To Have and to Hold

by Anne Bennett

  ‘Paul isn’t like that,’ Carmel told her. ‘He says—;’

  ‘I don’t care what he says,’ Lois said, cutting across her. ‘Look at his eyes if you want to know what he thinks. That motorbike is his pride and joy. Obviously he wants you to feel the same way. Chris wants to take me out for a spin on Sunday. What will you and Paul do then, and how do you think Paul will feel?’

  The two other girls thought the same way as Lois. Jane said, ‘If you don’t want to go out with dishy Paul on that fabulous machine then move over, I will.’

  ‘I think,’ commented Sylvia wryly, ‘you would have to join the queue, but Jane is right in a way because you do have to put yourself out when you love someone. It tells you this in all the women’s books—you know, the tips they print on keeping a man happy. They all tell you to take an interest in his hobbies.’

  ‘Are you saying regardless of how I feel I should force myself to go on that dreaded thing?’ Carmel demanded.

  ‘In a nutshell, that is exactly what we are saying,’ Lois said. ‘If I can do it, then so can you.’

  The result of this was that when Carmel saw Paul that evening, she told him that if he wanted she would go out on the bike on Sunday, the day before their holidays were over. She was rewarded by a smile that lit up all of Paul’s face. Then he lifted her in the air and told her that she was the greatest girl in the world, and she knew then her decision had been a wise one.

  He had told her to wrap up well and put a scarf around her head that she could tie securely.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ he said as she attempted to mount the machine behind him. ‘I always said I would never force you.’

  Carmel hoped Paul couldn’t feel the shaking of her limbs as she settled herself behind him and grasped him tight around the waist and she fought to keep the tremor out of her voice as she said, ‘But you haven’t forced me. This was totally my decision.’

  Afterwards, Carmel wasn’t sure when, despite the cold and the quite bumpy ride, she gave herself up to the exhilaration of the whole thing. Cuddled as she was against Paul, she felt the excitement running through him and that fuelled her own so that she wanted to shout with the joy of it. They left the town far, far behind and set out for the countryside, zooming down lanes, roaring past farms and sleepy villages and that first day they finally came to rest at the edge of a village called Kingsbury.

  Paul was glad to get Carmel to himself at last. ‘It seems like ages that I have been sharing you with others, or else on show, like we were in Letterkenny, and not able to be really natural. Soon I will probably have scant time off. Let’s enjoy being together for one day at least.’

  Carmel too had longed for time with Paul. They wandered through the village hand in hand and then out on the nearby canal and had lunch at a little pub fronting the water. They watched the shaggy-footed Shire horses pull the brightly painted barges along while the sunbronzed and barefoot children leaped agilely along the barge or on to the bank as confidently and effortlessly as monkeys. After lunch, they turned away from the canal and wandered the lanes hand in hand, and talked about all manner of things. They came to a sunny glade and Paul spread his jacket over the fallen leaves littering the ground so that they could sit in the shade of the oak tree, and when he lay down and pulled Carmel down beside him, she didn’t protest.

  His initial kisses left her dizzy and aching for more, and when they grew more urgent, she responded eagerly. She groaned with longing when Paul ran his hands all over her body and wriggled in anticipation. Paul was aching with desire when he gently teased her mouth open for the first time, and when his tongue shot into Carmel’s mouth, she felt as if an explosion had happened inside her. Her tongue responded to his and she was totally unable to stop Paul’s hands slipping beneath her clothes, nor his fumbling fingers snapping her brassiere undone. She felt his hands on her bare breasts and she moaned in ecstasy.

  Paul pushed up Carmel’s clothes and put his mouth around one of her nipples, sucking and teasing and Carmel thought she would drown in pleasure. Feelings new and exciting and more intense than she had ever felt before were coursing through her body and she knew she wouldn’t even try to stop Paul because she wanted him to go on and on.

  Paul knew that too. He felt her submission in every vestige of her being. He knew that any warning words her mother, or maybe Sister Frances, might have given her would have fled from her mind in this first overpowering introduction to her sexuality. Nothing else mattered to her at that moment, and he knew he could not debase and defile the love he had for this girl by taking something that she was too vulnerable and naïve to refuse him.

