Shadows in Heaven

by Nadine Dorries

  Without another word, Tig hopped across the road to Michael’s.

  An hour later, now safely on the banks of the river, the men were about to start.

  ‘Sshh, listen,’ said Tig as he stood with the lime sack in his hands. ‘Can you hear, is it Father Jerry?’

  They heard the familiar low whistle of their occasional companion. The call of Father Jerry, the man chastised by Brendan O’Kelly for breaking the law, asking to be guided to wherever on the banks Michael and Tig were.

  ‘Joseph and Mary, why can’t he just turn up at the house at the right time. He always comes along at an awkward moment,’ said Seamus.

  ‘Here, light me candle.’ Tig bent his head to reveal the opening of the lantern.

  ‘No, I’ll strike a match, ’twill be enough,’ said Michael, taking a box of matches out of his pocket. He struck the match, his heart beating wildly for fear of being seen. Bending down, he lit it within the cave of his cupped hands and turned his body in a semicircle so that its light could only be seen for a few seconds at a time. Anyone not looking for it would mistake the flickering orange glow for a faerie or a firebug. The village was steeped in faerie folklore. The light was enough. Minutes later, they heard the unmistakeable crunch of Father Jerry’s feet hitting the stony ground, and soon after came the sound of him puffing for his breath by their side.

  ‘Evening, Father,’ the four men whispered.

  ‘Evening. Shall I bless the water first?’ whispered Father Jerry.

  ‘Why should ye have to?’ asked Tig. ‘’Tis fecking ridiculous that you can’t fish from your own land, Michael. Sorry, Father.’ Tig looked sheepish at having sworn. He was always nervous on these occasions, mindful of his mother’s complaining and Keeva’s words.

  The five men placed their bags and nets on the ground and stood for a second, listening for the sound of any other footsteps. Their eyes searched for the flickering headlamp of the ghillie having been alerted by the match. They had unnerved a grouse or a fox, as something scuttled away through the coarse grass, off towards the edge of the field, which Michael had planted with oats. The gently beating wings of a large bird swooped by, unidentifiable as it blocked out the stars during its passage overhead, and then came the telltale call of an owl in dignified objection at having been disturbed from the thatch of a house.

  Turning back, they scanned the village for signs of life. There was only one cottage still lit. In Maria Murphy’s window the flame of a lone candle warned away the ancient ghosts. Maria, ninety-nine years old, was afraid of being alone in the dark. She lived her life, day and night, in the light, believing that the moment she found herself in darkness she would be called to her maker. Almost entirely deaf, and short-sighted, she was of no concern to Michael, knowing as he did that she spent more time asleep than awake. She would be dozing on the chair in front of her fire. The rest of Tarabeg enjoyed the sleep of the blessed and the innocent. All except one villager. Rosie O’Hara saw the light. Rosie knew what was occurring. She sat in her chair by the fire in the dark interior of her teacher’s cottage and waited for the next glint of life out on the river.

  The men turned back to the Taramore and bowed their heads as Father Jerry whispered his prayers. As soon as he’d finished, Seamus spoke. ‘I have an even better idea, Father. Here, from Daedio.’ He took a flat stoneware hip flask from his pocket and passed it round. ‘He said he can’t be here in body, but he can in spirit. Not the Holy Spirit, Father, but the one that keeps the blood running to our toes.’

  The men suppressed their laughter as they each took a swig of whiskey from the flask.

  ‘Tig is right,’ said Pete once they’d each taken a second swig, ‘’tis feckin’ mad that you can’t fish from yer own land.’

  Seamus slipped the flask back into his jacket pocket.

  ‘No one knows that more than me, sure they don’t.’ Michael’s brow furrowed with impatience, as it did every time the subject was raised. He was as frustrated as the rest that he couldn’t legally claim the salmon that thrived in the Taramore’s deep pools, which the English landowner, Captain Carter, charged British and German tourists huge amounts of money for the right to fish. Michael sometimes watched the boats on the river in the middle of his land, his irritation eased only by the pounds the visitors passed over his counter and into his till. ‘At least they buy some of their tackle from me,’ he said. ‘Mary Kate nearly blew it for us the other day.’ Seamus, who was fastening his net, looked up in surprise. ‘Yes, your precious granddaughter, she who can do no wrong. One of the tourists was buying a new salmon fly. Complaining, he was, about not being able to land a catch. Mary Kate says to him, all innocent, “Why don’t you use the lime, like Daddy. You just tip a bag in where you want to fish and it knocks the salmon out.”’

