To Have and to Hold
ANNE BENNETT

To my eldest grandchild and only granddaughter Briony Wilkes with all my love.

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Acknowledgements

About The Author

Other Books By

Copyright

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

Carmel was positively mesmerised by the bustling docks at Belfast. She could barely wait to board the mail boat anchored in the dock, fastened tightly to the solid concrete bollards with ropes as thick as a man’s forearm. Yet still the boat moved ever so slightly and Carmel tingled all over as she wondered how it would feel to be aboard that vessel and moving out into the open sea.

Just a little later she stood at the rails and watched the shores of Ireland disappear. She felt not homesickness, but relief, and she gave a defiant toss of her head that set her auburn curls dancing, while the excitement shone in her flashing dark brown eyes as the boat ploughed its way through the waves. Many were sick as the boat listed from side to side, including the nursing nuns that she was travelling with, but Carmel discovered her sea legs and explored the mail boat from end to end.

She was quite disappointed to leave the boat in Liverpool, yet as she and the nuns boarded the train for New Street Station in Birmingham, her insides turned somersaults with excitement—and a little trepidation. From the station she would be taken to the nurses’ home attached to Birmingham’s General Hospital where she would live for four years. She could barely believe that she was really here at last, and just as far from her family as she had wanted to be. She had known she wouldn’t feel free of her father’s dominance until she reached the shores of Britain. From now on, she decided, her life was to be her own. She would start the same as all the other probationers and no one need know about her earlier life at all. She would try to scrub it from her mind and forget it had ever happened.

But as the train rattled over the rails, taking her to her new life, she allowed herself to remember with great relief all she was leaving behind, like the abject terror her brutal father had always induced in her till she didn’t know that there was any other way to feel, and regarded herself as worthless and of no account.

She would never forget her horrifying schooldays, especially that awful day when she was about seven, when Breda Mulligan, the post mistress’s daughter, had pushed her face close to Carmel’s and said, ‘My mammy said I am not to play with you because you are dirty, smell bad and have nits in your hair.’

It had all been true. Carmel remembered then how the other children had formed a circle around her and chanted tunelessly in the school yard, ‘Carmel Duffy has nits in her hair, nits in her hair, nits in her hair.’ Time and again she had tried to break out of the circle, but the children held firm and pushed her back in. Even now, years later, she recalled crying with helplessness and fear. As the tears had trickled down her dirty face, they mingled with the snot from her nose that she wiped away with the sleeve of her ragged cardigan. ‘Filthy, snotty Duffy,’ Breda had cried with disgust, and they had all taken up the call. Eventually, one of the teachers, Mrs Mackay, had saved Carmel, scolded and scuppered the children and took Carmel inside to clean her up, but the damage had been done.

After school, the children had been waiting for her, but Mrs Mackay had anticipated that and she left her down at the house. House, huh, more like a shack—and Carmel had been mortified at her teacher glimpsing the hovel she lived in.

Once, Carmel imagined, the small cottage walls had been whitewashed and the thatch thick, but long ago the neglected thatch had had to be removed and lay in a sodden, rotting heap beside the house. The only roof they had then was of corrugated iron, and the sides of the house were reduced to bare stone. The shabby and ill-fitting door was hanging off its hinges, one of the grimy windows covered with cardboard after her father, in a rage, had put his fist through it, and outside was a sea of mud. Carmel wanted to curl up and die with shame.

After Mrs Mackay had told her mother why she had brought Carmel home, her mother, Eve, had waited only until Dennis left the house before boiling up a large pan of water on the fire. She scrubbed Carmel from head to foot, kneading at her hair until her scalp tingled, and then washed her clothes in the water and dried them before the fire.

It made no difference: it was too much fun hounding someone for any of the bullies to want to stop, and if they were inclined to, Breda would invent some other taunt so that Carmel began to dread going to school. In the end, Mrs Mackay suddenly found she had many jobs to do inside at lunchtime with which she needed Carmel’s help, and when she found the child had arrived with no dinner, which was usually the case, she would always say she couldn’t finish her own and share it with her.

Small wonder Carmel had loved her with a passion and worked like a Trojan to please her, thereby achieving more than anyone expected. She never had one friend, however, because of the reputation of her drunken, violent father, Dennis. The townspeople had the whole family tarred with the same brush. Dennis had an aversion to work of any kind, so that the family were forced to live on charity and were dressed in shabby cast-offs. Many in Letterkenny would shake their heads over the way the children had been brought up and mutter to themselves that, with such a start, what sort of a turnout would the children make at all, at all?

Carmel was the one who had to run the gauntlet every week, doing the shopping for her mother, paying for it with the vouchers from St Vincent de Paul, which were given to the poor of the parish, shaming her further. She would see girls of her own age wandering arm in arm about the town and she had ached to be accepted like that, but she knew that would never happen. She didn’t even look like them, with their clean, respectable clothes, socks and shoes.

However, she refused to lower her head to those disparaging people. It was hard to retain dignity when your dirty feet were bare and your clothes were on their last legs, but Carmel would raise her chin defiantly and hold their sneering gaze with eyes that flashed fire

‘Do you see the set of that one with the insolent look on her and her head held high, as if indeed she has anything at all to be proud of?’ she heard one women remark, as she passed her in the street.

‘Aye. I’d say they would have trouble with that one,’ her companion replied.

‘And not that one alone, I’m thinking. There’s a whole tribe of them back at that shack of a place.’

‘Aye, and what else can you expect after the rearing they’ve had?’

One by one, the townsfolk waited for the Duffy children to go to the bad. But Carmel had a champion in her teacher, Mrs Mackay. Yet, they both knew that there was neither the money nor the will in the Duffy household to keep a child at school a minute longer than was necessary, however intelligent she was.

As Carmel neared fourteen, Eileen Mackay approached her sister, who was a nursing nun, known as Sister Frances, in Letterkenny Hospital, and asked if there might be an opening for the girl.

‘Only as an orderly just,’ Sister Frances said.

‘There isn’t anything else, anything better that she might train for?’

Sister Frances shook her head. ‘Nothing. But I will take the girl on, if she is agreeable, and we’ll see how she shapes up.’

Carmel shaped up better than Sister Frances could have believed, and it was obvious she loved the work and the patients loved her. Her touch was firm yet gentle, and her voice calm and low, soothing to the apprehensive.

Within a year she was taking temperatures, helping to dress wounds, wash and feed the frail and helpless, and encourage those who were able to get out of bed to do so. Frances began to wonder how they had ever managed without her.

Carmel was too wise a girl to long for something she couldn’t have, but one day, when she had been at the hospital almost two years, she admitted to Frances that she would have loved to have had the chance to go into nursing. Sister Frances knew that she make a first-rate nurse so she asked the advice of her fellow nursing nuns at the convent.

‘Few of us had secondary education,’ one said, ‘but our training and such was done through the Church. She wouldn’t think of taking the veil herself?’

Frances thought of Carmel and the light of mischief that often danced in her eyes, and she said, ‘I should very much doubt it. Just as I am convinced Carmel would make a very good nurse, I know too that she would make a very bad nun.’

‘Pity.’

‘There is an exam they can take,’ said another. ‘Of course she might need coaching to pass it. How old is the girl now?’

‘Sixteen.’

‘Then you have two years to lick her into some sort of shape,’ the nun said, ‘for they’ll not touch her at all until she is at least eighteen.’

‘Put it to her and see what she says,’ another advised. ‘She might not be willing for all the hard work.’

However, Frances saw how Carmel hugged herself with delight and knew that that hard work wouldn’t bother her a jot if it was moving her a step nearer her objective. ‘This isn’t a foregone conclusion,’ the nun said. ‘You do realise the exam is likely to be quite hard?’

‘Would you help me with the work?’ Carmel asked.

‘Of course,’ Sister Frances said. ‘But your parents…your father…’

‘Is to know nothing about it.’

‘Carmel, I—’

‘Sister, you have already said it is not a foregone conclusion that I pass the exam,’ Carmel said. ‘Maybe I won’t even get that far. What is the point of telling my father now?’

Frances could see the logic of that and agreed to say nothing for the time being. That evening, when Carmel explained she was on a special training course at the hospital and would be later home at least two nights a week, her mother just accepted it. Only her father asked if she’d get more money because of it.

‘Hardly,’ she snapped. ‘It’s a training course. You just be grateful that you aren’t being asked to pay for it.’

‘You watch your mouth, girl, and the way you talk to me,’ Dennis growled. ‘You’re not too old for a good hiding and don’t you forget it.’

Carmel held her father’s gaze. Let him yell and bawl all he liked. She was going to be a nurse and master of her own life. Marriage, with children and all it entailed, was not the route she would take. No, by God, not for all the tea in China.

She had seen one aspect of marriage in the bruises her mother sported often, and she was well aware what happened in the marriage bed. It usually began with her mother pleading to be left alone, and then the punches administered, but it always finished the same way—with the rhythmic thump, thump, thump of her parents’ bed head against the wall and the animal grunts of her father, which were perfectly audible over the background noise of her mother’s sobs.

‘Mammy,’ she had said one day, seeing her mother sporting yet another black eye and split lip, ‘how long are you going to put up with Daddy slapping and punching you whenever he has the notion? Stand up to him, for once in your life, why don’t you?’

‘Look at me,’ Eve demanded, standing in front of her daughter. ‘What match am I for your father? Jesus, I’d sooner do battle with a steamroller. I’d likely come off less damaged.’

Carmel knew her mother spoke the truth, for there was little of her, but her husband was built like an ox. Carmel had inherited her mother’s fine bones and slight frame, but Eve was now scrawny thin because she often ate less than a bird so the children could eat a little better, while Carmel, though still slender, got a good meal each day at Letterkenny Hospital. Knowing Dennis Duffy and his love of the drink, whether he had the money or not, Sister Frances had arranged for the money for Carmel’s meals to be taken out at source, so that once a day at least she was well fed. But even so, Carmel and her mother together would be no match for Dennis Duffy.

‘Then tell the priest,’ Carmel said.

‘I did,’ Eve admitted. ‘Just the once, after the first baby was stillborn and I put that down to the beating I had received the day before.’

‘And?’

‘The priest told me I married the man of my own free will, that I married him for better or worse, and he couldn’t come between a man and his wife,’ Eve said bitterly. ‘I was eighteen, and I didn’t bother telling him that it was not my free will at all, and that I had not cared a jot for Dennis Duffy. My opinion had never been asked. My marriage had been arranged by my father in exchange for a parcel of land the Duffy family owned. Think of that, Carmel. A bare green field was prized more highly than me, and that meant I could not appeal to any of my family for help either.’

‘God Almighty!’ Carmel said, for she had never heard this before. ‘Does the priest know that sometimes Daddy near kills you and the weans are petrified rigid of him?’ she demanded. ‘You won’t go across the door if Daddy marks your face. Maybe you should. Let the priest and the townspeople know the manner of man he is altogether.’

‘I’d die of shame, Carmel.’

‘Mammy, it isn’t you that should be ashamed. It’s him,’ Carmel said fiercely.

Eve shook her head. ‘Don’t keep on, Carmel,’ she said. ‘Anyway, the answer from the priest would likely be the same.’

Carmel knew her mother was probably right about that, for the priests seemed in collusion with most of the men of the parish. Did she want a slice of that? You had to be joking.

As for children…Eve had eight living children, two she had miscarried and two more were stillborn. Carmel had seen how tired she had become with each pregnancy and how each birth had near tore the body from her. Carmel had been helping the midwife at the last few births and had seen the agony of it all etched on her mother’s contorted face and the way she had chewed her bottom lip to try to prevent the screams spiralling out of her, lest her husband hear and be vexed at her making a fuss.

She wanted none of that either, nor the rearing of the children after it. God, hadn’t she had her fill of children, helping bring up the seven younger than herself?

‘I don’t want to train in Derry or Dublin,’ Carmel told Sister Frances that first evening as they settled to work.

‘Why not?’

‘My father could still reach me if he felt like it.’

‘But surely—’

‘I want to go to England,’ Carmel said. ‘I don’t care where. I would just feel much safer with a stretch of sea separating us.’

The nun had developed a healthy respect for Carmel and knew she spoke the truth. The man could take a notion to just bring her home and there would be nothing then that Carmel could do; her chance would be gone. Better by far to have her well out of the way from the beginning. Sister Frances had an idea germinating in her head. She said, ‘Don’t get your hopes up, Carmel, but when I was at the convent school just outside Letterkenny, I was great friends with a girl called Catherine Turner. She wasn’t a Catholic, but her father had work in Derry and favoured a convent education for his daughter. We were both mad keen to nurse, but while I left the convent at sixteen to enter the Church and do my nursing training that way, Catherine stayed until she was eighteen. By then, her family had moved to Birmingham and she began her training there.

‘We vowed to keep in touch and compare the different paths our lives had taken, but the training was intensive and in the end it dwindled to a Christmas card with a scribbled note inside. However, I know that she is a matron at a place called the General Hospital in Birmingham, and from what she says, I understand the hospital runs a training school for nurses. It would be marvellous if she would consider you, because our order has its own hospital in Birmingham called St Chad’s, and the sisters from there would be at hand to keep an eye on you.’

She smiled at the face that Carmel pulled. Sister Frances knew full well what that expression said: that she neither wanted nor needed anyone to keep an eye on her. However, Birmingham was a large city and she would be miles from home. Sister Frances imagined that the hospital was much larger and possibly more impersonal than the small county hospital she had trained at and the only one she had any experience of. She said, ‘And you can pull a face, my girl, but it is a big thing to go so far at such a young age. I will write to Catherine tonight and see what’s what. I’m going to talk no more about it now, for we have a heap of work to get through.’

From the day Carmel had started at the hospital and Sister Frances had a glimpse of the life she led, she had advised her not to tell her parents of the wage rises she had been given. Her conscience had smote her about this, for surely it was a sin to deceive parents? But then Dennis Duffy didn’t act like a good and concerned parent. Both she and Carmel knew that however much she took home it would not benefit any but Dennis Duffy. Carmel also understood that she would not stay under the roof of a drunken bully for one minute longer than necessary, and that to escape from him she needed money. So every week Sister Frances took the money Carmel gave her and put it in the Post Office. Soon there was more need than ever to save, for the reply came from Catherine Turner. Sister Frances handed Carmel the letter to read.

Normally, I would not entertain taking a girl on until I had interviewed her, but I trust your judgement and so I will bend my own rules and take her on provisionally. I will arrange to see her as soon as she arrives. She will initially enter the preliminary training school for a period of six weeks, receiving basic instruction in Anatomy, Hygiene, Physiology and the Theory and Practice of Nursing. At the end of this period, there will be exams, which the candidates must pass in order to be admitted to the hospital as probationary nurses for an initial period of six weeks. There is no payment for the first three months and after that, the salary is £20 for the first year, £25 for the second, £30 for the third and £40 for the fourth year. A list of requirements Miss Duffy will need to bring will be sent at a later date.

‘What sort of requirements? I haven’t much money, Sister Frances,’ Carmel said in dismay.

‘Haven’t you been saving for the last two years, and will have two more years before there is anything much to buy?’ Sister Frances said. ‘Don’t fall at the first hurdle.’

‘I don’t intend to fall at any hurdle,’ Carmel said almost fiercely.

‘So you’re still as keen as ever?’

‘Keener, if anything, now I know it might actually happen.’

Nearly two years later, in June, Carmel stood before her father and told him of the exam that she had taken behind his back. She also told him that she had passed it with flying colours and that meant she could start her training to be a nurse in a hospital in Birmingham, England.

She had known that, at first, anyway, her father would protest, for didn’t he protest against every mortal thing as a matter of course? She knew too her father’s protests were usually expressed in a physical way. He wasn’t the sort of man anyone could have a reasoned discussion with. His fists or his belt usually settled any argument to his advantage.

But Carmel was more determined than she had ever been about anything. She had borne the thrust of his anger more than enough and she’d had as much as she was prepared to take.

‘He’ll never agree to it,’ Eve warned her daughter that first evening when her father was out of the house. ‘Sure you must put it out of your head.’

‘I will not!’ Carmel shouted defiantly. ‘He’s not thinking of anyone but himself as usual. He’s not objecting to me going because he is going to miss me at all. Huh, not a bit of it. All he’ll miss is the beer money I have to tip up every Friday night.’

‘Hush, Carmel, for pity’s sake,’ Eve said, in an effort to soothe her daughter’s temper before Dennis came back, for she was worried what he would do if Carmel stayed in this frame of mind and spoke out, as she was wont to.

Eve’s words, though, just stiffened Carmel’s resolve and she refused to let the matter drop, though she knew she was sailing nearer and nearer to the wind. Her mother begged her to stop, to give in, and her younger brothers and sisters looked at her in trepidation, mixed with a little awe, especially her brother Michael. At sixteen, he was nearest to her in age and he told her he would rather tangle with a sabre-toothed tiger than his father.

