Читать книгу Anne Bennett 3-Book Collection: A Sister’s Promise, A Daughter’s Secret, A Mother’s Spirit - Anne Bennett - Страница 17

The next afternoon, on the way to the McEvoys’, Tom admitted to Molly that he didn’t think he would ever have spoken to his mother the way he had done if he hadn’t been drinking.

‘Maybe you should have taken to the drink years ago then,’ Molly told him.

‘I hate unpleasantness,’ Tom said.

‘Not when you’re drunk you don’t,’ Molly said. ‘You fair went for your mother yesterday and at least she put up little objection to me coming here today.’

‘Well, that is because she is barely talking to either of us.’

‘Personally, I prefer it that way,’ Molly said with feeling. ‘And you really don’t have to walk all the way with me, unless you want to, especially as you are coming back to fetch me later. After all, it’s broad daylight and I know the way.’

‘Even on a day as overcast as this one, it is far preferable to be out in the fresh air than in with my mother,’ Tom said.

‘Well, I can’t argue with that,’ Molly said, ‘for the look on your mother’s face today would sour cream. And the dogs seem to appreciate the walk,’ she added, indicating Skip and Fly cavorting in front of them. She was getting on well with the two dogs now and she always spoke to them and gave them a stroke when she took them out their food. ‘I bet they are as pleased to get away from the farm as we are.’

‘Man or beast, it is good to have a break, and I am only just beginning to realise that myself,’ Tom said. ‘Now you can go on from here and I will take to the hills with the dogs.’

‘When will you come for me?’

‘Well, I’ll walk over when I have finished the milking and had my tea,’ Tom said. ‘No need for you to be ready then, though, for I’m going for a few jars with Cathy’s father before we set off back home.’

‘Oh, Uncle Tom, your mother will not be best pleased.’

‘Is she about anything now, Molly? Answer me that.’

And she wasn’t, that was the problem, Molly thought as she watched her uncle striding away, whistling to the dogs to follow him. Hilda was right: Biddy was a very unhappy woman. As Molly walked on she tried to imagine what it would be like waking up each morning, knowing that nothing that happened that day or any other day would even satisfy, never mind please. She wasn’t sure she would want to wake up at all.

A few days later, Tom took Molly to the bog to cut the turf and there was an unseasonable chill in the air. The sky was gunmetal grey and heavy black clouds were shrouding the tops of the hills.

‘Could rain,’ Tom commented, looking out at the sky anxiously. ‘But the only spare oilskin we have belonged to Joe, and I’d say that would be a mite big on you.’

Big was an understatement, for it reached Molly’s feet, and even with the bottom cut off and the sleeves cut down, it was still ridiculously large. But as Tom said, few would be seeing what she looked like and it was better than nothing at all.

There were a fair few other farmers at the bog that day, as Molly could see from a distance. Some had lads with them, though Molly estimated that the boys were slightly older than she was. As they drew closer, she saw that most of them had their trousers rolled up and were barefoot. ‘I used to go barefoot too throughout the whole summer,’ Tom told her, seeing her watching this. ‘We all did. In fact I used to hate to be forced into boots again to begin school in September, though I was glad enough of them when the snow and frosts were about. I thought you wouldn’t like to go barefoot, though, not being brought up to it.’

‘You’re right,’ Molly said. ‘I wasn’t brought up that way and neither was Kevin, and that was because my father was in work, but there were plenty in Birmingham not so lucky. I saw many thin, undernourished and barefoot children there, and that was the same summer and winter.’

‘It is a terrible thing all right for a man to have no job.’

‘That was what my father often said,’ Molly said. ‘The point is, he might have been in the same boat if it hadn’t been for what happened in the war.’ She related the story of the rescue of Paul Simmons and what happened because of it, when the war was ended.

Tom was impressed, Molly could see, and when he said, ‘I would say that you had a hero of a father,’ she nodded happily.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘And he was lovely as well, but when I said that to Mom she always said all the men who fought in the war that they call “the Great War” were heroes, and some never came back from it. I mean, some of the families are so poor because they have no provider at all and some of those who did come back, were so badly injured they were totally unable to work.’

