A Sister's Promise (9 page)

Molly could see how it had been for them all growing up on the farm, the three boys and the baby, Nuala, spoiled and petted by them all. She tried to paint the picture of her life before the tragedy. She wanted him to see how the adult Nuala had fared, of the fine man she had married and what a marvellous mother she was.

‘It wasn’t always easy for her, either,’ Molly said. ‘She wanted a houseful of children, she told me herself, but she lost three babies before Kevin was born. Then she was so ill giving birth to him that the doctor said there were to be no more.’

‘Ah, that must have been a disappointment for her.’

‘I’m sure it was,’ Molly said. ‘In fact, she said it had saddened her at first, but then she got over it and took pleasure in the children she had. That was the type of person she was, you see, someone really special. She said often people hanker for things they can’t have, until it takes over their lives and they miss enjoying the things they have got. I know that she would want me to always remember them, but not let their loss destroy my life totally.’

‘A wise woman, I’d say,’ Tom said. ‘And I regret the fact that I ever lost contact with her.’

‘So do I,’ Molly said. ‘I had thirteen years of loving care from my parents, while my little brother only had five. He never even knew his other grandma because she died just after his first birthday and it would have been nice for him to know – both of us, I suppose, but him especially – that there were other people that cared about us.’

‘I see that,’ Tom said. ‘Pity we can’t roll back the clock and have another go at the things we know with hindsight we did wrong. Was your other grandmother kind to you?’

‘She was lovely,’ Molly said, smiling at the memory. ‘She was round and cuddly, and her lap just the comfiest place to sit. Her house always smelled nice too, of cooking mainly, because she was always baking. When I would go and see her she always had cakes or something for me. Mom liked her too and they got on well. Granddad used to laugh and say the pair of them weren’t normal, that it was written in the rule book that they should be at it hammer and tongs.’

‘You must all have missed your grandmother when she died.’

‘We did, and it was so sudden,’ Molly said, casting her mind back. ‘I mean, she hadn’t been ill or anything. She was fine one minute and had a massive heart attack the next. I was nine then, and I didn’t think people just died like that. I was so shocked that for a while I didn’t believe she was really dead and, in the end, Granddad took me to see her and there she was lying in a coffin. I knew she was dead then. She didn’t look bad or anything, she looked just as if she was asleep, only you see I never saw my grandma so still before. She was always on the go – “on the batter”, Granddad used to call it.’

‘Does it upset you to talk about it?’ Tom asked, noting the reflective tone that had crept into Molly’s voice.

‘No, not upset really,’ Molly said. ‘It helps in a way. I mean, I wish none of it had happened, that my life with my parents and grandparents had gone on uneventfully for
years and years and we would all live happy ever after. But life isn’t like that and you have to take the bad times with the good times and learn to cope with it.’

She smiled and looked up at Tom and said, ‘Your mother is about as bad as it gets, and for now, while I am a child, I have to put up with it, but she will have to chain me down when I am grown, for I will not stop here one moment longer than necessary.’

‘And I will not blame you one bit,’ Tom said earnestly.

‘Hilda was our next-door neighbour and Mom’s great friend,’ Molly said. ‘And just before I left she said that your mother was a very bitter and unhappy woman and I had not to let it drag me down; that I had to rise above it or it would destroy me too. She was lovely, Hilda, and I am dying to hear how they are all getting on. I’m sure they will write straight back.’

‘Look who is ahead of us,’ Tom said suddenly. ‘I knew we wouldn’t be the only ones out walking today. Good day, Nellie. Lovely afternoon.’

The postmistress stopped and smiled at them both. ‘Couldn’t be better,’ she said. ‘Hello, Molly. Lovely to see you enjoying the fine weather. You need more of it, get some roses in your cheeks, for you are far too pale. Not like my girl, Cathy here,’ she said, indicating the girl by her side, whose cheeks were like two rosy apples either side of her nose.

‘Huh, and when I go out in the sun,’ said the girl with a toss of her head, ‘all I get is more freckles.’

Molly saw the girl, who looked a similar age to herself, was right, for merry eyes danced in a face covered in little brown spots. She had glimpsed her in the chapel that morning, but her grandmother had seen to it that she had no chance of a conversation with anyone.

Tom smiled at the girl. ‘Ah, will you give over, Cathy,’ he said. ‘Sure, aren’t freckles just sun kisses?’

‘Kisses I can well do without,’ the girl said. She turned
to Molly. ‘I saw you at Mass earlier and I really envied you your hair, for it is beautiful, while mine is dull brown and like a frizz in comparison.’

