Shadows in Heaven

by Nadine Dorries

  ‘Get her bedded and with child as soon as you’re wed. I need help, and when the land becomes ours, you will need labour. If you don’t, we will have to keep taking children that are not ours – and that’s getting harder. I cannot be here for ever. I have to go sometime.’

  Jay slurped down the last of the stew. His eyes darted between his spoon and his grandmother’s face, watchful.

  ‘The priest at Newranny will marry us straightaway. I’ll be keeping my hands clean. McGuffey has a gun and he’s a madman. Rumour has it he sent his own brother-in-law to his death – Rory Cosgrove. Claimed there were too many fishermen chasing too few fish in Blacksod Bay, so he made Rory go out way off the headland in a storm. It was McGuffey’s fault he got caught in the squall and drowned and every fisherman knows it, everyone except his widow. McGuffey is an evil bastard, born with his heart missing, some say, and I think they might be right. He will sort it for us.’

  Shona smiled as she heaved herself up from the fire and brushed down her skirt. ‘Mad, is he? With a temper? Sounds just the man for the job. Marry her. You have not been gifted with the sight. I need a great-grandchild, a girl to pass my gifts and my own sight on to before I go. Not one of the children we have taken has had it. We could be looking for ever. We need our own.’

  Jay Maughan turned his gaze up to the Church of the Sacred Heart and saw a light flickering in the window and he fleetingly wondered who would be in the church so late at night. ‘’Twill be done tomorrow,’ he said and he suddenly shivered as the wind ran through the branches and overhead an owl hooted its warning.

  *

  Rosie O’Hara had been unable to sleep. She had tossed and turned and finally decided to take a walk down to the bridge and back. Thoughts of Michael Malone were running wild in her head and she knew she would have to exhaust herself to be rid of them. Mulling over the past, searching for a reason why Michael had not spoken to her before he left for the war, had preoccupied her over the years. The sadness had not dimmed with time. She could still recall every moment of their brief times together. Long, shy glances at Mass and in the village when they’d passed each other on the main street. And then the dance in the Long Hall of Romance out at Ballycroy – just the one. He had lingered with her at the fair and they had walked home together with the rest of the young people from the village, in the company of Michael’s friend, Paddy and Josie’s son, Tig Devlin. The dances always took place during a full moon, so that there would be enough light to guide them home along the road. Michael had offered to walk her up to the teacher’s house, and there had been a kiss – just the one. She’d been shy and she remembered his gentle sweetness, the nervous tremble of her receiving lips, the reflection of the moon in his eyes and the involuntary gasp in her breath.

  Rosie was the only person in Tarabeg who did not know that the very next day Michael had met Sarah, sitting on the bench outside her father’s cottage, weaving and repairing her lobster pots. He had not seen her since she was a child at school, always quiet, withdrawn, skinny and sullen, but now he was blinded by her. ‘Jesus, was there ever a sight such as she?’ he had whispered and that had been it. He never looked at or spoke to Rosie again, and it was just that, the sudden silence and lack of contact, that had kept Rosie wondering, hoping, waiting.

  ‘Evening, Rosie, what are ye doing out at this hour?’

  Rosie almost jumped out of her skin. Turning, she saw the moonlit shadow of Father Jerry, making his way back from Paddy’s to the presbytery. ‘I can’t sleep, Father. Thought I would walk to the river and see if the air helped.’

  ‘Ah, well, don’t go too close to the church wall, Rosie, the Maughans are camped there.’

  They both looked up towards the church; no further explanation was required.

  ‘The lights in Paddy and Josie’s are on late,’ she said.

  ‘Sure, they are. I was just passing by, taking the air myself, no need now to be telling Teresa that you saw me. She’ll just be giving out to me and I know you wouldn’t want that.’

  Rosie smiled to herself. ‘I won’t be, Father, don’t worry.’

  ‘I heard that Michael Malone was due home, so I stopped to have a drink with Paddy and Josie, who are delighted at the news. Sure, Seamus and Nola are their best friends, they would be. They will all be away to their beds soon enough.’

