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