  ‘Feck,’ Tig said, standing there with a bag of lime in his hands.

  ‘Don’t be worrying now,’ said Michael. ‘The fella packed up and headed home. He wasn’t after anything I had. He wanted the fly to catch the fecking fish for him. He had neither the skill nor the patience to be a proper fisherman.’

  ‘Shall I tip the lime?’ Tig asked.

  ‘Aye, I brought two lots,’ said Michael. ‘Should knock out half the salmon in the river. ’Twill be a good catch tonight.’

  The five men looked at each other. It was almost pitch black and they could only see the whites of each other’s eyes as they all erupted with laughter, the irony of Michael’s condemnation of the poor fishing skills of the English tourist not lost on any of them as the lime fizzed and hissed in the water around them.

  ‘I’ll be holding the nets,’ said Father Jerry. ‘I have a harder time than you convincing Teresa Gallagher where the salmon come from. I’ll be telling no lies when I say I don’t know who caught it. I won’t be watching now – you just say “Net!” as usual.’ He turned his head away from the shore and stood with the biggest keep net firmly out to his side.

  The others grinned as they moved out into the river. Not one would admit that the only time they could breathe freely was when their catch was bagged and they were safely home through their own back door.

  ‘Net,’ hissed Tig, and the light on his head guided the hands of Father Jerry to catch the biggest salmon the men had ever landed. It was all they needed, so they waded back to the shore.

  ‘Sssh!’ It was Father Jerry.

  The men stopped dead in their tracks. Tig reached up and placed the palm of his hand over his light. They were once again plunged into darkness. No one dared speak. They knew the tone of voice, felt the fear slip into their bellies. All thoughts were of Tig. The worst nightmare had always been that if they had to run, how would they manage with Tig? Hearts beat wildly and they all stood rooted to the spot. Only Father Jerry moved as he let the sack containing the writhing salmon slip sound-lessly to the ground. They all heard a whispered prayer as their hearts steadied to a rhythm that allowed them to think clearly.

  ‘Look to the bridge,’ whispered Seamus.

  They all turned as they saw the familiar car of the ghillie pass slowly across the bridge. The sound of a car engine was something they were still unused to and they all squatted down as close to the ground as they could. The handbrake crunched on, the engine stopped and the car door creaked open. This all above the gurgle of the running river. A torch beam shone brightly and swung across to the river. It couldn’t reach them, but it was a sure sign the ghillie had seen them.

  ‘Feck, you all go,’ hissed Tig. ‘I can’t move as fast as you. Go! Go on, all of you. I will say ’twas just me.’

  ‘Not fecking likely,’ said Pete. ‘If we go, you go on my back or Michael’s. We aren’t leaving you behind.’

  ‘Look, he’s going down to the side of the bridge, he’s going to walk over.’

  ‘Trespassing,’ said Michael.

  ‘Not if he’s the ghillie,’ said Father Jerry.

  And then something happened that amazed them all. They heard the faint squeal of a woman’s voice and they w
atched as the ghillie looked towards the river, back to the road, once more to the river and then with reluctance in his step and a backwards glance moved back to the road.

  ‘What the…?’

  ‘It’s Rosie O’Hara,’ said Father Jerry. ‘She walks down to the bridge when she can’t sleep. She must have fallen or something.’

  ‘Head for the church wall – slowly,’ said Michael. ‘But don’t get up, and don’t leave the salmon.’

  Rosie O’Hara let out another wail, one that sounded more like a fox taking an unsuspecting nocturnal animal.

  ‘Miss O’Hara!’ the ghillie exclaimed. ‘Goodness me, it’s you. What would you be doing out at this time of night when the whole village is asleep? What on earth is wrong?’

  Rosie gasped. ‘I think I’ve hurt my ankle,’ she said, grabbing it and rocking backwards and forwards.

  ‘Shall I knock on the principal’s door?’ the ghillie asked, looking concerned.

  ‘Oh no, not at all. If you could just help me back to the teacher’s house, I’ll be fine.’

  He glanced down at Rosie’s ankle and then, with a look of regret, over his shoulder. ‘Of course, let me help you. Why in God’s name are you here?’

