Sixty Years a Nurse

by Mary Hazard

  Anyway, one morning I was lolling around in bed feeling sorry for myself, when the front doorbell rang. My father went to open the door, and there, on the doorstep, to his astonishment, was Brian Mann. I was in my bedroom and snuck out on the landing, alongside Una and Betty, and was utterly amazed. My father was blunt and to the point. ‘Who are you?’ he said (although it must have been pretty obvious, thinking about it). ‘I’ve come to see Mary,’ said Brian, unabashed. It was lovely to hear his voice: he sounded so warm and friendly – and very English. But my mother flew at him, on the doorstep, like a maternal Rottweiler from hell. ‘Get off my doorstep, you bloody Protestant bastard,’ she was screaming. Meanwhile, I was crying and shouting, ‘Brian, Brian,’ down the stairs, like the lunatic I’d actually become. Una and Betty were hysterical by now, too. Brian was shouting over my parents’ heads, ‘Mary, I’ve come all the way from England to see you. What on earth is going on? Where have you been all this time?’ My father suddenly leapt into action. ‘Hold the door, Agnes,’ he said, in a fury. ‘I’ll get the shotgun.’ Una started screaming now as my father was going to the gun cupboard to get his hunting cartridges and loading his gun. Sweet Jesus, he was going to kill another Englishman in front of our eyes. As he was doing this, Brian was shouting over my mother’s head, ‘Didn’t you get my letters, Mary? Why didn’t you write?’ I was shouting back down the stairs, ‘But I wrote to you, Brian. Why didn’t you write?’ By now my father was back at the door, aiming his gun straight at Brian, right between the eyes, with Una and Betty screaming over the bannisters, ‘Don’t shoot him, Daddy, don’t shoot!’ I was sitting at the top of the stairs, crying and screaming, ‘Brian, Brian.’ My mother turned round and screamed at me, ‘Get back in your bed. See what you’ve done.’ My brother had recently married a woman called Esther, who was staying with us, and I could also see her hanging over the bannisters, next to Una, with her eyes like saucers: she must have been wondering what on earth it was she had married into. Meanwhile, Brian was still standing on the doorstep, with my father aiming right between his eyes. Brian was shouting, ‘I’m not going. No, I’m not. I’ll go when she tells me to,’ he said pointedly, meaning me. So I crept downstairs in my pyjamas, tears streaming down my face, and cried, ‘Brian, go back to England. Go away. I never want to see you again.’ It wasn’t true, but I didn’t want him dead on the doorstep on my behalf. I knew my father had killed an Englishman before, and I believed he would have done it if things had gone on any longer. So that was it, and off Brian went. As he turned and walked away, my heart broke into a thousand pieces, watching him go.

  After this incident, I was incensed. Incandescent was more like it. I was still drugged and spending most days in bed, but I wanted to know about the letters. So I got Una to find out for me what had happened. She managed to uncover the plot, by asking around, and discovered that my beloved father had got Sean at the Post Office to intercept the letters to me from England, and the ones from Brian had been burned by my father, in our grate at home. Literally thrown on the fire. I couldn’t believe he would do that to me. It was an offence, but actually, worse than that, I was amazed that my father would do that to me. It shook me to my roots. I guessed my mother must have persuaded him to enact this insane plan. I also wondered what other letters he had destroyed ‘for your own good, Mary’. I was utterly miserable. I wrote to Sister Tutor and smuggled the letter out, via dear old Betty, saying I wanted to go back to Putney as soon as possible and was missing everything. I just hoped the letter got to her. Then one day Betty came in and sat with me, stroked my hair and said, ‘Oh Mary, you’re so unhappy, aren’t you?’ I blubbed and said, ‘I am. I’ve got to go back, somehow. He’ll meet somebody else, and I’ll lose him. I’ll lose everything I’ve worked for. I can’t bear it.’