‘If you ask me, miss, you think too much about your appearance,’ Nellie told her daughter sharply, but Molly knew from her twinkling eyes that she wasn’t really cross. ‘And in Mass too, when you should have your mind on higher things.’

Cathy made no reply to this, though she looked not the slightest bit abashed and when she glanced across at Molly and surreptitiously gave her a wink, Molly decided that she liked Cathy McEvoy very much.

It seemed that the McEvoys liked her too, because Nellie said, ‘You must come and see us so that we can get to know you better. I am tied up with the post office through the week, but what about next Sunday for tea?’

Molly knew she would love it, but she also knew her grandmother would more than likely not allow it, but before she could open her mouth to say this, Tom said, ‘That would be lovely. You’d be delighted, wouldn’t you, Molly?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘So, shall we say four o’clock?’ Nellie said. ‘We eat about five so that gives you some time together first.’

‘Perfect,’ Tom said. ‘And I will come up later to leave Molly home.’

As they made their goodbyes and were on their way again, Molly said, ‘Uncle Tom, my grandmother won’t let me go there.’

‘Why not? What is wrong with going to tea with someone your own age?’

‘She doesn’t have to have a reason, you know that,’ Molly said. ‘And what about the tea and the milking and all?’

‘Molly, we managed fine before you came,’ Tom said. ‘And believe me, the house won’t fall to pieces because you are out of it for an hour or two next Sunday. I will ask you one question: do you want to go to tea at the McEvoys?’

‘I’d love to, but—’

‘Will you stop saying “but”,’ Tom said with a grin. ‘If you want to go then you shall go, or my name isn’t Tom Sullivan.’

First thing on Monday morning, Molly had to tackle the washing. All the time her mother had been ill and then in hospital, Molly had helped Hilda, who had done the bulk of the Maguire wash until she had been banished by Biddy. Molly had found the load a heavy one when placed totally on her shoulders, despite the big gas boiler and wringer above it, not to mention running water and big sinks.

Molly gazed at the mass of things to be washed that first morning in dismay, and Biddy watched her in almost gleeful satisfaction. She told her there was more washing than usual because while she had been away, Tom had just swilled out things as he needed them and she had better get on with it, and quickly. Nothing would get done by staring at it.

Tom had already filled three buckets of water, which he tipped into the big pot hanging above the fire while Molly put all the clothes into the pot with the soap powder, before joining her uncle in the cowshed.

Once the milking and breakfast was over, Molly had to ladle the water from the pot to the maiding tub, pounding the poss stick up and down like she had done at home, with stubborn stains rubbed against the washboard. Then the tub had to be emptied panful by panful until it was light enough for her to push to the doorway and let it drain into the gutter in front of the cottage, before filling it up again with the clean water for rinsing. Tom was in the fields by
this time, so Molly had to fetch the water from the well herself. She found this a back-breaking enough job at the best of times, and however carefully she carried the water, some of it always slopped out and soaked the side of her dungarees.

The collars and cuffs on Tom’s shirts for Mass were detachable and had to be starched in a basin and then strung out with the rest of the mangled wash on the line that stretched across the yard. Then Molly, who felt as if she had done a full week’s work, emptied the tub again and replaced it and the mangle back in the barn and fetched another pail of water from the well as Biddy was roaring at her to wash the potatoes for the dinner.

Tom noticed Molly’s face glistening with sweat and the damp curls around her face at dinner, but said nothing about it, for it would achieve no purpose and could make his mother even more vindictive. But when Biddy told Molly to hurry up with her dinner because she had the beds to make up yet and the bedrooms to clean before she tackled the ironing, Tom said, ‘Give the milking a miss this evening, Molly. You have enough to do.’

‘She will not give the milking a miss,’ Biddy said. ‘And she had better not dawdle either, because she has the supper to make after it.’

Tom opened his mouth to protest, but Molly forestalled him. She would not beg, or even show weakness before this woman whom she was beginning to despise, and besides, she enjoyed the milking. It would be great to be able to sit down, even if it was only on a three-legged stool and lean her aching head against a cow’s flank. And her uncle, she was finding, was such an easy man to be with.

‘It is far too much for you,’ he said that evening as they began.

Molly ached everywhere it was possible to ache and was too bone weary to dispute this. ‘I’ll likely get used to it.’

‘You shouldn’t have to,’ Tom burst out. ‘Almighty Christ,
there is nothing to you and you are not full grown yet by any means.’

‘Well, I am not going to ask for favours that she will take pleasure in refusing,’ Molly said. ‘And another thing: I know in a way that she is making me pay for my mother’s so-called mistakes and the indulgent way she brought her up – she even said as much – but I reckon that she’d be more or less like that anyway. I mean, how harsh was your upbringing? According to you and what my mother said, she was the only one spoiled. I bet you were made to work hard when you were young.’

