As they left the cottage and Bee went to lift the latch, she noticed something was missing. ‘Angela, where is the gun?’
Angela stared vacantly at the blank nail rests on the wall and shook her head. ‘I have no notion. He’s off smuggling, maybe he thought he needed it with him.’
They stood with the door open as they took one last look inside. Bee felt it herself, the void, the bleakness after Sarah’s departure; it was profound.
Outdoors, a cool wind was gathering force and the full moon illuminated the heavy clouds as they raced across the cliffs. A storm was blowing in from the ocean. The terns and gulls circled and screeched with foreboding as they flew inland towards the village and safety.
With a worried glance at the sky, Bee pulled her shawl down over her head and fastened it tighter under her chin. ‘Come on, there’s nothing here for you. They’ll be safely away before that storm takes hold.’
Angela pulled at the door and turned to Bee. ‘All my life is in there, everything I am and do.’
‘No, it isn’t.’ Bee placed her hand over Angela’s and slammed the door shut. ‘Your life is ahead of you. Now run! You’ll only just catch them before they disappear around the headland. Be quick, ’tis going to rain asses’ legs, as God is my judge. I just felt the first drops on my face and ’tis already heavy.’
‘Bee, I made her a promise and I will go and find her. She’s my flesh and blood. We’ve spent every single day of her life together. I’m going to be the next one to run.’
‘Holy Mother of God,’ said Bee, and then she smiled. It had taken Sarah leaving to open her sister’s eyes, to put a fire in her belly, to make her fight for her life and her self-esteem. She saw a new determination and she was proud. ‘That’s my girl,’ she said as she squeezed her sister’s hand. ‘We have time to plan that one properly though. Hurry now, don’t be long. I won’t feel safe until you’re at my house.’
They parted outside the cottage door. Bee crossed the boreen, turned away from the ocean and ran towards her house. Angela strode out along the path to the cliff that looked down over the ocean, her shawl pulled tightly about her in the now brisk and noisy wind. ‘I can hear the motor on the boat,’ she shouted back. As she waved her hand, the first drops of rain began to beat at her face.
*
‘Here, take my arm.’ Captain Bob crooked his arm and smiled at Sarah.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered, as she duly slipped her arm through his, then fell silent again. She had no idea what to say to the man by her side. Her life, repetitive and predictable, her future, pictured every day, had disappeared in a moment, and here she was, with a man she had known for less than an hour, heading towards a place she had never in her wildest dreams imagined. She could barely transfer a thought into words.
They had walked in silence along the empty path, Sarah aware only of every breath she took and the sound of the waves crashing against the shore. Her mind was in turmoil, fighting a desire to turn and run. She felt cold with fear and could not prevent her limbs from violently shaking. The path dropped down towards the coast, their footsteps silent in the sandy earth.
She stopped dead when she heard the sound of a horse’s hooves.
‘Quick, into the grass! Duck down!’ Captain Bob crouched behind the whin and pulled her down beside him.
Sarah froze, then turned her head and looked back up towards the village. Was it Maughan? He often came to the coastal cottages, either peddling his wares to those who were too old or too idle and found the mile-long walk into the village too far, or delivering goods for her father to store in the cave for smuggling. But at this hour it might not be cigarettes or whiskey Maughan was transporting; he could be calling to collect his own merchandise – herself. Her flesh prickled with fear and her heart beat so fast, she could barely breathe. She could see the mast of the waiting trawler sticking up from the cove, but she’d shrunk so far into the gorse, the needle-like thorns puncturing her dress and threatening to pierce her skin, that she couldn’t see who it was on the horse. Something made her want to scramble back up the ridge and find out.
Captain Bob placed his hand on her arm. ‘No, don’t. We can’t take the risk of you being caught. We need to get down to the boat. Quick now, we don’t have any time to lose. The wind’s picking up and I don’t like how dark the sky has turned.’ His voice was gentle but insistent. ‘We can be away in minutes, and we have to be, or it will be all over for us, one way or another.’
