Sixty Years a Nurse

by Mary Hazard

  15

  Kidnapped

  To relieve all the tension and stress from endless training, studying and also long days of fulfilling duties and obeying rules, my pals and I still loved going out, as often as we could, to let our hair down and go dancing. There were still a lot of GIs around at that time, and I remember being whisked round the dance-floor quite a few times by a particularly ardent, good-looking Yank called Hank. He was very keen on me, but I kept my distance, as always, and although I enjoyed dancing, and the drinks, and the laughter and fun, and even the odd kiss and cuddle, I always wanted to get home intact (as it were), and sometimes that was a bit of struggle, I can tell you. A lot of my nurse friends were ‘going steady’ by the third year, or were actually engaged, and a couple had left, impatient to be married and settled down. I didn’t think I wanted to marry, particularly, at least not yet. I felt I had time enough for all that, as first I wanted to live, to work and enjoy some untrammelled freedom. My friends and I still used to go up Putney High Street on our days off and window shop, look at the fashions, get our hair done, or go to Zeta’s and drink coffee or have afternoon tea, and we were all beginning to think about what would happen once we got through our final exams, which were looming large at this time. I was pretty scared of the exams, and failing, so I knew I had to make a real effort to get through. I couldn’t fall at the last hurdle, so I knew I’d have to buckle down and concentrate. I was desperate to do well. I also knew that I would have to do a further year at Putney, a probationary year, from 1955 to 1956, and only then would I be properly qualified as an SRN. The fourth year was an essential part of the training, and, as I really loved my job, and I really loved learning, I didn’t want to mess it all up by getting over-involved with a man too soon. I’d seen enough nurses go off with fellas, like Wendy had, and jack it all in, and, frankly, it did seem a shame. But they were happy, and who was I to judge? Indeed I did feel, sometimes, that it would be nice to have a steady boyfriend, to have someone special who cared about me, who was fun to be with and who made me feel like a million dollars. I did look a bit enviously at my friends who landed nice guys, or were sporting their engagement rings (although they never would have worn them on the wards or on duty – strictly forbidden), and I did wonder if there would ever be a ‘Mr Right’ out there for me, somewhere, some day, somehow.

  We used to go to the Castle Ballroom in Richmond, where there were two large dance halls. One Saturday night I was going up a grand staircase just as a tall, dark-haired man was coming down, holding a pint of beer. I passed him, and instead of grabbing the bannister I grabbed his beer mug, and of course beer went flying everywhere. Oh, sweet Jesus. Typical Mary, so clumsy, and I wasn’t even tipsy, so no excuse. Oh Lord, he was awash and I was embarrassed. There was a lot of mopping up to do, but he actually laughed about it, although the beer was all over his trousers, and my skirt was sopping too. We went off to the bar and mopped ourselves up, and got another drink, and he bought me a Dubonnet and lemon, and we soon got chatting. I found him very attractive, a real good-looking charmer, and I soon fell under his spell. This was Brian Mann. He was English and a salesman, and I liked him at once. We got onto the dance floor, and he was soon whizzing me round and I felt absolutely wonderful in his arms. After this first, inauspicious meeting, which ended with a kiss, we started going out. He literally swept me off my feet, and I felt Brian was dashing, intelligent and fun, worldly and also very magnetic. We really ‘clicked’, and it was the first time I had wanted to spend time with a man. He soon became my official ‘boyfriend’ and then, amazingly, he asked me to marry him fairly soon after we met. I thought it was a bit too rushed, but I was flattered. He seemed to be the sort of man who made his mind up, and pursued what he wanted single-mindedly, and I liked that about him. He was romantic and adamant, and I was drawn by his energy and enthusiasm. However, I told him I’d have to think about it, but pretty soon I was sure that he was ‘the one’. I was twenty and probably felt that after my probationary year we would marry, and set up home together – although after all the struggle I had had to do my training I didn’t really want to give up nursing, just like that, which I knew I would have to do, if I married. Women had to stop working once they got hitched in those days, and I knew that would be an enormous wrench for me. I loved my work and I liked my independence. So, I felt there was no real rush, although it was lovely to finally be sharing my life with a man, planning a future and, who knew, maybe even have children and a family of my own at some point. Brian probably felt the need to marry quickly more than I did because I was still circumspect about keeping my virginity, and I felt I had to be married first. However, he was loving and kind, and I thought I had really met the right man for me.

