A Sister's Promise

by Anne Bennett

  ‘Molly and I understand each other,’ Biddy said with a sardonic smile. ‘She knows that if she doesn’t work effectively, then she doesn’t eat – and thinking of eating, I am famished. The meal on the boat I have brought back up. What have you in?’

  ‘I bought ham and tomatoes in the town,’ Tom said. ‘And I have the potatoes scrubbed and in the pot, ready to be put on.’

  ‘Well, put them on. What are you waiting for?’ Biddy snapped, and Molly wondered how the potatoes were to be cooked, because she had seen no cooker. Tom, however, went towards the open fire and pulled out a bracket with hooks on of different lengths. He hung the black pot he had ready on one of these hooks before giving the fire a poke and throwing something on it that looked like little more than lumps of dirt.

  When her grandmother saw Molly staring, she shrieked, ‘Don’t just stand there, girl. I told you this was no rest cure. Away to the room and take off your coat, then lay the table at the very least.’

  It was one of the most uncomfortable meals that Molly had endured. While eating it, Biddy regaled Tom with tales about Birmingham. She hadn’t a good word to say about it, and fairly ripped into the character of Molly’s parents and her grandfather. Many times, Molly was going to leap to the defence of those she loved, but the first time she opened her mouth to do this, she felt the pressure of Tom’s foot on hers and when she looked up quizzically, he made an almost imperceptible shake of his head. So she let her grandmother’s words wash over her, because really she was too tired to argue.

  After the meal, Tom fetched the chair from his room as he had said he would, then said, ‘Right, that’s that, then. Now, I’ll bring the cows in for milking.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Biddy. ‘Molly will go with you.’

  Both Molly and Tom looked at Biddy as if they couldn’t believe their ears. Molly was so weary she was having trouble functioning and she had been wondering how soon she would be allowed to go to bed, but now this. She couldn’t do this. She barely knew one end of a cow from the other and hadn’t dreamed that milking them would be part of her duties.

  Tom had no idea of Molly’s rising panic, but he had noted her exhausted state and said. ‘There is no need for this, Mammy. I don’t need anyone to help me. Haven’t I been doing it alone for a fair few years anyway?’

  ‘Aye, but there is no need for you to do it alone now. You have help.’

  ‘Can’t you see the child is worn out?’ Tom said. ‘She has been travelling all the day.’

  ‘I have told Molly there is no place for passengers on a farm, and the sooner she is made aware of this, the better it will be for everybody,’ Biddy said with some satisfaction.

  Molly wanted to say she had never had any desire to milk a cow and didn’t particularly want to learn either, but she had already decided that she would show no weakness in front of this woman. So, turning to Tom, she said, ‘You will have to show me how it is done.’

  Biddy may have been disappointed with Molly’s response, but Tom was full of admiration. ‘There is nothing to it,’ he said. ‘You’ll pick it up in no time. Let’s whistle up the dogs to help bring them down.’

  Tom was patient and kind, and his voice so calm that Molly could never imagine it raised in anger, or indeed anything else, and it was like balm to her bruised and battered soul. He seemed to understand her initial distaste, but he was so gentle and reassuring that Molly battled to overcome this because she knew it would please him.

  She was quick to learn generally, and soon got the hang of milking. She even began to enjoy it, finding, like many more, there was something incredibly soothing about sitting astride a three-legged stool, her face pressed against the velvet flank of the cow, and gently but firmly squeezing the udders and seeing the bucket fill with the squirts of milk.

  ‘Molly,’ said Tom after a while, ‘let me give you a word of warning. Don’t rise to Mammy’s bait. Let her rant and rave and all, and you say nothing. Eventually, she will have to stop.’

  ‘Yes, but when she says thing about my family …’

  ‘She says that because she knows it upsets you,’ Tom said.

  ‘She told me that my mother killed her father,’ Molly said. ‘Was that true?’

  Tom sighed. ‘When Daddy read the letter Nuala sent, telling of how she met your father and wanting to become engaged, and about his being a Protestant and all, Daddy had a heart attack.’

