A Sister's Promise (28 page)

However, the man smiled at Molly and shook hands as he said in his precise way, ‘Good day, Miss Maguire. I suppose it is Miss Maguire?’

‘Yes, Molly Maguire.’

‘And you are here about your brother, Kevin?’

‘I am here to see him,’ Molly said insistently.

‘Shall we go into the office where we can be more comfortable and discuss this fully?’

‘Yes, but can I see him?’ Molly asked.

‘All in good time, my dear,’ the superintendent said. ‘And perhaps, Matron, you could organise some tea?’

The woman left and Molly followed the superintendent and took the chair he indicated at one side of the desk.

He withdrew a file from the filing cabinet and scanned it before saying to Molly, ‘Why were you split up after your parents died?’

Molly hesitated. The last thing she wanted this man to think was that she was paranoid and given to hysteria. Maybe then they would not let her see Kevin at all, and she knew few would really understand how evil her grandmother was. They would think Molly was exaggerating or even that it was a total tissue of lies. To gain access to her brother she had to appear sane, sensible and mature, and if that meant lying through her teeth, then she would do so.

‘We weren’t going to be,’ Molly told him. ‘We were both due to go to Ireland, but Kevin became ill. The doctors said to take him away from all that was familiar would be harmful at that time.’

‘Yes, I see that,’ the superintendent said. ‘But then when your grandmother was informed of your grandfather’s death she not only refused to care for him, but also said she wanted
no communication with Kevin and neither did you. I have her reply here on record.’

‘She had no right to speak for me,’ Molly said. ‘But I suppose she did it with the best of intentions.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, my grandmother was very sick at the time,’ Molly said, thinking: sick, right enough, but hers is an illness of the mind. But for the benefit of the superintendent she told an alternative story. ‘Grandmother said that Kevin had seen enough of illness and death to last a lifetime and she also knew that with me having to nurse her, I would have little time or energy to deal with a young and distressed child. I wrote to him, but by the time Granddad’s neighbour found my letters in the house and took them to the receiving centre where she had left Kevin, he wasn’t allowed to have them because of that letter. I knew nothing about that until I came to Birmingham when grandfather’s neighbour filled me in with a lot of things.’

After a pause she went on, ‘There is something else as well. You see, neither my father nor grandfather were Catholics, and because Kevin was left here I think my grandmother assumed that he would be raised as a non-Catholic and that was probably another reason why she thought it was better that he stay in Birmingham.’

‘Letters wouldn’t have hurt, though.’

‘She didn’t have that long when she was well enough to write them,’ Molly said, assuming a sad expression.

‘I am sorry, my dear,’ the superintendent said. ‘I had no idea.’

Molly refused to feel like a heel. This was for Kevin. ‘As for me,’ she went on, ‘I was too busy. And then of course I had written and had no replies and so I didn’t know if the letters were getting through or not. And then when it was all over, I found the letter you sent in my grandmother’s effects and here I am.’

The matron came in bearing a tray of tea and Molly said
impatiently, ‘Is that all you need to know, because I came here to see the brother I haven’t seen in five years?’

‘Kevin is at school with all the others,’ the matron said, handing Molly a cup of tea and fixing her with a hard stare. ‘And all that Mr Sutcliffe is trying to do is ascertain that it will be good for Kevin to see you after all this time. The child has been traumatised and hurt enough.’

‘I don’t intend to hurt him,’ Molly burst out. ‘I love him. I always have.’

‘And you are rather young too,’ the matron said. ‘What age are you?’

‘I will be nineteen tomorrow,’ Molly said, ‘over eight years older than Kevin, who won’t be eleven until March.’

‘I must say I thought you much younger,’ the superintendent said, ‘didn’t you, Matron?’

The matron nodded. ‘I thought you were not long out of the schoolroom.’

‘It’s because I am small,’ Molly said. ‘I am well used to a reaction like that, but I take after my mother. She was the same.’

‘This puts a different complexion on the matter entirely,’ the superintendent said. ‘You are almost an adult and of course you must see Kevin. Could you come back this afternoon?’

Molly nodded eagerly and then, because she wanted no misunderstanding, she said, ‘I can’t take Kevin away, not yet. I need to find a job to support myself first and a place to live, though ideally I would like somewhere where I could look after Kevin totally eventually.’