  Carmel had no idea what it cost him to roll away from her. She gave a cry of dismay. ‘Don’t stop, for God’s sake.’

  ‘I must, before I forget myself altogether.’

  ‘Then forget yourself,’ Carmel cried. ‘I don’t mind. I am ready.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Paul said, pulling way again with difficulty. ‘You honestly don’t know what you’re saying. Cover yourself up, for Christ’s sake, before I leap on you again—and don’t say I am quite welcome to,’ he went on, seeing Carmel was about to protest.

  Carmel was tingling with sexual awareness, but Paul had already withdrawn from her. She tidied herself as best she could and when Paul got up and pulled her to her feet, she went without protest.

  After a few weeks, life got into something of a pattern. Paul and Chris continued to work the punishing hours of the first year, and Carmel worried at the spartan way they were living at the house, but they told her not to worry.

  ‘But how do you cook anything?’ she asked.

  ‘We don’t,’ Chris told her cheerfully. ‘We eat mainly in the hospital canteen.’

  ‘Or we live on fish and chips, or bread and jam,’ Paul put in. ‘To be honest, after we have done a shift we are usually too tired to think about cooking anything.’

  Carmel knew that it was right about the tiredness. Both men were often white with exhaustion. And yet when they had any free time they would do their level best to see the girls, although often they didn’t have time off together. Paul would sometimes pick Carmel up on the bike on his way home and then they would maybe see a picture at the Palace picture house on Erdington’s High Street. The cinema had a dance hall above it, but Carmel didn’t suggest going there, because she had never told Paul about the dancing lessons and warned Lois to keep it from Chris as well.

  Lois shrugged. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘but why all the secrecy? To be honest, you are a born dancer. I suppose it was all those years at the reels, jigs and hornpipes. Anyway, you know as much as I can teach you now and you can give Paul a run for his money, so why not tell him?’

  ‘I will, the same time I break the news to his sainted mother at that fancy hotel they are taking us to on New Year’s Eve,’ Carmel said. ‘I would like to see her face when I take to the floor with Paul.’

  From the corner, Jane chortled. ‘And so would I.’

  ‘Maybe we’ll all come and have a peep at the old buzzard and see how she is taking it?’ Sylvia said.

  ‘You dare,’ Carmel said, though she was smiling, ‘Anyway, aren’t you both working?’

  ‘Yeah, worse luck.’

  ‘Well, I am working all through Christmas and so is Paul,’ Carmel said. She couldn’t wait to get the Christmas festivities out of the way and move on into the year when she would become Paul’s wife. On more that one occasion that autumn, Carmel had come perilously near to losing her virginity and each time they had pulled back just in time, but it had got harder. She was eager for the day when they wouldn’t have to do that and she could give herself totally to Paul.

  Paul seldom mentioned relations with his parents to Carmel, but things between he and his mother were still strained. His father was more amenable and accepting of the situation, certainly when he and Paul were alone, but he had seldom stood against his wife where the boys were concerned for he liked a peaceful life.

  ‘We hardly
ever see you these days,’ Emma had complained to Paul in mid-November. It was true: Paul saw his parents only in his rare free time when Carmel was on duty. This is what he told his mother and he saw her lips purse in annoyance.

  ‘No need to look like that,’ he said sharply. ‘Carmel is my fiancée and it is obvious that I would spend as much time with her as possible.’

  ‘Well, surely you will have time off at Christmas?’

  ‘Actually, no, Mother,’ Paul said. ‘It is thoughtless, I know, but you see, people still get sick at Christmas and I have to work, and so does Carmel.’

  ‘All over the festive season?’ Emma asked plaintively.

  ‘I am afraid so.’

  ‘What about the New Year?’ Emma said. ‘Surely if you are giving up the whole of Christmas they won’t expect you to work over the New Year as well?’

  ‘I…we haven’t been given the roster list for the New Year yet.’

  Jeff, watching his son, knew he was lying and later, after a strained meal, when Paul was taking his leave, he went outside with him. Paul threw his leg expertly over the machine his mother hated to think of him riding, much as he tried to point out the practicalities to her.

