The Rosary Garden by Nicola White (best books to read now TXT) 📕

from the main road. For all their talk of community projects, these rich acres were lying unused, while inner-city kids played in the summer traffic. Withholding – that’s what they were good at. Even if one of these holy women had seen something, he was not convinced they would tell him.

13

The bell jingled, a cue to kneel; on either side of Ali, Aunt Una and Uncle Joe pulled themselves forward onto the padded kneeler. Ali never went to mass in Dublin. She wondered whether to stay sitting, to separate herself from the rigmarole. People were kneeling close behind her – she could feel someone’s breath on her neck. She moved forward onto her knees and Una gave a tiny satisfied hum as Ali drew level.

She had been woken early by her aunt, with a mug of tea and a slice of fruit bread, flicking the curtains open and saying that it would be a good thing if Ali came with her to ten o’clock mass. People could get a good look at her, Una said and, having seen her, wouldn’t be bothering the family with nosy questions. Ali still felt guilty about being late for dinner. Una said they’d be leaving in fifteen minutes.

A clinking of coins at the end of the aisle announced the collection, and a couple of gaunt men supervised the safe passage of baskets through the congregation. Una brought her handbag to her knee and pulled out a pre-folded note. Ali passed the wicker bowl across her lap, a weighty nest of money. The organist filled the hiatus with a swirling noise that suggested a tune might emerge by and by. Against this wash of sound, individual noises rose to the curved roof – someone at the back suppressing a chesty cough, a toddler whining, the occasional jackpot jangle as the collectors poured the takings into the large wooden box being trolleyed up the centre aisle.

After mass, the congregation milled around in the bright morning, a busy crush between railings and church front. Car engines revved as the road was filled with a sudden traffic jam. Up the street, some people were heading into pubs for an après-mass pint. A striking man with thick white hair and glasses moved in front of Ali and held a hand out for her to shake. Was it her imagination, or was the crowd thicker around them than in other parts of the churchyard?

‘You remember Dr Nolan,’ said Una as Ali surrendered her hand. She recognised him, but his hair had been dark back then. He asked politely after her mother and her own prospects. A picture of him from long ago bloomed in her head – Dr Nolan standing in the doorway of the living room, holding a gift wrapped in shining red paper. He had visited that Christmas Day – yes. With some children.

Dr Nolan turned to talk to her aunt. A finger tapped hard on Ali’s shoulder. She looked round to find a large, florid-faced man smiling at her.

‘I saw ye on the Late Late,’ he said, as if claiming kinship. ‘I thought ye were great.’

‘Thanks very much.’

‘And that Mary O’Shea, she’s great too, though I wouldn’t want to be married to her.’ He laughed, and two other young men who had drifted over to flank him joined in. Ali was distracted by a glint on the big man’s lapel. A familiar gold badge – two metal beans each topped by five pinhead dots: the footprints of a foetus, the tiny soles of the endangered womb-dweller. It was a badge to signal that its wearer was a dedicated pro-lifer, a man unashamed to defend theoretical babies.

‘Would you like to come for a drink with us sometime?’ His companions exchanged a delighted glance.

‘Go on with you, Cathal,’ said Uncle Joe, appearing beside her.

‘No harm, Mr Devane. Just being welcoming.’ The three men sloped off in the direction of Melody’s.

A small woman with a headscarf scooted forward and pressed something into Ali’s hand and muttered that she would pray for her.

‘Thank you,’ said Ali to the woman’s departing back. ‘Do you think we can go back to the car now, Uncle Joe?’

‘We’re waiting for Roisín.’

‘We are?’

She opened her hand to see what the woman had given her. It was a medal, light as a feather, the metal thin and chalky, a jellied pool of blue glaze on the front holding a scene of the Adoration at Lourdes. Or that’s what she presumed – the medal was so crudely made that the figures looked like stalagmites in a cave. Ali slipped it into the back pocket of her jeans, her fingers brushing against Mary O’Shea’s business card.

‘Who’s that woman in the headscarf?’

‘She’s a religious nut. Don’t mind her.’ It seemed that, in Uncle Joe’s mind, there was a subtle but important barrier between the nuts and the very devout. ‘Maeve Dempsey,’ he added.

‘Anything to Joan Dempsey?’

‘You’ve a good memory. Her mother.’

There had been a passing likeness between them – the slightness and quickness of Joan turned to a kind of bony agitation in the mother.

‘And is Joan about?’ She tried to make the question casual, just a polite addition to what went before.

Joe glanced past her, cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, ‘Roisín!’

Over by the railings, two young woman were talking, small children churning around their legs. One turned at the sound of Joe’s voice. Her cousin was still beautiful, Ali thought, lean like a tennis player, her fair hair now cut into a little crop, sensible, brisk. Roisín ran over to give Ali a hug.

‘God, it’s been years! I’ll bring her over to mine, Dad, and have her back to you later.’ Ali had no choice in the matter, it seemed. Like the evening before, she felt like a parcel passed from hand to hand.

Roisín talked non-stop on the way to her car, pointing out sights that Ali already knew, asserting her old bossiness. Her cousin had four years’ head-start on her, a gap that