A Daughter's Secret (31 page)

‘And did he survive it?’ Tom asked.

‘Oh yeah,’ Molly said. ‘Good job and all,’ cos he didn’t behave like some toffs did afterwards and forget Dad. He had taken over his father’s factory. As he had one leg shorter than the other, he found driving difficult so Dad would drive him places and then do anything else he wanted him to do. Mom said that if Dad hadn’t had a good, well-paid job her employers wouldn’t have allowed them to court, never mind marry. Just think, Uncle Tom,’ she went on with an impish grin, ‘I might not even have existed, and that I’m sure would have pleased your sainted mother.’

Tom laughed, realising how much he loved and admired his young niece. She had wormed her way into his heart, all right, and he welcomed the opportunity to get to know her better.

Molly was sixteen in February 1938 and began counting the days till she could leave the farm. Tom didn’t blame her one bit, though he knew he would miss her sorely.

Then Joe wrote to say that his mother-in-law had died and the way was open now for his family to leave America. They would not be returning to Ireland though, Gloria would never settle there, having been born and bred in a city. They would, he said, make for London.

* * *

Eventually Joe settled in a place called Tottenham and got work on the docks with no problem at all. He set about providing properly for his family again, but in his letters home he spoke often of the possibility of war with Germany in the near future.

He said he wasn’t fooled by Neville Chamberlain going to see Hitler in Munich in the autumn of that year. He came back on 29 September, waving a piece of paper in his hand and declaring, ‘There will be peace for our time.’ It was the headline in every newspaper, both in Ireland and Great Britain at the time, but Joe wasn’t the only one who was sceptical.

Christmas came and went, the year turned, and as the spring unfolded Tom began to feel that they were balanced on a knife edge. Joe saw war as almost unstoppable and wrote advising Tom to get a wireless in.

‘
These are dangerous times and even in Ireland, it is as well to keep abreast of things
.’

Tom knew his brother was absolutely right, and he wasn’t averse to getting a wireless anyway. When he mentioned it to Molly later that day as they ate around the table, she hugged herself with delight.

‘Ooh, it will be terrific to have a wireless in the house,’ she said. ‘The McEvoys have one and it is great entertainment. There are plays and comedy shows and music and programmes for children, all sorts of things.’

Tom smiled at her. ‘I have it mainly for the news, Molly.’

‘I know that,’ she said, ‘but no one can listen to the news twenty-four hours a day.’

‘You won’t listen to it at all, miss,’ Biddy snapped. ‘I’ll see to it that you won’t have time to sit and listen to any wireless.’

‘You don’t have to sit and listen to it,’ Molly said. ‘That is the beauty of it. I can listen and still do my work. In fact, working away to music helps to lighten the load.’

It was not Biddy’s intention to have the load lightened for Molly, the exact opposite, in fact, but she concentrated her energies on Tom. ‘Boy, money must burn a hole in your pocket.’

Tom had had a drink and that gave him the courage to snap back, ‘I am no boy, and when I ask you to give me something towards anything I buy, then you may express an opinion. What I do with my own money is my business.’

The Spanish Civil War had finally ground to a halt in March of 1939 with the dictator Franco as the victor. In the same month the Czechoslovakian people, dissatisfied with their government’s decision to give away part of their country to appease Hitler, began to protest. The government, afraid of revolt, asked Hitler for help in restoring order. His answer was to invade and take over the country. Tom wrote to urge Joe to come back to Ireland with his family before it was too late and war broke out.

Joe’s answer was swift. He said that people
couldn’t just run away when the going got tough and that he wanted to stay and fight if necessary to prevent that madman Hitler from overrunning Great Britain too.

In May, he wrote of the Territorial Army being recalled and in the same month conscription began of men of twenty and twenty-one years of age.

Molly was glad that the McEvoys had worked out a subterfuge years before so that she could receive her letters, addressed to Cathy, at the post office.

The loving concern of her granddad and their next-door neighbour, Hilda, had sparked from the pages over the years, while Kevin’s had sometimes made her laugh, though with each one she was aware of him growing up without her, and she yearned to see him again.

All in all, though, the letters had sustained her through many of the bleak times, and now they were able to tell her how Birmingham was preparing for war. In July, Molly’s granddad told of the trenches being dug in the parks and brick-built reinforced shelters being erected. The children, Kevin included, were recruited to fill sandbags to line the outside.

