Anne Bennett 3-Book Collection: A Sister’s Promise, A Daughter’s Secret, A Mother’s Spirit. Anne Bennett
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opened his mouth, but said nothing more. Molly was not ready yet to hear of his concerns. If he was right and he hoped to God he wasn’t, then before too long there would be plenty to worry about. What was the point of meeting trouble halfway?
Anyway, Molly told herself as the year rolled on, she was right not to fret over Spain. Britain and Ireland were islands and safe, surely. England had a new King on the throne too, for Edward’s brother had been crowned George VI. Her granddad had said in his letters that the celebrations had been muted somewhat because of the scandal surrounding Edward’s abdication. Anyway, whoever was on the throne was ruling over a country that had its own severe problems, and in Molly’s opinion the war to put an end to poverty was a far better battle to fight.
In January 1938, Biddy had news of her son Joe, from America. His mother-in-law had finally died and as soon as arrangements were finalised, Joe would be leaving.
‘Is he coming here?’ Molly asked Tom that evening as they milked the cows.
Tom smiled and shook his head. ‘Joe left here with big ideas. Told everyone he was off to the New World to make a fortune, that he would come back with gold dripping from his fingers, and he can’t face coming back here with his tail between his legs.’
‘So what is he going to do?’
‘He intends making for England as soon as he can, only the winter is not the best time to be travelling the Atlantic. He is looking to the spring to sail. I offered to send him the fare, for I know things have been tough for some time and the funeral must have been expensive, but he said he has some pride left. Gloria intends selling her mother’s rings to raise the money, apparently. Hers have already gone the same way to keep them alive this far. Anyway, he has a job of sorts now that keeps them just about surviving until they are ready to leave.’
‘What will he do in England?’
‘Anything he can turn his hand to,’ Tom said. ‘One thing neither myself nor Joe is afraid of is hard work. Once he is in England, I shall cease worrying so much about him.’
Biddy didn’t see it that way, of course. ‘Going to England is madness!’ she declared. ‘Why England, when he has a place ready and waiting for him here? He belongs here. They can have Molly’s room and she can sleep in the barn.’
‘Thank you very much,’ Molly commented sarcastically.
‘And it is more, far more, than you deserve,’ Biddy snapped. ‘Write and tell him, Tom.’
‘I will do no such thing, Mammy,’ Tom said. ‘Joe is a grown man and knows he can come back here and welcome at any time, and without relegating Molly to the barn either. But he has made the decision to make for England.’
‘I might have known I couldn’t count on you,’ Biddy snarled. ‘I will write to him myself and demand he comes here. I haven’t seen him in years and I am getting no younger. Joe will be home before long, mark my words.’
‘Will he, do you think?’ Molly asked Tom later.
He shook his head. ‘I doubt it, unless his character is changed totally. I told you, he never leaped to do Mammy’s bidding like muggins here did.’
Joe and his family arrived in England in early March where they found lodgings in Tottenham in London, and Joe soon got a job in the docks.
Biddy, of course, blamed Gloria for Joe’s staying away. ‘Thinks we are not good enough, that’s what it is,’ she said. ‘Don’t know why he had to take up with a Yankee trollop in the first place.’
‘She is Joe’s choice,’ Tom said quietly, ‘and that is good enough for me.’
But not apparently for Biddy. Watching her, Molly gave a shiver of apprehension for the unknown American woman. She knew Biddy would always blame her for their decision to stay in England, and the longer time passed, the greater her bitterness would be. She sincerely hoped the two never got to meet.
As Molly passed her sixteenth birthday, she remembered the promise she had made to Kevin that she come back when she was sixteen, but as the time drew near she was hesitant to do this. Part of the reason was money, for although Paul Simmons had been more than generous, and a postal order had come every week, most of which she deposited in the post office, she knew she would be in need of a fair bit when she set off back to Birmingham. There were the fares, for one thing, and perhaps lodgings and money enough to keep her until she got a job, because there was no way that she was going to live off her granddad.
Then Nellie told her that she thought Biddy might well have the right to bring her back if she was under the age of eighteen. ‘I mean, she will hardly agree to you going back and consorting with the people she sees as heathens,’ she said to Molly.
Molly gave a wry smile. ‘I wasn’t thinking of telling her, Nellie,’ she said. ‘I was going to slip away without a word. I know she wouldn’t agree to it, and not just for the religious aspect of it either. She has had me skivvying in that house and farm since the day I arrived. When I do leave here and she has to do some of these things herself she is going to have one almighty shock.’
‘So,’ Nellie said, ‘wouldn’t it be better to put off leaving for a while until you are older and she will have no more jurisdiction over you? She could easily get the police to help her trace a runaway, especially a girl. When you leave here, you don’t want to think that that old besom has any sort of right at all to haul you back again.’
And wouldn’t she make me suffer for that act of defiance if she did? Molly thought, and a shiver ran through her. ‘It would give me a chance to save more,’ she conceded. ‘But … well, eighteen is another two years away and there is that promise I made to Kevin.’
‘You didn’t know the set-up of the place when you made that promise, Molly,’ Nellie reminded her. ‘Nor just how bad your grandmother could be. Write to the child and give him some reason why you can’t come just yet.’
Knowing that Nellie spoke good sense, Molly wrote to her brother that very night, but because she had never told them in Birmingham how bad her grandmother was, she just said she hadn’t enough money saved to leave Ireland yet, but she would be with him as soon as she possibly could. That night, she lay in bed and went over the letter in her mind, knowing she had made the right decision.
One of the first things she had to do when she left this place was buy new clothes, for she had grown out of those she had brought with her. She now had definite breasts developing, though she would never have the figure of the more voluptuous Cathy. This, together with the muscles in her back, which had been strengthened by the work on the farm, had made her dresses for Mass very tight, and her coat she struggled to fasten at all. She had also grown taller, so that the dresses she had brought with her three years before were several inches above her knee and she could barely walk in her shoes that pinched her feet so badly.
Eventually and begrudgingly, Biddy declared she needed new clothes. Molly was as pleased as any other young girl at the thought of new things and she thanked her grandmother, not something she was wont to do often. It was as she saw her grandmother’s lips curl as if in amusement that she felt the first tingling of apprehension.
Buncrana was well served with dress shops, but Biddy marched past them all and instead took Molly into the drapers. Molly’s heart sank when Biddy selected cloth in the dullest of grey and navy blue for the dressmaker to make up into two dresses for Molly. She didn’t hear what was discussed, for she was sent outside the shop after the dressmaker had measured her, so she didn’t see the dressmaker trying to remonstrate with Biddy and try to change her mind.
‘After all, I have a reputation to keep up,’ she told Nellie later. ‘What that woman wants me to do is not something I approve of at all, at all. She wants no decoration, not even shiny buttons, or a collar and cuff of a contrasting colour. And what in God’s name is the point of it? It’s like throwing some old bag over a beautiful flower. I tell you, Nellie, I thought of refusing to make the dresses at all, but,’ and here she gave a shrug, ‘times are tough. I can’t really afford to turn business