A Sister's Promise (12 page)

‘There is no need,’ Molly said.

‘There’s every need,’ Tom maintained. ‘Anyway, the walk
will do me no harm at all and give me the chance to sink a few pints with Jack in Grant’s Bar while I wait for you. It will do me good as well to get out and meet people. A person can be too much on their own and this will be a fine opportunity for the pair of us.’

The following day at tea-time, Tom saw that Molly was exhausted. He had done what he could to help her that wash day, hanging around the cottage, doing jobs near at hand so that he could help bring any water she needed from the well. Later, he had helped her turn the mangle and put up with his mother’s sneering comments that he was turning into a sissy, doing women’s work.

He knew, however, that his mother had been particularly vicious that day and rightly guessed that it was her attitude that had worn Molly down so badly. While Molly had sort of expected some backlash for her visit to Cathy, she soon found that expecting such censure and dealing with it all day were two very different things.

In the end, while they were eating the last bowl of porridge before bed, she suddenly felt as if she had stood more than enough and she looked at her grandmother and asked candidly, ‘Why are you always so horrid? I sort of expect you now to find fault with everything I do, but you have been worse than ever today.’

Biddy was astounded and outraged. She had never been questioned in this way before. ‘How dare you?’ she burst out. ‘I have no need to explain myself to you, miss.’

Molly showed no fear, though her stomach was tied in knots. ‘I need to know, if I am on the receiving end of it.
The point is, I can’t see that I have done that much wrong today anyway.’

Tom hid his slight amusement as he watched his mother open and shut her mouth soundlessly for a few seconds, too stunned and taken unawares to make any sort of reply. He was absolutely astounded himself at Molly’s temerity.

‘Are you going to sit there like a deaf mute and let this brazen besom talk to me like this, Tom?’ Biddy screeched, turning her malevolent eyes on her son. ‘What manner of man are you at all?’

Listening to his mother’s disdainful whine, it was suddenly clear to Tom why Molly could speak with such assurance and courage and that was because of the confidence she had in herself. He would guess that that confidence was gained by being loved and valued by her parents, while he, on the other hand, had been verbally and physically abused almost since he had drawn his first breath and so now he said, ‘I am the manner of man that you made me, Mammy, and as for Molly, she has not been disrespectful to you in any way.’

‘I will act as I see fit in my own house,’ Biddy said mutinously. ‘No one has the right to refute anything I say.’

‘Dad used to say if everyone was able to do just as they liked, we would have something called anarchy and those who were more powerful or violent would rule over the others.’

‘God, I wish I still had my stick,’ Biddy ground out. ‘You would find the sting of it this day.’

‘That would just prove the point, though, wouldn’t it?’ Molly said.

‘It’s not right for a young girl to be speaking in such a way – and especially not to her elders and betters,’ Biddy snapped. ‘I only took you in because there was no one else suitable, but I dislike you intensely, and have done since the day we met.’

Molly shrugged. ‘I honestly don’t mind about that because,
as I said before we left Birmingham, I feel the same way about you.’

The slap knocked her from the stool and she lay on the stone floor. Tom was by her side in a moment. ‘Mammy, I told you there is to be no more of this.’

Molly got to her feet and faced her grandmother, her gaze steadily, enraging the old woman further.

‘You deserved that and more,’ Biddy growled out.

‘You can get away with that now because you are bigger and stronger than me, but it won’t always be that way,’ said Molly, glaring.

Biddy looked at the two ranged against her and deeply regretted bringing Molly to Ireland. She had thought she would easily break her spirit, but there was no sign of it so far, and Tom was taking her side at every turn.

‘Tom,’ she thundered, ‘I will not tolerate this. Where is the respect you have always shown me in the past?’

‘That wasn’t respect, Mammy,’ Tom said mildly. ‘It was fear, and it gives me no pleasure to admit that. However, this is not about me, but Molly, and you may as well know here and now that Nellie McEvoy asked Molly to tea this Sunday as well and she has already accepted the invitation.’

Biddy glared at her son, hardly able to believe her ears. ‘You take her part at your peril, Tom,’ she said. ‘For the girl is a born troublemaker and you can’t see it.’

‘How can you say that?’ Molly cried. ‘What have I done?’

‘You have brought dissension to this house. That is what you have done, my girl,’ Biddy shrieked.

