by Anne Bennett
‘You deserved that and more,’ Biddy growled out.
‘You can get away with that now because you are bigger and stronger than me, but it won’t always be that way,’ said Molly, glaring.
Biddy looked at the two ranged against her and deeply regretted bringing Molly to Ireland. She had thought she would easily break her spirit, but there was no sign of it so far, and Tom was taking her side at every turn.
‘Tom,’ she thundered, ‘I will not tolerate this. Where is the respect you have always shown me in the past?’
‘That wasn’t respect, Mammy,’ Tom said mildly. ‘It was fear, and it gives me no pleasure to admit that. However, this is not about me, but Molly, and you may as well know here and now that Nellie McEvoy asked Molly to tea this Sunday as well and she has already accepted the invitation.’
Biddy glared at her son, hardly able to believe her ears. ‘You take her part at your peril, Tom,’ she said. ‘For the girl is a born troublemaker and you can’t see it.’
‘How can you say that?’ Molly cried. ‘What have I done?’
‘You have brought dissension to this house. That is what you have done, my girl,’ Biddy shrieked.
Tom laughed. ‘This was never a happy place, Mammy. All my life you shouted the orders and I jumped to it, but it was never a real home. Molly couldn’t destroy what wasn’t there in the first place.’
Molly wished she could tell her uncle to be quiet, for she knew her grandmother was storing all this in her head and it might come out in every blow she would administer her way at the earliest opportunity. And yet she couldn’t totally regret the fact that Tom was beginning to stand up to his mother.
The next day, Molly lay in bed and faced what she had said to her grandmother the evening before. She didn’t regret a single word, though she knew that, if anything, things might get worse for her because of it. She had valued her uncle’s support, but she knew that defying his mother was an alien way for him to behave and she mentioned her concerns about this in the cowshed the following day.
‘Every word you have just uttered is right,’ Tom said. ‘Neither of my brothers was as eager to please Mammy as I was. She seemed to strip me of any shred of self-confidence I had.’
‘But now you are a grown man,’ Molly said, ‘and can take pride in yourself despite her.’
‘D’you know, for a wee girl of thirteen, you speak very well,’ Tom said, and added with the ghost of a smile, ‘Argue well too. Were you good at the book-learning at school?’
‘Pretty good,’ Molly said. ‘I was due to stay on until I was sixteen and matriculate. Daddy really would have liked me to go to university, but he wasn’t pushy or anything. He just said we would take each stage as it came and see how well I did and also how far I wanted to go. I really enjoyed school.’
‘That’s where you should be,’ Tom said.
‘Maybe,’ Molly agreed. ‘But you know, Uncle Tom, there is so much I would like to change about the life I have now that staying on at school is just one more thing to resent your mother for. Crikey,’ she added with a ghost of a smile, ‘that list is so long now, it is like a roll of wallpaper.’
Tom laughed. ‘You keep that outlook on life, young Molly, and you’ll manage just fine, I think.’
‘And what about you?’
‘Don’t you worry your pretty little head about me,’ Tom said. ‘I have managed this long and will cope, no doubt.’
‘I can’t help feeling that I have made life more difficult for you.’
Tom paused before saying. ‘In a way, I suppose it was your fault that I said anything at all. Not that I am blaming you. I know I should have done something a lot earlier than I did. The point was, while it was just me she was having a go at, I didn’t want to stir things up further and possibly make her worse. Then you arrived and Mammy was so unreasonable in her demands and expectations of you that she angered me. I knew I couldn’t just sit there and let you take it all on your own.’
He grinned at Molly and went on, ‘I had no idea then of the feisty little lady you were. You look so frail and slight, as if a puff of wind would blow you away. To tell you the absolute truth, you made me ashamed of myself when you stand and face Mammy and seem so unafraid.’
‘That is just an act,’ Molly admitted. ‘I am scared as the next. Sometimes I’m surprised that she can’t hear my heart banging against my ribs and my stomach is often tied in knots.’