‘You still miss your parents a great deal, don’t you?’ Tom said gently.

Molly nodded. ‘It’s like a nagging pain that is always there, but it helps to talk about them sometimes and remember how things used to be, and it is nice to hear things about my mother as a girl and everything. Was she ever taken to the bog?’

‘No,’ Tom said, smiling at the notion as he pulled the horse to a halt. ‘Few girls, particularly those of your age now, are taken to cut the peat, in actual fact,’ he said. ‘And, God above, if I had ever suggested taking Nuala, my mother would have beaten the head off me.’

Molly laughed at that image, and at the sound the other farmers noticed their arrival and greeted them. Tom smiled as he saw that many of the boys were more than interested in Molly, and he couldn’t blame them, for while most people would have looked ridiculous in the oversized clothes, Molly looked very fetching indeed. Tom thought her beauty was such that if she had been clothed in a sack she would still look good. She seemed totally unaware of it herself and oblivious to the boys’ interest in her too, which Tom thought a good thing. She was very young yet.

He leaped from the cart and helped Molly down before saying, ‘First the bog is cut into lines. See where the others have started?’

Molly nodded and Tom continued, ‘So if I start marking out the lines could you come after me and do the cutting into the brick shapes you have seen at home?’

‘Yeah,’ Molly said. ‘It doesn’t seem so hard.’

It wasn’t hard, but it was backbreaking, though Molly didn’t find that out straight away. She soon realised why the terrain was called a bog. Because no rain had actually fallen for some time, the thin grass covering the bog was dry but as soon as she sliced through the earth with her spade she saw and smelled the black slurry seeping through it. The bog seemed not to wish to relinquish its sod either, and tried to suck it back into the earth, but Molly persevered and eventually withdrew the brick almost triumphantly, threw it into the cart and bent to cut another.

She thought she was working incredibly slowly and ponderously, but when Tom, thinking he had drawn enough lines for the time being, came to join her, he said she was doing just fine. ‘There is a knack to it, as there is to most things,’ he said. ‘You will pick it up eventually, but considering this is your first time, you’re not bad at all.’

They went on hour after hour, until the ache in Molly’s back became unbearable and she stretched with a grimace of pain that Tom noticed. He decided enough was enough for now. ‘How d’you fancy a breather?’

Molly barely kept the relief out of her voice as with a shrug she said, ‘If you like.’

They sat a little way away from the bog on Tom’s waterproof spread on the earth. They ate the bread and cheese that Molly had put up before they left, and they washed it down with cold tea, which revived them both. Molly sat back thankfully and surveyed the cart a little way from them.

‘Isn’t that turf too wet to burn?’ she asked.

‘Aye,’ Tom said. ‘It is surely at the moment. We’ll take it back to the barn and stand the bricks up like little houses leaning against one another till the water has drained out of them and they can be stacked and then we will come back for more.’

‘How often do you come?’

‘Until I judge I have enough to last us the winter,’ Tom said, withdrawing his pipe from his pocket. ‘Now I am away for a wee smoke and a jaw with the neighbours. You can either come with me, or stop and rest yourself.’

Molly looked across at the now quite sizeable knot of men and boys, because more had come as they had worked, a fair few of them taking their ease as they were, and she felt suddenly shy to be the only girl amongst them.

‘I think I will stop here, Uncle Tom,’ she said. ‘I am quite tired.’

She was thoroughly weary and when Tom left her she lay back on the waterproof, closed her eyes and in a few minutes was fast asleep. Tom, returning later, did not wake her but just carried on working in the bog alone. Molly woke an hour or so afterwards, disorientated first, and then guilty as she saw the sizeable amount of bog Tom had cleared while she had slept. He waved away her apologies and she set back to work with a will.

That was not the last time Molly went to the bog. As one day slid into another, she got more into the routine of the work, both on the farm and in the house, and usually let Biddy’s word wash over her, for the silent treatment didn’t last nearly long enough in Molly’s opinion. Biddy was especially bad on Sundays, and Molly knew that this was because she resented the fact that so many greeted her warmly, both before and after Mass.

