Shadows in Heaven

by Nadine Dorries

  Sarah couldn’t speak. She couldn’t see. Her nose ran with her tears and she wiped her face with the back of her hands, too afraid to say anything. And then, turning from her abruptly, he was gone.

  *

  As the cart pulled into the village, Nola, listening for the familiar sound of the horse’s hooves, raced out of Ellen Carey’s shop to hug her son goodbye.

  Just at that moment, Sarah, having ran in the opposite direction, to the shore, reached her own cottage. She stopped outside to catch her breath, then almost fell through the door, tears still pouring down her face, as she called to Angela. ‘Mammy, I’m back.’

  She froze to the spot at the sight of her father standing before her, his belt in his hand. His gun, glinting in the light from the door, lay menacingly on the table, and her mother was sitting on the floor in the corner, her back against the wall. Instantly, Sarah understood. She knew that position. It was where they both shuffled to with their feet to edge away from his lashings, instinctively knowing that the wall would save half of their body from the blows raining down on them.

  Angela was rocking, holding her shawl to her head, blood seeping through it.

  How had he known? That was the first thought to flash through Sarah’s mind. No one knew about her and Michael. No one. She’d made sure she wasn’t seen as she crossed the boreens rather than take the main road from the shore to the bottom of the boreen that ran up Tarabeg Hill to the farm. No one had seen her apart from the tinkers, the Maughans, who were camped on the side of the hill, away from the Malones’ land but close enough to help themselves to their crops and orchards. No one spoke to the Maughans, so it couldn’t have been them.

  ‘Where the feck have you been?’ McGuffey snarled.

  Sarah paled and felt faint with fear. The brass of his belt buckle caught the light from the fire and winked at her. She felt her bladder weakening and her head spinning, and then she heard the whip of the belt as it cut through the air. Before it made contact with her face, the familiar wave of darkness saved her as she hit the floor.

  Chapter 2

  Five years later: 1945

  Rosie O’Hara’s shoes, still wet from the walk to school that morning, squelched as she finished damping down the fire and made her way across the scrubbed wooden floor to the classroom windows. She reached across to fold the bottle-green shutters. Peering down the street, she caught sight of young Theady O’Donnell heading home, dragging his feet as he went. He was walking alone, so he must have been the only child in detention in the boys’ room. Rosie pulled the ribbon that held her long, shiny auburn hair tighter and tucked the strands that had escaped during the day behind her ears. It was late June and the freckles that dappled her nose and cheeks looked almost painted on against her pale skin. Her grey eyes reflected the grey sky and as her insides churned with hunger, she sighed.

  She had remained late to wipe clean the slates and polish the girls’ desks; she’d worked quietly as she went, to avoid attracting the attention of Mr O’Dowd, the school principal. A loud and cheerful man with a thick thatch of badly cut dark hair, he was also the teacher in the boys’ room. He was wont to pop into her classroom at the slightest excuse, to see what she was doing, and had a habit of talking to her about things she knew nothing of – football and fishing. If he paid less attention to both, she thought, he might have found the time to marry. He spent most of the day sitting in the chair behind his desk, smoking his pipe, and when school was finished, he headed straight over the road to Paddy Devlin’s bar.

  Mr O’Dowd also ran the local football team, which played out on the flattest field in the village every Saturday morning. Rosie, often cold and suffering from painful chilblains in her toes, could never understand the attraction. She shivered in sympathy for the poor muddy boys, made to wash in the freezing Taramore river before they returned home.

  It was rare for Rosie to keep any of her girls in detention and she often felt sorry for the boys Mr O’Dowd kept behind, especially those who had to walk back home to the hill farms. ‘’Tis different altogether with the boys,’ Mr O’Dowd would say to her. ‘Someone has to stay on detention at least once a week, whether they need it or not. ’Tis a warning to the others. Best form of discipline, in my book. I hardly ever need the stick, and don’t I have the best-behaved class in all of Ireland to show for it.’

  Rosie never answered Mr O’Dowd back. Shy by nature, she felt diminished by his overly gregarious nature. He was liked and respected by every single parent, and for timid, withdrawn Rosie, being in his presence highlighted everything she was not. She strove for respect but mostly what she earned was pity.

