Shadows in Heaven

by Nadine Dorries

  SHADOWS IN HEAVEN

  Nadine Dorries

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  About this Book

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

  www.headofzeus.com

  About Shadows in Heaven

  In post-Second World War Ireland, two women are waiting for ambitious Michael Malone to return home. Rosie is the local schoolteacher and most people think she is promised to him. Just a few have guessed that he has secretly begun to woo Sarah, whose brutal fisherman father would kill her if he knew.

  Both Rosie and Sarah love Michael, both hope to become his wife and their lives will interweave in a tale of tangled secrets, old promises and new feuds. Michael Malone’s choice will have fateful consequences for everyone – especially, in due course, for his young daughter.

  This is the first in a new sequence of novels with a brilliant cast of characters and a story that will lead to Liverpool in Mary Kate and back to Ireland in The Seven Acres.

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  About Shadows in Heaven

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: 1940

  Chapter 2: Five years later: 1945

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16: Six years later: 1952

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24: Six months later

  Glossary of Irish terms

  About Nadine Dorries

  About The Lovely Lane Series

  About The Four Streets Trilogy

  Also by Nadine Dorries

  Newsletter

  From the Editor of this Book

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  Copyright

  To Rosie de Courcy –

  my editor, my friend,

  my angel

  Chapter 1

  1940

  Tarabeg village, on the west coast of Ireland

  ‘I don’t want to be here. Seamus made me come.’ Nola Malone had sat as still as she could while having her Sunday-best frock repaired by Ellen Carey in the tailor’s shop. But she kept glancing over her shoulder and out of the window, tea slopping from cup into saucer, waiting to catch sight of her husband and son as they rode down from the farm up on Tarabeg Hill in the horse and cart. She’d fixed her eyes on Ellen’s foot, expertly depressing the pedal on the Singer sewing machine, until it became almost too much for her to bear and she had to speak out.

  ‘Oh, don’t I know that,’ Ellen replied as she grabbed the wheel of the machine, stopped the needle, took it back half a turn, flicked up the foot and removed the fabric. She snapped the thread with her teeth. ‘I’ve put a new hem on this frock. You can farm and cook, Nola, and you make the best butter in all Mayo, but you cannot sew, and that’s for sure.’

  She placed her hands in her lap and sighed. ‘Look, I know you don’t want to be here – when was the last time a busy woman like you sat with me while I worked? Seamus has told me why, Nola. It has to be done. The lovebirds cannot meet anywhere else. That girl’s father would take a gun to him, and her too, if he knew they were together.’

  Nola blinked back the tears of self-pity that had sprung to her eyes. All thoughts appeared to be for young Sarah McGuffey from the fishermen’s cottages, the girl Michael had fallen in love with. The daughter of Kevin McGuffey, a man who had already done well from the war, using his boat to smuggle goods around the coast to the North more often than he used it for fishing. A man famed for his bad temper, his love of money and drink, and someone most people avoided where possible. ‘But what about me? His mother.’ Her voice faltered.

  Both women were fully aware that this could be the last time Nola ever saw her youngest son. She would have loved nothing more than to spend this, the last hour Michael had in Tarabeg before he left to fight in the war, in the farmhouse together. Checking his bag, counting his socks, feeding his belly. Fussing. It was what she did best. But her husband, Seamus, had persuaded her otherwise not two hours since.

  She had been keeping herself busy enough. Making oatcakes for Michael’s journey to stop from thinking how empty the house would be once he left, how hollow her heart would feel. She’d been in the middle of stoking up the fire to warm Michael’s coat as he took his final wash down in the scullery when Seamus had unexpectedly walked into her kitchen and laid down the law.

  ‘Leave the lad alone,’ he said firmly. ‘He wants this time for himself, with Sarah. I’ll be bringing him down the hill to the village on the cart, say your goodbyes then. I’ll stay out in the field until the time comes, so they can have the place to themselves.’

