No Place for a Woman

by Val Wood

  ‘Is that all, miss?’ the clerk asked her as she pushed the slip towards him and fumbled in her purse.

  She smiled. ‘Yes,’ she said happily. ‘For the time being.’

  Another pot of coffee and a slice of cake were brought to her and Lucy sat again and waited, and pondered on what had happened to the other two applicants. Perhaps it was their first interview. Maybe if they are successful I will see them again. But she didn’t like to ask Dr Schultz when she came back again to say there was a cab waiting for them.

  ‘It will take about an hour to get there,’ the doctor said, walking briskly to the door. ‘We’ll take a tour of the hospital wards and I’ll show you the lecture room and the theatre if it isn’t occupied, just to give you an idea of the layout of the hospital and introduce you to some of the medical staff.’

  ‘H-how many other students will be there?’ Lucy asked hesitantly.

  ‘Of those starting in October only six, that is if the next two interviewees come up to standard. This will be a preliminary induction only to find out how you shape up.’

  ‘I’m rather nervous,’ Lucy told her.

  ‘I would expect you to be,’ Dr Schultz said. ‘This is a very big and important step you are taking.’

  Dr Schultz introduced her to Dr Rose Mason who was waiting for them by the hansom cab and the three of them squashed into the vehicle to make the journey to Hampstead and the hospital.

  ‘Do you know this part of London, Miss Thornbury?’ Dr Mason asked her.

  ‘No, I don’t know London very well at all,’ Lucy answered. ‘It seems very exciting to me, bustling with traffic and people, much busier than Hull.’

  ‘I remember your mother,’ Dr Mason said. ‘She was from the south of England as I was; I recall teasing her when she said she was leaving London for the north.’ Then she fell silent and glanced at Dr Schultz, who was giving a little shake of her head.

  Lucy was taken aback. ‘I – was she?’ Why did I assume she was from Hull? Uncle William has often talked of when he and my father were young, although he did once say that he hadn’t known Mama’s parents; if they were not from Hull that must have been why. ‘I thought my mother was from Hull, as my father was.’

  She briefly thought of Aunt Nora; when she was a child she had once asked her why she said ‘Go with Ada for your barth’ instead of bath, and she and Uncle William had both laughed.

  ‘Berkshire,’ Dr Mason said quietly. ‘I’m so sorry. I thought you would have known.’

  ‘No,’ Lucy said softly. ‘I know very little about her. I wish I knew more.’

  Dr Mason again glanced at Dr Schultz and then murmured, ‘Perhaps when you are settled in we might have a chat about her.’

  ‘I’d like that,’ Lucy began, but was interrupted by Dr Schultz who said something about students having little time for chatting. Lucy said no more, but privately she was determined that she would at some time in the future approach Dr Mason and ask her to tell her all she knew about her mother.

  At the hospital she was given a white cap and gown to wear and led to a washroom where they all soaped and washed their hands. Lucy looked at herself in the mirror and thought she looked more like a nurse than a doctor; neither Dr Schultz nor Dr Mason wore any additional garment over their plain dresses.

  Lucy was taken on a tour of the wards with another young woman, Leila Stockton, who was also to undertake medical training. She said, indifferently, that she was familiar with hospital wards as her father was a doctor. Lucy spoke to some of the female patients – those who were well enough to sit up in bed – and said she hoped they were making a good recovery. Leila Stockton didn’t speak to any of them but picked up their notes and looked over them, much to the disapproval of Dr Schultz, who removed them from her, saying that they were private and for medical eyes only. The surgical theatre was occupied and so they were not allowed to enter.

  They were shown the room where patient files were kept, the hospital laundry and a room where medication was under lock and key; they saw a large room with wooden chairs and a long table which was where they would attend lectures or study, and then they were taken to the nurses’ rest room where a young nursing student offered them a cup of tea. Lucy thanked her but refused as she had seen how busy the nurses were as they flitted from patient to patient, and she then thought of Edie and determined to visit her as soon as she got home to find out if she had got any further with her thoughts on nursing.

