A baby, there was nothing she would love more. Moving the mixing bowl to the side, she leant back against the table, her hands splayed flat on the floury pine to give her purchase. One foot found the stool and Michael held on to her thighs and wrapped them around him. As she tilted her hips, Michael could wait no longer and plunged into her harder than he had meant to, but aware that they could be caught at any moment and that time was of the essence.
‘Oh my God in heaven,’ Sarah gasped.
‘What?’ said Michael. ‘What? Is something wrong?’
‘Jesus, no, it is not. Don’t stop.’ She gasped a second time as the mixing bowl smashed onto the floor.
Michael grinned. He couldn’t help himself – the look on her face as he moved in and out, teasing her, drove him wild.
Having one of the busiest kitchens in the village, they had never made love on the table before. Sarah was making the most of it and Michael was loving it. As she threw her head back and yelped, a cup jumped off the table, but she didn’t even notice.
Rosie, however, did notice. No one had asked her to work, but she had been invited as a guest to the birthday tea. ‘I can’t just turn up and leave Sarah to do all the work,’ she had said to Teresa when she left Mass. As the shop was closed, she’d walked around to the back door to be met by the sight of Michael’s bare backside, Sarah with her legs around his waist and her skirts splayed out over the table, and smashed dishes scattered across the kitchen floor. They were both making a noise like none Rosie had heard before, Michael grunting and Sarah almost screaming.
Rosie’s hand flew to her mouth, but she was rooted to the spot, she could not tear her eyes away. It wasn’t until she heard Michael let out an animal-like groan and saw him collapse over Sarah, proclaiming how much he loved her, that the pain in her heart got the better of her. She tiptoed away and slipped into the cow byre.
*
Hours later, the very same table heaved again but this time with the weight of smoked salmon. It lay on a wooden platter and reached almost from one end of the table to the other. A side of pork lay on the press and there were two huge bowls of buttery mashed potatoes, dishes of vegetables and the tallest, most perfectly risen Victoria sandwich cake any of them had seen.
The Devlins were at the table, Tig in between Seamus and Paddy, and Keeva and Josie next to Nola and Bridget McAndrew. Mary Kate, replete with as much salmon as a child could eat, had fallen asleep on her straw sleeper, which was at Daedio’s feet. Daedio was also replete, asleep, and slightly drunk.
As she dozed, Mary Kate clutched her painted donkey and her mother’s emerald. She insisted on wearing this whenever she was allowed. The first time she wore it, Michael had just returned from a shopping trip to Dublin and held a present in his hands for her. He crouched down on his haunches to her height, and said, ‘Did yer mammy give you that to wear for ever?’ Mary Kate shook her head, wondering if she might be in trouble. ‘I bought it for you, but she stole it from me, so she did.’
‘I did not,’ squealed Sarah. ‘Don’t be filling the girl’s head with such nonsense now.’ She was at the sink with her back to them, and Michael grinned and winked at Mary Kate.
‘She did so. I remember the day I bought it as if it were only yesterday. I said to yer man that I wanted a colour to match my daughter’s eyes, but your man in Dublin, he said to me, I have no colour as beautiful as the eyes in your daughter’s head, Malone, you shall have to be making do with this.’
‘Sure, the man was a genius,’ said Sarah as she turned back from the sink and, drying her hands on her apron, walked over to them both. ‘’Twas before you were even born, Mary Kate. Fancy that, a man with the gift of vision selling your father an emerald the colour of your eyes! And your father didn’t even buy it, it was a present from Daedio. That is an example of how much baloney your father talks.’
Mary Kate had grinned at her father, torn between throwing her arms around his neck in thanks for the way he made her feel with his beautiful words, and begging impatiently to see her present.
‘Stop, will you, and just give it to her,’ the always busy and often impatient Sarah had chastised as she walked over to the scrubbed pine table, began shaping the bread with her hands, and with her foot kicked open the range door ready to receive it at just the right temperature.
