by Anne Bennett
‘Oh, I do know what you mean,’ Lois said. ‘I long for this war to be over and for my husband to come home safe and sound and help raise our baby son.’
‘The war is on the turn,’ Carmel said soothingly. ‘It really is just a matter of time now.’
‘I have lost count of the people who have said that to me just lately,’ Lois said. ‘It doesn’t really help.’
‘I know that,’ Carmel agreed. ‘And listen to me. I am as bad as the rest.’
She felt sorry for Lois and guiltily glad that, once they were married, her husband would come home every night and be by her side, but it wouldn’t help to say that either.
Instead, in an attempt to turn Lois’s mind on to something else, she said, ‘I’m giving notice next week, you know?’
‘Giving notice? You mean you are not going back after the wedding?’
‘No.’
Lois shook her head. ‘My God! Those are words I never thought I would hear you say. What’s brought this on?’
‘A number of things,’ Carmel said. ‘First and foremost it’s about Beth. She has a year, maybe less, before she goes to school, because if she doesn’t start in January next year she certainly will after Easter, and I would like to spend some time with her before that. I mean, I felt I had to use my skill as a nurse when it was needed so badly, but the blitz seems to be over now and so it is the right time for me to leave. Added to that, Ruby and George have been marvellous, and I know Beth will always love them dearly—God, I do myself—but they are not getting any younger and Ruby in particular has not picked up since her daughter had that telegram to say her husband was missing, presumed dead, now has she?’
‘No, you are right,’ Lois said. ‘She has never been the same since.’
‘I have felt guilty sometimes that, because she has the care of my daughter, maybe she hasn’t been able to support her own fully. That is a terrible situation to put her in.’
Lois had to admit it was and since she had been at home with Colin, she had seen how drawn Ruby had looked sometimes. She thought that Carmel had made the right decision, but she wasn’t the only one involved and so Lois asked, ‘What does Terry think?’
‘Oh, he is all for it,’ Carmel said with a smile. ‘I think he imagines that if I have already left work, I can get on with the job of producing his son and heir all the quicker. He sort of sees it as one less hurdle to jump.’
‘Son and heir, eh?’
‘He wants a son,’ Carmel said. ‘What man doesn’t, deep down? Terry, being Terry, would bite his tongue off rather than admit it, but I’ve seen the way he looks at your Colin. Point is, though, I am not a brood mare,’ Carmel went on. ‘We all know people who go on and on giving birth to one girl after another in their quest for a boy and that is one road I am not going to go down, and I have let Terry know that.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t call him an unreasonable man.’
‘He isn’t,’ Carmel agreed happily. ‘He is absolutely lovely and could quite see my point of view. But even I know that with two children to see to, it will be wellnigh impossible to nurse, the hours being what they are. So I will either have to give it up for many years, or train for something less demanding, or at least more fitted to family life.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like district nursing, or midwifery,’ Carmel said. ‘I would have to take a further course, but one of the doctors was telling me that once this new Health Service the government keep wittering on about really kicks in, which will be when this war finally grinds to a halt, there will be a greater demand than ever for services like that.’
‘I can see that,’ Lois said. ‘I might make some enquiries myself.’
‘Can’t hurt,’ Carmel said. ‘No rush, though. This will all be years away yet, I should think. My more immediate problem for the future is finding something suitable to wear for the wedding, now that clothes are on ration and utility the order of the day. I don’t want a fairy-tale wedding dress this time, and I don’t mind something more practical, but I’d like something a wee bit different and I would love to be able to get my hands on something a bit bridesmaidy for Beth. I am finishing at two o’clock tomorrow. Don’t suppose you would meet me after work and go round the Bull Ring and help me choose?’
‘Course I will, you dope,’ Lois said, her eyes shining with happiness for her dear friend. She knew that whatever dress Carmel wore, her wedding would be like a fairy tale, and she couldn’t have been more pleased for her. ‘In fact,’ she added, ‘you just try to keep me away.’