  Then a letter did actually arrive at the house from Putney Hospital. It was addressed to my parents, and, for some strange reason I will never understand, the letter was read and not destroyed. It was from Sister Tutor saying that I was a good nurse, a great trainee, and that if I came back immediately I could sit my finals. I had missed nearly four months now, and it was January 1955. In the letter Sister Tutor explained that there had been a huge train crash in December in Barnes, which had been a major disaster. I hadn’t even heard about it, although that wasn’t surprising as I was under house arrest. I was shocked to hear that a train had not braked, had crashed at speed into the station and fifty-five people had died. The injuries had been terrible, and Putney Hospital, which was the nearest medical centre, had been completely overwhelmed. Sister Tutor wrote to my mother: ‘It was an absolutely terrible disaster, and we had bodies all over the corridor. We needed all hands available and we realised how much we missed a hard worker, like Mary. We need her to come back immediately, we need people, like Mary, who are dedicated nurses.’ Reading her letter, Betty kindly decided to help me then. She gave me the fare to get back to England, which was a lot of money then, and helped me escape. She said, ‘You go. I’ll tell them when you’ve gone.’ It was a real act of sisterhood, and she was quite a romantic at heart, Betty. She knew that I would be heartbroken for ever, not only about losing Brian, but also missing my final exams and not being a nurse. It all meant the world to me, and she cared that it did. So Betty got me the plane ticket and gave me some money. Then one night I snuck out of the downstairs lounge window, heart in my mouth, holding a little bag, and ran to Clonmel train station. From there I got a train to Dublin and thence onto a plane to England, and escaped. I had already written to Sister Tutor saying I was going to come back somehow, some way, and that I hoped Putney Hospital would take me back again, as promised.

  When I got back to Putney I was so happy to find my room still waiting for me. All my friends gave me a heroine’s welcome, and they all got in the Merrydown and Woodbines and we sat up late that first night, while I filled them in. Even Percy the porter was pleased to see me. But it had to be straight back to hard work and study, no messing. I had thrown away my tranquillisers, and I was back to being a human being. I had never been so grateful in all my life to empty a bedpan or even a vomit bowl. I told Sister Tutor what had passed, and she was an amazing ally to me: ‘You will make an excellent nurse, Mary,’ she said, ‘but you will have a lot of catching up to do, so you’ll have to work hard and concentrate now.’ I knew what she meant, so although Brian was waiting for me, and was amazed when I told him all that transpired, he also understood I needed to knuckle down to study for my exams. I wasn’t even worried about the Beetle, or Matron, or being carpeted again, so I really put my back into learning and working, and in the summer of 1955 I passed my finals with flying colours. I was so proud that I finally could call myself an SRN, although I would still have another probationary year to complete to get my certificate and badge.

  I was finally standing in the queue at my graduation ceremony in June 1955, waiting to receive my SRN badge, certificate and hospital badge from Putney Hospital’s Chief Consultant and Matron. I was wearing my black belt, with its special buckle, and my hat with its little string and bow. Of course, when I looked round the room I could see Sister Tutor, and my dear friends, but there was not a single member of my family from Ireland, sadly. However, Brian was there, beaming from the front row and giving me the thumbs up. During my probationary year we were married on 4 December 1956 in Harrow Registry Office. We had no guests at all, just a couple of witnesses. We spent our wedding night seeing Agatha Christie’s Mousetrap play and staying a night in the Charing Cross Hotel. We had no honeymoon, as we couldn’t afford it then, but we were happy. We had waited and I had qualified, and that was what mattered to me. But after the wedding I put my ring on a chain round my neck, and hid it. I didn’t want to jeopardise my position as a nurse, and I wanted to complete my probationary year and continue working beyond that, so I hid the fact that I was married, and we lived very discreetly in a flat in Putney. In a way my mother’s crazy plan to kidnap me had backfired on her because, in the end, it had strengthened
my resolve even more to succeed in becoming a nurse, live and work in black, Protestant England, and marry a Godforsaken Englishman.

  16

  Reader, I Married Him … and Carried On Working for the Next Sixty Years …

  By 1956 I was a qualified SRN, secretly married (still naughty Mary through and through) and working in all sorts of capacities locally as a nurse while Brian pursued his career. We didn’t have much money, but we managed and were happy. I was now living in England and could see my life would remain there for a long time to come. I wanted my family to visit, but they didn’t, and my mother still would not forgive me. However, during my early years after training I did all sorts of nursing jobs which I thoroughly enjoyed. I did some midwifery work, but found it was not really for me, and I didn’t pursue it further. Then I worked in a lot of different hospitals, and did a lot of night duties (which Putney had prepared me well for); and I worked regularly in theatre, as a community nurse, and even did a stint in a private hospital, the Nuffield, for a while. Having been trained by the NHS I couldn’t get used to having to write down every single thing I had got for a patient, like a toothbrush or a sanitary towel. I wasn’t particularly commercially minded, and I felt the private attitude to health actually got in the way of nursing, so I quit that as soon as possible. It wasn’t for me.