Biddy particularly disliked it when Molly and Cathy got together and began chattering about what they would do later that day. Molly went to the McEvoys for Sunday tea every week. Biddy would have liked to have forbidden the girl, but she sensed that if she did, everyone would be against her. Nellie had enthused about Molly, saying that they all loved having her in the house and that she was no trouble at all, and the two girls got on famously. Then there was Tom, insisting she needed time with other young people and the town’s folk agreeing with that, and the priest beaming in approval.

Biddy would have liked to tell them all to go to hell, that she would make any decisions about the girl. She was, after all, in her charge, but she had to live amongst these people afterwards. She didn’t really understand why the townsfolk should seem to like the girl so well, for she had done all that she could to blacken her name. So, she contented herself with making Molly’s life particularly miserable on Sundays, and if Tom was out of the way she was given many a clout that she kept quiet about.

Biddy blamed Molly’s arrival totally for the sea change in Tom, yet in Molly’s opinion he was acting in a more normal way now. He would go for a drink on Saturdays with the other men when they were in the town and then on Sunday evening before bringing Molly home. Molly often wondered why Biddy found this such a problem and why she would go for him as she did. It was hardly what a person could term excessive.

Her own father used to like a drink a couple of times a week and always after the match on Saturday, and her mother had never minded. Biddy, however, seemed to want Tom never to leave the farm, or seek any other company but hers. God, what a prospect!

As for Molly, she lived for the time spent with Cathy. Sometimes, they went out, maybe met up with friends, and other times it was just the two of them either outdoors or indoors. Molly barely minded which way it was, though if pressed she would have had to say that she liked best the company of Cathy on her own.

Molly had had friends in Birmingham, but she had sort of got out of the way of going about with them when her mother had been so ill. She had very little free time, anyway, at that time, as she shouldered much of the housework. But, in this place, where she had never wanted to live, Cathy was her life-saver.

The school holidays beginning made little difference to Molly, except the summer heat made the work more tiring, especially inside the house, for however hot it was, the fire had to be kept on. Sometimes there was so little breeze that opening the door and windows made no difference and she was glad of the light showers that took some of the heat from the days.

The farmers, though, watched the weather anxiously, knowing that heavy rain then might mean a poor harvest, but by and large the summer was hot and dry, and by the middle of August the harvest had begun. Molly and her uncle were soon hard at it from dawn till dusk because, as he said, their survival through the winter depended on it.

The flax was the first to be harvested. Once pulled and put into bunches, or ‘beets’ as Tom called them, it had to be soaked in the water butt for about three weeks and then spread out to dry before the fibres would be any good for thatching. So while the flax was being soaked, Tom turned his attention to the hay, which was cut with scythes. He was very wary of letting Molly do that at all.

‘It is not something you were brought up to,’ he said. ‘You are likely to slice the legs off yourself.’

Molly laughed. ‘Why am I? Look, Uncle Tom, I might have been born and raised in a city, but I have got a brain in my head and I do know how sharp the scythes are. You show me what to do and I will copy you. And don’t worry, I will keep my legs well away.’

There was, however, an art to scything, and Molly soon found wielding the scythe, heavy for someone of her build, hard, hard work that made her arms and then her shoulders and then her whole back ache almost unbearably. She watched her uncle slicing his way through the hay fields, seemingly with little effort, and felt quite useless.

Tom told her that however little she did, it would be less for him to do and not to worry about it, but seeing what an effort it was for Molly, he suggested after a little while that she leave the cutting to him and he showed her how to make the little hay cocks instead, which she then dotted about the field to make sure the hay was totally dry before the haystacks were built.

In the potato fields, Dobbin pulled the reaper that brought the potatoes to the surface. Molly went after, collecting them up in metal buckets, as she did with the turnips and swede, and she and her uncle collected the cabbages from another field together.

