To Have and to Hold

by Anne Bennett

  It didn’t at all. That night Emma accused Jeff of being all for the match and when he said he couldn’t see much wrong with the girl and he refused to see Paul to try to ‘talk some sense into him’, Emma flew into such a rage that he was given the silent treatment and banished to the guest bedroom.

  Carmel knew none of this. She had worries of her own and these were down to her work on the wards. She was now in her third year and expected to deal more personally with the patients. She learned among other things, to treat infected wounds using sulphonamide cream spread on rolls of lint. She was also shown how to give intramuscular injections into the thigh, administer a bladder wash out, and chest drainage, and how to insert a Ryles stomach tube.

  ‘It isn’t that I don’t know how to do all these things,’ she complained to Lois. ‘I mean, I do it, and right most of the time. But it is remembering it all step by step and explaining it in an exam that I am worried about.’

  ‘I know just what you mean,’ Lois said. ‘When you are in the throes of anything that you are doing like that, you do it as if it is second nature because you have to. It isn’t something you think about or take a study of. And you know what else bothers me? You said you do it right most of the time and so do I. Say we pass our exams and we are let us loose on the wards afterwards, we can’t afford to make mistakes because we are dealing with people’s lives.’

  ‘I know. Scary, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not half,’ Lois said fervently. ‘And I really wish that we hadn’t got to do nights in the new year. I think I need more practice on the wards with wide-awake patients needing treatment.’

  ‘Me too,’ Carmel agreed glumly ‘And then, of course, we will never have a hope in hell’s chance of seeing either Paul or Chris.’

  ‘No change there then,’ said Lois, because the scant time the men had off seldom coincided with the girls’. They both said they would be more fed up with this if they hadn’t each other for company, for as nice and understanding as Jane and Sylvia tried to be, they weren’t experiencing such frustrations on a day-to-day basis as Carmel and Lois. Their boyfriends worked more normal hours and they could nearly always see them in their free time.

  Carmel often used free time to practise dance steps. She had thrown herself into ballroom dancing as soon as Lois’s father had arrived with the gramophone and stack of records a week or so after the awful party.

  ‘There are five main dances,’ Lois had said that first day, as she wound up the gramophone. ‘And they are the slow waltz, the viennese waltz, the foxtrot, the tango and the quickstep. There are lots more, of course, as well as the young people’s dances my sister, Susan, taught me, like the shimmy, the black bottom and the charleston. They’re great fun. We used to dance them in the bedroom on the quiet because Mother, of course, didn’t approve, but the ballroom dances will do for now. We will have a go at the slow waltz first because it is the easiest and we won’t progress to something else until you feel confident about that. All right?’

  Carmel had nodded eagerly and seconds later the haunting music of Strauss filled the air.

  Carmel was used to listening to and moving with music and she was also agile and keen to learn, so she proved a natural-born dancer.

  She wasn’t content, though, with just being able to dance; she wanted to dance well, really well, and she was constantly rolling back the rugs and practising the steps. Lois would help her, taking the man’s role, full of admiration for the dedicated way Carmel had approached ballroom dancing. Lois knew when Carmel had the opportunity to show her skill and expertise in front of her future mother-in-law, the woman would be astounded and she hoped she was there to see the look on her Aunt Emma’s face.

  ‘Does your mother know about Paul?’ Lois said when they were halfway though their night duty in the new year.

  ‘Well she knows that I am seeing him, though just at the moment, not seeing him would be more accurate,’ Carmel said.

  ‘You haven’t said that you are engaged?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘No reason really,’ Carmel said. ‘They would probably wonder at the length of the engagement, because the wedding is going to be over a year away yet. Plenty of time to let them know.’

  Lois could read Carmel like a book. She looked at her and said, ‘You don’t want any of them to come at all, do you?’

  ‘No, if I am honest,’ Carmel admitted. ‘If they came, I just know that they would show me up, and I know it’s not nice, but I am ashamed of them. Anyway, they wouldn’t have suitable clothes and they wouldn’t be able to raise the fare.’