  Jeff said, ‘It would mean a lot to your mother if we got to see you over the New Year.’

  ‘I know, Dad, but—;’

  ‘Don’t tell me about the roster, son, because I know that isn’t the truth.’

  Paul smiled ruefully. ‘How well you know me,’ he said. ‘The point is, Dad, Mother hates Carmel and you know as well as I do how vindictive she can be when she wants. I don’t want to subject Carmel to that. She doesn’t want to come here and I don’t blame her.’

  ‘I’m not talking of here,’ Jeff said. ‘The golf club are having their annual bash—dinner and dance, you know—at the Westbury Hotel in town and your mother would love to see you there. Matthew is going too and it would be nice for us all to be together for once.’

  ‘All right,’ Paul said. ‘All I am agreeing with, mind, is to talk it over with Carmel. I will be guided by her.’

  When Paul told Carmel and asked her if she wanted to go, she knew this was her chance to show Paul and, more importantly, his mother how well she could dance in advance of the wedding so she told Paul she would love it.

  ‘It’s a dinner dance,’ Paul explained, thinking maybe she hadn’t understood.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I mean, you won’t feel awkward?’

  ‘No, not at all.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Quite sure,’ Carmel said firmly. ‘Tell your parents I am looking forward to seeing them there.’

  The girls really went to town getting Carmel ready for that most important dance, pooling resources to make her look, as Jane put it, ‘the business’.

  Lois was as generous as ever, but she was careful to loan Carmel nothing that her aunt might have seen her wearing. She knew, however, that Emma hadn’t seen the midnight-blue velvet ball gown, which was floor length and had flowing sleeves. When Carmel pulled it over her head and stood before the mirror she couldn’t believe the image looking back at her.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Jane exclaimed. ‘Will you just look at yourself? Don’t you just look a million dollars?’

  ‘God, you will knock them dead tomorrow,’ said Sylvia in agreement. ‘And you flush crimson every time someone gives you any sort of compliment. There will be plenty of those thrown your way, I would have thought, and each blush makes you even more attractive. Paul won’t be able to keep his hands to himself, I should think.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Carmel said, and she spun around in front of the mirror, feeling the dress swirl about her legs before saying, ‘Why wouldn’t I blush, listening to the rubbish the pair of you give out? It isn’t me, it is the dress and that really is gorgeous. Are you sure about this, Lois?’

  ‘Of course I am. Daddy bought me this for the pre-Christmas dance at his firm, when I sort of stand in for my mother, and I know for a fact that none of Paul’s family have seen this dress on me.’

  ‘It needs something else,’ Jane said with a slight frown. ‘Oh, wait!’ she cried after a moment’s thought. ‘I have just the thing.’ She rummaged in her drawer and found a pair of long white gloves.

  ‘Where on earth did you get those?’ Lois said with surprise.

  ‘Where d’you think?’ Jane said. ‘Where we buy everything—the Rag Market.’

  ‘But why?’ Sylvia asked, perplexed.

  Jane shrugged. ‘They were cheap enough and, don’t laugh, but I thought they might come in if I was to net me a toff, like we always reckoned we would. Remember?’

  ‘I remember,’ Sylva commented wryly, ‘like I remember the only one among us who didn’t want to do that is the one who has done it.’

  ‘Oh, not that old chestnut again?’ Carmel said. ‘And, anyway, Paul isn’t a toff.’

  ‘His parents are,’ Jane said. ‘From the way you and Lois described it, there is real money there.’

  ‘There is,’ Carmel admitted. ‘But that’s hardly his fault.’

  ‘We’re not saying it’s anyone’s fault,’ Sylvia said. ‘All Jane meant is that after Paul’s parents’ day, all that lovely lolly will, I should imagine, be divided between him and his brother.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ Lois said. ‘Maybe Paul’s share will be donated to the local cats’ home because he had the audacity to marry Carmel. Anyway, my aunt and uncle look remarkably healthy to me and are likely to go on for years yet, and this is contributing nothing to Carmel’s outfit.’ She turned to Carmel and asked, ‘Have you something for your neck?’