  ‘So she did then, in a way?’

  ‘Yes and no,’ Tom said. ‘Not long after Nuala left for England, Daddy developed pains in his chest and he was diagnosed with a bad heart. He knew he was on borrowed time – we all knew. The doctor said he could go any time, but Mammy said that Nuala wasn’t to be worried about it. If she had known maybe she would have come over in person and told him herself more gently, so I don’t think she can be blamed.’

  ‘She wasn’t told anything,’ Molly said. ‘Surely she should have been told her own father died?’

  ‘Of course she should,’ Tom said. ‘I blame myself. I should have stood against Mammy. She was just so adamant.’

  Uncle Tom was soft, a fact Molly had realised within a few minutes of meeting him. She would take a bet that he hated confrontation of any kind so, much as she liked him, she doubted that she could depend on him for support.

  He did try objecting when, on their return to the house, Biddy told Molly to wash the pots and to be quick about it, because she had to be up early in the morning for milking.

  ‘Mammy, for God’s sake, let the girl lie in tomorrow at least.’

  Biddy continued to Molly as if Tom hadn’t spoken, ‘And first you will kindle up the fire from the rakings, clean out the ashes and fill the kettle, and put it on before joining Tom in the cowshed. Oh, and you can leave your lah-d-dah city clothes in the wardrobe. They will do for Mass, but are not suitable for work on the farm. While you were at the milking I fashioned you a couple of working shirts and a pair of dungarees from things I had in the house. Put them on in the morning.’

  ‘You’ll kill the girl before you’re done,’ Tom commented morosely, and Biddy smiled as if that would be a quite acceptable outcome.

  The next morning Molly rose before five o’clock, put on the clothes her grandmother had given her and surveyed herself in the mirror. She supposed the shirts and dungarees were more serviceable, but she didn’t like them much, and they were rather big for her – so big that she had to roll up the sleeves of the shirts and the legs of the trousers over and over. Tom had already left to collect up the cows, and so the first time he saw the clothes was when Molly appeared in the cowshed a little later.

  He laughed his head off. ‘God Almighty,’ he said. ‘You’d fit in them twice over. They were probably Finn’s once, or Joe’s even, and both were a sight bigger than you.’

  Molly knew who Finn and Joe were for she had asked many questions about her mother’s family though Nuala had known nothing about them from the day she had left. Molly had known about Finn’s death, of course, but nothing of Joe.

  She said now, ‘What happened to Joe? Mom always thought he would be here on the farm with you, but my grandmother told me that he had gone to America.’

  ‘Aye,’ Tom said, ‘and, God’s truth, I couldn’t blame him. With Finn gone and Nuala too and Daddy dying, the place was not the same at all. In the end he could take no more. Anyway, as he said, what was he doing working his fingers to the bone on a farm that would never be his?’

  ‘Is he still there now?’

  ‘Aye, and he didn’t do badly at first,’ Tom said. ‘Well, he ended up marrying the boss’s daughter, a girl called Gloria, and probably thought he was set for life, but then there was something called the Wall Street Crash and …’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Oh, it’s to do with stocks and shares,’ Tom said. ‘And I have never had any truck with them. But it meant the boss, Joe’s father-in-law, lost a heap of money and ended up killing himself.’

  ‘Golly!’

  ‘Joe was
left with the debts the man had rung up,’ Tom said. ‘The house and fine way of living had to go, and he had a wife and mother-in-law to support and no means of doing so. I asked him to come here, but he can’t because the mother-in-law refuses to leave the land where her husband is buried and so they live in a downtown tenement, surviving on handouts or the odd day’s work Joe gets in a factory or down at the docks. It was worsened by the birth of their son, Ben, last year.’

  ‘Sad, isn’t it?’ Molly said wistfully. ‘You think your life will just go on the way it always has been and then something happens and the whole thing goes up in the air. Your brother is stuck just like I am.’

  ‘That’s about it,’ Tom said. ‘You won’t be stuck here for ever, though, young Molly, don’t fret. But if you don’t want Mammy giving out to us both for wasting time, we’d best be away back to the house, now we have finished the milking.’

