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

‘I don’t,’ Tom said. ‘As I have already told you, no one will blame you, and for what it’s worth, you will have my support. Not that you seem to need it.’

‘I do,’ Molly said. ‘Maybe not to fight my battles, but in championing me in other ways. It is really very hard to live with someone who hates you so much. Without you I don’t think I would be able to cope.’

‘Molly, that makes me feel so much better,’ Tom said.

‘Good,’ Molly said. ‘And now if you are finished here, then let’s go inside and face the old dragon.’ But she was glad her uncle couldn’t see her insides turning somersaults.

‘I can hardly believe it,’ Cathy said, taking hold of her friend’s arm as they came out of the church the following Saturday morning. ‘I could scarcely credit it when I saw you come into the pew. How did you get your grandmother to agree? Thought you said she was dead set against it?’

‘She was – still is, probably,’ Molly said. ‘But this is all the priest’s doing.’ And she recounted what had happened when the priest called.

‘And she agreed just like that?’

‘No, not quite,’ Molly said, and was unable to prevent the shudder that ran through her body.

Cathy was no fool. ‘She hit you, didn’t she?’

‘You could say that,’ Molly said. ‘She thought that I had gone complaining to the priest, though I hadn’t. He asked me why I wasn’t at confession more.’

‘And I suppose that cold you had …’

‘Was no cold at all,’ Molly finished for her. ‘My face was too battered to be seen and my body so stiff and sore I could hardly move.’

‘Poor you,’ Cathy said sympathetically. ‘What has she been like since?’

‘Well, it has been pretty fraught, as you might imagine, and I stayed in the bedroom for four days,’ Molly said. ‘In the end, though, I had to get up. I knew eventually I would have to face her, and the longer I left it, the harder it was going to be.’

‘God, you’re braver than me,’ Cathy said. ‘I would be a crumpled heap, and I think that’s how I would stay.’

‘If I had been, then she would have won, for it was what she wanted,’ Molly said. ‘I know now that from the moment she saw me, her intention was to bend me to her will as she did Uncle Tom. She isn’t right in the head, and reacting the way she does to things is crazy. Now, when we are in the house together and Tom not there, we seem to spend the time sort of circling each other like prizefighters.’

‘You haven’t got to put up with this kind of thing, you know.’

‘Yes, I have.’

‘You could tell someone. The gardaí …’

Molly gave a hoot of laughter. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘I’m sure they would be very interested in me going in and complaining about my grandmother giving me a good hiding. They’d be likely to tell me not to be so bold and to run away and play. And in the unlikely event they did take it slightly more seriously, then it would be even worse for me. Just think about it for a minute.’

Cathy didn’t need a minute. ‘I just wish I could do something to make things easier for you,’ she said.

‘You do, by being my friend. Going to your house every week helps me keep my sanity and now if I can come to Buncrana every fortnight it will be even better. Come on, I can put my own money in the post office today and I’ll keep some back to buy sweets. What do you say?’

Cathy saw that the subject of the beating was now closed, and she gave Molly’s arm a squeeze and said, ‘I say that you are the nicest friend a girl can have.’

‘And I say that that is cupboard love,’ said Molly.

A fortnight later it would have been Molly’s mother’s birthday, and Tom knew why the girl was feeling so dispirited and low, because he remembered the day his wee sister was born. He was sent off on the horse, not Dobbin then, to alert Maggie Allinson, who did as a midwife for them all around, and he recalled he was nearly been blown right off the horse, and more than once, for the wind was nearly fierce enough to raise the thatch on the roof.

Maggie had come back with him astride the horse, holding him tight around his waist, for she said she wouldn’t risk to take the trap and her smallish pony out in such a gale, and it wasn’t long altogether till the wails of a newborn filled the cottage. Suddenly the wind howling and moaning and hurling itself about like a creature in torment ceased to matter.

Only moments later, Tom had gazed with awe at the tiny, perfect and oh so beautiful little baby and that is what he told Molly that day in the cowshed.

‘A baby is a wonderful thing,’ he said. ‘Like a little miracle that seems to get into your heart straight away somehow. I had to leave the room and I went out into the teeth of that storm and cried my eyes out.’

Molly’s eyes were moist too as she said, ‘I am glad you told me, Uncle Tom. Granddad used to tell me tons about Dad as a wee boy and when he was born and everything, but Mom … I suppose because this home was closed to her, she cut her early life from her memory, saying only that she was spoiled. Anyway, she said once that it made her unhappy to think how it had been, so I never asked again.