‘
He is more excited than worried about th
e
possibility of war
,’ Granddad wrote. ‘
He sees it a
s
one big game
.’

But the adults knew it was no game. In August, Britain signed an alliance with Poland, which
promised Britain would go to Poland’s aid if she were attacked.

‘Hitler’s armies are nearly on the borders now,’ Molly said. ‘Jack showed us in the map he had inside the paper last Sunday.’

‘Aye, I know,’ Tom said.

‘Granddad is going to get an Anderson shelter,’ Molly told him. ‘He said it’s made of corrugated iron. You have to dig a pit to sink it in your garden and pile earth on top. I would rather they be there than in the brick-built surface shelter. I don’t really see how they can be much safer than a house.’

‘I agree,’ Tom said. ‘God knows what Joe will do, for they live in a flat with no garden at all. Anyway, Joe said once war is official he is going to offer his services as a volunteer fireman. They are advertising, apparently. Foolhardy, perhaps, but then someone has to do these things. Tell you, Molly, I’m glad we got the wireless in. Even if Ireland is neutral we have loved ones that will be in the thick of it. We need to know what is happening.’

There was to be an announcement from the British Prime Minister, Chamberlain, just after eleven o’clock in the morning of Sunday, 3 September. What he was going to say was almost a foregone conclusion for the German Army had invaded Poland two days before. Yet Tom and Molly needed to hear the dreaded words actually said.

‘
I am speaking to you from the cabinet room
of 10 Downing Street. This morning th
e
Ambassador in Berlin … no such undertaking ha
s
been received and that consequently this countr
y
is at war with Germany
.’

Tom sighed.

‘So, now we know for definite.’

‘You knew before,’ Biddy snapped. ‘That is, unless you are a complete and utter numbskull. But it won’t affect our lives in the slightest.’

‘Maybe not you, Mammy, but both Molly and I have people in Britain that we will worry about.’

‘Joe has a perfectly good home here where they all would be safe,’ Biddy snapped. ‘If he has chosen not to avail himself of it, then it is his own lookout, and Molly has no reason to concern herself with people who were part of her past life.’

‘You know one person shouldn’t tell another how to think or feel,’ Molly said to Biddy. ‘And for your information, I love those people in Birmingham just as much as I did the day I left.’

‘Nonsense, ‘Biddy retorted. ‘How can you say that? You hardly know them any more.’

Molly hid her secret smile and after, in the cowshed, she said to Tom, ‘She really thinks that I have had no correspondence with my family for four years, because she knows nothing about the letters. I will never tell her, though, however much I long to throw it in her face, because it will impinge on the McEvoys and they will have to live here after I leave.’

‘Are you leaving?’

‘Not yet,’ Molly said. ‘Nellie advised me to wait until I am eighteen because she says that then your mother will have no jurisdiction over me and will not be able to force me to return. But that isn’t that long. I will be eighteen in February next year. I can go any time after that.’

‘I will miss you.’

‘And I will miss you,’ Molly said sincerely. ‘Isn’t it odd, really? I mean, I didn’t know you at all for the first thirteen years of my life and yet I have grown to love you so much in the time that I have been here.’

Tom suddenly cleared his throat and turned away so that Molly wouldn’t see the tears gathering behind his eyes. He knew that when Molly left, it would be like someone turning off the light in his life.

The war drew a little closer to the Sullivan farm, for the Royal Navy had commandeered Derry as a naval base, called HMS
Ferret
. Lough Foyle, which separated the British North from the Free State, was filled with military craft for convoy duty protecting merchant ships, and a company of soldiers was positioned at Buncrana to guard Ireland’s neutrality. Tom wondered what chance the few soldiers would have against a highly disciplined and so far invincible German army bent on invasion. He kept these thoughts to himself, though; it would help no one to give voice to them.

Molly’s eighteenth birthday came and went. In May Germany invaded the Netherlands and Belgium,
and Hitler launched his promised blitzkrieg on Rotterdam, leaving nine hundred dead in one night. Knowing that what Hitler could do in Rotterdam could easily be done in Birmingham, London or any other damned place the madman wanted it to, Tom and Molly sent letters off to London and Birmingham, pleading with their loved ones to take care.

A few days later the papers were full of the hundreds of Allied soldiers trapped on the beaches of Dunkirk and France and the frantic efforts to rescue them after the surrender of Belgium. France fell towards the end of June and everyone was well aware that only a small stretch of water separated Hitler and his armies from Britain. The Luftwaffe began blitzing coastal towns and invasion was on everybody’s lips. Molly’s granddad urged Molly to stay where she was for the time being.

