The Rosary Garden

by Nicola White

‘Don’t be a fairy.’

  She took the bottle and swallowed. It burned inside her mouth and made her lips sting, but as it went down, she felt a warming in her chest, like coming back to life. She took another sip and Davy smiled. She wanted to change the subject.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘aren’t these my mother’s sheets?’

  ‘Must’ve taken them by mistake.’

  ‘Mistake?’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re bothering to go to university; with that nose on you, you should go straight into the cop shop – or the Gestapo – go snooping with the piggy pigs, oink-oink.’ He grabbed the bottle from her, swallowed deep and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  Ali tried again to think of something light to talk about, something to make Davy come back to himself. And then she thought of him laughing in the graveyard, the sound of it carrying over Joan’s open grave. And how Peggy had stared at him, her eyes burning; and Sister Bernadette beside her, looking too, angry with Davy for something more than just the laugh.

  She stood up, wobbled on the mattress.

  ‘Where’re you going?’

  ‘I’m going to get some water – water for the whiskey.’

  Ali let the tap run. The night of the marquee dance, she had seen Peggy on the edge of the floor, looking out at the dancers with the most miserable expression. And when Ali had taken her place, Davy was two feet away dancing with Valerie, the woman who had broken it off with him for his wandering eye. What was the connection between Davy and Peggy?

  She heard him move about the house, then a loud crack of splintering wood. She didn’t know what he was up to, but stayed at the sink, moving the glass under the water’s flow, filling it and emptying it again and again. What was it that Joan had said to her? You know nothing. Nothing at all.

  ‘You got a lighter?’ He was in the doorway.

  She wiped her hands on her skirt and took her lighter and cigarette box out of her pocket and offered them up.

  ‘Bring us a glass too – I’m lighting a fire in the front room.’

  Ali sat on the sofa, smoking, supping her whiskey and water steadily while Davy assembled a pile of thin wood and newspaper in the rough hole where a fire surround might one day go. He hummed as he touched the flame to the edges of the paper. The wood crisped and spat.

  ‘That’s cosy now,’ he said, balancing two peat briquettes over the flames. He came to join her on the sofa, filling the tumbler she’d brought for him with whiskey before settling back against the cushions.

  ‘You’re very quiet, but it’s better you know. Young girls can be very naïve. This is what the world is.’

  Her tongue in her mouth was clumsy. ‘Did something happen between you and Peggy?’

  ‘Aw, Jaysus – that too? Let me make one thing clear: I never fancied her. It was a moment of weakness. You know I’m given to moments of weakness.’

  Davy put his hand on Ali’s knee and gave her a rueful smile. She didn’t smile back, but glimpsed a foggy image of Davy’s face very close to hers in the darkness. He sighed and removed his hand, picking up the tale.

  ‘It was just once or twice. In the back of her daddy’s Jag; what can I say – the surroundings appealed to me. Should have fucked the car instead. She said she was on the pill, said her daddy got her a supply, and I believed her. Next thing she’s up the pole, and telling Valerie about it. And I got no say in any of it. That’s not fair, is it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I said she should get rid of it, and do you know what she said to me? She said she would if I’d be her boyfriend. She was trying to hijack my life. My whole life.’

  Davy thumped the arm of the sofa so hard the drink in Ali’s glass trembled. She raised it to her lips and tipped all the liquid into her mouth.

  ‘I convinced her to get it adopted – had a place set up for her in some residential place out in Connemara. Might have led her on a little bit about my feelings to get the job done, okay, but then Antoinette takes Peggy off to Dublin with her, says she doesn’t want her to make any rash decisions …’

  Ali thought of the Rosary Garden, of Sister Bernadette standing bereft outside the shed with a dead baby in her arms.

  ‘… like I’ve no rights, like I’m some fuckin’ plank of wood. You women think it’s all down to you – dominion over life and death, eh? I was just trying to get my say. It was half mine.’

  Ali tried to get to her feet, but Davy grabbed her hand and pulled, holding her down next to him and pointing a finger in her face.

