Shadows in Heaven

by Nadine Dorries

  Keeva had no idea how he felt about her, and Tig was adamant she never should. Josie and Paddy might have been blind to their son’s impairments, but he was sure no young woman as beautiful as Keeva would want to look twice at a man who needed a stick to walk and at times could barely breathe.

  Before Tig could settle his thoughts, he heard a horse pulling up outside, and then a shout. It was Michael. Tig had barely seen him in the weeks since he’d returned from the war; he missed their easy chats, the sharing of confidences and jokes. But Michael was all grown up now, with a wife to care for and a different sort of future ahead of him, and he rarely made it down to the bar. Tig was happy for him, but he would have been happier still if he’d had his own future mapped out.

  Tig and Paddy went to the door and stood there smiling at the sight of Michael helping Sarah to slide down from the saddle. Both father and son were thinking the same thing, that even the bright sunlight could do nothing to warm the waif of a girl who looked as though she was almost being held up by Michael. She was thin, as grey as a January sky and looked as though there was barely any life left in her.

  Michael had been sent down into the village with Sarah on Nola’s instructions. ‘Take her to the land, show her around, give her something to look forward to, to heal for. It might help, you never know. She needs to see that there is something up ahead, something to live for, to make her mother proud of her. I can’t think of anything else that will help with the grief. You know what Bridget says, she has no potion to heal the pain of loss. Captain Bob and Bee are coming tonight and it might give her something to talk to them about.’

  Sarah’s grief was profound and alarming, and in the weeks since her mother’s death it had not lessened. She had somehow held it together through the funeral and the wedding, but as soon as she’d walked through the Malones’ front door, with Michael by her side and Captain Bob and Bee behind them, she had collapsed. Her knees gave way and Captain Bob caught her as she fell. Bee had almost envied her – she’d had Ciaran by her side, which gave her no choice but to stand and be stoic.

  ‘Mother of God, take her through to the bed, would you, the poor child.’ Nora fussed around Sarah as Captain Bob and Michael carried her into the bedroom.

  Through the open door, Bee could see lady’s-tresses in a vase on the wooden bedside table, and a fire glowing in the grate. There were rag rugs on the floor, and a hand-crocheted coverlet was laid over Sarah. A candle was burning inside the glass lamp and in the sconces and the room looked to Bee like a sanctuary that came with its very own Nola. Sarah would be safe and, not only that, she would be cared for. A tear came to Bee’s eye.

  As Captain Bob came back to her side, he squeezed her hand. ‘She is going to be well looked after. We can worry about you now.’

  Weeks had passed and at least Sarah was now eating, although, as Daedio commented, ‘not enough to keep a worm wriggling’.

  Michael waved at the Devlins as he tied up the horse. ‘Tig, come here, me and Sarah have something to show you.’

  ‘Sarah can see from here, thank you very much,’ said Josie, who came bustling out from behind Paddy and Tig. Josie had also been given her instructions by Nola. ‘Come on, Sarah, I have rashers for your second breakfast on the range. Bridget’s coming to join us and I’ve no doubt the moment Keeva hears you’re here, she’ll be straight back down the road. I want us to try this Instant Coffee Philomena’s son sent over from New York. She brought me half a jar, so she did, in exchange for her sausages, and we’re to have it with hot water and milk, so she said.’ Josie waved Tig and Michael away with the flick of a tea towel. ‘Go! Go on, you two, off with you. Go.’

  Sarah looked dazed but took the hand Josie held out for her without complaint and gave Michael a smile that made his heart flip. Her first spontaneous smile. She was healing.

  ‘Follow me.’ Michael beckoned Tig across to the other side of the road, spun around and gestured at the seven acres. ‘You see this? This land?’ he shouted.

  A frown crossed Tig’s face. ‘Every fecking day, you eejit. I live there.’ He pointed back over at the bar and the butcher’s shop – his family home.

  ‘I know that,’ said Michael. ‘I mean this, here, where we’re standing. I mean all the way to the church there and down to the bridge here and then across on the other side of the river there, and the road is the end, here.’ Michael whirled around and pointed at the four landmarks in turn.

