To Have and To Hold

CHAPTER TWO

At New Street Station Carmel said goodbye to the nuns. She was sad to leave them, for they had been kindness itself to her, but they had their own transport arranged to St Chad’s on Hagley Road, which they said wasn’t far from the General Hospital.

‘Now you will be all right?’ the oldest of the nuns asked.

Suddenly Carmel felt far from all right, but she told herself sharply that it was no time for second thoughts, so she answered firmly, ‘I will be fine. I am to be met, the letter said so.’

‘If you are sure…?’

‘Yes, I am, honestly. You just go. You are keeping the taxi waiting.’

She watched them walk away and looked around the noisy station, trying to drink it all in. All around her trains were clattering, their brakes squealing and steam hissing. The platform was thronged with people, some talking and laughing together, others rushing past her with strained faces. Porters, their trolleys piled high with suitcases, warned people to ‘Mind your backs, please,’ and a little man selling newspapers from a cupboard of a place advertised them constantly in a thin, nasal voice that Carmel couldn’t understand a word of. Above this cacophony a loud but indistinct voice seemed to be advising people what platform to go to and what train to catch, though the words were as incomprehensible as the news vendor’s to Carmel.

Carmel no longer felt apprehensive, but thrilled to be a part of such vibrancy, so much life. Soon she was approached by two girls about the same age as herself.

‘Are you Carmel Duffy?’ the one with short bobbed black hair and laughing brown eyes asked. ‘Do say you are.’

Carmel gave a brief nod and then, before she had the chance to reply further, the other girl went on, ‘The home sister, Sister Magee, said we could come and meet you because we will be sharing a room. She told us you were coming all the way from Ireland. Gosh, I think that’s jolly brave. I bet you are tired after all that travelling and I bet you see a difference here from where you come from. Course, I am a brummie born and bred, and so—’

‘Do wrap up, Jane, and let the poor girl get her breath,’ said the other girl with a laugh. She looked at Carmel and said, ‘We only met yesterday and I already know that Jane Firkins here can talk the hind leg off a donkey, as my grandfather used to say.’

‘Only making her feel at home,’ Jane protested. ‘Friendly, like.’

‘Yeah, but you’ve got to give her space to speak,’ the other girl said, and extended her hand. ‘I suppose you are Carmel Duffy?’

‘Aye, um, yes,’ Carmel said, shaking hands and noting the other girl had dark blonde hair in waves, pinned back from her face with grips and a band of some sort. Her eyes were more thoughtful than Jane’s and dark grey in colour.

‘I’m Sylvia,’ the girl said, ‘Sylvia Forrester, and you have already met Jane.’

‘Yes,’ Carmel said. ‘And we will be sharing a room?’

‘That’s right,’ Jane put in. ‘There are four of us and so there will be another one, called Lois something, but she isn’t arriving until tomorrow.’

‘Anyway,’ Sylvia said, ‘let’s not stand here chatting. I bet you are dropping with tiredness.’

Carmel suddenly realised she was. It had been the very early hours when she had left the priest’s house that morning carrying the case packed with the hospital requirements and also with the clothes Sister Frances had let her choose from those collected to send to the missions. Carmel had been surprised at what some people threw out. ‘I am tired,’ she admitted.

‘Who wouldn’t be?’ Sylvia said sympathetically. ‘Come on. Let’s head for the taxis.’

Carmel was very glad the girls were there, taking care of everything, and when they were in the taxi and driving through the slightly dusky evening streets, she looked about her with interest.

‘The General Hospital is only a step away from New Street Station really,’ said Sylvia, ‘and so close to the centre of the town it’s not true. Jane and I walked here to meet you, but it is different if you have heavy bags and cases and things.’

It seemed only minutes later that Jane was saying. ‘This is Steelhouse Lane, called that because the police station is here, and the nurses’ home is on Whittall Street to the left just here.’

However, the taxi driver didn’t turn into Whittall Street straight away because Sylvia asked him to drive past the hospital first so that Carmel could have a good look at it. It was built of light-coloured brick that contrasted sharply with the dingy, grim police station opposite. Carmel was stunned by the sheer size of the place, which she estimated would be four times or more bigger that the hospital at Letterkenny. She felt suddenly nervous and was glad of the company of the friendly girls beside her.

