To Have and to Hold (12 page)

‘How could your parents cause you to make a decision like that?’ Jane said. ‘You have been here for over two years.’

‘It’s all linked to my past,’ Carmel said. ‘The past that you are curious about, which I will tell you all about now, if you like.’

‘Tonight I heard for the first time that your father is too sick to work,’ Lois said. ‘So, do you want to go on from there?’

‘Hah, too bloody idle more like,’ Carmel said, and added, ‘the only sickness my father has is the one in his mind because you have to be sick to like inflicting cruelty like he does.’

The three girls didn’t listen to the enfolding tale in silence as Paul had done. They stopped Carmel often to verify or elucidate something. As for Carmel, once she had begun, the words spilled from her mouth in her effort to rid herself of the burden that she had carried around with her for so long.

All the girls were shocked, but also outraged on Carmel’s behalf.

‘No man has a right to get away with this,’ Lois said fiercely.

‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ Carmel said testily. ‘What’s “right” got to do with anything? I’m ashamed I am even related to the man.’

She went on to tell them how it was for her mother and siblings; had been for her too until she had left. The others were shocked into silence as they listened to the true story of a family locked in a life of poverty and deprivation, made worse by the actions of a selfish brute of a father and could better understand Carmel’s attitude to the poor in the Bull Ring.

‘Anyway,’ Carmel said at the end, ‘with my father as an example, I had little time for men and long ago decided marriage was not for me. I didn’t account for falling in love.’

‘Yeah, that gets most of us in the end,’ Lois said. ‘But your marriage to Paul would be different altogether, Carmel. I think he would cut off his right arm before he would lay a hand on you.’

‘I know that,’ Carmel agreed happily. ‘I have no worries on that score, but I did have concerns that I wasn’t doing right by him, but he said he was marrying me, not my family, and the same goes for his too, I suppose. He isn’t to blame for his bloody mother.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us what you were fretting over?’ Lois asked. ‘After all, we have become very close.’

‘That was part of the reason I didn’t,’ Carmel said. ‘You are the only friends I have ever had and I had never got in the habit of confiding in anyone, telling secrets, and I didn’t want you all to look down on me.’

‘Why should we?’ Jane said.

‘Anyway, true friends would never do that,’ Lois said firmly.

‘I know that now,’ Carmel said. ‘But I’d had no experience of friendship when I first arrived here.’

‘I’m surprised that your father agreed to you coming here to take up nursing or any other damned thing,’ Sylvia said. ‘He sounds such a selfish brute.’

‘He didn’t agree,’ Carmel cried. ‘He nearly killed me.’ She described the last beating she had endured at her father’s hands and went on, ‘And though it was bad, it was my passport to freedom because I confronted the priest and he too was shocked by the level of the violence used. He and Sister Frances fully supported me in the end. And then, once I was on my way here, I knew that I had won,’ Carmel said. ‘I had pulled myself out of the mire and I wanted to dust off the shame I had always felt about my family, leave it behind in Ireland and start here on equal terms with everyone else, almost as if my past had never happened.’

‘I understand how you feel,’ Sylvia said. ‘But no one can ever do that.’

‘I know that, but when you asked me things, I would find all the memories crowding back into my mind and I was scared that if you found out, you would all feel differently about me.’

‘I do feel differently about you,’ Jane said. ‘I feel tremendous admiration for you. If I had to cope with all you did, I doubt that I would be here today. You must be a terrifically strong woman, Carmel, who will be able to cope with all that life might throw at you.’

‘Let’s hope it isn’t all that much,’ Sylvia said. ‘We are all going to lead charmed lives, surely?’

‘Course we are,’ Lois said.

Suddenly, tears of gratitude for the friendship of the three girls stung Carmel’s eyes.

‘You are not crying,’ Sylvia said accusingly.

‘No,’ Carmel said, giving a surreptitious sniff.

‘God, but you are one bloody awful liar,’ Sylvia said, giving Carmel a push.

Lois handed her a handkerchief she had tucked up her sleeve and Jane said, ‘We’d best hit the sack. Sylvia and I are on earlies tomorrow and you will have to be up too if you are meeting lover boy.’

Carmel laughed. ‘I’ll have plenty of time, I’d say. Judging by the state he was in last night, I don’t think he will be going anywhere till almost lunchtime.’