‘Well, you show no evidence of it,’ Tom said admiringly. ‘And now if you have no objection, we will go inside for breakfast before I collapse on the floor with starvation.’
Tom surprised everyone, not least Molly, the next Saturday by announcing that she was to accompany him and Biddy to Buncrana.
‘Impossible!’ Biddy said dismissively. ‘Molly has a host of jobs to get through.’
‘Well, they will have to wait.’
‘Since when did you begin giving out the orders?’
‘Not long,’ Tom admitted with a sardonic grin. ‘Some might say, better late than never.’
‘Oh, don’t start that again,’ Biddy said. ‘You always needed to be told. You’re useless at taking responsibility for anything. You were the same, even as a boy.’
‘So you say, Mammy,’ Tom said mildly, ‘but in this case I am telling you that Molly has to come with us to Buncrana today.’
‘And why is that?’
‘Because she needs wellingtons,’ Tom said. ‘I must start getting in the peat and Molly won’t be able to help me unless she has suitable footwear.’
‘Do you need her to help you?’
‘It was you who said I needed help,’ Tom pointed out. ‘Anyway, it isn’t only the peat you need wellingtons for on a farm. You may have saved money on her work clothes, though they would look better if they fitted her anywhere, but there isn’t a pair of boots in the whole place small enough for her feet. And she is ruining the shoes she has – I noticed it just the other day – and soon she will have nothing suitable to put on her feet for Mass.’
Molly, listening to this interchange, wanted to hug herself with delight. She knew that though Biddy took pleasure in the fact that, weekdays, she was dressed worse than some of the beggars she had seen on the streets of Birmingham, when it came to Mass she had to be respectable. It was a matter of pride.
This was proved when Biddy said grudgingly, ‘All right then, she needs a pair of wellingtons, but there is still no reason for her to come with us. We’ll bring her a pair home.’
‘You know that it is hard for one to buy footwear for another,’ Tom said, ‘even in the case of boots – maybe more especially in the way of boots. Molly will be wearing these most of the time that she is outside with me and I would be happier if they fit her well enough.’
And so Molly got to go to Buncrana. She fair rattled through the jobs beforehand. She sat in the back of the cart that early summer morning, with the sun just peeping over the hill to light up the pale blue sky with the clouds scudding across it, blown by the wafting breeze, and felt the beginning of happiness steal over her. She couldn’t believe that she could be so excited over a simple shopping trip.
She had been used to a vast array of shops virtually on her doorstep in the shape of Erdington Village, and the city centre itself only a short tram journey away, and though she had been shown around Buncrana by Cathy, that had been on a Sunday when everywhere was shut up. What a different and vibrant place it was on Saturday. She drank in the noise, the chatter and laughter, and the shouts of the men on the market.
Molly helped Tom unload the surplus eggs she had collected, butter she had churned and the vegetables she had helped Tom lift from the ground. They stacked them on a trestle table in the Market Hall.
Then Tom said to his mother, ‘All right, Mammy? I’ll take Molly for those boots and then pop down to the harbour and see if there is any fish for sale there.’
He gave Biddy no chance to say anything to this, but swung Molly away and down the side street, and didn’t miss the sigh of re
lief she gave at being away from his mother. Tom grinned at her and said, ‘Damned if I don’t feel the same way myself,’ and Molly gave a little laugh.
The boots were bought and wrapped in no time at all, and then Tom set out to introduce Molly to some of the townsfolk, many of whom she had glimpsed at Mass. All seemed pleased to see her, and those who remembered her mother all remarked on the likeness between them, and added what a tragedy it was that she and her husband had been killed. It was said with such sincerity and sadness that tears would sometime prickle the back of Molly’s eyes, but she didn’t let them fall.
Any crying she did now was in the privacy of her own room. Not that she cried that much any more, but the aching loss of her parents was always there. She had little control over her dreams, though, and sometimes when she woke up, her pillow would be damp.
The townsfolk didn’t see this, of course. They saw a wee strip of a girl, a beautiful girl too, with the large brown eyes and hair the colour of mahogany, so like her mother, coping stoically. That was one of the reasons the baker handed her a currant cake with a knowing little wink and then a little later, the greengrocer tossed her a red apple.