  However, there was one fly in the ointment. In fact, not a little fly, but a very big fly indeed. In fact a huge, flying black bug: my mother. Brian was an Englishman. He was also not Catholic and had no interest in converting (not that I would have asked him, anyway). I couldn’t imagine what I was going to do, or how on earth I was going to tell her, and the rest of my family, that I was going to probably marry an Englishman and also live in England – all the things that were the very worst possible sins that I could commit. I knew my mother would take it all very hard, and that I would probably never be forgiven. I was already living the blackened life as it was, and now this news would send her completely over the top. I had had so little contact with her all the time I was training that, in a way, it shouldn’t have mattered. But it did. She was my mother, after all. I had been indoctrinated from birth to take her opinion seriously (even though I largely defied it), and I knew it was going to be a hell of a difficult task to break the news to her about what her silly, wayward daughter was going to get up to next. Sweet Jesus, I put it off and put it off. And then I put it off some more. Brian, meanwhile, was getting more anxious about setting a date, so I felt I had to do something. I eventually wrote to my dear sister, Betty, confiding in her that I had a boyfriend and I thought I was madly in love. Betty, being a sweet and kind person, was all for it. She told Una, and they both had a breadth and depth about them, possibly because of their own sufferings with TB, that meant they both thought I should grab what happiness I could, whenever it presented itself. Betty had lost a year or two of her youth, and Una had spent a long six years sitting in a sanatorium, where the doctors and nurses were wonderful, but hidden away from all the fun and all the noise of life, to think about things. Thus, I always found that my two sisters were a wonderful sounding board, a great support and allies. Una wrote to me encouragingly, ‘Mary, just enjoy your life, as it can all be taken away so easily. Brian sounds like a lovely man, so I wish you all the very best. Just take good care of yourself.’ She told me Betty was right behind me, too. Of course, I would blub over these kinds of letters from Una, because she was so kind and caring, but I still had no idea how I was going to break the news to my mother, or even my beloved father, who also hated the English with a passion. I’d have to cross that rocky old bridge when I came to it.

  One morning in the autumn of 1955 I was on the men’s medical ward taking a patient’s temperature and blood pressure when Sister arrived at the bottom of the bed and stared at me. ‘Matron wants you in her office immediately,’ she snapped coldly. I thought, ‘Oh Lordy, what on earth have I gone and done now?’ I racked my brains as I was tucking the man in, wondering if my late-night scamperings in through the bottom window in the nurses’ home had been rumbled, or maybe I’d given the wrong drug to the wrong patient, in my rather loved-up state. ‘Oh, and change your apron, nurse,’ said Sister frostily. ‘It’s a disgrace.’ I looked down and it was a bit messy, so I rushed to the laundry room, changed my apron, washed my hands and brushed my hair, and arrived at Matron’s office ten minutes later. I stood on her doorstep, my heart in my mouth. How many times had I been here over the years at Putney? I should have been used to it by now, but I never knew how I was going to come out of these carpetings, and my pulse was racing, as I
simply couldn’t think what it was at all that I might have done wrong. Had I forgotten to empty bedpans in the sluice or even set my room on fire with Woodbines? I usually knew when I was in for it, as I had an inkling of what misdemeanour I had committed, but today I had absolutely no idea. So I screwed up my courage and knocked on the door. ‘Come in’ ushered icily from within, and I opened the door, walked in and nearly fainted when I saw who was beside Matron at her desk.

  There was my mother and my brother, P-J, standing bolt upright, almost to attention, staring right at me as I entered Matron’s office. My mother was wearing her best Musquash coat (only brought out for very grand occasions), and her hat with the pheasant feather, and my brother was in full naval uniform (he had joined the navy, as an engineer, a couple of years earlier), and it crossed my mind he really looked quite idiotic standing there in all his official kit. My knees went weak and I thought I was going to collapse and thought, ‘Jesus Christ, what on earth are they doing here?’ Matron could see I was shocked, and gestured my mother and brother towards chairs, but they refused to sit down. The only thing I could mumble out, stupidly, was ‘Who’s dead?’ and immediately I thought my father must have had a heart attack or that Una had gone back into hospital, and had died, or that Betty was sick again. Matron looked at me meaningfully, and she said, ‘Your mother had said she put you in my care, in my charge, and that I’ve let you get away with murder.’ My mother was now eyeballing Matron, with an air of haughty fury, so I looked at P-J, who was looking at the floor, embarrassed. I couldn’t understand at all what was going on. I was dumbstruck. I had no idea what on earth she was talking about. Matron looked at me, with ice almost forming on the inside of her little steel-rimmed glasses. ‘I believe you have a boyfriend. Is that so?’ Oh no, so that was it: my mother had got wind of Brian. And then I knew what this was all about and my knees weakened. As my mind was racing, I then remembered writing to Una the excited letter about Brian proposing to me, and how I’d said yes, and how much I loved him and all that jazz. I had tuned out Matron, and realised I was missing all that she was saying to me. ‘… and so your mother has told me that you are going home with her at once.’ ‘Whaaaaat?’ I half-shouted, then stood there, open-mouthed, on the damned carpet, yet again. ‘But surely …’ Matron put her hand up and stopped me. ‘I’m sorry, Nurse Powell, but your mother insists that this is the only possible course of action, in the circumstances.’ ‘What circumstances?’ I was trying to think fast, to stem my total confusion. Then I began panicking, almost hyperventilating, and the tears started, as always. ‘But what about my exams? They’re this year. I have to finish …’ I stammered out. And at that, my mother finally spoke directly to me, for the first time in years. ‘Ah, well, you should have thought about that before you got yourself involved with a Godforsaken Protestant Englishman, now shouldn’t you?’

