A Sister's Promise (17 page)

Inside the house, Molly’s grandmother was waiting for her. She, of course, knew full well what day it was, but she had said nothing about it and Molly imagined that it was going to be a nonevent, not mentioned at all.

In this she was wrong, though the first thing Biddy growled out at them was that they had taken their time over the milking. Then her eyes slid over to Molly’s and she said almost as a challenge, ‘You know what day it is today, I suppose?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘I’m arranging for the nine o’clock Mass tomorrow to be said on your mother’s behalf,’ Biddy said. ‘I am seeing the priest in Buncrana today.’

Only Molly’s eyes betrayed her surprise and her grandmother went on, ‘Course, it might already be too late. Where d’you think she is now, Molly, your wonderful mother? Roasting in the flames of hell alongside your father, the pair of them screaming in agony each and every day, or did Jesus have mercy on her soul and cast her into purgatory, where she will languish for ever until there are prayers enough said to get her out?’

Biddy saw the look on Molly’s face, the raw pain of loss, and she smiled as she sneered, ‘I’m surprised that loving her as much as you say you did, you are not on your knees nearly all the night through, praying for the repose of your mother’s soul.’

Sheer willpower kept Molly’s voice steady as she said, ‘Mom was the best mother to myself and Kevin that she ever could be, and a good wife to our dad, who she loved with all her heart. They died together side by side and if there is anything good to come out of that awful day, then it is that, for one wouldn’t have ever been truly happy without the other.’

‘Do you think the Good Lord cares one jot about what sort of mother Nuala was to a godless man or mother
to the children she should never have born him?’ Biddy screeched.

‘Do you know,’ Molly said, ‘my God is nothing like yours. Mine is good and kind and just, not hateful and vengeful like yours seems to be, and I think He cares about each and every one of us.’

‘Isn’t there something in the Bible where Jesus says He cares about the lilies in the field?’ Tom asked his mother. ‘Surely to God, some higher being who cares about a few flowers would care just as much or more about people, all people, I should think.’

Biddy surprisingly had no answer to that and Molly was grateful for her uncle’s intervention for she had been near breaking point and was surprised that he had seemed aware of that.

Despite this, though, she was very nervous at the accent the priest would put on the Mass the following day. She needn’t have worried. Father Finlay saw the white-faced Molly in the church and his heart went out to her. He spoke only positive things about the family, and Nuala and Ted in particular, and went on to talk of the tragedy that this loving couple and devoted parents, with so much life yet to live, should have been taken from it, leaving their children orphans and their relatives and friends devastated.

Outside the church, Biddy was not allowed to scurry home, driving Molly before her, for so many surrounded them, the men shaking Molly by the hand and many women, whom Molly saw had been crying, hugging her.

It was not the service Biddy had expected or asked for, and neither was the response afterwards, and she noted not one person had commended her for taking Molly to live with her. At one time she would have made Molly pay for that – a good thump or box on the ears would make her feel a whole lot better – but somehow, since that last beating, something had changed between them.

She had thought then the girl would be so cowed and
frightened, but that hadn’t happened. Molly had continued to stand up to her and Biddy hadn’t any idea how to cope with that.

Molly had no idea of Biddy’s thoughts and when she roared at her later because she said the cabbage was inadequately drained, she flinched for the expected blow, and when it didn’t come she was more than surprised.

As the first anniversary of the deaths and funeral of Nuala and Ted approached, Molly felt her spirits plummet. She remembered each minute of the terrible day they both died, as sharply as if it was engraved on her heart, or at least she remembered it until the doctor’s tablets had done their job.

But because she hadn’t actually seen her parents’ bodies after their death, their funeral had affected her just as much. It was then she felt she had said goodbye to them properly and she had hardly been able to bear the sight of their coffins being lowered into the earth. She couldn’t seem to prevent the memories seeping into her consciousness, so vividly at times that she would gasp with the pain of it.

She knew her grandmother, watched her with a measure of satisfaction and she wondered anew about the woman’s mental state. Surely it wasn’t normal to take such pleasure in another’s misery?