‘Dad’s birthday was the day after the funeral,’ she went on. ‘Mom was so pleased thinking she would be out of hospital in time for it and then it sort of passed in a blur of sadness. Anyway, when I sad this to Granddad, he said we should use their birthdays as a time to remember their lives, which were happy and fruitful, and not concentrate on the day or way they died, I think that is a good idea, don’t you?’

‘I do,’ Tom said sincerely and then added gently, ‘Molly, when did he tell you this?’

Molly clapped her hand to her mouth. Too late she remembered that Tom knew nothing about the letters. So many, many times, going or returning from the McEvoys, she had nearly mentioned the content of the letters, nothing earth-shattering, just some amusing incident her grandfather had mentioned, or a funny expression Hilda had used, and always she had stopped herself in time. And now this! What a stupid fool she had been. She groaned as she covered her face with her hands.

Tom peeled her hands away and held them between his own. ‘Look at me, Molly. This is me, your Uncle Tom, who means you no harm, who only has your good interests at heart, and nothing you tell me here will I tell another living soul, unless you give me leave to do so.’

Molly lifted her eyes and knew that Tom spoke the truth, and so the story of the letters unfolded and Tom was amazed, and annoyed with himself for not thinking up his own plan to foil his mother. But when he said this, Molly told him it was better this way.

‘No one connects the letters to me at all, for they are addressed to Cathy, and knowing the postman to be curious, for they want to know all your business here, Nellie let on that Cathy has two English pen friends.’

‘You needn’t worry that I will betray you, Molly,’ Tom said. ‘But how do you go on for stamps and paper and all?’

‘Jack McEvoy—’ Molly got no further.

‘Well, that at least I can do for you,’ Tom said, glad he could have some involvement. ‘You can tell Jack McEvoy that your uncle will deal with it from now on. In fact, I will tell him myself when we go to Buncrana today.’

Molly nearly told him about the money then, but she didn’t. That was her assurance that one day she would be free of this place and she could not risk that being compromised in any way. She knew Jack would say nothing to her uncle about the postal orders, because he had given his word and she trusted him.

She did feel bad, though, when Tom said, ‘I’ll tell you what I feel so awful about too, now that I have given myself time to think about it, and that is the fact that when I demanded a wage for myself that day coming back from the town, I never gave you a thought at all. I know what it is to have no money. I was that way for years and from now on will give you sixpence every week.’

‘No, it’s all right, Uncle Tom, really.’

‘Of course it is not all right,’ Tom said, and with a smile went on, ‘and don’t think I can’t afford it. I have plenty to buy enough Guinness to pour down my throat, as my mother is fond of saying every Saturday all the way home in the cart and when we both get in on Sunday evenings, and enough to buy baccy for my pipe. What she doesn’t know is I have a club I pay in to each week in the draper’s for my next suit for Mass, the first I will ever choose for myself, and some left over that I put in a Post Office account for a rainy day, so sixpence is neither here nor there, and this too will be a secret between us.’

Inside the house, Molly’s grandmother was waiting for her. She, of course, knew full well what day it was, but she had said nothing about it and Molly imagined that it was going to be a nonevent, not mentioned at all.

In this she was wrong, though the first thing Biddy growled out at them was that they had taken their time over the milking. Then her eyes slid over to Molly’s and she said almost as a challenge, ‘You know what day it is today, I suppose?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘I’m arranging for the nine o’clock Mass tomorrow to be said on your mother’s behalf,’ Biddy said. ‘I am seeing the priest in Buncrana today.’

Only Molly’s eyes betrayed her surprise and her grandmother went on, ‘Course, it might already be too late. Where d’you think she is now, Molly, your wonderful mother? Roasting in the flames of hell alongside your father, the pair of them screaming in agony each and every day, or did Jesus have mercy on her soul and cast her into purgatory, where she will languish for ever until there are prayers enough said to get her out?’

Biddy saw the look on Molly’s face, the raw pain of loss, and she smiled as she sneered, ‘I’m surprised that loving her as much as you say you did, you are not on your knees nearly all the night through, praying for the repose of your mother’s soul.’

Sheer willpower kept Molly’s voice steady as she said, ‘Mom was the best mother to myself and Kevin that she ever could be, and a good wife to our dad, who she loved with all her heart. They died together side by side and if there is anything good to come out of that awful day, then it is that, for one wouldn’t have ever been truly happy without the other.’

‘Do you think the Good Lord cares one jot about what sort of mother Nuala was to a godless man or mother to the children she should never have born him?’ Biddy screeched.