A Sister's Promise (6 page)

‘Have a home waiting for you,’ Biddy said, cutting in. She continued with a malevolent sneer, ‘Get used to it, Molly. I’m stuck with you and your brother and you are stuck with me.’

Molly knew she was right and at first she told herself that she was the lucky one, because in a year she could be working and then she could save and get away from the woman, come back to Birmingham if she liked. But then, how could she leave Kevin totally unprotected? She knew that she could not do that. When they escaped her clutches they had to do it together. She sighed as she realised she was looking at years and years of putting up with verbal and physical abuse, scorn and ridicule.

However, when her grandfather came home from a meeting he had had with Kevin’s doctor at the hospital, he had more news, which he told them over tea that evening. It had been decided that when Kevin was well enough to leave the hospital, he would be delivered into his grandfather’s care and left there. The medical staff had said, in their opinion he needed people he knew and loved around him, and taking him from the familiar would be detrimental to his health. Not even the Catholic Church had the power to overturn that ruling and Stan was hard-pressed not to show his blessed relief at the decision, though he felt heartsore
that nothing similar could be done to save Molly from Biddy’s clutches.

At first Molly did feel slightly resentful and was saddened that she would be leaving her little brother behind, but then she decided it was better for both of them. She knew he would be all right with their grandfather. Meanwhile she only had to look out for herself and she was of the opinion that that would take all her time and energy.

Biddy had a momentary pang too that she wouldn’t have the boy to bully, but then she told herself she had never liked boys much anyway. She did have Molly, who was the image of her bold and wilful mother, and she would make the child pay and dearly for her mother’s transgressions until she wished she had never been born.

Molly and her grandmother were due to leave on 21 May and the time left in Birmingham passed in a blur to Molly, especially as Biddy kept her hard at it. Each morning she had to get up first. Biddy gave her an alarm clock to ensure she did this. Her first job of the day was to clean the grate and lay and light the fire. That had always been her father’s job, even long before her mom took sick, and when he had lit the fire he would bank it with slack for safety. Then, when her mother got up, she would poke it well and put some nuggets of coal on it before calling Kevin and Molly, and so the room was always warm for them in the morning.

Molly decided very early on that she would rather clean the whole kitchen than the grate. It took skill to lay a fire that drew properly and lit first time. Biddy boxed her ears on a couple of occasions when the damned thing had gone out on her. The point was she couldn’t watch it because she had to make the porridge for breakfast, which she could never linger over because she had to make the beds and wash up the breakfast things before she left for school.

After school, she would be presented with a shopping list and when she had hauled the stuff home, she had to
cook the evening meal. How she missed Hilda at those times, for her lively encouragement, ready sense of humour and the way she could make Molly smile, even when she had been worried about her mother. Molly often wondered bleakly if she would ever smile again.

And when the meal that Biddy carped about and criticised had been eaten, Molly would clear away and wash up, and then Biddy would produce a basket of mending. She taught Molly to darn, sew on buttons and turn up hems, and there was always plenty for her to practise on in the long evenings.

Any homework Molly did secretly in the bedroom by the light of a candle. It meant she was almost constantly tired, but she didn’t bother saying anything, knowing there would be little point.

Saturday was particularly tiring, for as well as a big shop, there were the beds to change and the washing to do. When the wet and heavy clothes were hauled from boiler to sink, and her fingers rubbed raw on the wash board, it all had to be put through the mangle and hung out on the line.

Molly hated the wet and miserable days when it had to be hung inside, for she knew it would take ages to dry and, as Biddy would not let her iron on a Sunday, there would pile of ironing waiting for her on Monday after school. On good days she would start this chore after she had given the house a good clean. Clothes for Mass, for Biddy and herself, had to be ironed and left on the picture rail to air if they were still not completely dry, and then the shoes had all to be cleaned. Molly would often be nearly sobbing with weariness by the time that she was able to seek her bed.

That last Saturday Biddy went into the station to see about the tickets and, despite the mountains of things Molly had to do, she said to her grandfather, ‘I’m popping next door. I can’t leave without bidding Hilda goodbye.’

