In the Province of Saints Read online

  Copyright © 2005 by Thomas O’Malley

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group USA

  237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com.

  First eBook Edition: August 2005

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  ISBN 978-0-316-02848-6

  Contents

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For my mother,

  Bridie Lennon,

  and my father,

  Bartley O’Malley

  As much as the living

  the dead make their exactions.

  Someone we have not met

  sent us on this journey.

  — MICHAEL SMITH

  All the perversions of the soul

  I learnt on a small farm,

  how to do the neighbours harm

  by magic, how to hate.

  I was abandoned to their tragedies,

  minor but unhealing. . . .

  — MICHAEL HARTNETT

  in the dead of winter

  April 1976

  I was nine the year winter came in spring, and Cait Delacey’s mother, Mag of Slievecorragh, died; the winter had come and gone and surprised us with its return—sneaking furtively back to us like a fox during the night. The storm turned the sky black, the mercury plummeted, and everything beyond New Rowan froze. The snow fell so heavily and quickly it was like a hand wiping the land of every distinguishable feature. In the morning the fields were blanketed by soft-packed snow that sparkled all the way to town.

  No one was prepared for snow, most especially the distraught farmers. The sudden deep chill killed livestock as well as crops. In the morning the small frozen bodies of lambs lay shrouded in white all across the hillsides and fields; clusters of sheep, their fleece now suddenly and noticeably yellow against the backdrop of white, moved in and around them, bleating softly. I stared from my bedroom window, disturbed but in awe of the storm’s strange beauty.

  It was the same night that Mag Delacey died quietly in her sleep as her heart ruptured but continued pumping and spilling her blood throughout the cavity of her body while her husband, John, slept beside her, only awakening when he heard a long final death rattle from her lungs and noticed the blood about her mouth, while the children down the hall, Cait, the youngest, her two sisters and four brothers, and the rest of us in the parish slept in a world of dreams, numb and oblivious to death during the soundless fall of snow covering the land beyond our curtained windows.

  In the morning, when I saw Lugh McConnahue, the farmer’s laborer, tracking his way across the far field, I dressed quickly and rushed out into the cold bright morning to join him. Snot froze in my nose. My breath whistled high in my chest. Ice crystals sparkled on tree limbs where crows were already gathering. Lugh was kneeling before a lamb, his thin angular frame bent, cords of tight-wound muscle flexed in his shoulders and back. His black shaggy head was flecked with silver frost.

  Howya, Lugh, I called. Jaysus, it’s cold so.

  Lugh looked up, squinting. He had hard drinking eyes, bleached and pale, like I remembered my father’s. At times I wondered if I actually remembered Father or had merely created an image of him in my mind and clung to it, and dreamed of him instead. He was in America these last two years working on the construction, and always, it seemed, on the point of return. Lugh’s face was wan and pinched. He smiled grimly.

  ’Tis that. He looked back at the lamb.

  Ah, the poor little lambs, I said, leaning forward, resting my hands on my thighs.

  Feckin shame, Lugh agreed. Paddy’ll be fit to be tied.

  He tenderly brushed the snow from the lamb’s face. Its brown eyes stared back, and I was waiting for it to blink; it seemed that if you touched the lamb it would still be warm, the fleece still soft, the heart still alive within, and that it might awake. Lugh grasped its rigid hind legs, and in one quick movement hurled it into the back of the lorry with a loud resounding crack of bone against metal.

  How many do you think there are? he asked as he reached for another carcass. I looked about the field and up the slopes of the valley, and I thought about Paddy Flaherty’s fields that lay beyond the road and on the other side of the hill, all covered in white death.

  I shrugged. There’s got to be a hundred or more.

  Lugh nodded and grimaced. Oh, he’ll be on the tear after this all right.

  In the pub? I asked and he laughed.

  In the pub, on the horses, with the women.

  I nodded seriously as if I understood this.

  Lugh paused and cracked his back. I had gloves on but my hands were numb.

  How’s your mammy? he asked.

  She’s well, I said without ever thinking whether she was or not; she hadn’t been up when I left. She’d been sleeping for days it seemed, only rising late at night while Molly and I lay awake in bed, listening.

  We grunted together as I helped him swing the next body into the lorry, balancing my short-limbed swing with his large one, my smaller hands wrapped around their narrow legs, my fingers pressing in the narrow spaces between their small bones so that when I squeezed really hard I could hear them splinter and crack. I looked away from their eyes.

  It’s a terrible thing, Lugh said and I agreed.