  Nola bristled. ‘Say goodbye to my son in the middle of the village? Along with everyone else? Does a mother have no privacy to shed her tears? Am I to cry them in front of the likes of the O’Donnells and every gossip we know? My boy is not away to America to send home the dollars. He’s going to war, Seamus. He might die.’ She hissed these last words, even though Michael could not have heard her with all the noise he was making in the scullery – a large man going about his ablutions in a small space.

  Seamus had removed his cap and was studying the brim as though he had never seen it before. ‘Nola, there will be no send-off in the village. You know how it is. Ireland is neutral, for a good reason. The people don’t want us to be fighting for the British.’

  Nola waved the poker in her hand in the air. ‘No one to see him off? My son is putting his life at risk, and not an ounce of gratitude in any one of them.’ She threw the poker back into the fireplace with force and it clattered against the blackened stone chimney.

  Seamus was relieved. He had regretted speaking the moment she’d turned from the fire to face him, the tip of the poker burning as red as her round apple cheeks. He looked about him awkwardly and inclined his head towards the open farm-house door to check if Pete Shevlin, the farmhand, was waiting for him.

  Sarah would be there soon. He had seen the first of the fishing boats leaving as he rode down from the top field, dragging the prickly yellow whin in bundles behind the horse to hedge off the bull with a stubborn taste for freedom. Sarah would be there in minutes. It was time for Seamus to take charge. To separate his wife from the last of her brood.

  She didn’t yet know it, but she was going to need her husband to support her when the moment of truth hit her, to comfort her and absorb her tears. Even though they had six other children who’d already left for foreign shores, and even though tears had been shed at their leaving, this parting would be the worst.

  Michael might never return to Tarabeg. This might have been his last night in his own bed. The last breakfast she would serve him. She might never again complain about the water on the floor after he’d finished his wash. Michael wouldn’t be sending home happy letters stuffed with dollars like the others, or a hat at Christmas from Macy’s like the six in New York had bought and sent home together, in a huge hat box that half of the village had gathered in the post office to watch her open. A hat Nola would never wear. She had no notion yet how Michael’s leaving would rip her heart in two, but Seamus did, and this, this sudden removal of Nola from the house, was a part of his plan to save her, if only from a fraction of the pain of parting.

  ‘Come on, the horse is ready and Ellen Carey’s expecting you. I saw there was a rip in your dress at Mass on Sunday
and Ellen has it. I took it down yesterday.’

  Nola spluttered in disbelief. ‘You did what?’

  Seamus continued undeterred. Nola would not have her way, not today. For her own sake. ‘Pete isn’t due to collect Daedio from Paddy’s bar until four. Let’s go.’ He had removed all her avenues of protest and he was doing something he was simply not used to doing. He was crossing a line, taking charge inside his own house.

  As they made their way down the hill, the horse harnessed to the cart, and Nola stoic, resentful and silent, they came upon Sarah, her eyes alight, her skirt bunched up in her hands so as not to trip her, and her golden-red hair flying in the breeze behind her. Seamus lifted his hat in greeting. ‘I’ll be back for him in an hour, Sarah. You don’t have long.’ His heart pained for her. Just sixteen and already she’d experienced far more heartache than any girl of her age should.

  ‘I’ve left food on the table,’ said Nola. ‘Make sure he eats, would you, Sarah? There’s oatcakes and buttermilk on the side of the fire on the griddle, keeping warm.’ She grabbed her husband’s arm. ‘Seamus, stop! Stop the horse, would ye.’

  But Seamus hadn’t stopped the horse. He hadn’t even slowed it. He kept the cart moving and by the time Nola had finished her sentence, Sarah was behind them, waving down to them, disappearing into the distance. He cracked the reins and the horse trotted smartly down the hill.

  Nola turned abruptly to face him. ‘What did you do that for, you fat maggot.’ She slapped him on his back with her bag, but not too hard. ‘I had things to tell her, instructions… God in heaven, you will be sending that lad away starving hungry.’