  Rosie swallowed. Her heart was racing, filled with the pleasure of hearing someone speak Michael’s name out loud. ‘His parents will be overjoyed to have him home,’ she said.

  Father Jerry scanned her face and understood. Teresa was right. Teresa always was. ‘You should be back in your bed yourself, Rosie,’ he said.

  ‘Do they know when he’s coming home, Father?’ She felt bold for asking the question, but not so bold that she could look him in the eye.

  ‘No, no, we will hear about it soon enough when he is. He will be having things to do, special people he will be wanting to surprise with his return, people who have been waiting and counting down the days.’ His reply was spoken with purpose and kindness and, he thought, without ambiguity. He was talking about Sarah; it was his way of trying to warn Rosie, to let her know.

  But Rosie was thinking of herself. The lone owl hooted overhead as she raised her head. ‘Of course they are, they will be. Thank you, Father.’ She half whispered her words as she turned away, back to the teacher’s house.

  The owl with his amber eyes blinked, turned his head and watched her go.

  A smile crossed Rosie’s face as tears she had not expected filled her eyes and escaped down her cheeks while she walked. Father Jerry knew, she thought to herself. She was one of the people who had been waiting for this day, and the waiting was almost over.

  *

  Kevin McGuffey had sailed in at sunset and entered his own cottage in silence. It was too late to head to the village in search of a drink. He had planned to meet Jay Maughan at Paddy’s bar, but the wind had been against him. He had only the one night and would have to make the next tide out with a promised smuggling drop. He had collected the crates from the cave where he stored his goods, loaded up the boat ready for the morning and headed up the escarpment to the cottage. With the money from the bride price Maughan was paying him, and the profit from his smuggling, he would have enough to leave Tarabeg, head north of the border and fight the English on the soil they had stolen.

  It was late and he knew that both Angela and Sarah would have been asleep since dark. He objected to candles being burnt unnecessarily, except in the darkest winter months. ‘What do I care?’ he had muttered to himself as he came up the ridge, and it occurred to him that this might be the last time he climbed this path to the cottage. Once Maughan had married Sarah, he would not be taking Angela to the North with him. He was to become a soldier. He would abandon her here and she could survive or not.

  He dropped the latch and listened for their breathing. Walking past his own bed, he pushed aside the curtain to Sarah’s bed space at the end of the cottage. He stopped as the curtain fell, the only sound being the slow burn of what remained of the turf fire and the wind rattling the window panes.

  Sarah stirred and opened her eyes. What light there was from the fire caught and illuminated her father’s bright red hair. He had thrown his hat on the back of the door and his hair hung thick and wild about his head. For the briefest moment, she instinctively felt that something was wrong. Normally he yelled out as soon as he stepped inside, regardless of the time, night or day, but tonight he’d spoken not a word.

  Then she heard him move and suddenly smelt the staleness of his breath on her face. She tried to push herself up her bed and onto her pillow, but he shoved her back with force and laid the flat of his hand on her shoulder to pin her down. She yelped in pain as he slammed his free hand over her mouth.

  ‘Shut yer fecking face,’ he hissed. ‘If you wake your mother, you won’t be able to scream, I’ll see to that.’

  Sarah went limp, tried to focus her attention elsewhere, the way she did with every beati
ng. It helped a bit, sometimes.

  He removed his hand from her mouth to test she had understood, then smiled. ‘Now, is that not better?’

  She didn’t reply. Anything she said, any response, would serve as a reason for him to hit her. She had taken enough beatings to know that he meant it.

  He pulled the bedcover away and leered at her, yanking at her nightgown, his eyes roving from her breasts to her legs.

  Her hands automatically shot down to grab at his. ‘What are you doing?’ she rasped. This was new – he’d never looked at her body like that before. It was as if he was checking her over, as if she were a cow he wanted to sell. Or worse.

  Her response was a stinging slap to her face.

  He turned his head, as if listening. He was checking to see if her mother had woken. She hadn’t.

  ‘That’s the last time you speak,’ he hissed again. ‘I’ll be glad to get rid of ye from this house, ye moaning bitch. I’m marrying you off, so I am. To Jay Maughan. He’s giving me a pretty penny.’

