A Sister's Promise

by Anne Bennett

  ‘He may have a very bad reaction to seeing his sister go off like that,’ the doctor said. ‘Have they ever been apart before?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘Well, from what I have seen, they seem remarkably fond of one another,’ the doctor commented. ‘I would rather they said goodbye here, where we are all on hand if we are needed.’

  Stan could see the doctor’s point of view, and Kevin was upset when it dawned on him that he probably wouldn’t see Molly for a long, long time. Molly also cried bitterly. She had been eight when he was born and she had helped her mother bring him up. Though he was a nuisance at times, as little brothers go he wasn’t bad, and she loved him to bits and really thought she should be there for him with both their parents dead.

  However, for Kevin’s sake, she tried to get a grip on herself. ‘I will be working next year, Kevin,’ she told the child. ‘I will come back when I am sixteen and we will be together again, you’ll see.’

  ‘Do you promise?’ Kevin said.

  Molly looked at Kevin’s eyes, sparkling with tears, and said firmly, ‘Course I do.’

  ‘What if our grandmother don’t let you?’

  ‘She won’t be able to stop me when I am sixteen,’ Molly declared. ‘Anyroad, she can just go and boil her head.’ She saw the ghost of a smile at the corners of Kevin’s mouth. ‘Look,’ she said, and she licked her index finger and chanted, ‘See it wet, see it dry,’ then drew the finger across her neck, ‘cut my throat if I tell a lie.’ She saw Kevin sigh with relief. ‘Three years, that’s all, Kevin,’ Molly said. ‘And I promise we will be a family again.’

  However, three years when you are five is a very long time indeed. Kevin clung to Molly at the moment of parting and when Stan eventually peeled the weeping child from her, held him in his arms and signed for her to go, she left the room rapidly, knowing that to linger would only make matters worse.

  Stan held the child until the sobs ceased and Kevin lay still. Then he said, ‘Would you like to go fishing, sometime with me, Kevin?’

  Kevin was so surprised at the question that he was nonplussed for a moment or two. Then he shrugged and said, ‘I don’t know, Granddad.’

  ‘I used to take your daddy when he was a wee boy.’

  ‘Did you?’ Kevin found it hard to imagine his daddy as a young boy at all.

  ‘I surely did,’ Stan said. ‘Would you like to give it a go?’

  ‘Um, I think so.’

  ‘And I think that you are old enough to go to the football matches now too,’ Stan said. ‘What do you say?’

  Kevin’s face was one big beam. ‘Oh, yes, Granddad.’

  ‘Right then,’ cos us men have got to look after one another, you know,’ Stan continued. ‘So you have to get well and out of here mighty quick, and look after your old granddad.’

  ‘Yes. All right, I will,’ Kevin said determinedly.

  A little later, Stan came upon Molly waiting for him in the corridor and at the sight of her woebegone face, he wished he could cheer her up as easily as Kevin, but he couldn’t think of a thing to say. Molly didn’t seem to want to talk anyway; she was sort of buttoned up inside herself all the way back to the house.

  FIVE

  Molly knew she would never forget the sight of her grandfather standing on the platform waving until he became a small dot in the distance. She felt a sharp pain in her heart as if it had been split asunder just as when she had heard of the death of her parents. Granddad was the last link with all that was familiar in her life, and she cried silently as she leaned her head on the window of the carriage.

  Stan felt almost as bad to see his granddaughter move out of his life. He was glad he had told Biddy nothing about the money for the children from Paul Simmons. His conscience had smote him about this at first, until he had really got to know Biddy. Then he realised that had she been aware of the money, it wouldn’t have benefited Molly in the slightest – and Molly might have need of money some day. At least that was something he had done for her, he thought as, with the train out of sight, he turned sorrowfully away.

  When Biddy, sitting beside Molly, realised she was crying, she was furious with her.

  ‘Stop this at once,’ she hissed, but as quietly as she could, mindful of the others sharing their carriage. ‘Making a holy show of yourself.’