Eventually, Dennis snapped. Carmel had known he would and though she was scared, she knew it probably had to come to this for her to get her freedom from his tyranny. She groaned as her father’s fists powered into her face, almost blinded by the blood falling into her eyes and so dazed from the blows raining down on her, she fell to her knees. She screamed as her father grasped a handful of her curls and dragged her to the bedroom. Holding her fast with one hand, he loosened his belt with the other. The belt whistled through the air and when it made contact with her skin, ripping easily through the thin fabric of the dress she wore, she thought she would die with the pain of it. He hit her again and again, until the agonising pain was relentless and all-con-suming, and she thought he would kill her.

It was the combined efforts of Michael and her mother that saved her, although she hadn’t been aware of it at the time, hadn’t been aware of much. She languished on the mattress that did as a bed for three days while Eve settled Carmel’s sisters—twelve-year-old Siobhan, seven-year-old Kathy and the baby, Pauline, who usually shared the mattress—on the floor on a heap of rags lest they hurt her further. Eve then sent eleven-year-old Damien to the hospital with a note saying Carmel had a cold. Carmel didn’t protest. She felt truly ill and in tremendous pain, and was glad she hadn’t got to try to move. At least she was semi-protected from her father.

The fourth morning, though, she heaved her painful body out of the bed and began to dress.

‘Where d’you think you are going?’ Eve asked, but quietly, lest she wake Dennis.

‘To see Father O’Malley.’

‘Ah, no,’ Eve protested. ‘Surely not. Not with your face the way it is.’

‘Aye, Mammy,’ Carmel said. ‘He needs to see it. Know what sort of a madman I have for a father.’

Eve bit her lip in consternation, but Carmel was right. The priest was horrified at the extent of her injuries. He left her in the capable hands of his unmarried sister, who acted as housekeeper to him, and went down to the Duffy house to have strong words with Dennis.

According to Eve, who heard the whole exchange and reported it back to her daughter, Dennis said the girl was disobedient and had been deliberately provoking him. ‘And,’ he went on, ‘did you know of the exam that that bloody nun Sister Frances was after encouraging Carmel to take, and this without any knowledge, let alone permission being given? Surely to God such secrecy and deceit is not to be borne if a man is to be master in his own house and can not be blamed for chastising his own flesh and blood.’

The priest, however, remembered Carmel’s injuries and said maybe it might be better if she was away from the home for a little while, until things settled down.

Carmel stayed the night in the priest’s house and the next day, Father O’Malley went to see Sister Frances and she told him about Carmel’s love of nursing and the exam she had taken to enable her to attend the nurses’ training school in Birmingham, under the jurisdiction of her friend Catherine Turner, who was the Matron there. Together they went to see Carmel.

Sister Frances noted the girl’s split lip, grazed, bruised cheeks and black eyes, and when she saw the careful way she sat and held herself, she knew it wasn’t just her face her manic father had laid into and made such a mess of. Her eyes filled with tears and she was ashamed that she had let Carmel cope with breaking her news on her own. She knew the manner of man that Dennis was—why hadn’t she gone with the girl to explain and taken her out of the house that same night?

She turned to the priest and said, ‘Surely, Father, you can see Carmel cannot go back home after such a beating? And what is wrong with training to be a nurse? It is a very noble profession and Carmel is a natural. She has worked extremely hard, passed the stiff examination and, of course, has much practical experience to draw on too.’

‘This is all very well,’ the priest said, ‘but you say she wants to train in Birmingham, England, when we have perfectly good hospitals in Derry. I would understand any parent’s concern at the thought of their young daughter going so far on her own.’

‘My father has never had one minute’s concern about me,’ Carmel cried. ‘All he cares about is himself and always has done. I wouldn’t be far enough away from him in Derry.’

‘I’ve been to see the father, given him a stern talking-to,’ the priest said stiffly. ‘He says he knows he went too far and it will not happen again.’

Carmel gave a humourless laugh. ‘And you believe him?’ she asked, adding, ‘Of course you do. But, you see, I don’t, Father. This isn’t the first time that I have been beaten, but it is going to be the last, the very last, and if you won’t help me, or let Sister Frances help me, then I will do it on my own.’

The priest was clearly uncomfortable. He knew he should point out her duty to her parents, but it was hard to do so and look upon the handiwork of one of those parents.

‘And Carmel won’t be totally on her own in Birmingham anyway, Father,’ Frances said. ‘Four of our nursing sisters are leaving in September to take up posts in our own hospital of St Chad’s in the very same city and they could all travel together. They all know Carmel well and have worked with her on the wards at Letterkenny. They would be there if she should have need of them at all.’

Her eyes slid across to Carmel’s as she spoke but this time Carmel pulled no face. She was no fool and knew that this information would act in her favour, especially when Sister Frances went on to say, ‘And I have already explained that the matron who the young nurses are accountable to is an old friend of mine. I’m sure that she would keep a weather eye on young Carmel too. I don’t think anyone needs to worry on that score.’

‘Do you really want to do this nursing?’ Father O’Malley asked Carmel.

‘More than anything in the world,’ she said.

The priest saw the light shining behind Carmel’s eyes at the thought of it, but he also saw the determination there and he knew if she was thwarted in this, then she might just do what she threatened and take off on her own. If something should happen to her then, he would never forgive himself. He had known Carmel since the day she was born and the teachers had never said she was bold or naughty, just very bright and tenacious. He knew that in this instance he had to give Carmel her head, and with his blessing.

Carmel continued to stay at the priest’s house. The housekeeper was kindness itself to her, seemed determined to fatten her up and nursed her battered body tenderly.

A week later, when Carmel’s face was almost back to normal, she went with Sister Frances to the medical supplies shop in Derry armed with the hospital list. They had to buy six white linen belts, two plain print dresses, fourteen aprons, eight pair of cuffs, six collars, one pair of silver-plated surgical scissors, two named clothes bags and four pairs of black woollen stockings. Carmel also needed to take two dusters, one pincushion, one pin tray and one physiology book by Furneaux. She would never have been able to buy all she needed if it hadn’t been for the generosity of the hospital staff who had had a whipround for her. There was even enough left to buy the regulation lace-up Benduble shoes, which were fifteen shillings and nine pence a pair, but which Sister Frances said would see her right through her training.

That night Carmel packed all her purchases in the case Father O’Malley had lent her and knew that the die was now cast. Here she was on her way. It was September 1931 and Carmel Duffy, at eighteen years old, was off to live her life the way she wanted to. All she had to do was look out for New Street Station and let her new life begin.

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.

CHAPTER THREE

Carmel knew from talking to others that she was one of the few there who had left school at the statuary leaving age of fourteen and was not kept on till sixteen, or even later. Despite the excellent tuition from Sister Frances that had enabled her to pass the exam, she worried that she wouldn’t be able to understand the classes and would make an utter fool of herself.

However, she saw much of what she was taught was common sense and she enjoyed the first six weeks, despite the long hours. The working day began at 7.15 a.m. and didn’t end until 8.30 p.m. Anatomy, Physiology and Hygiene were taken by a sister tutor in the lecture room. Senior doctors used the same room to teach the theory of nursing in their specialist subjects, and so the students learned about ear, nose and throat problems, ophthalmics, gynaecology, midwifery, paediatrics and how to care for post-operative patients. They had many visits to the wards to observe what they had been told about in action.

They visited a sewage farm too, in order, Carmel supposed, to see the benefits of cleanliness in the hospital and for a similar reason they went another day to Cadbury’s to view their ventilation system. The place Carmel liked most, though, was Oozels Street, where they had cookery classes so they could manage the special diets some patients might have.

Both because of fatigue and lack of funds, most girls tended to stay close to the hospital during their free time in the early weeks, despite their proximity to the city centre. There was nothing more frustrating, Carmel thought, than looking into shops when a person hadn’t a penny piece to spare to buy anything, or smelling the tantalising aroma seeping out from the coffee houses when there wasn’t the money to sample a cup. Most of the girls were in the same boat, though some, like Lois, had an allowance, but she didn’t make a song and dance about this.

The Hospital was well aware of this, and organised whist and beetle drives for the girls, and they were promised a dance nearer to Christmas. They often met up in the common room to chat or play dominoes or cards. Carmel hadn’t a clue at first, but she quickly caught on and was soon a dab hand at rummy or brag. Often the four friends would just go back to their room, Carmel and Lois feeling incredibly fast as they experimented with some of the cosmetics that Jane and Sylvia had or tried out different hairstyles on one another.

Sometimes they would just chat together. It was soon apparent to the others that though they would talk freely about their families, Carmel never mentioned anything about hers and she neatly side-stepped direct questions. They knew she wrote dutifully to her mother every week for she had told them that much, and to the nun Sister Frances, whom she seemed so fond of. She received regular replies, but never commented about anything in the letters.

As far as Carmel was concerned, her life began when she entered the nurses’ home. Despite her lack of money, a state that she was well used to anyway, she was very happy, and couldn’t remember a time when she had felt so contented. Warmed by the true friendship of the other three girls, she didn’t want to be reminded of the degradation of her slum of a home, and certainly didn’t want to discuss it with anyone else.

In fact, she often found it difficult to find things to write to her mother about. Sometimes the letters centred around the church she now attended, St Chad’s Cathedral. She wasn’t the only Catholic studying at the hospital, although she was the only one in the first year, and they all had dispensation to attend Mass on Sundays. Fortunately St Chad’s was only yards from the home, on Bath Street, which was at the top of Whittall Street. The first time that Carmel saw it she was impressed by the grandeur of the place, though she had to own that for a cathedral it wasn’t that big, and very narrow, built of red brick with two blue spires.

She had made herself known to the parish priest, Father Donahue, but he already knew more about her than she realised. St Chad’s Hospital was primarily a hospital for sick or elderly Catholic woman and Father Donahue called there regularly to hear confession, administer communion, tend or give last rites to the very sick or dying and sometimes took Mass in the chapel for the nuns and those able to leave their beds.

The four nuns who had travelled to Birmingham with Carmel had told the priest all about her and the type of home she had come from. Father Donahue never mentioned this to Carmel, but it gave him a special interest in the girl and he always had a cheery word for her. She would write and tell her mother this, and about the nuns in the convent that she visited as often as she could and who always made her very welcome.

Eve’s replies told Carmel of her father still raging over what he called ‘her deception’. Carmel knew what form that raging would take and that her mother would bear the brunt of it. She would hardly wish to share that with anyone, or what her deprived siblings were doing and the gossip of the small town she was no longer interested in.

One Sunday morning, as Lois watched Carmel get ready for Mass, she suddenly said, ‘My Uncle Jeff is a Catholic.’

‘How can he be? You’re not.’

‘No. He’s married to Dad’s sister, my Aunt Emma, and she turned Catholic to please Jeff. The boys have been brought up Catholic too—the dishy Paul and annoying Matthew.’

‘Dishy Paul?’ Carmel echoed.

‘I tell you, Carmel, he is gorgeous,’ Lois went on. ‘He is tall and broad-shouldered and has blond hair and beautiful deep blue eyes and he only has to go into a room to have all the girls’ eyes on him.’

‘Sorry,’ Carmel said, ‘that is exactly the type of man I dislike most. I bet he is well aware of that and totally big-headed about it.’

‘That’s just it, he isn’t,’ Lois maintained. ‘I think that it is something to do with the family being so down-to-earth—well, Uncle Jeff, anyway. I mean, he owns a large engineering works and they have pots of money, but you would never know it.’

‘And so Paul is going to have the factory handed to him on a plate?’ Carmel said, in a slightly mocking tone, all ready to dislike this so perfect cousin of Lois’s.

‘No,’ Lois said, ‘Paul doesn’t want it. He’s training to be a doctor. Ooh, I bet he will have a lovely bedside manner,’ she said in delight. ‘When they let him loose I should imagine at least half of the female population will develop ailments that they have never suffered from before.’

‘You are a fool, Lois,’ Carmel said, though she too was laughing. ‘No one can be that charming and good-looking.’

‘Paul is,’ Lois said adamantly. ‘I tell you, if only we weren’t first cousins I would make a play for him myself. Paul has everything I admire in a man and I am not talking money here either. He even speaks French like a native. I mean, I learned French but mine is very schoolroomish. Jeff was half French and when Paul and Matthew were little, their French grandmother was alive and lived not far away and they would natter away to her in her native language. After she died, Uncle Jeff said he didn’t want the boys to lose the language, so Paul studied for two years at the Sorbonne.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘A university in Paris. Matthew will go too next year.’

‘You don’t like him so well.’

‘He’s all right,’ she said. ‘I suppose he is handsome too, in a manner of speaking, but he is a poor shadow next to his brother and he’s the one going to inherit the factory as Paul doesn’t want it, though Uncle Jeff says he will have to start on the shop floor and work his way up, so he will know every aspect of the trade.’

‘I think that is a jolly good idea.’

‘Me too,’ Lois agreed.

The six weeks passed quickly as the days were so busy. The four room-mates were delighted to find they had all passed their exams at the end, and with good marks too. Now they could go down on to the wards like proper nurses.

They began at seven o’clock each day and, with short meal breaks, continued until eight o’clock at night with one day off a week.

Each day, the ward sister would read the report left by the night sister and allocate work to be done that day by the senior and junior staff nurses and probationary nurses alike. Carmel was first under the direction of Staff Nurse Pamela Hammond, whom she estimated to be in her late twenties. Her grey eyes were kindly, and from around her cap, tufts of dark blonde hair peeped. She worked hard and expected her probationer to do the same. As hard work was second nature to Carmel, the two got on well.

In the early days it seemed to Carmel and her friends that they cleaned all day long, unless they were helping serve drinks or meals. They cleaned lockers, bedsteads and sluices. The rubber sheets of the incontinent had to be scrubbed daily and left to hang in the sluice room, bedpans were scalded, and at the end of each day, all dirty laundry had to be folded, counted and put in linen bags to be taken to the laundry. The girls were usually too weary even to talk at the end of a shift and only fit to fall into bed, particularly when they also had to attend lectures in their scant free time away, which they did after the initial six weeks on the wards were up.

Although it didn’t help the weariness, Carmel found the day passed quicker and far more pleasantly once she saw the patients as people. She had done this before in Letterkenny, though many had been known to her at least by sight, maybe from Mass or in the shops. She found if she thought that even the unappealing tasks she was doing were for the patients’ comfort and well-being that gave everything more of a purpose. Also it was pleasant to chat to them as she was working, and many said they loved her lilting accent.

The preliminary six-week period was over just before Christmas. Carmel offered to work through because she had nowhere to go. She had been asked by each of her flat mates in turn to go to their homes for Christmas, but though she know the girls well, she didn’t know a thing about their families and was nervous of descending on anyone at such a family time. Anyway, the hospital was always short-staffed at Christmas and extra hands were always welcome.

Carmel enjoyed the dance put on for the girls. She could do none of the dancing herself, but she wasn’t the only one, and she liked the music and to see people enjoying themselves. Unfortunately the girls had to dance with one another as there were no men present, and the evening came to an end altogether at nine-thirty. The singing of carols with the other nurses and the concert put on for the patients on Christmas Eve she thought she enjoyed more than they did, for she had never seen or done such things before.

The next morning Carmel slipped out to Mass before beginning her shift on the ward, which brought home to her the true meaning of Christmas once more. She felt at peace with the world as she returned to the hospital.

After the Christmas period was over, Carmel was introduced to the experience chart, which the sister had to fill in and which she explained was deposited with the matron each term so she could see the progress of each probationer at a glance. So over the next few days Carmel watched as the more experienced nurses showed her how to read a thermometer, to dress a wound, make up a poultice, roll a patient safely and give a bed-bath. Though she had done some of these things alongside Sister Frances, she said not a word about it.

The new year of 1932 wasn’t very old when all the room-mates had to do their annual block on night duty. All probationers once a year had to do almost three months on nights. This involved the girls moving out of the nurses’ home to rooms above the matron’s offices, which were quieter so that they could get some sleep in the day. Sleep was desperately needed as the girls worked from 11 p.m. until 8.15 a.m. for twelve nights followed by two nights off duty. So it wasn’t until the end of April, after their spell of night duty was over, that all four girls had a Saturday completely free.

‘We shouldn’t waste a whole Saturday off,’ Lois said gleefully after breakfast.

‘I suppose you would consider it a total waste if I suggested spending my day off in bed?’ Carmel said wistfully.

‘Yes I would, so don’t even bother thinking that way,’ Lois said firmly. ‘Come on, Carmel. What’s the matter with you? I want to show you around Birmingham, take you to my dad’s shop, show you the Bull Ring.’

‘All right, all right,’ Carmel said, giving in, ‘but the other two might not want to go gallivanting around the town.’

‘They’ll be fine,’ Lois said confidently, but Jane and Sylvia were difficult to rouse, impossible to motivate and point-black refused to go anywhere for a fair few hours.