  Lucy was fired up with enthusiasm. She felt that she couldn’t wait to start her professional training for a career which she knew would be long in coming and extremely difficult to attain, no matter how determined she was to achieve her goal; but, she thought decisively, I will attain it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  When Lucy stepped down from the train at Paragon station she was surprised to find Oswald waiting to greet her. He picked her up and swung her round which seemed to be becoming his usual form of greeting.

  ‘How did you know which train I would be on?’ she asked. ‘I didn’t give a time in my telegram.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, picking up her bag and ushering her towards the exit. ‘I’ve met every train in since midday. I worked out that it couldn’t possibly be before lunch and more likely teatime or later.’ He put an arm round her shoulder. ‘We’re all so excited and thrilled for you, Lucy. Pa is cock o’ hoop; he says you’re fulfilling your parents’ dreams.’

  ‘Really?’ She smiled. ‘I’m so happy, even though I know it’s going to be very hard, but I don’t mind that. And I realize it will take years and years; it’s still very difficult for women, you know – I don’t mean the work is more difficult than it is for men, but there are many male doctors who don’t want women in the profession. Isn’t that just so ridiculous!’

  She chatted on, wanting to describe all she had done and seen, the doctors she had met, the hospital visit, the suffragette women who had congregated on King’s Cross station both going and coming back, and particularly to tell him that she had met someone else who had known her mother.

  ‘I find it so strange that I didn’t know that my mother was training to be a doctor,’ she said, a frown wrinkling her brow. ‘Do you think that Uncle William knew? He said he didn’t meet her in the early days, but surely my father would have told him about his wife-to-be?’

  Oswald didn’t answer, but pressed his lips together; they dodged the traffic and crossed Prospect Street into Baker Street. Then he murmured, ‘I think it’s as well not to enquire too far into our family’s history, Lucy; certainly my mother wouldn’t thank me for enquiring into hers.’

  Lucy turned to look at him. ‘But surely you want to know about your father’s profession? Perhaps even follow in his footsteps?’

  He looked down at her quizzically. ‘No, I do not! My father’s life has no bearing whatsoever on what I do with mine. I don’t remember him and my mother was always reluctant to talk about him. Your uncle – Pa – is the only man who has had any influence on my life and upbringing and I shall be eternally grateful to him. It’s not only about blood relationship and kin, Lucy; it’s about those who have taken care of us. They are the ones who have formed us, who have made us what we are.’

  She nodded. He had mirrored her thoughts exactly.

  William was home early from the bank and both he and Nora were waiting for them with Eleanor, wreathed in smiles and uttering congratulations.

  ‘We are so proud,’ William said. ‘So very proud of you,’ whilst Nora said that she had never visited a woman doctor but that she was going to try Dr Mary Murdoch if ever anyone became ill, at least until Lucy qualified.

  Lucy laughed and said it would be a long wait until then. ‘Years and years,’ she said, just as she’d said to Oswald.

  ‘We’re going to host a dinner for you,’ Nora told her. ‘Not tonight, as we thought you might be tired, and besides we want to have you to ourselves to talk about your news, but we thought you might like to invite Dr and Mrs Warrington. He was
very helpful, wasn’t he? And perhaps Edie? And maybe that very polite cousin of hers, Max, was it? The grocer’s son.’

  William cleared his throat. ‘It’s a nice idea, my dear, but Lucy should choose whom she should invite as her guests.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course,’ Nora said, flustered. ‘I was only suggesting—’

  ‘It’s so kind of you to think of that, Aunt Nora,’ Lucy said, ‘but actually I’d rather make it a birthday party and just invite Edie and any of her brothers who are at home and all of you.’ She put her hand to her mouth, suddenly overcome with emotion. ‘You are all so special to me. But I’ll write to Dr Warrington and to Dr Murdoch tomorrow and thank them for their support and consideration.’

  She told them that Dr Murdoch had written to the examiners and told them about their meeting, ‘and she gave me a good character reference. Wasn’t that kind of her?’

