A Sister's Promise

by Anne Bennett

  She didn’t notice the uncomfortable silence, nor the stricken look on her grandfather’s face, for she decided she would try harder to get to know her grandmother and concentrate on the one link they had, the one thing she would like to know about.

  As she handed her a cup of tea she said, ‘Can you tell me, Grandmother, what my mother was like as a little girl?’

  Biddy’s lips pursed still further and she almost spat out, ‘Aye, I’ll tell you – not that you’ll want to hear it, for your mother was a bold and disobedient girl. She showed scant regard for her parents, was only interested in pursuit of her own pleasures and even went against the teachings of the Church and married a man of another faith, or as I have found out today, a man of no faith at all.’

  The words were said with such malice that Molly recoiled. It was the very last thing that she had expected the woman to say, and she suddenly knew that her grandmother wouldn’t be one bit sorry she hadn’t made it up with her daughter before she died. She somehow doubted she had ever felt sorry about anything in the whole of her life.

  ‘Of course,’ Biddy went on, ‘we only have ourselves to blame for the way Nuala turned out for we both spoiled her. When she wrote that letter saying that she wanted to marry a non-Catholic, Thomas John was so shocked he dropped dead of a heart attack. So that is your fine mammy for you, the sort who kills her own father.’

  Tears were now pouring from Molly’s eyes and Stan put his arm around her. ‘Here, here, the child doesn’t need this sort of carry-on. Have some compassion, woman. If you spoke the truth and what Nuala wrote in the letter caused your husband to have a heart attack, then I am sorry, but you must see that it was the last thing in the world that Nuala would have wanted or expected to happen.’

  ‘She knew he would be upset. She wasn’t stupid.’

  ‘She wasn’t cruel either,’ Molly burst out. ‘She wouldn’t mean that to happen.’

  ‘Your opinion wasn’t asked, miss,’ Biddy snapped. ‘Nor is it welcome, and I will thank you not to speak until you are spoken to. To spare the rod is to ruin the child totally and I see that that is what has happened to both you and that brother of yours. Well, there will be none of that with me, I’ll tell you. I will put manners on the pair of you if it’s the last thing I do.’

  Molly stared at her. What influence could she have on either of them? After the funeral this horrible woman would go back to her own life on the little farm in Ireland and Molly would live with her granddad and gradually come to terms with her loss and help her little brother to cope too.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said, almost challenging.

  Biddy heard the tone and it annoyed her. She would soon have that temper knocked out of her, she thought. ‘I’ll tell you what I mean, my girl,’ she spat out. ‘When you come to live with me over in Ireland, you’ll find life no bed of roses.’

  ‘Come to live with you in Ireland?’ Molly repeated, managing to hide the shiver of distaste that ran through her. ‘I don’t know you. I’m not going to live with you. I’m staying here with Granddad and so is Kevin.’

  ‘No, that’s where you are wrong. You are a Catholic because of your mother, who at least started you off on the right road, and you must be reared as a Catholic.’

  ‘I don’t care about being a Catholic,’ Molly shouted at Biddy. ‘And there is no way I am coming to live with you,’ adding, probably unwisely, but too upset to care, ‘I don’t even like you very much.’

  ‘Your likes and what you want will not come into this at all,’ Biddy snapped. ‘And there is no good turning on the waterworks,’ she went on, as tears of helplessness squeezed from Molly’s eyes. ‘You will find they don’t work with me.’

  Molly turned anguished eyes to her grandfather. ‘Granddad,’ she cried. ‘Say this isn’t true. We’re going to stay with you. You promised.’

  Stan’s eyes slid from Molly’s to Biddy’s gloating ones and then back to Molly, and because she deserved the truth he said, ‘I may find my hands are tied in this.’

  ‘Oh, Granddad, no,’ Molly cried, and flung herself into Stan’s arms.

  As he held the weeping child, he glared at Biddy and knew when she took the children from him she would also take away his reason for living.

