Anne Bennett 3-Book Collection: A Sister’s Promise, A Daughter’s Secret, A Mother’s Spirit. Anne Bennett
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Coventry had been attacked before but that night it was, according to the wireless, the fiercest yet.
Biddy gave a grim humourless laugh and said to Molly with gloating satisfaction, ‘Hah, there will be none of your precious country standing when the Germans have finished.’
‘Do you know,’ Molly said, ‘I think you are seriously unhinged. Why d’you think the Germans so wonderful? What d’you think would have happened to us all if the Germans had invaded? I tell you this much, they would have made short shrift of you. And don’t even think about that,’ she warned as she saw her grandmother’s fist raised. ‘You touch me and you’ll get twice as much back.’
Biddy was incensed, but saw that Molly meant what she had said. She had once told her grandmother that she could get away with hitting her only because she was bigger and stronger and said that it wouldn’t always be that way. Now, while Molly hadn’t grown terribly tall, she was hardened through the work on the farm, while the years had aged her grandmother, who had developed a slight stoop. Because of the indolent life Biddy had adopted when she had Molly to skivvy for her, she had become quite plump.
Biddy knew she was no match for Molly now and she lowered her clenched fist and contented herself with snarling, ‘I bet they’ll be none belonging to you left alive in that godforsaken place after this little lot is over. They will be burned to a crisp like those in Coventry.’
Molly didn’t even bother replying to this, knowing there was little point, and the following evening she found out the true extent of the damage to Coventry. In a raid that had gone on for over nine hours, the city was pounded by 500 bombers that destroyed over four thousand houses, three-quarters of the factories and annihilated the tram system, leaving nearly six hundred dead and countless others injured. The euphoric German papers were claiming to have invented a new word, Koventrieren, which was to signify the razing to the ground of a place. Molly knew with a dread certainty that Birmingham would be in line for some of the same.
That thought, however, only strengthened her determination. The next day being a Saturday, she visited Buncrana. Tom had barely brought the cart to a stop outside the Market Hall before Molly had jumped out of it. She was in too much of a tear to get things in motion to wait to set up the produce as she normally did and Tom knew this.
‘Away then,’ he said, and Molly needed no further bidding.
‘Where’s she off to?’ she heard her grandmother ask peevishly.
‘Running an errand for me,’ Tom replied.
‘What sort of errand?’ Biddy asked, and though Molly by then was too far away to hear Tom’s answer, she didn’t care what he said anyway. She had things to do here and no one was going to stop her. She made her way to Main Street and the post office. She had arranged with Nellie already that she would remove all the money from her account bar one pound, as she didn’t know how much things might cost. Cathy and Nellie were both waiting for her when she burst through the door. ‘You have a letter,’ Cathy cried.
Molly felt relief flood all through her. ‘Oh, thank God!’
Her relief was short-lived, however, for she saw at once that the letter was from Kevin, the address almost illegible as it had been written in pencil. The note inside had jagged edges as if it had been torn from a pad, but even so, the cryptic plea for help was clear enough: ‘Molly, come and get me. It is horrible in this place – luv Kevin.’
‘What is it?’ Nellie asked, seeing the blood drain from Molly’s face. Silently she handed the note over.
‘What does it mean?’ Cathy asked. ‘Where is he?’
Molly shrugged. ‘I have no idea. But it is even more important now for me to go over there and find out what has happened.’ She remembered the promise she had made to her young tearful brother before she left, and knew whatever the risks to herself she could afford to lose no time in going to Birmingham and finding Kevin, however long it took.
‘If anything major had occurred that meant for some reason your grandfather couldn’t look after your brother, your grandmother would have been informed as next of kin,’ Nellie said.
‘Well, she hasn’t, has she? I mean, she hasn’t said.’
‘Did she tell your mother when her own father died?’
Molly went cold. ‘But she knows how much it matters to me?’
‘Would that concern her?’ Nellie asked. ‘And she has no idea you would ever know, or at least for years, because she doesn’t know that you have been receiving letters from them.’
‘Oh God!’ Molly cried. ‘Well, have official letters come for her that you can remember?’
‘I don’t know, Molly, really I don’t. There is such a volume of mail now – more since the war began – and I couldn’t say, hand on heart, that your grandmother has received official letters or that she hasn’t. Can you remember, Cathy?’
Cathy shook her head sadly. ‘No, sorry, Molly. I haven’t a clue. Why don’t you ask her?’
‘Because I would have to explain how I know and that would bring in the letters and involve you, and I would rather not do that,’ Molly said. ‘And it would achieve nothing, because she wouldn’t tell me.’
She looked from Cathy to her mother and admitted plaintively, ‘I am scared. More scared than I have ever been in the whole of my life.’
‘I know,’ Nellie said. ‘I don’t know what you will find in Birmingham, and I wish to God you hadn’t to face it on your own, but there is no help for it. Even without that heart-rending note, you have to go. And now the die is cast, as it were, we must turn our minds to practicalities.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like your clothes, my dear.’
‘My clothes?’
‘My dear girl, you cannot arrive in Birmingham with just two dresses,’ Nellie said, drawing Molly into their living quarters as she spoke. ‘You are smaller than Cathy, so you can have her old things. Don’t worry, I have discussed it with her and she is in agreement. I have bought you some pretty underwear as well and a couple of brassieres, though I had to guess your size.’
‘Nellie, you mustn’t do this.’
‘My dear girl, all the years you have been coming to our house I have never bought you a thing,’ Nellie said. ‘Not even on your birthday and at Christmas. I have felt bad about it too, at times, though it has been deliberate, because I didn’t want to make things worse for you at the house and I was pretty certain anyway you wouldn’t be allowed to accept things from us.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ Molly said. ‘I know I wouldn’t. In fact, she would probably take them from me at the door and throw them straight into the fire.’
‘I thought as much.’
‘But you don’t have to buy me anything,’ Molly said, ‘though I am incredibly grateful.’
‘Listen to me, child dear,’ Nellie said. ‘You are going to a country in the grip of war and you do not know what you will find, or where you will lay your head tonight or maybe many nights yet to come. You may have great need of clothes. Now, about those hobnailed boots …’
‘I’m not taking them,’ Molly said. ‘I know that much. Whatever the weather I am wearing these shoes that Uncle Tom forced his mother to buy for me.’ Molly well remembered the row when, as springtime really set in, Tom had declared that Molly had to have shoes for Mass and that his mother couldn’t expect the child to go along in hobnailed boots any more.
‘You are not shaming Molly, Mammy, but yourself,’ Tom had cried. ‘And if you refuse to have her decently shod, then I will shame you further and take her to Buncrana and buy her some shoes myself and let it be known why I am having to do it.’
And so Biddy was forced to buy her shoes, but they were summer-weight