The corn was cut last and then taken to the mill to be threshed into meal, which Tom explained was used for oaten bread and porridge. The harvest was a tough time and general weariness and aching limbs encouraged Molly to fall into a deep sleep as soon as her head touched the pillow every night. Despite this though, she could quite see the satisfaction a person would feel knowing that by their labours there was enough food collected in for everyone throughout the winter, including the animals, and more than enough turf for the fire.

Of course, harvesting the crops meant she had been out of the house for days, working alongside her uncle a lot of the time. She knew without doubt that she would far rather be out in the fields with him, however arduous the work, than anywhere at all with her grandmother.

Just before the winter really set in, Tom brought quicklime back from the lime kiln one day, and he and Molly cleared out the well together, and lined the inside with the quicklime, which they had mixed with water, before allowing the well to fill up again. The quicklime was also used to make the whitewash for the outside of the cottage, and Molly found she liked doing that. Tom also checked that any poor thatch was replaced to keep the place weatherproof, but though Molly had climbed on to the roof with him, she was no good at the thatching itself – all fingers and thumbs, as her uncle said.

As the autumn rolled on, Molly realised how much she was dreading this first Christmas without her parents and guessed that there would be little festive cheer in that house of misery. She was right, for Christmas at the Sullivan house was almost a nonevent. No streamers festooned the house in the run-up to Christmas, there was no tree, no wooden Nativity scene decorating the mantelshelf and no cards at all.

Molly tried to push down the memories of the many Christmas days she had enjoyed at home, but she couldn’t help thinking nostalgically about them. She cried herself to sleep on Christmas Eve, feeling her loss especially poignantly, and yearning so much to be with those still left to her in Birmingham that it seemed to spread all over her body, making her nerve ends tingle and ache.

Tom listened to the anguished sobbing of the young girl, frustrated that he was so helpless to deal with such pain and sorrow, and hoped to God his mother wasn’t roused. He was so disturbed that he lay with his eyes smarting with tiredness, long after Molly was eventually quiet.

Molly woke heavy-eyed and sluggish, and dragged herself from the bed into the cold black early morning, pulling on her dungarees, for even on Christmas Day cows have to be milked. She went into the room to rake up the fire and put on the kettle. While she was doing that, Tom stopped beside her at the hearth, on his way to the cowshed.

He was pleased that his mother’s even breathing behind the bed canopy indicated that she was still asleep as he almost whispered, ‘Happy Christmas, Molly,’ and pressed a parcel into her hands.

Molly had expected no present, so she was stunned when she opened the packaging to find gloves, a scarf and a jaunty tam-o’-shanter, all of the softest wool in a myriad pastel colours. She was almost too overcome to speak, though she gasped in delight, and Tom saw her moist eyes and knew just how pleased she was. He was glad that he had asked Nellie’s advice.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ Molly said eventually. ‘You have taken me so much by surprise and you couldn’t have got anything better. My hands have been like blocks of ice some days, so thank you, Uncle Tom. Thank you so much. I can’t tell you how this has pleased me.’ She stood on tiptoe and kissed her uncle’s cheek, and he flushed bright pink with embarrassment.

‘’S all right,’ he said gruffly. ‘I’ve given the gift to you now so that you can wear them to Mass if you have a mind.’

‘Oh, I have a mind all right,’ Molly said. ‘I would be proud and pleased to wear them.’

Biddy, of course, tried to spoil it all, and laughed at Tom for what she called his stupidity. She wasn’t even mollified with the shawl he had bought her, but Molly refused to let Biddy’s sourness spoil her pleasure, and the people going into Mass that morning more than made up for it anyway. Nellie was so pleased the things suited her and Jack told her she was as pretty as a picture.

She so wished she could go home with the McEvoys after Mass, but it was no good wishing for things she couldn’t have, and she knew that as well as anyone. At least, she told herself as they made their way home, they had decent food in the house for a change, for Biddy had wrung the neck of a hen that was no longer laying the day before and Molly had drawn the innards from it and it was now ready to be cooked.