Molly chafed at the delay.

‘You can’t blame your grandfather for wanting to protect you,’ Tom said. ‘He hasn’t seen you for going on for five years. Although in his head, he knows you are eighteen, probably in his mind is the picture of you still the child that you were when you left Birmingham, afraid and sad and just thirteen years old. Probably the greatest thing he can do, in memory of your parents, is keep the two of you as safe as possible, and with you here he just has Kevin to worry about.’

‘I hear all you say and even understand it, but no one is thinking of me in this.’

‘Believe me, Molly, everyone who loves you has your welfare at heart,’ Tom said. ‘Everyone is waiting for and dreading invasion. Bide here a little longer until we see what transpires.’

The first bomb fell in Birmingham on 9 August, according to the wireless and the paper, though Birmingham was always referred to as ‘a Midlands town’. After that, there were more sporadic attacks throughout the month. Molly worried about the people back home, but her granddad wrote that he and Kevin were just fine and that she was not to think of returning just yet.

The first attack in London was in September and centred around the docks area. Tom was concerned for the safety of Joe and his family. However, there was nothing either he or Molly could do to help, and meanwhile life had to go on.

The raids increased in ferocity in October and then suddenly the letters from Birmingham ceased. By the time October gave way to November, Molly’s letters to Birmingham had a distraught edge to them. Intense fear dogged her every waking moment until she felt she couldn’t bear it any more. She
knew that she had to return to Birmingham, and without delay, to find out what had happened.

Tom didn’t want Molly anywhere near to Birmingham, though he knew the level of her concern. Each time she mentioned leaving, it brought to Tom’s mind Aggie’s desperate flight and the nagging worry of what had happened to her that had never truly left him.

Molly did her best to assure him that she would be all right, but as he couldn’t share Aggie’s story, her words couldn’t help him. The point was, his two sisters had been making for the same city. From the moment Aggie climbed into McAllister’s cart, and many years later, Nuala – in very different circumstances and with the grudging approval of her parents – had mounted the train at the station in Derry, he had never seen either of them again.

He was terrified of allowing his slight, wee niece that he had come to love dearly to travel alone to that same city, especially with the danger of bombs toppling from the sky. But how could he prevent it? She was old enough to make decisions herself and her fears for her loved ones were no longer unfounded. She needed to know. Even if the news was bad she needed to know, but he knew he would worry about her every second that she was away.

He was both relieved and pleased when Molly was able to tell him of her money from Paul Simmons, the man that her father had rescued way back in the First World War. Apparently he had
been sending her money since she was fourteen years old, which she had saved in the post office. When she told him how much it was, he knew that, even with the fare taken out of it, she would have plenty to find lodgings somewhere while she sorted everything out.

The fiercest air raid on Coventry, on Thursday, 14 November, only strengthened Molly’s resolve. The following Saturday she went into Buncrana to book her passage to England.

However, she sought out her uncle at the pub by the harbour just a little later and, drawing him to one side, away from the press of people, she thrust an envelope into his hand that had been waiting for her at the post office. Tom noted that the scrawled address was written in pencil before withdrawing the scrap of paper from inside. It had jagged edges as if torn from a pad, but the cryptic message was clear enough.

‘Molly, come and get me. It’s horrible in this place – luv Kevin.’

Kevin’s unhappiness leaped from the page and tore at Tom’s heart, but at least it showed the child was alive, or had been when he wrote the letter. That was the best scenario Molly could hope for.

‘Where is he, do you think?’ Tom asked.

Molly shrugged. ‘I have no idea, but as soon as I get to Birmingham, I will search until I find him, and also find out what has happened to Granddad and Hilda, our old neighbour. I won’t rest until I do.’

Tom nodded. He knew nothing would stop Molly now. ‘I see clearly what you must do and, indeed, what I would want to do myself in your shoes, and I will do all in my power to help you.’

‘Thank you, Uncle Tom,’ Molly said quietly. ‘That means a great deal to me.’

Molly left the following Tuesday, 19 November. Tom had bought her a fine torch and plenty of extra batteries, a money belt to keep her cash safe, and food and drink enough to feed a small army.

He’d intended taking her as far as the station, but as they stood on the slight hill above it and Molly saw the lights of the station twinkling, she would let him go no further. As he watched that stalwart figure walk away from him down the hill, he knew that Molly was taking a piece of his heart with her.