  THREE

  Stan was astounded at the numbers who attended the funeral of Ted and Nuala on 26 April. Paul Simmons had helped him make all the arrangements and had insisted on paying for everything. He had closed the factory as a mark of respect, but even so, Stan was amazed by those from the workforce who attended. Ted, Paul said, was very well thought of by everyone who met him, and many of the men who’d shaken Stan by the hand and commiserated with him on his loss said similar things. So also, it seemed, was Nuala liked and the pews were packed with neighbours and special friends of hers, mothers she met at the school gates, and those from the Mothers’ Union she used to attend regularly. Many were in tears.

  Added to this, all of Paul’s family came too – his father and mother, and two sisters and their husbands, all of whom still remembered what they had owed to Ted. They seemed genuinely shocked by his death and that of his young wife. Not that it was spoken of openly and certainly not in front of the children, who had both insisted on attending.

  Molly had remained dry-eyed, her distress and sense of loss too deep for tears, though she held on to Kevin’s hand to take comfort from the child as well as to give it, as the tears dribbled down his cheeks ceaselessly.

  As they stood at the graveside, they were warmed by the bright sun shining down from a sky of Wedgwood blue, and somehow this made the tragic deaths even more poignant. As the clods of earth fell with dull thuds on the coffins they seemed to reverberate in Molly’s brain. Dead! Dead! Dead! Kevin’s sobs became more audible and Biddy moved towards the child purposefully, but he pushed her away and turned instead to his grandfather. Stan held the little boy’s shuddering body tight. He didn’t urge him to stop crying either thinking he had a good enough reason to break his heart.

  He envied him in a way because he would have liked the opportunity to go home now and lock the door and cry his eyes out. Instead, he knew he had to lead the mourners to the room at the back of the Lyndhurst pub which Paul Simmons had booked, and make small talk with the people who had come to pay their respects.

  When he’d first been discussing the funeral arrangements with Mr Simmons, Stan, who had thought the mourners would only amount to a handful, said he intended to invite them back to the house. Mr Simmons had said he thought a room at a pub might be better and Stan, not up to arguing and certainly not with a toff, had agreed reluctantly.

  He had thought though the few people he had anticipated coming would look silly and maybe feel out of place, but it wasn’t that way at all. He looked at the crush of people around him in the room the pub had allocated them and was glad he had agreed. Kevin still held tight to his hand as Father Clayton, who had said the Requiem Mass, approached them.

  Father Clayton liked Stan, with whom he was not above sparring and joking, as he had liked Ted, and thought them fine men. He couldn’t understand for the life of him why they hadn’t turned Catholic and embraced the one true faith.

  That day though, Kevin’s large brown eyes still swam with tears as he turned them on the priest and demanded, ‘What did God want with my mammy and daddy?’

  Father Clayton didn’t have an answer that would satisfy the child. ‘We don’t understand the ways of God, Kevin.’

  ‘Not even you?’

  ‘Not even me.’

  ‘Well, then,’ Kevin said. ‘What’s the point of it all? That means that God can go round doing what He likes and you just say we can’t understand and that.’ He stamped his foot suddenly and cried in a high voice full of hurt and confusion, ‘I want to know. I think we needed Mammy and Daddy much more than He did.’

  ‘Kevin!’ The name was said like a pistol shot.

  Kevin jumped and his eyes were full of foreboding as he watched his grandmother approach. ‘No
w you see the level of my concern that I explained to you this morning when I called in to introduce myself and arrange an appointment?’ Biddy complained to Father Clayton. ‘The child has not even been taught how to address a priest correctly, and as for questioning the ways of our Good Lord, well, words fail me totally.’

  Before the priest had time to reply, Stan burst in, ‘I think Kevin has a perfect right to ask what manner of God it was at all who allowed his parents to be taken away, and who else to ask but the priest? So you just leave him alone.’ He turned to Father Clayton and went on before Biddy could speak, ‘We’re taught that God loves us, aren’t we? Well, He sure as hell didn’t show much love to poor Nuala and Ted. That’s how I feel and so I know exactly what young Kevin means.’

