If her grandmother was surprised by her calmness, she made no comment about it. All she did growl out as she passed her the pads was, ‘Period or not, there is to be no slacking. It happens to every woman every month and so there is no need to make a song and dance about it. Fill yourself a bucket of water to leave in your room to soak the used ones in and that should be all there is to it.’
Molly did as her grandmother told her and despite the messiness and the griping pains in her stomach, she welcomed her periods for they meant she was growing up, one step nearer to the time when she could leave this place.
The letters from Birmingham brought Molly up to date with things going on in the world beyond her narrow existence, like the civil war that had begun in Spain in the summer of that year, though Molly couldn’t see why Tom was so concerned about it.
‘But, Uncle Tom, Spain is miles away from us, and haven’t there always been little wars or rumours of wars happening in these types of countries?’ she said, as they walked side by side one bright and pleasant Sunday afternoon.
‘I have a very uneasy feeling about it, that’s all.’
‘But why?’
‘Molly,’ Tom asked, ‘have you ever stood dominoes in such a way that when you push the first one it knocks into the next and so on, until they all topple over?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Molly said. ‘I used to spend hours doing that for Kevin.’
‘Well, I can’t help feeling that what is happening in Spain is the first domino,’ Tom said. ‘Only time will tell if I am right.’
Molly, though, thought he was just being an old worry guts. She was more concerned with the Olympic Games in Berlin that summer, which she read all about in the papers at the McEvoys’. She was incensed by the fact that Hitler would not honour the black American athlete who beat all before him and, as Tom said, the action showed the whole world just how racist Hitler’s government was.
There were other things in the paper closer to home too, like the poverty in England, which even the Irish papers occasionally reported on.
‘Granddad says it’s as bad as ever,’ Molly said. ‘It was bad when I left but I sort of hoped it would have begun getting better by now and not just go on year after year. Granddad said if something isn’t done soon, he can just see the unemployed taking matters into their own hands and Hilda says more or less the same.’
It seemed there were many around who thought that, though, for by the time the harvest was completed and all stacked away for the winter, there came news of two hundred men walking from Jarrow in the North-East, where unemployment was nearly seventy per cent to bring their plight to the government in London.
The gesture captured the imagination of Ireland too, and there were many pictures in the papers of the weary marchers with thin, wasted faces, walking behind their battered bus containing all their provisions and cooking facilities rolling along beside them. Some towns and villages welcomed them and they were brought into church halls and fed, while other places were barred to them.
‘Afraid of riots amongst their own townsfolk, I imagine,’ Jack said at the tea table after scrutinising the paper. ‘Mind,’ he added, ‘it is one hell of a way to travel on empty stomachs.’
It was. Molly hadn’t been that sure where Jarrow was and Jack had shown both her and Cathy on a map. It was one hell of a way to travel, whichever way you looked at it, whether your stomach was full or not, Molly thought. It was gratifying to read that in the towns where the men were officially barred from entering, often church organisations and even ordinary people took on the task of feeding them.
‘My mother would do something like that,’ Molly said. ‘She bought pies for our dinner one day in the Bull Ring and then gave them away to this barefoot woman and her clutch of children. She said that the woman was so, so grateful, like as if she had given her the crown jewels. We had to have bread and dripping that day and she said we had to be grateful for that, for those children looked as if in all their short lives they had never had full stomachs.’
‘Point is, though,’ Jack said, ‘it shouldn’t have to happen that way. There should be jobs for the people. Seems to me Ireland wasn’t the only one let down after the Great War. And there is no good this chap Mosley trying to blame it all on the Jews, and inciting people to rise up against them.’
In the end, though, the Jarrow March was all for nothing, for the Prime Minister refused to see or speak with the men and, defeated and demoralised, they had no option but to return home with the situation unresolved. It seemed the last straw when King Edward abdicated, because the nation would not accept the American divorcee he had taken up with as their queen.
‘Deserting the sinking ship or what?’ Tom asked as they made their way to the McEvoys, the Sunday following this announcement on 11 December.
‘I think it’s what,’ Molly said. ‘Our old neighbour never liked him much. She thought the fact that he was handsome was the only thing he had in his favour, and that could be a handicap in a way, because if he was as ugly as sin, King or no King, I don’t reckon old Wallis would have looked the side he was on.’
‘You could be right,’ Tom said with a grin.
‘Anyway, it may be just as well,’ Molly said. ‘My granddad has been worried about Edward as King for ages because he says he’s too keen on Germany and the German government. And with all we hear about them all the time, isn’t that the last nation in the world you would like to be on friendly terms with?’
‘I would say so.’
‘And so would I,’ Molly said, then added, ‘This has been an unsettled year one way and another, hasn’t it?’
‘Aye,’ Tom said in agreement. ‘Let’s hope 1937 will be better.’
Molly thought it just might be when, for her fifteenth birthday, her grandfather sent her a silver locket. When she carefully opened it, she found a photograph of her mother one side of it and her father the other. Her granddad couldn’t have sent anything that could have pleased her more, and she placed it around her neck immediately, knowing she would never remove it, that she would wear her mother and father next to her heart, which was their rightful place, but beneath her clothes lest her grandmother see.
There had been little snow in the winter of 1936/7 and few truly gale-force winds, but the frost had been a hard one and the days bone-chillingly cold. Molly wasn’t the only one to feel glad when the warmth of spring began stealing into the days. It matched her more optimistic outlook. She had good friends, the support of her uncle, her savings were building up and her letters kept her in touch with what family she had.
The 19 April was a Monday that year and, mindful of Nellie’s words the previous year, Molly did not allow herself to dwell on the events of that dreadful day two years before. It was a beautiful day anyway. The sun shone from a sky of cornflower blue and Molly felt almost happy as she hung the washing on the line, knowing it would be dry in no time and she could have it all ironed and put away before the day was out.
The following week, Tom had to go into Buncrana and when he came back he told them of the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica. Jack had saved the papers for Tom to see for himself.
‘German planes were used,’ Tom said, ‘and hundreds were killed, because it was market day and all, and no warning of any sort.’
‘I am sorry, really sorry about all the people dying,’ Molly said later as they milked the cows together, ‘but it can’t have anything to do with us here, or England either, can it?’
‘It might,’ Tom said. ‘I imagine it was Hitler’s way of showing the world what he is capable