A Sister’s Promise

‘Dare say he is right there,’ Hilda said with a slight smile.

Her hand suddenly shot into the biscuit tin and came out with a handful. ‘Here,’ she said, pushing them at Molly. ‘Take these, and just for you, mind. Don’t you go sharing them. You are far too thin.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Course I’m sure, positive sure,’ Hilda said with a sniff. ‘Now get going before I end up blarting my eyes out.’

Everything stood ready, bags and boxes packed, for they were leaving early in the morning.

Molly and her grandfather went to the hospital to say goodbye to Kevin. As the day grew nearer to his grandmother’s departure, and with his grandfather’s continual assurance that he was going home with him, the child had improved dramatically. Stan had hoped the hospital might have allowed him to go with him to see Molly and Biddy off at the station.

‘He may have a very bad reaction to seeing his sister go off like that,’ the doctor said. ‘Have they ever been apart before?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘Well, from what I have seen, they seem remarkably fond of one another,’ the doctor commented. ‘I would rather they said goodbye here, where we are all on hand if we are needed.’

Stan could see the doctor’s point of view, and Kevin was upset when it dawned on him that he probably wouldn’t see Molly for a long, long time. Molly also cried bitterly. She had been eight when he was born and she had helped her mother bring him up. Though he was a nuisance at times, as little brothers go he wasn’t bad, and she loved him to bits and really thought she should be there for him with both their parents dead.

However, for Kevin’s sake, she tried to get a grip on herself. ‘I will be working next year, Kevin,’ she told the child. ‘I will come back when I am sixteen and we will be together again, you’ll see.’

‘Do you promise?’ Kevin said.

Molly looked at Kevin’s eyes, sparkling with tears, and said firmly, ‘Course I do.’

‘What if our grandmother don’t let you?’

‘She won’t be able to stop me when I am sixteen,’ Molly declared. ‘Anyroad, she can just go and boil her head.’ She saw the ghost of a smile at the corners of Kevin’s mouth. ‘Look,’ she said, and she licked her index finger and chanted, ‘See it wet, see it dry,’ then drew the finger across her neck, ‘cut my throat if I tell a lie.’ She saw Kevin sigh with relief. ‘Three years, that’s all, Kevin,’ Molly said. ‘And I promise we will be a family again.’

However, three years when you are five is a very long time indeed. Kevin clung to Molly at the moment of parting and when Stan eventually peeled the weeping child from her, held him in his arms and signed for her to go, she left the room rapidly, knowing that to linger would only make matters worse.

Stan held the child until the sobs ceased and Kevin lay still. Then he said, ‘Would you like to go fishing, sometime with me, Kevin?’

Kevin was so surprised at the question that he was nonplussed for a moment or two. Then he shrugged and said, ‘I don’t know, Granddad.’

‘I used to take your daddy when he was a wee boy.’

‘Did you?’ Kevin found it hard to imagine his daddy as a young boy at all.

‘I surely did,’ Stan said. ‘Would you like to give it a go?’

‘Um, I think so.’

‘And I think that you are old enough to go to the football matches now too,’ Stan said. ‘What do you say?’

Kevin’s face was one big beam. ‘Oh, yes, Granddad.’

‘Right then, ’cos us men have got to look after one another, you know,’ Stan continued. ‘So you have to get well and out of here mighty quick, and look after your old granddad.’

‘Yes. All right, I will,’ Kevin said determinedly.

A little later, Stan came upon Molly waiting for him in the corridor and at the sight of her woebegone face, he wished he could cheer her up as easily as Kevin, but he couldn’t think of a thing to say. Molly didn’t seem to want to talk anyway; she was sort of buttoned up inside herself all the way back to the house.

FIVE (#ulink_5ffa3bf9-51b3-5ca4-bd8b-8ab660c907ea)

Molly knew she would never forget the sight of her grandfather standing on the platform waving until he became a small dot in the distance. She felt a sharp pain in her heart as if it had been split asunder just as when she had heard of the death of her parents. Granddad was the last link with all that was familiar in her life, and she cried silently as she leaned her head on the window of the carriage.

Stan felt almost as bad to see his granddaughter move out of his life. He was glad he had told Biddy nothing about the money for the children from Paul Simmons. His conscience had smote him about this at first, until he had really got to know Biddy. Then he realised that had she been aware of the money, it wouldn’t have benefited Molly in the slightest – and Molly might have need of money some day. At least that was something he had done for her, he thought as, with the train out of sight, he turned sorrowfully away.

When Biddy, sitting beside Molly, realised she was crying, she was furious with her.