Tom couldn’t seem to help her and as the day Nuala and Ted had both died drew near, he did ask Molly if she didn’t want to talk about it. But, she said talking would not help, it was just one more thing she had to live through. She got through it too, though she worked like an automaton, spoke only in answer to something someone asked her and that night Tom heard her crying for hours.

In fact, she was finding she was unable to sleep properly and if she did drop off, the lurid and upsetting dreams would soon wake her. Each day she felt worse and totally alone to deal with the dreadful memory of it all.

Tom was glad that that year the 26 April, which was the
anniversary of the funeral, fell on a Sunday, knowing that Molly would at least have the love and support of the McEvoys for part of that day. He made it his business to make Nellie aware of the significance of the date.

That Sunday morning, everyone who saw Molly knew there was something grievously wrong with her. Not indeed that many did see her, because she entered the church with Biddy just as the Mass had begun and left before the last response. Nellie, who had hoped to have a quiet word with the girl, was prevented from doing this and was heartily glad she would see the child later that day.

Molly hadn’t really cared. By Sunday morning she had had no sleep for days and was too tired and downhearted to function properly. The pain in her head was so bad and she had the desire to curl up in a ball, her arms wrapped around her aching body, and howl like a wounded animal might.

Nothing touched her, not even Biddy’s ill humour, worse that day than ever, but she set off with her uncle as usual in the afternoon. Once they were away from the house, though, she said, ‘I don’t think I will go to Cathy’s today.’

‘Why not?’ Tom said. ‘They will be expecting you.’

‘I am too tired to make the journey,’ Molly said. ‘And I will be no fit company for anyone today.’

‘Listen to me, Molly,’ Tom said. ‘I could go up and explain to the McEvoys and yes, they would fully understand, for they know what day this is. True friends are there for you through the dark times too, and I think you need Nellie, Cathy and even Jack more than ever today. Their true and sincere sympathy might soothe you.’

‘I don’t think anyone can do anything to help me today,’ Molly said. ‘I just want to sink down into the grass here and let the world go on without me.’

Tom shook his head sadly. ‘Molly, if I could share any of this burden for you, I would gladly do so, for I see plainly how you are suffering at the moment, but I am
certain that trying to hide away from this is not the way to deal with it.’

‘How d’you know that?’ Molly cried.

‘Molly, Nuala was my wee sister.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Molly said sarcastically. ‘Of course she was. I forgot, like you conveniently forgot about her. Some big brother you turned out to be. You didn’t even know my mother.’

‘D’you think that makes me feel any better?’ Tom demanded. ‘Do you not think that I am heartsore about the past years that now I can do nothing about? I can’t roll back time and have another go at it, though I wish with all my soul that I could, for in abandoning Nuala, I abandoned all of you. Whatever I do now, I could never make it up to you for that. How do you think that makes me feel?’

Molly looked at her uncle and saw, as well as sadness, there was guilt lodged in his eyes and even in the very set of his shoulders. ‘You must feel awful,’ she conceded, sorry for her outburst.

‘Sometimes,’ Tom admitted, ‘I almost despise myself for my weakness.’

‘You can’t expect to overcome years of dominance in five minutes,’ Molly pointed out.

‘No,’ Tom said, ‘I suppose not. But you know it is hard to look back on your life as a grown man and see what a fool you have been throughout most of it. And now,’ he said, ‘we are nearing Buncrana. Do I go on alone and make your excuses to the McEvoys or are you going along to tea, as they will expect?’

Molly knew she had to go. She couldn’t let her good kind friends down and knew uncle was right, they wouldn’t expect her to be sparkling company. And so she nodded her head, ‘All right then, I will go on to the McEvoys’.’

Nellie told Cathy to say nothing to upset Molly that day as they washed up after dinner, and Cathy was incensed that her mother thought she even had to mention it to her.

‘D’you think I would?’ she retorted. ‘What sort of friend do you think I am? If I was Molly I wouldn’t want the 23 or 26 April to exist on the calendar at all, but she is one of the bravest people I know, and she just might want to talk about it.’