  ‘Then shouldn’t you go over there? Wouldn’t your mother at least like to meet the man her eldest daughter is marrying?’

  ‘Time enough,’ Carmel said. ‘And don’t raise your eyes to the ceiling, Lois. You know that Paul has barely time to blow his nose, never mind gallivant over to Ireland. And just how many times have they made arrangements with us, only to break them at the last minute?’

  ‘Too many times,’ Lois said grimly. ‘And I do hear what you say, but your family will have to know sometime.’

  ‘After I have taken the exams I will concentrate on it,’ Camel promised. ‘Mammy will want to know how I did anyway. When Paul and Chris have done a full year in September maybe life will settle down more.’

  ‘And maybe pigs might fly,’ Lois said.

  ‘They just might,’ Carmel agreed, and the two girls laughed together.

  Carmel had thought that her twenty-first birthday would pass unnoticed like the previous one, which was annoying because she finished her spell of night duty just beforehand and that meant she had the day of her birthday and the day after off duty. She tried very hard not to feel sorry for herself.

  ‘We have to go out for a drink at least,’ Jane said.

  Carmel wasn’t keen. Pubs weren’t her favourite places, but she knew that Jane and Sylvia were trying to be kind and so she agreed to go—to find half the staff at the hospital gathered in the back room of the pub, which Jane and Sylvia had decorated for Carmel’s coming of age. She was so overcome with their thoughtfulness and kindness that she felt tears sting the back of her eyes and knew she was lucky to have so many good friends.

  She didn’t let anyone see the tears and threw herself into enjoying the party, knowing this was the way to please them most. She was even inveigled into drinking the odd glass of sweet white wine instead of her more usual orange juice.

  She had been at the party more than an hour or so when Paul turned up. Though Carmel noticed the fatigue etched on his grey face and the bags beneath his slightly rheumy eyes, she said nothing, knowing Paul wouldn’t want her to. She loved the gold locket he gave her, which she would treasure always, but most of all she was glad to see him. She wanted to feel his arms around her, his lips on hers. Paul was more than willing to oblige and Carmel returned to the nurses’ home happier and more content than she had been for a long time.

  Then it was heads down to revise for the final exams. There were three components: written, oral and practical. Everyone during this time was very stressed, constantly testing themselves and one another, and convinced they were all going to fail drastically.

  On the day of the exam itself, Carmel was given practical tasks that she could do well and efficiently. She could answer all the oral questions without faltering, and when she turned over the written paper, all the things she thought had flown out of her head came back to her.

  ‘I think it went all right,’ she told Paul, who arrived that evening with Chris to see how the girls had got on.

  ‘I don’t doubt it for a minute,’ Paul said. ‘And I’m sure that you’re going to pass with flying colours. Now that you’ve got that out of the way, you must write to your parents.’

  Immediately the image of her bullying father towering over her cowering mother with his fist balled, a scenario she had witnessed many times, superimposed itself over the memories of the day, yet she said, ‘I know.’

>   ‘And,’ added Paul, ‘so must I.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Yes,’ Paul said. ‘I must ask your father for your hand in marriage formally and it’s no good putting up your hand, or saying he wouldn’t be interested,’ he went on as Carmel was about to protest. ‘It is the correct way to go about things. I would never have your father be able to level at me the criticism that things were done in an underhand way.’

  Carmel shook her head. ‘You really don’t understand how my parents are.’

  ‘Do any of us really understand our own parents, let alone the parents of our boyfriends and girlfriends?’ Paul asked. ‘But we need to observe traditions and then we will be married and can live in any way we want and see the parents as little or as often as we want to.’

  ‘Paul, it sounds marvellous.’

  Paul kissed her and said, ‘It will be marvellous. How could it be any other way, with two people who love each other as much as we do? I have some holidays due and you must have too. September would be a good time for me to go over, because most people from the hospital will be back from their holidays by then, but the illnesses of the autumn and winter will not have begun.’