‘You do right,’ Stan said. ‘The woman is worried about
you. She stopped me in the street the other day and was asking about you. She would value a visit.’

Hilda was delighted to see Molly, though she saw the black bags beneath her tired, sad eyes in her bleached face, and her heart turned over. She made a cup of tea and produced a tin of biscuits, and Molly felt the saliva form in her mouth, for she was nearly always hungry.

Hilda saw her expression and she said, ‘Tuck in, girl. You look as if you need feeding up. I know one thing: your mother would hate seeing you this way.’

‘You have known Mom always, haven’t you, Hilda?’ Molly said.

Hilda nodded. ‘From the day she and Ted moved in after the wedding.’

‘Didn’t they have a honeymoon?’

Hilda shook her head. ‘Few people did then. Your father did have a few days off and used the time to do up the house a bit and get the garden tidied up, and Nuala and I were the very best of friends from that first day. I promised your mother that I would look after you if anything happened to her. She asked me just before she was taken to hospital.’ Hilda went on, adding sadly, ‘I feel right bad that I have been unable to keep that promise.’

‘Don’t worry about it, Auntie Hilda,’ Molly said. ‘There is no help for it, I know that now. At least Kevin is all right and I will survive it. It is only a year until I leave school and then once I have a wage, I will save, however long it takes, and come back here just as soon as I can.’

‘You do that, ducks, and you knock on my door any time ’cos you will be welcome.’

‘I know that, Hilda,’ Molly said. ‘Will you sort of keep an eye on Kevin? Granddad too, of course?’

‘You don’t really need to ask that,’ Hilda said. ‘A poor sort of neighbour and friend I would be if I just washed my hands of them now. Your mother and father were the best neighbours to have in the world, and your mother the kindest,
sweetest person, and there isn’t a day goes by when I don’t miss her. Anything I can do for any of you, I would do gladly in her memory.’

There were tears in Molly’s eyes as she said, ‘I know how much you thought of Mom, in particular. I spotted you at the funeral, at the church, but when I looked for you afterwards, I couldn’t see you.’

‘No, I slipped back home,’ Hilda said. ‘I went to the church to say my goodbyes, but afterwards, I wasn’t in the mood for any party, and anyway, your grandmother was looking daggers at me and I thought it best to make myself scarce.’

‘That’s her normal expression,’ Molly said gloomily. ‘It is the way she looks at everything and everybody. I don’t mind the work that I have to do in the house really, though I would be grateful if she would lend a hand now and again, but it is the constant finding fault that gets to me.

‘D’you know, Auntie Hilda,’ she went on, ‘when I think of Mom and Dad it’s like there is a gaping hole inside me and sometimes it hurts me so bad. I sort of hoped that my grandmother might help fill it, give me a link with my mother when she was younger. But when I asked her, she said horrible things about her, hateful things. I can’t think of my mother like that anyway, and I told her that. I know Mom would have done anything for me and I really can’t think of any time when I might do something she disapproved of so much that she would never, ever forgive me.’

‘No, of course not,’ Hilda said. ‘It isn’t normal to do that either. I mean, children have to go their own way in the world. It is what it is all about. You might not like the decisions they make and the people they take up with, and yes, if you are concerned enough you might say something, but if they take no notice, you don’t cast them out like some sort of avenging God.

‘What you have got to realise, Molly,’ she continued, ‘is that your grandmother is a very unhappy woman, because no one could be happy with all that bitterness inside them.
You have got to develop the strength to rise above that. Don’t let it bog you down and destroy you too.’

‘I’ll try,’ Molly promised. ‘I really will try hard ’cos I’d hate to turn out like her anyway. Now I’d better go back.’

‘Yes,’ Hilda agreed. ‘Wouldn’t do to give that old besom reason to berate you again.’

‘She doesn’t need a reason.’ Molly said glumly. ‘Honest to God, she doesn’t.’

