A Sister's Promise

by Anne Bennett

  ‘Yes,’ Nellie said with a grimace. ‘She would be.’

  In fact, Biddy was far from finished. She bought Molly a couple of liberty bodices too. Molly had worn these before as a child for extra warmth in the winter, but they were nothing like these ones, which pressed her breasts down uncomfortably and had suspenders attached to them. Biddy bought thick black stockings to attach to them and voluminous knickers.

  ‘Take that look off your face, girl,’ Biddy said, as they left the shop. ‘This is what you are getting. Like it or lump it, it makes no odds to me. Now for the coat and boots.’

  The boots were second-hand, a pair the cobbler had left on his hands after repairing them. ‘They are more a boy’s boot than a girl’s,’ he told Biddy doubtfully.

  ‘A boot’s a boot, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but these are hobnailed to make them hard-wearing. That’s why the mothers buy them for the boys.’

  ‘They look just fine to me,’ Biddy said. She turned to Molly and said, ‘Try them on. If they fit you, we will take them.’

  Molly thought of the ugly clothes and the ugly underwear and now the ugly boots, and she wanted to weep, especially when she remembered the pretty clothes her mother had bought her, which she took such pleasure in wearing, and the patent shoes that she could almost see her face in.

  However, she knew her grandmother was already enjoying her discomfort and would be delighted to see tears. She would not give her that satisfaction. She lifted her head at this resolve. The movement was barely perceptible, but Biddy spotted it and it enraged her. By God, she thought, I will knock that pride out of her if it is the last thing I do. The shabby black coat she bought in the second-hand shop was one the proprietor thought he would never get rid of. It was far too big for Molly too, and so long she knew it would reach the top of her boots, but Biddy told him to wrap it up, they would take it.

  The next morning, Tom could hardly believe her eyes when Molly came out of her room dressed in her new clothes for Mass. He understood now why she hadn’t been excited at getting new things like Nuala had always been. She would be showing him this and that in the cart even, and once home insist on putting the new things on and parading in front of them all, his mother looking on dotingly at her darling child.

  His eyes slid to his mother’s now and he saw the gleam of satisfaction there. He thought her a malicious old cow and he knew the best thing to do was not to mention the clothes at all.

  So he smiled at Molly and said, ‘You ready then?’

  Molly was grateful to Tom and when she got to the church no one commented either, but Molly couldn’t altogether ignore the looks of pity that were shot her way. She didn’t want pity. It was no earthly use to anyone. She had money of her own now to buy what clothes she wanted. The five shillings had grown over the two years, especially as most weeks Tom remembered to give her sixpence, which she usually saved to pay for stationery and stamps. But she would not touch a penny piece of that money. It was to be her gateway to freedom, when she would be able to dress in any way she chose.

  * * *

  Just after they had news of Joe’s safe arrival in England, Molly heard of Germany’s invasion of Austria.

  ‘Uncle Tom, you don’t just march into another person’s country and take it over,’ Molly said as they walked home from the McEvoys’ one Sunday evening.

  ‘Well, that’s what Hitler did all right.’

  ‘And they just let him?’

  ‘That’s about the strength of it,’ Tom said. ‘Course, he was Austrian by birth. That’s maybe why. Anyway, they say without a shot fired he is now in charge of Austria. They call it the Anschluss. It means joining up, I suppose, like a merger.’

  ‘But I don’t understand,’ Molly said. ‘I mean, why did he want Austria? Isn’t Germany enough for him?’

  ‘Ah, Molly! If it was just Austria.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that I think this is the tip of a very big iceberg.’

  ‘But it doesn’t have to be,’ Molly said. ‘If Hitler wants Austria for some reason, and Austria doesn’t mind, then let him have the damned place if it matters much to him.’

  ‘I think, Molly, that that is what the world will be forced to do,’ said Tom.

  Then in late September of that same year the Prime Minister of Britain, Neville Chamberlain, had gone to see Hitler in Munich and worked out a deal, and there was a picture of him on the front pages of the paper waving the piece of paper and declaring, ‘I believe it is peace for our time.’