‘I understand perfectly,’ said the superintendent and, thinking she was newly arrived from Ireland, asked, ‘Where are you staying now?’

‘In lodgings in Aston,’ Molly said, thinking there was no harm in telling them that. ‘But I can’t stay there indefinitely. Anyway, now that I have located Kevin, I want a place close by so I can see him as often as possible.’

‘Have you any line of work in mind or don’t you care what you do?’ the matron continued.

‘I will do anything that pays me enough money to live on,’ Molly said simply.

‘So you would try hotel work?’

Molly remembered Cathy telling her how her sisters thought hotel work was great because you got a uniform, and your board and lodging, and were paid too.

‘That would be perfect,’ she said. ‘Do you know any hotel locally wanting people?’

The matron smiled. ‘Not locally, no,’ she said. ‘But I have a cousin who works in Four Oaks in a large hotel called Moor Hall. Do you know Four Oaks at all?’

‘I sort of know where it is,’ Molly said. ‘My parents used to take me to Sutton Park quite a few times. I remember the Four Oaks gate.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Isn’t it a distance from here?’

‘Not on the train,’ the matron said. ‘There is a direct line.’

And quite far enough away from Collingsworth and his cronies, Molly thought. There I would feel safe.

‘The point is,’ the matron went on, ‘they have had a few girls leave and they are recruiting now to train them in time for Easter when the hotel will start to fill up.’

‘Should I write to them, d’you think?’

‘I should take yourself up today,’ the matron said. ‘You have time to fill anyway before Kevin gets in, and the day is too cold for you to walk about much. The hotel will be easy to find. You just get off at Four Oaks Station and anyone will tell you where it is.’

Molly saw the sense of that and took her leave, promising to return and asking them not to tell Kevin where she had been, she wanted to surprise him later.

She hadn’t left the Cottage Homes long when the matron asked permission to use the phone.

‘Yes,’ said the superintendent in surprise, for she had never made such a request before. ‘Who do you want to phone?’

‘My cousin in that posh hotel,’ the matron said. ‘She has a lot of clout with the manager. He listens to her, and right now I think that young girl could do with a bit of a helping hand.’

Posh was not the word Molly would have used to describe Moor Hall Hotel when she walked up the gravel drive and saw the stupendous house before her, set in its own grounds. The magnificence of it all rendered her speechless.

She knew enough of such places to realise that she did not go up the marble steps and in the front entrance, but when she knocked at the door at the back and explained who she was and why she had come, she was very well received. The manager had been told about the girl, whom he agreed to see almost immediately, and Molly told him the truth as far as it went – that after her parents died she went to her maternal grandmother in Ireland and Kevin stayed with his paternal grandfather in Birmingham. After her grandfather’s death, Kevin had had to go into a home and Molly had moved to be closer to him so that she could see him as often as she could.

The manager liked Irish girls. He had employed many and most had been well used to hard work. Though Molly was small, he could bet she was as strong as the next.

‘I need waitresses, in the main,’ he said. ‘But there might be other duties when the hotel is full, chambermaiding, for example. Have you any objections to that?’

‘None at all,’ Molly said. ‘I will do whatever is needed.’

‘And when could you start?’

‘Immediately,’ Molly said. ‘In fact, the sooner the better.’

Afterwards, she had the urge to turn cartwheels on the lawn. Nothing – not the bleak, cold day, or the thick dark clouds – had the power to dampen her spirits, for she felt
that this was a new chapter of her life opening up, a new job, new place to live and a chance to get to know her brother all over again.

Kevin at first hadn’t quite believed that his sister had let him down. He had had to steal the paper, the envelope and the stamp from the office to write that last note, for when he asked for these things he was told Molly wanted no further communication with him. He didn’t believe it and he wrote to her in desperation, but she didn’t come, didn’t even reply, and he eventually came to the realisation that they were right after all, that she really didn’t want anything to do with him any more. He was on his own, he felt lonely and afraid, and he was terribly frightened of the future. For a time, his nightmares had returned and he became so withdrawn he had to go to see a psychiatrist.

