by Anne Bennett
‘What about?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, do I?’ Carmel said impatiently. ‘Why is anyone out of sorts?’
‘Has the way you are feeling got anything to do with your Terry being discharged?’ Lois persisted.
‘No, of course not,’ Carmel retorted quickly, almost too quickly. ‘And stop calling him my Terry.’ She was silent for a second or two and then said, ‘I do miss seeing him at the hospital. I expected to and I expected to get over it as well, which I will do.’ She hesitated and then went on, ‘If you want to know, Terry did say he cared for me, but as you once pointed out, many male patients fall in love with their nurses. Cassie has always said that he was sweet on me, but you have to take what Cassie says in that vein with a pinch of salt. As well as the numerous films she sees, she also reads these trashy romances and they fill her head with rubbish. She sees intrigue and passion around every corner.’
‘Can’t be bad,’ Lois said, and was pleased to see the ghost of a smile playing around Carmel’s mouth. ‘Maybe, as she has done such a study of it, she is the very one to ask.’
‘No, the very opposite,’ Carmel said, laughing. ‘She reminds me of Aileen in a way. Not that she falls in love herself every five minutes, but I think that she would like to arrange it that everyone else did.’
She shook her head and went on, ‘To tell you the truth, I think Terry is still mourning the family he lost. And the feelings he said he had for me, well, they were more infatuation, mixed up with gratitude. He has no room in his head for further tangled emotions. I know that in my rational head. I’m sorry I have been such a grouch. I know it is my problem and no one else’s and I intend to take a grip on myself. Don’t worry, I’ll have got myself sorted well before Christmas when I will see Terry again.’
Terry was also trying to work out his own feelings for the little nurse who had wormed her way into his heart. The love that he had once felt for his wife, his children and even Brenda’s parents and sister had seemed to disappear totally when they died. He’d felt barren, emotionless, and it was a young nurse who had made him feel again and taught him that his life had some meaning. She also taught him that though the memories of his loved ones would never leave him and would always hold a special place in his heart, he had to go back into the stream of life again because that is what they would have wanted him to do.
He had felt love for another human being stir in him again, as if it was being roused from a long sleep, and he knew he loved the little Irish nurse with the lilting voice who had pulled him back from the pit of despair.
After he left the hospital he felt cast adrift. He had got his old job back after the hospital had contacted the Gas Board, but his landlady had had to let someone else rent the rooms he’d had and had his belongings packed up ready for him to collect.
His boss was letting him sleep on his settee for the time being, but it was not suitable in the long term and Terry knew he would have to trail the streets once more, looking for someone with a spare room. In the meantime there was an ache in his heart every time he thought of Carmel. In the end the longing to see Carmel again got so great he knew he had to find her and tell her how he felt about her, and he set off after work one evening towards the end of November.
He had Carmel’s address in advance of Christmas. Just forty minutes later, he was standing outside number 17 York Road, and before his courage could fail him he raised the knocker.
Carmel was just mounting the stairs to take Beth to bed when the knock came on the front door and so she opened it with the child in her arms.
‘Terry!’ she cried, but Terry didn’t speak. He was startled by the sight of the child, though he could barely see either of them in the beam of his torch for Carmel had turned the light off before she could open the door. ‘Come in,’ she said. ‘We’re letting in all the cold air.’ And then, as he stepped into the hall and Carmel was able to shut the door and turn the light on, he saw Beth clearly for the first time. She was gorgeous and as unlike his Belinda as it was possible to be, with her vivid blue eyes, her blonde curls and her little rosebud mouth. He smiled even though he felt a tug in his heart as he did so.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘You must be Beth?’
‘Yes,’ the child said and then, because she liked to get things straight, she said, ‘What’s your name?’
‘Terry.’
‘What are you doing here, Terry?’ Carmel said. Then, with an impatient gesture, she said, ‘Oh, don’t bother telling me now. Wait until I get madam here to bed. Come through and meet Lois first, though, and have a hot drink at least. It is turning into a bleak old night outside, judging by the wind gusting around the house.’
