by Anne Bennett
‘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 glee
fully 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?’