Despite Carmel’s efforts to keep the wedding low key, that day there were far more thronging the church that ever she could have imagined. There were plenty from the hospital because Carmel was a popular nurse, and the whole romanticism of it appealed to the droves who turned out to support her. The romance element was fuelled by Cassie, who was claiming some of the credit for bringing Carmel and Terry together in the end.
‘They were looking doe-eyed at each other for weeks,’ she said to any who wanted to listen. ‘Course, they had to keep it under wraps a bit because of Matron and everything, but as far as I was concerned it was a foregone conclusion once Terry was out of the place. Anyhow, I think it is dead romantic. Fancy falling for and marrying a doctor who is killed in France and then falling in love again with a man she has brought back from the brink of death. And she did do that, you know; he told me himself. “Gave me a reason to live, Cassie,” he said, just like that. Isn’t that the loveliest thing you ever heard?’
Most of the nurses agreed that it was, and inside her office Matron smiled to herself. There was little she missed and she had seen the way the wind blew between Carmel and Terry Martin long before Carmel had given notice and officially told her the name of her intended. It amused her that both probationers and nurses alike thought they had a secret and that the groups whispering together would disperse when they saw her approaching. Wait till she turned up at the church, she thought with a smile. That will set the cat among the pigeons right and proper.
Carmel, at the church door, with her arm tucked into George’s, waiting for the Wedding March to begin, was glad to see that many guests had been directed to the other side of the church so that Terry, with his boss beside him as best man, were not sitting in isolated splendour. Then suddenly her eyes caught sight of Matron Turner sitting towards the back of the church. She’d never seen her in smart clothes before, but for all that she would have known her anywhere. Hearing Carmel’s arrival, she turned and smiled at her, and Carmel felt sort of warmed from within. It was as if the matron was giving her a seal of approval.
Many turned to look as Carmel began her slow walk. She had on a costume of ivory silk, the jacket fitted to show off the sort of figure many would die for. The full skirt, falling halfway down her calves, rustled when she moved. The light brown hat, with the veil semi-covering her face, matched her shoes, and in her hands she carried a bouquet of silk flowers, the real thing being in short supply, due to many fields being given over to the growing of vegetables.
Beth, coming solemnly behind her, had a similar posy, which matched the Alice band attached to the small veil that topped her golden locks. Her dress of apricot satin was to the floor, and peeping from the edge of it was a pair of white patent shoes. They both looked gorgeous and Carmel knew few would guess that their outfits had come mainly from second-hand stalls in the Rag Market. The woman tending the stall had been delighted to see Carmel interested in the silk costume. It was beautiful and almost new, but she had thought she would have it left on her hands, for few woman were slender enough to wear it.
‘You must have it,’ she said, when Carmel tried it on. ‘It’s made for someone like you and doesn’t it fit you like a glove?’
It was important to Carmel that she and Beth looked good, to prove this was no shabby hole-in-the-corner sort of wedding, which Father Robertson had intimated it was, as she couldn’t have the sacrament of Nuptial Mass to bless the union. She had never before come up
against the disapproval of the Church and it had affected her keenly.
Even at the six weekly meetings that they had to attend before the wedding so that Terry could fully understand what being married to a Catholic entailed, the priest’s manner had been grim, almost disdainful.
As Terry had said as they returned home one evening, ‘If anything could ever put me off joining the Church, then it is the attitude of that priest. The point is, if I was to go in next week and say that I had decided to join the Church he would pump my hand up and down and declare me a fine fellow altogether, and yet I would be exactly the same man with the same opinions and sets of values as I had the previous week. The whole thing is crazy.’
It was crazy, and they were both in it together. Even Sister Frances went on about it in her letters after Carmel returned home, for all she’d liked Terry when she met him in Letterkenny.
Carmel did feel bad about upsetting Sister Frances, for she knew that she owed her a lot. But when she wrote to her mother and said this, Eve’s reply was swift.