  Molly soon found that there is an art to filling a kettle from a full bucket of water and that it took time to acquire it. The first time she tried she swamped the floor and she knew if she hadn’t been able to clear away the evidence of this before Biddy got up, then she would probably have joined Tom in the cowshed with a thick ear.

  She was always more than ready for her breakfast after milking, which was a boiled egg or porridge, and she ate her fill. She was aware almost from the first day that once she rose from that table it would be a long time before she had the opportunity to rest her legs again. Her grandmother saw to that.

  Once she had put the water on to boil for the washing-up, Tom would fill up the buckets again. A large pan of water would be needed to scald the drinks for the two calves in the byre and to boil up the potatoes and turnips to feed the indolent, smelly pig and her litter of squealing piglets. Then Molly would feed the dogs and the hens, and collect and wipe the eggs.

  After the Angelus bell had rung at twelve o’clock, they would stop for dinner. Sometimes this would just consist of potatoes and shallots, though Tom told her there was fish most Saturdays after they had been to the market, and other days in the week if there was ever the occasion to go into the town again and the fishing fleet was in.

  ‘I bag the odd rabbit as well,’ he said. ‘And of course when a pig is killed we might enjoy a bit of pork, and if there is an old hen not laying at all well, then she might just find herself with her neck wrung.’

  ‘Ugh!’

  Tom laughed. ‘I suppose you got all your meat from the butchers all nicely packed and packaged,’ he said. ‘Well, this is where it all starts, and I’ll tell you, we are glad enough to see a bit of meat or fish when we have had potatoes and just potatoes for time and enough.’

  After dinner that first day, Biddy took Molly on one side to teach her how to make soda bread and bread with oaten meal. ‘This needs to be done three times a week,’ she said. ‘On Saturdays, of course, you will also make scones, barnbrack and potato cakes for Sunday, and in addition to this on Thursday, you will do the churning and Monday is, of course, wash day and that will take some time. And remember whatever other duties you have, you will go with Tom to do the milking twice a day.’

  Molly knew the workload would be a heavy one, but after only a day or so she found that she valued those peaceful times with her uncle in the cowshed. Biddy never went near it and so it was sort of a special place, where she could get away from her grandmother’s whining, complaining voice and the clouts that she seemed to find necessary to administer for the most minor things. But Molly was no fool, and she never, ever showed how much she enjoyed, even sometimes looked forward to, the milking. She knew that it was her grandmother’s intention to make her life as miserable as possible.

  On Thursday afternoon, Biddy prepared the churn, while Molly washed up the dinner dishes and then showed her what to do.

  ‘Up and down for twenty minutes,’ she said, handing her the paddle. ‘And without stopping.’

  Molly tried valiantly, but after a few minutes her arms felt like lead weights and she laid down the paddle with a sigh.

  Biddy cuffed her on the side of the head, sending her senses reeling. ‘Twenty minutes, I said.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You can if you want to eat tonight.’

  Molly knew that was no idle threat, but even then she could only manage a few minutes at a time, and every time she stopped, Biddy would clout her. But she hardly cared, for the pain in her arms and her back was worse than anything Biddy could do. When eventually Biddy called a halt and began to scoop the butter out and shape it, Molly’s arms continued to shake.

  They still ached when she joined Tom in the cowshed later, and when Tom saw the stiff way that she was working, he asked her if she was all right. He was angry when he learned that she had done the churning all on her own. She was so slight, for one thing, and she hadn’t been brought up to it, but he knew that there was no point in him saying anything about it.

  ‘There was so much butter too,’ Molly said. ‘What do you do with it all?’

  ‘What nearly everyone does,’ Tom said. ‘We have a stall in the Market Hall in Buncrana on Saturdays and we sell the surplus there.’

  ‘Oh,’ Molly said, delighted at the prospect of leaving the farm. ‘Do you go every Saturday?’

  ‘Aye,’ Tom said. ‘But I doubt that you would be let go.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Tom shook his head. ‘I have given up trying to understand my mother, but she said you are to be left here.’