  Seamus didn’t reply. He whistled to the horse and flicked the reins and they trotted on to Ellen Carey’s and the dress that didn’t need mending.

  *

  ‘Promise me you’ll wait for me until it’s all over and I’m back,’ Michael begged Sarah as he held her in his arms in the final minutes before he left.

  The stars had aligned, the weather was fair, the tide was in, the fishermen out. It had all come together to give them this precious hour alone. But it was a risk, as Sarah’s mother was painfully aware. ‘God be with you, Sarah. And be careful, will you,’ she’d admonished. ‘They are only loading the nets yet. If he catches sight of you from the shore…’

  They rarely referred to Sarah’s father by name; it was always ‘he’ or ‘him’. But Angela McGuffey’s words had fallen on deaf ears and she’d been left standing at the door, watching her daughter scramble up the escarpment from the beach to the road, the blaze of her golden-red hair seeming to hang in the air behind her long after she’d gone.

  Now, all passion spent, Sarah lay on her back, her head in the crook of Michael’s arm. She turned onto her side to face him. ‘After what you’ve just done to me, I have to wait all this time for you to come back home! I can’t believe you are actually going, Michael Malone.’

  It would forever be her secret that this seduction had been her plan all along. She thought that if she let him make love to her, tempted him into her arms, he would be unable to leave her. Surely that would make him change his mind. He would want more than just the once; he would stay in Tarabeg.

  ‘Will this not make you so sad to leave me, you cannot possibly go?’ she said theatrically but also with real feeling, her eyes shining with emotion.

  The past hour had gone exactly as she’d hoped. He had kissed her in the way he had during all of their clandestine meetings, but this time she’d pulled him closer in, for more. She had held his face in her hands and looked deep into his eyes as her own sent him a thousand messages of seduction. She felt no fear and, apart from the tremble in her hands which threatened to betray her, none of the nervousness that she had worried would be her undoing when the time came. With the boldness and skill of a woman ten years her senior, she had guided his hands over her virginal body. They had sought out her breasts together and, pulling them free, she had arched her body as her hair tumbled down her back, guiding his mouth as she eased his unresisting head down. She’d been in charge right up until a moan had escaped her lips and taken her unawares, not in her plan, and the control passed from her lips to the tips of his fingers. The sensation that flowed through her made her weak at the knees and she was truly lost, her plan abandoned. He had kissed her until her head spun and she felt faint. She was beyond reason and oblivious to danger. Once he had undone the final buttons on her blouse, her hands tore at his own shirt, all shyness forgotten, all sermons from the pulpit unheard, all thoughts of tomorrow vanquished.

  ‘Sarah, I have to go, I’m signed up and it’s a war.’

  Her face fell. She had failed. ‘You don’t have to, Michael, that’s just it. Ireland is neutral. You don’t have to be doing nothing.’

  Michael groaned and placed the flat of his palm on his forehead. ‘God in heaven, Sarah, I do. For one thing, I knows I will see some of the world and learn about something other than picking potatoes and stacking turf ricks. There are other places to live and I want to make a fortune one day. I can’t learn how to do that, here on a farm. If I stay here, we will both have to work to save to travel to America or Liverpool. This way, I get the money quicker and sure, how long can the war last?’

  Michael had propped himself up on his elbow and was stroking her breast. His finger, encircling her nipple, strayed to the bruise on her shoulder. He pulled back in horror. ‘What in God’s name is that?’ he asked, then gently placed his hand over the large yellowing patch of skin.

  She raised herself onto her knees and hurriedly yanked her blouse back up over her shoulder and began to fasten the buttons. ‘’Tis nothing. I fell on the rocks on the shore. I’m always doing it, so I am.’