A few moments later, Carmel was out on the pavement scrutinising the place that would be her home for the next four years. It was built of the same light bricks as the hospital, large and very solid-looking.

Jane led the way inside. ‘Our room is on the first floor,’ she said over her shoulder to Carmel, and Carmel followed her, hearing the chatter of other girls and passing some on the stairs. There seemed a great many of them and it was strange to think that in a short space of time she would probably know every one.

Then she was standing in the doorway of a room and Sylvia was saying, ‘What do you think?’

Carmel stepped slowly inside and looked around. The floor was covered with mottled blue oilcloth, light blue curtains framed the two windows and beside each bed was a dressing table and a wardrobe.

For a split second, she remembered the room where they had slept at home. The bed had been a dingy mattress laid on the floor and she had been squashed on it together with Siobhan, Kathy and even wee Pauline, who wasn’t yet a year old, while coats piled haphazardly on the top did in place of blankets. There were no curtains at the begrimed windows and an upended orange box housed their few clothes. Now her sigh was one of utter contentment.

‘Your bed is either of those two by the door,’ Jane said. ‘Sylvia and I have nabbed the two by the window.’

‘Just at this moment I wouldn’t care if my bed was out on the street,’ Carmel said. ‘It looks terribly inviting.’

Sylvia laughed. ‘You will have to wait a bit,’ she said, glancing at the clock on the wall. ‘The bell for dinner will go any second.’

The words had barely left her mouth when the strains of it could be heard echoing through the home. Carmel quickly removed her coat, hung it in the wardrobe, pushed her case under the bed and followed the others streaming, with hurrying feet and excited chatter, down the stairs towards the dining room.

The good wholesome food revived Carmel a little, although she was still extremely tired. She was quiet at the table, glad that Sylvia and Jane were there to keep up the conversation because she didn’t feel up to talking, laughing and being polite to those she hadn’t got to know yet.

Later, up in the room, she confessed to the other two what a relief it was to be there.

‘You don’t worry that you might be homesick?’ Jane said.

‘There is not a doubt in my mind that I will never miss my home,’ Carmel said. ‘As for wishing I was back there, no thank you.’ She gave a shiver of distaste.

‘Ooh, I might wish that sometimes and quite easily,’ Jane said, ‘especially when Matron’s on the warpath. Our next-door neighbour was here five years ago and said she was a targer.’

‘Our matron could be strict,’ Carmel conceded. ‘She was fair, though.’

‘Did you work in a hospital then?’

‘Aye. I was a ward orderly in Letterkenny Hospital, which was near where I lived,’ Carmel said. ‘Our matron had a thing about hospital corners on the beds and she was a stickler for having a tidy and uncluttered ward. But I was good at the bed-making and I like order myself, so we got on all right.’

‘Did she suggest you going in for nursing?’

‘No, that was Sister Frances, the nun I worked with mostly,’ Carmel said. ‘Matron did support me, though, when she knew about it.’

‘You didn’t lose your heart to any dishy doctors then?’ Jane asked.

Carmel laughed. ‘There weren’t any. I think ugliness or at least general unattractiveness with a brusque bedside manner were the requisites for any job there.’

‘Well, I hope it’s not the case here,’ Jane said with a slight pout of discontent.

‘I thought you came to learn nursing, not hook yourself a husband?’ Sylvia said scornfully.

‘No harm in combining the two ambitions and seeing what comes first,’ Jane said with a simper.

Carmel laughed. ‘You can do all the hooking you wish,’ she said. ‘I won’t be any sort of threat to you, because I won’t be in the race.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t want a husband—not now, not ever.’

The other two looked at her open-mouthed. ‘Not ever?’ Sylvia breathed.

‘You can’t honestly say you want to be an old maid all your life?’ Jane cried incredulously.

‘Oh, yes I can, because that’s exactly what I want.’

‘But why?’

Carmel shrugged. ‘Let’s just say that what I have seen of marriage, children and all so far has not impressed me one jot.’

‘Your mom and dad, I suppose?’ Sylvia asked.

‘Aye,’ Carmel said, ‘in the main, but there were others I knew who were downright unhappy. I want to be my own person without relying or depending on someone else, and to have no one leaning on me.’