Later, with his head reeling from the tantrum his mother had flown into when she realised Molly had left, he sought out Nellie McEvoy, needing the company of sane and ordinary people.

‘How are you feeling?’ she asked him, noting his sad and strained face.

‘Inadequate,’ he admitted.

‘Will you stop blaming yourself for all the world’s ills?’ Nellie said in exasperation, though she smiled at him. ‘What in God’s name could you have done that was in any way different?’

‘It’s just—’

‘It’s just that farms don’t run themselves, Tom.’

‘I know that,’ Tom said miserably, ‘but it isn’t just the journey and all and travelling to a country at war. What if the news is as bad as it gets?’

‘What if it is?’ Nellie said. ‘I am really not being heartless, Tom, but take heart from the fact that that young boy was alive when he wrote that letter. I am sure that Molly will be using that knowledge as a sort of talisman to hold on to.’

Tom knew, however, that he wouldn’t stop worrying about Molly until he received a letter from her saying that she had arrived safely. All other news could wait, but knowing how worried her uncle was, she had promised to write immediately and let him know that she was all right.

It had spread around Buncrana, as these things do, that Molly Maguire had gone back to Birmingham to see that her grandfather and brother were all right. Many townsfolk asked about her and at first Tom said confidently that he was sure they would hear from her any day.

Three weeks after she had left, he was beside himself with worry.

‘Maybe she hasn’t had the time yet,’ Nellie said, though she too was anxious. ‘Maybe she is waiting until she has something to say before she writes.’

‘No,’ Tom said. ‘She promised me.’

‘Och well, you know what these young ones are,’ Nellie said with a dismissive flap of her hand.

‘Not Molly,’ Cathy put in. ‘She is as straight as a die. If she says she will do a thing then she will. I’ve never ever known her tell a lie.’

‘Nor have I,’ Tom agreed.

Silence settled around them and each was busy with his or her own thoughts. Anything, just about anything, could have happened to Molly in that city bombed to bits most nights.

‘We must just wait and see,’ Nellie said at last, for there was nothing else to say. ‘Sure, she might write any day. Does your mother express any opinion about it at all?’

Tom sighed. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘Happiness.’

‘Happiness?’

‘She says Molly has gone the way of her mother. Dead and gone, and good riddance.’

‘Jesus, the woman must be mentally deranged.’

‘I think she is,’ Tom said. ‘Molly always thought it, and Joe. I mean, she was never an easy woman, and without Daddy our upbringing would have been very harsh indeed. Daddy wanted his pound of flesh all right, and we helped on the farm virtually as soon as we could walk, but he was fair. Well, to be completely honest, he was fair with me and Joe. Aggie had a special place in his heart and he fair doted on Nuala, as we all did. Finn seemed to irritate him and he often got the rough edge of Daddy’s tongue, yet I saw him sometimes look at Finn, when he thought himself unobserved, with a soft look in his eyes. I think deep down Finn was his favourite, but Daddy would think that was an unfair way to go on and so would be harder on him because of it.

‘Mammy cared for none of us but Nuala and
Daddy, and when he died it was as if something snapped in her brain. Just at the moment, I am so worried about Molly, and Mammy’s attitude is hard to take.’

‘I’ll say it is,’ agreed Jack. ‘I’d want to strangle the old harridan. Let’s away to sink a few pints and forget all about her for an hour or two at least.’

‘Aye,’ Tom said wearily, getting to his feet. ‘I’m up for anything that will block out my mother’s gloating face.’

Birmingham wasn’t the only city to be bombed, of course. London was going through it too. Tom wrote every week to his brother urging him to take care. It was a pointless exercise really because not only did Joe work on the docks, which was a favourite place for some of the bombers to drop their lethal loads, but he was also a volunteer fireman, which was one of the most dangerous jobs of all.

Not, of course, that Joe could tell him anything in his letters, but he didn’t need to, for the newscaster on the wireless would often pronounce how many bombers had attacked the capital and in which area the buildings were set ablaze. You didn’t need much imagination to understand the danger that Joe would be in, fighting those fires.

Even Joe, though, was concerned that Tom had heard nothing from Molly. He thought that she must be dead. He had seen plenty of dead bodies
since the bombing began, and he knew Molly would be counted as just one more casualty of a war that had already killed thousands of innocent men, women and children.

