Anne Bennett 3-Book Collection: A Sister’s Promise, A Daughter’s Secret, A Mother’s Spirit. Anne Bennett
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giggle was so infectious that Molly, who had once wondered if she would ever laugh again, joined in.
‘Did you see the faces of those we passed?’ Cathy said, when their hilarity was spent a little and she was dabbing at her damp eyes with a handkerchief. ‘If we are not careful, they will have the men with the white coats carry us away to the mental home in Derry.’
‘Rubbish,’ Molly said with a grin. ‘It made them smile too. Laughter is like that.’
‘My mammy always says it’s good for a body,’ Cathy agreed. ‘She says she had read somewhere that if you have a good belly laugh it can lengthen your life.’
‘Goodness!’ Molly said. ‘Can it really? I wonder by how much.’
‘Maybe we should have a good laugh every five minutes and live for ever,’ Cathy suggested.
‘Now, who is the fool?’ Molly smiled.
Cathy didn’t have time to answer this, for then they passed under the bridge carrying the railway line and there was the mill in front of them.
It was built on three levels, the largest of these having a tall, high chimney reaching to the sky. It didn’t look a very inspiring place to work in, but Molly reminded herself there were probably worse places in Birmingham, and she supposed that if it was work there or starve to death, one place was as inviting as the next.
‘Awful, isn’t it?’ Cathy said. ‘Daddy always said he didn’t want any of his children near the place but my brothers, John and Pat, had to work there for a bit. Then the place went afire four years ago. No one knew for a while if anyone was going to bother rebuilding it, and anyway, the boys didn’t stay around to find out. They both took the emigrant ship to America from Moville and Daddy said he didn’t blame them. They are in a place called Detroit now and, according to their letters anyway, have good jobs there in the motor industry.’
‘Didn’t your mother mind them going so far away?’ Molly asked.
Cathy nodded. ‘It was worse, of course, when my sisters left just a year after the boys to work in hotels in England. They say it is great, the hotel provides the uniforms, a place to stay and all their food, and all they need to do with their money is spend it, though they do send some home, and the boys too. It’s not the same, though. It isn’t that Mammy isn’t grateful for the money, she just says it’s hard to scrimp and scrape, working fingers to the bone raising children only for them to leave as soon as possible. She was married at seventeen, you know?’
‘Was she?’ Molly said. ‘It seems awfully young.’
‘I’ll say,’ Cathy said with feeling. ‘I certainly don’t want to go down that road at such an early age. My sisters don’t either. They say they are having too good a time to tie themselves down with a husband and weans, and that is what happens, of course, as soon as you are married. I mean, Mammy had my eldest brother, John, just ten months after they were married and he’s twenty-six now.’ She smiled and went on, ‘Mammy was glad that it was ten months. She always said the most stupid people in all the towns and villages of Ireland have the ability to count to nine.’
‘You can say that again,’ Molly said, for the girls were well aware that to have a baby outside marriage was just about the worst thing a girl could do, and to have to get married was only slightly better.
‘Anyway, Mammy hates my sisters writing so glowingly about their lives in England,’ Cathy continued. ‘She’s thinking, I suppose, that I might be tempted to join them.’
‘And are you?’
‘Not at the moment, certainly,’ Cathy said. ‘I like it here and I am set to have a good solid job helping to run the post office and probably going to take it on in the end. I don’t want to throw that in the air now, do I?’
‘Only if you were stupid,’ Molly said. ‘I really envy you to have your life so mapped out. But I will not bide here for ever. I will leave here as soon as I am old enough and be reunited with my young brother. I really miss him.’
‘Well, there in front of us is the railway station you will have to start from,’ Cathy said. ‘But you probably know that already.’
‘No. Why would I know that?’
‘Didn’t you come in there on your way from Derry?’
‘No,’ Molly told her. ‘Uncle Tom brought us home in the cart.’
‘Oh, I didn’t know that,’ Cathy said. ‘It was probably just as well, for Derry is only six miles away from here, and the trains are far from reliable. They carry freight as well, with the passengers in a sort of brake thing behind them, and of course stop at every station to unload.’
‘I would have travelled in anything at that time,’ Molly said. ‘I was so worn out. We had been on and off trains and boats since early morning.’
‘Were you sick on the crossing?’
‘I’ll say.’ Molly added with a grin, ‘It was a bit of a waste too, because we had both had breakfast on the boat and we brought it back just minutes later and everything else that had the nerve to lie in our stomachs.’
Cathy nodded, ‘My sisters said they were the same, and my younger brother, Pat, was so ill, John thought he would die on him. I bet he was more than glad to reach land, because they were at sea for ten days.’
Molly gave a shiver. ‘Poor thing,’ she said. ‘I had three and a half hours of it and that was enough.’
‘I bet,’ Cathy said with feeling. ‘Well, this now is the station. The roof looks bigger than the building. And I know where you get the tickets, because I came to see my sisters off.’ She led the way to a two-storeyed, flat-roofed building housing the ticket office, adjoining the main body of the station, and then past that and on to the platform. Molly followed and looked about her with interest. She tried to imagine the time when she would board a train from there to take her home.
‘What’s that mass of green in front?’ she asked Cathy.
‘The golf course.’
‘Golly, don’t they lose their golf balls in the water ever?’ Molly asked, because she could see the glistening waters of the Swilly just beyond the course.
Cathy smiled. ‘Probably lots of times.’
‘And what’s beyond that on the other side of the Lough?’
‘Rathmullen,’ Cathy said, pointing. ‘And just a bit further up, Glenvar. Come on now,’ she urged. ‘I want to show you the harbour where the fishing boats come in.’
Molly was impressed by the harbour and all the fishing vessels vying for space at the dockside, and she was charmed by the Lough, which she thought was just as good as the stories she had heard about the seaside because, just along from the harbour, she could plainly see large rocks and sandy beaches.
Cathy hailed two friends, Bernadette McCauley and Maeve Gilligan, whom Molly had met at Mass. Then Cathy pointed out the diving board and chute on the far side of the Lough. ‘My brothers learned to swim there,’ she said. ‘Most boys did, but of course we girls were forbidden to go near.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, some boys swam with no clothes on,’ Cathy said. ‘Not my brothers – Mammy wouldn’t let them – but some, and that is not a sight I would like to see.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ murmured Bernadette. ‘That surely would depend on the boy.’
‘Bernadette McCauley,’ exclaimed Cathy and Maeve together.
Cathy went on, ‘Confession for you, my girl. Impure thoughts and all.’
Bernadette just laughed. ‘I am telling no priest the thoughts that pop up in my head,’ she declared. ‘The poor man couldn’t stand the excitement. God, I’m sure his hair would stand on end.’
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