by Anne Bennett
‘Mammy, for heaven’s sake …’
‘I will not tolerate the way Molly spoke to me,’ Biddy declared.
Tom had pulled Molly away from his mother and she faced her, anger overriding any fear she might have as she said, ‘Well, I won’t tolerate you saying horrible things about my family. My father and grandfather and even Hilda have more kindness and goodness in their little fingers than you have in your entire body, and as for my mother—’
‘Don’t dare speak your mother’s name.’
‘I will if I like because she was wonderful, and I am glad I had thirteen years of her love before she died, and I will say so to anyone who asks me,’ Molly said firmly, adding goadingly, ‘So what are you going to do about that? Cut out my tongue?’
‘You see,’ Biddy said to Tom. ‘To spare the rod is to spoil the child, and this wayward streak Molly has in her is the result of too little chastisement in her formative years.’
Tom didn’t answer his mother. He had spent a lifetime studying her and scrutinising her face and now he suddenly knew that letters had arrived for Molly. He said, ‘All this anger has come about because Molly asked you a simple question. I think letters did come for Molly and I want you to tell me what you did with them.’
‘Yes, they came all right,’ Biddy said defiantly, ‘and they went on the fire. And if any more come, they will receive the same treatment.’
Molly stared at her, almost refusing to believe that the woman in front of her had done such an horrendously cruel thing. She yearned for news of those she had left behind and tears rained down her cheeks as she burst out, ‘How dare you burn letters addressed to me? You have no right.’
‘You forget,’ Biddy said. ‘I have every right.’
‘Mammy, surely to God you will see—’ Tom began.
‘Your opinion wasn’t asked for and is not needed,’ Biddy snapped. ‘Kindly keep out of this altogether.’
‘But, Mammy—’
‘Is your hearing affected, Tom?’ Biddy said, her words as brittle and cold as drops of ice. ‘I said this is not your concern and that is exactly what I meant.’
Molly saw her uncle almost flinch and fall silent, beaten by his mother’s iron will, which had dominated him since he was a child, and knew that she was on her own. She brushed the tears from her cheeks with her fingers and willed her voice not to shake as she faced her grandmother. ‘You must allow me to write and receive letters. These are the people that are dearest in the whole world to me.’
Biddy looked at her implacably and said, ‘That makes them even more dangerous.’
‘Dangerous!’
‘These are the people whose influence I removed you from,’ Biddy said. ‘For the good of your immortal soul I cannot allow you to communicate with them.’
‘D’you think they might contaminate me or something?’ Molly remarked sarcastically.
Biddy nodded her head sagely. ‘We cannot run that risk. However,’ she went on, ‘I don’t think we will have many more letters arriving, for I have written to your grandfather and that neighbour you seem so fond of, telling them there is to be no further correspondence with you. I have the letters already written for posting tomorrow.’
Molly thought how comforted she would have been by reading her grandfather’s words, reaching across the Irish Sea to the granddaughter he had had to relinquish. Maybe she might even get the odd wee note from Kevin when he had been at school a little longer, and she was in great need of the homespun wisdom and humour of Hilda. She knew that now her life would be harder and lonelier than ever.
EIGHT
With the business of the letters, Tom felt he had failed Molly, yet he knew there was no way on God’s earth that he could have changed his mother’s mind in the slightest degree. But one thing he was determined on was that she would keep her date with the McEvoys. So the next day in Buncrana, without saying a word to Molly about it and also unbeknownst to his mother, Tom had had a word with the postmistress.
Knowing her to be a kindly woman and one who could hold her own counsel if she had to, he put her wise to the situation at the house. Nellie wasn’t surprised because she had had Biddy in already that morning with the two letters for Birmingham and she had told Nellie straight out that she had written to Molly’s grandfather and the neighbour Hilda, saying that they were to have no further contact with Molly. Nellie thought it extremely harsh, but when she tried saying this, Biddy nearly bit her head off.
‘I can’t have her consorting in any way with those heathens in Birmingham. I would have thought you, as a good Catholic, would understand that.’