  A note of unease entered Tig’s voice. ‘Why would ye be asking me that? Have ye gone mad, Michael?’

  Michael roared with laughter. ‘No, I have not, only with the madness that has possessed me because ’tis all mine now, that’s what.’

  ‘Yours? How? How can it be?’

  Michael laughed again. ‘I can hardly believe it meself. Because Daedio bought it when God was a boy. That’s how.’

  ‘Daedio? Why?’

  ‘Because he was keeping it for whichever one of us had a nature to stay and not go to America, and that was me.’

  Tig let out a sudden breath. All he could say in response was, ‘Feck.’

  ‘Aye, feck it is.’ Michael grinned.

  ‘What are ye going to do with it?’ Tig changed his grip on his walking stick, leant on it more heavily. ‘Will ye build a house? Where will ye work, Michael? Ye would have to be back out of yer bed before ye got in it, if ye was to work up at the farm.’

  Michael turned his back on Tig and looked up to the quarry. There were now more men up there than there had been even on the day he was married. ‘See that? Those men that look like ants in the sky, up on the quarry? They are the future. I’m going to open a shop.’ He turned back to Tig. ‘Like yer daddy, I’ll have the shop at the front and the living at the back. I’ll sell all the things everyone has to travel to Ballina for. Pig feed, groceries, all the new things coming into the shops in Galway and Dublin, that kind of thing. Now the war’s over, there’ll be lots of new things to buy. Chocolate, pots and pans, flour and the like. I’ll be selling it all – cigarettes too.’

  When they were halfway across the land and Michael had listed all the things he wanted to sell, Tig asked, ‘But what will ye do about the Maughans? People buy half of that stuff from the back of their caravan when they come into Tarabeg, and Jay buys plenty more, Michael – stuff he shouldn’t, stuff the customs men don’t know about, that he takes onto the boats and sells in the North.’

  ‘Smuggling?’

  ‘Aye, he’s done mighty well on the back of it. And they mend the pots and the pans too. Jay welded this to the bottom of my stick.’ Tig held up his metal-footed walking stick for Michael to inspect.

  Michael was disappointed that Tig was throwing obstacles in his way. ‘Is Jay Maughan your friend now then? He’s no friend of mine, I can tell you that. Nor Sarah’s.’

  Tig shook his head. ‘Of course not, but—’

  ‘Jay Maughan can do what he likes, but a shop is the way. You should see them in Liverpool, Tig. They sell everything, all right. I was there before I was demobbed.’

  Tig stopped to catch his breath and fell a few steps behind. ‘Are you going to make Tarabeg like Liverpool, Michael?’

  ‘Jesus, no, but I am going to make money and I am going to make Sarah happy. Now get on my back because I want to go and collect the missus and show it all to her.’

  Tig’s heart sank. The shop would undoubtedly cause trouble with the Maughans. But Michael was in no mood to listen to anyone who wasn’t agreeing with every word he said. He was unstoppable. Michael wouldn’t hear it and he couldn’t see it, but Tig felt a cool wind blow on what was a hot day as his best friend ran with him on his back, just as he had done since they were boys, across the land he now owned.

  *

  Keeva slapped the brown-paper parcel containing the four slices of ham on the bone down on the counter and stormed into the back of the post office.

  ‘Morning, Keeva,’ said Ellen Carey as she marched past her.

  Keeva totally ignored her.
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  ‘What’s got into her?’ Ellen mouthed to Mrs Doyle.

  ‘I wouldn’t be having the faintest idea, but some days she is the Devil himself to be with. I only sent her out for a nice bit of ham for me tea. She was happy enough to go, all right, she always is – it’s when she comes back it’s the problem.’

  Both women craned their necks to see if they could make out what the banging was that was coming from the back of the post office.

  ‘What’s she doing?’ asked Ellen.

  ‘I’m sure I have no clue whatsoever, but I’m not asking her in that mood.’

  ‘I think you’re very wise,’ said Ellen, ‘but one of us will have to soon. The tea’s nearly out.’

  Keeva was so mad with herself, she practically thrashed the wooden case containing the next load of air mail paper. As usual, her mood swerved between intense anger and extreme self-pity.