  So did Father Clayton, and he was glad he had been the one assigned to take the Mass and not Father Monahon, for he would have torn the child to ribbons if he had been silly enough to say those things in front of him. As for Stan, a non-Catholic, Father Monahon would have a total lack of understanding for his pain. To Father Monahon, Catholicism and the pursuit of it was all that mattered. He was like the maternal grandmother, just recently arrived from Ireland, no doubt a devout and ardent Catholic, but not a woman he could take to at all. Father Clayton turned to her now as she burst out, ‘D’you hear that, Father? Blasphemy, and before the child too. As if I could leave a child in a home where such views are felt and, even worse, expressed. The sooner I get them both to Ireland the better I’ll like it.’

  ‘Come now …’ the priest began soothingly.

  He got no further, for what the women had said had penetrated Kevin’s brain. He had been shocked into silence when she had shouted at him, but now he said, ‘What do you mean about going to Ireland?’

  ‘Just what I say,’ Biddy almost hissed. ‘You and your sister are coming to live with me.’

  ‘Oh no I’m not! I ain’t,’ Kevin cried desperately. ‘I’m staying with my granddad, I am. Aren’t I, Granddad?’ He appealed as Stan stayed silent. ‘Tell her, Granddad. Go on, tell her.’

  ‘Ah, yes, tell me?’ Biddy mocked.

  ‘Have you no shame?’ Stan demanded of her coldly. ‘We have just buried the child’s parents. You might be holier than I am, but there isn’t a kind bone in your body.’

  ‘But it ain’t true, is it?’ Kevin cried. At the grave expression on his granddad’s face, he felt suddenly cold, afraid and lonely as he insisted, ‘Say it ain’t true, Granddad. Tell her.’

  ‘May your God forgive you,’ Stan said, picking Kevin up in his arms, ‘for I will struggle to do so.’

  Father Clayton watched Stan stride across the room and knew he was going to go somewhere quiet and explain to the child that his suffering was far from over yet. That now he had to go to some alien place with a woman he was so obviously scared of and live there until he was adult and could choose for himself. And tell him too there wasn’t a damned thing either of them could do about it. The priest felt suddenly terribly dispirited and heavy, as if his body was filled with lead.

  ‘They’re both wilful, those children,’ Biddy said fiercely. ‘Too fond of getting their own way and totally disrespectful.’

  ‘You don’t think it’s just that they are both still in shock and missing their parents, and maybe a little afraid of the future?’ the priest put in mildly.

  ‘I don’t go along with all this psychological claptrap,’ Biddy said. ‘Their parents are dead and gone, and that’s that, and it is obvious they will have to live with me. I am putting myself out too, you know? Do you think I want to start rearing children at my time of life?’

  ‘Then why do it?’ The words were out before the priest could stop them.

  Biddy stared at him coldly. ‘I would have thought you of all people would not have to ask that question,’ she said, ‘I know my duty and do not approve of my grandchildren being brought up with a heathen.’

  ‘Stan Maguire is no heathen,’ Father Clayton said quite heatedly because the woman was annoying him greatly.

  ‘I don’t see how you can say that so categorically when the man worships nowhere and neither did his son,’ Biddy said. ‘As far as I am concerned that makes him a heathen and I do not want my grandchildren brought up by one such as him. I am surprised that you are not similarly concerned. I think I need to talk to your superior about this and I fully intend to do that.’

  Father Clayton knew that Father Monahon would see things exactly as she did, and when she complained about his attitude, as he knew she would, he would be hauled over the coals himself. That in itself wouldn’t matter if anything had been achieved by his interference, but he knew it hadn’t. He sighed. Sometimes he found it difficult to follow the Church’s teaching in blind obedience as they were taught they had to, for he often found issues were not so black and white. He couldn’t help wishing that, regardless of Stan’s religion, or lack of it, the children could be left with the grandfather they loved.

  Molly had watched the altercation and knew by her grandfather’s determined strides across the room with Kevin in his arms that he was hopping mad about something and the same something was making her brother cry. She sighed as she followed them, for she didn’t have to be a genius to guess what it was all about.

  On the way in, Stan had noticed a couple of chairs set against the wall in the foyer and he sat down in one of these and set about telling Kevin what was going to happen to him and Molly, and why, despite his promise to them, he would be unable to fight against it.

  That is where Molly found them and her heart constricted in pity for her distressed little brother, who was weak from weeping.