‘Well, that is all right if she leads the conversation,’ Nellie said. ‘God knows, the child has plenty to put up with anyway.’

Cathy, looking at Molly a little later, thought there had been no need for her mother’s warning at all, for she could see clearly how sorrow-laden she was.

Nellie saw it too and she was also aware that she almost shrank from her embrace and Cathy’s and guessed that the only ones Molly needed that day were those of the people who had gone through it with her. Nellie couldn’t bring those people together, but she had the next best thing and she said, ‘I have letters for you, my dear, as you weren’t in Buncrana yesterday. Would you like to go up to Cathy’s room now and read them in peace?’

Nellie couldn’t have said anything better. Normally, Molly left the letters until she was alone at home, but that day she didn’t want to leave them to read, and she didn’t want anyone with her when she read them either. However, she knew that that was a rude thing to do in someone else’s house and she could hardly ban Cathy from her own bedroom, so she heard herself saying, ‘No, it’s all right.’

‘No it isn’t,’ Cathy retorted. ‘And we can’t make it all right. I think that you need to read those letters now. Don’t worry, I shan’t mind a bit.’

And so Molly read the words from those she had left behind, and tears dribbled down her cheeks. She knew it was right to cry and she felt their love and compassion for her, and she knew, though the letters had been written a few days before, Granddad, Kevin and Hilda would all be going through it the same as she that day and she was suddenly overcome with sadness.

When Cathy heard the anguished sobbing coming from her bedroom, she got to her feet to comfort her friend.

‘No,’ Nellie said. ‘It is neither of us Molly wants right now and she badly needs to shed those tears.’

Nellie was right. Molly needed no one. She keened aloud with her arms wrapped around her body, racked with sobs and she rocked backwards and forwards in her distress. Memories of her parents flitted across her mind and tears streamed from her eyes like a torrent, as she felt the aching loss of them anew.

Later, when all had been quiet for some time, Nellie crept upstairs to see Molly spreadeagled and fast asleep on Cathy’s bed. She had tear trails still on her cheeks and the letters were scrunched in her clenched hands. Nellie eased the letters from her and left them on the little cabinet by the bed, then fetched a blanket to put over Molly.

She slept deeply for three hours and as she struggled to wakefulness she realised that it was the first dreamless sleep she had had for days. Her heart felt strangely lighter, though she was mortified at falling asleep in someone else’s house. Nellie waved away her apologies and encouraged her sit up to the tea they had saved for her and eat her fill. Molly hadn’t felt hungry in days either, and suddenly she realised she was ravenous and she attacked the meal with gusto.

When she finished eventually and sat back with a sigh, Cathy said, ‘Feeling any better?’

‘Yes,’ Molly said. ‘Sort of lighter, you know?’

‘I know all right,’ Cathy said with a grin. ‘Don’t understand it, though. After the tea you have put away I would have said that you would have to feel a whole lot heavier.’

Molly found herself smiling at her friend, something else she hadn’t done in days. ‘You are a fool.’

‘I know,’ Cathy said with a sigh. ‘Didn’t we establish this early in our friendship?’

‘Yeah, we did.’

‘Well then, it’s old news you’re telling,’ Cathy said as her
mother came into the room and beamed when she saw Molly’s empty plate.

‘That’s what I like to see,’ she said. ‘How do you feel now, Molly?’

‘Better,’ Molly said. ‘I don’t really understand why though, because nothing’s changed. To tell you the truth, I have dreaded this day arriving.’

‘That is quite understandable,’ Nellie said. ‘But I would say that it will never be quite as bad for you again as it has been this first year of that terrible, awful tragedy.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘Because I know you,’ Nellie said, ‘and I have come to know the strength of your character. I’m not saying that you will never miss your parents and that tug of loss will never leave you, but you have survived it and you should be proud of yourself.’

Molly took Nellie’s words to heart and they helped her cope in the days that followed and the next Sunday she was able to talk of it with just a hint of Sadness.