He did feel a pang of regret for the young woman that Tom had described in such glowing terms, and also described the hellish life their mother had put her through. He wasn’t surprised, for if Molly had resembled Nuala even half as much as Tom said, then their mother would make the most of it, punishing her because she couldn’t get to Nuala. Joe wrote a warm and sympathetic letter to Tom, offering comfort and support while gently suggesting he should not raise his hopes of hearing from Molly.

He wondered for a moment about Molly’s brother, Kevin, whom she had gone to find, and the grandfather who had been looking after him. It was likely the grandfather was dead too, but the boy might be alive. He had been over a month ago, when he wrote the note to his sister that Tom had told him about. Pity he had put no address on it, because he wasn’t that much older than his own son, Ben, just a boy yet, and now possibly alone in the world. God, he would hate the same thing to happen to his own son, and so in his letter he also asked about Kevin and whether Tom had received any further information, but he had none at all.

Nellie and Cathy kept their hopes alive until Christmas. They had letters, presents and cards to
send to Molly as soon as they had an address for her, but as Christmas and the New Year passed with no word at all, Nellie and Cathy too lost heart that they would ever see Molly again.

The townsfolk had stopped asking about her as well, having drawn the same conclusions. Though many were saddened, Nellie and Cathy seemed burdened down with sorrow for the girl they had known so well, and they were often tearful.

Tom was the same. The tears flowed sometimes when he tilled the soil, or milked the cows, and mixed with his sadness was guilt. He blamed himself for allowing Molly to go alone to Birmingham.

He was glad of the heavy springtime workload. He was out from dawn till dusk, which at least ensured that he went to bed exhausted. It wasn’t just that there was twice the work without Molly; somehow it all seemed more of a chore. He hadn’t realised how much she lightened his days, and sometimes he couldn’t see the point in any of it. Breaking his back for what? His mother? And after her day, what then? Work and more work, and for bugger all. It wasn’t as if he had a son to pass it on to. If he envied Joe at all it was because he had a son.

Then, in mid-March, he went into the post office one Saturday and saw that Nellie had a big smile on her face.

‘You look like the cat that’s got the cream,’ he said.

‘Better than that,’ Nellie replied. ‘I’ve had a letter.’

Tom’s heart seemed to stop beating. Hardly daring to hope, he said, ‘Not from Molly?’

Nellie felt immediately contrite. ‘No, I’m sorry, Tom. I should have thought that you would assume that. It’s from Hilda, Molly’s old neighbour and she— No, I won’t tell you.’ She lifted the counter. ‘Come through to the back and you can read it for yourself in peace.’

Tom read the letter and was totally confused.

‘So what do you make of that?’ Nellie said, as he folded up the letter and returned it.

‘I don’t know what to make of it,’ Tom said. ‘Molly left here on the nineteenth of November, so where was she and what was she doing until three weeks ago, when she called on her old granddad’s neighbour?’

‘And where is she now?’ Nellie said. ‘She knows now her granddad is dead and her brother in some sort of orphanage, because the neighbour knew that much.’

‘What terrible news for that young girl to shoulder on her own.’

‘I know,’ Nellie said. ‘And think what that wee boy has gone through. Fancy your mother not only refusing to take him in when Social Services asked her to, but also saying there was to be no further communications between the siblings.’

‘That is desperate altogether,’ Tom said. ‘The child must have felt totally abandoned and yet you know I’m glad he didn’t come here. He would be one more child for me to try to protect from
Mammy. I would give my eye teeth to know they are all right, though, and I hope to God this Hilda gets to know something.’

‘That’s what I am hoping for too,’ Nellie said fervently. ‘That letter came a few days ago, and I wrote straight back and said that we had not received one word from Molly since she left here. I told Hilda that we were delighted to know that Molly was alive and obviously well, and if she had any news of her we would be pleased to hear it.’

‘I should go over myself.’

‘Talk sense, Tom,’ Nellie said. ‘You can’t leave the farm and, anyway, what chance would you have of finding Molly in a city the size of Birmingham? Maybe now we have Hilda as a contact we will hear something soon.’

‘I hope so, certainly,’ Tom said, ‘because you’re right, of course: I cannot leave the farm, much as I might want to.’

‘Wait and see,’ Nellie advised. ‘Really, it is all we can do.’

The summer and then autumn passed and Molly’s friends in Ireland were no nearer finding out where Molly and Kevin had disappeared to. Hilda too had drawn a blank.