  He turned anguished eyes towards her and said in a voice almost broken with sadness and disbelief, ‘Molly … has our g-granddad told you wh-where we’ve got to go and – live?’

  Molly nodded, and knealed down beside Kevin and held his agitated hand between hers. Her heart hammered in her chest, her mouth was very dry and she felt the familiar lump in her throat, and willed herself not to cry.

  ‘But … don’t want t-to live with her,’ Kevin said. ‘Sh-she’s horrible. I want to … stay with G-Granddad.’

  ‘So do I,’ Molly said fiercely. ‘I hate her as much as you do, but I am not afraid of her and you needn’t worry, because I will look after you, fight for you if I have to.’

  Kevin looked at the sister who had always looked out for him before and said, ‘Promise?’ He didn’t know if he believed in the power of a promise any more. Hadn’t his granddad promised? But it was all he had.

  Molly said without any hesitation at all, ‘I promise, Kevin. I swear it on the Bible.’

  ‘Ah, Molly,’ Kevin said, and he leaned towards her with a sigh and she put her arms around him. As Stan’s arms encircled both children he felt a sharp pain in his chest. So, he thought, this is what it feels like when a person’s heart is broken in two.

  * * *

  After the funeral was over, Biddy made her way to the presbytery and Father Monahon who had been expecting her. He listened to her proposals to take the children to Ireland and fully approved. In fact, he couldn’t see any viable alternative. In his opinion the sooner the children were removed from the clutches of their grandfather the better. Their immortal souls were at stake.

  ‘I’m gratified that you feel the same as I do,’ Biddy said. ‘At my time of life it is not easy to tie myself down with the worry and burden of raising children again, but I know where my duty lies. I must say, I was surprised that your curate didn’t share your view on this matter,’ she went on as Father Clayton entered the room.

  Father Monahon’s cold eyes slid over to the younger priest as he asked testily, ‘Is this true?’

  ‘In a way,’ Father Clayton admitted. ‘Mrs Sullivan has just said she would find it difficult raising the children. Added to that, they seem so happy with Stan. They have both just lost their parents and are naturally distraught over it. I thought perhaps taking them away from everything that was familiar …’

&n
bsp; ‘You thought,’ Father Monahon mimicked mockingly. ‘That’s your trouble, you think too much. As a priest, you don’t have to think, but you do have to obey the teachings of the Church. It might be good for the children to get away from memories and get some healthy living and country air into their lungs, but that is neither here nor there. If they are upset, that is the very time when they would need the comfort and support of the one true church and a loving grandmother to bring them up correctly.’

  Father Clayton knew there wasn’t a loving bone in Biddy Sullivan’s body and he knew too that wouldn’t matter a jot as far as Father Monahon was concerned. If she lashed the children mercilessly, verbally, physically or both, she would still be considered a fine woman in his superior’s book, if she saw to it that they attended Mass and the sacraments.

  Father Monahon shook hands with Biddy and said, ‘I would suggest that you see the authorities as quickly as possible and set all this in motion. Rest assured, you will have my full support.’

  Father Clayton said not a word. There was nothing left to say.

  That night, Kevin had a horrific nightmare. As he was sharing his granddad’s bed so that a room could be given up to Biddy, Stan was quick to comfort and reassure, but long after his granddad had fallen asleep again, Kevin had lain wide-eyed, for though he ached with tiredness and his eyes smarted from lack of sleep, he was afraid of closing them.

  Next morning, Kevin was listless his face was as white as a sheet, his eyes were red-rimmed. But Biddy didn’t believe in children having a lie-in. There was no time to lay about on a farm and the sooner they got to grips with that the better. Biddy had a host of jobs she wanted Molly to do and she listed these at the breakfast table. As well as the shopping and cooking, Biddy wanted her to tackle the family wash and then clean the house from top to bottom.

  Molly said nothing, though she looked across the table to her grandfather and saw him purse his lips. He hated the thought of his granddaughter working so hard all day. The child was no slouch anyway and had been tremendous with her mother so ill in hospital, taking on a lot of the housework and cooking. Both he and his son had given the child a hand. And then, of course, there was always Hilda, who had showed what a true friend she was.