It took Lois only a few minutes to realise that she liked Terry Martin very much and for her to note the love light shining in his eyes when Carmel came back into the room after tucking Beth up for the night. She also saw that Carmel was agitated and confused.
‘Why are you here, Terry?’ she said, sitting at the other side of the table opposite him. ‘I thought we agreed.’
Lois looked from the lovelorn face of Terry to the flushed one of Carmel and thought to herself that Cassie might have got it right after all. She knew too her presence wasn’t needed.
‘If you will excuse me I have to write a letter to Chris.’
Terry threw her a look of gratitude, but Carmel didn’t want her to leave. Couldn’t she see she wasn’t ready for this sort of thing yet? So she said almost accusingly, ‘But you wrote to him two days ago.’
‘Well, I am writing again,’ Lois said firmly. ‘There were things I missed telling him in the other letter,’ and she slipped out of the room and left them to it.
Terry cleared his throat and, knowing it was no good beating about the bush, said, ‘I came to see you, Carmel, because since I left that hospital, all I have done is think about you. You weren’t able to express how you felt about me in the hospital, I know that now, and the last thing in the world I would do would be to make life difficult for you, but I need to know. If you cannot return my feelings then I will move out of your life and harass you no further.’
Carmel looked into the deep grey eyes that she had looked into so many times and saw real love there. Her insides had suddenly turned to jelly and she was glad that she was sitting down, for she doubted that her legs could hold her up. She knew that no way could she say that Terry meant nothing to her, now that she had allowed the feelings she had tried to crush to surface.
‘You mean the very world to me,’ she said simply. ‘I think I have loved you from the first moment I saw you. I was worried that it was just a patient and nurse thing for you, mixed up with the grievous loss you had suffered.’
‘I did worry that it might be too soon,’ Terry said, ‘even when I said those things in the hospital. I mean, it is only two years since…well, you know.’
Carmel heard the uncertainty in Terry’s voice and reached out and caught his hand. ‘These things cannot be planned,’ she said. ‘Neither of us went out looking for another. It just happened. Maybe we are both being given a second chance.’
Terry stood up and drew Carmel into his arms. ‘Oh God, I never believed I would feel so deeply for someone again.’
‘Nor me,’ Carmel said, and when their lips met for the first time she let utter contentment flood through her body.
Lois and Ruby were delighted when Carmel told them how she felt about Terry, but she dreaded telling Jeff, wondering if he would see the relationship as a sort of betrayal. So she put it off. Then, in the second week in December, Lois had popped around to Ruby’s and so Carmel was alone when Jeff turned up that evening. She knew she couldn’t leave him in the dark any longer and, full of trepidation, she faced him and told him about her feelings for Terry.
Jeff wasn’t totally surprised. She had told him lots about Terry anyway, while she was nursing him, and as the days passed into weeks, Jeff had seen Carmel’s very expressive eyes shine when she spoke of the man.
‘It isn’t
that I think any the less of Paul, you know,’ she told Jeff anxiously
‘My dear, I saw you with Paul,’ Jeff said. ‘I know how much you loved him and the sun rose and set with you as far as he was concerned. But Paul’s body is in a foreign field somewhere, and you, my dear, have a life to live. Paul would not begrudge you this.’
‘Ah, Jeff, you always make me feel so much better,’ Carmel said, ‘I have told Terry all about you and how much you mean to me and everything. You will meet him at Christmas at Ruby’s and I’m sure you will like him.’
Jeff took to Terry straight away. He liked the firm handshake, the steady gaze in those dark grey eyes and the firm set of his chin. In Jeff’s book these things marked Terry as a man of integrity and not one to be trifled with. Yet he saw the loving way he treated Carmel and how gentle he was with Beth, and thought the man would be good for both of them.
It was obvious what Beth thought of Terry, who always had time for her. That afternoon he had got down on the floor to help her play with the puppet show Jeff had brought her. He had got it from the toy cupboard in the old nursery, which he seemed to be systematically emptying, though Beth, of course, thought it came direct from Santa.