Pete Shevlin was on the settle with Michael next to the fire. Sarah and Nola had persuaded Rosie to stay. ‘No, you aren’t doing all this work and then going back to your empty house. We want you to stay, don’t we, Nola?’
Despite her reluctance, Rosie had enjoyed the afternoon. She rose to gather the dirty plates and carried them out to the scullery.
‘Would ye look at that,’ said Michael, gazing down at the sleeping child. ‘She loves the donkey from Mrs Doyle’s. After all the things I bring her home from Dublin, that’s the thing she’s been holding on to all day.’
‘When are you next to Dublin?’ asked Seamus as he tried, with little success, to place almost a whole slice of cake into his mouth.
‘Tuesday.’
Sarah was placing a fresh jug of stout on the table. She leant over Michael’s shoulder. ‘You never told me that,’ she said.
‘I have to. I can’t have Mrs Doyle catching up with me. Need more stock. I’m right out of keep nets. You can’t catch salmon without one.’
‘How long will ye be gone for this time?’ asked Seamus.
Mary Kate shuffled and stretched in her sleep. With his foot, Michael shifted her wicker bed closer to the fire, away from the draught that was running under the kitchen door. The sun had long since given up trying and had given way to a fresh Atlantic breeze. The flames leapt up the chimney and Michael smiled down at his sleeping birthday girl, her cheeks flushed pink from the warmth. Sarah smiled and handed him Mary Kate’s blanket to slip over her; as she did so, he squeezed her hand. Mary Kate, the most precious thing in all the world to both of them.
‘I’ll be gone for a full week,’ he said.
‘Again?’ Sarah exclaimed. ‘Seems like you’ve hardly been home.’
‘’Tis a terrible place,’ said Seamus. ‘You be careful. They say the women in Dublin are as good as wild and they have no religion. The priests in Dublin have a terrible life, so they do.’
Michael noted the look of concern on Sarah’s face and, grabbing her hand, pulled her down onto his knee. ‘Quiet, Daddy, you’ll be having my Sarah worried sick. Won’t he?’ He rubbed the small of Sarah’s back with one hand as he held her hand with the other.
She looked down at him and smiled, and in front of his parents and his guests, he took her face in his hands. ‘Don’t you be taking no notice of any of them,’ he said. ‘The only woman on my mind when I am away is the most beautiful one in all of Ireland.’ Sarah grinned and kissed him on the nose. ‘And right now, she has no idea what I’m saying because she’s asleep under a blanket.’
Sarah jumped off his knee in mock disgust as they all began to laugh, and Michael managed to playfully slap Sarah’s backside before she moved out of range. The only person who wasn’t laughing was Seamus and when everyone had stopped, he reiterated his warning. ‘I’m just saying, be careful, that’s all. Dublin is not Galway and sure, that place is bad enough that I only go when I have to.’
Michael was about to pick up his jug of beer and looked under his lashes to Seamus. ‘Daddy, you have never been to Dublin, what could ye be worried about?’
‘The sin, the temptation. That’s what,’ Seamus fired back. ‘You think ye know everything, Michael, but you are a stubborn-headed country boy and ye don’t know all the evils of the world that are out there waiting to trip up a man like yourself who is making a good business for himself.’
Nola looked from one man to the other. She was drying dishes and could sense the tension building, but she knew how to handle it. ‘Well, I saw Teresa Gallagher in the post office the other day and she was saying what a fine business it is ye have here.’
‘I’m trying my best,’ said Mic
hael. ‘We both are, aren’t we, Sarah? And we have Rosie to help. Don’t ye be worrying, Daddy, I know what I’m doing all right.’
*
It was twilight when Rosie left the Malones and made her way home. Maughan was waiting for her halfway up the boreen. She had not felt frightened when he’d first approached her, asking for information about Mary Kate. She had simply listened to his questions without answering them. The Malones had made her feel like family, especially today, and she loved Mary Kate. She didn’t know how to get rid of him and she was afraid to tell Michael. He was hot-headed and she feared that if she did tell him, he could end up in jail or even swinging from a noose for what he might do. Rosie had learnt one thing, that Michael Malone was a man of great passion who didn’t always think first. Telling him would bring greater danger than Maughan waylaying her when she least expected him.