When she saw Cathy coming up the street with her father, Jack, Molly thought her happiness almost complete.
Cathy was just as delighted to see her, and after the families had greeted one another, Jack said to Tom, ‘Let’s leave the young ones to it. I’m away to the harbour to see what the catch is, and then I have a mind to sink a Guinness or two at the Lough Swilly Hotel and watch the world go round. How about it?’
Molly saw Tom hesitate and guessed that this wasn’t something he normally did on Saturday mornings. Then he said, ‘Aye, Jack, that sounds a grand occupation.’
‘Good man, yourself!’ Jack exclaimed as he clapped Tom on the back.
Tom bent to Molly. ‘I would keep out of Mammy’s way for an hour or so at least,’ he said.
‘You sure?’
‘Positive,’ Tom said definitely. ‘We’ll catch it when we get back whatever time it is, you likely more than me, and I’m in no rush to experience that.’
‘Nor me,’ Molly agreed with a shudder, and Tom smiled and pressed a thrupenny bit into her hand. ‘Oh, Uncle Tom!’ Molly cried in surprise.
‘Nothing worse than looking round the shops without a penny piece in your pocket,’ Tom said. ‘Away now and enjoy yourself, for it is no sin at all.’
And how Molly enjoyed that first day, walking about arm in arm, chattering non-stop, greeted by this one and that, stopping for a few words with some of Cathy’s school friends. When Tom first gave her the money, Molly’s first reaction had been to save it, because it was the first time that anyone had given her any money. Not, of course, that there was any occasion to spend anything on the farm, but she was worried how she would ever leave her grandmother’s clutches without any money at all and she knew whatever age she was and whatever she did, there would be no sort of a wage coming her way.
However, while she was debating this in her head, Cathy, who had been given the same by her father, said, ‘Let’s go to the sweet shop,’ and Molly’s mouth had filled with saliva at the thought. She had never been allowed to be a great sweet eater in Birmingham – her mother had been particularly strict about that, and Molly was wise enough to keep quiet about the odd things her granddad used to pass her – but now, the thought of a bag or two of luscious sweets was very tempting.
After all, she told herself, what good was thrupence in the grand scheme of things? And so she turned to Cathy with a broad smile and said, ‘Yes, let’s.’
They had finished all the tiger nuts, by tacit consent leaving the bull’s-eyes for another time, when they decided to go down to the harbour. ‘We’ll see if they are done with their pints of Guinness now and are ready to come home,’ Cathy said.
‘I’m all for that,’ Molly said, ‘because I am going nowhere near my grandmother without my uncle beside me.’
The men were standing outside gazing across at the Lough and as soon as Jack saw them, he said jovially, ‘Now this is a sight for sore eyes: two visions of loveliness.’
Tom turned to look and Molly saw that he wasn’t quite sober and she wondered if he would be any sort of protection at all between her and her grandmother, but Jack was speaking again. ‘Now, what will you have, girls, a lemonade each?’
Molly thought a lemonade sounded lovely, for the sweets had made her thirsty, but she looked towards her uncle first. ‘It’s all right,’ Jack said, taking Tom’s empty glass from him. ‘It’s my round anyway.’
‘Uncle Tom, you’re tiddly,’ Molly whispered when Jack had gone into the hotel bar, taking Cathy with him to give him a hand.
‘I know,’ said Tom. ‘I’m not used to it, you see.’
‘But your mother—’
‘My saintly mother will give out to me all the way home,’ Tom said. ‘The same way she gives out to me every other Saturday when I am stone-cold sober. Maybe today I’ll mind it less.’
‘Well, I’ll wish I had some of the same if you do,’ Molly said. ‘I don’t think that lemonade will have the same numbing effect.’
‘Maybe not, but there is nothing to stop you enjoying it here and now,’ Tom said.
And then Jack was there with two pints of Guinness, and Cathy with two lemonades.