About the time Lois and Carmel, who had slept late, were tucking into their breakfast, Emma was tapping on her elder son’s door. She had a tray with a cup of tea and plate of hot buttered toast on it, together with a couple of aspirins.

‘Come on, darling. Rise and shine,’ she said as she entered the room.

Paul opened his heavy pain-filled eyes reluctantly. God, he felt rough. His mouth was so dry it hurt to swallow, and he felt as sick as a dog. He knew he couldn’t stomach anything to eat, but the tea looked good and he could definitely do with the aspirins, if he could just sit up without throwing up.

His mother put the tray on the bedside table and opened the curtains. Sunshine spilled into the room.

‘Ouch,’ said Paul. ‘I don’t think the sun should be allowed to shine so brightly so early in the morning.’

‘It’s not early in the morning, it’s after nine,’ Emma said. ‘And a beautiful day that you are missing.’

‘To me that’s early,’ Paul said. ‘I have a bloody awful
headache and don’t feel too hot, to tell you the truth. What’s the panic, in any case?’

‘The headache is self-induced,’ Emma said unsympathetically. ‘You did imbibe rather freely yesterday. Never mind, darling—it was your party, after all. A trip to the sea is just the thing for a raging hangover, and days as warm as this don’t happen much this late in September.’

‘What are you on about?’

‘We are spending the day with the Chisholms on their yacht.’

‘What?’ Paul cried, sitting upright in the bed, and holding his hands to his aching head.

‘You heard what I said.’

‘I thought I did,’ Paul said. ‘I thought you said we are spending the day with the Chisholms.’

‘That’s right. Melissa asked you especially and you said it sounded just the thing.’

‘But Carmel and I are choosing the ring today.’

Emma laughed. ‘Is that wise, my son, all this haste to get engaged? Are you really ready to settle down? Going by your behaviour at the party I would say maybe you need to play the field a little longer. If fact, if that young nurse has one spark of pride, she’ll not want anything more to do with you ever again, never mind getting engaged.’

The events of the party were hazy to Paul, and from the time the meal was finished, some areas were complete and utter blanks. He took a couple of grateful swallows of the hot sweet tea, before asking, almost in a whisper, ‘What did I do?’

‘What didn’t you do?’ Emma said, embellishing a little. ‘You were kissing and cuddling Melissa and her sister,
Kate, and Penelope Crabtree all night, and in full view of everyone—Carmel too, I might add—and holding them almost indecently close when you danced. It was Melissa you took outside later—that was fortunately after Carmel had left—and both of you came back very dishevelled. I do think, Paul, it was a very shabby way to treat a girl you purport to be fond of.’

‘I am more than fond of Carmel, Mother,’ Paul said with a hint of exasperation. ‘I have told you this before. I love her.’

‘Funny way you had of showing it, that’s all I can say,’ Emma said through tightened lips. ‘And kindly do not use that tone with me. I was not the one who behaved so disgracefully.’

Paul was suddenly engulfed with shame for what he had put Carmel through. He had been drunk, very drunk, but that was no excuse for the conduct his mother had described. It was imperative now that he saw Carmel and tried to explain and, most of all, apologise, beg her forgiveness and promise that such a thing would never happen again.

‘You put the girl into an almost impossible situation,’ Emma told her son irritably. ‘All it did was show her how out of place she was. She is not of our set or class and never will be. Can’t you see that?’

Paul could hardly believe what his mother had just said. He finished the tea and replaced it on the tray before saying, ‘You, Mother, are a snob and living in the last century. It is not all this class-conscious and knowing-your-place stuff at the hospital, Mother. There it is totally different.’

‘It is not snobbish to know where you stand in the social
order,’ Emma protested. ‘And you mock people knowing their place, but let me tell you, it oils the wheels that civilisation runs on. Not everyone can be a boss. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, Paul,’ she chided. ‘If we hadn’t had the means to finance you, you would be no doctor, so don’t go all high and mighty on me now. You have a duty to us, your parents, and the class you were born into to take your proper place in society once you have finished this compulsory year at the hospital.’

‘I am grateful for your help and support,’ Paul said. Then added, ‘I wasn’t aware it came with conditions.’