  Theady was the child who lived closest to the school. He was also one of the few who possessed a pair of sturdy shoes, being the only O’Donnell child left at home who had not emigrated to America. Rosie had noticed a difference in him of late. Once the most pleasant boy in Tarabeg, he had in a matter of months become one of the most sullen. She had commented to her only real friend in the village, Teresa Gallagher, that a great change had come over him.

  ‘His mother, Philomena, is the scold of the village, with a tongue sharper than any knife,’ Teresa had said. ‘He’s been the same since the last brother ran from her house on the day he had the fare saved to take him to Cobh for the boat to New York. It must be awful for him, being the only child left with that woman, and him being too young to escape. His da spends most of his day anywhere but in the house. She missed Mass twice last week, can you imagine?’ As Father Jerry’s housekeeper at the presbytery, Teresa seemed to find this far more significant than Theady’s unhappiness.

  ‘He is a sensitive boy, his heart must be breaking for his brothers,’ said Rosie, almost to herself. She knew Theady loved to please. It was easy enough with her, but seemingly a near impossibility at home with his mother. He was always the first to arrive at the school in the morning, long before Mr O’Dowd appeared, and he would always ask Rosie, ‘Shall I take the basket to fetch the kindling, Miss O’Hara, to get the fire going for you?’

  ‘You do that, Theady,’ she would say, and straightaway he would head off up the hill to collect bits of wood and anything else that would catch for long enough to sustain a flame and start the fire in the schoolroom. He was never quite so keen to leave Rosie once they had got the fire going and it was time to line up in the cinder yard when she rang the bell.

  The school comprised just two classrooms, one for girls, the other for boys. Mr O’Dowd, originally from Dublin, had taught there for many years. He did not divide up the grant that they were paid from fairly or in the manner that he was supposed to, but kept the lion’s share for himself, which meant that Rosie, who had arrived six years ago from Connemara, received a pittance. Without the kindness of Teresa Gallagher she would have struggled to survive.

  Mr O’Dowd was also profligate with the kindling Theady brought back, and Rosie struggled to keep enough back to ensure they never had a truly cold day in the girls’ room. He used more of the turf that the families were required to provide for the benefit of the school, too, leaving her with less for the girls.

  For all that, Rosie knew that he was such a great man of the community, such a well-regarded figure and a friend of all, that no one would believe her, a girl from Connemara, if she complained about him, an educated man from Dublin. And she was doubtful if they would see anything wrong in a spinster teacher being paid such a pitiful salary. Shamed, she would be sent away from Tarabeg. And for reasons that were very close to her heart, that was the last thing Rosie wanted to happen. For now that the war was over, she was sure that Michael Malone must be coming home, and Rosie wanted to be there and waiting when that day arrived. She was older now, more of a woman than a girl. This time, she would not allow her shyness to repel him. Even if it killed her, she would win his affection back.

  Rosie wriggled her toes, cold and still damp in her cheaply made shoes. Her heart sank as she took in the heavy mist on the hills and the rain bouncing off the cinder playground. She
would be wet for the second time today when she left for home. The rain had been relentless. ‘Even in summer,’ she whispered.

  Her breath had misted up the pane of glass and she rubbed it with her sleeve as from the corner of her eye she caught sight of Teresa Gallagher. She was pulling up the reins of her horse with force.

  ‘Whoa! Whoa!’ Teresa shouted. With the agility of a woman half her age, she got down from the trap before the wheels had fully stopped, turned in through the gate and hurried up the path towards Rosie. She had news to tell, that much was obvious.

  Teresa was a purveyor of news. As housekeeper at the presbytery, she got to hear everything – it all came to her door. This news, however, was so important that all pleasantries were dispensed with as she marched into the empty classroom. Her silver hair was always fixed in a small tight bun at the nape of her neck and she wore the same style of dress as she had for the past forty years: long and black, with a change of collar, always made by Ellen Carey. Narrow, wire-framed spectacles perched on the end of her nose and she never set foot outdoors unless she was wearing a hat. Today was no exception and her oilskin bonnet was tied tightly under her chin.