‘But they are the people she has always known, Biddy, and she is so alone in the world. Surely to God a few letters would do no harm.’
‘I will be the judge of that,’ Biddy had snapped. ‘The girl is in my care and I will do as I see fit.’
Nellie had said nothing further, knowing it anyway to be futile, but took the two letters from Biddy with a heavy heart and so, as she listened to Tom, she wasn’t unduly surprised.
‘I thought there was something not quite right when I saw the harsh way she treated her outside the church last Sunday,’ she said. ‘We were all looking forward to meeting Nuala’s daughter and my, when I saw how she resembled her mother, it was like taking a step back in time. And then the priest came over to greet them and your mother spouted it out about Molly’s father. I could hardly believe it, and you could see young Molly was upset. Everyone was on about it after.’
It was the first Tom knew of any of this. ‘What about her father?’
Nellie told him what his mother had said. Tom was angered and understood Molly vowing that she would not let anyone denigrate her parents and go unchallenged ever again. He burst out, ‘Do you know, I don’t give a tinker’s cuss whether the man was a Catholic, a Protestant or a Hindu. He was a good father to Molly and that, as far as I am concerned, is that. You should hear how she talks of him – of all of them. It would break your heart, especially as she is so brave, yet her loss was surely a grievous one. And it must have made things worse to be then ripped away from all that was familiar to her, including her grandfather, who seemed such an important part of her life.’
‘It must be hard for her right enough,’ Nellie said. ‘I would say a little understanding and compassion wouldn’t come amiss.’
‘Nor would I,’ Tom said.
‘Molly needs time away from the farm,’ Nellie said. ‘She needs to meet and mix with people her own age and that was one of the reasons I asked her to tea at our house. You don’t think your mother might forbid her to come?’
‘Oh, yes I do,’ Tom said. ‘But I have been puzzling over a way to get around this and I think if you were to ask her in front of people before church in the morning, as if you had just thought of it, and get the priest to endorse it, as it were, we just might get my bloody mother to agree and without too much of a row and ruction.’
‘God, Tom, how did you ever get a mother like Biddy?’ Nellie asked with a laugh. ‘You are one of the nicest and most nonconfrontational people I know.’
‘Even the mildest worm can turn,’ Tom said. ‘And even if I won’t do it for me, maybe I will for Molly.’
‘Well, that is a sight I would like to see anyway,’ Nellie said. ‘But don’t you worry about this Sunday. I will prime the neighbours as well as the priest, and between the lot of us we will have Biddy eating out of the palm of our hands.’
‘Hah, I doubt that very much.’
‘And so do I really,’ Nellie said with a grim little smile. ‘However, for Molly’s sake we will do our best.’
As soon as they reached the church that Sunday morning, Cathy pounced on Molly and spirited her away, saying she wanted to introduce her to her friends. And Molly went without asking, or even giving Biddy a look of any sort. Biddy could see her now in a group of young girls like herself, laughing and talking fifteen to the dozen as if she had known them all her life, and she vowed she would make Molly pay for that act of wilfulness w
hen she got her home.
Then to cap it all, Nellie was by her elbow, asking if Molly could come to tea with them that evening. Before Biddy had a chance to say that she couldn’t, everyone else took up the conversation, saying what a great idea and how grand it was for young people, like, to be together. Even the priest joined in.
‘Molly has duties at home,’ Biddy said through tight lips.
‘Ah, but less on Sunday, surely?’ said the priest. ‘The Good Lord did not labour on the seventh day, on the Sabbath. It’s not just for resting either, particularly for the young. It is for doing things you can’t do on the other days of the week, like taking a walk perhaps, or visiting a friend. I can’t think of anything nicer than Molly calling for tea with Cathy McEvoy.’
Biddy could think of a host of things she would rather have the girl do, but she felt as if she was caught in a corner. She would have said she hadn’t a whit of interest in the townspeople and their opinion mattered not a jot to her, but Nellie McEvoy was the postmistress and that position meant power. It wouldn’t do to make a real enemy of her. And then, of course, there was the priest. Biddy knew that this time, anyway, she would have to let the bloody girl go to tea with Nellie and her family, and she would wish her joy of it because if she had her way it would be for the last time.
