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

motioned to the window with a jog of her head, and they strolled over with exaggerated nonchalance. Outside, the sun beat down on a brutish tarmac yard stretching away from the back of the hospital. Cars were parked along its far edge, where it butted up to a field dotted with black cattle.

‘Do you remember me finding something that Christmas Day?’ ventured Ali.

Joan shook her head, looked out at the hot cars.

Ali moved an inch closer. ‘There was a baby. It wasn’t alive. It was in a box, up in the back bedroom. And I wondered, was it yours?’

‘You found a baby in Dublin. I’ve never even been to Dublin.’ Joan wouldn’t look at her. As she lifted her cigarette to her mouth, Ali noticed a tremor in her hand.

‘I’m talking about before.’

‘Boxes. Bedrooms. I don’t know what you’re on about.’

‘You were expecting, weren’t you?’

There was a tiny flicker from Joan, a tightening of the corner of her mouth.

‘’Twas a miscarriage.’ She hissed the word out.

Ali looked out the window. What she had seen couldn’t be a miscarriage, could it? A miscarriage would be unformed, would look like something from that abortion film the nuns had shown them, with the bin full of discarded foetuses; a red galaxy swirling with the soft outlines of frog legs and newt palms among nameless clots of matter. Girls had fled the assembly hall, retching as they went.

Joan flicked rhythmically at the cigarette butt with her fingernail. Ash flakes sprinkled the windowsill.

‘The baby was wrapped in a towel,’ Ali persisted. ‘It was a small baby, but it looked perfect.’

On the word perfect, Joan froze. She addressed the windowpane.

‘Not a miscarriage, the other thing. When it doesn’t live. A stone birth – I mean still birth – that’s what they call it. Your aunt said that there would be other babies. But she was wrong; I tried and no others came. I gave myself to men I didn’t even like.’ Joan’s voice grew unsteady. ‘Sometimes I think God must hate me. He just hates me.’ She put her forehead against the windowpane.

Ali wished she hadn’t mentioned the baby. She had prised open a whole world of upset. What right had she to come here, bothering Joan? If the people who ran this place knew what she was at, they would keep her in – her and her dead babies. And Tony would wink at her as he tucked her up in her narrow bed, keys jingling at his hip.

‘I’m sorry, Joan. Nobody ever explained what happened. I’m just trying to make sense of it.’

‘You said it was perfect. Was it really?’

Ali nodded, put an arm round Joan’s waist. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘What did your aunt tell you?’

‘I didn’t ask her.’

Ali had never sung songs with Una, never run her hands through Una’s hair. She couldn’t ever remember speaking to her aunt when there weren’t other people present.

Joan turned away from the window, smoothed out her cheeks with her palms.

‘You used to drag that black kitten about – remember?’ said Joan. ‘Carried it all over the place with you like a dolly, never mind the fleas on it. You had bites all over your arms.’

Ali smiled. ‘You put calamine lotion on them.’ Chalky streaks of it, crackling when it dried.

So odd to think of this tiny woman taking care of her; the substantial presence of her then compared to now. Joan had been queen of the kitchen, the heart of the house for Ali, but she had just been passing through, had owned nothing but her labour.

A woman wheeled in a trolley of blue cups and handed strong, sugary tea to everyone, Ali included. She and Joan sat in chairs near the window. The boy with the fringe turned on the television, and everyone looked at the screen for a while, supping their tea. Onscreen, a man in yellow dungarees was talking to a red-haired puppet. The card players took a break from their game. It was sort of cosy.

‘I went to visit, but your aunt shooed me off. They won’t give me my job back.’

‘It was a long time ago, Joan. More than ten years.’

‘Well, she used to be very good to me. And then she wasn’t.’

‘When you were pregnant?’

Joan frowned and checked that no one had heard. The card players were talking. The sleeper on the floor slept on, a cup of cooling tea by her head.

‘You and your mammy were as bad.’

‘What did we do?’

‘You passed me on the road – me and my brother – like we were too dirty to pick up, like we were tinkers.’

As Joan said it, Ali had a vague memory of being in her mother’s new car, starting the trip back up to Dublin, and Joan on the grass verge of the road, holding a yellow-haired boy close in to her body as their car drove past them.

‘Did you leave Caherbawn the same day as us?’

‘Thrown out, more like.’ Joan screwed the butt of her cigarette into the ashtray, mashing it.

‘You know, there really isn’t much of a job to do any more. There’s hardly anyone to cook for,’ said Ali.

‘How d’you mean?’

‘Roisín, the twins and Davy are gone. They have their own homes. There don’t seem to be any farmhands, either. It’s only my aunt and uncle there now. And Brendan.’

All the anger drained from Joan’s expression, to be replaced with confusion. Ali got out of her chair and stooped down in front of her, catching Joan’s small hands together in her own. She looked over at Tony, but he didn’t seem to notice Joan’s distress. Only the shy girl was watching, scratching her cheek rhythmically.

‘You were very good to me,’ Ali said, searching out eye contact. ‘I remember that. You were kind.’

Joan wouldn’t look at her.

‘You sang me the farting song that Auntie Una banned. You let me plait your hair, and you made me show you my Irish dancing, up on the kitchen table, and clapped out the beat for me. Do you remember?’ Joan nodded,