  ‘You listen: I’ll tell you how it was supposed to go, and then how you messed it up.’

  ‘I feel sick.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  Davy looked round for the whiskey bottle, but he couldn’t reach it and keep hold of her at the same time.

  ‘Bugger. Anyway, Peggy goes to Dublin to have the baby, and I follow after. Her sister’s trying to persuade her to keep it, to come back to Buleen and live openly with her little bastard in my own town. I’d never be rid of her.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I sorted something out. It was perfect. I told her I had a family in England, rich people desperate for a baby, who would give it the life of a princess. We do a deal. I persuade Peggy to give me the baby one night in Dublin and tell her I’m going to take it over on the ferry.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Of course I didn’t. I would have been stopped at the first post. It was just a tale. No, I had a better plan. I figured I could drive as far as Portlaoise and back without your mother missing her car. Drop the baby near the hospital in the dark. I even had a wee bed set up in the back of the car, a towel to wrap it in. I’m not a monster. They’d be searching the midlands for the mother. Nothing to connect it to her or me.’

  ‘It’s still alive?’

  ‘It would be, if you hadn’t arrived at the door with your little blondie friend.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your house. That night. The thing was screaming – a noise that would strip the skin off you. I popped back to yours, figured I could get some milk and whiskey down it. Just dope it, like. I knew no one was in. But still it won’t stop crying. I was in the laundry room with it when I hear the key in the door and you two giggling in the hall. You made me panic.’

  His voice was accusing, but he wouldn’t meet her eye. Ali remembered coming in with Fitz that night, because Fitz wanted to meet Davy – wanted to meet any man she could – and him coming out of the scullery all flustered, and her thinking it was shyness.

  ‘What have you done, Davy?’

  ‘I’ve done no worse than thousands of women, than my own sister did. What difference is there between a foetus and a just-born baby that knows nothing or no one – days, that’s all it is.’

  ‘There is a difference,’ said Ali.

  His hand grabbed the back of her neck and tightened.

  ‘Don’t give me crap. You don’t know enough to keep your knickers on, either. I had to leave it somewhere, so I thought I’d put it in that little garden you talk about so much. A nice present for Sister Bernadette and her meddling. And there you were, under a tree, getting your titties out for some boy.’

  It felt like being punched. He had been there, the figure walking on the path down to the Rosary Garden. He had seen her with Ronan. This wasn’t made up.

  Davy let go of her, turned away. When he spoke, his voice was barely there. ‘I just needed it to shut up.’

  ‘Davy, it wasn’t an “it”.’

  He wrapped his arms around his head as if warding her off. ‘It wasn’t my fault—’

  Ali leapt for the hall, grabbing at the jamb to pivot herself towards the front door. She fumbled with the snib while he called her name from the living room, a forlorn wail that almost made her waver, but the door was opening now and she could see the dusky sky and the path through the trees beckoning her out of there.

  She stepped out into air, forgetting that the ground would be so far. Her body pi
tched forward, flying down towards the cement boulder that suddenly filled her vision.

  33

  > Swan knocked on Dr Nolan’s study door. Outside, in the dwindling light, his small team readied themselves for the short trip to Caherbawn.

  ‘Come in!’

  It was more of a library than a consulting room, though an examination bench covered in nasty beige vinyl lurked against one wall. The sight of it reminded him of Ali, and what she had been subjected to on his orders. But the girl and the mother hadn’t been quite honest with him – they had never mentioned an uncle being with them in Dublin.

  Dr Nolan was sitting at an old-fashioned writing desk, a fat reference tome open before him, a brass lamp casting a civilised light. He slid off some wire-rimmed reading glasses as Swan approached. There was a ring of falseness to the pose, as if he had been waiting to be interrupted.

  ‘I’ll assume you know why we’re here, Doctor.’

  A nod and a shrug. I do, but I don’t.

  ‘Your daughters have given contradictory statements to me about the fate of the baby your daughter Peggy was carrying. What do you know of it?’

