Shadows in Heaven

by Nadine Dorries

  ‘Well now, in any other house that happens once a year, but here ’tis a special occasion. Get the whiskey out, woman,’ said Daedio, grinning his toothless grin. ‘Not that she needs any excuse, mind.’ He winked. ‘I’m not drinking me tea without it. I may not live to see the little fella arrive, so I’ll wet his head now. Seamus, Pete, come away in here. Seamus, yer wife has turned into a blitherin’ wreck.’

  In the commotion that followed, it never occurred to Sarah to ask Daedio how he knew, and he was glad of that, because Annie had told him much in the night, and some of it made him want to leave this world sooner than he ever would have thought.

  Chapter 21

  Rosie was surprised to find Theady O’Donnell sitting on her step when she returned home from school one autumn afternoon. He was back on a visit from the seminary and each time she saw him he seemed to have grown another foot.

  ‘Can I talk to you, Miss O’Hara?’ Theady was scrambling to his feet. ‘My priest at school tells me I mustn’t, that I must not breathe a word to anyone and that what I told him was a lie, but, I have to and I can’t think of anyone else who would know what to do.’ He appeared distressed, his eyes were opened wide and his voice was laced with anxiety.

  Rosie opened her cottage door. ‘Come on, come inside, you look a state. Would you like me to take you to see Father Jerry?’ she asked. ‘If it’s about your work at the seminary…’As she looked into his face, a shiver ran down her spine. The time Sarah had asked her to look out for Ciaran, because Bee had concerns about Mr O’Dowd, flew into her mind. The long-ago words of Theady’s own mother, Philomena, likewise.

  ‘If I do, they will throw me out of the seminary, I would like to talk to you first, tell you, someone has to know because I can’t keep this in here any more.’ He pointed to his head and his eyes filled with tears. Rosie felt her skin prickle and tighten. Theady was seventeen now, almost a man and yet, here he was stood before her crying like a baby.

  ‘Come inside,’ she said as she held the door open to let him through. As he passed, she laid her hand on his back. Looking over her shoulder to the presbytery, she saw Teresa, stood quite still, watching them both through the window.

  *

  Bridget McAndrew was one of the busiest women in Tarabeg and was the first person locals called on should there be an ailment, an injury or a baby to be delivered in the village. Her basket rattled with the lotions and potions she’d been using for the past forty years, prepared with knowledge that had been handed down to her by her great-grandmother, who in turn had had the recipes passed down to her through generations before.

  She was out in the field, cutting the peat in the autumn sunshine to harvest and store indoors ready for the long, cold and invariably damp winter, when she was summoned by Michael. He was struggling to get his van up the boreen leading to her cottage. The van could barely take it and twice he almost got himself stuck.

  Bridget and Porick lived in a stone house that they all but shared with their cow, the sod-and-thatch byre they’d built for it having long since blown away. The house was at the foot of the mountain, directly opposite a stream in which there stood a stone sink and from where the McAndrews took their water. The boreen that led to their cottage was reached via a dead-end road that served just two farmhouses. It was a famine road, built a hundred years earlier by desperate, half-starving men forced to labour in exchange for food that was barely enough to survive on. The bogs were crisscrossed with such roads that led nowhere, roads for which men had sweated blood as they starved and died where they fell for no other reason than to be seen to have worked hard for whatever famine relief they received.

  The McAndrews lived hand to mouth – potato to pan, pig to skillet, oats to bread – and their main income was the money Bridget was paid to deliver babies, heal the sick and tell fortunes. ‘A witch, you are,’ Porick chided. But he didn’t say it too often, as like all Irishmen and -women, he was scared to the point of terror of the spirits that roamed the land, their land. Like many others, the McAndrews’ house had been built before the famine and Porick had never been comfortable with the sighs and whispers he heard in the dark shadows of the night as his wife snored next to him. As the storyteller told them often enough, ‘’Tis impossible for so many to lie down and die on this very soil and for their spirits to leave us forever in peace. The good Lord will always be busy here.’

  Porick ran the local taxi, but as hardly anyone went anywhere, he spent most of his day idle, which suited him perfectly. If there was need of the cab, it would be booked through Mrs Doyle. Most of his trade came from fishermen arriving at Galway station. He kept the cab at the rear of the post office and once a week he would call down into the village to be given his bookings by Mrs Doyle before heading over to Paddy’s bar.

