Anne Bennett 3-Book Collection: A Sister’s Promise, A Daughter’s Secret, A Mother’s Spirit. Anne Bennett

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      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!’

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