‘Stop this at once,’ she hissed, but as quietly as she could, mindful of the others sharing their carriage. ‘Making a holy show of yourself.’

Molly saw the woman opposite look at her with sympathetic eyes, but she knew enough about her grandmother’s character to know that it would be the worse for her if she were to engender any sort of interest from her fellow passengers. So she tried to swallow the lump of misery lodged in her throat and looked out at the landscape flashing past the windows, knowing that in any other circumstance she would probably have enjoyed the experience because she had never been further than Birmingham in the whole of her life.

She saw the buildings and houses at the city’s edge give way to fields, dappled here and there by the early morning sun peeping from the clouds. Some of the fields were cultivated, set in rows with things growing in them; others were bare, the long grass waving in the breeze, or dotted with sheep, many with their lambs gambolling beside them. In another there might be horses, the lean racy sort, or the thick heavy ones with shaggy feet, the kind of horse the milkman and the coalman used in Birmingham. Sometimes, cows would lean their heads over the five-barred gates, placidly chewing and watching the train pass.

Now and again Molly would spy isolated farmhouses, and she realised suddenly she knew nothing about the farm she was going to. She asked her grandmother about it.

‘We do a bit of everything,’ Biddy said. ‘We grow vegetables, have a few cows, a pig and chickens, of course. We used to have sheep, but after my man died and Joe high-tailed it to America, Tom couldn’t manage the sheep as well as everything else. Even as it stands now, it’s a lot for one man. He will be glad of your help.’

‘But won’t I have to go to school?’

Biddy smiled her horrible, hard smile. She said with more than a measure of satisfaction, ‘I think you have enough book-learning. Any more won’t be any sort of asset on a farm.’

Molly’s heart sank. For one thing, she had thought school would get her away from her grandmother’s brooding presence for much of the day, and anyway she was good at her lessons. When her parents were both alive they had intended keeping her at school until she was sixteen and allowing her to matriculate. She told her grandmother this and went on, ‘Dad said it would help me get a good job in the end.’

Again there was that sardonic smile. ‘You have a job,’ Biddy said. ‘Like I said before, you’ll be on the farm alongside Tom, and all the book-learning in the world won’t make you any better at that.’

Molly felt suddenly cold inside and she held out little hope that she would get on any better with this Uncle Tom she had not seen, who was probably just as nasty as his mother. Her heart plummeted to her boots.

She saw her plans for any sort of life she might have imagined for herself crumble to dust, but she knew that to say any of this would achieve nothing. So she was silent, and mighty glad later to find her grandmother had fallen asleep.

If it hadn’t been for the other people on the train, Molly would never have managed at Crewe, where they had to change trains, for they also had to change platforms and other people helped carry the bags up the huge iron staircase, along the bridge spanning the line, and down the other side. Molly was immensely grateful, especially when those same people helped her board the ferry at Liverpool.

It was called the Ulster Prince, and she thought it magnificent, towering up out of the scummy grey water of the quay, with its three large black funnels atop everything, spilling grey smoke into the spring morning. She was on deck, the sun warm on her back and sparkling on the water as she watched the boat pull away. Her knuckles were white, she was gripping the rail so tightly. She remembered the promise she had made to Kevin and she vowed, but silently, ‘I will be back. However long it takes, I will be back.’

‘Come along,’ her grandmother said, just behind her. ‘They are serving breakfasts in the dining room until noon, and it is turned eleven already.’

Molly followed Biddy eagerly. They had been travelling for many hours and she had been too nervous to eat much before they left the house.

The dining room was delightful. Its windows were round, and when she queried this, she was told they were called portholes. In the dining room they were decorated with pretty pink curtains.

They could have creamy porridge with as much sugar and hot milk as anyone wanted, followed by toast and jam and a pot of tea, all for one and sixpence. Molly ate everything before her, and took three spoons of sugar in her tea, just because she could, and afterwards thought how much better a person felt when they had a full stomach. She kept this thought in her head just a little time. It certainly wasn’t there when she stood alongside her grandmother and a good many more and vomited all her breakfast into the churning waters.

By the time they alighted in Belfast, Molly was feeling decidedly ill. Her stomach ached and her throat burned from the constant vomiting that continued long after she had anything left, and made her feel wretched for the entire crossing, which took three and a half hours.

By the time they disembarked and were aboard the train, she was also feeling light-headed and had a throbbing pain behind her eyes. Her grandmother’s voice, berating her for something or other, seemed to be coming from a long way off and she was too tired and disorientated to distinguish what the woman was on about anyway. Her eyes closed almost by themselves, and the next thing she remembered was her grandmother shaking her roughly as the train pulled in to Derry.