  ‘Well, you will never believe it, Michael Malone is on his way home,’ she said as she shook out her oilskin cape. It cracked as she did so and the raindrops covered Rosie’s feet in a light shower. But Rosie hadn’t noticed; her heart had stopped beating right there and then. ‘He’s sent a telegram and Mrs Doyle has to take it from the post office to Seamus as soon as they all stop drinking the tea. Keeva is in a right flap, she thought it was another death in the village, she was all for running up to tell Father Jerry if I hadn’t been there and heard it all myself. Mrs Doyle was put out indeed. “Your job is as my assistant, miss. You don’t run the post office,” she said to Keeva. Anyway, I thought I would stop to tell you before I’m off to see my sister, thought you might like to know the news.’

  Rosie felt her heart restart. It beat in her chest with the force of a trapped bird. Her mouth dried, the palms of her hands moistened and she struggled to reply. An awkward silence filled the space between them as Teresa, a stranger to self-doubt, wondered if she had made the right call. Rosie had never discussed Michael Malone, or taken the bait that Teresa had thrown down for her a million times, so it was all guesswork on Teresa’s part. However, she was sure that Rosie was sweet on Michael and had been since almost the day she’d arrived in Tarabeg. ‘Even a blind man can see that,’ she had once said to Father Jerry. ‘Sure, wasn’t he once sweet on her too? I cannot get a word out of her, no matter how hard I try. I’m never wrong though.’ Now, in the confines of the schoolroom, she studied Rosie’s face for any indication of her affection for Michael. She was disappointed.

  As calmly as if she were discussing the weather, Rosie replied in a voice she barely recognised. ‘That’s good news. His family, they will be relieved that he wasn’t one of the soldiers who never came back then.’

  ‘Oh, they’ll be thankful he’s alive all right, praise be to God for that. But they will know the way people are feeling about those who fought with the British, they will have heard all about that. He will be back off away out of here the minute he turns up and he finds out what’s what. Nola won’t let him jump from a frying pan into a fire, so she won’t.’ Teresa tutted and shook her head in irritation. ‘They’re even talking about passing a law, so I hear, to stop soldiers like Michael from getting proper work and benefits when they come home. They are going to be calling it the starvation law, can you imagine? Call them deserters, so they do, because they fought with the English army. He’ll not be forgiven in a hurry. Doesn’t Father Jerry know all about it. He spends his life, so he does, trying to get them not to listen to Kevin McGuffey and his wicked words of hate towards the English. There are enough lads from the villages round here who haven’t made it back, who died in a field to keep the Germans out. He’s a bog maggot that man McGuffey is.’

  Rosie picked up the white duster and began wiping the blackboard in earnest, keeping her back to Teresa and her hands busy. Her face was inscrutable, but she took no chances as Teresa continued.

  ‘Will they listen to Father Jerry though? No, not a word. They would rather follow the gospel according to McGuffey, one filled with hate, and walk along a path that leads straight to Galway jail. My sister, and as you know we were both very well educated, she says that the people around here have no idea, no idea at all what it would have been like had Hitler marched over the hill and into Tarabeg.’

  Teresa stopped talking and studied Rosie’s swaying back. She was disappointed. Rosie was composed, she was giving nothing away. ‘Anyhow, I’m off to my sister’s. Will Father Jerry and I be seeing you later for your tea?’

  Rosie turned, slowly laid the chalky rag down on her desk, and nodded. She wanted to decline, to hide away and secretly digest this news. But there would be more, she was sure, in the hours between now and teatime and, despite herself, she wanted to know, to know it all.

  *

  Mr O’Dowd had already departed, as was his routine, leaving Rosie to lock up while he headed to the tobacconist for his daily craic and supply for his pipe before making his way to Paddy’s bar. As Rosie turned the key in the huge green-painted wooden door, ready to begin her walk home, she saw the postmistress, Mrs Doyle, coming out of the post office. She was clutching the telegram in one hand and the heavy gold crucifix that hung from her neck in the other. Her breasts, free from the restraint of a folded pair of arms, ricocheted about like rocks in socks.

