Molly decided that she had to bite the bullet, so to speak, so as soon as they were in the door she said to her grandmother, ‘Has there been any letters come for me?’
Biddy remembered the two letters she had thrown into the fire the day before, but still said, ‘Why should there be letters for you?’
Molly stared at her. ‘Well, because I thought Granddad at least would want to know how I am. Anyway, I asked him questions in my letter about Kevin.’
‘Your letter,’ Biddy repeated. It was obvious that she hadn’t known about this, but Molly hadn’t been secretive on purpose. It was just that she had as little to do with Biddy as possible and she hadn’t thought to mention it. ‘When, pray, did you write a letter?’ Biddy demanded.
‘Nearly a week ago,’ Molly said. She thought her grandmother was looking at her strangely, but then she often did. Tom, however, had seen that expression before. He knew Molly was heading straight into trouble, and there was not a thing he could do about it. Molly went blithely on, ‘Granddad packed the paper and envelopes and all in my case.’
‘And how did you post it?’
‘Oh, Uncle Tom did that for me.’
Biddy’s cold and accusing eyes slid towards Tom and it was when he said in a bumbling apologetic voice, ‘Ah, Mammy, sure I saw no harm in it,’ that Molly felt the first feelings of unease.’
‘No harm in the child writing to heathens?’
‘Heathens!’ Molly cried. ‘Who are you calling heathens?’
‘Don’t you take that tone with me, my girl,’ Biddy snapped. ‘You shouldn’t have to ask who the heathen is? Your grandfather, for one.’
Molly was incensed. ‘Don’t be stupid!’ she cried. ‘My granddad is not a heathen.’
The slap knocked her off her feet and Biddy said to Tom, ‘Fetch the stick.’
‘Ah, no, Mammy,’ Tom said. ‘Sure, Molly didn’t mean to say you were stupid.’
Molly’s blood was up, however, and she was too angry to be in any way conciliatory. ‘Oh yes I did mean it,’ she cried. ‘I meant every bloody word.’
Biddy hauled her to her feet and shook her as if she was a rag doll, then dragged her across to the fireplace where the stick was. Molly was writhing and screaming like a stuck pig, especially when the stick sliced through the air and made contact with her skin. She braced herself for another blow, but it didn’t happen, for Tom not only wrenched the stick from his mother’s hand, he also broke it in two and threw the pieces into the fire.
‘I had more than enough of that bloody thing when I was growing up,’ he growled out. ‘It’s past time it was burned.’
Biddy was incensed, but she said sneeringly, ‘I can always get another. Besides,’ she added, ‘there is more than one way of killing a cat than by drowning it.’
‘Mammy, for heaven’s sake …’
‘I will not tolerate the way Molly spoke to me,’ Biddy declared.
Tom had pulled Molly away from his mother and she faced her, anger overriding any fear she might have as she said, ‘Well, I won’t tolerate you saying horrible things about my family. My father and grandfather and even Hilda have more kindness and goodness in their little fingers than you have in your entire body, and as for my mother—’
‘Don’t dare speak your mother’s name.’
‘I will if I like because she was wonderful, and I am glad I had thirteen years of her love before she died, and I will say so to anyone who asks me,’ Molly said firmly, adding goadingly, ‘So what are you going to do about that? Cut out my tongue?’
‘You see,’ Biddy said to Tom. ‘To spare the rod is to spoil the child, and this wayward streak Molly has in her is the result of too little chastisement in her formative years.’
Tom didn’t answer his mother. He had spent a lifetime studying her and scrutinising her face and now he suddenly knew that letters had arrived for Molly. He said, ‘All this anger has come about because Molly asked you a simple question. I think letters did come for Molly and I want you to tell me what you did with them.’
‘Yes, they came all right,’ Biddy said defiantly, ‘and they went on the fire. And if any more come, they will receive the same treatment.’
Molly stared at her, almost refusing to believe that the woman in front of her had done such an horrendously cruel thing. She yearned for news of those she had left behind and tears rained down her cheeks as she burst out, ‘How dare you burn letters addressed to me? You have no right.’
‘You forget,’ Biddy said. ‘I have every right.’
‘Mammy, surely to God you will see—’ Tom began.
‘Your opinion wasn’t asked for and is not needed,’ Biddy snapped. ‘Kindly keep out of this altogether.’
‘But, Mammy—’
‘Is your hearing affected, Tom?’ Biddy said, her words as brittle and cold as drops of ice. ‘I said this is not your concern and that is exactly what I meant.’
Molly saw her uncle almost flinch and fall silent, beaten by his mother’s iron will, which had dominated him since he was a child, and knew that she was on her own. She brushed the tears from her cheeks with her fingers and willed her voice not to shake as she faced her grandmother. ‘You must allow me to write and receive letters. These are the people that are dearest in the whole world to me.’
Biddy looked at her implacably and said, ‘That makes them even more dangerous.’
‘Dangerous!’
‘These are the people whose influence I removed you from,’ Biddy said. ‘For the good of your immortal soul I cannot allow you to communicate with them.’
‘D’you think they might contaminate me or something?’ Molly remarked sarcastically.
Biddy nodded her head sagely. ‘We cannot run that risk. However,’ she went on, ‘I don’t think we will have many more letters arriving, for I have written to your grandfather and that neighbour you seem so fond of, telling them there is to be no further correspondence with you. I have the letters already written for posting tomorrow.’
Molly thought how comforted she would have been by reading her grandfather’s words, reaching across the Irish Sea to the granddaughter he had had to relinquish. Maybe she might even get the odd wee note from Kevin when he had been at school a little longer, and she was in great need of the homespun wisdom and humour of Hilda. She knew that now her life would be harder and lonelier than ever.
With the business of the letters, Tom felt he had failed Molly, yet he knew there was no way on God’s earth that he could have changed his mother’s mind in the slightest degree. But one thing he was determined on was that she would keep her date with the McEvoys. So the next day in Buncrana, without saying a word to Molly about it and also unbeknownst to his mother, Tom had had a word with the postmistress.
Knowing her to be a kindly woman and one who could hold her own counsel if she had to, he put her wise to the situation at the house. Nellie wasn’t surprised because she had had Biddy in already that morning with the two letters for Birmingham and she had told Nellie straight out that she had written to Molly’s grandfather and the neighbour Hilda, saying that they were to have no further contact with Molly. Nellie thought it extremely harsh, but when she tried saying this, Biddy