Tom remembered back to the time that he had tilled the fields when, because of his tender years, even an empty spade was a strain to lift. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘We all had precious little childhood, even Finn, though he was much younger than us. In fact, that was one of the reasons he joined up, if the truth be told. He told me straight he was going somewhere where he would be given a measure of respect and a wage for the job he did, and that a trench in France could be no worse than an Irish one, and if he popped off a few Germans along the way so much the better. Course, he never knew what he was letting himself in for. None of us did at the time, not really, and when people did realise, there was an uprising and the beginnings of the Troubles in Ireland.’

‘Mom told me that was one of the reasons that she was allowed to go to England with her employers,’ Molly said.

‘Aye,’ Tom replied. ‘They had a big house just outside Derry. Protestants, of course, virtually the only ones to have big houses in Ireland at that time – or in Donegal, at any rate. Nuala had worked there as nursemaid since she was fourteen, and the children knew her and loved her, but if Ireland had been a more stable place there would have been no question of her going with them to England. But it wasn’t and so our parents let her go. I wasn’t to know that from the day she climbed on the train at Derry station I would never see her again.’

‘Sad, isn’t it?’

‘I’ll tell you what I think is worse,’ Tom said, almost bitterly. ‘And that is the fact that it was my own fault that I didn’t see her. When the letter came and Daddy died with it still in his hand, Mammy said that, as far as she was concerned, Nuala was no longer a daughter of hers and that was that. I can scarcely believe now that Joe and I just went along with it.

‘I mean, what Mammy said was probably when she was in a state of shock, and though I know neither of us could have gone at the time, with her so upset and all, never once in the intervening years did I try to keep in touch with my wee sister, get to know her husband and children, or even try to help Mammy cope with her loss and deal with her stiff-necked resentment.

‘You coming here has shown up my shortcomings all right. The tragedy of losing your parents might still have happened, but by then you might have known me better, maybe already have been here on holiday. Mammy isn’t too great with children anyway, and never has been, but without really trying she could have given you a far warmer welcome than she has so far.’

‘Yeah,’ Molly said. ‘I agree with everything you say and, knowing the kind of woman your mother is, how are you going to get my grandmother to allow me to go to Cathy McEvoy’s on Sunday? If I thought it was actually going to happen then I would be excited, for all it’s days away, but every time I think of it my stomach curls up in knots because I know she will try to spoil it.’

Tom smiled. ‘Leave Mammy to me and you get just as excited as you want to be.’

‘That, of course, is if I survive till then,’ Molly said grimly, handing her uncle another bucket of milk.

‘There is that to consider too,’ Tom commented laconically.

When Molly opened her eyes the next morning, she thought her survival might be in doubt, for there wasn’t one bit of
her that didn’t hurt in some way. When she got to her feet her taut muscles throbbed in protest but she suppressed the groan she would have liked to give voice to, lest her grandmother hear it. She dressed with difficulty and then went stiffly from the room to see to the fire.

When the milking was done and the breakfast eaten and tidied away, Biddy said, ‘Now I hope that you are feeling good and strong, Molly, for you have to churn for butter today.’

Molly just stared at her and so did Tom. The butter was churned on Thursdays. Molly’s arms still ached from the washing and ironing of the day before, and her body recoiled at the thought of more pain to come. However, when she looked into the old woman’s eyes and saw that she was enjoying her discomfort, she straightened her aching back, met her gaze levelly and silenced Tom, about to protest, with a small shake of her head.

Within minutes of starting the churning, the stabbing pains began, running from both shoulders to her fingertips. The ache between her shoulder blades grew in intensity, as did the one in her back, until even her legs were trembling with the effort of keeping going, up and down, up and down. Molly wanted to lie on the floor and weep, but she bit her lip to prevent any cry escaping her.

Biddy watched her, expecting that any minute she would say that she couldn’t go on, beg to be excused. Then she would really make her suffer.

Molly herself didn’t know what kept her upright and her arms moving as if of their own volition, but she went on and on, like some sort of machine.

When, in the end, Biddy tried to take the paddle from Molly she had to almost wrest it from her fists closed over it, and then Molly’s pain-glazed eyes met those of her grandmother before she sank to the floor in a faint, just as Tom came in the door.

Concern for his niece threw caution to the wind as he
fixed his mother with a glare, demanding, ‘What have you done with her now, you malicious old witch?’ He crossed the room as he spoke and lifted Molly into his arms with ease.