Molly hated preparing the hens to eat. In Birmingham they had bought them from the butcher ready just to put in the oven. The very first time Biddy had made Molly draw out the bird’s innards the sight and smell had caused her to be sick in the gutter in the yard afterwards, and Biddy had laughed at her. She couldn’t help feeling nauseous every time, but she would never allow herself to be sick again and give Biddy any reason to gloat over her.

Despite the food, though, the day was as gloomy as Molly thought it would be, and though she did go for a tramp with her uncle and later played cards with him, she was glad when the day was over and she could look forward to seeing Cathy and her parents the following day.

The next day, though, she wasn’t sure she would be allowed to go, for her grandmother kicked up shockingly. A tantrum of such magnitude used to terrify Tom to the extent he would give in to anything she wanted, and he felt his innards quail at the vitriol pouring from her mouth. Even Molly was unnerved.

And then Biddy’s temper got the better of her and she lashed out at Molly. The first punch causing her nose to spurt blood and the second, administered before Tom could get to her, split her lip. Anger replaced the fear coursing through Tom’s vein and he helped Molly to her feet because the power of the second punch had knocked her over.

He said to his mother through gritted teeth. ‘You have cooked your goose right and proper now. Why in God’s name would anyone want to stay with someone like you one minute longer than was necessary? And I’m warning you, Mammy, if you can’t keep your hands to yourself, you’d better watch out I don’t do the same to you one of these days.’

‘How dare you?’ Biddy shrieked. ‘Let me tell you—’

‘No,’ Tom said firmly. ‘I don’t want to hear it. I am off for more congenial company and so is Molly, and we will see you later.’

Both Nellie and Jack McEvoy looked askance at Molly’s face when she arrived at their door, but didn’t ask any questions. Cathy, on the other hand, barely waited until they were in her bedroom, before she said, ‘Your face is a right mess. What happened to it?’

Molly felt she owed Biddy no loyalty so she said, ‘My grandmother wasn’t that keen on me coming here today.’

‘So, she did that to you?’

‘That’s right.’

Cathy was shocked to the core. ‘That’s awful.’

‘I agree,’ Molly said. ‘In fact, I think it is so awful that I don’t want to think about it any more, never mind talk about it.’

Cathy knew she was right. What was the point of going on and on about something dreadful that she had no power of changing? So she said, ‘Let’s talk about Christmas instead, because it is my favourite time in the whole year.’

‘It used to be mine too.’

‘Sorry,’ Cathy said, wincing at her tactlessness. ‘That was stupid of me.’

‘It’s all right, really,’ Molly said. ‘Though I must admit, I have missed my parents very much this year.’

‘You were bound to,’ Cathy said gently. ‘I bet your grandfather sent you a card, though, and your brother.’

Molly stared at Cathy. ‘I thought you knew, that your mother might have said or something.’

‘What about?’

‘No one from Birmingham is allowed to write to me.’

‘Why on earth not?’

‘Because my grandmother considers them heathens.’

‘That’s rubbish!’ Cathy said. ‘Anyway, she can’t stop them.’

‘She can, you know, and she does,’ Molly said. ‘I don’t have a penny piece of my own, for a start. My granddad thought of that and gave me a writing pad and envelopes and some Irish stamps, and I wrote to him and Hilda just the once. Uncle Tom posted the letters in Buncrana. I never thought of asking permission – didn’t think I would need it – but my grandmother went mad when she knew. Replies would have come for me, I know that, but I never saw them. She confiscated all the stuff my grandfather gave me and wrote and told them not to write to me again, that she was severing all communication between us.’

‘That is perfectly dreadful,’ said Cathy, distressed.

‘I thought your mother might have told you,’ Molly said.

Cathy shook her head. ‘Mammy never talks of things like that,’ she said. ‘She said it isn’t nice to bandy gossip about, and particularly because she does know, or could probably guess, a lot of what goes on in people’s lives because of the job she does and things people say when they confide in her. She can keep things pretty close to her chest, can my mother when she wants to.’

‘Would she tell me things if I asked her directly?’ Molly asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Cathy said. ‘But personally I think you have a right to know if letters came for you and you never got them. We’ll be having dinner soon and we’ll bring it up at the table.’