‘I know, lass,’ Hilda said. ‘And this isn’t goodbye, it’s just farewell for now.’ She enfolded Molly in her arms as she spoke and then pushed her away gently and said in a voice thick with unshed tears, ‘Don’t you go round forgetting us now. I’ll want to know how you are getting on.’

‘I will write to you,’ Molly promised. ‘I’d like to. Granddad has packed a paper, envelopes and stamps in my case already. He said rural Ireland is not like Birmingham, with a shop on every corner.’

‘Dare say he is right there,’ Hilda said with a slight smile.

Her hand suddenly shot into the biscuit tin and came out with a handful. ‘Here,’ she said, pushing them at Molly. ‘Take these, and just for you, mind. Don’t you go sharing them. You are far too thin.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Course I’m sure, positive sure,’ Hilda said with a sniff. ‘Now get going before I end up blarting my eyes out.’

Everything stood ready, bags and boxes packed, for they were leaving early in the morning.

Molly and her grandfather went to the hospital to say goodbye to Kevin. As the day grew nearer to his grandmother’s departure, and with his grandfather’s continual assurance that he was going home with him, the child had improved dramatically. Stan had hoped the hospital might have allowed him to go with him to see Molly and Biddy off at the station.

‘He may have a very bad reaction to seeing his sister go off like that,’ the doctor said. ‘Have they ever been apart before?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘Well, from what I have seen, they seem remarkably fond of one another,’ the doctor commented. ‘I would rather they said goodbye here, where we are all on hand if we are needed.’

Stan could see the doctor’s point of view, and Kevin was upset when it dawned on him that he probably wouldn’t see Molly for a long, long time. Molly also cried bitterly. She had been eight when he was born and she had helped her mother bring him up. Though he was a nuisance at times, as little brothers go he wasn’t bad, and she loved him to bits and really thought she should be there for him with both their parents dead.

However, for Kevin’s sake, she tried to get a grip on herself. ‘I will be working next year, Kevin,’ she told the child. ‘I will come back when I am sixteen and we will be together again, you’ll see.’

‘Do you promise?’ Kevin said.

Molly looked at Kevin’s eyes, sparkling with tears, and said firmly, ‘Course I do.’

‘What if our grandmother don’t let you?’

‘She won’t be able to stop me when I am sixteen,’ Molly declared. ‘Anyroad, she can just go and boil her head.’ She saw the ghost of a smile at the corners of Kevin’s mouth. ‘Look,’ she said, and she licked her index finger and chanted, ‘See it wet, see it dry,’ then drew the finger across her neck, ‘cut my throat if I tell a lie.’ She saw Kevin sigh with relief. ‘Three years, that’s all, Kevin,’ Molly said. ‘And I promise we will be a family again.’

However, three years when you are five is a very long time indeed. Kevin clung to Molly at the moment of parting and when Stan eventually peeled the weeping child from her, held him in his arms and signed for her to go, she left the room rapidly, knowing that to linger would only make matters worse.

Stan held the child until the sobs ceased and Kevin lay
still. Then he said, ‘Would you like to go fishing, sometime with me, Kevin?’

Kevin was so surprised at the question that he was nonplussed for a moment or two. Then he shrugged and said, ‘I don’t know, Granddad.’

‘I used to take your daddy when he was a wee boy.’

‘Did you?’ Kevin found it hard to imagine his daddy as a young boy at all.

‘I surely did,’ Stan said. ‘Would you like to give it a go?’

‘Um, I think so.’

‘And I think that you are old enough to go to the football matches now too,’ Stan said. ‘What do you say?’

Kevin’s face was one big beam. ‘Oh, yes, Granddad.’

‘Right then,’ cos us men have got to look after one another, you know,’ Stan continued. ‘So you have to get well and out of here mighty quick, and look after your old granddad.’

‘Yes. All right, I will,’ Kevin said determinedly.

A little later, Stan came upon Molly waiting for him in the corridor and at the sight of her woebegone face, he wished he could cheer her up as easily as Kevin, but he couldn’t think of a thing to say. Molly didn’t seem to want to talk anyway; she was sort of buttoned up inside herself all the way back to the house.