‘Kindly don’t speak to me in that way,’ Biddy said. ‘And for your information, I did nothing to her. I had just taken the paddle from her when she collapsed.’

‘When you tried to work her half to death, you mean?’ Tom said contemptuously, kicking open Molly’s bedroom door as he spoke. He laid her unconscious form on the bed, where he took her small, limp hands between his own, rough and calloused though they were, and rubbed at them solicitously as he said, ‘Well, there is to be no more of it – not today at least, and not at all until she is fully recovered.’

‘And who, pray, is to do all the jobs around here?’

‘I should imagine the same one who did them before,’ Tom said. ‘Tell me, Mammy, when did you lose the power of your arms and legs, because since Molly first came here you have scarcely lifted a finger?’

‘I can’t do everything. I’m not as young as I was,’ Biddy said.

‘I know that,’ Tom said. ‘And I’m sure Molly would help you, but not this way, working her into the ground.’

Biddy was incensed, but at that moment Molly eyelids fluttered open. She was at first alarmed to find herself in bed in the middle of the day and her uncle and grandmother standing over her. She cast her mind back to the events of that morning, but could only remember the interminable churning.

‘What happened?’

‘You fainted,’ Tom told her. ‘From exhaustion, I would think, and so I want you to stay in bed today at least.’

Molly knew, though, who wielded the power in that house and so her eyes sought her grandmother’s, who after a nudge from her son, said grudgingly, ‘I suppose the one day would do no harm, as long as you don’t make a habit of it.’

Inside, Biddy’s mind was saying something entirely different. It was not to be borne, her son telling her what
to do and criticising the way she was bringing up her granddaughter, when all she was doing was stopping her going the same way as her mother.

Molly felt quite strange when she woke the next morning and more rested than she had ever been since she had arrived at the house. She slipped quickly out of bed. Tom had already gone out to attend to the cows and, unusually, her grandmother was up. Immediately Molly felt flutters of nervousness begin in her stomach.

‘So,’ said Biddy sarcastically, ‘you have decided to arise from your bed today, have you?’

‘As you can see,’ Molly said, and saw Biddy nip her lip in annoyance at the way she had spoken to her.

‘Don’t think that you can get away with that tack every few days either,’ Biddy said. ‘I will not have you slacking.’

Molly stood up from the fire she had been poking into life and feeding with turf and said, ‘I have seldom had a free moment since I stepped over the threshold of this house. I do my share and more.’

The blow knocked her against the fireplace and this was followed by a hefty slap across her face as Biddy hissed, ‘You watch how you talk to me, girl. Your uncle is not here to fight your corner now, and I will knock that temper out of you if it is the last thing I do.’

Without a word, Molly hung the kettle above the fire and walked across the room. Once there, she looked back at her grandmother and said, ‘Pity the same thing wasn’t done to you,’ before escaping to the cowshed.

Her grandmother didn’t follow her and Molly imagined that was partly because Tom would be there. She knew, though, that Biddy wouldn’t forget and that she herself would probably pay dearly for that last remark. But she didn’t care. It had been worth it to see the look on her grandmother’s face.

She knew too that she couldn’t go running to Tom with a list of complaints every five minutes. For one thing, he would
hate it, and for another, she could guess then her grandmother’s punishment, when Tom wasn’t around, would probably be worse, for she would be hitting out at him too, through her. So she said nothing about the altercation that morning and was glad the cowshed was dim enough to hide her cheek, which was stinging so much she knew it would be scarlet.

Molly’s assessment was right: the more Tom attempted to stick up for her, the greater was Biddy’s anger and subsequent retribution when they were alone.

But by Friday evening something else was playing on Molly’s mind, and that was the fact that she had had no reply to either of the letters she had sent. She never saw the postman for he always came when she and Tom were in the cowshed and sometimes when they went in for breakfast the post would be there on the table. It was mainly catalogues for feed stuffs or farm equipment, and Molly had also seen a letter from Joe in America.

‘I just can’t understand it,’ she said to Tom as they were at the evening milking. ‘I mean, they’d know I would be anxious for news of them. I expected an answer by return.’

Tom agreed. ‘I did think they would have written back by now,’ he said. ‘I caught the post last Saturday so, all things being equal, they would have received the letters on Monday, Tuesday at the latest. But then maybe we are being too hasty. Maybe they will come tomorrow, or early next week. Have you asked Mammy if any post has come for you?’

‘I speak to your mother as little as possible, Uncle Tom. You know that,’ Molly said. ‘Anyway, if she had any letters for me, wouldn’t she have told me, given them to me?’