Tom lifted one of the foaming tankards. ‘Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, that’s what I told myself today,’ he said to Molly with a broad wink as he lifted the glass to his lips.
Later, Molly thought Biddy was going to kill the pair of them and more so when she found that Tom had not only been drinking but doing so ‘to excess’, as she put it.
‘You have no right to leave me at all,’ she screeched. ‘Left alone for hours on end. Stuck here like a stook.’
‘And why were you?’ Tom asked amiably. ‘If you got rid of the produce early, then what was to stop you parading the town, maybe taking tea with neighbouring women, only too glad of an excuse for a good gossip? That’s what other women from the outlying farms often do on Saturday.’
‘I am not other women,’ Biddy almost snarled. ‘I am me and I have no desire other than to go home, and where were you but tipping ale down your throat? And where,’ she said suddenly grabbing Molly’s arm, ‘were you in this, miss?’
‘With me, of course,’ Tom said. ‘Helped me choose the fish, didn’t you, Moll?’
Molly nodded heartily, glad that she had the bull’s-eyes safely hidden, and hoped that her grandmother wouldn’t ask her what fish she had chosen, for she wouldn’t have a clue.
However, her grandmother hadn’t finished with Tom. Seeing him stumble as he helped her up into the seat at the front of the cart, she said sharply, ‘And you are far from steady on your feet. Are you sure you are capable of driving this horse home?’
Tom gave a short laugh. ‘Don’t worry, Mammy, you are in safe hands. I am quite capable, but even if I were paralytic and passed out in the flat of the cart, old Dobbin would still get you home in one piece.’
‘I’d rather not put it to the test,’ Biddy replied with spirit.
‘No need to,’ Tom said with a flick of the reins. ‘Hie up, Dobbin.’
All the way home, Biddy berated both Tom and Molly. Molly was so used to this now she let her grandmother’s voice go over her head while she relived the last couple of hours. She thought her uncle was taking as little notice as she was because since they had left the town he had said little and listened to his mother with an inane smile plastered across his face. That was, until Biddy went on about the money that Tom had spent in the pub.
‘What odds to you?’ he commented mildly. ‘It’s money honestly earned.’
‘Not earned to be wasted.’
‘If I earn it then I can spend my share of it on what I choose, surely?’
‘Your share of it?’ Biddy repeated.
‘Aye, Mammy, my share of it,’ Tom repeated ‘And there lies the rub, you see. I am forty-seven years old
and I have been working this farm full time since I left school at twelve, and I have never had a penny piece to call my own. I have money doled to me as if I were a wean, like today. You decide when I need a new suit for Mass, or a shirt. I am consulted on neither style nor colour, and it is the same for my everyday clothes. God, you even tip up the money for the collection at Mass. Well, it has to stop now. I will work out how much I do and how much I can legitimately take from the profits and pay myself a proper wage each week.’
‘You will not.’
‘Oh, yes, I will, Mammy,’ Tom said, and Molly noted the steely edge to his voice with surprise. ‘For there is nothing to stop me dropping you at the farmhouse door, putting all my clothes in a case, taking my share from the farm and hightailing it to England, or across the Atlantic to Joe.’
‘Joe!’ Biddy said scornfully. ‘Living hand to mouth, reliant on handouts and soup kitchens.’
‘Joe has no proper job, that’s why he has to do that for now,’ Tom said. ‘Whereas I have a job and one I am at every day, and aren’t I reliant on my mother for handouts for food and clothes and all else? It isn’t right and the sooner you accept that, the better it will be for all of us. I want some money of my own.’
‘What do you need money for?’ Biddy asked testily, unwilling to let go of the purse strings that she had held for so long. ‘To get drunk every night?’
‘If I want,’ Tom said defiantly. ‘What I do with my money in my own free time is my business, but I’m warning you, Mammy, that there are going to be a few changes around here that are long overdue.’
Molly wanted to cheer. Even though she knew her life was not going to change drastically and that she might actually suffer for the stand that Tom had made, she couldn’t regret he had made it. As he said, it was long overdue.
TEN
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.