He had told him all his fears and doubts, and the psychiatrist talked him through them. In the end he had told him that, harsh as it appeared, the reality was that he had to learn to stand on his own two feet and look after himself because that is what he would have to do when he left the home. Kevin knew that really, and said it was probably as well because everyone he loved had eventually been taken from him, but inside he ached for the sister he remembered so clearly.

That day, as he returned from school, he was asked to go down to the Lodge.

‘What you been and gone and done, Maguire?’ another boy asked, giving Kevin a punch on the shoulder, for the Lodge was where reprimands and punishments were meted out.

‘Gerroff me,’ Kevin said, giving the other boy a push. ‘I ain’t done nothing.’

‘That’s what they all say,’ another commented sagely. ‘You’ll get six of the best, I reckon.’

‘Oh, shurrup!’ Kevin snapped, but as he walked to the Lodge, he examined everything he had done over the past few days and couldn’t think of anything bad enough to be caned for. He knew, though, adults were a funny breed and could sometimes get mad over very little, and so he was full of trepidation as he knocked on the door.

The superintendent opened it. ‘Come in, Kevin,’ he said almost jovially. ‘Don’t look so scared. No one is going to eat you. There is someone here to see you.’

Kevin suppressed a sigh. He knew that it would be another doctor or psychiatrist because those people were all he ever saw, but when he went into the office, and the woman turned to greet him, he felt as if his heart had stopped beating for a moment or two.

‘Molly?’ he said uncertainly, not sure she wouldn’t just vanish if he spoke her name. ‘You came?’

Molly saw that the little boy she had left behind was gone and the boy before her stood straight and tall, looking more and more like his father as Molly remembered him. But he was still a child and in need, and Molly smiled as she said, ‘Of course I came. I promised you I would.’

Kevin remembered that smile so well, and he was across the room in two bounds. He threw his arms around his sister and when he felt the tears running from his eyes, he didn’t bother wiping them away because he felt as if the loneliness was dripping from him.

It was even better when Molly, breaking off the embrace, said, ‘Go and get your coat, Kevin. I am taking you out for tea.’

Kevin’s eyes were alive with excitement. ‘Out to tea. Oh boy!’

‘Well, you and I have a lot of catching up to do, don’t you think?’

‘Not half,’ Kevin said. ‘I won’t be two ticks.’

‘Where you going, Maguire?’ asked a boy, seeing him lift his coat from the peg in the cloakroom.

‘Mind your own business,’ Kevin said. ‘And for your information I weren’t caned neither. Me sister has come to see me.’

‘You ain’t got a sister.’

‘I have, and she’s taking me out to tea, so there,’ Kevin said, and with that parting shot he was away and running like a dervish down the drive towards the Lodge.

‘Why did you take so long to come and see me?’ Kevin asked later, between mouthfuls of fish and chips.

‘Well, I had things to see to first,’ Molly said evasively. ‘Anyway, you didn’t put an address on the letter.’

‘I had to write it quick before they caught me,’ Kevin said. ‘Anyroad, I thought you would know the address, that the social workers who brought me here would have told you.’

‘They may well have told our grandmother,’ Molly said, ‘but I never got to hear of it.’

‘Why not?’

Molly shrugged. ‘I really don’t know, Kevin,’ she said. ‘Between you and me, I think the woman is crackers. She seemed to delight in making my life a misery. She never even told me granddad had died.’

‘Dain’t she?’ Kevin said, totally shocked that one person should keep such a thing from another. ‘That’s horrible, that is – but she was horrible, weren’t she? When they said she dain’t want anything to do with me, I was glad. They said you dain’t either and I didn’t believe that. Well,’ he added more honestly, ‘I didn’t at first. It was just when you didn’t come and that, but it’s all right now ’cos I can come home with you, can’t I?’

‘I haven’t got a home, Kevin.’

‘What about our granddad’s house?’

‘That’s long gone to other tenants,’ Molly said. ‘But even if I had somewhere to live, I would still have to work at a job that paid enough to support us both.’

‘So I’ve got to stay at the home then?’ Kevin said morosely.

‘Yes, I am afraid so for now,’ Molly said. ‘I will be working at Moor Hall Hotel in Four Oaks and I will be able to come and see you in my time off and we can go out places.’ She saw the disappointment in Kevin’s eyes and said, ‘I know it probably isn’t what you hoped for. But it is really the best I can do for now. Is it really horrible?’