‘But the day will be gone then.’

‘Good,’ said Sylvia.

‘Where do you want to go in such a tear anyway?’ Jane asked.

‘To town, the Bull Ring and that.’

‘Are you mad?’ Jane said. ‘Haven’t we seen it all a million times? It can wait until we feel a bit more human.’

‘Carmel hasn’t seen it.’

‘Well, show it to her then,’ Sylvia said irritably.

‘All right then,’ Lois said, conceding defeat. ‘Why don’t you meet us for lunch in Lyons Corner House on New Street?’

‘Make it tea and I’ll think about it,’ Sylvia said with a yawn. ‘I want a bath and to wash my hair and there’s homework to do first, and so until then let a body sleep, can’t you?’

‘All right,’ Lois said. ‘We can take a hint. We know when we’re not wanted.’

As they walked up Steelhouse Lane a little later, Carmel wondered what was the cheapest thing Lyons Corner House sold because she hadn’t the money to go out to eat. She would have to impress that on Lois as soon as she could.

‘Right,’ Lois said, taking Carmel’s arm, ‘if we were to walk up Colmore Row as far as the Town Hall, then we can go for a toddle round the shops and have a bite to eat in Lyons before we tackle the Bull Ring. What do you say?’

‘I say, I can’t really afford to eat out, Lois,’ Carmel said uncomfortably.

‘My treat.’

‘No, really.’

‘Listen,’ Lois said, ‘Daddy sends me an allowance every month and I have hardly spent any of it. I have plenty to treat my friends.’

‘Even so…’

‘Even so nothing,’ Lois said airily. ‘Come on, this is Colmore Row now.’

The road was long and wide with tram tracks laid the length of it. Carmel’s eye was caught by an imposing building on her right. It had many storeys, supported by pillars, and arched windows. ‘Snow Hill Station’ was written above the entrance.

‘There are three stations in Birmingham,’ Lois said, taking in her gaze. ‘The one you arrived in was New Street, this is Snow Hill and the other one is called Moor Street down Digbeth way. We’ll be nearly beside it when we are down the Bull Ring. But that is for later.’ She pointed. ‘If you look across the road now you will see St Philip’s Cathedral. See, it’s no bigger than St Chad’s.’

It was grand, though, Carmel thought, taking in the majestic arched, stained-glass windows. There was a tower above the main structure and a clock set just beneath the blue dome above it. All around the church were trees and tended lawns interspersed with paths, with benches here and there for people to rest on. Carmel thought it a very pleasant place altogether and would have liked the opportunity to sit and watch the world go by.

However, Lois was in no mood for sitting. She led the way up the road, and after a short distance it opened out before a tall and imposing building of light brick.

‘Our own Big Ben,’ Lois told Carmel with a smile, pointing to a large clock in a tower at the front of it, ‘known as “Big Brum” and this statue here is of Queen Victoria.’ She led Carmel over to look at the statute of the old and rather disgruntled-looking queen.

‘And that truly magnificent building in front of us is the Town Hall you spoke about?’ Carmel asked.

‘The very same.’

‘It’s huge!’ Carmel said, approaching the marvellous structure. ‘Look at the enormous arches on the ground floor and those giant columns soaring upwards from it, and all the carvings and decoration.’

‘You never really look at the place you live in,’ Lois said. ‘And I am ashamed to say that, though I knew all about the Town Hall, I’ve never truly seen its grandeur until now. It’s supposed to be based on a Roman temple.’

‘Gosh, Lois,’ said Carmel in admiration. ‘What a lovely city you have.’

Lois was surprised and pleased. ‘You haven’t even seen the shops yet,’ she said.

‘Well,’ said Carmel, ‘what are we waiting for?’ She linked arms with Lois and they sallied forth together.

Carmel came from a thriving town, a county town, which she’d always thought was quite big, but she saw that it was a dwarf of a place compared to Birmingham. The pavements on New Street, on every street, were thronged with people, and she had never seen such traffic as they turned towards the centre where cars, trucks, lorries and vans jostled for space with horse-drawn carts, diesel buses and clanking, swaying trams.

Carmel had never see a sight like it—so many people gathered together in one place—had never heard such noise and had never had the sour, acrid taste of engine fumes that had lodged in the back of her throat and her mouth. The size of the buildings shocked her as much as the array of shops or things on offer. Some of the stores were on several floors. Lois had taken her inside a few of these and she had stood mesmerised by the goods for sale, by the lights in the place, the smart shop assistants.

Some of the counters housed enormous silver tills, which the assistants would punch the front of and the prices would be displayed at the top. Carmel had seen tills before, but none as impressive as these. Best of all, though, were the counters that had no till at all. There the assistant would issue a bill, which, together with the customer’s money, would be placed in a little metal canister that was somehow attached to wires crisscrossing the shop. It would swoop through the air to a cashier who was usually sitting up in a high glass-sided little office. She would then deal with the receipt and, if there was any change needed, put it in the canister and the process would be reversed.

It was so entertaining, Carmel could have watched it all day. But Lois was impatient. ‘Come on, there is so much to see yet. Have you ever been in a lift?’

No. Carmel had never been in a lift and when Lois had taken her up and down in one, wasn’t sure she wanted to go in again either.

‘I’ll stick with the stairs, thank you,’ she said.

Lois grinned. ‘I’ll take you to some special stairs,’ she said, when they were in Marshall & Snelgrove. ‘See how you like them.’

Carmel didn’t like them one bit. ‘They are moving.’

‘Of course they are.’ Lois said. ‘It’s called an escalator.’

‘How would you get on to it?’ Carmel said. ‘I prefer my stairs to be static.’

‘Where’s your sense of adventure?’ Lois demanded. ‘It’s easy, even children use them. Come on, follow me.’

Carmel did, stepping onto the escalator gingerly and nearly losing her balance totally when the stair folded down beneath her foot. All the way to the next floor she didn’t feel safe, but still she felt proud of herself for actually doing it.

‘They have escalators in Lewis’s too, where Dad works. You remember me telling you?’ Lois asked. When Carmel nodded she added, ‘Well, that is where I am going to take you next.’

Carmel thought Lewis’s at the top of Corporation Street a most unusual shop altogether. It appeared to be two shops on either side of a little cobbled street called The Minories, though Lois said they joined at the third floor.

Carmel gazed upwards. ‘I can see they join somewhere.’

‘The fifth floor is the place to be,’ Lois said. ‘It’s full of toys.’

‘Toys?’

‘Yes, but toys like you have never seen. Before my mother took to lying on a couch all day long and moaning and groaning, she’d bring us to town sometimes and we always begged to go to the toy floor. I have to go again, if only to see if it has the same fascination now that I am an adult.’

With a smile, Carmel agreed to go with Lois so that she could satisfy her curiosity, but she didn’t expect to be much interested herself. What an eye-opener she got.

The first thing she saw were model trains running round the room, up hill and down dale, passing through countryside, under tunnels and stopping at little country stations where you could see the streets and houses and people. Then they would be off again, changing lines as the signals indicated.

‘It’s magical, isn’t it?’ Lois said at her side. ‘I used to watch it as long as I was allowed.’

Carmel could only nod, understanding that perfectly.

There were other toys too, of course, when Carmel was able to tear herself away—huge forts full of lead soldiers, or cowboys and Indians. There were also big garages with every toy car imaginable and a variety of car tracks for them to run along.

Another section had soft-bodied dolls with china heads and all manner of clothes nice enough to put on a real-life baby, and the cots and prams and pushchairs you would hardly credit.

‘Did you have toys like these?’ Carmel asked Lois.

‘No,’ Lois said. ‘Our stuff was basic, nothing like these magnificent things.’

Carmel wandered around the department, mesmerised. Teddy bears, rocking horses, hobby horses, spinning tops, skipping ropes with fancy handles, jack-in-the-boxes and kaleidoscopes were just some of the things she knew her little brothers and sisters would love. There were giant dolls’ houses, full of minute furniture and little people that would thrill the girls. And she so wished she could buy her brothers a proper football, for all they had to kick about were rags tied together, or the occasional pig’s bladder they begged from the butcher in the town. And wouldn’t they just love the cricket sets and blow football, and they could all have a fine game with the ping-pong.

The only thing the Duffy children had to spin was the lid of a saucepan, and their toys were buttons, clothes pegs, or stones. Any dolls were made of rags. Carmel felt suddenly immeasurably sad for her siblings, but even worse, she also felt guiltily glad that she was no longer there to share their misery.

‘Well,’ said Lois, ‘I don’t know about you, but I am ready for my dinner and Lyons is as close as anywhere.’

‘Are you sure you can afford it?’

‘Don’t start that again,’ Lois said. ‘We have already discussed it. Come on quick for my stomach thinks my throat is cut.’

Carmel realised she too was hungry and her stomach growled in appreciation when just a little later a steaming plate of golden fish and crispy chips was placed before her. Both girls did the meal justice, and Lois sighed with satisfaction as she ate the last morsel.

‘Ooh, that’s better,’ she said. ‘It’s amazing how a meal revives you. I was feeling quite tired.’

‘So was I,’ Carmel said. ‘But I have enjoyed today, for all that. You have a very interesting city here, Lois.’

‘You know,’ Lois said. ‘I have never really thought that before. What do you say to us exploring the Bull Ring now?’

‘I say lead the way,’ Carmel said, and the two girls left the cafeteria arm in arm.

The Bull Ring astounded Carmel. There were women grouped around a statue selling flowers, such a colourful and fragrant sight, though she had to shake her head at the proffered bunches for she hadn’t enough spare money to buy flowers.

The hawkers, selling all manner of things from their barrows, swept down the cobbled incline to another church that Lois told her was called St Martin-in-the Fields, though there were precious little fields around, she noted. It was however, ringed by trees, its spire towering skyward.

Everywhere hawkers shouted out their wares, vying with the clamour of the customers. One old lady’s strident voice rose above the others. She was standing in front of Woolworths, which the two girls were making for, and she was selling carrier bags and determined to let everybody know about it.

‘Woolworths is called the tanner shop,’ Lois said.

The two girls wandered up and down the aisles, looking at all the different things for sale for sixpence or less.

‘Everything is just sixpence?’ Carmel asked in amazement.

‘Oh, yes,’ Lois said with a smile. ‘Though some say that it’s a swizz. I mean, you do get a teapot for a tanner, but if you want a lid for it that is another tanner and a teapot is not much good without a lid, is it?’

‘No,’ Carmel agreed. ‘But I don’t know that that is not such a bad idea. After all, it is usually the lid breaks first. I would be very handy to be able to get another and all for just sixpence.’

‘Well, yes,’ Lois conceded. ‘That’s another way of looking at it, I suppose. Come on, I want to take a dekko at Hobbies next door.’

The window of Hobbies was full of wooden models of planes, cars and ships of all shapes, sizes and designs. Carmel was amazed at the detail and size of them.

‘My brother would spend hours in here,’ Lois said. ‘They sell kits, you know, to make the things you can see, and Santa always had one in his sack that he would drop off ready for Christmas morning.’ She wrinkled her nose and went on, ‘I can smell the glue even now. It was disgusting.

‘Now,’ she said, turning away from the shop, ‘I think the Rag Market is the place we’ll make for next, down by the church. Watch out for the trams. They come rattling around in front of St Martin’s like the very devil and there might be a couple of drayhorses pulling carts too.’

‘Drayhorses I have no problem with,’ Carmel said. ‘I’m used to horses, but those trams frighten the life out of me. I will give them a wide berth, never fear.’

Lois laughed. ‘You’ll soon get used to them,’ she said, but Carmel doubted she would. She’d seldom seen anything so scary.

Once inside the hall, there was a pervading odour.

‘What’s the stink?’ Carmel asked Lois. ‘It’s like fish.’

‘It is fish, left over from the weekdays when this place is used as a fish market,’ Lois said. ‘But never mind that. This is the place where bargains are to be had.’

Carmel thought it a strange place, for while some of the goods were displayed on trestle tables, others were just laid on blankets spread on the floor. She was very interested in the second-hand stalls where she saw many good quality clothes being sold comparatively cheaply, and she thought she would bear that in mind in case she needed anything another time.

She could have spent longer in the market, for such unusual things were being sold there. She stood mesmerised by the mechanical toys a man was selling. Catching Carmel’s interest, he wound up a spinning top.

‘On the table, on the chair, little devils go everywhere,’ he chanted. ‘Only a tanner. What d’you say?’

What Carmel would have liked to have said was that she would take four or five to send home to her wee brothers and sisters. She could imagine their excitement, but instead she turned her head away regretfully. ‘I’m sorry. I haven’t the money to spare.’

‘Your loss, lady.’

‘Come on,’ Lois urged. ‘I want you to see Peacocks. You can buy almost anything there, and we must go to the Market Hall before we leave.’

When they were outside the Rag Market a far more pleasant smell than that of stale fish assailed Carmel’s nostrils and she sniffed appreciatively.

‘That’s the smell from Mountford’s, where they’re cooking the joints of meat,’ Lois said. ‘Makes you feel hungry, doesn’t it?’

‘Not half.’

They passed the shop, where there was the tantalising sight of a sizzling joint on a spit turning in the window. Carmel felt her mouth water. It would be at least another hour before she ate anything, for she and Lois were not meeting the others until five and it was only four o’clock.

‘Come on,’ Lois urged. ‘Let’s go and see around Peacocks. I used to love this too when I was just a child.’

Peacocks was packed—Lois said it always was and Carmel could well see why, for the store had such a conglomeration of things for sale, clothes and toys as well as anything you would conceivably need for the house.

Outside Peacocks, a hawker had a stall selling fish. ‘What am I asking for these kippers?’ he demanded. ‘A tanner a pair, that’s what. Come on, ladies, get out your purses. You won’t get a bargain like this every day.’

Because of the press of people, the girls had reached the steps leading up to the gothic pillars either side of the door into the Market Hall before Carmel noticed the men. They were shabbily and inadequately dressed, their boots well cobbled, and the greasy caps rammed on over their heads hiding much of their thin grey faces. They all had trays around their necks, selling bootlaces, razor blades, matches and hairgrips. Carmel felt a flash of pity for them, and as soon as they were in the Hall and out of the men’s hearing, asked who they were.

‘Flotsam from the last war,’ Lois told her. ‘They can’t get proper jobs, you see. I mean, there is little work anyway, but some of these men couldn’t do anything hard or physical, because many are damaged in some way from the war, shell-shocked perhaps, or suffering from the effects of gas. There is one man comes sometimes and he’s blind and led along by a friend, and another with only one leg.’

‘It’s awful,’ Carmel burst out. ‘And so unfair. These men have fought for their country—surely the government should look after them now.’

‘Of course they should, but when has that made any difference?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Look,’ Lois said, ‘this is your first experience of this, but I have seen them there for years. You get almost used to it, though if I have any spare cash I will buy something because I do feel sorry for them. But if we get upset, it won’t change things for them, will it?’

And of course it wouldn’t. Carmel saw that and she took her lead from Lois. In the Market Hall there was much to distract her, anyway, for, like the barrows outside, stalls selling meat, vegetables and fish were side by side with junk and novelty stalls and others selling pots and pans, cheap crockery, sheets and towels. However, for Carmel the main draw was the pet stall.

She had never owned a pet, and though she would have loved a cuddly kitten of her own, or a boisterous puppy to take for walks, she knew there had been barely enough food for the children, never mind an animal. She’d never have taken a defenceless animal near her father either, for she thought a man who would beat his wife and children without thought or care, wouldn’t think twice about kicking an animal to death if the notion took him.

There were rabbits and guinea pigs in cages, and twittering canaries and budgies that Lois spent ages trying to get to talk. Carmel had never heard of a talking budgie and was inclined to be sceptical. However, just as Lois was maintaining that some budgies did talk and she had an aunt who had owned such a bird, there was a sudden shriek and a raucous voice burst out, ‘Mind the mainsail. Keep it steady, lads. Who’s a pretty boy then?’

The milling customers laughed and the stall owner went into the back to bring out a parrot that neither Lois nor Carmel had noticed.

‘There,’ Lois said with satisfaction. ‘I told you that some birds can talk.’

‘You said budgies could, not parrots,’ Carmel contradicted. ‘I knew about parrots, though I had never heard one until today.’

‘Even budgies…’

However, Lois didn’t get to finish the sentence, because someone beside her suddenly said, ‘It’s nearly five o’clock.’

Carmel put the kitten she had been holding back in the box, and stood up, brushing the straw lint from her coat. ‘We’d better get our skates on,’ she said. ‘The other will be there before we are.’

‘No, wait on,’ Lois said. ‘If we are a few minutes late, they won’t mind. They can have a cup of tea or something.’

‘But what are we waiting for?’