In fact everyone seemed to like Terry, including Ruby’s daughter, Chrissie, who was also spending the day with them. Everyone went out of their way to make him feel welcome.
‘He is really good with Beth,’ Ruby remarked as the women were washing up after the mammoth dinner.
‘Yes,’ Carmel commented drily. ‘Though did you see the delight on Terry’s face at the toys? I don’t know whether it is the man or the child getting the most enjoyment.’
‘Well, they say that men never grow up.’
‘This sort of proves it, doesn’t it?’ Carmel said.
‘Oh, come on,’ Chrissie said. ‘Isn’t it better he takes an interest than ignoring the child altogether?’
‘Course it is,’ Carmel said. ‘I am only kidding.’
‘Is he going back home tonight?’ Ruby asked.
‘No,’ Carmel said. ‘He can have the loan of our settee tonight. Make a change from the boss’s.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, he hasn’t got anywhere to stay at the moment,’ Carmel said. ‘The landlady let his rooms while he was in hospital.’
‘Bloody cheek!’
‘He was in some weeks,’ Carmel said. ‘I expect she has to make a living, the same as the rest of us. Anyway, I don’t know all the ins and outs of it, but I do know all his stuff was packed up for him and he was out on his ear.’
‘But he needn’t be any longer,’ Ruby said. ‘Haven’t I two rooms above, just begging to be occupied?’
‘Oh, Ruby, he will be delighted,’ Carmel said. ‘I know he worries about getting in the way where he is.’
‘I’ll put it to him over tea and see what he says.’
Carmel knew full well what Terry would say and she wasn’t disappointed. On New Year’s Day, he moved into Ruby’s. Lois fully approved when she came back from Chris’s parents, where she had spent the festive season, though Chris himself had had only a forty-eight-hour pass.
With each passing day and week Carmel’s love for Terry seemed to deepen. It was different from the way she had felt about Paul. Of course she was a different person, older certainly, and one who had tasted tragedy in her own life and dealt with the aftermath of the tragedies of many other people.
Then Terry was different to Paul, both in looks and attitude. Carmel had thought he was more serious at first, but when she helped him shed the guilt he had felt burdened with, he emerged as quite a different person, with a wonderful sense of fun.
Beth accepted Terry as the father she had never had. She even called him ‘Daddy’, which gave Terry immense pleasure, though Lois had been quite shocked when she first heard the child use that term.
‘It’s all right, Auntie Lois,’ Beth told her in explanation. ‘I know that Terry isn’t my real daddy, but he lives in Heaven now.’
‘It was something she just started to do,’ Carmel told Lois out of Beth’s hearing. ‘I have told her all about Paul and what happened to him, and I gave her a photograph to stand by her bed so she can see what he looked like. But, for God’s sake, Lois, she is only three years old and has no concept of death. When I’d finished explaining she just said that if her real daddy couldn’t live here, wasn’t it good that Terry could. I was completely floored. I mean, what could I say to logic like that? And it isn’t as if Paul can be hurt by her doing this, but I am sorry if it has upset you.’
‘No,’ Lois said. ‘Don’t be sorry. It’s me being stupid. There is no reason on God’s earth why Beth shouldn’t call Terry “Daddy”, and he is a father to her every way but biologically.’
However, despite loving Beth so dearly and getting on well with all the others, Terry deepest love was reserved for Carmel. He wanted to take her out a time or two and court her properly. Carmel was in agreement with this and didn’t want to rush into anything, for they had met and fallen in love in very strange circumstances.
Everyone else thought it sensible for them to take their time too, and so when Terry took Carmel to see Casablanca at the Palace cinema on Erdington High Street there was no shortage of people willing to babysit Beth, and it was the same when he took Carmel dancing one night in the upstairs room of the cinema.
‘Are you sure this will be all right for you?’
‘What?’
‘Dancing?’
‘I suggested it, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, but with your back, I mean.’