‘We used to make a big thing of birthdays,’ Molly told Nellie and Cathy the following Sunday afternoon. ‘On Dad’s birthday, the year before Mom was sick, we went to the Alex Theatre in Birmingham to see a variety show. Kevin didn’t go because he was too young, so Granddad looked after him and it was just me and my parents, and there was a man called Max Wall as the star of the show. What a comedian!

‘I remember laughing so hard my stomach ached and then to put the tin hat on it, though we’d had this party tea and all before we left the house, we bought fish and chips on the way home and ate them out of the paper. It was the perfect end to the perfect day, and nothing can ever erase my memory of that. What hurts me a bit is that Kevin won’t have many memories at all. I mean, what can you really remember clearly from when you were five?’

‘Not a lot,’ Cathy and Nellie admitted.

‘Sometimes I think because he was so young, eventually he will probably forget what our parents looked like,’ Molly said.

‘It must be terribly hard for him right enough,’ Nellie said with sympathy, ‘and I often think it was wrong to part you. You really needed each other and please God you will be together soon.’

‘There is still a part of me, like a nagging tooth, that asks why?’ Molly said. ‘That was the question Kevin asked the priest on the day of the funeral. But of course he didn’t know either. I think Kevin thought he had a sort of hotline to God and could come up with a host of reasons why He needed our parents more than we did at that time.’

‘I really understand your bewilderment,’ Nellie said. ‘And I haven’t any answers to give you either. It was a dreadful and terribly tragic accident. To be honest, there are many things in the world that I don’t understand, but I have to live life the way it is.’

‘I do see what you mean,’ Molly said. ‘And you are right. We all hear of horrible things happening to people every day of the week. And now that this has happened to me, and I can do nothing to change it, the only way to deal with it is to go on, look forward and live my life as my parents would want me to.’

Both Nellie and Cathy were astounded by Molly’s stoicism and courage. Nellie gave her hands a squeeze as she said gently, ‘Well done, my dear. Now, how about tea and cake all round?’

‘I’d say about time too,’ Jack said, coming into the room at that moment. He had a large grin plastered to his face as he went on, ‘And be quick about it too, woman. Tom will be here soon and we don’t want the Guinness spoiling.’

‘Don’t you “woman” me, Jack McEvoy,’ Nellie said in mock indignation, though she got to her feet as she spoke. ‘And as for the Guinness spoiling, you never leave it in the glass long enough to spoil. And I wasn’t talking to you, anyway. It was Cathy and Molly I was speaking to.’

Cathy raised her eyes to the ceiling, and Molly bit her lip to prevent a laugh escaping as they heard Jack’s indignant voice as he followed his wife out of the room, protesting, ‘Well, I like that, not talking to me, not considering me at all and me the head of the house …’

Molly felt a surge of happiness that she could count on
this family, who were so at one with one another, as her friends. She said, ‘I do think your parents are lovely.’

Cathy pretended to consider this and then said with a grin, ‘They’re not so bad, as parents go. I think I have done quite a good job of knocking them into shape.’

Molly laughed. ‘I wonder what your mother would say about that, Cathy. Maybe we should ask her. Isn’t that her voice calling us now?’

Cathy left school that summer and began work in the shop full time. To mark the occasion, Nellie bought her new clothes, including a couple of brassieres to accommodate her quite large and pendulous breasts. Molly was so envious of the brassieres that Cathy showed her the Sunday after they were bought, but even more envious of the size of Cathy’s breasts, which would fit in them, for hers were small in comparison.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Cathy said, when Molly said this. ‘Anyway, with your build wouldn’t large breasts look a bit stupid?’

‘I suppose,’ Molly agreed, for she was very fine-boned.

‘They are not much use to me either,’ Cathy went on. ‘I mean, think about it. Look at the figure you have, and the skin and hair I would die for. It isn’t as if I can take out my breasts for everyone to have a look and remark on how big they are, is it?’ And then there was a slight pause before she said, ‘Not just yet a while, anyway.’

‘Cathy!’

‘Why are you so shocked?’ Cathy said. ‘Someone will be entitled to take a look at them one day. And,’ she added with an impish grin, ‘more than a look if I know anything.’

