by Anne Bennett
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.