  She sat on the crate with her chin in her hands and sighed. She just wasn’t pretty enough for Tig to take notice. He’d never noticed her and he never would. This was it, her life. Making tea for everyone in the village who needed the post office. Cooing over every baby that was born. Marvelling at the romances and weddings of others. Even Sarah McGuffey, with a murderer for a father, was married. There was only one boy Keeva had ever been interested in and he didn’t even know she existed. And it wasn’t for the want of her trying – she called into the Devlins’ at least once a day. She grimaced and looked round at the cases of bottled holy water still waiting to be unpacked.

  ‘Are you free, please, Keeva?’ shouted Mrs Doyle, more tentatively than was normal for her.

  Keeva stood. Yes, this was it, her life. ‘Coming,’ she replied. Without being asked, she hauled up the tea tray and carried it into the shop just as the post office bell rang.

  It was Philomena. ‘Well, I’m sure, we all know why it had to happen,’ she said as she half closed the door and peeped down the road, ‘but if it was my daughter-in-law, I’d be keeping her indoors for another year at least.’

  ‘Who?’ asked Mrs Doyle as she stamped a letter for Ellen.

  ‘Sarah McGuffey, or Malone, as she is now.’

  ‘Why, where is she?’

  ‘Stood on the road opposite the Devlins’ with Josie, Bridget, Michael and Tig.’

  Mrs Doyle sprinted around the counter and they all pressed their noses against the glass to see.

  ‘Why don’t I go over and ask how she is?’ said Keeva, her mood lightening in an instant at the prospect of having a reason to place herself in Tig’s company once again.

  ‘Yes, go on, Keeva, you go and be asking how she’s feeling and see if there’s any news.’

  Keeva didn’t need asking twice. Two minutes later, she walked up to Sarah and opened her arms as Sarah, nervous at first, smiled for the second time that day and allowed herself to be hugged.

  *

  Sarah now began to make steady progress. ‘We can only wait for time to pass,’ Nola said to Michael as he sat at the kitchen table. ‘Thanks to the actions of her madman of a father, not a soul from here to kingdom come is condemning the marriage, and Father Jerry is even putting it about that he did what he did because he had to, to save her from her father’s gun. And never was there a truer story. You’ve only to think of Jay Maughan and his leg, so you do. Shona had to throw all she had to save it, so they say in the post office. Mrs Doyle says there was nearly two murders in one week.’

  She shot Michael a meaningful glance. ‘Aye, he’s a good shot all right, that McGuffey, and because of him, Jay Maughan will be limping worse than Tig forever more. Bridget said, the infection in his leg was that bad and if it hadn’t been for Shona knowing how to stop the bleeding, he would have been dead in minutes, just feet away from where he killed Angela, imagine that, here in Tarabeg. I told Father Jerry, “That story will do nicely, Father. Keep it going.” And he said to me, “Well, I don’t have to. As many people are talking about the madman with the gun, and about Maughan’s leg, as they are about Sarah.”’

  Nola looked out of the kitchen window. Sarah was sitting on the cart out in the field with Pete and Seamus, who were loading the peat stacks into sacks. The sun was high and hot and Nola thought that each time Sarah stepped out into the sunshine, it was as if she had been touched by a paintbrush. Her colour returned and a few more freckles appeared on her nose.

  Michael had been down in the field with them, but being the fastest runner, he’d been sent back to fill up the stoneware flasks with tea.

  ‘Run as fast as yer legs will go,’ said Seamus. ‘I’m as dry as a dead donkey’s langer.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Sarah from the back of the cart, where she was stacking one sack on top of the other.

  The three men stopped dead, held her in their gaze, and began to laugh in unison.

  ‘Well, I had better run then,’ said Michael.

  He helped himself to a hot floury potato cake and wrapped three more into a cloth while Nola filled the flasks. ‘Do you think her daddy will ever come back?’ he asked her. They were never alone in the house together, mother and son, now that Sarah had moved in. He gasped for air to cool the hot potato cake that sat in his mouth.

  ‘Not likely, I would say. What would he be coming back for? Maughan won’t want nothing to do with him now he’s walking worse than Tig. And the smuggling has died away. There’s not a fisherman among them who wouldn’t run to the Garda as soon as look at him. No, there’s only trouble and the prison barracks waiting for him if he dares show up here.’