  Molly, as usual, followed the news stories at Cathy’s house. ‘That’s good news, at any rate,’ she said.

  ‘Um, I suppose,’ Cathy replied.

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Well, it’s just that Daddy said that Chamberlain had to give Hitler a piece of Czechoslovakia to get him to agree.’

  Molly pondered this for a moment and then she said, ‘Well, I don’t see that that is right. I know what problems there are taking away part of a country, and Ireland knows that maybe better than many. I also don’t see what gave Britain the authority to take land from one country and give it to another just because they wanted it, and I have no idea how the Czechoslovakian government or its people feel about it either. But I can’t help feeling if the alternative was war they would probably agree anyway.’

  ‘You’re right, of course,’ Cathy said. ‘It is what anyone with any sense would want. Anyway, I’m grateful that all the fretting and anxiety is out of the way. Maybe now everyone can stop going around with doleful faces.’

  ‘Oh God, Cathy,’ Molly cried with a smile, ‘do you really think that is likely? It is adults we are talking about here, and the age of miracles is past long ago.’

  ‘Cathy says her father thinks Chamberlain a fool,’ Molly told her uncle one Sunday evening in early February 1939, as they walked home from the McEvoys’.

  ‘He does,’ Tom said, ‘and so do I if he actually trusts Hitler and believes that bit of paper he was shaking so importantly has any credence at all. I don’t want a war, Molly – no one in their right mind would – but somehow we seem to be balanced on a knife-edge, like we are waiting for something.’

  They hadn’t long to wait, because the following month, though the Spanish Civil War eventually drew to a close, the dictator Franco was the victor and the leader of the country, and that same month Hitler’s armies marched into Czechoslovakia.

  In May, Joe wrote to tell them of the Territorial Army recalled and mobilised, and the call-up begun of young men of twenty and twenty-one years. For the first time, Molly faced the fact that Britain at least was walking the path to war, and she wrote an impassioned letter to her grandfather and Hilda, telling them to look after themselves and keep safe at all costs.

  Stan, probably thinking to reassure his granddaughter, told her of the corrugated iron shelters that would be delivered to every house with a garden big enough to take them.

  It will be the end of me growing my taters and my onions, at least for now, because we will have to dig a big pit to put it in. Kevin will help me – you would hardly know the lad now for he is growing up fast. Anyway, when the pit is dug and the thing assembled and fitted into it, you pile earth on the top. People say if there is enough earth then you can still grow your vegetables.

  So don’t you worry your little head about us, for won’t we be as safe as houses in there? If war does come, it will not be another Guernica here, so don’t fret.

  It didn’t make Molly feel any better at all. The thought of her grandfather and her little brother, and possibly Hilda and her husband too, burrowing into the ground like animals, while bombs rained down on them from the sky, horrified her. Her grandfather’s reference to Guernica bought to mind the pictures she had seen of that blitzed town, the buildings reduced to piles of smoking, smouldering rubble, its many dead or dying, others dreadfully injured.

  The savagery of it had shocked the world and now that same thing perhaps might be afflicted on
them or those belonging to them. God, it didn’t bear thinking about.

  The talk of war was everywhere and couldn’t be escaped as the spring rolled into summer. Tom told her, going home from the McEvoys one day, that not all Irishmen felt that the war should affect them or their country at all.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, you see, many feel that this is England’s fight, not theirs, and they should keep well out of it. I think they are remembering England’s promise of Home Rule as thanks for Ireland’s support in the Great War, where our brother Finn lost his life.’

  Molly nodded. ‘Mom told me about that and also that the promise wasn’t kept.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Tom said. ‘And of course that led to years of unease and almost civil war raging through the land. People here don’t want to be dragged in again.’

  ‘I can see they have a point,’ Molly said. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘I think the past should stay in the past,’ Tom said firmly. ‘What’s done is done, and it does no good to be rehashing it all the time. I think if Britain goes to war we could well be dragged into it whether we like it or not. And though I am essentially a man of peace, I could do my bit as well as the next man if I had to.’