‘Don’t be like this, Paul,’ Emma said. ‘It’s just when all this socialist claptrap is over and you go into private practice, when you take a wife, she will need to have the right sort of breeding and gentility to help further your career.’

‘Someone like Melissa, in fact, who wouldn’t go along with the socialist claptrap at all?’

Emma missed the sarcasm in Paul’s voice and the sardonic glint in his eye. ‘Exactly like Melissa,’ she said, ‘Now, your father has been making an few enquiries and he says—;’

‘Mother,’ Paul said in slight amazement, ‘you do not know me at all. There is no way on God’s earth I want either to marry Melissa or to have a private practice.’

‘Don’t be so foolish, Paul. Of course you do.’

‘No, Mother, I do not,’ Paul said. ‘Anyway, if you will excuse me I need to dress. I have a date with a beautiful girl who I know will be waiting for me.’

‘But what about the Chisholms?’ Emma cried. ‘Melissa will be so disappointed.’

‘Haven’t you listened to a word I’ve said?’ Paul cried,
exasperated. ‘I can’t go. You must see that. I have a prior engagement,’ he added with a slight smile.

‘You can’t do this,’ Emma cried. ‘You can’t shame me in this way. At the party you agreed. You said it was a grand idea.’

‘Then you must apologise on my behalf,’ Paul said. ‘But you know as well as I that the arrangements I made with Melissa and her parents, I wasn’t really capable of making. Take Matthew to make up the numbers.’

‘Matthew is dead to the world,’ Emma said. ‘And likely to remain so for many hours. Anyway, they don’t want Matthew. It is you Melissa is sweet on.’

‘That is the very thing I don’t want to encourage,’ Paul said. ‘You said I am not ready to settle down, Mother, but I am; with the right girl I am more than ready and that girl is Carmel. So, if that is all, Mother, I really have got to get dressed.’

Emma gave Paul a baleful look as she swept angrily from the room.

Paul did feel guilty about upsetting his mother, but not half as guilty as he would have done if he had let Carmel down. Despite the claim that he was not up to rushing, he leaped from the bed as soon as the door closed and dressed as quickly as he could, ignoring his thumping head and churning stomach, desperate to be out of the house and on his way to meet Carmel.

After Carmel had eaten breakfast, she returned to the room with Lois and changed into the outfit she had specially chosen for the day she would spend with Paul. The dress was pale green and had a matching jacket. She had bought it in the second-hand stall in the market
and although it had been cheap enough, with the vagaries of the British climate, she had thought at the time that she mighty get little wear out of it. But it was made for a day such as this. The September sun shone down from a sky of Wedgwood blue and the only clouds were light and fluffy.

‘It sets your hair off beautifully,’ Lois said enviously. ‘You lucky thing. All you need do is brush it and it falls into natural curls and looks terrific. You just need a wee bit of powder…’

‘Oh, I don’t know Lois,’ Carmel said, for she wasn’t at all sure about using cosmetics.

‘Do you want to meet Paul with a shiny nose?’

‘Oh God!’ cried Carmel, her hands flying to her face. ‘Have I a shiny nose?’

‘No,’ said Lois with a smile, ‘but are you prepared to run the risk of getting one? Come on now, trust Auntie Lois.’

A few minutes later in the washroom, with powder dusted across her face, rouge on her cheeks, brown shadow on the lids of her eyes and her lips scarlet, Carmel gazed at her reflection in the mirror.

‘I don’t look fast, do I?’ she asked worriedly.

‘No,’ Lois stated. ‘Why should you? How can you think that just because you are wearing cosmetics to enhance your natural beauty? It isn’t a sin, Carmel. You’re not in some little town in Ireland now either, but in Birmingham where people think it is all right to get dressed up, made up and off out to have a good time.’

Carmel was still biting her bottom lip in uncertainty and Lois caught hold of her hands. ‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘You are a truly beautiful girl and out in the street
there will be few to even come close to you. You will dazzle the eyes from Paul when he sees you. Now will you stop fretting? This lesser mortal, namely me, needs to get herself ready for her own day out with her own man and, God knows, I will have to work harder than you for less effect. So, I would be obliged if you would stop worrying and sling your hook while I start on myself.’