  ‘Bridget, ’tis Sarah!’ Michael shouted through the open window of his van as he drove towards her up the side of the hill.

  Bridget, looking up, was surprised she hadn’t heard the sound of his engine on the springy bog.

  ‘She’s been in labour for hours – she asked me to fetch you.’

  Bridget placed the flat of her hand in the small of her back and, straightening up, placed a hand over her eyes to shield out the sun, rare this late in October. She squinted up at Michael, who was now almost upon her. ‘How many hours would it be?’ she asked.

  Michael abandoned the van, jumped out, and came running over to her. ‘I reckon it’s at least six. I’ve had to close the shop.’

  Porick harrumphed next to her as he drove his blade into the peat. ‘’Tis all he be worried about,’ he muttered. ‘Not the wife or the babby, ’tis shutting the shop and the money he’s lost.’

  ‘Shut your mouth,’ snapped Bridget. ‘He cares more about his wife than you ever did about me. If you’d had your way, I’d have been giving birth in the fields.’

  ‘If I’d had my way, you would just have been giving birth.’

  Porick’s remark stung, but then he’d meant it to. Bridget not having borne him even one son meant his life was hard; the work was his own to do, alone and for evermore. He had sympathy for those complaining about the children who had upped and left them; his had never come.

  ‘Do you want to come back with me in the van?’ Michael shouted, ignoring Porick.

  ‘No, I do not. Go back to Sarah. I’ll make it to the house and fetch me bag and meet you there.’

  Michael did not look happy with her reply. ‘Are ye sure? There’s no danger in the van. Will I wait down on the road for you? It will be the quickest way to get you to Sarah.’

  Bridget had dropped her shovel on the ground for Porick to carry and had already begun making her way back. She stopped in her tracks and placed her hands on her hips. ‘If I wanted to come with you and get in that monster of a machine, I would have said yes. Did ye not hear me, Michael Malone? And watch the tyres in the ruts. If you catch one, a broken van you’ll have and I’ve no cure for that. You go back to your Sarah. Who is with her now?’

  ‘Mary Kate is. Paddy’s taken a message up to the farm for my mother to come down. She could be there by now.’

  ‘Aye, well, Nola might be having to look after Daedio. I took a draught over there yesterday, he’s not so good himself, so she might not be able to get away. He’s worrying, Michael. Tells me he’s seeing a lot of Annie. I think his time is near.’

  ‘I was up there this morning,’ Michael shouted down. ‘He’s fretting about something, but Mammy thinks it will pass when the baby arrives. He’s worried about Sarah and so am I. Come on, Bridget, in the van.’

  ‘Your bedroom window faces south, does it not?’

  ‘It does.’

  ‘Well, face the foot of the bed to the south, not to the fire. There was never an easy delivery in a north-facing bed, and to the west and east ’tis unlucky. Take the van back down, if you can, and meet me on the road in ten minutes. I’ll be chancing it, but mind you don’t drive fast.’

  Michael ran back to his van, which had half of
the boreen sticking out of the exhaust pipe. He shook his head, but, glad to have something useful to occupy his mind and his hands, he cleared the earth from his exhaust and started the engine. With no room to turn, he painstakingly reversed the van down the hill and waited for Bridget to fetch her basket.

  Bridget’s house was sparse, containing not much more than a hard mud floor, a table and two chairs by the fire. She kept her wicker basket ready by the side of the straw mattress on her truckle bed. Carrying it to the table, she checked inside. Her bottle of blue motherwort solution was almost full, as were her supplies of echinacea and nettle tea. She’d recently replenished some of own special concoctions, too, made from herbs and seeds she gathered before the sun came up over the horizon; nothing collected after sun up was of any use. The salix willow potion she’d brewed that morning was still warm, standing on the kitchen table.

  She took four potatoes out of the basket under the table, threw some fresh peat onto the fire, and dropped the potatoes into the dry cast-iron cauldron hanging from the chimney, to bake ready for their supper when she returned.