‘You can’t go through life like that,’ Jane said. ‘It’s so sad and lonely-sounding.’

‘Yeah,’ Sylvia agreed. ‘And just ’cos your parents didn’t hit it off, what’s that got to do with you and your life? I mean, Carmel, if you could see mine…Fight like cat and dog, they do, and always have done, but I will be ready to take the plunge when I’m swept off my feet.’

‘And me.’

‘Well, I wish you the well of it,’ Carmel said.

‘But, Carmel—’

‘The thing is,’ Carmel said, ‘you don’t really know anything about a man until you marry him. That has been said to me countless times.’

A yawn suddenly overtook her and she gave a rueful smile. ‘Sorry, girls, I am too tired to be fit company for anyone tonight. I will have to leave my unpacking till the morning. Thank God I had the foresight to put all I would need for tonight in the bag.’

As Carmel padded down the corridor to the bathroom in her bare feet, Jane whispered to Sylvia, ‘D’you think she really means it about men and that?’

Sylvia shrugged. ‘Sounds like it, but she is only eighteen.’

‘Yeah. Likely change her mind half a dozen times yet.’

Carmel was woken the next morning by the ringing of a bell and for a moment or two was disorientated. Then the previous day and all that had happened came back to her. She felt her whole body fill with delicious anticipation and she could barely wait for the day to start.

The system of the bells had been explained to her and other new arrivals after dinner the previous evening. She knew she had twenty minutes between the first bell and the second, when she was supposed to be in the dining hall. The clock on the wall told her it was twenty to seven and she knew it would take her all her time to wash, haul something suitable and as uncreased as possible out of the suitcase, make her bed and arrive in the dining hall on time and so she slipped out of bed quickly.

The other two had barely stirred and she made straight for the bathroom, delighting in hot water straight from the tap and plenty of soap and soft towels. She was invigorated by her wash and returned to the room in a buoyant mood to see Sylvia up, while Jane still lay curled in her bed with her eyes closed.

In fact, Jane was so hard to rouse, Carmel feared they would all be late. To try to prevent this, she ended up making up Jane’s bed, to enable Jane to have time to dress herself.

‘It is good of you,’ Jane told her. ‘I’ve never been my best in the morning.’

‘You’d better work on it,’ Sylvia told her grimly. ‘Neither Carmel nor I is here to wait on you.’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

‘Come on,’ Carmel urged. ‘Look at the time. The next bell will go any second.’

The girls scurried from the room, arriving in the dining hall just as the strains of the piercing alarm were dying away. Carmel’s stomach growled and she knew she would be glad of the breakfast, which she soon found out was thick creamy porridge with extra hot milk, and sugar to sprinkle over, followed by rounds of buttered toast and cups of strong tea.

She had never had such a breakfast, and remarked to a girl beside her that she would be the size of a house if she ate like that every day. The girl looked at Carmel’s slender figure and smiled.

‘I doubt that,’ she said. ‘I think it is more the case of keeping your strength up. From what I was told, they run every morsel of food off you. I mean, have you seen any fat nurses?’

‘No,’ Carmel had to admit, ‘And I’m too hungry anyway not to eat.’

The last of the probationary nurses were arriving that day, and for this reason the others were free until one o’clock, when they had to report to the lecture hall. Some of the girls, including Jane and Sylvia, went to the common room, but Carmel, mindful of her case not yet unpacked, was going to attend to it when the home sister hailed her.

‘Are you Carmel Duffy?’

‘Yes, Sister.’

‘The matron would like a word.’

‘Yes, Sister.’

The matron wore a dark blue dress, covered with a pure white apron. The ruff at her neck seemed as stiff as the woman itself. Her grey hair was scraped back from her head so effectively that her eyebrows rose as if she were constantly surprised. On her head was perched a starched white matron’s cap. Her eyes were piercing blue and they fastened fixedly on Carmel as she bade her sit at the other side of the desk.

‘Sister Francis thinks highly of you,’ Matron began.

What could Carmel say to that? ‘Yes, Matron,’ sounded the safest option.

‘And I have further endorsements from the matron at Letterkenny Hospital, detailing your suitability to be taken on this course, and a character reference from your parish priest.’