‘The clock,’ Lois said, pulling Carmel to the front of the stall. Everyone was suddenly still, Carmel noticed, and gazing up at the wooden clock on the wall, watching the seconds ticking by. And then the hour was reached and three figures, like knights and a lady, emerged to strike a set of bells to play a tinkling, but lilting tune. Carmel was as enthralled as anyone else.

‘Oh, it’s lovely,’ she cried, when the strains of it had died away.

‘It wasn’t always here,’ Lois said, as they walked outside again. ‘It was first put into an arcade up Dale End way, but my dad said that the arcade went out of business through lack of custom. He told me the man who made the clock was never paid the full asking price and he is supposed to have put a curse on it and that was why the arcade in Dale End had to close. That is hardly going to happen here, though, to the thriving Market Hall. You saw that for yourself today.’

‘Yes I did,’ Carmel agreed. ‘But I can’t help feeling sorry for the man who made the clock not getting the money for it. It’s a magnificent piece of work and must have taken him ages and ages—and then to be diddled like that…’

‘You’re all for the underdog, aren’t you?’ Lois said. ‘First the old lags on the market steps and now the poor clockmaker. I’ve never ever given that man a minute’s thought.’

‘I don’t like unfairness.’

‘No more do I,’ Lois said. ‘Only now that I am nearly grown up I see that there is unfairness everywhere, and as individuals there isn’t much we can do about it. The poverty of this place, which I imagine is repeated in most cities, would really depress you if you let it. You sometimes have to rise above it, even if you care desperately.’

Carmel said nothing more, for wasn’t that just what she had done—risen above neglect, poverty and the downright tyranny of her home and left the others to manage as best they could? She had cared while she was there, for all the good it did, but when this means of escape had been handed to her, she had grasped it thankfully and pulled herself up. She had no intention of letting herself go back to that sort of situation ever again and so without another word she followed Lois to meet the others.

CHAPTER FOUR

Carmel was surprised when, after a very substantial tea, Jane and Sylvia elected to go back to the Bull Ring when Lois asked them what they wanted to do for the evening.

‘Is there any point?’ Carmel asked. ‘I mean, won’t everywhere be closed now?’

Sylvia laughed. ‘Not tonight,’ she said. ‘Tell you, girl, you’ve not lived till you see a Saturday night down the Bull Ring.’

Carmel wasn’t convinced. Lois had mentioned both the music hall and cinema, and Carmel would have given her right arm to see either. Though free tickets sometimes came for the probationary nurses, Carmel had always refused any invitation for she felt she hadn’t the clothes for such outings. Now though, she would have put up with the embarrassment of that to have an evening out with her special friends.

‘After all, the night is mild enough,’ Jane remarked.

‘Yeah,’ Sylvia agreed. ‘Might as well make the most of it. We can go to the pictures or music hall another time, when the weather isn’t so kind to us.’

Only Lois saw the brief flash of disappointment cover Carmel’s face. ‘Do you mind?’ she said. ‘Is that where you want to go too?’

Carmel had never had friends before. Because of the type of home she came from, she had never had anyone to link arms with and whisper confidences to, or go out to the socials at the chapel with. And she wasn’t going to risk damaging the relationship developing between her and the others by going against them now. So she said, ‘I honestly don’t care where we go. It is all new to me, don’t forget, so everywhere is an adventure.’

The dusk had deepened as they made their way back to the Bull Ring and Carmel saw that around the barrows, and in other strategic points, there were spluttering gas flares, slicing through the darkness and making the whole place look a little like a sort of fairyland, and as different from the Bull Ring in the daytime as it was possible to be. And then in the shadows cast by the lights, Carmel spied some beshawled women lurking, many with babies in their arms and surrounded by raggedy children with bare feet, arms and legs like sticks.

‘What are they doing here?’ she asked, appalled.

‘Waiting for the hawkers to virtually give the stuff away,’ Sylvia said. ‘They do that at the end of the day and those poor old buggers go home with some scrappy meat and overripe veg and look like they have won a king’s ransom.’

‘These are the real poor that I mentioned earlier,’ Lois said. ‘They are always here of a Saturday and you can just stand here all night and stare at them, which will either make them feel more ashamed, or else angry, or you can do them the dignity of pretending you see nothing amiss and come about with the rest of us.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Carmel said. ‘I never thought of it that way.’

‘Watch out!’ called Jane, who was a little way in front. ‘The stilt walkers are coming.’

The crowds parted to let past the incredibly tall men, dressed in exceedingly long black trousers, striped blazers and shiny top hats. They doffed their hats to the people, who threw money into them.

‘Just how do they do that?’ Carmel asked.

‘Who knows?’ Jane said. ‘But they’re good.’

‘Carmel, you have seen nothing yet,’ Sylvia promised.

‘Jimmy Jesus is getting up on his soap box,’ Lois called.

‘Jimmy Jesus?’

‘The old fellow with the white beard,’ Lois pointed.

‘Is that his real name?’

‘No,’ Lois said. ‘Don’t know if anyone actually knows what his real name is. But that is all I have ever heard him called, ’cos as well as the way he looks he spouts on about the Bible, you see.’

‘There’s usually some fun when the hecklers start,’ Sylvia said. ‘I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not ready for a sermon just yet a while.’

‘Me, neither,’ Jane declared. ‘Let’s take a look at the boxing.’

Carmel didn’t say, but she hated the boxing, where a big bruiser of a man challenged those in the crowds for a match. ‘Knock the champ down and you win five pounds,’ his promoter urged from the corner.

Carmel thought the champ, with his build, his beefy arms, legs like tree trunks, small, mean-looking eyes and belligerent features reminded her of her father.

‘I’m not surprised that no one has taken him up on the offer,’ she said.

There were a fair few men in the audience, but none seemed anxious to take up the challenge, though they hung about for a little while.

‘It’s early yet,’ Sylvia told her. ‘Wait till they’ve sunk a few jars in The Bell. The weediest ones will think they can take on the world then.’

‘Have anyone ever laid the champ out?’

‘Are you kidding?’ Jane said, as she steered Carmel away. ‘Do you think they would be offering five pounds if people were likely to win it? Mind you, we have seen quite a few of the challengers spread their length on the sawdust.’

‘Ugh, it’s horrible.’

The others laughed at Carmel’s queasiness, but kindly.

‘I’ll bet you’ll think this just as bad,’ Jane said, and Carmel thought that she was right for as they turned the corner, there was a man lying on a bed of nails. He had very brown and oily skin and there was a lot of it to see, for he had few clothes on, just something wrapped around his head that Lois told her was a turban and what appeared to be a giant nappy on his lower half. As the friends watched in horrified fascination, two girls stepped forward, shed their shoes, and stood one his chest and one on his abdomen. The man made no sound and he seemed not to either feel the girls’ weight, nor the nails they could clearly see were pressing into his skin.

Eventually, the girls got off and money as thrown into the bowl by the nailed bed by impressed onlookers. The man got up and came over to the nurses.

‘Any of you lot like to try? Promise I won’t look up your skirts.’

‘Carmel might fancy a go,’ Jane said with a smile at the repugnance on Carmel’s face.

‘Carmel would not—oh, no, definitely not,’ Carmel declared vehemently. ‘I think it’s just, well, just awful.’

The man shrugged as Lois pulled her away.

Carmel wasn’t that keen on the man tied in chains either, but was quite willing to stay around to see he got free in the end and was unharmed, though the others eventually got fed up.

‘He won’t even try until there is at least a pound in the hat, and that could take ages yet,’ Lois said.

‘Have you ever seen him get out?’

‘No, I haven’t personally.’

‘I have,’ Jane said. ‘But just the once.’

‘How?’ Carmel asked, for the man was trussed up like some of the chickens she had seen hanging from butchers’ stalls earlier that day.

‘I don’t know,’ Jane admitted. ‘He had a cloak around him. Didn’t take him long, I do remember that. People say it’s a swizz, but you can examine the chains and all if you want. He doesn’t mind.’

‘Well, I don’t fancy waiting around any more tonight.’ Sylvia said. ‘And the musicians will be setting up soon, I should think.’

‘Music,’ Carmel said. ‘That’s more my kind of thing.’

‘Oh, you’ll like it, all right,’ Lois said. ‘It’s from your neck of the woods—the first stuff they play, anyway— jigs and reels and that, and then they go on to the songs from the music halls that everybody knows.’

‘I don’t.’

‘You will when you’ve been here a bit,’ Sylvia put in.

They went past the stilt walkers, still striding effortlessly around the market, and past Jimmy Jesus again, urging the people to repent and then their souls would be as white as the driven snow, washed by the blood of the Lamb. There were a few catcalls from some of the lads and a bit of jeering, but generally people seemed to tolerate the man very well. Carmel was glad, for she thought he had a very gentle voice and manner about him.

By now the accordion players were just setting up in their corner.

Lois said, ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me, after that tea and everything. I must have worms because I could just murder a baked potato.’ She indicated a little man nearby with an oven shaped not unlike Stephenson’s Rocket, which Carmel had seen pictures of.

‘It’s just because you can smell them,’ Sylvia said. ‘They always smell lovely, I think.’

‘I don’t care what it is,’ Lois said, ‘I am buying one anyway. Anyone else want one, or are you going to let me be the only pig?’

‘Let me buy one for each of you,’ said a male voice suddenly.

Lois swung around. ‘Paul!’ she exclaimed, and gave the man a hug before introducing him to her friends one by one. ‘Sylvia, Jane and Carmel, this is my cousin Paul.’

‘God,’ said Jane in an aside to Sylvia, ‘why haven’t I got cousins like that?’

‘Having them as cousins is no good,’ Sylvia replied, as the man in question and Lois went over to the hot potato man. ‘Did you see that dazzling smile he cast your way, Carmel?’

‘I can’t say I noticed,’ Carmel said.

‘You must be flipping blind then,’ Jane put in. ‘I really don’t know what’s the matter with you.’

‘I’ve told you, I’m not interested in men.’

‘God, Carmel, you must be mad,’ Sylvia protested. ‘I’d be turning somersaults if a man as dishy as that one smiled at me like he did you.’

‘Well, that’s you, isn’t it?’ Carmel retorted. ‘I don’t feel the same, that’s all.’

‘Carmel, we’re not talking of marrying the man, just having a bit of fun, and no harm in that either,’ Sylvia said. ‘After all, none of us can get married for years anyway, if we want to finish our training.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Jane said. ‘It depends on whether a better offer comes along. A man like that wouldn’t have to try very hard to entice me from the charming clutches of Matron.’

The girls laughed but talk about Paul had to cease there, for he and Lois were approaching. Carmel found the potato surprisingly tasty. The music was good too and made her foot tap. The only thing that spoiled it for her was seeing the shambling women, clutching their spoils, children trailing behind them, leaving the market as the hawkers began packing away.

She turned her face resolutely away from the sight and didn’t mention it at all lest the others be irritated by her. They tried to get her to show them a jig or a reel, but she would never show herself up like that and especially not with Paul’s eyes fastened on hers so intently.

By the time the music-hall songs were being played, the hot potatoes were all eaten and everyone was belting out the songs, Paul had somehow arranged it so that he was right next to Carmel. He might as well have been invisible for Carmel took no notice of him at all.

Eventually, in a lull between tunes, he said, ‘I believe you and my illustrious cousin are room-mates?’

Jane, hearing this, gave Sylvia a nudge, she nodded and they moved forward into the crowd, taking Lois with them.

Carmel answered, ‘That’s right.’

‘And this is your first visit to the Bull Ring she said?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, what do you think of it?’

Carmel shrugged. ‘It’s all right.’

Paul smiled. ‘Just all right?’

‘What d’you want me to say?’ Carmel cried. ‘It’s good. I’ve enjoyed it.’

‘Have you anything like this where you come from?’

‘No, not really.’

‘You hail from Ireland, Lois said?’

‘That’s right?’

‘Which part?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

Paul was nonplussed. He wasn’t used to having this reaction, especially from girls. He shrugged. ‘Just interested.’

‘Why?’ Carmel demanded. ‘You don’t even know me.’

‘Maybe I was trying to get to know you.’

‘I don’t see the purpose of it.’

‘It’s just…it’s what people do, that’s all.’

‘It’s not what this person does,’ Carmel snapped. She looked around frantically for the others, but found herself somehow positioned at the edge of the group with other people in front of her, separating her from her friends. Everyone was singing with gusto about it being a long way to Tipperary.

Paul, though taken aback by Carmel’s response to his innocent questions, was not one for giving up easily, especially with a girl as lovely-looking as Carmel. He thought maybe she was shy and so he drew her away from the group slightly and said, ‘Please don’t be offended. I really meant no harm. It’s just that I am interested in people. It’s partly why I want to be a doctor, I suppose, and with you in the same line of work, as it were, and a room-mate of Lois’s, I just thought it would be nice to get to know you a little better.’

‘So now you know I’m not worth the effort.’

Paul gave a slightly hesitant laugh as he said, ‘Surely, Carmel, I should be the judge of that?’

‘No,’ Carmel said. ‘I should. I really have no wish to talk to you further and I want to rejoin my friends.’

That wasn’t so easy, however, because there was a body of people in front of her that she couldn’t push past and so she stood awkwardly on the edge of the group with Paul beside her. He was wondering how in heaven’s name he could break down this delicious-looking girl’s reserve, but Carmel had many secrets in her past she had no intention of sharing with a virtual stranger.

The musicians finished and began tidying away. Carmel sighed. Now perhaps she could meet up with the others and they could all go home, away from this irritating man and his constant questions, but as she thought this, the strains of a brass band could be heard in the distance and she lifted her head to listen.

‘That’s the Sally Army playing “Jerusalem”,’ Paul told Carmel, seeing her interest.

‘Sally Army?’

‘Salvation Army I mean really,’ Paul said. ‘But you would hardly knew about those either, coming from Ireland. They come here every Saturday evening and collect up all the hungry and destitute, the sort of person you or I would cross the street to avoid, for they are usually none too clean and alive with vermin. The Salvation Army don’t seem to care about that, and they will take these people back to the Citadel, which is what they call their headquarters, and give them hot broth and bread, and try and find the especially vulnerable a bed for the night.’

It happened just as Paul said. From the minute the Salvation Army swung into view, singing with all their might, tramps began emerging from every corner.

However, some of the crowd had begun to melt away and Carmel was able to push past the rest and rejoin her friends again. Unseen by Carmel, Lois raised her eyebrows quizzically at her cousin and he shook his head slightly.

Jane was saying to Carmel, ‘D’you want to stay and sing some more?’

‘I don’t know any of these,’ Carmel said truthfully as the band announced they would be singing ‘The Old Rugged Cross’. ‘I’m ready to call it a day if you are.’

‘But the night is young yet,’ Paul said. ‘How about a drink to round it off?’

Alone, Carmel would have refused. She had a horror of drink and drunks and pubs, but she wasn’t alone and it wasn’t totally her decision to make.

Paul turned pleading eyes on Lois and she knew what he wanted. So, despite the early start Carmel would have in the morning, Lois said a drink would be just the job. Both Sylvia and Jane too had seen where Paul’s interest lay, and so they backed Lois up and Carmel knew the decision had been made. Without being churlish and risk alienating her friends, she would have to go along with it. However, she thought firmly, there was no way that she would drink anything even mildly alcoholic and she would be adamant about that.

Paul had one arm linked with Lois and when he extended his other for Carmel, she pretended not to see it, and Sylvia, feeling sorry for the rebuff, took hold of it instead. Jane and Carmel walked behind, Jane shaking her head at Carmel’s foolishness.

‘Our Paul is really keen on you,’ Lois said as she and Carmel made their way to work a couple of days after her initial visit to the Bull Ring.

‘I hope you told him that I’m a hopeless case.’

‘No,’ Lois said. ‘But then he wouldn’t listen if I did.’

Carmel shrugged. ‘He’s going to be one disappointed man then, isn’t he?’

‘Carmel…’

‘No, Lois, I’ve told you, but you don’t seem to understand it,’ Carmel said hotly. ‘I’m not interested in Paul, or any other man—not now, not ever. Anyway, isn’t there some rule about not fraternising with the doctors?’

‘Yeah, for all the notice anyone takes of it,’ Lois said. ‘Some girls come into nursing and their prime objective is to hook a nice eligible and potentially rich doctor.’

‘Surely not?’

‘No, straight up,’ Lois said. ‘I really wanted to nurse, but I bet Jane would jack the whole thing in if the right man came along, doctor or otherwise. You heard what she said the other day and it wasn’t totally in jest.’

‘I was a bit shocked,’ Carmel said.

‘Why?’ Lois said. ‘She is eighteen. Lots of girls our age are at least going steady, or else engaged, if not married. She might as well do something useful while she waits for Mr Right to sweep her off her feet.’

‘I suppose.’

‘I am more committed than that and I know you are, but I want to have some fun as well.’

‘I don’t mind fun,’ Carmel protested. ‘I really enjoyed Saturday.’

‘Till Paul came,’ Lois said. ‘You changed totally then.’