  Molly saw the woman opposite look at her with sympathetic eyes, but she knew enough about her grandmother’s character to know that it would be the worse for her if she were to engender any sort of interest from her fellow passengers. So she tried to swallow the lump of misery lodged in her throat and looked out at the landscape flashing past the windows, knowing that in any other circumstance she would probably have enjoyed the experience because she had never been further than Birmingham in the whole of her life.

  She saw the buildings and houses at the city’s edge give way to fields, dappled here and there by the early morning sun peeping from the clouds. Some of the fields were cultivated, set in rows with things growing in them; others were bare, the long grass waving in the breeze, or dotted with sheep, many with their lambs gambolling beside them. In another there might be horses, the lean racy sort, or the thick heavy ones with shaggy feet, the kind of horse the milkman and the coalman used in Birmingham. Sometimes, cows would lean their heads over the five-barred gates, placidly chewing and watching the train pass.

  Now and again Molly would spy isolated farmhouses, and she realised suddenly she knew nothing about the farm she was going to. She asked her grandmother about it.

  ‘We do a bit of everything,’ Biddy said. ‘We grow vegetables, have a few cows, a pig and chickens, of course. We used to have sheep, but after my man died and Joe hightailed it to America, Tom couldn’t manage the sheep as well as everything else. Even as it stands now, it’s a lot for one man. He will be glad of your help.’

  ‘But won’t I have to go to school?’

  Biddy smiled her horrible, hard smile. She said with more than a measure of satisfaction, ‘I think you have enough book-learning. Any more won’t be any sort of asset on a farm.’

  Molly’s heart sank. For one thing, she had thought school would get her away from her grandmother’s brooding presence for much of the day, and anyway she was good at her lessons. When her parents were both alive they had intended keeping her at school until she was sixteen and allowing her to matriculate. She told her grandmother this and went on, ‘Dad said it would help me get a good job in the end.’

  Again there was that sardonic smile. ‘You have a job,’ Biddy said. ‘Like I said before, you’ll be on the farm alongside Tom, and all the book-learning in the world won’t make you any better at that.’

  Molly felt suddenly cold inside and she held out little hope that she would get on any better with this Uncle Tom she had not seen, who was probably just as nasty as his mother. Her heart plummeted to her boots.

  She saw her plans for any sort of life she might have imagined for herself crumble to dust, but she knew that to say any of this would achieve nothing. So she was silent, and mighty glad later to find her grandmother had fallen asleep.

  If it hadn’t been for the other people on the train, Molly would never have managed at Crewe, where they had to change trains, for they also had to change platforms and other people helped carry the bags up the huge iron staircase, along the bridge spanning the line, and down the other side. Molly was immensely grateful, especially when those same people helped her board the ferry at Liverpool.

  It was called the Ulster Prince, and she thought it magnificent, towering up out of the scummy grey water of the quay, with its three large black funnels atop everything, spilling grey smoke into the spring morning. She was on deck, the sun warm on her back and sparkling on the water as she watched the boat pull away. Her knuckles were white, she was gripping the rail so tightly. She remembered the promise she had made to Kevin and she vowed, but silently, ‘I will be back. However long it takes, I will be back.’

  ‘Come along,’ her g
randmother said, just behind her. ‘They are serving breakfasts in the dining room until noon, and it is turned eleven already.’

  Molly followed Biddy eagerly. They had been travelling for many hours and she had been too nervous to eat much before they left the house.

  The dining room was delightful. Its windows were round, and when she queried this, she was told they were called portholes. In the dining room they were decorated with pretty pink curtains.

  They could have creamy porridge with as much sugar and hot milk as anyone wanted, followed by toast and jam and a pot of tea, all for one and sixpence. Molly ate everything before her, and took three spoons of sugar in her tea, just because she could, and afterwards thought how much better a person felt when they had a full stomach. She kept this thought in her head just a little time. It certainly wasn’t there when she stood alongside her grandmother and a good many more and vomited all her breakfast into the churning waters.

  By the time they alighted in Belfast, Molly was feeling decidedly ill. Her stomach ached and her throat burned from the constant vomiting that continued long after she had anything left, and made her feel wretched for the entire crossing, which took three and a half hours.