Tom laughed. ‘This was never a happy place, Mammy. All my life you shouted the orders and I jumped to it, but it was never a real home. Molly couldn’t destroy what wasn’t there in the first place.’

Molly wished she could tell her uncle to be quiet, for she knew her grandmother was storing all this in her head and it might come out in every blow she would administer her way at the earliest opportunity. And yet she couldn’t totally
regret the fact that Tom was beginning to stand up to his mother.

The next day, Molly lay in bed and faced what she had said to her grandmother the evening before. She didn’t regret a single word, though she knew that, if anything, things might get worse for her because of it. She had valued her uncle’s support, but she knew that defying his mother was an alien way for him to behave and she mentioned her concerns about this in the cowshed the following day.

‘Every word you have just uttered is right,’ Tom said. ‘Neither of my brothers was as eager to please Mammy as I was. She seemed to strip me of any shred of self-confidence I had.’

‘But now you are a grown man,’ Molly said, ‘and can take pride in yourself despite her.’

‘D’you know, for a wee girl of thirteen, you speak very well,’ Tom said, and added with the ghost of a smile, ‘Argue well too. Were you good at the book-learning at school?’

‘Pretty good,’ Molly said. ‘I was due to stay on until I was sixteen and matriculate. Daddy really would have liked me to go to university, but he wasn’t pushy or anything. He just said we would take each stage as it came and see how well I did and also how far I wanted to go. I really enjoyed school.’

‘That’s where you should be,’ Tom said.

‘Maybe,’ Molly agreed. ‘But you know, Uncle Tom, there is so much I would like to change about the life I have now that staying on at school is just one more thing to resent your mother for. Crikey,’ she added with a ghost of a smile, ‘that list is so long now, it is like a roll of wallpaper.’

Tom laughed. ‘You keep that outlook on life, young Molly, and you’ll manage just fine, I think.’

‘And what about you?’

‘Don’t you worry your pretty little head about me,’ Tom said. ‘I have managed this long and will cope, no doubt.’

‘I can’t help feeling that I have made life more difficult for you.’

Tom paused before saying. ‘In a way, I suppose it was your fault that I said anything at all. Not that I am blaming you. I know I should have done something a lot earlier than I did. The point was, while it was just me she was having a go at, I didn’t want to stir things up further and possibly make her worse. Then you arrived and Mammy was so unreasonable in her demands and expectations of you that she angered me. I knew I couldn’t just sit there and let you take it all on your own.’

He grinned at Molly and went on, ‘I had no idea then of the feisty little lady you were. You look so frail and slight, as if a puff of wind would blow you away. To tell you the absolute truth, you made me ashamed of myself when you stand and face Mammy and seem so unafraid.’

‘That is just an act,’ Molly admitted. ‘I am scared as the next. Sometimes I’m surprised that she can’t hear my heart banging against my ribs and my stomach is often tied in knots.’

‘Well, you show no evidence of it,’ Tom said admiringly. ‘And now if you have no objection, we will go inside for breakfast before I collapse on the floor with starvation.’

Tom surprised everyone, not least Molly, the next Saturday by announcing that she was to accompany him and Biddy to Buncrana.

‘Impossible!’ Biddy said dismissively. ‘Molly has a host of jobs to get through.’

‘Well, they will have to wait.’

‘Since when did you begin giving out the orders?’

‘Not long,’ Tom admitted with a sardonic grin. ‘Some might say, better late than never.’

‘Oh, don’t start that again,’ Biddy said. ‘You always needed to be told. You’re useless at taking responsibility for anything. You were the same, even as a boy.’

‘So you say, Mammy,’ Tom said mildly, ‘but in this case I am telling you that Molly has to come with us to Buncrana today.’

‘And why is that?’

‘Because she needs wellingtons,’ Tom said. ‘I must start getting in the peat and Molly won’t be able to help me unless she has suitable footwear.’

‘Do you need her to help you?’

‘It was you who said I needed help,’ Tom pointed out. ‘Anyway, it isn’t only the peat you need wellingtons for on a farm. You may have saved money on her work clothes, though they would look better if they fitted her anywhere, but there isn’t a pair of boots in the whole place small enough for her feet. And she is ruining the shoes she has – I noticed it just the other day – and soon she will have nothing suitable to put on her feet for Mass.’