  I headed back to the house to light th
e fire, to feed the dog and let it out, and watched from the kitchen window as Flaherty’s other laborers arrived and gathered up the small bodies. All through the day the lorry made its slow progress through the fields and up the hills, leaving behind deep black furrows in the white snow, so deep it seemed as if nothing might be able to touch that spot ever again.

  The church was filled for Mag’s funeral. People who’d come in from the country stretched out the door into the vestibule and then out onto the road. Even as Father O’Brien began, there were coughs and shuffles, stamped feet or the dull slap of Wellingtons on stone as more people pushed into the church. People shook the snow that still lay across the country roads from their feet; their breath smoked the air. The radiators in the church pinged and hissed and shunted water through baseboards. Everything was gurgling and steaming, but if there was warmth it didn’t seem to touch a thing.

  Everyone looked cold but Cait. Her face was flushed and her eyes wide—not the squint that people had from being pressed in by a chill. Her hair shone dark as the lacquered pews. Each time Father O’Brien looked up, he glared toward the back, and only after a long still silence, in which he craned his neck to the rafters as if he were searching for strength that only the divine could provide him with, did he begin.

  Throughout the Mass I looked at her; sometimes she stared at the coffin, at other times she turned and searched the back of the room. She leant close to Aisling, her eldest sister, who wrapped an arm about her. Aisling gestured with her head toward the coffin and whispered. Cait stared at the coffin again, perplexed it seemed, and I knew that she was wondering where her mother was.

  After the Final Commendation, John Delacey and his sons came forward, dipped their knees, and hefted the long box atop their shoulders. One of Mag’s cousins, a large woman from Roscommon, stood before the altar and began to sing the Ave Maria. Someone opened the doors of the church; the heavy wood resounded as they thumped the walls. Coins fell from pockets as people staggered to their feet; knee rests slammed against pews. The heaters kicked in as the cold rushed down the aisle: wick-smoke of extinguished candles; rustle of clothing; smell of wax and incense and the thick doughy odor of old women.

  The coffin passed down the aisle, the pallbearers’ feet scraping the tile. John Delacey clean shaven, his face scrubbed so hard it looked like polished stone; Martin holding back tears; and JJ, his head bowed, long, lank hair hanging before his face.

  And lastly, Aisling holding Cait’s hand. They followed the coffin out into the gray silver day, their heels shattering what was left of the silence, and we followed them. People spread out like a fan against the wrought-iron gates to allow the funeral procession to pass. It was blustery still and a few strakes of windblown snow threw themselves across the road and the distant fields, dashed the top of the coffin so that the pallbearers squinted and bowed their heads.

  To our right, down the hill, lay the Barrow and the bridge that crossed over into Rowan. Boats moved sluggishly before the quay. Cars motored back and forth, slow and hesitant over the bridge, and then along the white stretch of waterfront, exhausts smoking the air. Someone had spray painted UP THE PROVOS! BRITS OUT! on the wall by the rusted old railway tracks that ran alongside the black riverbank. In bright red letters three feet tall the words glared at traffic coming into town on the Waterford road. The doors of the hearse slammed closed.

  I blessed myself with holy water from the font, then dallied in the vestibule adjusting my scarf and buttoning my anorak. Two men stood by the arch, finishing their cigarettes. They watched the funeral procession moving off down the hill. When the hearse and the cars were gone, they threw their butt-ends to the gravel and ground them into the crushed stone with their boots.

  Do you think John knew? one of them said. He was from the town and I couldn’t place him although he looked familiar. The other, his wide back to me, shrugged and hacked phlegm. Then I heard my father’s name, McDonagh, hissed like a curse and I shrank against the stone, moved back into the shadows against the wall.

  A’course he knew, sure isn’t that why she’s in the ground right now instead of off with your man?

  Well, there are other reasons for that.

  He’d be daft not to know, the whole town knows.

  Still.

  I expect it will be a cold day in hell before we see his face again.

  I doubt we would, but sure when he hears about this. . . . The man shook his head again.

  I waited in the shadows until I heard their footsteps receding on the road. They were heading down the hill toward the pub, their shoulders hunched against the wind. Across the river, upon the far hill, the funeral procession moved in a staggered, uncertain line up Mary Street. The river a black sheet of glass. The fertilizer factory stacks pumping gray. The last of the snow dropped in soft lumps from tree branches above the sedge, thumping the macadam in an incessant and awkward rhythm, and then slowing as everything froze once more. My hands and feet were numb, my head aching with the cold. I stood and watched as the snow, turning to ice, slowly darkened into pools at the edge of the road.