Carmel left Lois alone, but she was at a loose end. She felt overdressed for the common room and yet her nerves were jumping about too much for her to settle to read. The room too was rather stuffy and she wished she could go outside and wait for Paul, but she was certain sure that Lois would frown on that idea and say it made her look forward and quite desperate.

The fact was, she
was
desperate. After that awful party, she needed to see that Paul had not changed, that he loved her still and as soon as she saw him she would know.

Lois had finished her ablutions, dressed in her finery and gone out to meet Chris before eventually Sister Magee knocked on the door and said that Dr Connolly was waiting for Carmel downstairs. She stopped only to pick up her bag, before flying down to meet him. She took in his slightly bloodshot eyes as she came closer, and guessed he would be suffering a hangover, but she saw also those eyes were full of love for her and she felt her whole body relax.

Paul thought he had never seen anything lovelier than the sight of Carmel that day, descending the stairs at a rate of knots in her beautifully made clothes and
smart high-heeled shoes. But better by far was the love light shining in her beautiful eyes, and he felt his heart skip a beat and his stomach tighten. He knew he would love Carmel and only Carmel till the breath left his body, and that a lifetime wouldn’t be long enough to show her how much he loved her.

He caught her up in his arms at the bottom of the steps and swung her round. ‘I am so sorry I am late,’ he said, seeing her face light up with delight and a little relief. ‘To my shame I overslept.’

‘It’s all right,’ Carmel assured him. ‘We hadn’t specified a time.’

‘Even so…’

Carmel didn’t want to discuss it further, discuss anything at all under the watchful eye of the home sister. She could see Sister Magee’s lips pursed tight in disapproval and knew that though she would say nothing to Paul—for he was now Dr Connolly, no errant medical student—she could say plenty to Carmel on her return about the proper way to behave.

‘You still do want to marry me?’ Paul asked, as the two of them made for the city centre, remembering his mother’s words that morning.

‘What a question!’ Carmel said. ‘What made you ask it?’

‘I thought maybe you had doubts,’ Paul said. ‘After the party, I mean.’

It was on the tip of Carmel’s tongue to say that it was all right now, that she had no problem. However, there were unresolved issues from that party that she had been dreadfully upset about. If she didn’t speak of this now, while she had the chance, it could easily fester
in her head and cause suspicion to enter and maybe spoil their relationship.

And so she said, ‘We do need to talk about what happened at that party, Paul, but not in the street. Let’s go to a coffee house and discuss it properly.’

Neither Paul nor Carmel spoke until the coffee was before them, and then Paul reached across and took hold of Carmel’s hands.

‘I want to apologise for the awful time you had at the party. I can, in all truth, remember little of it, but my mother filled in many of the blanks, and even the bits I can recall I am bitterly ashamed of.’

‘I’m glad you feel that way, truly I am,’ Carmel said. ‘For I have seldom been as miserable as I was last night. To see you with other girls draped all over you and you seeming not to care, lapping it up, rather…’

‘They are girls I have known for years,’ Paul put in defensively.

‘I know, your mother told me that,’ Carmel said. ‘She actually took great pleasure in telling me. The point is, Paul, it really doesn’t make a ha’p’orth of difference how long you have known someone; there is a way to behave when you are promised to another and in my opinion you went way, way beyond that. I mean,’ she went on, ‘how would you feel if a few fellows were to come here from Ireland and I was to sit kissing and cuddling them and tell you that it was all right, that I had known them all my life? Would that be all right with you, Paul?’

Just the thought of another man putting his arms around Carmel made Paul feel sick and he realised how deeply he must have hurt her. ‘No, of course it wouldn’t,
and I quite see that that was very wrong. The girls weren’t aware I wasn’t available.’

‘I know that, but you did, and so you shouldn’t have entered into it quite so wholeheartedly,’ Carmel said. ‘Anyway this whole thing was engineered by your mother.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I mean this business of not telling people we were engaged until we got the ring and made the announcement properly,’ Carmel said. ‘The announcement could have been made at the party, made part of the celebrations. You had been in hospital for weeks. No one would think it strange that we hadn’t bought a ring yet, and those girls would know then that you were spoken for. You have done them a disservice too, because you were sending them the wrong messages, especially the tall one with blonde hair.’

‘Melissa?’

Carmel shrugged. ‘If that is her name, yes, Melissa.’