‘Well, yes, if you like,’ Carmel said. ‘I enjoyed it till Paul came. He sort of muscled in and took over, like men always do.’

‘I didn’t see Paul doing that,’ Lois said. ‘You seem to have a real downer of the whole male race.’

‘You have it at last,’ Carmel said. ‘And you would be doing your cousin a service if you were to tell him that.’

In the end, Lois decided to tell Paul, because she knew that it would be more unkind to allow him to harbour false hopes. She knew, but hadn’t told Carmel yet, that soon she would see more of Paul than she might like, because he had been assigned to work at the General Hospital from the autumn.

However, Paul was more upset than Lois had bargained for when she stressed how Carmel felt.

‘Look, Paul,’ she said, seeing his desolate face, ‘I can’t believe you can be this upset. Crikey, you’ve only met the girl once and for such a short time too.’

‘None of that matters,’ Paul said miserably ‘I think about her all the time.’

Lois felt immensely sorry for her cousin, but she knew for his own sake, he had to get over this fixation with Carmel. ‘Well, you will have to stop. I have told you how she feels, Paul. This is just silly. You don’t even know her.’

‘I tried to get to know her,’ Paul said. ‘God, it was like pulling teeth.’

Lois smiled. ‘We have all had a taste of that,’ she said. ‘Carmel might sometimes make a comment about her family, though she does that rarely, and whatever she says has to be left there, because if you start asking questions, she clams up. We all know her parents’ marriage isn’t a happy one—in fact it is so miserable it has put her off for life. You must forget her, dear cousin. Good heavens, isn’t the world full of pretty girls who would fall madly in love with you if you gave them the slightest encouragement?’

Paul smiled and Lois caught her breath and regretted anew that he was her cousin.

‘You have an exaggerated opinion of me, cousin, dear,’ Paul said. ‘And a biased one, I believe.’

‘Take a look in the mirror, Paul,’ Lois said. ‘Then go out and conquer the world.’

Paul doubted that he would ever forget the girl who seemed ingrained on his heart, but he also knew that Lois was right: to try to put her out of his mind was the only thing to do.

CHAPTER FIVE

The weeks rolled by and turned into months. Carmel finished her first year and when her holidays were due, she went to stay with the sisters at St Chad’s Hospital. It was rather a busman’s holiday because she helped out on the wards, but she was quite happy about that.

She began her second year with no change in her attitude towards men, and was surprised and a little dismayed when she learned that Paul was working at the hospital with a fair few other student doctors.

‘Why didn’t you warn me?’ she asked Lois.

‘There seemed little point,’ Lois said with a shrug. ‘I knew that you would find out eventually. He likes the situation even less than you do. None of them has had any choice about where they were sent.’

Carmel knew that was true. To give the probationer nurses the maximum exposure to a variety of medical conditions, each one spent a minimum of nine weeks and a maximum of twelve on a different ward. Carmel valued the experience this was giving her and she imagined that it would help the budding doctors to learn in different places too. As the General and Queen’s were the only two teaching hospitals in the city, it was inevitable that some medical students should be sent there. She knew she wouldn’t be able to avoid seeing Paul, but Lois had assured her that Paul had been told and understood how Carmel felt. She was glad about this for it meant she would be able to treat him in a respectful and professional manner, as she did the other doctors she came into contact with.

‘Has anyone else see that gorgeous doctor?’ Aileen Roberts said at breakfast one day at the beginning of October.

No one had apparently, so Aileen went on, ‘He is wonderful, terrific. He has blond hair and the deepest blue eyes.’

Carmel and her room-mates weren’t there, or Lois would have said the man was probably her cousin Paul. Everyone was used to Aileen and her ways, anyway, and liked to tease her.

‘I thought you liked them tall, dark and handsome like Dr Durston,’ another girl, Maggie, said. ‘Weren’t you madly in love with him just a few weeks ago?’

‘Yeah, and then it was that surgeon—what’s his name, Adams—Mr Adams that you said had smouldering eyes that turned you weak at the knees,’ Susan, another young probationer, added.

There was a ripple of laughter and then Maggie said, ‘You even had a thing going for Jimmy, that cheeky young porter, as I remember.’

‘Face it, Aileen,’ put in Susan, ‘with men you are a right pushover and you fall in love more often than I have hot dinners.’

‘This is different,’ Aileen maintained. ‘They were just mere mortals, but this man is a god, a true god. You’ll know when you see him yourself.’

‘Has he a name, this man?’ Maggie asked with a wry smile. ‘Just in case there is more than one god trailing about the hospital?’

Aileen cast her a withering look. ‘Connolly, that’s what he’s called. Dr P. Connolly.’

‘Haven’t you found out what the P stands for yet?’ Maggie cried. ‘God, Aileen, you’re slipping.’

‘Give me time,’ Aileen said. ‘I have only just spotted him. It could be Peter.’

‘Or Philip or Paul,’ Susan said.

‘Or Patrick,’ said Maggie, and went on mockingly, ‘But surely these are such ordinary, mortal names for such a superior being?’

‘You wait till you see him,’ Aileen said, getting in a huff at all the teasing. ‘And when you do, remember that I saw him first and that makes him mine.’

‘Haven’t you heard the expression that all’s fair in love and war?’ Maggie asked.

‘I don’t know about fair in love and war,’ said Susan. ‘But I do know no one will be fair on us if we don’t head on to the wards, and mightily quickly too.’

There was a resigned groan as the girls, realising that Susan was right, got to their feet. The matter of Aileen and the dashing doctor was shelved for the moment.

It soon filtered around the hospital that the Adonis that Aileen had described was Lois’s cousin Paul. Aileen was delighted that one of the girls was related to him.

‘That’s wonderful. Maybe she can put in a word for me,’ she said at breakfast one morning.

‘Why should she?’ said Jane with a laugh.

‘Anyway, I’d say a man like that will make up his own mind,’ Sylvia said. ‘And from what I remember from the night we met him down the Bull Ring that one time, it was Carmel he was showing an interest in.’

‘Carmel!’

‘Don’t sound so surprised,’ Sylvia said. ‘She’s very pretty.’

There was no denying that. Aileen thought it a shame that such beauty should go to waste, for Carmel seemed to have no interest in men. ‘I bet she didn’t take no notice,’ she said.

‘No, she didn’t.’

‘I don’t understand her,’ Aileen said. ‘I don’t know why she don’t go the whole hog and be a nun if she ain’t a bit interested in men. Anyway, it don’t matter, she has had her chance and if she don’t want Paul, plenty will—like me, for instance.’

‘You’ll have to get in the queue for that then,’ another girl said from further down the table. ‘’Cos I will hand it to you this time, Aileen, he is very dishy, this Paul Connolly, and I intend to be very nice to Lois.’

In actual fact, probationers had little to do with the doctors anyway, and so it was a couple of days before Carmel confronted Paul face to face.

‘Good morning, Dr Connolly,’ she said, and saw that he was more shaken than she was, but he took his guide from her.

‘Good morning, Nurse Duffy.’

Carmel passed him then, giving him no chance to linger. Paul, watching her go, felt as if his limbs had turned to water. He knew then that he was in love with Carmel Duffy.

Carmel, however, seemed completely content. She still hadn’t much money—none of them had—but thanks to the second-hand stall at the Rag Market she had been able to add to her wardrobe a little, and though she enjoyed going out with a crowd of nurses, especially her room-mates, she would never make arrangements to see later any of the boys they might meet. When others did and would go out on dates, Carmel would be quite happy to stay in by herself, or pop over to see the nuns at St Chad’s Hospital.

The other student nurses would often shake their heads over Carmel’s determinedly single state. As far as they could ascertain, Paul Connolly didn’t go out much either, and though he didn’t appear to have anyone special in his life, he showed no interest in any of them.

In fact, Paul was more miserable than he could ever remember. He was finding it harder than he had ever thought it would be, seeing Carmel, going about her duties, or laughing and joking with the patients or her friends, but treating him so formally.

However, there was nothing to be gained by mooning over her, he knew, so, coaxed and bullied by his friends, he did start to go out more, though he still took no more notice of the student nurses than he ever had.

That year, Paul volunteered to work over Christmas and so did Carmel. Lois was having that Christmas off and so was Sylvia. Jane was on duty, but courting strong, and Carmel guessed she wouldn’t see much of her outside of their working hours. She told herself she didn’t mind this, but for the first time she felt left out and knew she would be glad when the others were back and Christmas over and done with.

She was surprised how good Paul was in the pantomime, put on for the patients on Christmas Eve. She would have imagined a man as handsome and well set up as he appeared, and also training for a serious and respectable career, would not feel happy in such a frivolous production. However, not only did he throw himself into it with great enthusiasm, he seemed to be having as much fun as the audience. She saw with amusement that many of the nurses were gazing at him with more that just admiration in their eyes, and that Paul was either unaware of it, or else giving a very good impression that he was.

He also had a very good tenor singing voice, Carmel discovered, as the staff sang the age-old carols together with the patients. She felt a momentary pang of sympathy for Paul’s younger brother. It must be hard to follow this golden boy, who seemed to have it all, without a certain amount of resentment creeping in, she thought, and that in turn would make him less likeable. Look how Lois had first described them: ‘dishy Paul and annoying Matthew’.

She slipped out after the concert to attend Midnight Mass, having been given an especially late pass for the purpose, feeling the bone-chilling cold seep into her, even on the short walk to St Chad’s, despite the thick coat and scarf she had picked up for a song at the Rag Market.

The Mass had just begun when someone slipped into the pew beside her and, glancing across, she was surprised to see Paul. Carmel felt decidedly uncomfortable all through that Mass, being so close to him and unreasonably resentful that he should spoil her enjoyment of that Christmas service. He seemed unaware of how she felt and he turned and gave her one of his devastating smiles. Even she acknowledged then how truly handsome the man was and saw how the smile made his eyes dance and shine, just as if someone had turned a light on behind them.

That’s it, she thought as she tore her eyes away from Paul, this man is dangerous and the less I have to do with him the better.

When Carmel left the church, with the greetings of Happy Christmas from one to another ringing in her ears, she was nearly lifted off her feet by the power of the wind that brought with it icy rain spears, which stung her face.

‘Link your arm through mine,’ urged Paul, who had suddenly appeared beside her, and as she hesitated he grabbed her arm, tucked it through his and held tight. ‘Come on, be sensible,’ he said when Carmel tried to pull away. ‘This wind could have you over.’

The words had barely left his lips when a sudden gust cannoned into Carmel causing her to stagger and almost fall against Paul. He dropped her arm and instead held her round her shoulders.

‘Lean in to me,’ he said, giving her a little squeeze.

Carmel was well aware that she shouldn’t allow such familiarity with someone she really knew so little of, but it was so very comforting being held that way and she didn’t protest any more. She was glad, though, there was no one from the hospital to see them walking snuggled together like a courting couple for the short journey to the door of the nurses’ home.

‘Merry Christmas, Carmel,’ Paul said softly, and he kissed her gently on the cheek and waited until she had gone in the door before making for his own lodgings.

Carmel thought about the evening as she lay in bed, and despite her tiredness, sleep eluded her as she went over everything in her head. She decided that she was glad that she had met up with Paul. She knew he was a kind man and a gentle one, for she had seen the way he was with patients, but she had seen another side to him that night. She had met the Paul with a sense of humour, and who refused to take himself too seriously—and she liked that. No more than that, of course, but if they liked one another, they could perhaps behave more naturally in the hospital if they should meet.

By the evening of the twenty-eighth, Carmel was exhausted. She had worked long hours straight through from Christmas Eve, and she was heartily glad she had the following day off. She met Paul in the dining hall and they went in together and then sat at the same table, though Carmel did say, ‘I hope you are not expecting sparkling conversation. I’m really no fit company for anyone tonight in fact, it is hard enough to just string a few words together.’

Paul smiled. ‘If you did manage to deliver a marvellous oration, I know for a fact I would be too tired to appreciate it.’

Carmel knew that Paul had been working as hard and just as long hours as she, and she said, ‘Are you off tomorrow too?’

Paul nodded. ‘From ten o’clock I am. Just pray that nothing serious happens before then that might mean me stopping later, for I fear they would have to prop my eyes open with matchsticks.’

‘Poor you,’ Carmel said. ‘I don’t think I could work a minute longer. I will be making for my bed as soon as I possibly can, and stay in it most of tomorrow too, if I get my way.’

‘Surely not,’ Paul said. ‘Resting is for old bones.’

‘Right,’ Carmel said nodding sagely. ‘Of course, how silly of me. I will be up with the lark and run the marathon instead.’

‘Do you know, Miss Duffy, that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit?’

‘And the highest form of intellect, so I’m told,’ Carmel retorted.

Paul burst out laughing. ‘Touché, as the French would say.’ Then he went on, ‘I was actually thinking of leaving the marathon until next week and taking in a pantomime tomorrow. Aladdin is on at the Alex.’

‘A pantomime!’ Carmel breathed, because she’d never seen a pantomime, though many of the other probationers had and had described them to her. Her chances of seeing one with her friends were less now than the previous year, for her three room-mates were dating fairly seriously so the girls’ nights out had been severely curtailed.

Lois had told Paul this. Now he said, ‘Point is, a pantomime will be no fun on my own.’ He raised his eyes. ‘I don’t suppose that you…?’

‘No, Paul.’

‘Why not? Have you already seen it?’ he asked, knowing that she hadn’t.

‘I have never seen a pantomime in the whole of my life.’

‘Then why?’

‘I don’t think that it would be sensible.’

Paul stared at Carmel for a minute or two and then said, ‘Can you tell me what is so unsensible about two friends, both at loose ends, going to the Alex together to see a pantomime?’

‘Two friends?’

‘Yes, friends,’ Paul said. ‘We’re sure as God aren’t enemies, are we? Unless I am missing something here, that is.’

‘No, of course not. It’s just…I don’t know. I mean, what if people sort of misconstrue the whole thing?’

‘What if they do?’ Paul said. ‘Do you give a tuppenny damn for what people might think?’

‘Not usually,’ Carmel admitted. ‘But, honest to God, Paul, you wouldn’t believe the nurses’ home. It’s a hotbed of rumour and speculation.’

‘So you’re passing up on something you want to do in case people tease you about it,’ Paul said. ‘I honestly didn’t think you were so feeble.’

‘I’m not feeble!’ Carmel cried. ‘Don’t you dare call me feeble!’

‘Prove that you are not then,’ Paul taunted.

‘Right, I’ll show you,’ Carmel said.

‘So you’ll come with me?’

‘Yes. Yes, I will.’

Despite his weariness, Paul was in a jubilant mood as he returned to the ward, though he knew he would have to treat Carmel as the friend he had claimed to be and not the lover he hoped to become.

The night was a magical one. Paul called for Carmel in the afternoon and, though the day was bleak and raw, with all the promise of snow from the leaden skies, they wandered around the shops first, all preparing for the January sales, the streets outside still festooned with Christmas lights.

Before the pantomime, they went for a meal at Lyons Corner House and then on to the Alex. The pantomime was every bit as good as Carmel had hoped. She loved the glitz and glamour and sheer splendour of it all. She loved the audience participation too, and she booed, hissed and cheered with the best of them, laughed herself silly at the jokes and clapped until her hands were sore.

Paul would have taken Carmel for a drink after the show, but she said she wasn’t keen on pubs and, anyway, it was late enough. Paul didn’t argue and as they walked back he said, ‘Did you enjoy it?’

‘Oh, Paul,’ Carmel said, ‘I can’t tell you how much. I have had such a wonderful time. I feel as if I’m still in it, you know? As if I could dance madly along this road now.’

Paul laughed. ‘Shall I catch up your hand and we’ll cavort along together?’

She gave him a push. ‘You’ll do no such thing. They’ll think the two of us crazy.’

‘I thought we weren’t going to care what people thought.’

‘Maybe not,’ Carmel said, ‘but I’d care very much if I was encased in a straitjacket.’

‘So if I promise to behave, could we, maybe, do this again?’

‘Yes,’ Carmel said. ‘I’d like that, but don’t forget my prelims are looming and I will have to get my head down to do some revision.’

Still, Paul was amazed at the progress he had made in one evening.

Carmel was right about one thing: nothing could be kept quiet in the nurses’ home. Though her room-mates knew she had gone out with Paul she had told no one else, but still they had been spotted. Aileen stopped Carmel and Lois when they came off duty the night after the pantomime.

‘Are you going out with Paul Connolly, Duffy?’ she demanded angrily.

Carmel looked at Aileen’s angry face and she was irritated by the way the girl had spoken to her. ‘I don’t know what it has got to do with you, but, no, I am not “going out”,—not in that sense. We are just friends.’

Aileen gave a sniff of derision. ‘Don’t give me that,’ she snapped. ‘Do you think I was born yesterday? The two of you were seen all very pally walking the town.’