‘Oh, Carmel, you can’t be serious. I am a flipping gas fitter. That means I often have to climb into small holes or twist myself into unimaginable positions to reach the gas outlets. I don’t sit at a desk and fill in forms all day, you know.’
‘I know. I just—;’
‘Just wanted to fuss,’ Terry remarked. ‘Blimey, once a nurse always a nurse.’
‘Oh, you…’ Carmel cried, giving him a push. But Terry caught her hand and pulled her round to face him. Suddenly she could feel her heart pounding in her chest.
‘I love you, heart, body and soul, Carmel,’ Terry said seriously. ‘There aren’t words to say how much.’ He kissed her gently on the lips and then his voice, still a little unsteady, said, ‘Now let us away and teach them all how to dance.’
What a surprise awaited them, though, for they found that the waltzs, quicksteps and foxtrots that they had been practicing in the house were things of the past. There was an entirely new form of dancing now, brought over from the States and called jitterbugging. The music was jazzier and wilder. It was, as Terry said, ‘foot-tapping music’.
Oh, how glad Carmel was that she had worn a dress with a full skirt as she saw most girls wore something similar. She hadn’t any nylon stockings—few had, for they were like gold dust—but Lois had helped her coat her legs with gravy browning and then she had drawn a line down the back with an eyebrow pencil so that it looked as if Carmel was wearing stylish seamed stockings. With her hand in Terry’s, she took to the floor with all the rest as the band started up again.
She had been nervous at first and hoped that she wouldn’t make an utter fool of herself, but she found jitterbugging wasn’t hard to learn at all and was the most tremendous fun. By watching and copying the others and also listening to the music, Carmel and Terry soon got the hang of it and were soon jitterbugging with the best of them and as if they had done it every day of their lives.
‘You should have seen us,’ Carmel said to Lois and Ruby, who had waited up for them. ‘Like prize idiots, we were, expecting a slow waltz, or a fairly sedate foxtrot and this jitterbugging is just so…just so…’
‘Unrestrained is the word I think you are searching for,’ Terry said.
‘Unrestrained!’ Carmel mocked. ‘Abandoned is more like it. Riotous even, and some of the girls were thrown about so much and twirled round to such an extent that their knickers were on show.’
/> ‘Could have been worse,’ Terry said. ‘At least they had knickers on.’
‘Terry!’
‘Only saying.’
‘Well, don’t bother.’
‘So,’ said Ruby, with a dry laugh, ‘you’ll hardly be going to this place of abandonment and riotousness again, then?’
‘Are you kidding?’ Carmel said. ‘I’m up for it again next week, baby-sitters willing.’
There were things to do other than dancing, and the following week they queued outside the Odeon in what was left of New Street in the city centre to see Gone With the Wind, which Carmel had been wanting to see for ages, especially after Cassie had enthused over it so much. However, when they went to see In Which We Serve at the Palace the following week, mindful that Lois might be feeling a little pushed out, they asked her to go with them and Ruby happily baby-sat until they returned.
Sometimes, they sat in with Lois, just chatting or playing cards, or listening to a play or something on the wireless; sometimes Ruby would come in too, and George and Terry, and Jeff if he was there, would take themselves off to the pub while the women gossiped together.
The times Terry treasured, however, were the moments he had alone with Carmel, when they would sit, cuddled up on the settee in Carmel’s sitting room, and Terry’s hands would explore her body while his kisses and caresses caused her to groan with desire. However, much as she longed for fulfilment with Terry, she wanted to wait. He never pressed her to go further, for Carmel knew if they were to marry, she wanted her wedding night to be as special as the one she had shared with Paul.
At the beginning of April Lois went to see the doctor after work, to confirm really what she already knew—that she was at long last having a baby. Carmel had only to take one look at her face when she came through the door to know that the news was good.
‘You are?’ she cried, and Lois only had time to nod happily before Carmel caught her about the waist and the pair cavorted around the room.
Beth regarded such unbridled enthusiasm solemnly and then said, ‘Why are you so sited?’