  After Mag Delacey’s funeral, Mother didn’t move from her bed for days. It was Thursday and she was supposed to go into Rowan to collect the dole but sent me instead with a letter from Dr. French.

  The dole office was in an old building squeezed between derelict tenements on the Bosheen Housing Estate. Across the road St. Bridget’s massive spires blocked all sunlight and the dole office was so dark that you had to stand in the dim light squinting; the wooden floors echoed as you stepped across them to the desk, and everything smelled of mildew and dust burning black on the radiators and Dettol disinfectant coming in from the outdoor toilets. When you said your name it resounded off the wood and the stone and narrow walls and splintered desks so that everyone in the room heard.

  The last of the snow had melted and rushed through the gutters, flooding the cobbled lanes and tenements in the Old Quay. The clouds looked bright and hard as stamped metal so that you had to squint at them, and there was a coolness in the air that suggested autumn and not spring at all. A fierce wind howled down the narrow streets, pushing empty crisp packets before it, and I was glad for the coat I was wearing.

  At nine in the morning it was crowded; people queued down the street. Those that had already gotten their money lounged outside with others, smoking cigarettes or waiting for someone else to be done. The country people nodded at one another, spoke silently, and headed toward the bank or the shops with their money when they were done. Those without cars would ride back into the country on their push-bikes. The townsfolk were raucous and happy. They threw their cigarette butts into the gutter and called to one another from either side of the street as they made their way down to the pubs along the quay. I turned my face toward the wall and hoped I would see no one who might recognize me from school.

  Color rose to my cheeks as I looked at the woman behind the desk. Moira McDonagh, I whispered and still my voice seemed to carry and echo beyond and around me and I willed myself to stand straight and to look strong and proud, no matter what I felt inside.

  Where’s your mammy? the woman asked.

  She’s not well, I said, and slid the paper across the desk to her. This is the doctor’s note.

  She glanced at the paper, and her mouth puckered. What’s the matter with her then?

  Heads turned in our direction. It seemed as if talking had stilled. Outside someone hollered and then there was laughter. A wireless somewhere was playing a football match. I shrugged.

  You’re too young to be in here, she said. Why aren’t you in school? Whose son are ye?

  Mammy’s too ill to come. I’m looking after her.

  What’s the matter with her? she asked again.

  I don’t know. What does the letter say?

  The woman grunted and made me wait at the far side of the room, against the wall, until she called me.

  I’ve talked to the manager, she said as she handed over the pound notes. She st
uck her mouth forward when she said this and pursed her lips, showing her teeth so that manager sounded very impressive and official-like.

  Can I have me letter? I asked.

  She hesitated, looked at the letter in her hands, then stared at me coldly. Wha? Did ye think I’d want to hold on to your silly paper?

  She tossed the letter onto the counter and I folded it carefully into my pocket. Will I need to bring it next time? I asked, but she had already turned away and was pointing to me as she spoke with another clerk.

  It’s all right, a voice whispered at my shoulder, and I turned and there was Lugh grinning. She’s a right bitch, that one. Has been since she was a schoolgirl. He put his hand on my shoulder and leant in close. His breath was warm with whiskey. Look at her, Michael. No, go ahead. Look at her and tell me what you see.

  He turned my body slightly with his strong hands so that I was looking back at the woman. Now that Lugh was with me she didn’t look my way. An old man held himself at the desk with a dirty, muck-encrusted cane. It looked as if he’d come in from the country. She shoved some papers back across the table at him and shook her head. She looked incredibly satisfied. When the old man shuffled from the counter, spittle covered his chin; he looked as if he were drooling but couldn’t help himself. His mouth was sunken in on itself, his eyes as small as pips, and he shook. Mrs. Kelly adjusted her hair, compressed it with her palm into a tight bun, then stared off into space with her lips pursed tightly. I suddenly felt sorry for her although I couldn’t explain why.

  Lugh followed my gaze. Will you look at the puss on her. She’s been like that her entire life, do ye understand? Her entire life.

  He stood straight and he seemed taller in that small room; he shrugged his shoulders slowly, rolling the muscles. You’ve always got to hold your head a little higher than them, yeah?

  He took a bent hand-rolled cigarette from his shirt pocket and looked at it; it seemed in sad shape but he tightened the roll with a lick and lit it anyway, squinting as he inhaled. He stepped toward the polished wood counter. Howya, Katherine, he said loudly, exhaling a plume of thick blue-gray smoke, and the woman turned. By God, you’re looking fit today. Sure how does Niall keep the men at bay at all? Jaysus woman, you’d tempt a monk in that dress, wha? All the men must be after you.