that she had expected the woman to say, and she suddenly knew that her grandmother wouldn’t be one bit sorry she hadn’t made it up with her daughter before she died. She somehow doubted she had ever felt sorry about anything in the whole of her life.
‘Of course,’ Biddy went on, ‘we only have ourselves to blame for the way Nuala turned out for we both spoiled her. When she wrote that letter saying that she wanted to marry a non-Catholic, Thomas John was so shocked he dropped dead of a heart attack. So that is your fine mammy for you, the sort who kills her own father.’
Tears were now pouring from Molly’s eyes and Stan put his arm around her. ‘Here, here, the child doesn’t need this sort of carry-on. Have some compassion, woman. If you spoke the truth and what Nuala wrote in the letter caused your husband to have a heart attack, then I am sorry, but you must see that it was the last thing in the world that Nuala would have wanted or expected to happen.’
‘She knew he would be upset. She wasn’t stupid.’
‘She wasn’t cruel either,’ Molly burst out. ‘She wouldn’t mean that to happen.’
‘Your opinion wasn’t asked, miss,’ Biddy snapped. ‘Nor is it welcome, and I will thank you not to speak until you are spoken to. To spare the rod is to ruin the child totally and I see that that is what has happened to both you and that brother of yours. Well, there will be none of that with me, I’ll tell you. I will put manners on the pair of you if it’s the last thing I do.’
Molly stared at her. What influence could she have on either of them? After the funeral this horrible woman would go back to her own life on the little farm in Ireland and Molly would live with her granddad and gradually come to terms with her loss and help her little brother to cope too.
‘What do you mean?’ she said, almost challenging.
Biddy heard the tone and it annoyed her. She would soon have that temper knocked out of her, she thought. ‘I’ll tell you what I mean, my girl,’ she spat out. ‘When you come to live with me over in Ireland, you’ll find life no bed of roses.’
‘Come to live with you in Ireland?’ Molly repeated, managing to hide the shiver of distaste that ran through her. ‘I don’t know you. I’m not going to live with you. I’m staying here with Granddad and so is Kevin.’
‘No, that’s where you are wrong. You are a Catholic because of your mother, who at least started you off on the right road, and you must be reared as a Catholic.’
‘I don’t care about being a Catholic,’ Molly shouted at Biddy. ‘And there is no way I am coming to live with you,’ adding, probably unwisely, but too upset to care, ‘I don’t even like you very much.’
‘Your likes and what you want will not come into this at all,’ Biddy snapped. ‘And there is no good turning on the waterworks,’ she went on, as tears of helplessness squeezed from Molly’s eyes. ‘You will find they don’t work with me.’
Molly turned anguished eyes to her grandfather. ‘Granddad,’ she cried. ‘Say this isn’t true. We’re going to stay with you. You promised.’
Stan’s eyes slid from Molly’s to Biddy’s gloating ones and then back to Molly, and because she deserved the truth he said, ‘I may find my hands are tied in this.’
‘Oh, Granddad, no,’ Molly cried, and flung herself into Stan’s arms.
As he held the weeping child, he glared at Biddy and knew when she took the children from him she would also take away his reason for living.
Stan was astounded at the numbers who attended the funeral of Ted and Nuala on 26 April. Paul Simmons had helped him make all the arrangements and had insisted on paying for everything. He had closed the factory as a mark of respect, but even so, Stan was amazed by those from the workforce who attended. Ted, Paul said, was very well thought of by everyone who met him, and many of the men who’d shaken Stan by the hand and commiserated with him on his loss said similar things. So also, it seemed, was Nuala liked and the pews were packed with neighbours and special friends of hers, mothers she met at the school gates, and those from the Mothers’ Union she used to attend regularly. Many were in tears.
Added to this, all of Paul’s family came too – his father and mother, and two sisters and their husbands, all of whom still remembered what they had owed to Ted. They seemed genuinely shocked by his death and that of his young wife. Not that it was spoken of openly and certainly not in front of the children, who had both insisted on attending.
Molly had remained dry-eyed, her distress and sense of loss too deep for tears, though she held on to Kevin’s hand to take comfort from the child as well as to give it, as the tears dribbled down his cheeks ceaselessly.
As they stood at the graveside, they were warmed by the bright sun shining down from a sky of Wedgwood blue, and somehow this made the tragic deaths even more poignant. As the clods of earth fell with dull thuds on the coffins they seemed to reverberate in Molly’s brain. Dead! Dead! Dead! Kevin’s sobs became more audible and Biddy moved towards the child purposefully, but he pushed her away and turned instead to his grandfather. Stan held the little boy’s shuddering body tight. He didn’t urge him to stop crying either thinking he had a good enough reason to break his heart.
He envied him in a way because he would have liked the opportunity to go home now and lock the door and cry his eyes out. Instead, he knew he had to lead the mourners to the room at the back of the Lyndhurst pub which Paul Simmons had booked, and make small talk with the people who had come to pay their respects.
When he’d first been discussing the funeral arrangements with Mr Simmons, Stan, who had thought the mourners would only amount to a handful, said he intended to invite them back to the house. Mr Simmons had said he thought a room at a pub might be better and Stan, not up to arguing and certainly not with a toff, had agreed reluctantly.
He had thought though the few people he had anticipated coming would look silly and maybe feel out of place, but it wasn’t that way at all. He looked at the crush of people around him in the room the pub had allocated them and was glad he had agreed. Kevin still held tight to his hand as Father Clayton, who had said the Requiem Mass, approached them.
Father Clayton liked Stan, with whom he was not above sparring and joking, as he had liked Ted, and thought them fine men. He couldn’t understand for the life of him why they hadn’t turned Catholic and embraced the one true faith.
That day though, Kevin’s large brown eyes still swam with tears as he turned them on the priest and demanded, ‘What did God want with my mammy and daddy?’
Father Clayton didn’t have an answer that would satisfy the child. ‘We don’t understand the ways of God, Kevin.’
‘Not even you?’
‘Not even me.’
‘Well, then,’ Kevin said. ‘What’s the point of it all? That means that God can go round doing what He likes and you just say we can’t understand and that.’ He stamped his foot suddenly and cried in a high voice full of hurt and confusion, ‘I want to know. I think we needed Mammy and Daddy much more than He did.’
‘Kevin!’ The name was said like a pistol shot.
Kevin