  From being a staff nurse, I soon went on to become a sister myself, and worked nights once my children came along. I had three lovely children who were the apples of my eye: two boys, Christopher and Anthony, and a girl, Jennifer. Brian’s work was up and down in sales, so I had to keep on working to bring the money in. I did a lot of night shifts and used my husband’s mother, friends, child-minders and a local state nursery to get me through the early years. Nursing was definitely my life, and I was always happy once I was back on the wards, or dealing with some medical problem or other. I loved the camaraderie, and the whole way of life. Sometimes I had to take on some extra part-time work like waitressing to make ends meet. I always gravitated back to nursing full or part time, as the odd jobs were really just to supplement our precarious incomes. I also worked in some elderly care homes, which were horrendous. I remember one place, run by a Harley Street doctor, where the poor elderly inmates were left just one cup of porridge oats to feed them all (seventeen people). That’s all there was, a small amount of watery gruel for them to live on. I couldn’t bear such meanness, and left there as soon as possible. At another place I worked, which had lots of disabled inmates, we had a riot one night when we took them all up in the centre minibus to Regent Street to see the lights at Christmas, and then got them twenty portions of fish and chips to eat in the bus on the way home. They had a great time, and thoroughly enjoyed themselves, although the bus really stank for ages afterwards.

  Sadly, my mother and I could never make peace. I found it very painful that she was never able to be a hands-on grandmother, and didn’t send presents to my children for Christmas or birthdays. I think her mind was fixed, and her views were rigid, and she never forgave me for what she thought was my terrible betrayal. Personally, I feel she missed out terribly on her lovely grandchildren’s childhoods, and she didn’t experience their love and sense of fun, which was a great shame all round. I was sad about it, obviously, and I knew my father would never come over and see me on his own, and sadly he died in 1971. I did see my sisters and brother from time to time, as I visited them and their families, so we managed to remain in good contact until each of them eventually died. Unfortunately, they all died fairly early due to ill health; I believe that the TB had definitely weakened my sisters’ hearts and immunity. When my mother got bowel cancer, at the age of sixty, I did visit her, and I offered to nurse her, but she was unforgiving, and so no real reconciliation was possible. She had turned away from me completely. Amazingly, I did found out, however, from the priest, that she had actually been grief-stricken when I’d gone over to England originally, something which she had never really conveyed to me. He had told her to forget that she ever had had a daughter called Mary, and I think that’s actually what she did. So, all I had ever had was the anger and the recriminations, and of course the kidnapping. However, I wasn’t bitter, as I had chosen my path and followed it, and I was happy in my choices. I did retain my relationship with my siblings and their children throughout, I am pleased to say.

  Also, I am sad to say that my marriage to Brian didn’t last, despite having three lovely children, and we were divorced in the 1971. I then had to be a lone parent to my three young children, and that proved to be a tough task, but being a resourceful nurse I was always able to get work, and I did a lot of night duties as a sister. I had to exist on very little sleep, and a lot of support from dear friends, but I managed it. I think I always found a way through, and was determined to be there for my children, whatever effort it took. I did marry a second time, but unfortunately it didn’t work out.