Molly, listening to this interchange, wanted to hug herself with delight. She knew that though Biddy took pleasure in the fact that, weekdays, she was dressed worse than some of the beggars she had seen on the streets of Birmingham, when it came to Mass she had to be respectable. It was a matter of pride.

This was proved when Biddy said grudgingly, ‘All right then, she needs a pair of wellingtons, but there is still no reason for her to come with us. We’ll bring her a pair home.’

‘You know that it is hard for one to buy footwear for another,’ Tom said, ‘even in the case of boots – maybe more especially in the way of boots. Molly will be wearing these most of the time that she is outside with me and I would be happier if they fit her well enough.’

And so Molly got to go to Buncrana. She fair rattled through the jobs beforehand. She sat in the back of the cart that early summer morning, with the sun just peeping over the hill to light up the pale blue sky with the clouds scudding across it, blown by the wafting breeze, and felt the beginning of happiness steal over her. She couldn’t
believe that she could be so excited over a simple shopping trip.

She had been used to a vast array of shops virtually on her doorstep in the shape of Erdington Village, and the city centre itself only a short tram journey away, and though she had been shown around Buncrana by Cathy, that had been on a Sunday when everywhere was shut up. What a different and vibrant place it was on Saturday. She drank in the noise, the chatter and laughter, and the shouts of the men on the market.

Molly helped Tom unload the surplus eggs she had collected, butter she had churned and the vegetables she had helped Tom lift from the ground. They stacked them on a trestle table in the Market Hall.

Then Tom said to his mother, ‘All right, Mammy? I’ll take Molly for those boots and then pop down to the harbour and see if there is any fish for sale there.’

He gave Biddy no chance to say anything to this, but swung Molly away and down the side street, and didn’t miss the sigh of relief she gave at being away from his mother. Tom grinned at her and said, ‘Damned if I don’t feel the same way myself,’ and Molly gave a little laugh.

The boots were bought and wrapped in no time at all, and then Tom set out to introduce Molly to some of the townsfolk, many of whom she had glimpsed at Mass. All seemed pleased to see her, and those who remembered her mother all remarked on the likeness between them, and added what a tragedy it was that she and her husband had been killed. It was said with such sincerity and sadness that tears would sometime prickle the back of Molly’s eyes, but she didn’t let them fall.

Any crying she did now was in the privacy of her own room. Not that she cried that much any more, but the aching loss of her parents was always there. She had little control over her dreams, though, and sometimes when she woke up, her pillow would be damp.

The townsfolk didn’t see this, of course. They saw a wee strip of a girl, a beautiful girl too, with the large brown eyes and hair the colour of mahogany, so like her mother, coping stoically. That was one of the reasons the baker handed her a currant cake with a knowing little wink and then a little later, the greengrocer tossed her a red apple.

When she saw Cathy coming up the street with her father, Jack, Molly thought her happiness almost complete.

Cathy was just as delighted to see her, and after the families had greeted one another, Jack said to Tom, ‘Let’s leave the young ones to it. I’m away to the harbour to see what the catch is, and then I have a mind to sink a Guinness or two at the Lough Swilly Hotel and watch the world go round. How about it?’

Molly saw Tom hesitate and guessed that this wasn’t something he normally did on Saturday mornings. Then he said, ‘Aye, Jack, that sounds a grand occupation.’

‘Good man, yourself!’ Jack exclaimed as he clapped Tom on the back.

Tom bent to Molly. ‘I would keep out of Mammy’s way for an hour or so at least,’ he said.

‘You sure?’

‘Positive,’ Tom said definitely. ‘We’ll catch it when we get back whatever time it is, you likely more than me, and I’m in no rush to experience that.’

‘Nor me,’ Molly agreed with a shudder, and Tom smiled and pressed a thrupenny bit into her hand. ‘Oh, Uncle Tom!’ Molly cried in surprise.

‘Nothing worse than looking round the shops without a penny piece in your pocket,’ Tom said. ‘Away now and enjoy yourself, for it is no sin at all.’

And how Molly enjoyed that first day, walking about arm in arm, chattering non-stop, greeted by this one and that, stopping for a few words with some of Cathy’s school friends. When Tom first gave her the money, Molly’s first reaction had been to save it, because it was the first time
that anyone had given her any money. Not, of course, that there was any occasion to spend anything on the farm, but she was worried how she would ever leave her grandmother’s clutches without any money at all and she knew whatever age she was and whatever she did, there would be no sort of a wage coming her way.