  As she made for the door, she popped the salix solution into her bag. She moved at her own pace, the pace of a woman feeling her age and accustomed to a life of hard work. She was fired on by the confidence that she had never lost either a baby or a mother in a village half populated by those she had delivered. Standing in the doorway, she looked out on the fields and Tarabeg below, and at the sun glinting off the river as it wound its way through, a sight that never failed to gladden her heart. Then she slammed the door shut behind her.

  *

  Nola almost flew up the stairs and into the bedroom to Sarah. ‘Oh thank God, I got here in time. You are early, aren’t you? Isn’t it another month to go?’

  Sarah was lying on the bed red-faced and with her hair soaked with sweat and tied back. The ticking mattress was overstuffed and bulged under the linen sheet. The window was open and the pretty floral curtains – made from the pale lemon and pink fabric that had caused such a commotion the day it arrived – lifted and dropped in the breeze. On the scrubbed pine side table under the window stood a tall china jug and a basin for washing. The fire was lit, filling the room with the distinctive smell of peat.

  ‘Yes,’ rasped Sarah. ‘This one is early and troublesome, has been all along.’

  Nola shot her a look of sympathy. ‘You’ve been saying ’twill be a boy since the day Daedio told you. I wish to God he was wrong. That would give me so much pleasure telling him that, but you’ve been going along with him. I’ve never heard a mother so sure of what she was carrying.’

  She turned to her granddaughter, who was sitting ramrod straight with nerves on the chair beside Sarah’s bed. ‘Come on, Mary Kate, I have a job to do before I look after your mother. Help me get the pots in the kitchen filled with water and onto the fire.’

  Mary Kate was so relieved that her Granny Nola had arrived. She’d been sitting there ever since she got home from school and was faint with worry and hunger. Grasping at her granny’s hand, she was only too happy to rush down the stairs away from the groans of pain she knew her mother was trying to suppress for her sake.

  As they reached the bottom of the stairs, Michael burst in through the back door. ‘Mammy, thank God! How is she?’

  Nola shrugged. ‘She’s like every woman in labour, Michael – in agony, I’d be thinking. Is Bridget here?’

  ‘She is, she’s talking to Josie. Shall I go up to Sarah – is Rosie in the shop yet?’ Michael was nervous. This was the first time he’d closed the shop since the day it had opened. He’d sent for Rosie, but a message had been returned by Teresa that she was busy with Father Jerry. At that moment, though, the shop bell rang and he heard Rosie calling Sarah’s name.

  Michael needed no further encouragement to remove him-self from the simultaneous agonies of listening to his wife in childbirth and contemplating the money lost from not being able to deliver the pig feed. ‘Right you are, I’m away in the shop to collect the deliveries.’ Then he remembered himself. ‘Oh no, I’m not, I can’t, not yet. Bridget told me I have to turn the bed to face south.’ And without further comment he took the stairs two at a time, shouting, ‘Sarah, hold on, we have to turn the bed around.’

  *

  The sun had given way to the moon and it was now dark outside. Rosie had left for home and Michael finally closed the shop. No one came after dark, unless it was a full moon and the way was lit. For what seemed like hours, he and Mary Kate had kept themselves occupied making endless cups of tea for Bridget, Nola and Sarah upstairs.

  ‘Nola, would you come here,’ Bridget shouted down the stairs to Nola, who’d slipped out to fetch more water and provide Michael and Mary Kate with a progress report.

  It seemed to Mary Kate as though her Granny Nola had been running upstairs with jugs of clean water and down again with bowls of dirty water all day long.

  ‘It’s nearly over, Mary Kate, and very soon you’re going to have a brand-new baby brother or sister.’ Nola picked up the biggest pot of boiling water and tipped it into a large china bowl. ‘Michael, we need to fetch Father Jerry, and you will be coming to Mass with me in the morning, if everything goes well, God willing.’ She blessed herself.

  Just then the cry came down the stairs, ‘Nola, fetch me the boiling water.’

  Michael sat on the rocking chair by the fire and pulled Mary Kate down onto his knee. He picked up her hand, kissed her fingers and smiled at her. She beamed back. They were both high on anticipation. Both knew that the softening of the muffled yelps and shouts coming from up the stairs had a significant meaning.