Later, up in their room, Lois said, ‘Is anything going on with you and Paul?’

‘No,’ Carmel said. ‘We’re just friends, like I told you.’

‘Hmm,’ Lois said. ‘Don’t play fast and loose with Paul’s feelings, will you? He is really gone on you.’

‘He might have been once,’ Carmel said, ‘but, he’s over that now and knows full well where he stands.’

But Lois remembered that, less than half an hour before, she had seen Paul gazing at Carmel as she walked down the ward. Carmel had been unaware of his scrutiny and for a few moments Lois saw the naked love printed across Paul’s face. Then he seemed to remember where he was and the moment passed, but now Lois knew, whatever Carmel thought, that he wanted to be more than a friend and she just hoped he wasn’t heading straight for heartache.

However, though they went out together again to see Cavalcade in mid-January, Carmel wasn’t able to see much of Paul at all after that, for the prelims, or mid-term exams, were early in February and any spare time was given over for revision, because if she failed she would be unable to continue nursing.

Carmel and Lois received news that they had passed their prelims on Carmel’s birthday and were given different caps to denote their new status just two days before starting their annual three-month block of night duty.

As before, Carmel felt as if her life was put on hold because she was so constantly tired. She saw Paul rarely, usually in the company of others and never for very long. Paul knew the stresses and strains of working long and unsociable hours and could quite appreciate Carmel’s exhaustion.

Not everyone was as understanding. Lois’s boyfriend finished with her before the stint was over in mid-June and Lois was pretty miserable about it. Carmel suggested they go to the cinema together to see King Kong, which some of the others had been raving about. It was a long time since Lois and Carmel had been out together and at first, when Paul turned up with his friend and fellow medical student, Chris, Carmel was quite annoyed, but they could hardly let the two men sit on their own.

Carmel was soon glad of Paul’s solid presence beside her because the film was more than just scary, and when his arm encircled her shaking form, she was too frightened to make any sort of protest. Anyway, she saw that Chris was comforting Lois the same way. Chris wanted to go for a drink afterwards, but Carmel again refused. Lois saw that Paul didn’t mind and what he wanted was to get Carmel on his own and so they parted at the pub, and Paul and Carmel took off into the night.

It was balmy and still quite warm, and as they walked Carmel suddenly said, ‘Why did you go in to be a doctor in the first place, Paul? You told me once that it was because you were interested in people.’

‘Yes, that was it really,’ Paul said. ‘I wanted to make things better for them. I don’t remember when I first wanted to be a doctor. It didn’t come in a blinding flash or anything like that. It was as if it had sort of always been there. Mind you, it might have been harder to convince my parents—my mother, anyway—if I didn’t have a younger brother to take over the business.’

‘That’s Matthew, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. How did you know?’

‘Lois told me,’ Carmel said. ‘She told me lots about you, as a matter of fact. Don’t look like that either; I didn’t ask her. She told me not long after I met her and ages before I met you for the first time. She said you studied at the Sorbonne in France for a couple of years.’

‘Yes I did. I enjoyed my time there,’ Paul said. ‘Matthew is there now, studying engineering.’

‘Can you speak fluent French?’

‘Pretty much. Did you take French at school?’

Carmel suppressed a smile at the thought of French introduced at the little county school in Letterkenny. It was as likely as someone having two heads or taking a trip to Mars, but she answered seriously enough. ‘No, Paul. French wasn’t offered in my school.’

Paul seemed surprised. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I thought it was pretty well standard now, but there you are. Anyway, when Matthew gets back, he will join the old man at the factory. Without him, I might not be on my way to being Dr Connolly, or not at least without some argument and unpleasantness.’

‘I nearly didn’t get here either,’ Carmel said.

‘Was there some opposition from your parents too?’ Paul asked, and then without waiting for a reply went on, ‘Your father, I bet. Lots of fathers object to their daughters working. Hell of an old-fashioned idea today, I think. Was that it?’

Carmel wondered what Paul would say if she was to answer, ‘No, Paul, not quite. My father had me out grafting for his beer money since I was fourteen years old and the opposition he felt when I attempted to escape his clutches led to him beating me so severely I still have the marks of his belt on my back.’ But she wouldn’t say that, couldn’t say it. Instead she said, ‘Something like that.’

She knew that Paul moved in circles far different from her own. His family owned a factory, for heaven’s sake. Paul and his brother had probably gone to private school, places where the teaching of languages was standard, and they could both swan off to France without causing any sort of financial constraint. He lived in the sort of world where many daughters did stay at home until they were married, where it wasn’t considered quite the done thing to go out to work, but did it matter that friends came from different backgrounds?

However, Paul wanted more than friendship. He knew he was risking the relationship they had, speaking from his heart, and yet he felt he had to tell Carmel how he felt because it was chewing him up inside.

He slid his arm tentatively round her shoulders. Usually he never touched her, but what she had allowed him to do in the cinema had heartened him and he was filled with hope when she didn’t throw his arm off.

In fact Carmel thought she should, for she remembered Lois’s word about playing fast and loose with Paul’s feelings, but she didn’t want to. It felt just so right resting there.

Paul said ‘If friendship is all you can offer me, I will take it and welcome, for I value that highly, but you should know that I love you with all my heart and soul. I have done since the moment I saw you in the Bull Ring and I imagine I will go to my grave loving you. Whether you return that love or not, I have to tell you how I feel.’

Carmel didn’t reply straight away. Then she chose her words with care. ‘This has come as a bit of a shock,’ she said. ‘I mean, I knew how you felt about me once. I suppose I thought you’d got over it, come to your senses.’ She stopped, gave a sigh and then said, ‘I don’t know how I feel about you now and that is the honest truth. What I will say is that I have a higher regard for you

than any other man I have ever met.’

‘Will you think about what I have said?’

‘Of course, but what if I cannot return your feelings?’

‘Then we will go on as before.’

‘Won’t that be hard for you?’

‘It’s hard for me now.’

‘Maybe,’ Carmel said, ‘it would be better for you to cool our friendship, give you time to meet someone else who could love you the same way you say you love me now.’ She realised as soon as the words were out of her mouth how upset she would be if he did that, but for his happiness she would bear it.

Paul suddenly caught her hand and swung her round to face him. ‘It would break my heart if I were never to see you again,’ he said earnestly. ‘That is the honest truth.’

They had reached the door of the nurses’ home, and Paul leaned over and kissed Carmel on the cheek. ‘Sweet dreams, Carmel,’ he whispered softly.

She was smiling as she closed the door behind her.

The room was quiet and in darkness, Jane and Sylvia asleep, Lois not in yet, and Carmel was glad of it. She had to sort out her feelings before she would be able to share them and she was soon in bed and reliving the time she had spent with Paul again and again.

She eventually fell into a deep sleep, so deep she didn’t hear Lois come in. She dreamed that she was back in Ireland with her drunken father roaring at her mother and lashing at her and any who tried to go to her aid. When she felt the belt cut across her back, she was jerked awake with a yelp of terror. She lay back down and tried to still the panic. It was just a dream, she told herself, that was all. This here and now was reality.

Eventually, her breathing got easier and she was ready to drop off again, when suddenly her eyes shot open as she suddenly realised that she owed it to Paul to tell him all about her background. She shouldn’t have secrets about where she came from, what her beginnings were, though she had never wanted to bring that sordidness and brutality into her life here. Ah, dear Christ, she thought, when Paul knew the type of home she came from, it would wipe the love from his eyes all right.

Should she break off any friendship they shared before they got in any deeper? But then she remembered him saying that his heart would be broken if she did that, and the bleak look in his eyes when he said it. Could she inflict that hurt on someone she cared for?

The dilemma she found herself in drove sleep well away and when it was eventually time to rise she felt like a bit of chewed string. She hoped that Lois wasn’t going to ask questions about Paul, but fortunately she was more interested in talking about her and Chris, and Carmel was grateful.

As soon as her shift was over and she had eaten a scratch meal, she set off for the church, knowing the priest would be there to hear confession in the evening. She wanted so badly to pour her feelings out to someone.

When Father Donahue saw Carmel enter the church, and the dejected stance of her, he rushed forward and led her to one of the pews. ‘Carmel, my dear child, what is all this? Are you in trouble of some kind?’ He hoped, even as he spoke the words, that she wasn’t in that kind of trouble.

Carmel looked at the priest, her eyes glistening with tears and said. ‘It’s trouble of my own making, Father, for I think I must tell Paul our friendship is over.’

‘And why is this, my dear?’ the priest asked gently, sitting down beside her.

‘It’s because of something from my past. Something no one can help me with.’

‘I see,’ the priest said. ‘And this thing—was it something you did, something you could confess, get forgiveness for and put behind you?’

‘It wasn’t anything I did, Father.’

‘But you are not responsible for the sins of others.’

‘I know that deep down, Father,’ Carmel said. ‘It’s just…I can’t expect Paul to…He’s going to be a doctor, Father.’

Father Donahue had seen Carmel in the church a few times with Paul and had been delighted that she had found herself a good Catholic boy. Carmel’s duties prevented her from doing more than attending Mass on Sunday and Holy Days and she had been unable to go to any social events where she might meet other Catholic young people.

When he expressed this regret not long after Carmel made herself known to him, she had told him not to worry; that she didn’t intend marrying anyone. He had hidden his smile, though he did say she was young to make such a momentous decision. He couldn’t help thinking, however, that a doctor was a good catch for this girl, whom the nuns had told him came from one of the most desperate families in Letterkenny.

Suddenly the priest knew what Carmel was talking about because shame and degradation were mirrored in her eyes and he said gently, ‘Carmel, I know the sort of home you come from and the sort or rearing you had.’

Carmel’s head shot up and she looked at him in sudden alarm.

He went on in the same soothing voice, ‘The nuns told me. They thought I should know.’

‘Oh, Father,’ Carmel said, and the tears began trickling down her face. She covered her face with her hands and moaned.

The priest took hold of those hands and pulled them from her face as he said, ‘Come, come now, Carmel. Don’t distress yourself like this. There is no need. Have I ever treated you differently because I had this knowledge?’

Carmel made an effort to control herself. ‘No, Father, you haven’t,’ she said. ‘In fact you have always been kindness itself to me. But that isn’t the same everywhere. In Letterkenny, for example, there were many there who looked down on us and I can’t expect Paul to want even friendship from the likes of me.’

‘Are you ashamed of your family, Carmel?’

‘Aye, Father,’ Carmel said. ‘And ashamed of being ashamed.’

‘Then be ashamed no more,’ the priest said. ‘Pity them instead. Take responsibility just for yourself. Seek out your young man and tell him about your background and see what he says.’

‘I couldn’t, Father,’ Carmel said. ‘I couldn’t bear it if he despised me.’

The priest gave Carmel’s hands a small shake and looked deep into her eyes. ‘He will never despise you. The love he has for you shines bright in his eyes and that will not be dimmed when he hears how you were reared. Carmel, you owe it to him to tell him.’

‘You really think so?’

‘I know so. And you speak of friendship—is that all you really want from Paul?’

‘Yes, Father,’ Carmel said. ‘As I said, I never intend to marry.’

‘And how does Paul feel?’

‘He admitted last night that he loves me, Father.’

‘And you can’t feel the same?’

Carmel shook her head and the priest said, ‘I know that I am a fine one to talk about love. But sometimes you have to open your heart and see what God wants for you in the future. I had to open my own so I could hear him calling me to the priesthood. Maybe you are approaching this with your head only, giving reasons why it isn’t sensible to become involved with someone, when really a person’s heart is often a better indicator of what will make them happiest and bring the greatest fulfilment in their lives.’

‘So you think I should keep seeing Paul?’

‘Not if you continue to feel only friendship,’ the priest said ‘That way only pain and anguish wait for him and, knowing you, even as well as I do, you will feel guilty for the hurt inflicted. However, the stumbling block in all this is your background and your home in Letterkenny. You must tell Paul. Give the man a chance and then see if it makes a difference to the way you feel.’

‘All right, then,’ Carmel said with a sigh. ‘I will be guided by you, but it will be the hardest thing I will ever do.’

CHAPTER SIX

Over the next few days Carmel didn’t see Paul to speak to. Any time they had off never fell together and, anyway, he was in the throes of studying for his finals, as Chris was. So Carmel and Lois were thrown together quite a lot, for Jane and Sylvia were courting strongly. Carmel had admitted to Lois what had happened on the walk home after the pictures, and some of what the priest had said, omitting all mention of her background.

‘So how d’you know you don’t actually love Paul, then?’ Lois asked.

Carmel shrugged. ‘How would I know? How does anyone know?’

‘Well, do you think about him a lot?’

‘It used to be just now and then,’ Carmel said. ‘But he’s rarely out of my thoughts at the moment.’

‘And can you imagine life without him, if he wasn’t here, or if he got on with someone else?’

Carmel had to think about that and eventually she said, ‘Yes, when I suggested Paul see other people, as I couldn’t feel for him the way he wanted me to, it gave me quite a pang to think of Paul with another girl, and that quite surprised me. Yes, I would miss him if he was no longer around, if he wasn’t an important part of my life. Oh God!’

‘You have answered your own question,’ Lois said, and hugged her in delight. ‘You are in love with Paul and I know he is besotted with you. I tell you, Carmel, if I can’t have the man myself, there is no one I’d rather he take up with than you. You’ll still have to be careful, though, for if Matron gets one sniff of romance between a junior doctor and one of her probationers they’ll likely be “wigs on the green”, as my Uncle Jeff is fond of saying.’

But, Carmel couldn’t think about Matron or anyone else. All she could take on board was love for Paul awakening in her and the joy and wonder of it. The thing spoken about in literature and poems, and sung about in ballads and laments down through the centuries, and the one thing she thought she would never experience because she wasn’t going to allow herself to. Oh, how she had underestimated the power of that emotion, she realised. Then she remembered that she still had to tell Paul all about herself and her family and she still shrank from doing that.

She decided to shelve everything till after her holiday, which despite the pleading of her mother for her to go home, she was spending again at the convent on the Hagley Road.

‘What about Paul?’ Lois asked.

‘What about him?’ Carmel said. ‘When his exams are over he can come and see me. I have my own room there and far more chance of privacy than here in the nurses’ home. I haven’t even had a chance of telling him my feelings have changed so drastically and I will need privacy then.’

Lois could see the sense of that and so could Paul when she told him of her plans. But really all his energies were centred on his finals.

At last, by early July, the dreaded exams were over and Carmel and Paul were making up a foursome with Chris and Lois the following night to celebrate that fact. Carmel was feeling very happy that evening as she was returning from benediction. It was just turning dusk and she was glad that she would be back in the hospital before the dark had really set in, when she heard a distinct groan coming from an alleyway to her right.

She stopped, her senses alerted, and listened as she peered into the gloom of the entry. The low moan came again. Tentatively, Carmel went towards the black hole. Attacks on individuals in the city centre had been getting frequent of late and had made everyone nervous. Carmel did wonder if this was some sort of trick to lure her into an unlit place. Her senses were on high alert as she moved cautiously, feeling the walls with her shaking fingers, expecting any moment to feel hands grabbing at her, pulling her further in.

Scared though she was, she knew even if she hadn’t trained as a nurse, she couldn’t walk past a person groaning in pain as if it was no business of hers.

Anyway, she told herself wryly, if anyone was to attack me in the hope of rich pickings, they would be on a losing wicket because I haven’t a penny piece on me.

All thoughts of it all being some sort of trick fled a few moments later, however, when Carmel’s shuffling feet came in contact with something on the ground. She could see virtually nothing, just a vague mound, and she was suddenly so scared the hairs on the back of her neck rose. She kneeled and put her hands out hesitantly and felt clothing, like a jacket. She wished to God she had some sort of light for she knew there was a person lying there too injured to move. More confidently now, she ran her hands expertly over the prone and twisted form, checking for any kind of injury. She could find nothing obvious until she came to the person’s head, where her fingers located a gaping sticky wound with blood still seeping from it. Gently, she laid two fingers against the neck and felt the pulse. She pursed her lips at the irregularity of it.

She knew the man needed help and fast, and yet she hesitated to leave him. Maybe there was someone still in the church? She ran to the edge of the entry and was greatly relieved to see Father Donahue in the church doorway. ‘Oh, Father,’ she cried.

‘What is it, my dear?’ the priest said, hurrying towards Carmel, taking in her agitated state first and then seeing her fingers covered in blood. ‘What has happened?’

‘There is an injured man in the entry, Father,’ Carmel said pointing. ‘At least from his clothes and haircut, I take it he is a man. I heard him groaning, that’s what alerted me, but now he seems to have lapsed into unconsciousness. He is bleeding profusely from a head wound and his pulse rate is erratic. He needs treatment, and as quickly as possible, but I would hate to leave him.’

‘I will alert them at the hospital, never fear,’ the priest said. ‘But shouldn’t we try to bring the poor unfortunate person more into the light?’