‘Yes, Matron.’

‘What I want to make clear to you, Miss Duffy, is that I broke the rule of interviewing you before accepting you, even so far, because of the friendship of someone in the same field as myself whose judgement I trust. You are not and will not be treated as a special case.’

‘No, Matron,’ Carmel said. ‘I truly hadn’t expected to be.’

‘As long as that is firmly understood.’

‘Oh, yes, Matron.’

‘You may go, Miss Duffy. And I am glad to see,’ she added, ‘that you have the regulation stockings and shoes.’

As Carmel scurried from the room, Catherine smiled. She knew more about Carmel Duffy than the young woman realised, because Sister Frances had told her all about her background and the type of home she came from. She had gone on to say that the child and young woman that she had known for four years had remained untainted by this and had the ability and will to make something of herself. Catherine liked the sound of Carmel Duffy and had been impressed with what she saw, but because Frances had also said she hated talking of her family and in particular her father, she had asked no questions. Anyway, she had the girl’s testimonials, and all Matron really was interested in was whether Carmel would make a good nurse.

Unaware of the matron’s thoughts, Carmel, glad that quite painless interview was over, returned to her room to find a girl, still in her outdoor clothes, looking a little lost.

‘Hello,’ Carmel said. ‘You must be Lois.’

The girl’s sigh of relief was audible. ‘Yes,’ she said, extending her hand. ‘Lois Baker.’

‘And I’m Carmel Duffy.’

‘No secrets about where you come from,’ Lois said. ‘Your accent is lovely, and what gorgeous hair.’

‘Thanks,’ Carmel said, liking the look of Lois too, with her dark brown curls and merry brown eyes.

‘Where is everyone?’

‘Well, we’ve not long had breakfast,’ Carmel explained, hauling her case from beneath the bed as she spoke. ‘We haven’t got to report for duty until one o’clock in the lecture theatre, and most of the girls have gone into the common room. I only arrived last night myself, though, and was too tired after the meal to unpack so I’m doing it now. I’m not sure when I’ll have a spare minute again.’

‘Good idea,’ Lois said. ‘I’ll do the same.’

As Lois hauled her case up onto the bed as Carmel directed her to, she said with a wry smile, ‘I find it hard to believe I am here at last. There were times I didn’t think I would make it.’

‘Nor me,’ Carmel said. ‘Did your father object too?’

‘No, it was my mother,’ Lois said. ‘She kicked up a right shindig about it. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Daddy and his support, I wouldn’t have made it.’

‘Why did she object?’

‘Well, she’s an invalid, you see,’ Lois said. ‘At least…’ she wrinkled her nose, ‘she’s supposed to be an invalid. I have my doubts. Well, more than doubts because I have caught her out a time or two. She’s not half as helpless as she makes out.’

Carmel couldn’t quite believe that anyone could act that way. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Oh, I’m sure, all right, but…well, what can I do? All the years I was growing up, it was impressed upon me—on all of us—that Mummy wasn’t very strong. You get sort of conditioned. I have a brother and a sister both older than me and they got away in time so there was just me left.’

‘What about your father?’

‘Daddy is marvellous and he said I should run while I had the chance. Now he pays a woman, an ex-nurse, to come in and see to Mummy.’

‘Is your father rich to be able to just employ someone like that?’

‘I don’t know,’ Lois said. ‘I’ve never thought about it.’

‘What does he do?’

‘He’s a department manager in Lewis’s.’ Then, at the perplexed look on Carmel’s face, Lois went on, ‘It’s a big store in the city centre, bigger even than Marshall & Snelgrove. D’you know how Daddy got around my mother in the end?’ Carmel shook her head and Lois continued. ‘Told her that I was training as a nurse so that I could look after her more effectively.’

‘And will you?’

‘Not likely,’ Lois said determinedly. ‘She is a slave-driver and not averse either to giving me the odd hard slap or pinch for little or nothing at all. She behaves better with other people. Daddy has the patience of Job with her—with everyone, really. He is a wonderful person. What about you?’

Carmel was laying the pin cushion and pin tray on the dressing table as the letter had directed her to but her hands became still at Lois’s question. She didn’t want to bring the details of her former dirty, gruesome existence and the deprived brothers and sisters she’d left behind into this new and clean life.