‘Do you ever think about things like that?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘I asked first.’

‘Well, course I do,’ Cathy said. ‘It’s natural, isn’t it, to wonder?’

‘You don’t think it’s a sin?’

‘How could it be?’ Cathy said. ‘The priests would probably say it was but, God, don’t they see sin everywhere? If you got out of bed one morning and blew your nose, they would find probably find some sin in there somewhere.’

‘So you don’t confess it?’

‘I do not,’ Cathy said emphatically. ‘And you won’t either if you have any sense. What Mammy told us last month, did you think that a sin?’

‘No,’ Molly said definitely. ‘Anything but, and less than a fortnight later, I was more than grateful.’

Seeing the girls developing into young women, Nellie had taken them aside and explained about periods, and just a scant two weeks later Molly started. She knew without Nellie she would have thought she was dying. As it was, she had been able to go into the farmhouse without any fuss, and ask her grandmother did she have any cotton pads for she had started her periods.

If her grandmother was surprised by her calmness, she made no comment about it. All she did growl out as she passed her the pads was, ‘Period or not, there is to be no slacking. It happens to every woman every month and so there is no need to make a song and dance about it. Fill yourself a bucket of water to leave in your room to soak the used ones in and that should be all there is to it.’

Molly did as her grandmother told her and despite the messiness and the griping pains in her stomach, she welcomed her periods for they meant she was growing up, one step nearer to the time when she could leave this place.

The letters from Birmingham brought Molly up to date with things going on in the world beyond her narrow existence, like the civil war that had begun in Spain in the summer of that year, though Molly couldn’t see why Tom was so concerned about it.

‘But, Uncle Tom, Spain is miles away from us, and haven’t there always been little wars or rumours of wars happening
in these types of countries?’ she said, as they walked side by side one bright and pleasant Sunday afternoon.

‘I have a very uneasy feeling about it, that’s all.’

‘But why?’

‘Molly,’ Tom asked, ‘have you ever stood dominoes in such a way that when you push the first one it knocks into the next and so on, until they all topple over?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Molly said. ‘I used to spend hours doing that for Kevin.’

‘Well, I can’t help feeling that what is happening in Spain is the first domino,’ Tom said. ‘Only time will tell if I am right.’

Molly, though, thought he was just being an old worry guts. She was more concerned with the Olympic Games in Berlin that summer, which she read all about in the papers at the McEvoys’. She was incensed by the fact that Hitler would not honour the black American athlete who beat all before him and, as Tom said, the action showed the whole world just how racist Hitler’s government was.

There were other things in the paper closer to home too, like the poverty in England, which even the Irish papers occasionally reported on.

‘Granddad says it’s as bad as ever,’ Molly said. ‘It was bad when I left but I sort of hoped it would have begun getting better by now and not just go on year after year. Granddad said if something isn’t done soon, he can just see the unemployed taking matters into their own hands and Hilda says more or less the same.’

It seemed there were many around who thought that, though, for by the time the harvest was completed and all stacked away for the winter, there came news of two hundred men walking from Jarrow in the North-East, where unemployment was nearly seventy per cent to bring their plight to the government in London.

The gesture captured the imagination of Ireland too, and there were many pictures in the papers of the weary marchers
with thin, wasted faces, walking behind their battered bus containing all their provisions and cooking facilities rolling along beside them. Some towns and villages welcomed them and they were brought into church halls and fed, while other places were barred to them.

‘Afraid of riots amongst their own townsfolk, I imagine,’ Jack said at the tea table after scrutinising the paper. ‘Mind,’ he added, ‘it is one hell of a way to travel on empty stomachs.’

It was. Molly hadn’t been that sure where Jarrow was and Jack had shown both her and Cathy on a map. It
was
one hell of a way to travel, whichever way you looked at it, whether your stomach was full or not, Molly thought. It was gratifying to read that in the towns where the men were officially barred from entering, often church organisations and even ordinary people took on the task of feeding them.

