The Rosary Garden

by Nicola White

  Swan sat in his car for a while before turning the engine on. To believe Ali Hogan or not?

  He counted up the infanticide cases he’d had experience of – the baby by the canal, the one under the garage in Clondalkin two years back. Oh, and there was that case in Drimnagh – two tiny skeletons in a boarding-house cupboard, fishbone ribs covered in paper-thin skin. The woman from Achill who had put them there twenty years before said she hadn’t known anyone in Dublin at the time. That was her only explanation.

  He remembered the words of a farmer he’d met once in a bar in Athlone. He’d said that it used to be a common thing for the bog-strippers to turn up the remains of infants. The little bones scattered over the flayed land.

  He thought the man was being morbid in drink, but maybe it was he who was naïve. Perhaps the whole country was dotted with tiny corpses waiting to be found – babies tucked behind gateposts, eased under floorboards or thrown into sacks, with the company of stones to take them down into brown water. An Irish solution to an Irish problem. Grown secretly in the dark, and to the dark so quickly returned, some never surfacing at all to feel air inflate their lungs, the trickle of warm milk filling new stomachs.

  And what of his own babies: would they ever make it into the world or would there only be more pain? Two conceived, both faltered in the womb. Two months. Four months. He was forty-three. Elizabeth thirty-eight already. Perhaps they were too old, or a bad match. All he knew was that he couldn’t bear it to happen again. She wanted to try – argued that they didn’t have the luxury of waiting – but he couldn’t go near her, for fear of it. They hadn’t been intimate for so long now, he wasn’t sure it could be mended.

  He wiped a hand over his eyes and turned the ignition, driving without focus until he was away from Ranelagh, waking again to the world beyond the windscreen only as he turned down by the canal.

  He noticed a woman sitting on a bench in a short skirt and boots, her hair dyed a chemical auburn, her mouth clasped passionately around a cigarette. It reminded him of Sister Bernadette and her good work with the working girls of this area. The ice-queen moving among them. Community projects, the old nun had said. Not so very far away from the convent, really. He wondered if anyone from the team had had time to check it out.

  Percy Place was where she said St Jude’s, the drop-in centre, was – just nearby. He took a left fork out of the main traffic flow and cruised slowly to where the handsome Georgian terrace faced onto the canal. Halfway down he spotted a round plaque on the wall – a famous writer remembered.

  Swan parked. It was a lovely street, especially in the quiet of a late Sunday morning, like a film set, the way the whispering trees watched over the little stone bridge. The start of a Kavanagh poem learned at school came to him:

  Leafy-with-love banks and the green waters of the canal

  Pouring redemption for me …

  Ah, redemption. A pint of that would be welcome.

  The house was tall and wide, and a little brass sign at the top of the steps said Order of the Annunciation, in letters you would have to be closer than two feet away to read. Very discreet. He knocked. Nothing happened. He knocked again.

  A door opened somewhere below and Swan looked down over the railing into the paved basement area. A young woman with very short hair walked out and put something in a bin. Even from above, he could see how her stomach domed out.

  ‘Excuse me? Do you know if there’s anyone in up here?’

  She looked up, shading her eyes with a hand. She was much younger than he had first thought.

  ‘It’s all the one. Who are you looking for?’

  ‘Sister Bernadette?’

  ‘She’s had to go away.’

  ‘Do you work here?’

  ‘Naw. I’m a resident.’ She didn’t look like a prostitute, not at all. She looked more like a schoolgirl.

  An awful thought struck him.

  25

  After the police detectives left, Ali collected up their mugs and put the tray outside the door. She turned back to the mess of her room, a mess she’d become newly aware of through strangers’ eyes. Clothes spewed from the rucksack she had brought with her from Buleen. That was a good place to start.

  When she shook out her jeans, the little medal that Joan’s mother had given her fell out of the pocket, followed by the flutter of Mary O’Shea’s business card. Ali picked up the white rectangle and stared at it.