Remember you have to live with the man you choose, not any priest or nun. Follow your heart, my darling girl. True love is the only thing that matters in the end.
And then Terry turned and looked at her, his fathomless eyes so full of love, and Carmel knew her mother was right for her heart was filled with rapture that she was soon to be married to this wonderful man.
She gave her bouquet into the outstretched arms of Ruby, stepped away from George’s side, and took her place beside Terry.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Being married to Terry, Carmel soon found, was nothing like being married to Paul. Paul had been filled with almost restless energy and so had she then. They needed that vitality to make the most of every second they could, to give them quality time together, for they’d both had to work long and gruelling shifts at the hospitals. In fact, she recalled much of their lives centred around rush and bustle and snatched moments together.
With Terry, each day was much calmer. She loved getting up in the morning to cook breakfast for him and then waving him off to work before listening to The Kitchen Front, which was on after the eight o’clock news on the wireless. This programme saved the sanity of many women, as it gave out recipes for foodstuffs that were usually available and the two girls would write down any of the recipes they fancied having a go at before toiling up to Erdington to fetch their rations and see if there was possibly some little delicacy off-ration that they could join a queue for.
They had been shielded from the true effects of rationing when they had both been nursing and getting many of their meals at the hospital—except for the time that Carmel had away from work waiting for the birth of Beth, when rationing was just kicking in—and rationing to them had been seen as a irritant more than anything. Lois had complained how difficult it was when she stopped work to await Colin’s birth, but Carmel hadn’t appreciated this until she experienced it herself. It was a nightmare, because as well as jiggling the rationed food, there were things on points and this effectively dealt with canned fish, meat, vegetables, fruit and condensed milk, together with ordinary milk, cereals, rice, biscuits and oat flakes, and everyone had just sixteen points a month.
They would pool rations as they always had and produce such delights as vegetable and oatmeal goulash, Woolton pie or curried carrots and rice to put before Terry when he came in after a hard day. He never complained, and if he had it wouldn’t have made any difference. He always ate everything on his plate and complemented them both on it, however tasteless it was.
They did their best, often adding Bovril to a dish or making up a soup of whatever they had in the cupboard to pour over things to make it tastier. They were both mighty glad that dried egg had appeared in the shops. It was nothing like the real thing, but it wasn’t that bad scrambled, or as an omelette, which was another meal, and if they had the sugar and butter enough to make a cake, dried egg could be used in place of the real thing. If they ever got hold of a real egg it was saved for Beth, or Colin, now he was being weaned, or occasionally for Terry. Both women knew though they were luckier than most, for because their children were under five, they had special green ration books that entitled them to extra milk, orange juice, cod liver oil and a packet of dried egg powder off points every eight weeks, and so they managed.
Terry said they should utilise some of the garden and, with Carmel’s agreement, he had sold Paul’s motorbike, which he said was not the vehicle for a family man.
‘After the war I’ll look around for a little car,’ he told Carmel. ‘No point now with petrol rationing the way it is, but afterwards won’t it be just champion to take a run out on a Sunday, get Beth out of the streets to where the air is a bit fresher?’
Where Paul’s bike had stood in the garden was a pile of mud, for any grass underneath it had died. Terry dug it over, tilled it and planted potatoes, carrots and onions. On the little lawn left he fashioned up a swing for Beth. Carmel had seldom known Beth so happy and contented, though she had always been a compliant child. She loved having her mother at home all day and told her often. However, when Terry came home, she turned into his little shadow, wanting to be with him wherever he was. It gave Carmel so much pleasure to see the bond between them grow deeper every day.
Even Ruby and George had taken their rightful place as pseudo-grandparents and now they hadn’t the care of Beth, they were able to just enjoy her company. Ruby was able also to be some measure of support to her poor, bereaved daughter.