He had tried to scare her when she first came across him in the boreen. Told her he wanted her to take Mary Kate to the river when Michael was away on his buying trips as her grandfather wanted to talk to her. He had threatened her with curses and all manner of hell that would rain down on them if she didn’t, but she had stood her ground.
‘You can do nothing. The good Lord is my protector, he is all I need. Now go, before I call the Garda.’
She was surprised to see him there today, but maybe he’d known it was Mary Kate’s birthday. ‘I’m not bringing the child, I have nothing for you and I never will.’ She was firm in her voice and appeared stronger than she felt. She took some pleasure in watching him deflate.
‘You will regret this,’ he said as he spat on the ground.
‘No, I won’t. Don’t ever block my path again or I will turn around and go straight to the guard. You will not get away quicker than he will catch you in his car. Tell McGuffey the same applies to him. Go from Tarabeg and take your witch of a grandmother with you because I will be straight to the guard house right now and telling him all about you.’
As she watched his departing back disappearing into the ferns, she began to shake violently. She had no idea where the words or the courage had come from. That wasn’t a Rosie she had ever been before. She looked up towards her house and then down at the church. Turning on her heel, she headed back to the church to pray. She needed help.
*
‘Sure that was the best idea you ever had, asking Rosie to work for them. She’s a good girl and a grand help to Sarah,’ said Daedio. ‘They’ve gone from strength to strength, and he makes more money than the farm does now. Did you see them fishermen, buying the lines Michael had made up for them with his own hands? And he gives them advice, about where is the best place to fish on the river. Didn’t I say it, that the salmon would bring in the business. Didn’t I say that the fishermen would be coming.’
‘Yes, yes, you did,’ said Nola.
She, Daedio and Seamus were sitting in their horse and trap, making their way back up to the farm. The village below them was getting ever smaller as they climbed the dusty boreen. They had stayed almost too long and as dusk fell and the moon rose, one familiar landmark after another faded from sight. Daedio’s snores lifted into the air.
‘He’s asleep more than he’s awake these days,’ said Seamus.
‘Aye, he is. Heaven, I’d say. He’s right too, the business is going well…’ She sighed. ‘But ’tis a shame, Sarah would have loved another child – and when so many in this village can have ten or more.’
‘Well, it isn’t for the want of trying. I swear they were at it only minutes before I walked through the door. Rosie was right behind me. If she’d arrived a minute earlier, she would have caught them too. Not having any babbies, it hasn’t stopped those two.’ Seamus grinned. ‘I fancy a bit of that myself tonight, do you?’
Nola looked sideways at her husband in the twilight and grinned back. Despite his age, he showed no sign of slowing down. He was the serious and sometimes grim one of the family. But, with her, when they were alone, he was always the same, her playful and loving Seamus.
‘There’s no chance of ye getting pregnant now, is there?’ he asked with a hint of worry in his voice as he cracked the reins.
‘God, no. Not a chance.’ She stared up at the moon. ‘Doesn’t seem like forty years ago we had our first one, does it, eh? Forty! Our Sean had quite a party for his big birthday, did he not, or so he said in the letter. And the others all there too…’ Her voice wobbled slightly. ‘Wouldn’t you think they would want to come home from America and at least see that miserable old git sleeping in the back one more time?’
Seamus looked over his shoulder at Daedio, who was under the influence of five pots of porter. ‘I’ll give you this,’ he said, ‘having only one child is a queer situation altogether. Mary Kate may be the only one, but she has the looks and the brains of half a dozen. God has his ways and I’d say this, what’s the point in having them when they all bugger off and leave you? What will happen to the farm when we have gone, and the house? Who will take it on?’
Nola had no response. They truth was that none of them would, but that wasn’t what Seamus wanted to hear.
‘What we have been working to leave, they will sell between them, and this will all belong to someone else one day.’