  By the time they disembarked and were aboard the train, she was also feeling light-headed and had a throbbing pain behind her eyes. Her grandmother’s voice, berating her for something or other, seemed to be coming from a long way off and she was too tired and disorientated to distinguish what the woman was on about anyway. Her eyes closed almost by themselves, and the next thing she remembered was her grandmother shaking her roughly as the train pulled in to Derry.

  She knew her uncle would be there to meet them with a horse and cart, to save them having to take the train the last step of the way. Molly was so travel worn and weary that she was immensely glad when she saw the man waiting for them, the shaggy-footed horse standing patiently between the shafts of the farm cart.

  Tom knew he would never forget that meeting. It was like his sister Nuala had returned to him, but never had he seen his sister so disheartened and sad, nor her eyes with blue smudges beneath them and her face bleached white. He felt suddenly very sorry for the girl and went towards her with a smile.

  ‘Welcome to Ireland, Molly,’ he said, taking her limp hand and shaking it vigorously. ‘It is a pity that we are not meeting under happier circumstances. I was sorry to hear about the death of your parents and I’m sure you will miss them very much.’

  Molly’s eyes filled with tears at her uncle’s words and the compassion in his face, and she knew that he was the antithesis of his mother.

  Then Biddy, watching this scene, commented sarcastically, ‘Very touching. Now stop your stupid blethering, can’t you, and get this luggage into the cart.’

  Molly saw the sag of her uncle’s shoulders at his mother’s words. ‘And welcome home to you too, Mammy,’ he said with a sigh, throwing up the bags and cases as he did so. He helped his mother up on to the seat beside him and then he turned to Molly with a smile. ‘Now you,’ he said, lifting her with ease. ‘And Dobbin here will have us home in a jiffy.’

  It wasn’t quite a jiffy, for the horse wasn’t built for speed, but Molly took the opportunity to look around her. Once outside of the town, most of the farmhouses seemed to be white, squat, single-storey dwellings, with thick dark yellow roofs, and all the protruding chimneys had smoke curling upwards from them.

  ‘That’s your typical Irish cottage,’ Tom said, seeing Molly’s preoccupation.

  ‘Mom described them to me,’ Molly said, ‘but I’ve never see roofs like those. We had grey slate.’

  Tom smiled. ‘That’s called thatch, Molly,’ he said. ‘It’s made of flax that we grow in the fields and then weave it together.’

  They passed small towns and villages, and Molly noted the names of them. Springtown was the first, and then Burnfoot. It was as they neared a place called Fahan that Tom said, ‘Did your mammy tell you much about this place?’

  ‘Some,’ Molly said. ‘I mean, I knew she lived near Lough Swilly and that it was a saltwater lough because it fed out to the sea. In Birmingham most people have never seen the sea. It is just too far away. When we were on the boat was the first time I had seen it and then I was too sick to take in the expanse of it really.’

  She stopped and then went on more hesitantly, ‘I once asked Mom if she missed the place, because she always said how beautiful it was, but she said that it was a funny thing but seldom does a person really value where they are born and reared. Anyway, she always said people were more important than places.’

  Tom, noting Molly’s exhausted face and her eyes glittering with tears, said, ‘Not long now, at any rate. Buncrana is next, but I will skirt the town this evening because the farm is beyond it in a district called Cockhill, and we will pass St Mary’s, the Catholic church, this way.’

  St Mary’s was quite an impressive place, though it wasn’t that large. It was made of stone and had a high and ornate belfry to the front of it. The church was approached through a wrought-iron gate and along a gravel path with graves either side.

  ‘Why was the church built so far out of Buncrana?’ Molly asked as they passed it. ‘It seems silly.’

  ‘That was because at the time when St Mary’s was built, the English said all Catholic churches had to be built at least a mile outside the town or village, and England controlled Ireland then,’ Tom told her.

  ‘That was what the Troubles were over that Mom spoke of?’ Molly said. ‘To get rid of English rule.’