‘We should not move him, Father,’ Carmel said. ‘Tell them to bring torches, flashlights, anything, but hurry, Father. I will stay with him till someone comes.’

It was easier this time to go into the entry. When she got to the man, she felt the floor around him and the pool of blood, and she knew she had to stanch the wound. Glad there was none to see her, she pulled her dress and underslip over her head and ripped the slip into strips to pack and bind the wound before replacing her dress.

When the doctors came in with the stretcher and flashlights they found Carmel kneeling in the puddle of blood herself, as she had lifted the man’s head slightly on to her knees so that she could stanch the flow more effectively.

‘Good work, Nurse Duffy,’ one of the senior doctors said to her. ‘Now if you let us in we will see what is the matter with the poor fellow.’

‘Certainly, Doctor,’ Carmel said, easing the man’s head from her so that she could get up. One of the doctors played the flashlight on to the injured man’s face and when Carmel saw who it was, she staggered and would have fallen if the doctor hadn’t caught her arm.

‘You’ve stiffened up sitting there so long,’ he said, not understanding.

But Carmel saw that the man whose head she had cradled in her lap was none other than Paul Connolly, whose face had been battered so badly he looked more dead than alive.

‘Christ Almighty,’ she heard the doctor exclaim behind her. ‘It’s young Connolly.’

There were a thousand questions burning in her brain. What was Paul doing there? What had happened him? How badly hurt was he?

‘It’s Paul,’ she told the priest, still waiting at the entrance with the orderlies who had brought the stretcher. ‘I am going to go down to the hospital with them. I need to see if he’s going to be all right.’

The priest saw Carmel’s bleak eyes filled with worry and he said, ‘I’ll come with you.’ Carmel just nodded and knew she would be glad of the man by her side.

‘They’ll not likely be able to tell you anything for some time,’ one of the orderlies said. ‘And you really need to get cleaned up.’

Carmel looked down at herself. Blood covered her dress from the waist, though there were also some splashes on the bodice, and her legs and hands were coated with it. But none of this mattered. The only thing that did was that the man she had just realised she loved above all others was desperately ill. She said, ‘I will wash my hands but the rest can wait. Knowing that Dr Connolly is going to be all right is the only thing that counts.’

Many saw the state of Carmel as she went into the hospital that evening flanked by the priest. Then the young doctor was carried in on a stretcher and everyone was agog with curiosity.

Father Donahue sought out the staff nurse on duty and informed her of events. ‘Carmel tells me Dr Connolly has a cousin here in the hospital,’ he went on to say, ‘a probationer called Lois Baker.’

‘Yes, I was aware of that,’ the staff nurse said. ‘I will see that she is informed, as well as Dr Connolly’s parents.’

Minutes later, Lois scurried down the corridor. She hadn’t been told of Carmel’s involvement and when she saw her sitting there beside the priest, she was surprised, but as she drew closer and saw the bedraggled and bloodstained state of her, she became alarmed.

‘What is it? What’s happened to you?’ she cried.

‘Nothing,’ Carmel told her. ‘This isn’t my blood, it’s Paul’s.’

‘Paul’s?’

‘What have you been told?’

‘That Paul has had some kind of accident.’

Carmel hesitated and then said, ‘He has a head injury that was bleeding quite badly. I don’t know if he was injured anywhere else, it was too dark to see.’

‘Why? Where was this?’

‘I found him in an entry off Whittall Street, not far from St Chad’s,’ Carmel said. ‘I think he was attacked.’

‘Is he badly hurt?’ Lois asked in a voice so low it was almost a whisper.

‘I don’t know,’ Carmel said sorrowfully. ‘That is why I am waiting—to find out.’

She was suddenly overcome by the enormity of it all and the self-control she had kept a tight rein on began to dissolve. Her voice broke as she turned anguished eyes to Lois and cried. ‘Oh, Lois, what am I to do? I couldn’t bear to lose Paul now.’

‘Hush,’ Lois said, holding her friend’s shuddering shoulders as she wept. ‘I’m sure he will be all right.’ But she was aware she was only hoping.

‘It’s the not knowing anything that gets to you in the end,’ Father Donahue said.

‘Yes,’ said Lois. ‘No one seems to understand what loved ones go through, sitting in corridors like this, not knowing anything hour after hour. I fully understand that the doctors hate being harassed when they are busy with a patient, but someone could come out now and again and tell you something. You will find that when my uncle comes he will not be content to wait around. If there is no one to tell him anything when he arrives he will go and find out for himself.’

Lois was absolutely right. Paul’s father was a big man with quite a ruddy complexion. His hair was almost black, as was the moustache he sported above his wide and generous mouth, but it was his wife that Paul had got his looks from. Emma was still a very beautiful woman, with creamy skin, a rosebud mouth, and dark blonde hair.

Lois introduced Carmel and the priest to Paul’s parents. Carmel saw that though Emma’s blue eyes and Jeff’s dark, rather brooding ones, were filled with concern, Emma was also alarmed at the state of Carmel. This didn’t lessen when Lois explained that it had been Carmel that had found Paul injured in the entry and that was why she was covered with blood. Carmel was heartily glad she had recovered her composure a little and stopped crying, though she could do little about her puffy eyes, for she had the impression that appearance meant everything to Paul’s mother.

‘And how is Paul now?’ Jeff demanded.

Lois shook her head. ‘We’ve heard nothing since we arrived.’

‘Well,’ said Jeff, ‘I’ll not stand for that. I’ll find someone to tell us something, or my name isn’t Jeffrey Connolly. Come on, Emma, we deserve to be told what’s going on.’

‘Told you what he would do,’ Lois said as they watched Jeff authoritatively push open the door they had been sitting outside and march through it with Emma on his arm.

‘I’m glad he has,’ Carmel said. ‘It’s awful just sitting here.’

‘Don’t I know it?’ said Lois, morosely.

Jeff was back in a relatively short space of time to tell them that Paul had been severely beaten.

‘A right bloody mess he is,’ he said angrily. ‘Beg your pardon, Father, but it’s the thought of what some madman has done to my boy.’

‘I fully understand,’ the priest said. ‘Was it theft?’

‘Yeah, so they say. Everything was lifted from him,’ Jeff said. ‘They say he probably put up some sort of resistance and that was why the attack was so severe but, God Almighty, Father, you should see him. He has quite a few broken ribs and his body and face are a mass of bruises, but, of course, it’s the head wound and him still being unconscious that’s worrying them. They are preparing him now to go down for X-ray. I just popped out to tell you, like. Oh,’ he said to Carmel, ‘the coppers have been informed, so they might pay you a visit, as you found him.’

‘I can hardly help them,’ Carmel said. ‘I mean, I saw nothing.’

‘Well, they will probably come and question you anyway,’ Jeff said. ‘You know what the police are like. I’m going back inside now, because I want to be there when the X-ray results come back.’

‘And I am going to phone Daddy,’ Lois said, and Jeff nodded his approval.

When the door had closed behind Paul’s father, Carmel asked incredulously. ‘Have you a phone right inside the house?’

‘Yes,’ Lois said. ‘Lucky, aren’t we? It was put in when I began training, for Mother, you know, but it’s handy now.’

When Lois had gone, Carmel turned to the priest. ‘I think I’ll leave now,’ she said. ‘I know at least that Paul isn’t dead and no one is likely to know any more for some time. Anyway, this is a family time. If the police want to see me I would like to get out of these clothes and have a bit of a wash first.’

‘I don’t blame you,’ the priest said. ‘I’ll wait on a wee while longer.’

‘All right, Father. Good night then.’

Carmel had only just washed and changed into clean clothes when Sister Magee knocked on the door to tell her there was a policeman downstairs to talk to her and that she had made her office available.

Carmel thanked her and ran down the stairs. The policeman had been seated, but he rose as she came in. ‘I honestly don’t know what I can tell you,’ she said, taking a seat the policeman indicated. ‘I mean, I am not being awkward or anything, but I had just come from the church and I neither saw nor heard anything till that first groan.’

‘Just tell us everything in your own words,’ the man said, ‘and we’ll go from there.’

Carmel told him all she remembered. Sometimes the policeman stopped her to go over a point, but still, she was done in only a few minutes. ‘That’s about it. I don’t know whether that helps or not,’ Carmel said.

‘You never know in a case like this with no witnesses,’ the policeman said.

‘One thing I did think odd,’ Carmel said. ‘Paul was in an entry in a side street. Haven’t the other recent attacks being in the city centre and the victim just left there?’

‘We don’t think Dr Connolly was attacked in Whittall Street at all,’ the policeman told her. ‘We won’t be sure of where he was attacked till first light and we think he put up one hell of a fight. The doctors have verified this. Possibly because he retaliated, his attacker or attackers really laid into him. Probably thought they had done him in, didn’t want him found too soon and dragged him to the entry. We’ve been up and seen the scuff marks and spots of blood on the pavement leading away from the city centre. You saved that young chap’s life tonight.’

Carmel flushed in embarrassment. ‘Oh, surely…’

‘Straight up, the doctor told us himself,’ the policeman said. ‘He said the young man had lost a lot of blood and if you hadn’t heard him and used your expertise to stop the bleeding, he wouldn’t be here now. So, you can feel right proud of yourself. I bet that Paul Connolly will be grateful when he hears about it.’

There was a sense of unreality about the next couple of days as the news of the heroism of Carmel flew round the hospital. Carmel thought the whole thing silly. It was what anyone would have done, she said; it was nothing special.

Each day she asked after Paul but as she couldn’t claim any special relationship with him she was only told that he was ‘satisfactory’ or ‘as well as could be expected’. Lois learned little more and Carmel cancelled her holiday, not wishing to be far from the hospital while Paul lay critically ill. She knew that his condition would remain critical until he regained consciousness. This happened four days later. It was Lois who told her and she also said the first indications were that there was no brain damage.

‘He still has to be careful, of course, because he has been well bashed about,’ Lois went on. ‘And then whatever he was hit with fractured his skull, but he is now off the official danger list, though it will be weeks yet, they say, before he will be completely recovered. Anyway, because there is no brain damage, and providing he continues to improve, he is allowed visitors from tomorrow. Paul is asking to see you and, I’ll tell you, if it had been anyone but you I would have been as jealous as hell.’

Carmel had the urge to grasp Lois by the waist and dance a jig around the room, but she contented herself with a hug. ‘Oh God! That is the best news I have heard in ages.’

When Carmel did see Paul the following evening she was shocked, but managed to bite back the gasp of dismay. He was lying flat on his back with foam pads supporting his head, immobilising it. Almost a week after the attack, the bruising was well out on his face, which was a mass of colours from mauve to green, his nose looked as if it had been broken and his bottom lip had been split open and was stitched but swollen to twice its normal size. He also had a bandage swathing his head and smudged blackness was around and underneath both eyes, but the eyes themselves, as soon as he realised she was in the room, lit up with delight.

Carmel saw the pain still reflected in those eyes and felt immense pity for Paul and how he had suffered and was still suffering, but she knew he’d hate to guess her thoughts and so instead she said, ‘Hello, Paul. What did the other fellow look like?’

She was relieved to hear the chuckle she loved so much as he answered, ‘Worse, death’s door, I believe, and thank God for you. Everyone else is pussyfooting around me, treating me like a bloody invalid.’

Carmel thought this was not the time or place, nor did she have the right to say what she would like to do this moment, which was to wrap him in cotton wool herself and not let any harm come to him ever again. Seeing him lying there so vulnerable was doing funny things to her innards.

‘Come on up and sit on the bed where I can look at you.’

‘Dr Connolly,’ Carmel said in mock severity, ‘you know that sitting on the bed is expressly forbidden.’

‘Yeah,’ Paul said. ‘And you know what? Since I have been on the other end, so to speak, I have come to realise that we have stupid rules that don’t make any sense. How can I tell you how grateful I am to you for saving my life so that you can see in my eyes that I mean every word from the bottom of my heart if you don’t sit on the bed?’

Carmel waved her hand dismissively, but Paul caught hold of it and held it tight. ‘Don’t say it was nothing, please,’ he said. ‘The doctors gave it to me straight. If you hadn’t found me, I wouldn’t be here today.’

Carmel was embarrassed by Paul’s humbleness and relieved to see his parents approach the bed. She got to her feet and extended her hand to greet them.

‘Good evening,’ she said. ‘We only met the once. You’d hardly remember me. You were rightly concerned about Paul then.’

As she shook Carmel’s hand Emma noticed the easy way the girl used her son’s Christian name and she saw a light shining in her son’s eyes that had never been there before.

‘Please stay a little longer,’ Paul pleaded. ‘My parents too would like to thank you.’

‘I can only stay a minute or two,’ Carmel said. ‘You know there are only two allowed at the bedside and if Matron was to see me breaking yet another hospital rule, she really would haul me over the coals.’

Emma knew she had much to thank this girl for because she had saved her son’s life, but she hoped Paul’s gratitude didn’t run to him fancying himself in love with her. She was just a nurse and not the right companion for Paul, even if she was a friend of her niece’s. Emma had set her sights for Paul a little higher than that. However, she knew she had to keep these thoughts to herself and so she thanked the girl.

Carmel accepted her thanks graciously, although she had noticed Emma’s cold eyes and knew the woman was just going through the motions.

Jeff was as different again. Always naturally effusive and swayed by a pretty face, he was busy pumping Carmel’s hand up and down as if he never intended to let it go, while he told her over and over how grateful he was.

‘We don’t know how to thank you. Indeed, we are all indebted to you,’ he went on. ‘When I think of how the outcome could have been so different…Well, it doesn’t bear thinking about. If it hadn’t been for your intervention and with you knowing what to do as well…Lois has done nothing but sing your praises. You really are a remarkable and very brave young lady. And don’t you try and pass it off as if it was nothing,’ he said, wagging his finger at her in mock severity. ‘You were brave. Those doctors told me how it was—the dark entry you ventured into when you heard Paul groan, when many would have passed by, just kept on walking and told themselves it was none of their business. But you are made of sterner stuff. As I say, without you, this son of mine might not be lying in a hospital bed today, getting the best of treatment and being waited on hand and foot, and let me tell you—;’

‘Dad,’ Paul interjected, ‘you have told enough. You haven’t let Carmel get a word in edgeways and you have embarrassed the life out of her, so that her face is the colour of beetroot at the moment. Leave her alone now. I think she has established just how grateful you are.’

Jeff took his son’s rebuke and said sheepishly, ‘I do get carried away. Sorry, lass.’

The apology made Carmel feel worse. ‘Please don’t apologise,’ she said. ‘I do understand how you feel, but truly, anyone would have done what I did and I’m just thankful that Paul has made such a remarkable recovery. And now I must leave you, because out of the corner of my eye, I can see Matron making her way towards me with all guns blazing.’

Paul knew she would get into trouble if she lingered further and so instead he said, ‘Will you come again?’ And when she hesitated he went on, ‘Please? Come tomorrow.’

‘All right then,’ Carmel said. ‘I am on days this week. I’ll come tomorrow evening. Now I really must dash. Lovely to meet you again,’ she said to Paul’s parents before beating a hasty retreat.

‘That wasn’t so hard, was it?’ Lois said, when Carmel got back to their room.

‘I don’t suppose so. Now everyone has got their thanks out of the way, maybe I can have a normal sort of visit next time.’

‘And mop his fevered brow, like?’

‘Do you know you are just about the most aggravating person to know?’ Carmel said. She lobbed a pillow at Lois’s head and the two collapsed in giggles.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Carmel wasn’t the only one to visit Paul—in fact, he often had a plethora of visitors. His friends went usually in the morning, the rules relaxed somewhat with Paul being a doctor. His parents also went frequently and Paul told Carmel one evening that even his brother had made a flying visit from Paris. Lois wanted to see Paul too, of course, and her parents, and yet if he was asked, Paul would have requested they all stay home for it was Carmel’s visits he longed for. But of course he never said this.

Carmel too looked forward to seeing Paul, taking joy in the fact that he was improving slowly. His mouth had been so damaged he had had to have his food puréed at first, and he was ecstatic the day the stitches were removed from his lip and he could start to enjoy normal food again. Other milestones were when they said he no longer needed the drips, and when the foam pads were removed and he was able to move his head from side to side. The bandage encircling his head was removed a little later and Carmel saw where his head had been shaved for the large wound to be stitched, although hair like soft down was already beginning to cover it.

Just days after this, the nurses began propping him up in the bed, for short periods at first, but these would be extended. Paul couldn’t help but be excited about that and Carmel understood, knowing how frustrated he often was. She visited him every day and they talked about everything under the sun, but never about anything that mattered, the confines of the public ward, which Paul had now been moved to, making that impossible.

Then one day, when Carmel had been visiting Paul for over five weeks, she found him propped up in the armchair by his bed, with a rug tucked around him. ‘I’ll try and get a wheelchair for when you come in tomorrow,’ he told her excitedly.

