Anne Bennett 3-Book Collection: A Sister’s Promise, A Daughter’s Secret, A Mother’s Spirit. Anne Bennett
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before the haystacks were built.
In the potato fields, Dobbin pulled the reaper that brought the potatoes to the surface. Molly went after, collecting them up in metal buckets, as she did with the turnips and swede, and she and her uncle collected the cabbages from another field together.
The corn was cut last and then taken to the mill to be threshed into meal, which Tom explained was used for oaten bread and porridge. The harvest was a tough time and general weariness and aching limbs encouraged Molly to fall into a deep sleep as soon as her head touched the pillow every night. Despite this though, she could quite see the satisfaction a person would feel knowing that by their labours there was enough food collected in for everyone throughout the winter, including the animals, and more than enough turf for the fire.
Of course, harvesting the crops meant she had been out of the house for days, working alongside her uncle a lot of the time. She knew without doubt that she would far rather be out in the fields with him, however arduous the work, than anywhere at all with her grandmother.
Just before the winter really set in, Tom brought quicklime back from the lime kiln one day, and he and Molly cleared out the well together, and lined the inside with the quicklime, which they had mixed with water, before allowing the well to fill up again. The quicklime was also used to make the whitewash for the outside of the cottage, and Molly found she liked doing that. Tom also checked that any poor thatch was replaced to keep the place weatherproof, but though Molly had climbed on to the roof with him, she was no good at the thatching itself – all fingers and thumbs, as her uncle said.
As the autumn rolled on, Molly realised how much she was dreading this first Christmas without her parents and guessed that there would be little festive cheer in that house of misery. She was right, for Christmas at the Sullivan house was almost a nonevent. No streamers festooned the house in the run-up to Christmas, there was no tree, no wooden Nativity scene decorating the mantelshelf and no cards at all.
Molly tried to push down the memories of the many Christmas days she had enjoyed at home, but she couldn’t help thinking nostalgically about them. She cried herself to sleep on Christmas Eve, feeling her loss especially poignantly, and yearning so much to be with those still left to her in Birmingham that it seemed to spread all over her body, making her nerve ends tingle and ache.
Tom listened to the anguished sobbing of the young girl, frustrated that he was so helpless to deal with such pain and sorrow, and hoped to God his mother wasn’t roused. He was so disturbed that he lay with his eyes smarting with tiredness, long after Molly was eventually quiet.
Molly woke heavy-eyed and sluggish, and dragged herself from the bed into the cold black early morning, pulling on her dungarees, for even on Christmas Day cows have to be milked. She went into the room to rake up the fire and put on the kettle. While she was doing that, Tom stopped beside her at the hearth, on his way to the cowshed.
He was pleased that his mother’s even breathing behind the bed canopy indicated that she was still asleep as he almost whispered, ‘Happy Christmas, Molly,’ and pressed a parcel into her hands.
Molly had expected no present, so she was stunned when she opened the packaging to find gloves, a scarf and a jaunty tam-o’-shanter, all of the softest wool in a myriad pastel colours. She was almost too overcome to speak, though she gasped in delight, and Tom saw her moist eyes and knew just how pleased she was. He was glad that he had asked Nellie’s advice.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ Molly said eventually. ‘You have taken me so much by surprise and you couldn’t have got anything better. My hands have been like blocks of ice some days, so thank you, Uncle Tom. Thank you so much. I can’t tell you how this has pleased me.’ She stood on tiptoe and kissed her uncle’s cheek, and he flushed bright pink with embarrassment.
‘’S all right,’ he said gruffly. ‘I’ve given the gift to you now so that you can wear them to Mass if you have a mind.’
‘Oh, I have a mind all right,’ Molly said. ‘I would be proud and pleased to wear them.’
Biddy, of course, tried to spoil it all, and laughed at Tom for what she called his stupidity. She wasn’t even mollified with the shawl he had bought her, but Molly refused to let Biddy’s sourness spoil her pleasure, and the people going into Mass that morning more than made up for it anyway. Nellie was so pleased the things suited her and Jack told her she was as pretty as a picture.
She so wished she could go home with the McEvoys after Mass, but it was no good wishing for things she couldn’t have, and she knew that as well as anyone. At least, she told herself as they made their way home, they had decent food in the house for a change, for Biddy had wrung the neck of a hen that was no longer laying the day before and Molly had drawn the innards from it and it was now ready to be cooked.
Molly hated preparing the hens to eat. In Birmingham they had bought them from the butcher ready just to put in the oven. The very first time Biddy had made Molly draw out the bird’s innards the sight and smell had caused her to be sick in the gutter in the yard afterwards, and Biddy had laughed at her. She couldn’t help feeling nauseous every time, but she would never allow herself to be sick again and give Biddy any reason to gloat over her.
Despite the food, though, the day was as gloomy as Molly thought it would be, and though she did go for a tramp with her uncle and later played cards with him, she was glad when the day was over and she could look forward to seeing Cathy and her parents the following day.
The next day, though, she wasn’t sure she would be allowed to go, for her grandmother kicked up shockingly. A tantrum of such magnitude used to terrify Tom to the extent he would give in to anything she wanted, and he felt his innards quail at the vitriol pouring from her mouth. Even Molly was unnerved.
And then Biddy’s temper got the better of her and she lashed out at Molly. The first punch causing her nose to spurt blood and the second, administered before Tom could get to her, split her lip. Anger replaced the fear coursing through Tom’s vein and he helped Molly to her feet because the power of the second punch had knocked her over.
He said to his mother through gritted teeth. ‘You have cooked your goose right and proper now. Why in God’s name would anyone want to stay with someone like you one minute longer than was necessary? And I’m warning you, Mammy, if you can’t keep your hands to yourself, you’d better watch out I don’t do the same to you one of these days.’
‘How dare you?’ Biddy shrieked. ‘Let me tell you—’
‘No,’ Tom said firmly. ‘I don’t want to hear it. I am off for more congenial company and so is Molly, and we will see you later.’
Both Nellie and Jack McEvoy looked askance at Molly’s face when she arrived at their door, but didn’t ask any questions. Cathy, on the other hand, barely waited until they were in her bedroom, before she said, ‘Your face is a right mess. What happened to it?’
Molly felt she owed Biddy no loyalty so she said, ‘My grandmother wasn’t that keen on me coming here today.’
‘So, she did that to you?’
‘That’s right.’
Cathy was shocked to the core. ‘That’s awful.’
‘I agree,’ Molly said. ‘In fact, I think it is so awful that I don’t want to think about it any more, never mind talk about it.’
Cathy knew she was right. What was the point of going on and on about something dreadful that she had no power of changing? So she said, ‘Let’s talk about Christmas instead, because it is my favourite time in the whole year.’
‘It used to be mine too.’
‘Sorry,’ Cathy said, wincing at her tactlessness. ‘That was stupid of me.’
‘It’s all right, really,’ Molly said. ‘Though I must admit, I have missed my parents very much this year.’
‘You were bound to,’ Cathy said gently. ‘I bet your grandfather sent you a card, though, and your brother.’
Molly