  Sarah gasped, resisting the urge to scream, which would make things even worse for her. All she could do was clasp her own hand over her mouth and cover her nose, a barrier against the stinking sourness of his breath.

  He moved his face closer as he whispered, ‘Don’t be thinking you’re anything special – no one else will have him because of the witch, Shona. He’s taking you because he’s desperate.’

  Her eyes had adjusted to the dark now; through her river of tears she could make out the smirk on his wavering face.

  ‘Kevin, is that you?’

  Resentfully, he lifted himself slowly from the bed and with a warning in his backwards glance he moved around her curtain and into the main room.

  Sarah let her breathing steady before she moved her hand. She pulled the bedcovers back up over her for protection and lay motionless, curled up in a ball, her mind racing, panicking, desperate. Jay Maughan! The prospect was too horrible. Five long years waiting for Michael and now she was to be a tinker’s woman, travelling the roads in a grubby caravan with that white-haired witch for a mother-in-law. Her flesh went cold. She would not marry him. She would escape and hide somewhere to wait for Michael. She would go to Dublin, to Liverpool if she had to, to search for him. They had pledged themselves to each other – he had to be coming for her. She had already given herself to him, after all; that was their secret, a secret not even her mother or her aunt knew. There would be no one else.

  Hearing her father’s snores, she propped herself up the better to think. She would not sleep again in that bed – once her father had left on the morning tide, she would be gone. Where or how, she didn’t know or even care, but she would not stay another night there, at the mercy of him and the miserable life he planned for her.

  Distraught, her head in a jumble, she let her terrified sobs soak into her pillow. ‘Michael, where are you? In God’s name, where are you?’

  Chapter 6

  Sarah fell into a fitful sleep just as the cock crowed. She’d heard the door click shut as her father left to catch the morning tide. Male voices had resonated outside and she’d heard the footsteps of two, maybe three men crunch on the shale as they passed her window. They were not voices she recognised, but her father’s clandestine activities were not for either her or her mother to enquire about, that much had been made clear. She heard the bray of a donkey and knew that would be the goods arriving. They would either be loaded on the boat or stored in the cave down on the shore that her father had claimed as his own. No one dared trespass near it.

  She woke for the second time to her mother calling her name and shaking her shoulder.

  ‘Sarah, are you well? It’s not like you to sleep in.’

  Sarah blinked her eyes open and saw her mother smiling down at her, completely unaware of what had happened in the night.

  ‘It’s a beautiful day, though I don’t think ’twill be for long,’ said Angela. ‘Are you all right, Sarah? You look peaky.’

  ‘I… I’m fine. Did Da sail?’

  ‘He did, hours ago. Bee is coming over this morning, so come on, lazy bones, up! You need to check how many of the pots you made yesterday have gone – if the weather stays fine, you’ll be busy today.’ Angela moved from Sarah’s bed space back into the kitchen.

  Sarah sat upright and began to tremble, running over in her mind her father’s horrendous news of the night before. Bee was coming… Bee would know what to do. Jay Maughan! She could not marry Jay Maughan. But how could she tell her mammy that was what her father intended for her?

  The sound of the front door crashing open interrupted her thoughts, and Bee’s voice filled the cottage.

  ‘Holy Mother of God, the rain has finally stopped and the sun is out, but they say it won’t be lasting for long, a storm is coming in from the sea.’

  Sarah flew from her bed. Bee had arrived. Bee knew the answer to all problems. She had saved her and her mammy from her da on so many occasions, surely she would know how to save her from his latest plan.

  ‘Sarah, all your pots have gone and someone has left a pullet in the shed in payment. Come on out, would ye, I have news,’ Bee shouted.

  ‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ Sarah shouted back as she pulled her dress down over her head and tied her hair back in a dark green ribbon that went beautifully with her hair and had been a present from Bee.

  Moments later, she was in the kitchen. Bee was pouring tea and Angela was spreading Malone butter on oatcakes. She’d found the dish on her doorstep days ago and thought it must have been left by Seamus, when he’d come to buy fish from a catch.