Molly knew she would never forget the sight of her grandfather standing on the platform waving until he became a small dot in the distance. She felt a sharp pain in her heart as if it had been split asunder just as when she had heard of the death of her parents. Granddad was the last link with all that was familiar in her life, and she cried silently as she leaned her head on the window of the carriage.

Stan felt almost as bad to see his granddaughter move out of his life. He was glad he had told Biddy nothing about the money for the children from Paul Simmons. His conscience had smote him about this at first, until he had really got to know Biddy. Then he realised that had she been aware of the money, it wouldn’t have benefited Molly in the slightest – and Molly might have need of money some day. At least that was something he had done for her, he thought as, with the train out of sight, he turned sorrowfully away.

When Biddy, sitting beside Molly, realised she was crying, she was furious with her.

‘Stop this at once,’ she hissed, but as quietly as she could, mindful of the others sharing their carriage. ‘Making a holy show of yourself.’

Molly saw the woman opposite look at her with sympathetic eyes, but she knew enough about her grandmother’s character to know that it would be the worse for her if she
were to engender any sort of interest from her fellow passengers. So she tried to swallow the lump of misery lodged in her throat and looked out at the landscape flashing past the windows, knowing that in any other circumstance she would probably have enjoyed the experience because she had never been further than Birmingham in the whole of her life.

She saw the buildings and houses at the city’s edge give way to fields, dappled here and there by the early morning sun peeping from the clouds. Some of the fields were cultivated, set in rows with things growing in them; others were bare, the long grass waving in the breeze, or dotted with sheep, many with their lambs gambolling beside them. In another there might be horses, the lean racy sort, or the thick heavy ones with shaggy feet, the kind of horse the milkman and the coalman used in Birmingham. Sometimes, cows would lean their heads over the five-barred gates, placidly chewing and watching the train pass.

Now and again Molly would spy isolated farmhouses, and she realised suddenly she knew nothing about the farm she was going to. She asked her grandmother about it.

‘We do a bit of everything,’ Biddy said. ‘We grow vegetables, have a few cows, a pig and chickens, of course. We used to have sheep, but after my man died and Joe hightailed it to America, Tom couldn’t manage the sheep as well as everything else. Even as it stands now, it’s a lot for one man. He will be glad of your help.’

‘But won’t I have to go to school?’

Biddy smiled her horrible, hard smile. She said with more than a measure of satisfaction, ‘I think you have enough book-learning. Any more won’t be any sort of asset on a farm.’

Molly’s heart sank. For one thing, she had thought school would get her away from her grandmother’s brooding presence for much of the day, and anyway she was good at her lessons. When her parents were both alive they had intended keeping her at school until she was sixteen and allowing her to matriculate. She told her grandmother this
and went on, ‘Dad said it would help me get a good job in the end.’

Again there was that sardonic smile. ‘You have a job,’ Biddy said. ‘Like I said before, you’ll be on the farm alongside Tom, and all the book-learning in the world won’t make you any better at that.’

Molly felt suddenly cold inside and she held out little hope that she would get on any better with this Uncle Tom she had not seen, who was probably just as nasty as his mother. Her heart plummeted to her boots.

She saw her plans for any sort of life she might have imagined for herself crumble to dust, but she knew that to say any of this would achieve nothing. So she was silent, and mighty glad later to find her grandmother had fallen asleep.

If it hadn’t been for the other people on the train, Molly would never have managed at Crewe, where they had to change trains, for they also had to change platforms and other people helped carry the bags up the huge iron staircase, along the bridge spanning the line, and down the other side. Molly was immensely grateful, especially when those same people helped her board the ferry at Liverpool.

It was called the
Ulster Prince
, and she thought it magnificent, towering up out of the scummy grey water of the quay, with its three large black funnels atop everything, spilling grey smoke into the spring morning. She was on deck, the sun warm on her back and sparkling on the water as she watched the boat pull away. Her knuckles were white, she was gripping the rail so tightly. She remembered the promise she had made to Kevin and she vowed, but silently, ‘I will be back. However long it takes, I will be back.’

