A Sister's Promise

by Anne Bennett

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Cathy said, when Molly said this. ‘Anyway, with your build wouldn’t large breasts look a bit stupid?’

  ‘I suppose,’ Molly agreed, for she was very fine-boned.

  ‘They are not much use to me either,’ Cathy went on. ‘I mean, think about it. Look at the figure you have, and the skin and hair I would die for. It isn’t as if I can take out my breasts for everyone to have a look and remark on how big they are, is it?’ And then there was a slight pause before she said, ‘Not just yet a while, anyway.’

  ‘Cathy!’

  ‘Why are you so shocked?’ Cathy said. ‘Someone will be entitled to take a look at them one day. And,’ she added with an impish grin, ‘more than a look if I know anything.’

  ‘Do you ever think about things like that?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘I asked first.’

  ‘Well, course I do,’ Cathy said. ‘It’s natural, isn’t it, to wonder?’

  ‘You don’t think it’s a sin?’

  ‘How could it be?’ Cathy said. ‘The priests would probably say it was but, God, don’t they see sin everywhere? If you got out of bed one morning and blew your nose, they would find probably find some sin in there somewhere.’

  ‘So you don’t confess it?’

  ‘I do not,’ Cathy said emphatically. ‘And you won’t either if you have any sense. What Mammy told us last month, did you think that a sin?’

  ‘No,’ Molly said definitely. ‘Anything but, and less than a fortnight later, I was more than grateful.’

  Seeing the girls developing into young women, Nellie had taken them aside and explained about periods, and just a scant two weeks later Molly started. She knew without Nellie she would have thought she was dying. As it was, she had been able to go into the farmhouse without any fuss, and ask her grandmother did she have any cotton pads for she had started her periods.

  If her grandmother was surprised by her calmness, she made no comment about it. All she did growl out as she passed her the pads was, ‘Period or not, there is to be no slacking. It happens to every woman every month and so there is no need to make a song and dance about it. Fill yourself a bucket of water to leave in your room to soak the used ones in and that should be all there is to it.’

  Molly did as her grandmother told her and despite the messiness and the griping pains in her stomach, she welcomed her periods for they meant she was growing up, one step nearer to the time when she could leave this place.

  The letters from Birmingham brought Molly up to date with things going on in the world beyond her narrow existence, like the civil war that had begun in Spain in the summer of that year, though Molly couldn’t see why Tom was so concerned about it.

  ‘But, Uncle Tom, Spain is miles away from us, and haven’t there always been little wars or rumours of wars happening in these types of countries?’ she said, as they walked side by side one bright and pleasant Sunday afternoon.

  ‘I have a very uneasy feeling about it, that’s all.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Molly,’ Tom asked, ‘have you ever stood dominoes in such a way that when you push the first one it knocks into the next and so on, until they all topple over?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Molly said. ‘I used to spend hours doing that for Kevin.’

  ‘Well, I can’t help feeling that what is happening in Spain is the first domino,’ Tom said. ‘Only time will tell if I am right.’

  Molly, though, thought he was just being an old worry guts. She was more concerned with the Olympic Games in Berlin that summer, which she read all about in the papers at the McEvoys’. She was incensed by the fact that Hitler would not honour the black American athlete who beat all before him and, as Tom said, the action showed the whole world just how racist Hitler’s government was.

  There were other things in the paper closer to home too, like the poverty in England, which even the Irish papers occasionally reported on.

  ‘Granddad says it’s as bad as ever,’ Molly said. ‘It was bad when I left but I sort of hoped it would have begun getting better by now and not just go on year after year. Granddad said if something isn’t done soon, he can just see the unemployed taking matters into their own hands and Hilda says more or less the same.’

  It seemed there were many around who thought that, though, for by the time the harvest was completed and all stacked away for the winter, there came news of two hundred men walking from Jarrow in the North-East, where unemployment was nearly seventy per cent to bring their plight to the government in London.

  The gesture captured the imagination of Ireland too, and there were many pictures in the papers of the weary marchers with thin, wasted faces, walking behind their battered bus containing all their provisions and cooking facilities rolling along beside them. Some towns and villages welcomed them and they were brought into church halls and fed, while other places were barred to them.

  ‘Afraid of riots amongst their own townsfolk, I imagine,’ Jack said at the tea table after scrutinising the paper. ‘Mind,’ he added, ‘it is one hell of a way to travel on empty stomachs.’