In fact the only thing that caused Carmel any concern at all was that she hadn’t seen Jeff for some time. After discussing it with Carmel, Terry had told Jeff that, after they were married, Carmel would no longer need any financial contributions from Paul’s estate, but if Jeff wanted to put the money in trust for Beth he had no objection to that at all and he had assured Carmel at the time that Jeff hadn’t seemed upset or offended by anything he’d said.
Carmel had been so glad the matter had been resolved because she had felt guilty from the first taking money from her dead husband. There had been plenty of it too, far more that she had needed, and far more than she could ever spend in the current climate, try as she might. In fact, once she had begun nursing again, even paying Ruby for minding Beth, she had plenty left and now there was a sizeable amount resting in the bank.
‘Keep hold of it, darling,’ Terry told her one night, as they got ready for bed. ‘I too have a fair bit stashed away. I wasn’t sure how much until this legal chap at work sorted it all out for me, because there were insurance policies to redeem and all sorts, but I am saving it, because one day I want to buy us our own house. What d’you say to that?’
‘I say that you are a lovely, wonderful man, and I am more glad every day that I married you,’ Carmel said, with a smile.
‘And I say words are cheap,’ Terry said with mock severity. ‘And people do say actions speak louder than any words, so how about it?’
‘How about it?’ Carmel repeated sarcastically, while at the same time lying back in the bed, gazing at him provocatively. ‘I think that you are a sex-crazed beast and what’s more…’
Carmel got no further as Terry’s lips covered hers and she gave herself up to the pleasure of it. Again, sex with Terry was not like sex with Paul. It was slower and more controlled and more waiting until Carmel was fully aroused, absolutely ready, and then so tremendously fulfilling that she would cry out again and again.
One Monday in early June, Terry sent word that he had to work over on a difficult job and not to bother saving him any dinner, that he would get chips or something for himself. He didn’t know how late he would be and Carmel let Beth stay up until eight o’clock to see if he would come in, before insisting that she go to bed.
She protested strongly, but Carmel was standing no nonsense because she knew from experience just how difficult Beth could be the next day if she had had insufficient sleep. So when she came down after putting her very disgruntled child to bed, Lois was
smiling as she handed Carmel a cup of tea.
‘There goes one very unhappy little girl.’
‘I’ll say,’ Carmel said. ‘And I know she is pulling out all the stops and employing all the delaying tactics she can think of, but she asked tonight why her Granddad Jeff doesn’t come to see her any more and I couldn’t answer because I have no idea. Do you know anything about it?’
‘Not in so many words,’ Lois said. ‘I mean, no one has ever said, but I do know, for instance, that Emma is ill.’
Carmel sat back in the chair and stared at Lois. ‘You are asking me to believe that because Emma has a cold, Jeff has sat by her side night after night, holding her hand, mopping her fevered brow and whispering sweet nothings in her ear? I think not.’
‘It isn’t a cold,’ Lois said. ‘It’s cancer and she is dying from it.’
‘Don’t you dare try and get me to feel sorry for that bitch of a woman.’
‘I’m not,’ Lois protested with a smile. ‘I am just offering it as a possible reason for Jeff not coming so often.’
‘Even so,’ Carmel said. ‘I mean, I haven’t seen him since before the wedding and that was nearly three months ago. That means Beth hasn’t seen him either and that is a long time for a little girl especially—;’
‘Ssh,’ Lois said urgently. ‘Do you hear planes?’
‘I do, and many of them,’ Carmel cried, leaping to her feet. ‘They are right above us. I’ll get Beth, and I bet that cellar will be damp.’
‘No, wait,’ Lois said. ‘These are our planes, I’m sure of it. Don’t you remember the intermittent engine sound the German planes had?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Carmel said. ‘But why would so many of our planes be flying overhead?’
‘I don’t know,’ Lois said. ‘But I aim to try and find out.’
‘And I am coming with you,’ Carmel cried.
The two made for the back door. They were not the only ones standing in their gardens. Most of their neighbours were out too in that unseasonably chill evening, watching in awe mixed with apprehension as plane after plane, squadron after squadron, flew above them.