‘Come along,’ her grandmother said, just behind her. ‘They are serving breakfasts in the dining room until noon, and it is turned eleven already.’

Molly followed Biddy eagerly. They had been travelling for many hours and she had been too nervous to eat much before they left the house.

The dining room was delightful. Its windows were round, and when she queried this, she was told they were called portholes. In the dining room they were decorated with pretty pink curtains.

They could have creamy porridge with as much sugar and hot milk as anyone wanted, followed by toast and jam and a pot of tea, all for one and sixpence. Molly ate everything before her, and took three spoons of sugar in her tea, just because she could, and afterwards thought how much better a person felt when they had a full stomach. She kept this thought in her head just a little time. It certainly wasn’t there when she stood alongside her grandmother and a good many more and vomited all her breakfast into the churning waters.

By the time they alighted in Belfast, Molly was feeling decidedly ill. Her stomach ached and her throat burned from the constant vomiting that continued long after she had anything left, and made her feel wretched for the entire crossing, which took three and a half hours.

By the time they disembarked and were aboard the train, she was also feeling light-headed and had a throbbing pain behind her eyes. Her grandmother’s voice, berating her for something or other, seemed to be coming from a long way off and she was too tired and disorientated to distinguish what the woman was on about anyway. Her eyes closed almost by themselves, and the next thing she remembered was her grandmother shaking her roughly as the train pulled in to Derry.

She knew her uncle would be there to meet them with a horse and cart, to save them having to take the train the last step of the way. Molly was so travel worn and weary that she was immensely glad when she saw the man waiting for them, the shaggy-footed horse standing patiently between the shafts of the farm cart.

Tom knew he would never forget that meeting. It was like his sister Nuala had returned to him, but never had he seen his sister so disheartened and sad, nor her eyes with blue smudges beneath them and her face bleached white.
He felt suddenly very sorry for the girl and went towards her with a smile.

‘Welcome to Ireland, Molly,’ he said, taking her limp hand and shaking it vigorously. ‘It is a pity that we are not meeting under happier circumstances. I was sorry to hear about the death of your parents and I’m sure you will miss them very much.’

Molly’s eyes filled with tears at her uncle’s words and the compassion in his face, and she knew that he was the antithesis of his mother.

Then Biddy, watching this scene, commented sarcastically, ‘Very touching. Now stop your stupid blethering, can’t you, and get this luggage into the cart.’

Molly saw the sag of her uncle’s shoulders at his mother’s words. ‘And welcome home to you too, Mammy,’ he said with a sigh, throwing up the bags and cases as he did so. He helped his mother up on to the seat beside him and then he turned to Molly with a smile. ‘Now you,’ he said, lifting her with ease. ‘And Dobbin here will have us home in a jiffy.’

It wasn’t quite a jiffy, for the horse wasn’t built for speed, but Molly took the opportunity to look around her. Once outside of the town, most of the farmhouses seemed to be white, squat, single-storey dwellings, with thick dark yellow roofs, and all the protruding chimneys had smoke curling upwards from them.

‘That’s your typical Irish cottage,’ Tom said, seeing Molly’s preoccupation.

‘Mom described them to me,’ Molly said, ‘but I’ve never see roofs like those. We had grey slate.’

Tom smiled. ‘That’s called thatch, Molly,’ he said. ‘It’s made of flax that we grow in the fields and then weave it together.’

They passed small towns and villages, and Molly noted the names of them. Springtown was the first, and then Burnfoot. It was as they neared a place called Fahan that Tom said, ‘Did your mammy tell you much about this place?’

‘Some,’ Molly said. ‘I mean, I knew she lived near Lough
Swilly and that it was a saltwater lough because it fed out to the sea. In Birmingham most people have never seen the sea. It is just too far away. When we were on the boat was the first time I had seen it and then I was too sick to take in the expanse of it really.’

She stopped and then went on more hesitantly, ‘I once asked Mom if she missed the place, because she always said how beautiful it was, but she said that it was a funny thing but seldom does a person really value where they are born and reared. Anyway, she always said people were more important than places.’