  However, there was a terribly dark time to come for me. Tragedy was to strike, and it would take me years and years to get over it – in fact, I never really did get over it. My wonderful daughter Jennifer was killed at the age of twenty-one by a drunk driver. Her own car had broken down, and she had been out to a pub with friends (she didn’t even drink). She had accepted a ten-minute lift home from a stranger, who she didn’t know was completely over the limit. It was a freak accident, but the driver hit a lamp-post, and my beautiful Jennifer was decapitated. He ran away with bruises and scratches, with his girlfriend, brother and sister, and abandoned her in his car, but was tracked down through A&E records and prosecuted, thank goodness. However, he only got nine months in jail and I was totally heart-broken. I could not bear the grief of losing my girl, or the ridiculousness of the man’s sentence. By now my two sons had left home, and I had worked for years in various hospitals. The stress of losing my daughter was too much, as I loved her dearly, and I had a breakdown. I spent several months, heartbroken, desperately sad and bereft, as my daughter was such a wonderful, lovely girl, and her loss was beyond what I could handle. We were very close and it did feel like the end of the world. I also found out that I had cervical cancer and had a hysterectomy before I was fifty, and gradually pulled through. This was in the early 1980s and all looked very bleak for a while. I think I became quite depressed, feeling I had been through two marriages, lost my beloved daughter, dealt with cancer and had no idea where to go next. For a while I felt totally lost, and I wasn’t even interested in going back to work – I felt I had nothing left to give.

  Then a dear fellow nurse came to see me one day in 1983, and suggested we go into business together. She could see I was struggling, and I was unusually down and had no direction in life any more. She also knew how much I had loved my daughter, and how bereft I was. When she suggested we set up a business I really thought she was mad, as I didn’t have a commercial bone in my body. But she was adamant that we could do it together, and that it would work, and she really thought we should make a go of it. She had noticed a gap in the market for good-quality residential care for the elderly. I had some insurance money after my daughter’s death, from an insurance policy she had, and we went to see a business adviser. Then we sank Jennifer’s money, along with some money from my friend, into a property in Palmer’s Green, North London, and set up a care home for the elderly, called The Hollies. I’d never done anything like this in my life before, and it was a steep learning curve, but it was a wonderful antidote to all the loss and emptiness I was feeling. We had to take out a mortgage, and it took months to get the business up and running, but it was great to have a project. The house had to pass fire regulations and social service rules, so there was a huge amount for us to get to grips with.

  Eventually, we had twelve elderly residents in all, and because we were trained nurses we could attend to their physical needs, look after them when they got sick (so they didn’t have to go into hospital), and we also did all sorts of fun things, like their nails, their hair, and so on. I always liked working with the elderly and we had
a lot of good times with these people, who were both men and women, some single, some married, some widowed. We really looked after them well, and we had lots of song evenings, games nights and parties. We tried to make it a fun place to be. One particular married couple used to share a room, and the woman had Alzheimer’s, and they used to go to bed early together. Then there would be a ‘boom’ and she’d be on the floor. He’d pick her up, and they’d get into bed together again, then there’s be another ‘boom’ half an hour later, and he’d be on the floor. He insisted on their sleeping together in one tiny single bed, although they had twin beds in their room – I guess they were used to it after a lifetime together. They were a sweet old couple, and we had a ball with those old people: I loved them like my own family. We would have Christmas parties, and little dances, and we did four days on, three days off, and covered the duties, including the nights, all ourselves. Sadly, the regulations of the local authority changed, and made it harder and more expensive for us to run. We were going to lose out unless we bought a bigger property, which meant borrowing more money. Neither of us felt we could do that at our ages, so we were heartbroken as we had to decide to sell the business. (The place is still there, although it’s been expanded now.) I loved working with the elderly, but we had to sell up. We both took out about £6,000 each after all was told, and that is how I bought my little one-bedroom flat, to live on my own, after that.

  However, I still wanted to work, as I still loved nursing, and I had found working in The Hollies had been very restorative after the loss of my daughter. It actually saved my life. My sons were grown up, and having families of their own now, and I felt I couldn’t really face the rest of my life without working. I still loved being involved in all things medical, so I decided to try to find something to do. Luckily, I saw an advert in a local newspaper for Chase Farm Hospital, in Hertfordshire, who were looking to train up some new phlebotomists (people who take blood samples). I had never done anything like that, but I thought it might be a great thing to do. It was a new skill, and it avoided all the usual heavy lifting and physical work that was involved in nursing. I applied and got the job, and so I was trained as a phlebotomist, and went on to work at Chase Farm for the next fourteen years. I loved the work, as it was light, but interesting, and it was dealing with people all day. I also loved the staff, and I made some very good friends there. I guess I always feel at home with nurses, and we had great laughs, and went out to pubs and parties, and always had a jolly good time at Christmas (including Irish dancing and singing, of course).