  ‘I would think that Bernadette would be your more reliable witness. My younger daughter’s state of mind isn’t strong.’

  ‘She didn’t seem very focused. What have you given her?’

  ‘She’s on a prescription tranquilliser. All above board.’

  ‘When did you notice she was pregnant?’

  Dr Nolan hesitated a moment. ‘She concealed it from us. I didn’t know till quite late along.’

  ‘I thought the signs would be more obvious to a medic,’ said Swan.

  The doctor tightened his jaw. ‘The girls tend to rely on their mother for those kind of confidences.’

  There was no regret for his lost grandchild, nor did he seem inclined to protect Peggy against her sister’s implied accusation.

  ‘We’ll need to take a statement from you and your wife tomorrow at the station.’

  ‘Can’t it be done here?’

  ‘I’ll see – it might be possible, if you can help me with another matter.’

  Nolan nodded.

  ‘Twelve years ago at Christmas time another baby was found, at Caherbawn. I believe you were there.’

  ‘Your officer asked me about that previously. Una Devane called me to Caherbawn and I examined the mother.’

  ‘Did the child’s body have any marks on it – any signs of violence?’

  A hesitation. The doctor shook his head.

  ‘You didn’t inform the Guards.’

  ‘The child never lived, didn’t attain independent existence, as such. Some people’s lives are hard enough. I don’t see that there’s any benefit in making a song and dance.’

  ‘What happened to the body?’

  ‘I can’t recall. It was left with the family. You should see Una Devane about it.’

  ‘Are you sure you actually examined the child?’

  Dr Nolan picked up his glasses as if eager to get on with his reading. ‘I don’t see the point in all this.’

  ‘Did you see the baby?’

  ‘Una Devane is a reliable woman … it was Christmas. A house full of children.’

  ‘You didn’t.’

  ‘I was shown it briefly,’ he finally conceded.

  ‘The mother of the child that you didn’t record was buried this morning, drowned. Did you sign off her death certificate?’

  ‘There was nothing to suggest Joan Dempsey’s death was anything other than an accident.’

  ‘Don’t you need an autopsy to determine that?’

  ‘I examined the body and spoke to Father Philbin and the police. We did not deem it necessary.’

  A big man in a small town, thought Swan. Practised here all his life, knew all the secrets. Decided what was best. Deemed it.

  ‘Well, I’m just going to have to order one myself.’

  As he rose to go, Swan noticed the little wire glasses trembling in the doctor’s grip.

  34

  Branches moving against a deep-blue sky. Twilight and shifting air, everything mobile. She thought she was back in the convent grounds with Ronan, that he was about to kiss her and that this time it would be lovely. A face hovered over her, Ronan’s face approaching, blocking out her view of the sky. The face wavered, became Davy’s, so close to hers that all the light disappeared and she was floating in blackness again.

  When Ali woke, she was aware of stones under her, and although the air was mild, her head was cold and clammy.

  She raised her fingers to her scalp, felt her hair clumped together, sticky. Now she was properly awake and could recognise the outside of Davy’s bungalow. She put a hand to the concrete stump beside her, used it to lever herself to sitting. Her hand left dark prints on the grey. She wanted to be sick.

  The house was in blackness; the door stood open. Ali got shakily to her feet and tried to think. If he was still there in the living room he could see her through the dark window, might be looking straight at her. She knew now that he would hurt her, if he felt he had to.

  Ali turned and hobbled away, picking up speed as she reached the trees, ears straining for steps behind her. Halfway along the path she held onto a sapling and stopped to look behind. She couldn’t see him, but branches and their shadows swayed in the breeze. He could be very close by.

  If she could reach the farmhouse, surely her family would protect her. But Davy was family too, closer to the rest of them than she was. A line of fresh blood dripped down her cheek, and she held a hand to it. She had no choice – she might even be dying. Ali staggered in the direction of the farm. She would not die alone out here.