Tom, noting Molly’s exhausted face and her eyes glittering with tears, said, ‘Not long now, at any rate. Buncrana is next, but I will skirt the town this evening because the farm is beyond it in a district called Cockhill, and we will pass St Mary’s, the Catholic church, this way.’

St Mary’s was quite an impressive place, though it wasn’t that large. It was made of stone and had a high and ornate belfry to the front of it. The church was approached through a wrought-iron gate and along a gravel path with graves either side.

‘Why was the church built so far out of Buncrana?’ Molly asked as they passed it. ‘It seems silly.’

‘That was because at the time when St Mary’s was built, the English said all Catholic churches had to be built at least a mile outside the town or village, and England controlled Ireland then,’ Tom told her.

‘That was what the Troubles were over that Mom spoke of?’ Molly said. ‘To get rid of English rule.’

‘Aye,’ Tom said, ‘that was it right enough. Anyway, while the English could tell the Catholic Church where to put the building, they couldn’t tell them what to put in it. In that church, above the altar is the most amazing picture of the Nativity painted by an Italian artist who was specially commissioned. You’ll see it on Sunday and be able to judge for yourself how lovely it is.’

They went on a little way past the church, past hedges bordering the fields, and then the horse determinedly turned into a narrow lane almost, Molly noticed, without her uncle needing to touch the reins at all.

‘Old Dobbin knows the way home, all right,’ Tom remarked, seeing her noticing. ‘I really think he could do it blindfold.’

Molly looked about her with more interest, noting that the narrow lane was just wide enough for the cart to pass down with thick hawthorn hedges in both sides. She could see beyond the hedges because of the height of the cart seat. Fields stretched for miles, some cultivated, others with cows in them, and some of these were milling around the five-barred gate set into the hedge.

‘Waiting to be milked,’ Tom explained with a nod. ‘Bit early yet, though.’

Molly looked at the cows’ distended udders and, though she knew that was where milk came from, because her mother had told her, she would have preferred to get it from the Co-op milkman.

The lane led to a cobbled yard that seemed full of pecking chickens. Tom drew the horse to a halt in front of a thatched whitewashed cottage with the dark red door that looked as if it opened in two halves.

‘This is it,’ he said to Molly, hauling the luggage from the cart. ‘What do you think?’

Before Molly was able to reply, two black and white dogs, which Tom greeted as Skip and Fly, came to meet them, barking a welcome. Molly was not used to animals, for she and Kevin had had no pets, and the dogs unnerved her a little.

‘They’re saying hallo just,’ Tom said reassuringly, seeing that Molly was a little edgy. ‘Let them sniff your hand and then they’ll know you are a friend.’

Molly would rather not have done any such thing, but she knew that dogs were an important part of any farm and she would have to get used to them. So she extended her
hand and let the dogs sniff. When she met her grandmother’s malevolent gaze, she said in a voice she willed not to shake, ‘My mother was always saying that what can’t be cured must be endured and I suppose that is what she would think about this situation. I haven’t chosen to come here, but now I have arrived, I suppose I will like it well enough in time.’

She saw her grandmother seemed almost disappointed, but Tom clapped her on the shoulder. ‘Well said, young Molly. Come away in and see the place.’

In all her life, Molly had never seen anything quite like it. She stepped into a low room, the flagged floor covered with rugs. To her left was a door that she learned later housed the two bedrooms, hers first and then beyond that Tom’s. Next to a dresser displaying plates and bowls and cups was a large bin that she was to learn was where the oaten meal was stored. A cupboard and a sideboard stood against the back wall next to a heavily curtained area that Tom told her closed off the bed her grandmother slept in.

To her right was a stool with one bucket of water standing on it and one bucket of water beneath it. There were no taps here and all water had to be fetched from the spring well halfway up the lane, which Tom had pointed out to her as they passed. Beside that was a large scrubbed wooden table with chairs grouped around it.

‘That doesn’t look very comfy,’ Molly said, pointing to the wooden bench seat bedecked with cushions and set beneath the window.