  Mrs Doyle had barely supressed a yelp of delight when the telex machine had erupted into life of its own accord and began tapping away behind the counter. ‘Keeva, would ye look at that, we have a telex coming through. Put the kettle on, would ye.’

  Keeva Power had only just finished clearing away the mugs from the last round of tea. Tea was always required when two or more women appeared in the post office at once, and most definitely when one of them was Teresa Gallagher, the only woman to know more than Mrs Doyle. ‘What, again?’ she muttered. ‘It’s barely cold from the last flamin’ lot.’ She grudgingly loaded up used cups onto the wooden tray and hurried over to the range next to the fire to slide the kettle across.

  She was keen herself to see who it was who was trying to make contact with them. Her mother would be all ears too, for she was convinced that with a little ingenuity the telex could be used to bring messages from the dead. Keeva would be sure to fill her in when she got home that evening. The two of them lived together on a farm two miles outside the village. Her father had died and her sisters and brothers were all scattered across America, so Keeva and her mother survived on the dollars sent and on Keeva’s wage from the post office. The dollars were intermittent, but the wage was weekly and therefore essential.

  Keeva’s shoulder length hair was wild and red and her eyes were as green as the first spring shoots of the wild angelica that grew along the banks of Tarabeg’s Taramore river. She was thin from spending the entire day on her feet, walking an hour to work and another hour back in the evening, and never resting until she hit her straw mattress at night, but she loved her job. The post office was the hub of the village, the place where all news arrived, and being a part of it relieved the repetitive routine of her life.

  The telex had caused quite a stir the day it was installed and had not ceased to amaze since. The women of the village still sometimes gathered round it, gazing, waiting, bending their ears to the background hum as they stared in wonder at the occasional involuntary half jump of a key as it threatened to beat out a message.

  Finding Seamus Malone on this wet afternoon was not a difficult task for Mrs Doyle, who knew he would be up at the farm on Tarabeg Hill if he wasn’t in the village. Along with the post office, the main street comprised only the tailor’s shop owned by the Careys, the tobacconist’s, a hardware shop, the new baker’s, the public house, the schoolhouse, Paddy and Josie Devlin’s butcher’s shop, with its own second bar at the back, and, finally
, the old barracks and Garda post, the church and the school.

  ‘Where are you off to with that?’ Ellen Carey shouted to her from the door of the tailor’s shop. Mere seconds before, she’d been sitting by the large-paned window, pedalling away at her Singer sewing machine as her eyes scanned the village. It was a draughty spot, and furthest from the fire, but it afforded Ellen the best view, and that she would never relinquish. She had spotted the mustard-coloured envelope in Mrs Doyle’s hand before she was ten paces from the post-office door.

  Without breaking her stride, Mrs Doyle gasped, ‘Oh, I can’t stop, Ellen, I’ve left Keeva looking after the post office and if I’m too long, she’ll have given all the money away in wrong change. ’Tis for Seamus. I have to see is he in Paddy’s. Oh look, would you, his horse is there! I’ve caught him, praise be to God.’

  Her still-black hair was drawn into a loose chignon on the nape of her neck, in the local style, and bobbed up and down to the rhythm of her breasts. Her long black skirt and white blouse had been dry when she left the post office only moments earlier, but the rain hit the black serge of her outer skirt with the force of the wind behind it, penetrating the linen slip beneath and seeping through to her stick-thin thighs. Her shawl, draped across her shoulders, was in danger of slipping off as she lowered her head and ran, trying to keep her face dry.

  ‘If it’s for Seamus, it must be news of Michael,’ said Ellen. ‘Wait for me.’ She stepped back into the tailor’s, grabbed her own shawl from the back of the chair, turned the ‘Open’ sign to ‘Closed’ and, slamming the door to the sound of the jangling bell, threw the shawl over her head and shoulders and headed off down the street after Mrs Doyle.

  ‘How are ye, Miss O’Hara?’ she shouted to Rosie, not stopping to wait for a reply. ‘Mrs Doyle has a telegram, so she does. For Seamus,’ she called over her shoulder by way of an explanation for her bad manners.