  The barn loomed up behind the trees. Not far to go, she told herself. Her feet hit the concrete of the yard and she could see the light from the kitchen window fall across the patch of grass at the back of the house. On the ground to her left, she registered two squares of darkness where the awful slurry tank was. There should only be one square, the drain cover, but now there seemed to be two, one darker than the other, and something else – some object – beside them.

  Keep going, she told herself, but her eyes clung to the squares, halting her feet, wanting to make sense of it.

  The slurry tank had been opened. One square was the metal cover, pulled aside; the other was the black void it should be covering. She took a few steps towards them. Except for her own ragged breathing, all remained quiet, nothing moved. From six feet away, she peered at the open hole and what was left beside it. It was hard to make it out in the dim light, and Ali moved closer. At first she thought it was a stone, then she saw it was a shoe, a black brogue. She knew she’d seen one like it recently, but her head was so fogged it took another long moment until she could make sense of it and remember where.

  A tremor ran through her body and her throat opened to unleash a wail. In answer to her scream, a raw light burst from a lamp on the side of the barn, raking across the ground. A voice called her name and she turned to see Una running from the house towards her – her face distorted in panic.

  But even as she turned towards her aunt, Ali couldn’t rid her eyes of what she had glimpsed as the light burst across the yard. A dark shape like a sack, or perhaps a rounded back, lolled in the glossy brown swill of the slurry.

  35

  The scene that greeted Swan at Caherbawn was like some twisted medieval altarpiece – suffering and gesture stamped in light against the grainy dark.

  Four figures were lit up by harsh white floodlights. Two men, smeared with muck, laboured with wooden poles twice their height. They seemed to be prodding the ground, but the poles kept changing lengths and Swan realised they were probing some kind of hole. At their feet crouched two female figures, one middle-aged, kneeling with her arms cast out to either side of her in a kind of supplication, her hair wild and her eyes to heaven, the other on her hands and knees, staring into the hole, a shining trail of blood caking one side of her milky face. Ali. His heart contracted at th
e sight.

  Before Swan could fully absorb what he was looking at, Considine leapt out of the passenger seat, the two Guards from Kinmore following her. Ali shouted something as they approached, pointing into the hole in the ground. The two men with the long poles froze where they were. The woman got to her feet and stepped behind the men.

  The smell was awful, thick in his nose and throat, intimate and revolting. By the time he reached the group he could feel it soak his clothes and skin. One of the Gardaí stepped away to retch, affording Swan a view of the dark pit that all attention was centred on. Two feet below the opening he could see the stewing surface of some vast reservoir of faeces. The men had been stirring this with their poles, trying to fish something from it, and in the ordure was a form more solid than the rest. At first glance he took it to be a cat or dog that had somehow fallen in, a suggestion of matted fur or hair.

  He lifted his eyes. Considine had her arms around Ali, was trying to inspect her head injury even while she spoke to calm the shivering girl. The younger man was wearing a blue boiler suit. His red hair and arms were streaked with slurry as if he had been half-dipped into the tank.

  ‘What’s in there?’ Swan asked him.

  ‘She’s says – she says it’s Davy,’ he replied, gesturing at Ali, but never taking his eyes from the hatch.

  ‘It can’t be Davy,’ the older woman said.

  ‘Well, it’s someone,’ said one of the Guards and the older man turned away at his words, trailing the hooked pole after him, heading off into the darkness, his shoulders heaving.

  They eventually persuaded the family to go into the house, even the older man, Joe Devane, who they found shaking in a corner of the barn, still gripping his smeared pole.

  Fitzmaurice put a call in for an ambulance and the fire brigade. He asked Swan if it was worth getting the Garda divers too.

  ‘Let’s see what the fire boys can do first.’

  It took two hours to get him out – two hours of argument and speculation, of ropes and pulleys and improvised scaffold. The young fireman who volunteered to go down neck-deep and attach a line to the body deserved a medal. At last they managed to haul it out by a rope looped under its armpits, and it hung for a while under the scaffold in the lights, slowly rotating as the muck dripped from it, sliding off in gobbets. Swan checked again that the curtains were closed in the farmhouse.