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 you worry your pretty little head about me,’ Tom said. ‘I have managed this long and will cope, no doubt.’
‘I can’t help feeling that I have made life more difficult for you.’
Tom paused before saying. ‘In a way, I suppose it was your fault that I said anything at all. Not that I am blaming you. I know I should have done something a lot earlier than I did. The point was, while it was just me she was having a go at, I didn’t want to stir things up further and possibly make her worse. Then you arrived and Mammy was so unreasonable in her demands and expectations of you that she angered me. I knew I couldn’t just sit there and let you take it all on your own.’
He grinned at Molly and went on, ‘I had no idea then of the feisty little lady you were. You look so frail and slight, as if a puff of wind would blow you away. To tell you the absolute truth, you made me ashamed of myself when you stand and face Mammy and seem so unafraid.’
‘That is just an act,’ Molly admitted. ‘I am scared as the next. Sometimes I’m surprised that she can’t hear my heart banging against my ribs and my stomach is often tied in knots.’
‘Well, you show no evidence of it,’ Tom said admiringly. ‘And now if you have no objection, we will go inside for breakfast before I collapse on the floor with starvation.’
Tom surprised everyone, not least Molly, the next Saturday by announcing that she was to accompany him and Biddy to Buncrana.
‘Impossible!’ Biddy said dismissively. ‘Molly has a host of jobs to get through.’
‘Well, they will have to wait.’
‘Since when did you begin giving out the orders?’
‘Not long,’ Tom admitted with a sardonic grin. ‘Some might say, better late than never.’
‘Oh, don’t start that again,’ Biddy said. ‘You always needed to be told. You’re useless at taking responsibility for anything. You were the same, even as a boy.’
‘So you say, Mammy,’ Tom said mildly, ‘but in this case I am telling you that Molly has to come with us to Buncrana today.’
‘And why is that?’
‘Because she needs wellingtons,’ Tom said. ‘I must start getting in the peat and Molly won’t be able to help me unless she has suitable footwear.’
‘Do you need her to help you?’
‘It was you who said I needed help,’ Tom pointed out. ‘Anyway, it isn’t only the peat you need wellingtons for on a farm. You may have saved money on her work clothes, though they would look better if they fitted her anywhere, but there isn’t a pair of boots in the whole place small enough for her feet. And she is ruining the shoes she has – I noticed it just the other day – and soon she will have nothing suitable to put on her feet for Mass.’
Molly, listening to this interchange, wanted to hug herself with delight. She knew that though Biddy took pleasure in the fact that, weekdays, she was dressed worse than some of the beggars she had seen on the streets of Birmingham, when it came to Mass she had to be respectable. It was a matter of pride.
This was proved when Biddy said grudgingly, ‘All right then, she needs a pair of wellingtons, but there is still no reason for her to come with us. We’ll bring her a pair home.’
‘You know that it is hard for one to buy footwear for another,’ Tom said, ‘even in the case of boots – maybe more especially in the way of boots. Molly will be wearing these most of the time that she is outside with me and I would be happier if they fit her well enough.’
And so Molly got to go to Buncrana. She fair rattled through the jobs beforehand. She sat in the back of the cart that early summer morning, with the sun just peeping over the hill to light up the pale blue sky with the clouds scudding across it, blown by the wafting breeze, and felt the beginning of happiness steal over her. She couldn’t believe that she could be so excited over a simple shopping trip.
She had been used to a vast array of shops virtually on her doorstep in the shape of Erdington Village, and the city centre itself only a short tram journey away, and though she had been shown around Buncrana by Cathy, that had been on a Sunday when everywhere was shut up.