  ‘He’s in Ulster,’ Daedio piped up from the bed.

  Nola and Michael both turned round to face him. ‘How do ye know that?’ asked Michael.

  ‘Because Mrs Doyle knows, she told Father Jerry and he told me when he came up here to give me communion. There’s a lot in here’ – he tapped the brim of his cap with his finger – ‘that you don’t know about, and ye might be a lot more knowledgeable if ye had a mind to ask.’

  Michael would have grinned at Daedio if they’d been talking about anyone but McGuffey. ‘Do you think he’ll come back, Daedio?’

  Daedio shook his head. ‘No, I don’t. He’s already caught up with those madmen and their bombs and guns. He must feel right at home.’

  But Michael wasn’t so sure they had seen the last of him.

  ‘Right, here’s yer tea. Run back with it now and don’t think I didn’t see ye taking the potato cakes – did ye think I wouldn’t let ye have one?’

  Michael grinned as he scooped up the two flasks.

  ‘Go on now, and if yer back begins to break and ye feel like complaining, just thank the Lord that you aren’t me, stuck in here with that miserable sod all day.’

  ‘Right, I am out of the door,’ shouted Michael before he could hear Daedio’s response. He ran back across the field to Sarah. Leaving her even for just a few moments made him feel unsettled and afraid for her safety. He had pledged to her that he would never leave her side again.

  It was at night, under the cover of darkness, when Sarah shed her tears. No words of comfort would ease her pain, so Michael, fearful of saying the wrong thing, held her close and rocked her until she had cried herself out.

  As she began to heal, not a soul mentioned Angela or her death. Whenever Sarah spoke of her mother, she met the equivalent of a blank wall, a change of subject. ‘No one will speak of her, Michael,’ she said to him one night, soon after they’d got into bed. ‘If I mention her to Nola, she doesn’t answer me. Why is that?’

  ‘Ah, now, I will never understand the ways of women.’ Michael pulled her closer. He wanted her to move on, past the sadness. He knew that Angela’s death was viewed as a sin, not Angela’s sin but nonetheless a sin that shouldn’t be spoken of. ‘But you can talk to me all you like. I’m here, aren’t I? And tomorrow Bee is coming up with Captain Bob and Ciaran.’

  Sarah could never tell Michael of the things her father had done, or that even though he was gone, she felt threatened by him still. Every morning she woke wit
h the hope that today her thoughts might be free of his menacing presence, free to mourn and love in peace, but that hadn’t happened yet.

  Michael sensed her disquiet and responded as best he knew how. The tragic circumstances of their reunion had intensified their closeness and their love for each other. The two of them stood together, facing down the grief and fear of the past and looking ahead to an uncertain but exciting future of building their own home and business.

  Despite her sadness, Michael had been pleasantly surprised at the intensity of their lovemaking. At first she had felt nothing but guilt. ‘We can’t! Mammy…’ she had whispered to him the day after Angela had been buried, the night they were married.

  ‘You can,’ he’d said without any shadow of guilt or doubt. ‘Because this will make you feel better, that’s why.’

  And he’d been right. For a short while, her mind had been relieved of the pain and her belly of the ache that had not left her since the moment she’d looked into her mother’s vacant eyes.

  Their lovemaking was life-affirming and the nights were when she and Michael were at their closest. Afterwards, Sarah always fell asleep with her head on his chest, and he kept his arm around her shoulders, holding her close.

  None of this was lost on Daedio.

  ‘They was at it again last night,’ he’d said to Nola that morning when she came into the room. He said the same thing every morning.

  ‘Oh, shut your filthy mouth, would you. They is man and wife in the eyes of God. They can do what they like and I don’t want to know.’

  ‘Oh well, suit yerself, but ye will when the head of that iron bed comes crashing though the wall and lands on you and Seamus. Tell you what, he’s good, keeps going nearly as long as I did when I was first married.’

  Nola stormed out of the kitchen in disgust and complained to Seamus, who was in the cowshed with Pete. ‘Yer father is a disgusting pig of a man and I shouldn’t have to listen to the filth that pours from his mouth.’