  It was. Molly hadn’t been that sure where Jarrow was and Jack had shown both her and Cathy on a map. It was one hell of a way to travel, whichever way you looked at it, whether your stomach was full or not, Molly thought. It was gratifying to read that in the towns where the men were officially barred from entering, often church organisations and even ordinary people took on the task of feeding them.

  ‘My mother would do something like that,’ Molly said. ‘She bought pies for our dinner one day in the Bull Ring and then gave them away to this barefoot woman and her clutch of children. She said that the woman was so, so grateful, like as if she had given her the crown jewels. We had to have bread and dripping that day and she said we had to be grateful for that, for those children looked as if in all their short lives they had never had full stomachs.’

  ‘Point is, though,’ Jack said, ‘it shouldn’t have to happen that way. There should be jobs for the people. Seems to me Ireland wasn’t the only one let down after the Great War. And there is no good this chap Mosley trying to blame it all on the Jews, and inciting people to rise up against them.’

  In the end, though, the Jarrow March was all for nothing, for the Prime Minister refused to see or speak with the men and, defeated and demoralised, they had no option but to return home with the situation unresolved. It seemed the last straw when King Edward abdicated, because the nation would not accept the American divorcee he had taken up with as their queen.

  ‘Deserting the sinking ship or what?’ Tom asked as they made their way to the McEvoys, the Sunday following this announcement on 11 December.

  ‘I think it’s what,’ Molly said. ‘Our old neighbour never liked him much. She thought the fact that he was handsome was the only thing he had in his favour, and that could be a handicap in a way, because if he was as ugly as sin, King or no King, I don’t reckon old Wallis would have looked the side he was on.’

  ‘You could be right,’ Tom said with a grin.

  ‘Anyway, it may be just as well,’ Molly said. ‘My granddad has been worried about Edward as King for ages because he says he’s too keen on Germany and the German government. And with all we hear about them all the time, isn’t that the last nation in the world you would like to be on friendly terms with?’

  ‘I would say so.’

  ‘And so would I,’ Molly said, then added, ‘This has been an unsettled year one way and another, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Aye,’ Tom said in agreement. ‘Let’s hope 1937 will be better.’

  Molly thought it just might be when, for her fifteenth birthday, her grandfather sent her a silver locket. When she carefully opened it, she found a photograph of her mother one side of it and her father the other. Her granddad couldn’t have sent anything that could have pleased her more, and she placed it around her neck immediately, knowing she would never remove it, that she would wear her mother and father next to h
er heart, which was their rightful place, but beneath her clothes lest her grandmother see.

  There had been little snow in the winter of 1936/7 and few truly gale-force winds, but the frost had been a hard one and the days bone-chillingly cold. Molly wasn’t the only one to feel glad when the warmth of spring began stealing into the days. It matched her more optimistic outlook. She had good friends, the support of her uncle, her savings were building up and her letters kept her in touch with what family she had.

  The 19 April was a Monday that year and, mindful of Nellie’s words the previous year, Molly did not allow herself to dwell on the events of that dreadful day two years before. It was a beautiful day anyway. The sun shone from a sky of cornflower blue and Molly felt almost happy as she hung the washing on the line, knowing it would be dry in no time and she could have it all ironed and put away before the day was out.

  The following week, Tom had to go into Buncrana and when he came back he told them of the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica. Jack had saved the papers for Tom to see for himself.

  ‘German planes were used,’ Tom said, ‘and hundreds were killed, because it was market day and all, and no warning of any sort.’

  ‘I am sorry, really sorry about all the people dying,’ Molly said later as they milked the cows together, ‘but it can’t have anything to do with us here, or England either, can it?’

  ‘It might,’ Tom said. ‘I imagine it was Hitler’s way of showing the world what he is capable of.’

  ‘Right, so now the world knows,’ Molly said. ‘But it was directed against the poor people of Spain, not us.’

  Tom 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 mo
re 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 away.’

  The following week, when Molly saw the dresses, her heart sank. There was no adornment of any sort about them and they went right up to the neck and down to the wrist and ended halfway down her calf.

  ‘Ah God, Nellie, if you could have seen the look in that poor girl’s eyes when she looked at herself in the mirror,’ the dressmaker said to Nellie afterwards. ‘And the grandmother enjoying it, so she was.’