  She sat back down on the bed, all energy fled. She rubbed the edge of the card back and forth against her lips. Mary would be very interested in what Beasley had subjected her to. But what would Mary do with that? How could she control where that story went? How could she be sure she wouldn’t come out of it looking suspicious, stupid – both? She shouldn’t trust Mary, and she couldn’t trust the police. The police thought she might have had a baby. Beasley had looked inside her and thought so too. Swan was talking about poltergeists and dark forces. All of it was awful – everything that had happened since she stepped into the garden, or was it the night before that when things started to fall apart?

  She should have told the police about being at St Brigid’s that night; it just never occurred to her. The awful sight of that baby had put everything else out of her head. Fitz and she had met up with Bobby and Ronan outside the Berry-bush pub while Davy had been inside buying a naggin of vodka for them. The boys had beer, and it was their idea to go to the school grounds, not hers. Ronan had been paying her a lot of attention, slagging her, pretending to be interested in her bangles, that kind of thing. Usually boys paid more attention to Fitz.

  He stole one of her bracelets and she had chased after him, running over the grass in her bare feet, leaving Bobby and Fitz behind at the hockey pitch, drinking beer. When she caught up with Ronan, he grabbed her, pressed her into the bark of one of the big cedars. They were only messing about, nothing serious. He was kissing her neck, and she was starting to feel kind of floaty with it, watching the branches above her moving against the darkening sky – that deep, deep blue that comes before black. One of Ronan’s hands was at her chest, twisting the buttons of her shirt. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Ronan laughed and stepped back from her. She looked down and saw with a shock that one breast was exposed, lolling out, almost luminous in the dusk.

  It was then that they heard the footsteps on the path, a soft gritty rhythm coming towards them. Ali turned quickly and crouched into the tree, signalled to Ronan to hide too. She didn’t dare move until the sound had faded well beyond them. Ronan claimed it was a nun who passed – perhaps the ghost of a nun – but that wasn’t what she had seen. The half-glimpsed figure looked more like a man to her.

  She couldn’t tell Swan she had gone off with Ronan – he thought she was a right tramp already. She’d caught him staring at that damn love-bite on her neck. Anyway, she couldn’t really be sure she had seen anything.

  She tore Mary’s business card into little pieces. It was better not to have that temptation after what happened last time.

  She didn’t know what to do with herself. She didn’t want to tidy. The muffled sound of the radio floated up from her mother’s room downstairs. She would be sitting there among her broken things and saucers of glue. A spider in her web, fiddling, mending.

  The gate to the passageway squeaked. Ali went to her window and looked down. A familiar bright head bobbed up the passageway.

  As Ali ran down the first flight of stairs, the doorbell rang.

  ‘I’ll get it!’ her mother shouted.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Ali called back, ‘it’s only Fitz.’

  When she pulled the big door open, Fitz was picking at the labels on the rack of old bells.

  ‘When you going to get rid of all these?’ she asked.

  Ali gave her friend a quick hug and pulled her inside. She could hear her mother moving around on the landing, so she pushed Fitz into the front room. She didn’t want her mother hearing any more than was necessary, especially now that she was being so nice, treating Ali a
s lovingly and carefully as a piece of her broken porcelain.

  ‘Have I been in this room?’ asked Fitz, looking around at the stripped single bed, the tilting empty shelves.

  ‘Davy was staying in it last,’ said Ali.

  ‘The foxy uncle,’ said Fitz, and ran a palm sensually over the bare mattress before sitting down on it.

  Ali laughed obligingly. This is how they always were together, joking, mock-sophisticated, but it felt newly awkward, like she couldn’t find the rhythm of their usual dance.

  On the wall over the bed, Davy had stuck pictures from newspapers, a collage of faces that he had added to day by day, like a bulging cloud. He stuck them on with toothpaste. She noticed Mary O’Shea’s picture in the centre, little fangs and horns drawn on in black felt-tip.

  Fitz followed her gaze.

  ‘Did he do all that? He’s mad. Where’s he gone?’

  ‘He had to go back down to Buleen. Work.’

  ‘Pity. I think he fancied me.’