  ‘If I can’t sleep, I often walk down to the bridge. The water, I find it soothing.’

  ‘Can you bear any weight?’

  ‘No, none at all.’

  ‘Right, well, let’s get you into my car and I will drive you up. You’ve cut yourself too – that will need tending to.’

  The five men as good as belly-crawled across the land. In no time, they’d skirted the ripening oats, scaled the low church wall and hidden behind a row of gravestones. From this safe vantage point they watched as Rosie O’Hara was helped off the ground by the ghillie and escorted back to the teacher’s house.

  ‘Did ye pray for Rosie O’Hara to have a sleepless night tonight, Father?’ asked Seamus from behind his gravestone.

  ‘Did you pray for her to fall over?’ asked Pete from behind his, which he recognised as being that of his own sister. ‘Jesus, our Mary will be turning in this grave with my arse in her face.’

  ‘Did you pray then for the ghillie to take her home?’ asked Tig.

  Father Jerry shook his head. ‘I prayed for the fattest fish to ever swim in the river to come tonight.’ His voice came from behind a particularly large gravestone, which hid him completely. ‘And I’d be thinking my prayer was answered. I could barely lift the net.’

  They all began to snort with laughter and relief as the hip flask was thrown from one hiding place to another. They watched the car park outside the teacher’s house.

  ‘Who would have told Nola if we’d been caught?’ asked Seamus as he passed the flask to Pete.

  ‘I would, Daddy,’ said Michael. ‘Would you have told Sarah?’

  ‘Oh aye, of course I would,’ Seamus replied.

  ‘Who would have told Keeva and Mammy?’ asked Tig, his voice catching at the prospect.

  ‘Don’t worry, Tig, that would have been me too,’ said Michael.

  ‘Aye, well, brave men, who would have told Teresa Gallagher?’ asked Father Jerry.

  There was a moment’s silence before the men answered as one. ‘No one, Father – you’re on your own there.’ And they were once again consumed by laughter.

  *

  Rosie thanked the ghillie profusely. ‘I will be absolutely fine. I’ll just put it up until the morning.’

  ‘Well, Miss O’Hara, if you don’t mind me saying, there isn’t much of a moon tonight, so there’s no light. Better to keep your walks for when there is at least some light.’

  Rosie closed her cottage door. As she did so, she turned to face Teresa Gallagher, who was sitting in her chair by Rosie’s fire with her finger over her lips, urging her to be quiet.

  ‘Did they get away?’ Teresa asked once they’d heard the car leave.

  ‘Well, I gave them enough time,’ said Rosie. ‘Look! I actually had to fall, and I really cut my knee.’

  ‘I’ll bring you double salmon for that tomorrow,’ said Teresa, tutting in sympathy as Rosie peeled the ripped stocking from her grazed and bleeding knee.

  ‘Will you tell Father Jerry that I saw the ghillie’s car on the Ballina road and came to your door?’ asked Rosie.

  ‘Holy Mother of God, do I look mad? No, I will not, Rosie. I’m a respectable woman. I don’t want him thinking we watch his every move. If he knows I know he poaches, he might stop, and then where would we be, without the salmon?’ Within minutes, she was gone. She didn’t want to be caught herself by Father Jerry.

  Rosie had formed a bond with Sarah, had become a regular guest at her house. She never wanted that to end, had found huge comfort in the friendship, and her fondness for Mary Kate was something she struggled to contain. Mary Kate was often her reason to be at the Malones’, to help where she could, and that was where she was at her happiest. To spend time near Michael was enough, albeit also with his adoring wife and child. It was enough to see his face, smell him, bathe in the warmth of his smile. It was all she needed. It was Michael Rosie had fallen to save, not Father Jerry.

  Chapter 17

  ‘I have a hunger in me belly to make more money,’ Michael said to Sarah, as he did almost every night. ‘To do better than we are.’

  They were sitting as they always did at the end of the day, in front of the fire in the hearth Michael had built with his own hands, taking their nightly glass of porter, their reward once they’d cashed up. The two of them worked hard from morning to night; they knew no different way of life. They were at the service of Tarabeg and, in turn, Tarabeg filled the till. Sarah was up at five to bake the bread and milk the cow, and as she often told Michael, ‘What I can’t fit in before eight o’clock isn’t worth doing.’

