The Rosary Garden
AVAILABLE FROM NICOLA WHITE AND VIPER
A Famished Heart
The Rosary Garden
The Burning Boy (2022)
The Rosary Garden
NICOLA WHITE
First published in this edition in Great Britain in 2021 by
VIPER, part of Serpent’s Tail,
an imprint of Profile Books Ltd
29 Cloth Fair
London
EC1A 7JQ
www.serpentstail.com
An earlier version of this work was published as
In the Rosary Garden by Cargo Publishing in 2013
Copyright © Nicola White, 2021
The lines from ‘Canal Bank Walk’ by Patrick Kavanagh (p.247) are reprinted from Collected Poems, edited by Antoinette Quinn (Allen Lane, 2004), by kind permission of the Trustees of the Estate of the late Katherine B. Kavanagh, through the Jonathan Williams Literary Agency.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781788164115
eISBN 9781782836445
To my parents, Seán and Mary, who fed me books
1
Dublin, 1984
It was good to be early. A step ahead. He cruised the car to a gentle stop on the canal side of the street and killed the lights. There was a little humpback bridge at the end of the road with a lantern on the top of it. Pretty as a postcard. Through the arch of the bridge he could just make out a wall of water falling over a lock gate, a shadowy unspooling that sounded like someone exhaling for ever. It was good to watch, took the edge off his nerves.
On the dot of eight, a light came on behind the splayed bones of a fanlight. The door below opened and she appeared – silhouetted, alone. It looked like she had nothing but a small case with her and disappointment flooded him, but then he noticed the crossing of one arm over her chest, the way she leaned back as she came down the stone steps.
She stepped into the fall of a street lamp and he could see the bulge of her coat more clearly. It was good that she was trying to be discreet, even if the result was ludicrously noticeable. Luckily there was nobody else on the road to see. He scanned the front of the terrace again for movement at windows. Nothing. The trees along the canal were in full leaf, blocking the buildings on the other side from sight.
He rolled down the window.
‘Here!’
Her head swivelled in his direction.
Steady!
He called her name gently. Better to stay in the car, make her come to him.
She crossed the street and he reached over to open the passenger door for her. She put the case in the footwell and lowered herself slowly in beside him. He didn’t want to look at her, so he fiddled with the keys.
‘How’re ya?’ Her face was coming towards him. He ducked down and started the engine. ‘We’ll drive round a bit, eh?’
He checked his mirrors, pulled out slowly. He wasn’t sure where he was going, but it seemed a good idea to get moving.
‘No one saw me leaving,’ she said.
He looked in the rear-view mirror.
‘No one saw me. I did well, didn’t I?’
She was such a poultice.
‘Sure you did,’ he said.
Her hand was still clamped to the front of her coat where the lump was, and she started to stroke the material above it. He should have told her to put it in the back.
They were headed into the city centre now. He didn’t want to go too far, didn’t want to get lost. Get her to hand it over, drop her at the train station. That’s all.
‘Tell me again about the family?’ she asked.
‘They’re rich, cultured people. Aristocracy, I suppose you’d call them. Big house, ponies. She’ll have the life of a princess over there.’
‘They won’t send her to boarding school?’
‘No, they were very against that,’ he said and made himself touch her, put his hand flat on her thigh and give a little squeeze. She’d put on the beef.
‘What matters is that we get a fresh start,’ he said. ‘Nobody pulling us this way and that.’
She covered his hand with her own.
They were driving round Stephen’s Green. Round and round. She didn’t seem to notice that they were going nowhere. A set of lights changed to red and he took the chance to retrieve his hand.
‘I have a little bed for her in the back.’
She twisted to look. It was only a laundry basket, but he thought it looked the business, padded out with sheets and things.
‘I’ll pull in up here and you can put her in, eh?’
He could feel her reluctance fluttering beside him.
‘We won’t let them bully us,’ he said, ‘will we?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘we won’t.’
The word we was all that was needed. He applied it sparingly, knowing she’d do what he wanted, for the hope it contained. She was too easily swayed. Soft in the head, really. She would have made a terrible mother.
2
Fitz and Ali were late. They got to the door of the nuns’ parlour in time to hear the dry beat of a pair of clapping hands rise through a babble of voices.
Ali cracked the door open. Reverend Mother Mary Paul looked in their direction, one sceptical eyebrow raised even as she continued to clap for silence. The feeling of dread was only a reflex – Ali had to remind herself that the nun had no hold over them now.
A dozen of their former classmates gathered around in an untidy horseshoe with a few nuns and older lay teachers. Some big sheets of paper were pinned to the wall. GOOD LUCK TO OUR BRAINBOXES was painted across them, each awkward letter wrought in a different style and colour. An art project for reluctant first-years, probably. Ali tried to tuck
