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

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       NINE

      The following day at tea-time, Tom saw that Molly was exhausted. He had done what he could to help her that wash day, hanging around the cottage, doing jobs near at hand so that he could help bring any water she needed from the well. Later, he had helped her turn the mangle and put up with his mother’s sneering comments that he was turning into a sissy, doing women’s work.

      He knew, however, that his mother had been particularly vicious that day and rightly guessed that it was her attitude that had worn Molly down so badly. While Molly had sort of expected some backlash for her visit to Cathy, she soon found that expecting such censure and dealing with it all day were two very different things.

      In the end, while they were eating the last bowl of porridge before bed, she suddenly felt as if she had stood more than enough and she looked at her grandmother and asked candidly, ‘Why are you always so horrid? I sort of expect you now to find fault with everything I do, but you have been worse than ever today.’

      Biddy was astounded and outraged. She had never been questioned in this way before. ‘How dare you?’ she burst out. ‘I have no need to explain myself to you, miss.’

      Molly showed no fear, though her stomach was tied in knots. ‘I need to know, if I am on the receiving end of it. The point is, I can’t see that I have done that much wrong today anyway.’

      Tom hid his slight amusement as he watched his mother open and shut her mouth soundlessly for a few seconds, too stunned and taken unawares to make any sort of reply. He was absolutely astounded himself at Molly’s temerity.

      ‘Are you going to sit there like a deaf mute and let this brazen besom talk to me like this, Tom?’ Biddy screeched, turning her malevolent eyes on her son. ‘What manner of man are you at all?’

      Listening to his mother’s disdainful whine, it was suddenly clear to Tom why Molly could speak with such assurance and courage and that was because of the confidence she had in herself. He would guess that that confidence was gained by being loved and valued by her parents, while he, on the other hand, had been verbally and physically abused almost since he had drawn his first breath and so now he said, ‘I am the manner of man that you made me, Mammy, and as for Molly, she has not been disrespectful to you in any way.’

      ‘I will act as I see fit in my own house,’ Biddy said mutinously. ‘No one has the right to refute anything I say.’

      ‘Dad used to say if everyone was able to do just as they liked, we would have something called anarchy and those who were more powerful or violent would rule over the others.’

      ‘God, I wish I still had my stick,’ Biddy ground out. ‘You would find the sting of it this day.’

      ‘That would just prove the point, though, wouldn’t it?’ Molly said.

      ‘It’s not right for a young girl to be speaking in such a way – and especially not to her elders and betters,’ Biddy snapped. ‘I only took you in because there was no one else suitable, but I dislike you intensely, and have done since the day we met.’

      Molly shrugged. ‘I honestly don’t mind about that because, as I said before we left Birmingham, I feel the same way about you.’

      The slap knocked her from the stool and she lay on the stone floor. Tom was by her side in a moment. ‘Mammy, I told you there is to be no more of this.’

      Molly got to her feet and faced her grandmother, her gaze steadily, enraging the old woman further.

      ‘You deserved that and more,’ Biddy growled out.

      ‘You can get away with that now because you are bigger and stronger than me, but it won’t always be that way,’ said Molly, glaring.

      Biddy looked at the two ranged against her and deeply regretted bringing Molly to Ireland. She had thought she would easily break her spirit, but there was no sign of it so far, and Tom was taking her side at every turn.

      ‘Tom,’ she thundered, ‘I will not tolerate this. Where is the respect you have always shown me in the past?’

      ‘That wasn’t respect, Mammy,’ Tom said mildly. ‘It was fear, and it gives me no pleasure to admit that. However, this is not about me, but Molly, and you may as well know here and now that Nellie McEvoy asked Molly to tea this Sunday as well and she has already accepted the invitation.’

      Biddy glared at her son, hardly able to believe her ears. ‘You take her part at your peril, Tom,’ she said. ‘For the girl is a born troublemaker and you can’t see it.’

      ‘How can you say that?’ Molly cried. ‘What have I done?’

      ‘You have brought dissension to this house. That is what you have done, my girl,’ Biddy shrieked.

      Tom laughed. ‘This was never a happy place, Mammy. All my life you shouted the orders and I jumped to it, but it was never a real home. Molly couldn’t destroy what wasn’t there in the first place.’

      Molly wished she could tell her uncle to be quiet, for she knew her grandmother was storing all this in her head and it might come out in every blow she would administer her way at the earliest opportunity. And yet she couldn’t totally regret the fact that Tom was beginning to stand up to his mother.

      The next day, Molly lay in bed and faced what she had said to her grandmother the evening before. She didn’t regret a single word, though she knew that, if anything, things might get worse for her because of it. She had valued her uncle’s support, but she knew that defying his mother was an alien way for him to behave and she mentioned her concerns about this in the cowshed the following day.

      ‘Every word you have just uttered is right,’ Tom said. ‘Neither of my brothers was as eager to please Mammy as I was. She seemed to strip me of any shred of self-confidence I had.’

      ‘But now you are a grown man,’ Molly said, ‘and can take pride in yourself despite her.’

      ‘D’you know, for a wee girl of thirteen, you speak very well,’ Tom said, and added with the ghost of a smile, ‘Argue well too. Were you good at the book-learning at school?’

      ‘Pretty good,’ Molly said. ‘I was due to stay on until I was sixteen and matriculate. Daddy really would have liked me to go to university, but he wasn’t pushy or anything. He just said we would take each stage as it came and see how well I did and also how far I wanted to go. I really enjoyed school.’

      ‘That’s where you should be,’ Tom said.

      ‘Maybe,’ Molly agreed. ‘But you know, Uncle Tom, there is so much I would like to change about the life I have now that staying on at school is just one more thing to resent your mother for. Crikey,’ she added with a ghost of a smile, ‘that list is so long now, it is like a roll of wallpaper.’

      Tom laughed. ‘You keep that outlook on life, young Molly, and you’ll manage just fine, I think.’

      ‘And what about you?’

      ‘Don’t СКАЧАТЬ