Remembering what had happened to Rory, caught in a storm that he couldn’t escape, and spurred on by the sudden realisation that she needed to be on the water and away from the reach of her would-be tormentors, Sarah turned back to face the ocean and followed Captain Bob down to the water’s edge. Within moments she was being helped into his boat.
*
As soon as Angela reached the cliff’s edge, she saw the boat. Sarah was sitting on the end, looking back towards land. Angela thanked God for the full moon, which lit the ocean all the way around the headland. She began frantically to wave at her daughter. There was no response. She stretched her arm high and, ripping off her shawl, held it aloft. The wind, fiercer now, grabbed the shawl as though it were a mere rag and buffeted and beat it like a flag. A landmark for Sarah, if only she’d catch sight of it.
‘I’m coming too. I’m going to follow you,’ shouted Angela. ‘You will see me again before ye know it. I’m coming, Sarah! I’m coming too!’ She almost screamed the last words on a breath of exhalation as she tasted the sweetness of freedom. She had no idea how she would do it. Maybe Captain Bob would do the same for her. Maybe Bee would help and she could work in Dublin and save the fare to travel. She would disappear, change her name to Bee’s, say she was a widow. She was flooded with a new determination to find a way. She would escape; she would join her Sarah and make a new life for them both.
*
Further up the shoreline, concealed behind the rocks where he had beached his hooker, stood Kevin McGuffey. He had made his drop of whiskey and cigarettes, but instead of heading for Scottish waters, he’d decided to return to hand his daughter over to Jay Maughan sooner than he’d planned.
Maughan had come to the house in the early hours to tell him that Michael Malone was coming back home to Tarabeg. The news had sat uneasily in his gut. He sensed Michael was a danger and a menace, and he knew Angela and Sarah were keeping something from him. He could see it in Sarah’s face. They’d been keeping secrets from him for years, he knew that – and in his own home too. It had started the night he had beaten Sarah and knocked her unconscious, when Maughan had told him he’d seen her running back from the Malones’ farm, back through the boreens, towards the coast and home, as though the Devil himself were hot on her heels. Since then there’d been something about her, her manner; she’d changed. There was a resistance in her body to the lashings from his belt, and a blaze of defiance in her eye; but it was more than that – there had been no tears. No crying, no begging for his forgiveness. He knew it had something to do with Michael Malone.
This morning he had made his smuggling drop as planned, but his pick-up had been late and had apologised profusely. ‘The customs men are growing mightily in numbers. Men back from the war taking up the jobs,’ he’d said.
‘Another reason to hate the bastards then,’ McGuffey replied.
The weather had turned. He had no intention of heading off into Scottish waters for a catch. He had more profitable business to attend to. He would hand Sarah over to Maughan as soon as he returned.
He unloaded his boat in silence, but the pick-up, a man from Donegal, never stopped talking. ‘They say ’tis going to turn mighty bad,’ he said as he found his balance and stretched out his arms to take the first box of whiskey. ‘Real bad. Blowing up from the north and will hit us fast. Won’t be able to tack into it, it’ll be too strong for a trawler even.’
The evening sky had turned to night almost as quickly as McGuffey’s mood had deteriorated. The name Malone was beating agai
nst the side of his brain and eating away at his guts. He would return to the cave at the foot of the cliff where he stored his goods, hide the money and make his way up to the cottage.
All his attention was taken up with beaching the hooker. As he saw the row of upturned boats lifting and shifting in the wind, he knew the men had abandoned the day’s catch. One of the boats he’d seen setting out that morning was now upside down like a fat monk’s belly, with a sandbag on the base to stop the wind from catching it.
Finally, safely landed and with his hooker secured and secluded in a nook in the shoreline, he paused for a breather and looked up at the clifftop. The clouds were racing in the wind, the cliffs intermittently vivid in the light of the full moon. In a sudden clear view to the headland above him, he saw his wife, waving and shouting. Something was very wrong. He reached into the boat, pulled back the oilskin and removed his gun. Was she waving for help? Or had she finally gone mad? He cracked open the gun and pulled his cape tighter. There was only one way to find out.