She gave a shrug. ‘I may tell you about myself some other time,’ she said. ‘But if you have finished your packing, we’d best go down and meet the others.’

‘I’m all done,’ Lois said, snapping the case shut. ‘What do we do with the cases?’

‘Leave them on the bed,’ Carmel said. ‘That’s what I was told. The porter or caretaker or whoever he is comes and takes them away later.’

‘Right oh, then,’ Lois said. ‘Lead the way.’

The lecture theatre was in the main body of the hospital, which was connected to the nurses’ home via a conservatory. Outside the room it was fair bustling with noise as Carmel, Jane, Sylvia and Lois congregated there with everyone else.

‘Out of the way!’ said a grumbling voice suddenly. ‘Bunching together like that before the door. Ridiculous! Get inside. Inside quickly.’

Carmel had never heard the words ‘lecture theatre’ before, never mind seen inside one and she surged inside with the others and looked around in amazement at the tiered benches of shiny golden wood that stretched up and up before the small dais at the front.

The woman’s entrance into the room had caused a silence to descend on the apprehensive girls. The woman spoke again. ‘I am Matron Turner and when you refer to me, you just call me Matron. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, Matron.’

‘Remember that in future and now I want you all against the wall,’ Matron said.

Carmel found herself next to Jane. ‘Now prepare to face the firing squad,’ Jane whispered, and Carmel had to stifle her giggles with a cough, bringing Matron’s shrewd eyes to rest upon her.

She found fault with many of them and when she got to Carmel, the girl wasn’t surprised to be told her hair was too wild and frizzy. ‘You will have to do something with it,’ she said. ‘You’ll never get your cap to stay on that bush. Our standards are high,’ Matron’s voice rapped out, ‘and hygiene is of paramount importance. Hold out your hands.’

Wondering why in the world they had to do that, Carmel nervously extended her hands and tried to still their trembling as the woman walked up and down inspecting them.

‘Before going on to the ward, your hands must be scrubbed, and before you attend a patient, and between patients,’ the matron said. ‘Nails must be kept short at all times and dirty nails will not be tolerated. And,’ she went on, fixing the students with a glare. ‘if you have been prone to bite your nails in the past—a disgusting habit, I might add—then you must stop. A nurse cannot run the risk of passing on the bacteria in her mouth to a sick and vulnerable patient. I hope that I have made myself clear.’

Again came the chorus, ‘Yes, Matron.’

‘We expect high standards. If you have come here as some sort of rest cure, then you are in the wrong job. The hours are long and some of the work arduous. You must understand that from the outset.

‘Before you even start a shift, your bedroom must be left clean and tidy at all times,’ the matron continued, fixing them all with a gimlet eye. ‘This shows that you have refinement of mind, clean habits and tidy ways. If you are careless or slovenly, then these same attributes will be carried on to the ward, and let me tell you,’ she added, ‘I will not have any slatterns on my wards.’

‘No, Matron,’ chorused the girls in the pause that followed this declaration.

‘You are on the brink of entering a noble and respectable profession and this must be shown in your manner at all times. There is to be no frivolous behaviour in wards or corridors and, of course, no running at any time. No nurse is to eat on the wards, there is to be no jewellery worn, nor cosmetics of any sort, and the relationship between nurse and patients must be kept on a strictly professional level. There is to be no fraternising with the doctors either, and no nurse is to enter any other department without permission. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, Matron.’

‘Now, you are each required to have a medical examination, as the list of rules explained, so if you make your way down to the medical room you will be dealt with alphabetically.’

‘Phew, she must have been practising that sort of attitude for years,’ Jane remarked when the matron had gone.

‘I know one thing,’ another girl put in, ‘the army’s loss is our gain. God, wouldn’t she make a first-class sergeant major?’

‘Oh, no,’ Lois said. ‘She wouldn’t be happy unless she was a general.’

‘You’re right there,’ the first girl conceded, and there were gales of laughter as the girls left the room.

That night, after being declared fit and healthy, Carmel examined her hair ruefully. The matron was right about one thing.

‘How the hell am I going to get any sort of cap to stay on my head under my mass of hair? After the initial six weeks I’ll have to wear one,’ Carmel lamented.