‘Shush, Seamus, you know that’s not true.’ And quickly, as was her way, she changed the subject, because she was her children’s mother and no one knew them like she did. She didn’t want to look to the future, to when she and Seamus were no longer there and the boots of strangers tramped over Malone land.
*
Three months later, Sarah ran from the sink in the scullery to the yard outside and vomited all over the chicken feed, to the indignation of the chickens, who scurried out of the gate squawking. Mary Kate ran after her, closely followed by Rosie.
‘Mrs Malone, are ye all right?’ Rosie looked concerned.
Sarah couldn’t answer at first. The ground was spinning and beads of perspiration stood out on her top lip. She wiped them away with the corner of her apron. She put her hand out to Mary Kate as reassurance and looked up at Rosie through watery eyes. ‘I am, thank you. I don’t know what happened, ’twas so quick. Mary Kate, back inside.’
‘What’s everyone doing out here?’ asked Michael as he came to the door with a mug in his hand.
‘Go on in,’ Sarah ushered Mary Kate. ‘Take her in, would you, Rosie.’
Rosie took Mary Kate’s hand as she led her indoors. As she passed Michael, the hair on her forearm prickled.
‘Michael, come here,’ Sarah called out to him. She had one hand on the roof of the chicken pen.
He walked over to her and offered his mug. ‘Do you want some of this? Are you not feeling good?’
Sarah pulled a face and looked down to the ground.
‘Holy Mother, was that you?’ he asked.
Sarah nodded. ‘Michael, I think this means one thing,’ she said. ‘I’ll call up to Bridget today, to make sure, but I think I know what she’ll say.’
‘What?’ asked Michael, alarmed. ‘What will she say?’
‘That, well, maybe we have a babby on the way.’
It was a good few seconds before Michael responded. ‘A babby? But it’s been seven years.’
Sarah nodded. ‘It has, and we’ve been blessed again.’ She began to laugh at the expression on Michael’s face.
‘Oh, God, is it true?’ Michael had long given up hope of another child, all hope of a son, and as the shock left him and he recovered his equilibrium, he picked up his Sarah and swung her around in his arms. At that moment he thought that there couldn’t possibly be another man alive as happy as he was.
Later that day he took Sarah up the hill in the van to tell Nola, Seamus and Daedio herself. They left Rosie in charge of the shop with Mary Kate.
As they arrived at the farm, Nola rushed out of the house in a panic, and Seamus and Pete emerged hurriedly from the old cottage.
‘What in God’s name is wrong?’ Nola demanded. ‘Is it Mary Kate?’
‘You look a bit peaky, Sarah, how are ye?’ Nola looked at Sarah with a puzzled expression. She and Michael weren’t expected. They rarely left the shop together and they had very obviously come for a reason.
Sarah winked at Nola. ‘I’m fine, but Michael, you know what he’s like for the tea.’
‘Has the most beautiful woman in all of Ireland just walked into this house?’ Daedio was in his usual place, lying on his bed in front of the fire, his back to the door. ‘And very obviously, I don’t mean you, Nola, unless I’ve gone entirely mad.’
‘Jesus, won’t you ever leave.’ Nola kicked the bed as she walked past to put the kettle on the fire.
Sarah sat herself on the side of Daedio’s bed and Michael said, ‘I’m going out to the old cottage, to tell Daddy and Peter.’
‘Tell them what?’ Nola shouted after him, but it was too late, he’d gone.
‘He wants to tell them our news,’ said Sarah. ‘That’s why we came.’
Daedio winked at her. ‘I already know it,’ he said.
Sarah sat bolt upright. ‘You can’t do. I only knew myself this morning and I’ve only just been to see Bridget.’
‘You don’t need Bridget,’ Daedio said. ‘You just need to come and see me to tell you that you have a little boy growing in yer belly.’
They both heard a crash from the table and looked round to see Nola white with shock. ‘Is it true?’ she asked.
Sarah nodded as tears jumped to her eyes.
Shadows in Heaven Page 28