  ‘Sarah, come and sit down now. Fancy that – a pullet! We can have our own eggs.’ Angela tapped the top of the table to indicate to Sarah where she wanted her to sit as she placed her oatcake down.

  ‘I have news for you, Sarah, and you too, Angela,’ said Bee as she lifted the kettle.

  Angela looked up at Bee; her face showed no sign of a smile. ‘Is it about that man of yours?’ she whispered and frowned as she shot a look towards Sarah, who knew nothing about the secret life of her aunt.

  ‘Oh, for the sake of all that is holy!’ Bee slammed the kettle down on the hearth. ‘That man – you mean Captain Bob? The man who puts shoes on Ciaran’s feet so that he doesn’t walk to school barefoot. That man, who put an oilskin cape over Ciaran’s shoulders so that he hasn’t caught his death of cold. That man, who puts food in our bellies, aye, in the bellies of Rory’s old mammy and daddy too, and a smile on my face and all!’ Bee held her head inches from Angela’s. ‘That man, who treats me a million times better than the one you have been married to for the last twenty-five years.’

  Angela, the older of the two by ten years, would not be cowed by her sister. She had not wanted Sarah to know all the details of Bee’s arrangement, but Bee had driven her to it.

  ‘Bee, you know he is a married man. As sure as God is true, there will be a wife in Ballycroy, and you know it, ’tis sinful what you are doing, a wicked sin. The likes of Philomena O’Donnell will drive you out of the village when they find out. And Paddy and Josie, they would not be able to keep you on.’

  Bee snorted with laughter. ‘What I am doing is none of their business. What I am doing is nothing I haven’t done before, Angela. And I know nothing about any wife,’ she lied. Now was not the time to discuss the deeper details of her relationship with Captain Bob. ‘I don’t want to know, ’tis not my business. My name is not Philomena. Now be quiet and listen to me, would you. Sarah, you too.’

  Bee had run all the way from her own house to Angela’s. Captain Bob had disappeared at first light, setting sail from further along the shore on the early tide, and had promised he would be back when it was dark. He had left Bee with very clear instructions about what to do. They had made a plan and Bee knew, as God was her judge, she had to make it happen. First, she had to tell Sarah that Michael was coming home but no one knew when; and then she had to blow her niece’s world apart and tell her that she might not
be able to marry him after all.

  She turned to Sarah, who looked as though the news that her beloved aunt had a lover was the most shocking thing she’d ever heard. The colour had drained from her face as she stood teetering on the spot.

  ‘Jesus, you look as though you’re about to faint. Sit down, would ye.’ Bee pulled up the chair next to her. She held her niece’s hand and stroked the hair she had brushed so often since she’d been just a baby. ‘Listen, Sarah, don’t think about Captain Bob, don’t let that worry you just now, we have other things we need to talk about. And anyway, don’t think badly of him, or me for that matter, because he’s about to help us.’

  ‘I don’t think badly of you, Bee.’ Sarah looked up at her aunt.

  Angela had pulled up a chair on the other side of Sarah. She and her sister were silently competing for Sarah’s attention, as had always been the way.

  ‘I don’t know what he is doing to help us, but I won’t be here to see it. Mammy…’ Sarah turned to face Angela. ‘I have to run away – Da’s going to marry me off to Jay Maughan, and I think it will be soon, maybe even when he gets back tomorrow morning.’ Her voice cracked, but she carried on. ‘I haven’t any time – I have to go now! Otherwise I won’t be here for Michael. He told me last night, Mammy, when you were asleep, when he came back.’ At that, the sobs and the tears came.

  Angela threw her arm around her daughter’s shoulders and pulled her into her chest. She didn’t speak. She never rushed to opinion or judgement, she always listened first and thought things through. ‘Sshh, sshh,’ was all she said as she kissed her daughter’s brow.

  ‘You know already?’ Bee sat upright in her chair, letting her hand drop from Sarah’s hair.

  Angela gasped. ‘Bee, you know about this too?’

  Sarah reached out and took her mother’s hand. The three women were linked together in the briefest moment of misery and confusion, until a look of triumph crept over Bee’s face.