However, Biddy was no fool. She knew that the fiasco had been engineered and could have an educated guess as to who was behind it too: the son she had once thought she could count on. The thought that she might be losing her influence over Tom put her in a filthy temper, and so she scowled her way through the Mass, and once it was over, she scurried from the place, pushing Molly in front of her and calling for Tom to hurry up. She looked neither to the right nor to the left and addressed no one as they made their way home. That gave the townsfolk something else to discuss over their dinner.
Tom and Molly had to put up with Biddy’s ill humour all day. Her nagging and complaining reached new heights and Molly got more than one unwarranted slap. But she didn’t care, not that day, when, with the dinner eaten and the dishes washed and put away, she took up her coat. Tom whistled to Skip and Fly as they crossed the cobbled yard, and together they walked across the fields to Buncrana and Cathy’s place above the post office.
‘I’m so glad that you could come,’ Cathy said.
‘And me,’ Molly said fervently. ‘I had my doubts I’d be let when your mother asked me last week.’
‘I know,’ Cathy said, and she giggled. ‘I think Mammy and your uncle hatched something between them yesterday. I was going to go into the post office and saw them with their heads together. I couldn’t hear what they were saying and all, but then this morning, as we set off for Mass, Mammy said for me to get you away from your grandmother with some excuse. Well, that was easy because all the other girls wanted to meet you. I tell you, Molly, you have been the subject of many of our conversations. I thought you would be joining us at the school, tell you the truth.’
‘I would rather be at school any day in comparison to the drudge I am fast turning into,’ Molly told Cathy firmly. ‘Anyway,’ she added, ‘I should be there. I’m not fourteen and won’t be until February.’
‘Then why …?’
‘My grandmother said I had enough book-learning and that more of it would not fit me any better for life on the farm.’
‘And you would rather be at school?’
‘Much rather.’
‘I can’t wait to leave.’
‘Yeah, but what are you leaving to?’ Molly said. ‘Your mother runs the shop and post office so I suppose there will be some employment for you?’
‘Oh, aye,’ Cathy said. ‘It’s what she wants for me, now I am the only one left. I have two sisters and two brothers, but they have all left home now and are, anyway, much older than me. Really, it was like being an only child in many ways.’
‘It was the other way round in our house,’ Molly said. ‘I am eight years older than my brother, and yet my parents, particularly my mother, made us both feel very special in different ways.’
There was silence in the room for a few moments and Molly felt the changed atmosphere and said a little apprehensively, ‘What’s up? What did I say that was so wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ Cathy said. ‘I mean, look, Molly, I was warned not to say one word about your mother and you just came out with it so natural.’
‘I suppose you were told that in case it would upset me?’ Molly said.
‘Aye, that’s what Mammy said.’
Molly thought for a second or two and then said, ‘You know, I think that it is far better to talk about my parents, even if it does make me a little sad. Not talking about them at all makes it seem as if they really didn’t exist and they very much did.’
‘I just can’t imagine how you have coped with it all.’
‘Don’t even try,’ Molly advised. ‘It is really so very painful, but I would rather talk of the things we did when they were alive than how and when they died.’
‘Right,’ Cathy said. ‘You are absolutely right, and we won’t go down that road unless you want to.’
Molly was surprised, when Nellie called both girls down for their tea, to find it was a quarter-past five. Never had time passed so quickly. She wished that they could have eaten their tea in the very comfortable bedroom where she could have relaxed properly with Cathy. Although she knew Nellie to be kindly to invite her to tea, she was still nervous of sitting up to a meal with her and Cathy’s father, Jack, whom she had only glimpsed at Mass.
She was worrying unduly, though, because both adults went out of their way to make Molly feel at home and more than welcome. They were like chalk and cheese to look at, Molly noted, for while Nellie was a thin and neat little woman, with eyes the same brown as her daughter’s and the same shape to her mouth, and her grey hair caught up in a bun, her husband was a bear of a man. He was about as tall as Molly’s uncle, but much broader, from his barrel chest to his more than ample stomach. His face was red, his eyes blue, and the hair that he had left on his head light brown.