  There was a flash of disappointment, but Molly knew there was no point worrying about a situation she couldn’t change. At least this way she was going to be free of her grandmother for a few hours.

  ‘What I was going to suggest,’ Tom said, breaking in on her thoughts, ‘was that if you wanted to write to your grandfather and all, I could post the letters for you in Buncrana.’

  ‘Oh, Uncle Tom that would be great,’ Molly cried. ‘Granddad packed everything that he thought I might need – paper, envelopes, he even managed to get hold of some Irish stamps – but I couldn’t imagine how I would post any letters and so I haven’t used anything yet.’

  ‘Well, that is one problem solved,’ Tom said. ‘You just get the letters written and I will do the rest. Now, sit you up on that milking stool and rub your arms to get the feeling back and leave the rest of the milking to me tonight.’

  Molly was grateful to her uncle and sat back with a sigh of relief. For once, she didn’t mind that Biddy roared at her as soon as she was in the door, to get on the porridge for supper and not take all night over it, because her head was full of the letters that she intended writing that night.

  Feeling sure that Biddy would object and make disparaging remarks, Molly left the writing of the letters until she was in her room. Normally, she was so tired when she went to bed that she fell into a deep sleep as soon as her head touched the pillow, but that night excitement drove sleep from her and she sat in her bed and wrote feverishly by the light of a candle.

  Knowing that neither Hilda or her grandfather could do anything to change the situation she was in, she didn’t tell them that she didn’t attend school any more, and very little about her grandmother at all. She did tell them of Tom and how welcoming he had been, how kind and patient he was teaching her things about farming life, and how she enjoyed helping him out on the farm. She knew that they would be pleased by that and she urged them to write back soon for she was desperate for news of them all.

  SIX

  Molly couldn’t believe the relief she felt when she watched Biddy drive off with Tom that first Saturday – and that was despite the long list of jobs awaiting her. She had hoped that they would stay away the whole day. However, Tom had said that their business would probably be completed by dinner-time, and when she caught a glimpse of the cart turning in the head of the lane, about half-past twelve, she felt her heart sink.

  Molly knew that it was too much to expect her grandmother to be pleased with anything she did and this was just as well, because that
way she wasn’t either surprised or disappointed with Biddy’s reaction. In fact, she was far more interested in the fresh fish that Tom had brought home. He gutted it and had it in the pan above the fire in no time at all, and it tasted so delicious when they sat down to eat it.

  The house had to be spotless and a batch of baking done for Sunday, so Molly was run off her feet all afternoon, glad after washing up the tea things to escape with Tom to the cowshed.

  Molly had already got the Mass clothes ready for them all for the following morning and cleaned the shoes as her grandmother had bade. Now, as she emerged in the door after the milking that evening, Biddy said, ‘Time you had a bath, girl.’

  Molly, used to an indoor bathroom, had wondered about that. Her grandfather had had no bathroom either, and had told Molly that he, Phoebe and Ted too, before he was married, would bath in front of the fire. Molly had presumed she would have to do the same here, and this was proved when Biddy ordered Tom to fetch the bath in from the barn while a large pot of water was put over the fire to heat.

  The galvanised bath Tom brought in looked neither large, nor very comfortable, but Molly was less concerned about that than she was about where Tom would go, for she had no intention of taking one stitch of clothing off in front of him. Fortunately, he stayed only long enough to mix the hot water and cold water together before leaving to tramp the hills while Molly washed herself.

  Despite the fairly primitive conditions, Molly would have enjoyed her bath, if it hadn’t been for the presence of her grandmother, sitting in the chair watching her. She wondered at the ability the woman had of changing the atmosphere of a room just by being in it, and so she had no intention of lingering over her wash, which was just as well because she had barely rinsed the soap off before her grandmother was urging her to hurry up.

  She was, however, dressed in her pyjamas and slippers and her towelled hair in plaits before Tom put in an appearance. Then he emptied the bath into the gutter in the yard, despite Biddy telling him to leave it to Molly.