  Then I found myself being summarily frogmarched to my room in the nurses’ home, stood over, berated and barked at while I packed, while I was crying helplessly all the time. Then I was frogmarched to a bus stop, and thence to the airport, then frogmarched back to Dublin, and finally on to Clonmel. I was in my mother’s iron-fisted grasp. It all seemed to be happening in a dream, and I couldn’t believe it was happening to me. It was like a nightmare, but I couldn’t wake up. I couldn’t believe my mother had actually got herself onto an aeroplane and travelled overseas to England and actually found Putney Hospital. I also couldn’t believe that she had the gall to remove me from everything that was dear to me. I was in a state of complete and utter shock. I could see that P-J was embarrassed by the whole thing. I refused to speak to my mother the whole way home, but cried the entire journey. I had had to leave Putney without saying goodbye to my dear friends Jenny, Hanse, Christe and Susan – even thinking of Percy and Bert the porters, or Ivy the cook, or Lily the seamstress, and especially Sister Tutor, my major ally, made me cry helplessly. I even felt some strange fondness for Matron and the Beetle, which showed how far gone I was. I kept asking P-J, ‘What on earth has gone on? Why is she doing this? How can she take me like this? I don’t understand.’ One problem for me, that P-J pointed out, was that I was still under twenty-one, and thus a minor in legal terms, so my mother was pulling parental rank. It seemed that Una had let slip at supper one evening that I had found a beau, and my mother had gone absolutely ballistic. She had interrogated Una and Betty and finally wrested the letters out of them both, and read them for herself. My mother was beside herself and had decided that I had gone completely over to the enemy. I had to be taught a lesson, obviously. So I had to be brought back immediately, shown the error of my ways and brought forcibly to my senses. P-J told me she was completely implacable. Even my father had tried to reason with her, as had my sister Una (who felt terribly guilty) and Betty, whereas my other sister, Joan, had tended to side more with my mother. P-J said he felt sorry for me, but had been dragooned into ‘rescuing’ me as my father staunchly refused to step on English soil, even to accompany my mother on her moral crusade. It was unbelievable. Worse, I had had to leave without telling Brian, and I was due to see him the very next day. He would have no idea at all where I had gone, or why. There was no way of letting him know. It was all a terrible, awful mess. It was my life, my vocation, my love, my world, and now it was all totally ruined. I was a lost cause.

  Then it all got a lot worse. If it possibly could. My mother had got it into her head that I was mentally ill. She dragged our family doctor round and I was put under the medical microscope, like an insect on trial. ‘Doctor,’ she barked, in front of me, although I was crying uncontrollably, ‘I have had to get Mary back from that Godforsaken place she insisted on working in, and where she’s gone completely off the rails, just as I predicted. I truly believe she’s been studying too hard, and it’s all got on top of her. I believe she has mental problems. Just look at the state of her.’ Indeed, I could not stop crying, I was incoherent, and the doctor, seeing my obvious distress and confusion, prescribed Oblivon, a very strong tranquilliser. My mother stood over me and made me take the tablets. ‘I knew going overseas would do you no good, you wayward girl – but you wouldn’t listen’ was all she said once I was confined to my room. I slept for almost an entire week, and every time I woke up my mother was there, giving me soup or tea, and making me take more tablets. She literally had me locked in – I was a prisoner in my own home, and my mother the prison guard. My mother would stand over me and tell me she didn’t want the priest to find out I was going to marry a bloody Protestant, and an English one, to boot. But I was in love, I tried to explain, and I was going to be married, through my miserable tears. ‘Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it,’ she hissed venomously. ‘Over my dead body.’ ‘Don’t tempt me,’ was all I could think, but the drugs made me so woozy, and I felt so defeated, that all I could do was fall back on the pillow and sink down further into dreamless, drug-laden sleep.

  I was locked in by my mother for three months. I literally couldn’t go out of the house – the door was locked, and I was under house arrest. My sisters were still at home, and they stood guard, too. My only ally was Una, who was sickly still, very delicate, and was terribly sorry about having given the game away. I got so depressed that, despite the tablets, I just cried and cried every day. I was back to square one, back to where I’d started at seventeen, and there was no escape. I’d say to my mother, ‘Why isn’t he writing to me?’ And she’d say, ‘See, you’re soon forgotten.’ I was kidnapped, a prisoner. I was missing my friends, missing Brian, even missing the sisters and the porters; I was missing my whole way of life that I’d established – and the freedom, of course – over the past two and a half years. My father was implacable, too. He was under pain of death to agree with my mother and, anyway, he had always hated England and the English, so he wasn’t a natural ally. The tablets also made everything seem far away, unreal and woolly, so I would sit like a zombie or do a bit of knitting or needlework, but I couldn’t really be bothered to finish anything. I had no id
ea how on earth I was going to get my life back on track. My mother kept getting repeat prescriptions from the doctor, and maintaining to one and all that I was having some kind of breakdown. Well, I was – but it had been induced by my mother kidnapping me! My brother P-J had scuttled back to his ship, so I was abandoned and I had absolutely no idea how I was going to get out of this situation and back to my life. I was also sad that I hadn’t had any letters from Brian, or indeed any of my friends all this time, although I had written letters, and asked Una to smuggle them out of the house for me. It was a terrible situation and I was trapped.