Chapter 7
‘Take good care now, Michael,’ Sam, the driver of the post van shouted as Michael alighted at the foot of the boreen leading to the farm.
The van had called in at almost every village between Galway and Tarabeg, and it was late by the time they reached the outskirts of Tarabeg. Even so, Sam had still to collect the mail sack, such as it was, from the back of Mrs Doyle’s before he could call it a night.
As the van pulled away, Michael breathed in deeply, never so happy to be alive, filling his lungs with the smell of pasture, cows, turf, bogs, and the night-time river air. Looking to the village, he saw the lights from Paddy’s spilling out onto the street, but there was no temptation – he had a promise to keep. The full moon disappeared from view and just as he began to head up the muddy boreen towards the farm the rain began. The vegetation became dense and the scratchy wool of his trousers absorbed the damp like a sponge. Even after five years away, every bog hole and turn was familiar to him. He was walking to his home when so many of the men he had fought alongside lay dead and buried on foreign soil. As he strode on, he imagined he heard the sound of their boots marching beside him. It was five long years since he had walked alone.
Rounding the bend, he stopped dead and gasped at the sight of the farmhouse standing in profile in the moonlight, encircled by the grazing meadows. The rainclouds had passed and the slate roof gleamed and the limestone wash shone white and inviting. He lingered for a moment to take a breath. For the briefest second, his heart stopped. He had thought of the house many times, but never like this, bathed in a magical silver light.
The ferns and the mountain trees were still. The only sounds were of the wildlife scurrying back to their playgrounds on the path now that he was quiet and motionless. The rain dripped from the leaves and rabbits bobbed in the grass, their eyes shining like glistening black pebbles.
He crept past the old cottage, its heather thatch casting a dark, undulating silhouette, the cows inside as quiet as he was trying to be. But the dogs chained up against the wall could sense him and began to bark. Before he could turn, he felt that he was being watched. Pete Shevlin, bleary eyed in his stained vest, stood in the doorway as the ghostly form of a cow in the byre shuffled behind him and snorted her own soft greeting.
‘Oh, ’tis you, Michael. I’ll be away to me bed then. Nice to see you back safe, like.’
‘Aye, thanks. I’ll see you in the morning, Pete.’
Pete rubbed his eyes and slid back into the darkness of the old cottage, whispering, ‘Shush now, ’tis Michael home,’ to the dogs.
A hurricane lamp burnt in the window of the farmhouse and Michael guessed it had been left to guide him on his last steps should he return in the night. A single curl of smoke rose from the chimney. He depressed the latch, the familiar click piercing the silent night air as the door creaked and gave way beneath his gentle push.
He let his kit bag slip from his shoulder onto the thick rush mat inside the door and bent to undo the laces on his boots. He hung his coat on the nail on the back of the door, undid the belt of his wet and muddy trousers and let them fall to the floor, where they landed with a soggy thud. The place smelt the same – it smelt of home. He dipped his fingers into the holy water that his mother kept at the foot of her plastercast of Mary and blessed himself.
The limewashed walls glowed orange from the dimming light of the fire and he sensed he was not alone in the room. As his eyes adjusted, he saw the truckle bed and his grandfather. Seeking warmth, he tiptoed to the fire, the rushes crackling beneath his feet. The sight of the food and mug on the table made his stomach rumble loudly, and his heart went out to his mammy for having left it out for him. He would stay for only minutes. Just long enough to change and eat and collect his da’s horse.
Picking up the plate of food and the mug, he moved towards the fire and lowered himself onto the rush mat. He smiled, he sipped, he sighed.
The first person to wake was Daedio. ‘Michael? Michael, is that you? Oh, thank the heavenly Lord and all the saints in heaven. You’re home!’
In less than a minute, Seamus and Nola had joined them.
‘Daddy, do you need the horse tonight?’
Seamus, his heart warmed by the whiskey he had poured in celebration at the return of his son, stood in the kitchen, which had been such a lonely place for him and Nola. At that moment, he would have given his son anything. Nola fussed and brought out the clothes she had kept regularly laundered and pushed her son into the scullery to wash and change. ‘The trousers, they are almost too big,’ she exclaimed. ‘What did they feed you in that army?’ Michael wasn’t listening. His father was letting him take the horse and Sarah was minutes away.