Carmel was as pleased as he was, but she commented drily, ‘You are very sure of yourself, aren’t you? What makes you so certain I will visit tomorrow?’

‘Because I command it and you must do what a poor, sickly patient asks.’

‘Since when?’ Carmel asked with a smile and added sarcastically, ‘What hospital did you say you trained at?’

‘This one,’ Paul said. ‘But I’ll not be at it much longer. As soon as they discharge me, I am away out of this.’

Carmel felt a stab of disappointment. ‘Where will you go?’

‘Queen’s,’ he said.

‘Queen’s?’ Carmel repeated, puzzled for a moment, and then she cried out, ‘You have had your exam results?’

Paul’s grin nearly split his face in two. ‘Yes, and I passed everything so I have accepted the post at Queen’s that they offered to me provisionally, dependent on my grades.’

‘Oh, Paul!’ Spontaneously Carmel threw her arms around him and felt the beat of her heart match his. She melted against him as he held her fast and wished the moment could go on and on.

‘Carmel, I—;’

‘Hush,’ Carmel said, putting a finger to his lips. ‘Not here and not now.’

She pulled away reluctantly and wondered if her face was as flushed as Paul’s was. She knew soon she and Paul would have to talk seriously and this time she wouldn’t back out of it or try to dodge the issue.

When Carmel went into the hospital the following evening, it was to see Paul sitting up in a wheelchair with a broad and triumphant grin on his face.

‘I had to fight for this,’ he said, pointing to the wheelchair. ‘But I won in the end. I thought we might sit in the day room for a change.’

The day room was at the end of the ward and usually virtually deserted as most patients were still unable to leave their beds. Without a word of protest, Carmel took hold of the handles of the wheelchair.

She had never been in the room before and thought it a very unwelcoming place. The bare walls were a dull dirty beige colour, while the paintwork was dark brown, and rigid and uncompromising chairs were grouped before the wireless, or beside one of the tables, which had magazines and papers scattered across it.

The drabness didn’t help Carmel’s mood or help her form the words she had to say if she and Paul were to move forward, have any sort of future together. She sat down beside him in one of the uncomfortable chairs, aware that her heart was hammering against her ribs and her mouth was so dry she wondered how she would be able to speak at all.

Sensing her nervousness, Paul took up one of her hands, noting that it was clammy with sweat. His heart went out to her. ‘Go on, darling,’ he urged. ‘Nothing on God’s earth should cause you this much pain.’

Carmel tried to swallow the lump in her throat threatening to choke her. Her eyes were full of trepidation, ‘Oh, Paul,’ she breathed.

Paul gave her hand a squeeze and Carmel took a deep breath and slowly and hesitantly she told him of her family. She didn’t exaggerate, but nor did she pull any punches.

Paul listened and said not a word. Inside he was raging that such things had happened to the girl he was beginning to realise meant more to him that life itself, but knew that wasn’t the way to deal with this problem, which Carmel saw as such an obstacle to her own happiness.

So, when Carmel eventually drew to a close, Paul said, ‘Is that it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know what I mean,’ Paul said. ‘You have let people who aren’t even here dictate to you. Because of your family and primarily because of your father, you were half prepared to say goodbye to me, weren’t you? I felt it and that is why I made that declaration that evening. It was done in desperation.’

‘But…I don’t know what you are talking about,’ Carmel cried. ‘I have told you how it is, how my father—;’

‘Stop, right there,’ Paul commanded. ‘You are talking of your father, not you. I am not interested in your father—in fact, after the way he has treated you, I would be hard-pressed to even be civil to the man—but what I think of your father bears no relation to how I think about you. You shouldn’t have to ask how that is, but I will tell you anyway.’ He looked deep into her eyes as he said, ‘I love you, Carmel, with every fibre of my being, and until the end of time, and I need to know how you feel about me.’

Carmel, seeing the passion in Paul’s face and hearing it in his voice, knew if she rejected this man that she loved because of the actions of her father, he would have won and she would be miserable every day of her life. She was determined now, as she had never been before, that she wouldn’t let that happen. And so she said, ‘There are not enough words written to tell you how much I love you, but I’ll try. I love you, I love you, I love…’

But her words were lost as Paul gave her a sudden tug and she fell against him. When their lips met, the words no longer mattered.

They talked and talked, but now it was as if she was on another plain altogether, a wonderful place where only she and Paul existed. Now that she had at last admitted her deep love for him, she drank in everything: the timbre of his voice, the way he held his head, moved his hands, his beautiful smile that lit up his whole face, and the full and luscious lips she longed to kiss. When Paul lifted one of Carmel’s hands, which he still held, and kissed her fingers one by one, the tremors went all through her body.

Paul smiled in satisfaction. Nothing mattered any more now that Carmel loved him as much as he loved her.

‘Carmel, forgive me for not getting down on one knee,’ he said, ‘but the sentiment is the same. You wondrous, beautiful and desirable girl, will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?’

‘Oh, yes, Paul,’ Carmel cried. ‘Yes, yes, yes. A thousand times yes, but…’

Paul knew what was disturbing Carmel. ‘When you have finished your training, of course. In the meantime I will get established at Queen’s and then I will decide whether I want to carry on there, move somewhere else, or possibly specialise.’

‘You wouldn’t fancy being a GP somewhere?’

Paul shook his head. ‘Not at the moment, certainly. Maybe when I am older and greyer, but for the moment I like hospital work. D’you mind that?’

‘Whatever you do is fine by me,’ Carmel said. ‘And I would go with you to Outer Mongolia, wherever that is, if you wished me to.’

‘I don’t think there will be a call for you to do that,’ Paul said with a grin. ‘I was thinking more about another area of Brum.’

‘Were you?’ Carmel said in mock disappointment. ‘What a boring man you are.’

‘I’ll give you boring, my girl, when I am out of this damn thing and on my two legs again,’ Paul said.

‘I can hardly wait,’ Carmel said, and at the seductiveness in her voice and the light of excitement dancing in her eyes, Paul felt as if his whole body was on fire.

‘Oh, Carmel, I do so love you.’

Before Carmel was able to make any sort of reply, the bell denoting the end of visiting trilled out. Carmel looked at Paul bleakly. Never had time passed so quickly. ‘Oh, Paul.’

‘I know, my darling,’ he said. ‘But I won’t be in here for ever, never fear. Will you be able to come tomorrow?’

‘You just try and keep me away,’ Carmel said. ‘But for now I’d better take you back on to the ward.’

‘One more kiss before you do?’ Paul pleaded.

Carmel kneeled on the floor beside the wheelchair and put her arms around Paul, and when their lips met it was as if a fire had been lit in both of them, and Carmel moaned in pleasure.

Paul thought briefly of teasing her mouth open, but decided against it. He knew Carmel would have been untouched by any man and he would have to proceed slowly, or he could frighten her. Anyway, there was no rush. They had a whole lifetime before them.

The news of the engagement of Paul Connolly and Carmel Duffy flew around the hospital and everyone, except perhaps Aileen Roberts and Matron, seemed pleased. Paul was no longer a student, but a qualified doctor and had never been under Matron’s jurisdiction anyway, but the situation was different for Carmel. When Matron sent for her, Carmel went with her heart quaking.

‘You know that fraternising with the doctors is expressly forbidden,’ Matron said. ‘And yet you must have disobeyed my instructions because no one gets engaged in five minutes.’

‘I’m sorry, Matron,’ Carmel said. ‘I met Paul through Lois, who is his cousin. We were just friends at first. I didn’t intend this to happen at all.’

‘Does nursing not matter to you?’

‘Of course, Matron,’ Carmel said. ‘I wouldn’t dream of getting married before I qualified. Paul understands this perfectly.’

Catherine Turner was disappointed with Carmel. She had had her marked down as a girl fully committed to her career, and now look. But there was nothing she could do about it. Once married, most husbands wanted their wives at home and most women wanted to care for their man, and it would be one more good nurse lost.

Paul’s parents congratulated them both, though Carmel knew that only his father was sincerely pleased. Carmel hoped that in time Paul’s mother would accept her, for she certainly didn’t want to cause any sort of rift between them. He had made clear that he thought a lot of his parents. Carmel knew he owed them a lot, for they had supported him through medical school, and without their support it would have been a lot more difficult for him to have qualified as a doctor.

Emma Connolly did think it was hard to hold resentment for a girl that might possibly have saved her son’s life, and doubtless Paul was grateful to her, but she thought a person could carry gratitude too far. Surely Paul could see that he didn’t have to marry the girl.

He had virtually been promised to Melissa Chisholm since birth, and she had all the right connections. Paul and she had had a thing going before medical school and finishing school separated them. Emma had thought that by the time he qualified, Paul would have sown all the wild oats he needed and be ready to settle down with Melissa. It would have happened that way if the nurse Carmel Duffy hadn’t happened along when she did, when Paul was sick and vulnerable. If Paul couldn’t see how unsuitable such a marriage was, Emma was certain the girl would when it was pointed out to her.

She had mentioned her concerns to Jeff and really didn’t know why she bothered because as usual he couldn’t see a problem. ‘Paul’s happy enough,’ he said. ‘I can quite see why he’s attracted to Carmel, for she looks such a fragile little thing, though to be a nurse she must be very strong. Added to that, she is very easy on the eye, and a friend of our Lois’s. What more do you want? And you know if she was none of these things and still Paul’s choice, then that would be that.’

‘The girl will never fit in,’ Emma said through tight lips. ‘Surely you can see that?’

‘No I can’t,’ Jeff said. ‘Paul is no longer in short trousers, but a man of twenty-five and he must be let live his life without interference. Anyway, I reckon, he could go further and fare worse. Carmel is his choice and that, as far as I am concerned, is that.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

It was the last week of September and Paul was preparing to leave hospital after nearly ten weeks. His parents had planned a big celebration, both to welcome him home and also as a belated congratulations party for his exam successes.

Carmel thought the party might be to announce his engagement too, but Paul explained his mother wanted no one to know yet, not until the ring was bought, and then she would put an announcement in The Times and have a proper engagement party. Carmel thought it odd, but decided in the end to go along with the plan. Maybe in the middle classes it was how things were done. How would she know?

She was nervous about the party, and immensely glad Lois and Chris had been asked too. She was certain she would be amongst people from a different social class, and not at all sure whether she would pass muster.

This was exactly how Emma wanted her to feel. She had arranged the most lavish party. Jeff had grumbled at the expense and even Paul had queried the flamboyance.

‘And why shouldn’t it be a magnificent affair?’ Emma asked teasingly. ‘Not only is my son soon to be an eminent doctor, but he was also only recently snatched from the jaws of death.’

Paul laughed. ‘A little dramatic, Mother,’ he said, giving her a hug. ‘But that’s you, isn’t it? Should have been on the stage.’

‘What a tease you are, Paul,’ Emma said, tapping him playfully on the cheek.

With another smile, Paul went off to find his father, who was the one who would have to pay for his mother’s latest foolishness. And that is all he thought it was: getting one over on the neighbours, rubbing their noses in his success and stressing the fact that the Connollys could afford to celebrate in such a way.

That was only a part of Emma’s plan. The biggest part was to make Carmel feel uncomfortable—so uncomfortable that she would realise, without a shadow of a doubt, that she would never fit into their world. The guest list had been worked out carefully and Emma had adjusted the original seating plan to her advantage.

Unaware of Emma’s deviousness, Carmel worried what she would wear to such an occasion, though clothes were usually not a problem any more because the girls, much of a muchness in size, usually pooled all they had. Lois had a lot more than the others, and more expensive usually, but was always generous at sharing. So Carmel set out that night in a dress borrowed from Lois. It was pure silk of swirled autumn colours, the skirt billowing out from the waist and held out with petticoats that rustled deliciously when she moved. The hem was just below the knee. The court shoes were her own. The dark brown stole, which set the outfit off a treat, was one that Jane had got second-hand at the Rag Market.

Paul’s parents lived in a house Four Oaks, Sutton Coldfield. The first Carmel saw of it was two stone lions that sat atop posts supporting wrought-iron gates. That night the gates stood open for arriving guests and the taxi drove down the sweeping gravel drive to pull up with a crunch in front of a house of enormous proportions.

Carmel looked at the three-storeyed dwelling with the beautifully tended flowerbeds either side of the white steps that led to a balustrade that ran around the house front and also to the oaken and studded front door. She felt her insides quiver with nervousness.

‘D’you live in something like this?’ she asked Lois in an awed whisper.

‘Not half as big or impressive,’ Lois said. ‘Uncle Jeff has real money.’

Carmel could feel her fragile shreds of confidence falling away.

Chris, seeing this and feeling very sorry for her, caught her up with his free arm, his other already entwined with Lois. Then arm in arm with both girls he announced, ‘We’ll do this in style, as if this is the sort of thing we are used to doing every day of the week.’

Carmel was grateful to him for lightening the atmosphere. She truly liked Chris and thought he and Lois well suited. Then Chris, with a huge smile of encouragement, fairly swept them along, their shoes crunching on the gravel, taking the steps at a run and ringing the bell with no hesitation.

‘God, Aunt Emma has surely pushed the boat out for this,’ Lois breathed in Carmel’s ear as a man, dressed in a butler’s uniform, opened the door and took their outer clothing, to be put in the cloakroom.

Paul came out to meet them. He took Carmel’s arm and led her into a huge room, which he called the drawing room, that seemed filled with people with drinks in their hands. Carmel was glad there were soft drinks on offer too and she took one of those while she wandered around happily listening to this one and that talking to Paul and addressing the odd word to her.

Then, she was claimed by Emma, who was pleasantly surprised by Carmel’s outfit, though she hadn’t revised her opinion of her lowly breeding. Carmel saw, with a little dismay, that almost as soon as she left Paul’s side he was surrounded by girls. Emma wasn’t surprised, for he had always been a popular boy and he was very handsome—and now, of course, as a qualified doctor, he would be very eligible indeed.

‘They are girls Paul has known for years,’ Emma told Carmel, following her gaze as she watched Paul almost being mauled by some of these rapacious girls, and laughing as if it was all one big joke. ‘They are part of our set, you see.’

Carmel looked at her. She might as well have added, ‘As you will never be,’

Emma went on, ‘Most have known Paul since their nursery years and they are members of the tennis club, or yachting club or sometimes both. Do you play tennis, Carmel, or have you any experience of sailing?’

Carmel’s eyes narrowed for she realised what Emma was doing and could do or say nothing about it without making an almighty fuss. But she wasn’t going to allow her to talk to her in that supercilious way and get away with it.

‘You must know, Mrs Connolly, that I would have little experience of either of those pastimes.’

‘But you see, my dear, I don’t,’ Emma said. ‘In fact, I don’t know the least thing about you and that is quite worrying because we really need to ascertain whether you are the right sort of wife for Paul.’

‘The right sort of wife?’ Carmel echoed.

‘Yes, one that will help him, enhance his career. Believe me, the right wife can make all the difference to a man’s prospects.’

They loved each other. Did that count for nothing? ‘Isn’t it up to Paul who he marries?’ she asked Emma. ‘Paul and I love each other and—;’

‘D’you know, there is a great deal of nonsense spoken of love?’ Emma said disparagingly. ‘Left to myself I would never have married Jeff. I fancied myself in love with a most unsuitable man and really I wasn’t all that keen on Jeff at all. It was my father who advised me to make a play for him. The other man could never have provided for me as Jeff has, and we get on well enough together. I never gave the other man a moment’s thought, for love, you see, fades and it is a very unstable base to build a marriage on that is to last a lifetime.’

Jeff appeared beside Emma before Carmel could think up a reply. ‘Come, my dear, don’t monopolise Carmel all evening. I want her to meet Matthew.’

Carmel had never met Paul’s brother before and he welcomed her with a bow and then, in a voice dripping with charm, commented on her small stature, her luxuriant hair, her absolute beauty so that soon he had her blushing. He kissed her hand with a flourish, but the hand was held a little too tightly, and the kiss went on too long, and when Carmel tried to pull away she couldn’t, or at least not without making a fuss. It made her feel uneasy.

Later she saw him walk across to Paul and, after looking pointedly in her direction, said something to him in French. Paul was annoyed with him and Carmel didn’t need to understand French to know his retort was angry. Matthew was not the slightest bit abashed and had a smirk on his face as he shrugged and moved off.

Carmel longed to ask what Matthew had said, but the party was too crowded to do that without being overheard, and Paul too much in demand to slip away. Anyway, she told herself, Paul had dealt with it. It was likely nothing at all, but she couldn’t help wishing that the party was over and she was back in her room at the hospital where she felt so at ease and could really be herself.

Things got worse when the gong was struck, alerting everyone that the food was ready to be served.

‘We are eating in the supper room,’ Paul said, as he crossed to stand at Carmel’s side.

‘The supper room?’ she repeated, never having heard of such a place. Then, when she glimpsed the room they were to eat in, her mouth dropped open in amazement.

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