  Carmel sent her letter together with one from Paul, introducing himself to the family and asking her parents’ permission to marry their daughter. Two days later came the reply.

  ‘They want to meet you,’ Carmel told him. ‘Mammy must have written by return and she says my father won’t give his permission unless he meets you, and September suits them fine.’

  ‘Well, as you are over twenty-one we don’t really need their permission, but I can quite see why he wants to see me,’ Paul said.

  ‘I can’t,’ Carmel said. ‘Is he going to ask you if you can keep me in the manner I am accustomed to?’ she went on drily. ‘It would be easy enough—some old slum to live in and surviving on St Vincent de Paul vouchers and fresh air and I’d definitely feel I was back home.’

  Paul laughed, though the word ‘slum’ brought to mind his mother’s angry words and his own fruitless searching for a property. He said, ‘We might both be living in a slum before we are much older, and glad of it. I think your father’s concern is just to see the type of person I am; that I will treat you right.’

  ‘Yeah, like he never did.’

  ‘That’s people for you,’ Paul said. ‘Book a fortnight off and I will do the same and we will spend the first few days at your home. It makes sense to go now too, because I have the funds at the moment. My paternal grandfather left money in a trust fund, for myself and Matthew to be given when either we graduate or reach the age of twenty-five, whichever came first, and so mine, at the moment, is just resting in the bank. When we come back we will have to get down to some serious house hunting.’

  Paul had made the odd enquiry about somewhere to live, and so had Chris, for the lease on the lodgings they shared would have to be renewed for a further year or else they had to find somewhere else to live. With marriage planned the following year, it seemed sensible to look around for a house that the men would live in alone for the time being. ‘Even if we could move into their lodgings I wouldn’t,’ Lois said. ‘Apart from its nearness to Queen’s it has got little to recommend it.’

  Carmel knew just what she meant. The house Paul and Chris shared with two other men was worse than seedy.

  ‘Anyway, I don’t want to live in Edgbaston,’ Lois went on. ‘I fancied living closer to my family.’

  ‘Won’t the houses in Sutton Coldfield be expensive to rent?’

  Lois wrinkled her nose. ‘That’s what Chris said. But Erdington is right next door and so we are going to concentrate our search there.’

  ‘And we might help you,’ Carmel said, ‘when we have been to Ireland to see the family.’

  First, though, there was the formal presentation that both Chris and Paul attended to see Carmel and Lois and many other friends receive badges from the GNC (General Nursing Council) and their registration numbers, qualifying them as state registered nurses.

  It meant all the girls who had got this far would now be junior staff nurses. As Matron said, ‘There will be no more exams, no lectures, but you will all have another twelve months on the wards under the direction and guidance of a senior staff nurse. This will enable you to consolidate all you have learned in training before receiving your certificates next year and I trust you will make full use of this coming year.’

  Chris and Paul were immensely proud of the girls, knowing how hard they had both worked, and Carmel’s head was in the clouds for she knew the dream of being a proper qualified nurse was now in sight. It was what she’d hankered after for years. Now, though, there was an added complication because she also hankered after Paul, longed and yearned to become his wife, and she fervently hoped she hadn’t to ditch one of her dreams to achieve the other.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  As they alighted at Letterkenny station, the September sun was sinking and, in its golden light, Carmel saw the speculative looks thrown her way by some of the people on the platform, and even a nudge from one woman to her husband to alert him to the fact that Carmel Duffy was back.

  Paul felt the trembling of her whole body against him and he was filled with compassion for her. ‘Chin up,’ he whispered. ‘You’re worth ten of these any day.’

  Paul’s words gave Carmel the courage to lift her head and she inclined it to those they passed in greeting, but didn’t try to speak because she wasn’t sure that she would be able to. Her heart was thumping in her chest for she couldn’t still the panic coursing through her every time she thought of coming face to face with her father, despite Paul’s dependable presence beside her.

