Ali laughed.
‘And that was very advanced for the sixties,’ said Mary. ‘What did you get?’
‘We got a man. Not just a man of course, a doctor. We were twelve or thirteen. He talked to us for a whole day. Most of it was about the Billing’s method and secretions, and how to fend off your husband’s advances. Because men can’t help themselves, he said.’
‘It’s no joke, getting pregnant.’
‘No. But they always go on about how men want sex, like it’s their particular thing, not the women – we only go through with it to be kind. Can’t women want it too?’
Mary smiled a slow smile and smoothed her hair. ‘It takes a while to get past the programming.’
Ali took another sip from her glass, thought how nice it would be to be as comfortable in the world as Mary O’Shea.
‘You know the referendum?’
Mary sighed as she nodded.
‘No one made the men account for their sperm, did they?’
‘A fair point.’
‘Each little tadpole a potential human soul. No, it was always about those murderous women, those precious eggs.’
‘The most dangerous place in the world is in a woman’s womb,’ intoned Mary, a notorious quote from an archbishop. ‘Why do you think the baby died?’
Ali looked away.
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
They fell silent for a moment, Mary looking down at her notebook, Ali stirring the ice-melt in her glass with a plastic swizzle stick.
‘I had a great friend at school,’ said Mary eventually. ‘Barbara, her name was. We went to the Gaeltacht together one summer, had a rare time – the boys, the ceilidhs, bonfires on the beach. We ran wild. But when we got back to school, Barbara said her mother had decided she should go to boarding school in the country and that she was leaving St Brigid’s at Christmas. She went really quiet. I stupidly thought it was because she was so sad to leave me. I wrote to her at the new school, but she didn’t answer. It wasn’t till years later that I found out the truth of it.’
Ali nodded to show that she understood.
Mary picked up her drink and cupped it in her hands, leaning towards Ali.
‘Did that happen to any girls that you know?’
Five minutes before, Ali would have said ‘no’, but as Mary talked, the face of a girl called Eileen Vaughan had risen in her mind. Eileen had been Fitz’s best friend. It was only Eileen’s sudden departure from school at Easter that left Fitz free to be friends with Ali. There were rumours through the school that Eileen Vaughan had been dabbling in drugs. Fitz wouldn’t discuss it. Ali realised now there was a more obvious explanation.
‘I think maybe it did. The same as with your friend. A girl left suddenly early this year, no mention of it afterwards, like she’d never been there.’
‘When was this?’
‘March, I think.’
‘Hmm.’ Mary counted on her fingers. ‘Can you give me her name?’
Ali looked into Mary O’Shea’s clear eyes. ‘Sorry.’
Mary frowned, disappointed with her. ‘Look, Ali. This thing will probably never go to court. They’ll find the poor girl who gave birth and send her to psychiatric for a while. It’s a tragedy, and a national disgrace, but it’s hardly a state secret.’
Ali shrugged. She was thinking of Fitz being angry, not the police.
‘Who’s the officer in charge? The one who made you promise not to talk to people like me?’ Mary made it sound like a game, a matter of poses being struck.
‘He’s called Detective Swan, I met him in Rathmines Garda station, but he said he worked at the Phoenix Park.’
‘Is he a small, dark man – neat, reasonably attractive?’
‘Well … I don’t know about attractive.’ Maybe he was, to someone of Mary’s age. Her own mother thought the oddest men were lovely.
‘I know him! He’s in the murder squad. I talked to him once at The Gate, at a Wilde play. Not many detectives you can say that of. Maybe dragged along by the wife. A foot taller than him, she was.’
‘It’s not that I don’t want to talk to you, Mary, but he’ll know it was me.’
‘Sure weren’t there others who saw the same thing? All the nuns hanging about?’
‘Well, no, not inside the shed …’ She was going explain how only three of them had seen the child lying in the basket, when she stopped herself. The gin was making her stupid.
‘What do you mean, the shed?’
‘In the Rosary Garden. It was in the shed. I don’t … I told you, I can’t talk this way.’ Her face felt terribly hot.
Mary held her hands up in mock surrender.
‘We’re on the same side, Ali. Want another drink?’ She pointed at Ali’s empty glass. Her own was hardly touched.
‘I’m fine, thanks.’
Mary dashed off a few more squiggles on her pad.
‘Look, I have to meet someone here in five minutes. I could talk all day, but we’ll need to finish up. I’ll write something for the paper tomorrow. It’s nothing to worry about, but I will mention you and talk about the type of place St Brigid’s is. I’d love us to keep in touch – as this thing unfolds. You’ve got integrity, and you express yourself well.’
‘You won’t make it sound like I’ve been pushing myself forward?’
‘Ali. Don’t worry. We’ve nothing to fear from the truth. As somebody must have said sometime.’
Mary opened her bag again and took out a business card. She wrote two numbers on the back and handed it to Ali.
‘The top one is my answering service. They can page me wherever. That other one is my home number, so I’d appreciate it if you kept it to yourself.’
Ali