  Her eyes left his, the air left the room, and for a brief moment Michael had no idea how to respond. He had heard the rumours of how moody Sarah’s father was. Kevin McGuffey’s temper was legendary in a village where no home held secrets. But this? He lifted her chin with his finger and forced her to look at him. ‘As soon as I’m back, things are going to change. Do you understand that, Sarah?’

  Sarah was on the verge of tears, her mind racing. What could she do now to keep him? What else was there left that she could use to persuade him? She had given him herself, her all. She had nothing else. ‘Michael, don’t go. Do you not love me now, after what we just did together? Has it not changed anything at all? Won’t you stay now?’ Her eyes were wide and pleading, her lips trembling.

  Michael pulled her towards him and groaned. He was weakening. There was nothing he wanted more than to stay with Sarah, to marry her tomorrow. To take her away from the home that was more often than not the talk of the village. ‘I will be back before ye know I’m gone, Sarah, I promise. I swear, as God is true, I’ll be straight home to you as soon as it’s all over and I will drag you to that church if I have to. It can’t be another year at the very most.’

  Sarah half laughed at the prospect of being dragged to the church and collapsed on top of him. ‘It could be even less. It might be only weeks. God, I will pray so every day. Are ye proposing to me now after this, or what?’ She was teasing, half teasing. Wanting to believe his words but seeking his confirmation that he meant them. She was stunned by his response.

  He sat up on the mattress, the look on his face earnest and intent, his black curls falling over his eyes as he brushed them back and lifted her up by her shoulders. ‘Yes, Sarah, I am. Just wait until this is all over and I am back. Promise you will wait for me? Be my wife, please, will you? Wait for me?’

  Sarah nodded furiously, unable to answer, her throat thick with emotion as the tears ran down her face and she struggled to speak. ‘I… I do love you, Michael. I wouldn’t have let you do that if I didn’t. I’ve never done it before…’

  ‘Shush, I know that.’ He grabbed her to him and smothered her face as he kissed away her tears. He moved his lips to her eyes, her nose, her cheeks, and as his passion rekindled, and with it the knowledge that there was now very little time lef
t to them, that she was not his wife and he had no right, his own tears began to mingle with hers. Their breathing quickened as they stroked each other’s faces, hands, hair and held each other so tightly, committing each second to memory – the taste, the feel, the smell, each kiss.

  They both heard the wheels of the cart outside the house.

  ‘I have to go,’ Michael said softly.

  Sarah pushed down the skirt she’d hurriedly pulled up during their lovemaking, having had neither the courage nor the time to remove it, and wiped her eyes. ‘I can’t bear it,’ she whispered as she tucked in her blouse. ‘I’m not as strong as I thought I was. I can’t do it.’ She was trembling, her complexion white, her eyes full of fear.

  ‘Don’t you worry, my love,’ he whispered back, placing his arms around her and hugging her into his chest, her tears soaking though his vest. ‘I’ll be home before the year is out. And I promise you this too: you will be the next Mrs Malone, because I love you. I’m going to dress you in fine clothes and shoes and no one is ever going to lay a finger on you again. Do you understand? You will be safe with me.’

  They both jumped at the sound of Pete’s polite and gentle knock on the door. Sarah began to shake uncontrollably. She bit her lip, fighting every instinct to cling to him, to lose all self-respect. Hold on. Hold on. The words raced through her mind as she closed her eyes, holding on for dear life. ‘I cannot do this, I cannot,’ she whimpered.

  Michael knew this was his only chance. He had to run now, he had to run and do something, grab at any opportunity, to make a better life for them both. Another moment of hesitation and he would falter, and that would be it. They would live their entire life there on the farm, scraping by, hand to mouth.

  ‘Wait for me, Sarah. Just one year at the very, very most. Count the days. As soon as I am back, ’twill all be different. God in heaven, I promise. Don’t go marrying anyone else when I’m gone, do you hear me? If you need to get away from home for any reason, come here, to my mammy and daddy. They will help you.’