‘My mother would do something like that,’ Molly said. ‘She bought pies for our dinner one day in the Bull Ring and then gave them away to this barefoot woman and her clutch of children. She said that the woman was so, so grateful, like as if she had given her the crown jewels. We had to have bread and dripping that day and she said we had to be grateful for that, for those children looked as if in all their short lives they had never had full stomachs.’

‘Point is, though,’ Jack said, ‘it shouldn’t have to happen that way. There should be jobs for the people. Seems to me Ireland wasn’t the only one let down after the Great War. And there is no good this chap Mosley trying to blame it all on the Jews, and inciting people to rise up against them.’

In the end, though, the Jarrow March was all for nothing, for the Prime Minister refused to see or speak with the men and, defeated and demoralised, they had no option but to return home with the situation unresolved. It seemed the last straw when King Edward abdicated, because the nation would not accept the American divorcee he had taken up with as their queen.

‘Deserting the sinking ship or what?’ Tom asked as they made their way to the McEvoys, the Sunday following this announcement on 11 December.

‘I think it’s what,’ Molly said. ‘Our old neighbour never liked him much. She thought the fact that he was handsome was the only thing he had in his favour, and that could be a handicap in a way, because if he was as ugly as sin, King or no King, I don’t reckon old Wallis would have looked the side he was on.’

‘You could be right,’ Tom said with a grin.

‘Anyway, it may be just as well,’ Molly said. ‘My granddad has been worried about Edward as King for ages because he says he’s too keen on Germany and the German government. And with all we hear about them all the time, isn’t that the last nation in the world you would like to be on friendly terms with?’

‘I would say so.’

‘And so would I,’ Molly said, then added, ‘This has been an unsettled year one way and another, hasn’t it?’

‘Aye,’ Tom said in agreement. ‘Let’s hope 1937 will be better.’

Molly thought it just might be when, for her fifteenth birthday, her grandfather sent her a silver locket. When she carefully opened it, she found a photograph of her mother one side of it and her father the other. Her granddad couldn’t have sent anything that could have pleased her more, and she placed it around her neck immediately, knowing she would never remove it, that she would wear her mother and father next to her heart, which was their rightful place, but beneath her clothes lest her grandmother see.

There had been little snow in the winter of 1936/7 and few truly gale-force winds, but the frost had been a hard one and the days bone-chillingly cold. Molly wasn’t the only one to feel glad when the warmth of spring began stealing into the days. It matched her more optimistic outlook. She had good
friends, the support of her uncle, her savings were building up and her letters kept her in touch with what family she had.

The 19 April was a Monday that year and, mindful of Nellie’s words the previous year, Molly did not allow herself to dwell on the events of that dreadful day two years before. It was a beautiful day anyway. The sun shone from a sky of cornflower blue and Molly felt almost happy as she hung the washing on the line, knowing it would be dry in no time and she could have it all ironed and put away before the day was out.

The following week, Tom had to go into Buncrana and when he came back he told them of the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica. Jack had saved the papers for Tom to see for himself.

‘German planes were used,’ Tom said, ‘and hundreds were killed, because it was market day and all, and no warning of any sort.’

‘I am sorry, really sorry about all the people dying,’ Molly said later as they milked the cows together, ‘but it can’t have anything to do with us here, or England either, can it?’

‘It might,’ Tom said. ‘I imagine it was Hitler’s way of showing the world what he is capable of.’

‘Right, so now the world knows,’ Molly said. ‘But it was directed against the poor people of Spain, not us.’

Tom opened his mouth, but said nothing more. Molly was not ready yet to hear of his concerns. If he was right and he hoped to God he wasn’t, then before too long there would be plenty to worry about. What was the point of meeting trouble halfway?

Anyway, Molly told herself as the year rolled on, she was right not to fret over Spain. Britain and Ireland were islands and safe, surely. England had a new King on the throne too, for Edward’s brother had been crowned George VI. Her granddad had said in his letters that the celebrations had been muted somewhat because of the scandal surrounding Edward’s abdication. Anyway, whoever was on the throne
was ruling over a country that had its own severe problems, and in Molly’s opinion the war to put an end to poverty was a far better battle to fight.