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

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СКАЧАТЬ that anyone had given her any money. Not, of course, that there was any occasion to spend anything on the farm, but she was worried how she would ever leave her grandmother’s clutches without any money at all and she knew whatever age she was and whatever she did, there would be no sort of a wage coming her way.

      However, while she was debating this in her head, Cathy, who had been given the same by her father, said, ‘Let’s go to the sweet shop,’ and Molly’s mouth had filled with saliva at the thought. She had never been allowed to be a great sweet eater in Birmingham – her mother had been particularly strict about that, and Molly was wise enough to keep quiet about the odd things her granddad used to pass her – but now, the thought of a bag or two of luscious sweets was very tempting.

      After all, she told herself, what good was thrupence in the grand scheme of things? And so she turned to Cathy with a broad smile and said, ‘Yes, let’s.’

      They had finished all the tiger nuts, by tacit consent leaving the bull’s-eyes for another time, when they decided to go down to the harbour. ‘We’ll see if they are done with their pints of Guinness now and are ready to come home,’ Cathy said.

      ‘I’m all for that,’ Molly said, ‘because I am going nowhere near my grandmother without my uncle beside me.’

      The men were standing outside gazing across at the Lough and as soon as Jack saw them, he said jovially, ‘Now this is a sight for sore eyes: two visions of loveliness.’

      Tom turned to look and Molly saw that he wasn’t quite sober and she wondered if he would be any sort of protection at all between her and her grandmother, but Jack was speaking again. ‘Now, what will you have, girls, a lemonade each?’

      Molly thought a lemonade sounded lovely, for the sweets had made her thirsty, but she looked towards her uncle first. ‘It’s all right,’ Jack said, taking Tom’s empty glass from him. ‘It’s my round anyway.’

      ‘Uncle Tom, you’re tiddly,’ Molly whispered when Jack had gone into the hotel bar, taking Cathy with him to give him a hand.

      ‘I know,’ said Tom. ‘I’m not used to it, you see.’

      ‘But your mother—’

      ‘My saintly mother will give out to me all the way home,’ Tom said. ‘The same way she gives out to me every other Saturday when I am stone-cold sober. Maybe today I’ll mind it less.’

      ‘Well, I’ll wish I had some of the same if you do,’ Molly said. ‘I don’t think that lemonade will have the same numbing effect.’

      ‘Maybe not, but there is nothing to stop you enjoying it here and now,’ Tom said.

      And then Jack was there with two pints of Guinness, and Cathy with two lemonades.

      Tom lifted one of the foaming tankards. ‘Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, that’s what I told myself today,’ he said to Molly with a broad wink as he lifted the glass to his lips.

      Later, Molly thought Biddy was going to kill the pair of them and more so when she found that Tom had not only been drinking but doing so ‘to excess’, as she put it.

      ‘You have no right to leave me at all,’ she screeched. ‘Left alone for hours on end. Stuck here like a stook.’

      ‘And why were you?’ Tom asked amiably. ‘If you got rid of the produce early, then what was to stop you parading the town, maybe taking tea with neighbouring women, only too glad of an excuse for a good gossip? That’s what other women from the outlying farms often do on Saturday.’

      ‘I am not other women,’ Biddy almost snarled. ‘I am me and I have no desire other than to go home, and where were you but tipping ale down your throat? And where,’ she said suddenly grabbing Molly’s arm, ‘were you in this, miss?’

      ‘With me, of course,’ Tom said. ‘Helped me choose the fish, didn’t you, Moll?’

      Molly nodded heartily, glad that she had the bull’s-eyes safely hidden, and hoped that her grandmother wouldn’t ask her what fish she had chosen, for she wouldn’t have a clue.

      However, her grandmother hadn’t finished with Tom. Seeing him stumble as he helped her up into the seat at the front of the cart, she said sharply, ‘And you are far from steady on your feet. Are you sure you are capable of driving this horse home?’

      Tom gave a short laugh. ‘Don’t worry, Mammy, you are in safe hands. I am quite capable, but even if I were paralytic and passed out in the flat of the cart, old Dobbin would still get you home in one piece.’

      ‘I’d rather not put it to the test,’ Biddy replied with spirit.

      ‘No need to,’ Tom said with a flick of the reins. ‘Hie up, Dobbin.’

      All the way home, Biddy berated both Tom and Molly. Molly was so used to this now she let her grandmother’s voice go over her head while she relived the last couple of hours. She thought her uncle was taking as little notice as she was because since they had left the town he had said little and listened to his mother with an inane smile plastered across his face. That was, until Biddy went on about the money that Tom had spent in the pub.

      ‘What odds to you?’ he commented mildly. ‘It’s money honestly earned.’

      ‘Not earned to be wasted.’

      ‘If I earn it then I can spend my share of it on what I choose, surely?’

      ‘Your share of it?’ Biddy repeated.

      ‘Aye, Mammy, my share of it,’ Tom repeated ‘And there lies the rub, you see. I am forty-seven years old and I have been working this farm full time since I left school at twelve, and I have never had a penny piece to call my own. I have money doled to me as if I were a wean, like today. You decide when I need a new suit for Mass, or a shirt. I am consulted on neither style nor colour, and it is the same for my everyday clothes. God, you even tip up the money for the collection at Mass. Well, it has to stop now. I will work out how much I do and how much I can legitimately take from the profits and pay myself a proper wage each week.’

      ‘You will not.’

      ‘Oh, yes, I will, Mammy,’ Tom said, and Molly noted the steely edge to his voice with surprise. ‘For there is nothing to stop me dropping you at the farmhouse door, putting all my clothes in a case, taking my share from the farm and hightailing it to England, or across the Atlantic to Joe.’

      ‘Joe!’ Biddy said scornfully. ‘Living hand to mouth, reliant on handouts and soup kitchens.’

      ‘Joe has no proper job, that’s why he has to do that for now,’ Tom said. ‘Whereas I have a job and one I am at every day, and aren’t I reliant on my mother for handouts for food and clothes and all else? It isn’t right and the sooner you accept that, the better it will be for all of us. I want some money of my own.’

      ‘What do you need money for?’ Biddy asked testily, unwilling to let go of the purse strings that she had held for so long. ‘To get drunk every night?’

      ‘If I want,’ Tom said defiantly. ‘What I do with my money in my own free time is my business, but I’m warning you, Mammy, that there are going to be a few changes around here that are long overdue.’

      Molly СКАЧАТЬ