  ‘Aye,’ Tom said, ‘that was it right enough. Anyway, while the English could tell the Catholic Church where to put the building, they couldn’t tell them what to put in it. In that church, above the altar is the most amazing picture of the Nativity painted by an Italian artist who was specially commissioned. You’ll see it on Sunday and be able to judge for yourself how lovely it is.’

  They went on a little way past the church, past hedges bordering the fields, and then the horse determinedly turned into a narrow lane almost, Molly noticed, without her uncle needing to touch the reins at all.

  ‘Old Dobbin knows the way home, all right,’ Tom remarked, seeing her noticing. ‘I really think he could do it blindfold.’

  Molly looked about her with more interest, noting that the narrow lane was just wide enough for the cart to pass down with thick hawthorn hedges in both sides. She could see beyond the hedges because of the height of the cart seat. Fields stretched for miles, some cultivated, others with cows in them, and some of these were milling around the five-barred gate set into the hedge.

  ‘Waiting to be milked,’ Tom explained with a nod. ‘Bit early yet, though.’

  Molly looked at the cows’ distended udders and, though she knew that was where milk came from, because her mother had told her, she would have preferred to get it from the Co-op milkman.

  The lane led to a cobbled yard that seemed full of pecking chickens. Tom drew the horse to a halt in front of a thatched whitewashed cottage with the dark red door that looked as if it opened in two halves.

  ‘This is it,’ he said to Molly, hauling the luggage from the cart. ‘What do you think?’

  Before Molly was able to reply, two black and white dogs, which Tom greeted as Skip and Fly, came to meet them, barking a welcome. Molly was not used to animals, for she and Kevin had had no pets, and the dogs unnerved her a little.

  ‘They’re saying hallo just,’ Tom said reassuringly, seeing that Molly was a little edgy. ‘Let them sniff your hand and then they’ll know you are a friend.’

  Molly would rather not have done any such thing, but she knew that dogs were an important part of any farm and she would have to get used to them. So she extended her hand and let the dogs sniff. When she met her grandmother’s malevolent gaze, she said in a voice she willed not to shake, ‘My mother was always saying that what can’t be cured must be endured and I suppose that is what she would think about this situation. I haven’t chosen to come here, but no
w I have arrived, I suppose I will like it well enough in time.’

  She saw her grandmother seemed almost disappointed, but Tom clapped her on the shoulder. ‘Well said, young Molly. Come away in and see the place.’

  In all her life, Molly had never seen anything quite like it. She stepped into a low room, the flagged floor covered with rugs. To her left was a door that she learned later housed the two bedrooms, hers first and then beyond that Tom’s. Next to a dresser displaying plates and bowls and cups was a large bin that she was to learn was where the oaten meal was stored. A cupboard and a sideboard stood against the back wall next to a heavily curtained area that Tom told her closed off the bed her grandmother slept in.

  To her right was a stool with one bucket of water standing on it and one bucket of water beneath it. There were no taps here and all water had to be fetched from the spring well halfway up the lane, which Tom had pointed out to her as they passed. Beside that was a large scrubbed wooden table with chairs grouped around it.

  ‘That doesn’t look very comfy,’ Molly said, pointing to the wooden bench seat bedecked with cushions and set beneath the window.

  ‘That’s a settle,’ Tom said. ‘It opens to a bed that the children can sleep in when the house is full. I have used it a time or two, but you are right, it is very uncomfortable to sit on. The easy chairs before the fire are better.’

  There were two, and when Tom said, ‘We’ll have to think about getting another for you,’ Biddy snapped, ‘You won’t need to bother. I aim to see to it that that girl isn’t going to have much time for sitting resting herself and for the times she is allowed to sit, a creepie will do her.’

  ‘A creepie is way too low for her, Mammy,’ Tom said. A creepie, Molly was to learn, was a very low seat made of bog oak. ‘And if you want Molly to work hard, then she has to have time to rest too. I have an easy chair in my room and as it is only to put my clothes on, a wooden kitchen chair will do the job well enough.’ And at this he gave Molly a wink.