silent, and mighty glad later to find her grandmother had fallen asleep.
If it hadn’t been for the other people on the train, Molly would never have managed at Crewe, where they had to change trains, for they also had to change platforms and other people helped carry the bags up the huge iron staircase, along the bridge spanning the line, and down the other side. Molly was immensely grateful, especially when those same people helped her board the ferry at Liverpool.
It was called the Ulster Prince, and she thought it magnificent, towering up out of the scummy grey water of the quay, with its three large black funnels atop everything, spilling grey smoke into the spring morning. She was on deck, the sun warm on her back and sparkling on the water as she watched the boat pull away. Her knuckles were white, she was gripping the rail so tightly. She remembered the promise she had made to Kevin and she vowed, but silently, ‘I will be back. However long it takes, I will be back.’
‘Come along,’ her grandmother said, just behind her. ‘They are serving breakfasts in the dining room until noon, and it is turned eleven already.’
Molly followed Biddy eagerly. They had been travelling for many hours and she had been too nervous to eat much before they left the house.
The dining room was delightful. Its windows were round, and when she queried this, she was told they were called portholes. In the dining room they were decorated with pretty pink curtains.
They could have creamy porridge with as much sugar and hot milk as anyone wanted, followed by toast and jam and a pot of tea, all for one and sixpence. Molly ate everything before her, and took three spoons of sugar in her tea, just because she could, and afterwards thought how much better a person felt when they had a full stomach. She kept this thought in her head just a little time. It certainly wasn’t there when she stood alongside her grandmother and a good many more and vomited all her breakfast into the churning waters.
By the time they alighted in Belfast, Molly was feeling decidedly ill. Her stomach ached and her throat burned from the constant vomiting that continued long after she had anything left, and made her feel wretched for the entire crossing, which took three and a half hours.
By the time they disembarked and were aboard the train, she was also feeling light-headed and had a throbbing pain behind her eyes. Her grandmother’s voice, berating her for something or other, seemed to be coming from a long way off and she was too tired and disorientated to distinguish what the woman was on about anyway. Her eyes closed almost by themselves, and the next thing she remembered was her grandmother shaking her roughly as the train pulled in to Derry.
She knew her uncle would be there to meet them with a horse and cart, to save them having to take the train the last step of the way. Molly was so travel worn and weary that she was immensely glad when she saw the man waiting for them, the shaggy-footed horse standing patiently between the shafts of the farm cart.
Tom knew he would never forget that meeting. It was like his sister Nuala had returned to him, but never had he seen his sister so disheartened and sad, nor her eyes with blue smudges beneath them and her face bleached white. He felt suddenly very sorry for the girl and went towards her with a smile.
‘Welcome to Ireland, Molly,’ he said, taking her limp hand and shaking it vigorously. ‘It is a pity that we are not meeting under happier circumstances. I was sorry to hear about the death of your parents and I’m sure you will miss them very much.’
Molly’s eyes filled with tears at her uncle’s words and the compassion in his face, and she knew that he was the antithesis of his mother.
Then Biddy, watching this scene, commented sarcastically, ‘Very touching. Now stop your stupid blethering, can’t you, and get this luggage into the cart.’
Molly saw the sag of her uncle’s shoulders at his mother’s words. ‘And welcome home to you too, Mammy,’ he said with a sigh, throwing up the bags and cases as he did so. He helped his mother up on to the seat beside him and then he turned to Molly with a smile. ‘Now you,’ he said, lifting her with ease. ‘And Dobbin here will have us home in a jiffy.’
It wasn’t quite a jiffy, for the horse wasn’t built for speed, but Molly took the opportunity to look around her. Once outside of the town, most of the farmhouses seemed to be white, squat, single-storey dwellings, with thick dark yellow roofs, and all the protruding chimneys had smoke curling upwards from them.
‘That’s your typical Irish cottage,’ Tom said, seeing Molly’s preoccupation.
‘Mom described them to me,’ Molly said, ‘but I’ve never see roofs like those. We had grey slate.’
Tom smiled. ‘That’s called thatch, Molly,’ he said. ‘It’s made of flax that we grow in the fields and then weave it together.’
They passed small towns and villages, and Molly noted the names of them. Springtown was the first, and then Burnfoot. It was as they neared a place called Fahan that Tom said, ‘Did your mammy tell you much about this place?’
‘Some,’ Molly said. ‘I mean, I knew she lived near Lough Swilly and that it was a saltwater lough because it fed out to the sea. In Birmingham most people have never seen the sea. It is just too far away. When we were on the boat was the first time I had seen it and then I was too sick to take in the expanse of it really.’
She stopped and then went on more hesitantly, ‘I once asked Mom if she missed the place, because she always said how beautiful it was, but she said that it was a funny thing but seldom does a person really value where they are born and reared. Anyway, she always said people were more important than places.’
Tom, noting Molly’s exhausted face and her eyes glittering with tears, said, ‘Not long now, at any rate. Buncrana is next, but I will skirt the town this evening because the farm is beyond it in a district called Cockhill, and we will pass St Mary’s, the Catholic church, this way.’
St Mary’s was quite an impressive place, though it wasn’t that large. It was made of stone and had a high and ornate belfry to the front of it. The church was approached through a wrought-iron gate and along a gravel path with graves either side.
‘Why was the church built so far out of Buncrana?’ Molly asked as they passed it. ‘It seems silly.’
‘That was because at the time when St Mary’s was built, the English said all Catholic churches had to be built at least a mile outside the town or village, and England controlled Ireland then,’ Tom told her.
‘That was what the Troubles were over that Mom spoke of?’ Molly said. ‘To get rid of English rule.’
‘Aye,’ Tom said, ‘that was it right enough. Anyway, while the English could tell the Catholic Church where to put the building, they couldn’t tell them what to put in it. In that church, above the altar is the most amazing picture of the Nativity painted by an Italian artist who was specially commissioned. You’ll see it on Sunday and be able to judge for yourself how lovely it is.’
They went on a little way past the church, past hedges bordering the fields, and then the horse determinedly turned into a narrow lane almost, Molly noticed, without her uncle needing to touch the reins at all.
‘Old Dobbin knows the way home, all right,’ Tom remarked, seeing her noticing. ‘I really think he could do it blindfold.’
Molly looked about her with more interest, noting that the narrow lane was just wide enough for the cart to pass down with thick hawthorn hedges in both sides. She could see beyond the hedges because of the height of the cart seat. Fields stretched for miles, some cultivated, others with cows in them, and some of these were milling around the five-barred gate set into the hedge.
‘Waiting to be milked,’ Tom explained with a nod. ‘Bit early yet, though.’
Molly looked at the cows’ distended udders and, though she knew that was where milk came from, because her mother had told her, she would have preferred to get it from the Co-op milkman.
The lane led to a cobbled yard that seemed full of pecking chickens. Tom