  Fitz was probably right, but Ali wasn’t going to add to her vanity. When she’d brought Fitz home with her that night she’d noticed how flustered Davy was, tripping over himself to take them out for a drink. If only they’d managed to get served in the Berrybush, they wouldn’t have ended up going to St Brigid’s with the consolation prize of the vodka he’d bought them and those stupid boys. Davy refused to come with them. Why would he drink like a kid when he could sit in a pub, he said. Maybe he wasn’t that keen on Fitz after all.

  ‘Anyway,’ Fitz was saying, ‘I came here to say I was sorry I said anything to the Guards about the boys, but they were pretty fierce. I was worried they’d do me for underage drinking.’

  ‘I’m not angry with you,’ said Ali, ‘but it is creepy, don’t you think? I mean … someone else was there that night. And the baby turned up in the shed. I just don’t know. Maybe it was me that did it and I’ve blacked it all out. Have you noticed anything strange about me in the last few months?’

  ‘No, but I’m noticing it now.’

  ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘Unless you’re completely schizophrenic, or something. Ali, you’d know. And I’d certainly know.’

  ‘You’ll testify in court then?’

  Fitz laughed and rolled her eyes. ‘You’ve got to get a grip, sweetie.’

  She wanted to tell Fitz about Joan, but where would she even start to explain it all?

  ‘Aren’t you’re worried about your results?’ said Fitz.

  Ali’s first thought was that Fitz somehow knew about Beasley and all the tests they did on her, but as Fitz went on to say how she hadn’t done enough revision, Ali realised she was only talking about the Leaving: the exam results, the thing she’d been so obsessed about before all this. Her future.

  ‘They’ll be here next week. I can’t believe it. Do you want to meet up? We could go into town …’

  Ali imagined sitting with Fitz on a red settee in Bewley’s, eating almond buns, laughing about nothing and watching university boys go by.

  ‘I can’t go out, Fitz, I can’t see anyone. You could come here. I’m sure Ma would let us have some wine.’

  ‘I guess I could, but Allanah and Rachel were talking about Captain Americas, which would be fun. Come on.’

  ‘Don’t worry. You go out. I’ll phone you.’

  ‘Do that.’

  Ali walked her to the door.

  When Fitz reached the bottom of the steps she turned and cocked her hand like a gun. ‘Ciao, baby. Don’t take any shit.’

  Ali stood for a while with her forehead against the closed door. She missed the way they’d been.

  She went back into Davy’s room. She missed him too. Maybe when all this was past, he would come back and get a proper job in Dublin. Anyone could see there was nothing for him in Buleen, only an ugly half-finished bungalow. And the place did something bad to him, made his humour bitter and careless. She stood and looked at the pictures he’d put on the wall until her mother called her to the kitchen for lunch.

  Ali ate the soup put in front of her. Tomato, sweet and bland.

  ‘I talked to Una on the phone just now. She says Joan’s funeral is tomorrow. So quick. But I don’t think she was suggesting we should go.’

  Joan’s funeral. Coming back to Dublin had been forced on her. She should be in Buleen, should be there to acknowledge all that she hadn’t done for Joan.

  ‘I think I should be there, Ma. I spent time with Joan in Buleen. I even spoke to her the night she died.’

  ‘I’m concerned about you, pet. You’ve been involved in too much – too much grimness.’

  ‘We could go together. You haven’t been back in a long time.’

  ‘Ha!’ said her mother. ‘I don’t care if I never see that hole again.’ She quickly put her hand up to her mouth. Ali stared back at her. It had never occurred to her that her mother didn’t love the place she came from.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know – lots of things. The baby, of course. Other bad associations. Do you remember your granddad at all?’

  ‘Sort of.’ What Ali remembered was an old red-faced man propped in an easy chair in Una’s front room. His stillness and silence were frightening.

  ‘He was fairly diminished when you knew him. When I was a girl, he was a bit of a brute, to be frank. No affection. Thought a father’s role was to toughen you up.’

  Her mother pushed her half-eaten plate of soup away to one side.

  ‘I remember once – I’ll never forget it – he had this notion that being able to deliver a good death to a beast was an essential skill. He thought the whole family should know how to do it, even his children.’

  Ali put her spoon down. She wanted to tell her mother to stop talking, but no words came.

