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

Una, ‘you can change, then you’ll come down to the farm for your tea.’

A man was walking towards them on the roadside. He had a beige raincoat on, open and blowing back from a pale grey suit. Not the kind of clothes anyone wore around here. The knees of his trousers had mud on them. As they drew closer, Davy recognised the detective from the Dublin police station. He quickly raised a hand to his face. Una looked in the rear-view mirror. The man stood gazing after them, his coat billowing against the cow parsley that gushed from the hedge.

‘Who’s that?’

‘I don’t know. Just drop me at the track.’

As he got out of the car, Davy looked back down the road towards town. The man was no longer in sight.

‘Come down in about an hour,’ said Una.

‘I’m not hungry,’ said Davy. He banged the car door shut and started up the track towards his bungalow.

30

Ali ignored Detective Swan’s advice. A bath would fix nothing, and she didn’t want to face her aunt. Instead of going to the farm, she walked to Davy’s house. He wasn’t there. She sat down on the cement stump that stood like a sentry by the unfinished threshold. The afternoon was mild, but she couldn’t stop her hands from trembling. Down on the road, a car door slammed and soon afterwards Davy appeared through the trees, walking fast. He was still wearing his dark funeral suit, but it looked baggier than when she’d seen him at the graveyard, and his tie was gone.

He started to raise a hand in greeting, but then blinked and stood still, looking at her with an expression somewhere between disgust and confusion.

‘What have you got there?’ he called.

Ali looked down. The doll was lying across her knee.

‘It’s my doll.’

He closed the distance between them. In the light of the clearing he looked ill, his skin doughy. He stood over her, staring down at the filthy remains of Baby Joy. He brought his hand up and swung it in slow motion towards her face. His fingers delivered a light flick against her cheek.

‘You little joker,’ he said, but he wasn’t smiling.

Ali stood up. ‘You’ve been in the pub, haven’t you?’

‘Where did you find that aul’ yoke?’

‘This yoke is the doll I was supposed to get that Christmas. I found it buried in the cottage on the forestry road.’

Davy started to laugh, low and empty. ‘So that’s what she did with it. What a retard. So you’re all on your own here?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Only I saw a man on the road, heading for the village – he had city clothes.’

‘That’s Detective Swan – he’s from Dublin.’

Davy took a small bunch of keys from his pocket and bounced them rhythmically in his hand. ‘I hope he’s not going to take you away from us again?’ He hopped past her up onto the doorstep and busied himself with the lock.

‘Nah, he’s here to talk to Sister Bernadette from my school. She’s Dr Nolan’s daughter. Well, you probably know that.’

Davy was taking a while to unlock the door. ‘Why don’t you come in for a coffee,’ he said, his back still turned, ‘tell me all about it.’

‘Davy?’

He looked round.

‘Who’s a retard? When I said I’d found the doll, you said something like she’s a retard.’

He lifted his shoulders, then relaxed them in a long, exaggerated sigh.

‘Joan. God rest her soul. I gave her that doll to help her get over losing the baby that night. Something to hold while she was wailing. We needed the box. I didn’t think she’d go and bury it.’

Ali shivered. We needed the box. So matter-of-fact. She did a sum in her head. Davy must have been sixteen when Joan had her baby.

‘Do you know about … where her baby ended up? When we found this doll, I was thinking, Where’s the real one?’

‘Who’s we?’

‘Detective Swan and me – he helped dig it up.’

Davy stepped down beside her.

‘You’re some kid, do you know that? Okay, so …’

Sliding an arm round her shoulder, Davy started to walk her along the rough path towards the farm. The doll hung from her hand, brushing through the grass. Everything was both ordinary and extraordinary, and she felt that she was being carried along on some kind of irresistible current, that even though she could speak and move, she couldn’t affect the flow of things. Even Davy seemed strange, full of flippant cheer.

‘Joan used to stay in that broken cottage with her little brother, like a pair of tinkers. I don’t know what you see in him, by the way; he’s closer to livestock than human. He thinks it was me that shafted her. Got her up the pole. An altar boy like me.’

‘I don’t think I feel right, Davy. Do you?’

He squeezed her closer to him, but kept walking. ‘He’d rather think that than the truth. Better than knowing it was your old man or your uncle, or even one of your brothers, doing her. That’s why Joan used to stay over in the kitchen – she didn’t want to go home. She knew an awful lot for her age, sex stuff. She was very keen to teach it, too.’

The path widened and the trees gave way to farm buildings. Davy released his hold on her, looked about at the barn and outbuildings as if they were new to him, rubbed at his chin.

Ali walked ahead onto the concrete screed of the farmyard, and the view opened up around her – the soft rise of hills, the lines of hedges and, closer in, on her left, the pig sheds. Davy came up to stand beside her.

‘Technically speaking, I might have been the father, but I know in my heart it wasn’t mine. It was a sickly thing, and its end was sad. I won’t have that one associated with me. I won’t.’

Gold sunlight slanted across the fields, but here in the shade of the barn it felt cold. Ali tucked the doll inside her cardigan