  Camel nodded. ‘The rope of pearls and pearl earrings Paul gave me for Christmas.’

  ‘Perfect!’ Lois declared. ‘They will look lovely against the blue. Now what about a handbag and shoes…?’

  Carmel usually didn’t have a high opinion of how she looked, but as she descended the stairs the following evening, after Sister Magee announced that Dr Connolly was waiting for her, she didn’t need to see the openmouthed appreciation of Paul to know she looked good. The only thing she felt uncomfortable about was the long white gloves. Never in her life had she worn gloves indoors, but Lois assured it they were ‘the icing on the cake’ and what many people would be wearing at such a prestigious do.

  She decided to see what Paul’s opinion was. If he said he didn’t like them or that they looked out of place, then she would take them back to the room. But for a while Paul didn’t say anything at all, just stared at her until she cried, ‘Say something, for goodness’ sake? How do I look?’

  ‘Breathtakingly beautiful,’ Paul said. ‘Lovely. Tremendous. There aren’t the words…’

  ‘Stop all that blathering nonsense,’ Carmel commanded, though she was smiling, her eyes sparkling. ‘I’ll do then?’

  ‘Oh, my darling girl,’ Paul cried, catching her by the waist and swinging her around, ‘you’ll more than do.’

  ‘Even my gloves?’

  ‘Your gloves?’ Paul repeated, surprised.

  ‘They don’t look stupid or anything?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Paul said. ‘Why should they? They make you look sophisticated, if you must know—older, no, not older, more sure of yourself.’

  ‘They must have tremendous power, those gloves, if they make me look like that,’ Carmel said. ‘For I am not a bit sophisticated and the only thing I am sure of is that I will probably make an utter fool of myself tonight.’

  Paul laughed. ‘Of course you won’t, you little goose. Don’t worry, it will be nothing like last time. I will not leave your side all night.’

  ‘Oh, that will delight your mother and all the other female admirers you seem to have.’

  ‘They can go to hell, the whole lot of them,’ Paul said with determination. ‘You are the most important person in the world for me, Carmel, and the sooner that is realised, the better it will be for everyone. And now, madam,’ he said in a bantering tone as he took her arm, ‘your carriage awaits.’r />
  ‘Then lead on, sir,’ Carmel said, matching his mood, and Paul led her to the waiting taxi.

  It was no distance to the Westbury Hotel, but Carmel thought anywhere could seem a distance when the ground crackled with frost, the icy wind would chill a body in minutes and she was dressed in an evening gown and high-heeled shoes. She was glad that Paul had insisted on coming for her in a taxi.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Paul felt so proud as he escorted Carmel into the foyer of the hotel for that New Year’s Eve ball. There had been a babble of noise for there were a lot of people gathered there, but many of the men grew silent at the entrance of Carmel on Paul’s arm, and Paul saw the envy in their eyes.

  Carmel was unaware of the men’s interest in her and instead noticed the wistful glances many girls were throwing at Paul and the looks of jealousy and sometimes sheer dislike when their eyes slid to Carmel.

  Jeff came forward smiling, arms outstretched, a look of appreciation on his face, and in his eyes a genuine smile of welcome. He shook hands with Paul and then took Carmel in his arms and kissed her on both cheeks. ‘My word, my dear,’ he said. ‘How wonderful you are looking tonight. You have gladdened many a man’s heart and lightened a room just by entering it.’

  Carmel’s cheeks lightly flushed with embarrassment at his words, making her even more entrancing. Matthew was standing behind his father, waiting his turn to greet her, and yet Carmel went into his arms reluctantly. She didn’t know why it was that she could submit to Jeff’s embrace so readily and yet feel herself stiffen when Matthew touched her. She always felt uneasy being near him.

  When she caught sight of Emma, however, Carmel saw that her whole face was filled with malevolence and there was such loathing in the eyes she had fastened on Carmel so fixedly that she was quite shaken. And then Emma came closer and put out her hand as she said in flat, insincere tones, ‘I’m glad you could join us.’