  She clicked her tongue at him now. ‘We should be content with what we have, Michael. All the effort that went into building this place!’

  Michael rocked back and forth in the only possession he’d brought down from the old farm, his grandmother’s rocking chair. Nola and Daedio had insisted he take it. ‘I know that wherever that chair is, Annie will be there too,’ Daedio had said. ‘I don’t need looking after, but you do. Take it.’

  Breathing in deeply after lighting his pipe, Michael sat back and enjoyed the dying glow of the crumbling peat. ‘Do you remember the night we decided we would do it?’ he asked.

  ‘How could I forget! There was no stopping you.’ Sarah smiled as she wound the wool.

  ‘Reading the letters that are coming back from America, I’m in no doubt we did the right thing. I wish the lot of them would come back home even if only for a visit, just to put a smile on Mammy’s face. I’m going to suggest to Daedio that I pay him back some of the money he gave me and he sends it to the others to buy tickets home.’

  ‘God, wouldn’t that be lovely,’ Sarah said wistfully. ‘Can you imagine the party we would have if they did.’

  ‘I can. But none would be as grand as the party we had the night we opened.’

  A frown crossed Sarah’s face. ‘A curse was put on me the night we opened – everyone said Shona threw a cast over me that night.’ She looked up, tried to catch Michael’s eye. ‘Sit still, will ye? How can I wind when you are rocking back and forth.’

  It had come as no shock to Sarah that Bridget McAndrew had turned up on their doorstep the day after the party, carrying a basket of potions and herbs. Bunches of herbs were threaded into the thatch, and placed all over the house. A potion of Bridget’s and a bucket of holy water was sprinkled over the stone walls of the cottage, inside and out, and Bridget herself burnt something in the cow byre and then in the dairy and then in the house itself. After that she moved on to Sarah and Michael themselves. They had to swallow potions and stuff their pockets with crushed herbs. ‘Look, I don’t trust Shona,’ she’d said by way of explanation. ‘No one does. She is as old as the hills and her powers are weak, but we need to put up a defence against any wickedness she might have
been up to last night.’

  Sarah remembered those words still, but Michael wasn’t taking the bait. ‘Aye, as God is true, wasn’t that the best night this village has ever known?’

  ‘It was that.’ Sarah wound the last of the wool with a flourish. ‘There hasn’t been another like it, in more ways than one. You do remember, don’t you, that Bridget thought Shona was up to something.’

  Michael shook his head impatiently. ‘Sarah, we’ve gone from strength to strength. Even the Maughans come here now to buy their baccy. Jay can’t get his baccy any cheaper than he can here.’

  ‘They shouldn’t scare people so.’

  ‘Aye, well, people only have to look at the success of Malone’s to know that there is no power in a gypsy’s curse any more. Not in this day and age.’

  Sarah looked up at the ceiling, alerted by the sound of Mary Kate turning over restlessly in her bed upstairs. She wished she could be as unconcerned about the Maughans as her husband, but the fact was she’d guessed, she knew, what Shona’s curse had been, and it had worked. There had been no other child since Mary Kate.

  Mary Kate’s room was right above them. Sarah glanced over at Michael and put her finger to her lips, then cocked her head, waiting for the stillness to return. At six, Mary Kate sometimes had bad dreams, crying out for Sarah to come and comfort her. She hoped tonight wouldn’t be one of those nights.

  Mary Kate turned onto her back and counted the stars in the black sky. She’d woken to the sound of her parents’ voices, as she often did, their words filtering up through the floorboards. She liked hearing the gentle rhythmic creak of the rocking chair, but most of all she liked listening to her parents’ conversations, especially their stories about people she knew in the village. They laughed about the antics of the customers who came into the shop. They discussed Mrs Doyle’s bad leg, and Tig and Keeva and their two tearaway boys, her friends, Aedan and Iain, and Mary Kate’s big cousin, Ciaran, who came home with her after school and had his tea in the back of the shop before he walked home to the shore. Sometimes they talked about the time before she was born and the day they met, and often they talked about their hopes for her future. It was when they talked about the night of the shop opening and the Maughans that she listened hardest. A gnawing feeling came over her when they were mentioned. She sensed from the change of tone in her mother’s voice that something had happened on that night and that it still concerned her.