  Carmel knew the landlady of the lodging house that Sister Frances had found for them a little. She had been one of the kinder of the townsfolk and she greeted them both warmly and showed them to the rooms where they could leave their cases. As Carmel expected, the rooms were very basic, but they were clean and she looked longingly at the comfortable-looking bed, wishing she could slip into it and sleep away the weariness of the journey. But her mother would be expecting her.

  ‘We must buy food,’ she said, when they were once more in the street.

  Paul nodded. He had expected that really. A family as poverty-stricken as Carmel said hers was would have no spare cash to provide for visitors and he intended to buy plenty. He wanted them all well fed for once in their lives.

  So the grocer, the butcher, the greengrocer and the baker were all introduced to Paul and all admired the ring and wished the young couple their very best. As they walked towards Carmel’s home with their laden bags, the news flew around the town that the eldest Duffy girl, her that went in for the nursing, was back to see her mother and sporting a ring that would dazzle the life out of you to look on it. And would you credit it, the man she was engaged to was a doctor!

  In that small community, the doctor was only one remove from the priest in the hierarchy, and a tad more respected than the school teacher, and between these types of people and the ordinary folk there was a deep chasm that it was unheard of to cross. For one of the weans of Dennis Duffy to even speak to a doctor was bad enough, but to be engaged…! It was totally outside their understanding.

  ‘Mind you,’ said one women spitefully, ‘the man is in for a rude awakening, I’m thinking, for he hasn’t seen the house yet. Nor has he met the brute of a father. I just hope Carmel hasn’t got her heart set on him. I think this will be his first and last visit, and when they go back to Birmingham or wherever it was she went, she’ll not see him for dust.’

  ‘Aye,’ the women said collectively.

  And one commented, ‘After all, it stands to reason, you can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. Carmel must see that they are streets apart.’

  Carmel was too nervous for small talk and so she walked beside Paul in silence. Then suddenly, as the lane turned a corner, a small boy slithered out of a tree in front of them. He made no move to approach them, however, but ran the
other way instead, shouting, ‘Mammy, they’re here. Our Carmel’s come.’

  Paul raised quizzical eyebrows and Carmel said, ‘That will be my little brother Tom. He has grown and must be nearly eight now, but it was him all right.’

  Paul was shocked. Nearly eight! The child was no bigger than one of five years old. His dirty feet were bare and his arms and legs so spindly he resembled one of the destitute children that hung about the barrows in the Bull Ring, begging. He could say none of this to Carmel and he had no time, for a woman came into view, dancing children surrounding her. When she saw Carmel she ran towards her and, ignoring Paul, she threw her arms around her daughter, as tears rained down her cheeks.

  ‘Oh, my darling, darling girl, how I have longed to see you.’

  Guilt smote Carmel and she gently unwound her mother’s arms from around her neck and held her hands, giving them a little shake as she said, ‘Come, Mammy, this isn’t the time for tears. This is my fiancé, Paul.’

  Paul shook hands with the woman and made the right responses, but his mind was reeling with shock for he was looking at a carbon copy of Carmel, though a faded bedraggled copy.

  He wondered if her eyes ever lit up with excitement or joy, as Carmel’s often did, or if she had ever laughed at something that amused her. He doubted it somehow, for everything about her was muted and sad.

  When Paul had his first sight of the cottage, he was glad that Eve had kept hold of her daughter’s hand as if her life depended on it. He brought up the rear, with the cavorting children leaping beside them, and that gave him time to compose his face. The state of the house astounded him, for it was little more than a shack.

  But if Paul was horrified by the house, Eve was mortified. For so long she hadn’t seen how bad it was; it was just where they eked out an existence. They had never had visitors and so, until this moment, she had never had to look at her house through someone else’s eyes. Now that she did she wanted to sink down to the ground and weep with shame.