  ‘Yeah, I think that is the best way to look at it really,’ Molly agreed.

  ‘But I think it would do no harm to get a wireless in,’ Tom said.

  ‘A wireless! Oh, Uncle Tom!’ Molly hugged herself with delight.

  Tom smiled at her. ‘Joe was after advising me to get one; keep abreast of things,’ he said in explanation. ‘Seems a good enough idea to me.’

  ‘But how will you work it?’ Molly asked. ‘I mean, we had a wireless at home, but it ran on electric.’

  ‘These have something called an accumulator in the back,’ Tom said. ‘The man in the shop in Buncrana was showing me. He said it has to be charged up every so often and I can do that in Buncrana when I go in on a Saturday. Anyway, he has one on order for me and I am picking it up next Saturday.’

  ‘Oh, it will be grand to have a wireless,’ Molly said. ‘Ooh, I can’t wait.’

  Biddy didn’t think it was grand at all. ‘Waste of more money,’ she growled out as Tom proudly carried it indoors. ‘Boy, money must burn a hole in your pocket.’

  ‘I am no boy,’ Tom snapped back. ‘And when I ask you to give me something towards anything I buy, then you may express an opinion. This was bought with my own hard-earned money and we have already established that what I do with that is my own business.’

  Molly smiled. For her money, Tom could go for a drink every day of the week because he could always cope better with his mother when he had sunk a few pints of Guinness with Jack and the rest of the men. And anyway, she thought, nothing could take the pleasure away from actually having a wireless in the house again.

  FOURTEEN

  England at least was preparing for war. Molly’s grandfather told her of the trenches dug in Birmingham parks and the reinforced brick-built shelters that were going up everywhere. Even the children got involved, and Kevin wrote and told her of the hundreds of bags they had spent ages filling with sand through the hot summer days.

  Hilda explained to her about the blackout and the issuing of gas masks.

  Not a chink of light to be seen outside and if it is, you face a fine of £200, think on that? And the ruddy gas masks is just horrible. They smell to high heaven, and everyone has a box to put them in that they must carry around their neck in case of gas attacks, they say.

  ‘What are these gas attacks like, Uncle Tom?’ Molly asked one day in the cowshed.

  ‘Well,’ Tom said, ‘I can only talk about the last war when the Germans used mustard gas on the soldiers. It buggers up, I mean, damages the lungs so that a person can’t breathe.’

  ‘Does it kill?’

  ‘Aye, I believe it can do,’ Tom said. ‘I suppose all these measures are to protect the civilian population. They are sending the children away too, so Joe said. Did your grandfather tell you that?’

  Molly nodded. ‘Doesn’t affect them,’ she said. ‘Erdington obviously isn’t considered a high-risk area.’

  ‘Tottenham is,’ Tom said. ‘But Joe says that Gloria won’t even consider Ben going anywhere.’

  ‘I don’t blame her either,’ Molly said. ‘But it is scary, isn’t it?’

  ‘All war is scary,’ Tom said. ‘Only a fool wouldn’t be scared, and though the raids and all won’t happen here, because Ireland has declared itself neutral, we have loved ones to worry about in England that I am certain will soon be in the thick of it.’

  ‘I know,’ Molly said, and her heart felt as heavy as lead.

  On Friday, 1 September, the day many children from England’s cities were travelling to unknown destinations, Germany invaded Poland. Molly’s eyes met those of her uncle as the voice on the wireless told them what this meant. Everyone with a grain of common sense knew already.

  Molly was glad the following Sunday that her grandmother wasn’t the kind to linger after nine o’clock Mass. There was going to be an address by the British Prime Minister, just after eleven, and Molly wanted to have the opportunity to listen to it, although she knew what it was going to say.

  She wasn’t disappointed either. By 11.15 a.m. on Sunday 3 September 1939, she heard that Britain was at war with Germany, and she felt suddenly numbed with fear.