He was constantly urging Molly to ‘eat up’, and offering her plate after plate of delicacies from the beautifully made sandwiches to the cakes and scones.
‘Mostly shop bought, I am afraid,’ Nellie said apologetically. ‘I am too busy with the shop to bake as well.’
Molly didn’t care. She seldom had food so fine and she tucked in with relish.
‘That’s the way, young Molly,’ said Jack approvingly. ‘I love to see a girl with an appetite.’
‘If we all ate enough to please you, Daddy, we’d be the size of a house,’ Cathy said.
Jack’s eyes twinkled as he gazed at his daughter. ‘Not at all, at all,’ he said. ‘Molly at least knows that the only thing to do with good food is eat it.’
Molly immediately wondered if she had eaten too much, been greedy. Nellie noticed her slight hesitation and urged, ‘You eat away, Molly. Nothing vexes a woman more than preparing food that people just pick at.’
Cathy hooted with laughter. ‘No danger of that here, Mammy. Anything anyone leaves is eaten by Daddy, shown clearly by his girth.’
‘You cheeky young rip,’ Jack said, but there was no menace in his voice, even when he added, ‘You are not too old for a good hiding, you know.’
‘Oh, that would be the day,’ Nellie said. ‘You have never laid a hand on any of them, even the lads, who could sometimes have done with a father’s hand. All the chastising was left to me.’
‘I am too big a man and my hands too large and rough to be hitting weans, sure,’ Jack said. ‘And you must have done the job right, for the children made a fine turn-out, the boys too.’
‘Even me?’ Cathy asked impishly.
‘No,’ Jack said. ‘Not you, for you are the worst of the lot.’ And he winked at Molly as he went on, ‘Completely ungovernable. Still, there is usually one bad apple in every barrel.’
‘Cheek!’ spluttered Cathy indignantly, while the laughter swelled arou
nd the table and Molly thought that the love apparent between Cathy and her parents reminded her of how it had been in her own home. She refused to let herself be sad and spoil this happy atmosphere, but Nellie had seen the shadow flit across Molly’s eyes and could guess her thoughts. ‘I think that we should have a bit of decorum when we sit down to a meal, particularly on a Sunday,’ she said, with a smile for Molly. ‘I would say that Molly is shocked to the core, are you not, child?’
Molly could see by the smile on Nellie’s face that she didn’t believe this for a moment, and without a trace of self-pity, she said, ‘No, not at all. I like it. It reminds me of some of the meals we used to have at home.’
There was a sudden silence and before it could become uncomfortable, Nellie said gently, ‘Can I say, my dear, if it won’t upset you too much, how like your mother you are?’
‘I know,’ Molly said happily. ‘And I am glad. My little brother looks more like my dad did. And no, it doesn’t upset me to talk about them. I don’t want anyone to think that there were so many things they couldn’t say to me that it was safest to say nothing at all, or skirt around the subject as if they were treading on eggshells.’
‘Well said, Molly,’ Jack said, clapping her on the back. ‘I think that that is the very best way to look at things. Now can I tempt you to take another cake?’
Molly shook her head. ‘I couldn’t eat another thing. I am almost too full to move already.’
‘I hope you’re not,’ Cathy said. ‘I want to show you the town.’
‘Oh,’ Molly said, ‘I would like that, but shouldn’t we help with washing-up, first?’
‘Not today,’ Nellie said firmly as she began collecting the plates. ‘Maybe when you are a regular visitor here I will let you put your hands in the sink or wield a tea towel, but today make use of the fine evening.’
‘And try and work off that lovely tea.’
‘That as well,’ Nellie said with a smile.
The post office was situated almost at the top of a hill on a wide and straight street with the hills visible in the distance ahead. It was as they walked to the top of it that Molly saw the cinema and she exclaimed in amazement. It was a sizeable cinema too, made of honey-coloured brick with arched doors at the entrance.