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

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      The next afternoon, on the way to the McEvoys’, Tom admitted to Molly that he didn’t think he would ever have spoken to his mother the way he had done if he hadn’t been drinking.

      ‘Maybe you should have taken to the drink years ago then,’ Molly told him.

      ‘I hate unpleasantness,’ Tom said.

      ‘Not when you’re drunk you don’t,’ Molly said. ‘You fair went for your mother yesterday and at least she put up little objection to me coming here today.’

      ‘Well, that is because she is barely talking to either of us.’

      ‘Personally, I prefer it that way,’ Molly said with feeling. ‘And you really don’t have to walk all the way with me, unless you want to, especially as you are coming back to fetch me later. After all, it’s broad daylight and I know the way.’

      ‘Even on a day as overcast as this one, it is far preferable to be out in the fresh air than in with my mother,’ Tom said.

      ‘Well, I can’t argue with that,’ Molly said, ‘for the look on your mother’s face today would sour cream. And the dogs seem to appreciate the walk,’ she added, indicating Skip and Fly cavorting in front of them. She was getting on well with the two dogs now and she always spoke to them and gave them a stroke when she took them out their food. ‘I bet they are as pleased to get away from the farm as we are.’

      ‘Man or beast, it is good to have a break, and I am only just beginning to realise that myself,’ Tom said. ‘Now you can go on from here and I will take to the hills with the dogs.’

      ‘When will you come for me?’

      ‘Well, I’ll walk over when I have finished the milking and had my tea,’ Tom said. ‘No need for you to be ready then, though, for I’m going for a few jars with Cathy’s father before we set off back home.’

      ‘Oh, Uncle Tom, your mother will not be best pleased.’

      ‘Is she about anything now, Molly? Answer me that.’

      And she wasn’t, that was the problem, Molly thought as she watched her uncle striding away, whistling to the dogs to follow him. Hilda was right: Biddy was a very unhappy woman. As Molly walked on she tried to imagine what it would be like waking up each morning, knowing that nothing that happened that day or any other day would even satisfy, never mind please. She wasn’t sure she would want to wake up at all.

      A few days later, Tom took Molly to the bog to cut the turf and there was an unseasonable chill in the air. The sky was gunmetal grey and heavy black clouds were shrouding the tops of the hills.

      ‘Could rain,’ Tom commented, looking out at the sky anxiously. ‘But the only spare oilskin we have belonged to Joe, and I’d say that would be a mite big on you.’

      Big was an understatement, for it reached Molly’s feet, and even with the bottom cut off and the sleeves cut down, it was still ridiculously large. But as Tom said, few would be seeing what she looked like and it was better than nothing at all.

      There were a fair few other farmers at the bog that day, as Molly could see from a distance. Some had lads with them, though Molly estimated that the boys were slightly older than she was. As they drew closer, she saw that most of them had their trousers rolled up and were barefoot. ‘I used to go barefoot too throughout the whole summer,’ Tom told her, seeing her watching this. ‘We all did. In fact I used to hate to be forced into boots again to begin school in September, though I was glad enough of them when the snow and frosts were about. I thought you wouldn’t like to go barefoot, though, not being brought up to it.’

      ‘You’re right,’ Molly said. ‘I wasn’t brought up that way and neither was Kevin, and that was because my father was in work, but there were plenty in Birmingham not so lucky. I saw many thin, undernourished and barefoot children there, and that was the same summer and winter.’

      ‘It is a terrible thing all right for a man to have no job.’

      ‘That was what my father often said,’ Molly said. ‘The point is, he might have been in the same boat if it hadn’t been for what happened in the war.’ She related the story of the rescue of Paul Simmons and what happened because of it, when the war was ended.

      Tom was impressed, Molly could see, and when he said, ‘I would say that you had a hero of a father,’ she nodded happily.

      ‘I know,’ she said. ‘And he was lovely as well, but when I said that to Mom she always said all the men who fought in the war that they call “the Great War” were heroes, and some never came back from it. I mean, some of the families are so poor because they have no provider at all and some of those who did come back, were so badly injured they were totally unable to work.’

      ‘You still miss your parents a great deal, don’t you?’ Tom said gently.

      Molly nodded. ‘It’s like a nagging pain that is always there, but it helps to talk about them sometimes and remember how things used to be, and it is nice to hear things about my mother as a girl and everything. Was she ever taken to the bog?’

      ‘No,’ Tom said, smiling at the notion as he pulled the horse to a halt. ‘Few girls, particularly those of your age now, are taken to cut the peat, in actual fact,’ he said. ‘And, God above, if I had ever suggested taking Nuala, my mother would have beaten the head off me.’

      Molly laughed at that image, and at the sound the other farmers noticed their arrival and greeted them. Tom smiled as he saw that many of the boys were more than interested in Molly, and he couldn’t blame them, for while most people would have looked ridiculous in the oversized clothes, Molly looked very fetching indeed. Tom thought her beauty was such that if she had been clothed in a sack she would still look good. She seemed totally unaware of it herself and oblivious to the boys’ interest in her too, which Tom thought a good thing. She was very young yet.

      He leaped from the cart and helped Molly down before saying, ‘First the bog is cut into lines. See where the others have started?’

      Molly nodded and Tom continued, ‘So if I start marking out the lines could you come after me and do the cutting into the brick shapes you have seen at home?’

      ‘Yeah,’ Molly said. ‘It doesn’t seem so hard.’

      It wasn’t hard, but it was backbreaking, though Molly didn’t find that out straight away. She soon realised why the terrain was called a bog. Because no rain had actually fallen for some time, the thin grass covering the bog was dry but as soon as she sliced through the earth with her spade she saw and smelled the black slurry seeping through it. The bog seemed not to wish to relinquish its sod either, and tried to suck it back into the earth, but Molly persevered and eventually withdrew the brick almost triumphantly, threw it into the cart and bent to cut another.

      She thought she was working incredibly slowly and ponderously, but when Tom, thinking he had drawn enough lines for the time being, came to join her, he said she was doing just fine. ‘There is a knack to it, as there is to most things,’ he said. ‘You will pick it up eventually, but considering this is your first time, you’re not bad at all.’

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