Jane gave a hoot of laughter. ‘It will be like getting a quart into a pint pot,’ she said.

‘Let’s not be so defeatist about this,’ Lois said. ‘Your hair will have to be put up, and surely that is just a matter of a thousand Kirbigrips or thereabouts?’

‘Come on, then,’ Jane said. ‘Let’s try it.’

With the combined efforts of Jane, Lois and Sylvia, and using all the grips the girls possessed, Carmel’s hair was finally up, or most of it, though tendrils of it had already escaped. Carmel felt the rest of it pulling against the restraining grips, threatening any moment to break free. She surveyed herself critically in the mirror.

‘It won’t do, will it?’ she said. ‘Even if I had the time to do this every morning and could manage it without help, I have the feeling it would burst out and cascade down my back as soon as I began work.’

‘Oh, can you imagine the matron’s face if that happened?’ Sylvia said.

‘And her comments,’ Lois added.

‘I’d rather not think of either,’ Carmel said drily. ‘The woman would probably scalp me into the bargain.’ She released her hair and lifted the curls critically. ‘It will have to come off,’ she said. ‘It is the only way.’

‘It seems such a shame when it’s so lovely and thick,’ Lois said. ‘But I do see what you mean. I’ll do it for you, if you like. I was a dab hand at cutting my mother’s.’

‘Well, I’d rather you than Matron,’ Carmel commented grimly, ‘and I suppose it had better be done sooner rather than later.’

Despite Carmel’s spirited words, she felt more than a pang of regret as the Titian curls fell to the ground. Lois, though, didn’t just hack the hair off, but took time to shape it. The other girls were impressed.

‘Years of practice,’ Lois said. ‘My mother hasn’t been able to visit a hairdresser for some time and Carmel’s hair is so soft and luxuriant, it’s a joy to work on.’

Jane laughed. ‘Whatever you say,’ she said. ‘It’s another string to your bow. If ever the wish to tell Matron where to go overcomes you totally, then at least you can take up hairdressing, I’d say.’

‘I’ll keep it in mind,’ Lois said grimly, ‘for I’d do anything rather than go back home again to live.’

‘Let me see what you’ve done,’ Carmel demanded. ‘Your keep talking about it and it is my hair.’

‘It’s lovely,’ Jane said, as Lois went for the mirror. ‘Truly lovely. You lucky thing.’

Carmel looked at her reflection and couldn’t help but be pleased at what she saw. As the waves had been shorn, it had taken the weight from the head so the rest had sprung into curls that encircled her head and framed her face. The result was very pleasing indeed.

Carmel had never been encouraged to think of herself as pretty or desirable. She had neither the money, clothes nor even the time to make the best of herself, so until she arrived here she had never thought much about her appearance at all.

But now she saw that the face reflected in the glass looked quite pretty, and much of that was because she was smiling.

‘You have done a wonderful job,’ she said to Lois, full of admiration. ‘I look a different person.’

‘Yeah, but just as stunning,’ Jane commented glumly. ‘What chance have we got of attracting the chaps when you look like you do?’

‘You have a free playing field as far as chaps go,’ Carmel told her. ‘For as I said, I want no truck with any of them.’

‘You didn’t mean it, though, did you?’ Sylvia said. ‘I mean, we’ve all said that in the past when we have been let down or something, but it doesn’t last.’

‘Believe me, this is more deep-seated than that,’ Carmel said. ‘And I have never gone out with a either a man or a boy to give them any opportunity to let me down.’

‘Never?’ Jane and Sylvia said, incredulous and in unison.

‘Nor have I,’ Lois admitted. ‘Mummy would never have allowed it. I was barely allowed to leave the house for any reason.’

‘Oh, I see we shall have to take you two in hand,’ Jane said. ‘For neither of you knows what you have been missing.’

‘That’s right,’ Sylvia said. ‘You’d better believe it. We are going to teach the pair of you to live.’

‘I told you—’ Carmel began.

‘Shut up,’ Jane said. ‘We’re not talking fellows here, we are talking about girls having fun.’

‘Oh, well, in that case…’

‘How else will we be able to withstand the dreaded matron?’ Jane remarked.

‘Oh, how indeed?’ Carmel agreed with a smile, and the girls burst into laughter.