  ‘I’m thinking Daedio is maybe right?’ he said as he grinned, almost unable to contain his trembling nerves.

  Mary Kate shuddered with excitement. ‘I think Daedio is right too, Daddy. Mammy told me that if the babby was like me, we would hear it crying before we saw it. She said they heard me crying in Castlebar on market day. I don’t believe her, you know. ’Tis not true.’ A frown had crossed her face and Michael roared with laughter.

  ‘Sure, it was. I was out with the pigs with Granddaddy Seamus and they were screaming for the hell of it, and Granddaddy said to me, “Shush now, I think that’s your Mary Kate arriving I just heard. We had better be getting home.”’

  Mary Kate leapt off his knee in indignation. ‘No!’ she almost shouted. ‘Daddy, I never cry. Crying is for babbies.’

  ‘Aye, but you were a babby then, Mary Kate, sure you were, the noisiest babby in Tarabeg.’

  She put her hands on her hips, about to protest, but Michael pulled her back down onto his knee. His smile made her warm inside. He was her hero and she was the proudest daughter in all Mayo.

  Michael settled back into the armchair and his gaze fell into the fire. Mary Kate nestled her head against his chest. All the demons of worry scattered as he lifted her fingers and, kissing the back of her hand said, ‘Mary Kate, when you wear that emerald, you are the most beautiful girl in all of Ireland, do ye know that?’

  Mary Kate couldn’t help herself. She put her free hand up to the emerald and, looking back at her father, nodded in earnest.

  To her surprise, he guffawed loudly and hugged her tightly. As he did, she heard him whisper a silent prayer into her hair. ‘Dear God, keep my family well and secure, and deliver Sarah safely through this ordeal.’

  Mary Kate felt very grown up as she kissed his forehead and whispered back, ‘’Tis all right, Daddy, don’t fret so.’ And together they swayed to and fro, each lost in their own thoughts on his wooden rocking chair.

  *

  First came the hungry screams and then the thundering footsteps of Nola as she raced down the wooden stairs shouting, ‘Michael, Mary Kate, would you come here, both of you.’

  Michael jumped up so fast that Mary Kate fell from his knee to the floor with a bump. He reached down and grabbed her by the hand and almost pulled her to the stairs, where they collided into Nola, who, with tears in her eyes, said, ‘Come on,
you two, you can come up now.’

  Michael scooped Mary Kate up in his arms and he ran up the stairs with her as though she was no weight at all. ‘What’s the betting you have the little brother you’ve been asking for at last, eh?’ And then he shouted, ‘Sarah, we are coming. SARAH!’ he roared as they burst in through the bedroom door. He’d been gripped by a sudden vison, a manifestation of his worst terror, one that he had held at bay all this time. Now that he knew all was well and his defences were down, it came racing to the surface and caught him unawares. It was a sudden rush of disbelief, as though Nola had been deceiving him, hiding something from him. He pictured the curtains billowing in the moonlight, the gurgling of the river nearby, a tidy room, the fire lit, a wooden chair with the tapestry cushion Sarah had made when they were first married, and an empty bed, facing north.

  As he crashed through the door, it banged against the wall so hard it brought away flakes of lime wash. Sarah looked up from the pillows, alarmed. Mary Kate glanced down and saw the pile of blood-soaked sheets and rags on the floor. She froze in Michael’s arms, but all seemed well as her mother struggled to sit up in the bed and reassure them, her curtain of golden-red hair combed and hanging down over her shoulders.

  Nola laid the hungry baby on Sarah’s bare left breast, the one closest to her heart, and it seemed to Mary Kate as though her mother was lit from within.

  ‘Oh God, Sarah, is it a boy?’ asked Michael.

  ‘It is that,’ she said above the howls of hunger coming from the squirming red and wrinkly scrap of life in her arms. ‘Come here, both of ye, while I tell ye,’ she said with a hint of distraction. She tried to move the baby’s head around with her hand to help him latch on to her nipple. ‘Oh God, would ye look at him,’ she pleaded to Nola, who leant over her.

  ‘Come, Sarah,’ said Bridget, and with the deftness of a woman who had had much practice, she cupped the back of the baby’s head with one hand, took Sarah’s nipple between her thumb and forefinger and connected the two.