Cathy did bring it up and Nellie looked decidedly uncomfortable. She knew of the letters that had come for Molly as she knew of the missive Biddy had sent banning them, though at first, despite that, the letters came thick and fast. She hadn’t thought to mention any of this to her daughter, though as she watched the friendship develop between them, she had thought the day might come when she would have to explain herself. So when she was asked so directly she said to Molly, ‘There were letters that came for you, at first anyway, but your grandmother obviously thought that it was better you didn’t see them.’

Nellie looked into Molly’s eyes, so sad they were like pools of pain in that battered face, and her stomach contracted in pity for the young girl.

‘I don’t know if you were aware of the letter Biddy sent, banning all communication, Molly. I only know myself because she told me. I thought it was the wrong thing to do then and I told her so, and I haven’t changed my opinion. Anyway, those in Birmingham took no notice at first either because for a time the letters continued to come.’

Cathy was perplexed. She looked at her friend and recognised her suffering as she burst out, ‘But why did you give them to the postman, Mammy, knowing that Molly wasn’t going to be allowed to receive them?’

‘I didn’t know that absolutely at first,’ Nellie protested. ‘It was only when Molly never mentioned anything about them that I had my suspicions. After that, every time I put the letters for you in the sack, my heart would sink. It was almost a relief when they eventually stopped coming.’

‘I still don’t understand why you gave letters to the postman when you realised that?’ Cathy insisted.

Nellie bit back, ‘I did it because I had to.’

Cathy shook her head. ‘You could have just left them all here and Molly could have had them when she came over on Sunday.’

‘If only you knew just how often I have been tempted to do just that,’ Nellie said. ‘But withholding mail is a serious offence, and one I would be in really hot water for if it were brought to the authority’s notice.’

‘But isn’t Molly’s grandmother withholding her mail?’

‘Yes, but Molly is a minor and under her grandmother’s care,’ Nellie said. She felt burdened by her part in all this, and in an effort to explain she addressed herself again to Molly.

‘If I was to do this and your grandmother was to find out, she could make trouble for me because of it, and you know, don’t you, Molly, that she would delight in doing that?’

Molly loved Nellie, the woman who had shown her nothing but kindness from the very first, and she saw immediately her dilemma.

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I do understand, and you are right, my grandmother would love to get you into trouble – I know that as well as you – and I would hate it and feel responsible.’

‘If only we could find a way around this,’ Cathy mused.

Jack had taken no part in the discussion so far, but now he said sharply to his daughter, ‘Cathy, stop this at once. Your mother has explained it to you. Let that be an end to it.’

‘But what if Molly was to write from here and they could write back, addressing their letters to me?’

Nellie stared at her daughter. In fact, they all stared at her. Nellie knew she shouldn’t agree to this, but Jack said, ‘Don’t see any harm in that, Nellie. After all, there is no law in the land that says Cathy can’t write to anyone in the world if she takes a mind.’

‘The postman will wonder,’ Nellie said.

‘Yeah, he might, but he won’t connect it with Molly, will he?’ Cathy said. ‘You can tell him that I have a couple of pen friends in England, if you like. They are always advising us to do that at school, to broaden our horizons or something. Some of the others already do it, so it won’t seem all that strange.’

‘Do you know,’ Jack said, ‘it may just work. What d’you say, Molly?’

Molly turned her eyes on Jack and he saw the little flame of hope that had suddenly burned within her go out. She knew writing to her people was as remote a reality as ever, because she couldn’t afford writing pad and envelopes, never mind stamps every week. Jack, though, guessed what was troubling her and, excusing himself, he left the table, coming back a few minutes later with a writing pad, a stack of envelopes and two pens.

‘Here you are, Molly,’ he said. ‘Merry Christmas, and don’t you worry about stamps, for I will buy them for you myself and will be glad to do it.’

Molly looked around the table at those good, kind people, so eager and willing to help her, and suddenly it was all too much, and she laid her head on the table and cried her eyes out.