The Rosary Garden

and Davy had treated her so gently when they collected her from the police station, and later Davy went out and got a bucket of fried chicken and a bottle of white wine for dinner, as if her brush with death called for something – not a celebration, certainly, but an occasion outside everyday rhythms.
After they ate, her mother went to visit a friend in hospital, and Ali went to her uncle’s room to sit side-by-side across his bed and watch a spy film on RTÉ2. They didn’t talk much. Davy said he felt a bit stunned by what had happened, so he couldn’t imagine how it was for her. They’d shared a half-bottle of Southern Comfort until her eyelids drooped and she lost track of who was who in the film. She didn’t even remember getting to bed.
She hauled herself up on her feet and washed the remains of her make-up off at the sink in the corner of her bedroom. There was a shower next to the sink, like a plastic phone box parked against the wall, a remnant of the house’s former life as a warren of bedsits. Ali used it as a wardrobe, hanging her clothes from the top edge, inside and out. She picked yesterday’s dress off the floor and hung it over the layers already there. Then she changed her mind and bundled it into one of the boxes of junk under her bed. She didn’t feel like seeing it again. When tears started, she sat on the floor and waited for them to pass, like weather.
Davy was down in the kitchen reading a newspaper, his fringe almost touching the page. When he noticed her, he made a half-hearted attempt at hiding it.
‘Just looking at the jobs,’ he said.
Davy had come to stay with them three weeks earlier. He was trying to find a job in Dublin, saying there were none to be had down in Clare. Each morning he would phone a few companies from the Yellow Pages and ask if they’d anything going.
‘Saves the feet,’ he’d say.
‘But not my bloody phone bill,’ Ma complained. ‘You need to get out there.’
Ali liked having him around. He was the baby of his family, nearer her age than her mother’s, and had a quick energy to him that altered the dull atmosphere of their house. He pottered around at all hours fixing things, hacking back the garden, surprising them. But he hadn’t landed so much as an interview for a job.
Davy shook out the newspaper and began to fold it up. ‘I didn’t want you upset. I just thought I’d look – there’s hardly anything.’
Ali tugged at the paper and he allowed it to escape. She found a small headline and a paragraph underneath. Dead Baby Found in Convent. It was a strange relief to see the words there, out in the world. The matter-of-factness of it.
‘I thought it might be worse,’ she said.
Her mother appeared in the doorway. ‘That’s only the start, apparently.’
She was wearing a loose dragon-print kimono over her nightdress and her dark-dyed hair sat in a careless knot on top of her head, like a cast member of a slovenly Mikado.
‘Seán O’Loan told me the Guards were trying to keep the lid on it, but he expects the press will soon be crawling all over it.’
‘When did you talk to him?’ said Ali. ‘I thought you were visiting Angela Farrington and her new hip.’
‘Well, when I came out of the hospital I had a while to wait for the bus, so I dropped into Lamb’s and he happened to be there.’ Ma had assumed her posher voice. She was a lousy liar.
‘You told him all about it, didn’t you?’
Ma took down the gas lighter and stood silent by the cooker, waiting for its tick-tick sparking to ignite the gas. The blue flames flattened as she put the kettle down and turned back to her daughter.
‘Well, I don’t know all about it, do I? You’ve told us very little. What harm if our friend gets to know something ahead of the pack?’
‘The policeman said I wasn’t to say anything, and you go straight to a journalist. You could get me into trouble.’
‘You didn’t say anything. I did. It’s my affair and I’ll take the responsibility.’
‘Oh, it’s your affair, all right.’
‘You’re a cheeky little pup—’
‘Ah, stop it now!’ said Davy.
Ali felt a stab of shame, just a little one. She wasn’t comfortable with the men her mother hung around with. No doubt the media crowd in Lamb’s were entertaining, but Ali couldn’t get past the fact that all those men had homes and families to return to, and dinner waiting in the oven. Her mother was never invited to share that dinner or sit at their tables.
The doorbell rang. They all looked up the hall to where the big panelled door was framed by threads of daylight.
‘Well, it won’t be for me,’ said Davy.
Deirdre Hogan moved, closing the kitchen door as she went. Davy and Ali listened to the muffled exchange on the threshold. The other voice was a man’s, and there seemed to be some kind of negotiation going on.
After a minute, her mother reappeared.
‘Love?’ she started, and Ali bristled. ‘Seán sent a photographer.’
‘What!’
‘He says they’re doing an article, but they’ve no photos to go with it. All he wants is a quick snap.’
‘No way.’
‘I’ll just have to give him your school photo then.’
‘Very funny.’
‘It’s the only decent one I have.’
Her sixth-year photograph sat framed on her mother’s dressing table, under a fine film of talc. In it Ali wore her uniform, a hairband and a submissive chin-tucked smile. She hated the girl in that photo.
‘Hal-oo-oo?’ The photographer was walking down the hall.
‘You’re unbelievable.’
Her mother opened the kitchen door. The man had a big canvas bag over one shoulder and a tripod in one hand. He looked around impatiently.
‘Is there a cosy corner somewhere we could do this, ma’am?’ He smiled at Ali and held out his hand. ‘Eamonn Owens at your