Warmed, fed, clothed, and after hugging his mother half to death, Michael said, ‘I’m sorry, but I have to go and fetch her. I’ll be back before dawn though.’
‘I think you’ll need to marry her first, Michael, before you bring her here. But we will make her as welcome as Grandma Annie made your mammy, and indeed, before Grandma Annie there was—’
Michael was already on his way back to the door; he had no time to listen to a story. ‘That’s why I’m off for Sarah. I spoke to Father Jerry the day I left and I wrote to him months ago. We will be heading straight to the presbytery. He told me what to do.’
‘’Tis not that easy,’ said Nola. ‘There’s the licence to be got—’
But it was too late; Michael was already out of the door.
As Nola and Seamus stood in the doorway and watched their son head off down the hill, Nola felt a weight pressing on her heart.
‘Oh, Seamus, he isn’t heading straight into trouble, is he? We only just have him home – will he not at least stay the night?’
‘Well now, I’m with Michael on this. McGuffey, he has a fearsome reputation, but I happen to know he’s away smuggling, and when he leaves the North, he always sails over to Scotland for the fish. Paddy told me that was so. He’s not due back until tomorrow, they say. I’m thinking that Michael’s timing is just right.’ He smiled broadly and put his arm around his wife. ‘The boy can do what the feck he likes after what he’s been through – I’m not going to stop him. And it will be easier for Sarah, if her father is away. Don’t you be worrying about no licence. Father Jerry will see him right, and I’ll drop the whiskey down for him tomorrow.’ He stared out into the darkness. ‘This could not be easier for Michael. My prayers have been answered, every fecking one of them,’ he said with a satisfied flourish as he pulled on his pipe.
Nola slapped her husband on the backside as a reprimand for swearing. ‘Go and say your Hail Marys for that,’ she said. ‘Right now, or it’s Father Jerry I’ll be telling.’
As Nola stepped back indoors, Seamus kept his eye on his son while he saddled up and chatted to Pete, who was helping him. He hadn’t managed to have a private word with him or even put his arm around him; Daedio and Nola had filled all the time that had been available to them. And why shouldn’t they
have, he thought. I’ll have a word with him later, me and the boy.
Since he’d opened the telegram, he’d managed to keep his emotions in check, but now he blinked hard as a single tear escaped and ran down his leathery skin and onto his stubbled chin. He placed his pipe back in his mouth and took a long pull. ‘God be with him,’ he whispered.
He hadn’t told Nola the stories he’d heard about McGuffey, and he hadn’t told Michael that the man had promised his daughter to Jay Maughan. He felt it in his bones that Michael would be just in the nick of time. The Malones were respected in the village. Once Michael came back to Tarabeg Hill with his Sarah, no one would dare set foot on the boreen leading to their farm in malice or anger. Not if they ever wanted to be served another drink at Paddy’s. As he banged and emptied his pipe against the outside wall, Seamus whispered again, ‘God be with him,’ and then in a louder voice and over his shoulder he shouted, ‘I think there’s a few rabbits out here chancing their luck, Nola. I’m off with the traps. Get the pan ready for the morning. There is nothing that boy loves more than a good rabbit stew.’
*
Bee felt troubled as she walked back to her cottage by herself, leaving Angela on the clifftop to wave her final goodbyes to Sarah. Angela had been right, of course: she had to get back to collect Ciaran from his grandparents’, but she wished Angela was with her. Her heart sank as she saw the heavy clouds move across the moon. Within minutes, the rain began to pelt down with force. ‘Oh God, no,’ she cried out as the sky ruptured with a flash of lightning and the rain battered her face, penetrated her shawl and soaked her skin beneath. Her first thought was for Sarah and Captain Bob in the boat. She knew how ferocious west coast storms could be – storms that churned the sea and swallowed the mountains. At least Captain Bob had a motor; if there was a storm, he would be safe where others would not.
Shadows in Heaven Page 10