  Everyone, both in Ireland and Britain, expected raids from the air once war between Britain and Germany was official, but it didn’t happen. In fact, nothing did. There were battles at sea and ships sunk which were often reported in the Irish papers. Though Molly could feel sorry about the sailors who had lost their lives, that didn’t adversely affect her loved ones at all.

  In fact, what seemed to affect them most was the blackout. As Hilda put it,

  Telling you, Molly, you ain’t seen dark like it. You can’t see a hand in front of you. And there’s accidents, of course. I mean, stands to reason. Some of them have been little, like slipping off kerbs and that, and you do feel right daft when you find yourself apologising to the pillar box, or lamppost you have just walked into. But, some of the accidents have been more serious and people have been injured, or even killed on the roads, because the cars and buses and stuff are unlit too. In fact, my old man says he wonders who the enemy is, for Germany has been quiet since the balloon really went up. Calm before the storm, I dare say, but if the government don’t do summat about this here blackout soon, there won’t be the people left to fight Hitler off if he does try to take a pop at us.

  Her granddad hated it as much as anyone else, but he was also dreading the rationing that was being introduced in the new year.

  I know, though, it will be a fairer system and much better than the last war when the rich bought all before them, so that in some places there was little left in the shops for the rest of us. Anyway, I suppose I must put up with it like everyone else. If you utter a word in complaint about any damned thing these days you are reminded there is a war on. I mean, as if you are likely to forget.

  I’ve had word that we are having our Anderson shelter delivered next week. We have the pit already dug and once the shelter is up I will make it as snug as I can for the two of us. Then Hitler can do his worst and we’ll be as safe as houses.

  Now, Molly, I want you to listen to me. I never wanted you to go to Ireland in the first place and I know that you would be well aware of that. And you also know that in the normal way of things I would welcome you back tomorrow, but you are safer where you are and I want you to stay put until this little lot is over. Me and Kevin are all right, but you would be put to work in a munitions factory or something like that, and those are the places that will be right in the firing range if any attacks come. I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to either of you children.

  Molly could understand her granddad’s concern and was glad too that he was having the Anderson shelter delivered at last. She might not be that ecstatic about the two of them burrowing ins
ide a tin shack buried in the garden but she had to admit that if the raids came, it had to be a safer place to bide than out in the open with no protection at all.

  Spring came early in 1940, and, even though she longed to go back to Birmingham, by May Molly thought the countryside had never looked better. The sunshine lent a glow to everything, and many of the trees were heavy with fragrant blossom. Added to this, all the crops were ripening very satisfactorily in the fields. The war seemed a million miles away.

  And yet just the previous evening she had heard a man on the wireless tell them of the bombing of Rotterdam that left nine hundred people dead. Molly felt sick, for she knew that this was Blitzkrieg, or lightning war, which the Germans had promised was coming and she also knew what had been done in Rotterdam could be achieved just as well in Birmingham, London or anywhere else they chose.

  No one was surprised when Belgium and Holland surrendered, and then towards the end of the month they heard of the defeat of France, the Allied troops trapped on the beaches of Dunkirk and the frantic efforts to rescue them.

  ‘Don’t the people in Birmingham tell you any of this?’ Tom asked Molly one day in early June as they did the milking together.

  ‘If they try, like they did in the beginning, then the censor cuts it out,’ Molly said. ‘Now they stick to general things like how hard it is to make the rations stretch and how they have food programmes on the wireless every day and between films in the cinema, and there are hints and tips in the newspapers and magazines. Granddad has taken on an allotment with Hilda’s husband, Alf, though he says he now has a fine crop of potatoes growing in the earth he piled on top of the Anderson shelter.’

  ‘Which they haven’t had any occasion to use yet.’

  ‘No, thank God,’ Molly said fervently. ‘It is bound to come, though. The government have recommended putting tape crisscrossing the windows to prevent flying glass in the event of an attack, and the blackout is as stringent as ever, though they are now allowing shielded torches and shielded light on cars and other vehicles.’