  ‘One of the cats brought a bird into the kitchen, maimed. It was a little wren, hopping around under the table with it wing sticking out. I was only five or six. My father fetches a bucket from the scullery, fills it with water. Then he bends down and catches the bird, calls me to him. I thought he was going to mend it somehow, so I wasn’t scared until he presses the little thing into my hand, tells me to hold it under the water. I wouldn’t do it, no matter how he argued that it’s the right thing.

  ‘So he puts his hand around mine and forces them both into the bucket, and I can feel the little thing fluttering, panicking, inside my fingers, but I can’t open my hand. Finally it stops moving, and I look at my father. He takes our hands out of the bucket, pulls my fingers apart and the bird is stretching out in my hand, its little claws uncurling. You know, I don’t think I ever felt the same about him after.’

  ‘Did he make the others do that?’

  ‘Oh yes. He made Una kill a lamb that was ailing, but she would have done anything for her daddy. Davy went trapping rabbits with him from the time he could walk, learned how to dispatch them. But it was different for him.’

  ‘How different?

  ‘Ach, he’s a boy, it doesn’t seem to go so hard with them. Anyway, it was enough to give me a stomach full. I never miss the place at all. But if you want to go back, I won’t stop you.’

  Ali went upstairs to pack. As she changed her clothes, she spotted the little Lourdes medal on the floor. She picked it up it and put it in her shirt pocket, happy to take any protection that was going. From somewhere in the chest of drawers she found a black skirt to wear for the funeral.

  ‘There’s a train in an hour.’

  Her mother was standing at the phone. She put the receiver down and turned to take Ali into her arms for the first time in years. Ali hugged back.

  ‘Be careful,’ said Ma. The phone started to ring again. Neither moved to answer it.

  ‘If my Leaving results come,’ said Ali, ‘don’t open them. Wait till I get back and we can open them together.’

  26

  Swan took his badge from his inside pocket and held it out towards the pregnant girl. She squinted and shook her head. It was too far away. Swan went dow
n to her, could hardly ask her to climb the steps up to him.

  ‘Someone was supposed to meet me here,’ he lied. ‘I need to take a quick look round. Are any staff about?’

  ‘One of the nuns’ll be coming to make the dinner, but there’s nobody here now. Never is on a Sunday.’ Her accent wasn’t Dublin, more southerly – Corkish. She inspected his ID diligently and smiled a cheeky smile.

  ‘I’m not in trouble, am I?’ Flirty, despite her condition. Swan didn’t respond.

  He stepped towards the open basement door, peered in – he could see a washing machine and a chest freezer.

  ‘Can I just have a look?’

  ‘I suppose it’s all right – but don’t go into any of the girls’ rooms, they’re private.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Many what?’

  ‘Girls are staying at the moment?’

  ‘There’s three of us.’

  Swan followed her into the basement of the house, through a large, functional-looking kitchen. Beyond that there was a big sitting room, with a hatch through to the kitchen. The curtains had been drawn to block the light from the TV screen, but even in the blue-washed gloom, the pregnant state of the two young women slumped on the sofa was the first thing he noticed. They were planted deep in the cushions, as if their distended bellies had fallen on them and rooted them there. The girls stirred at his entrance, and one drew a hand up over her stomach in a protective gesture.

  ‘He’s just having a look round,’ said the crop-haired girl and shot Swan a grin as though his motives were slightly suspect. She went over to an armchair and descended into it slowly, taking the strain on her arms. It seemed he was free to wander. Through the next doorway a staircase led up to the rest of the house.

  On the floor above, next to the main entrance, he found two nicely proportioned rooms, furnished for the most part with bland desks and filing cabinets and those low easy chairs with no arms – perhaps this was the drop-in centre that Sister Bernadette had mentioned, but the two floors above that looked like an upmarket B&B: nice carpet, another living room or parlour and a series of gleaming doors with numbers on them and tiny brass frames below. A few of the frames held yellow cards with names inked on them in cramped Gothic calligraphy – Jenny Mooney, Esther McDaid, Sharon O’Higgins – just like the writing on the Reverend Mother’s door back at the convent.