  Later, when the four of them were sitting quietly by the fireside after Eleanor had gone to bed, Lucy said, ‘Uncle William, whilst I was in London I met another woman doctor who knew my mother. She recognized the name. Do you know why she gave up her medical training? Was it because she wanted to marry my father?’

  Nora got up from her chair. ‘Excuse me for a moment,’ she said. ‘I must just have a word with Ada.’

  ‘Will you excuse me too?’ Oswald said, unfolding his long legs from the sofa. ‘I’ve just remembered I have a letter to write.’

  Lucy and her uncle looked up at them as they left and then looked at each other. Lucy laughed. ‘Was it something I said?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I think it might have been.’ William carefully and neatly folded up the newspaper he’d been holding. ‘They are being diplomatic.’

  ‘But why?’ she asked. ‘It was a straightforward question.’

  ‘But there’s not a straightforward answer.’ William stretched out his legs and sighed. ‘Your aunt is aware of a little about your parents, though not in great detail, and I told her that I proposed to discuss the matter with you when you arrived home.’ He smiled. ‘Oswald is a very discerning young man and I suspect took the prompt from his mother, for he hasn’t been told anything. I conjectured when you went to your first interview that you might meet someone who remembered your mother, but I didn’t know her during her time there. In fact, I didn’t meet her until your parents’ wedding day.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘So it was because of my father that she abandoned her career.’

  He hesitated. ‘In a way. It was then and I understand still is impossible for a woman to continue medical training if she gets married, although I imagine that after they qualify there is nothing to stop them from marrying whenever they like.’

  ‘So why didn’t they wait?’ Lucy said. ‘They would both have had wonderful professions in front of them, although of course …’ She fell silent and gazed into the distance. ‘It is strange, isn’t it, when you think about it, how life sometimes steers you in a different direction.’ She caught her breath. ‘They wouldn’t have been on that train and I wouldn’t have been there either.’

  ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘They wouldn’t, and you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation.’

  Lucy brought her gaze back to her uncle and found him looking tenderly at her.

  ‘I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of seeing you grow up and becoming like a daughter to me, a daughter loved just as much as my own Eleanor. But there is more, Lucy,’ he went on, ‘and now as you plan your new life it is perhaps time for an explanation.’

  She waited as he appeared to prepare his thoughts before he slowly began.

  ‘As I understand it, because as I said before I didn’t know her then, your mother was a brilliant student, much more so than your father or any of the other young women trainees, and great things were expected of her in spite of her being so young, younger even than you are now, Lucy. Her father had taught her – she was an only child – and she was reading the classics, ahead of most adults in mathematics, and fluent in several languages including French and German when she was only twelve.

  ‘Her father was apparently determined that she would succeed in mathematics and science and become the most educated woman in England and beyond, but she was very determined to plough her own furrow, so to speak, and said she wanted to study medicine. It was a very expensive profession to get into but finally her father agreed and she passed all the necessary exams without any trouble at all when she was just seventeen.’

  ‘Goodness!’ Lucy breathed. ‘How incredible.’

  William nodded and continued. ‘She began her tutelage under Dr Elizabeth Garrett Anderson.’

  ‘Oh,’ Lucy breathed again. ‘Her daughter Louisa …’

  ‘Yes, the same,’ he said. ‘Both inspiring women. I understand that your mother was expected to succeed on all fronts, notwithstanding the difficulties that women had to endure.’ He hesitated. ‘And then at some time in her second year, I think it was, she met your father.’

  ‘And fell in love!’ Lucy murmured.

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘And they didn’t want to wait? She gave it all up for the love of my father?’

  He gazed at her. ‘She gave it up for you, Lucy,’ he said quietly. ‘They were impetuous young people, not thinking of the consequences, but only of their love and desire.’

  Lucy stared at her uncle, lost for words. Then her cheeks flushed as she whispered, ‘For me? You mean …’

  He nodded again. ‘Your father was lucky not to lose his place at King’s, but he had by then passed his exams with excellent results and needed only to finish his final hospital training before qualifying and no one, not his fellow students nor his tutors, breathed a word, even though some of them must have known.’

  ‘But not so for Mama,’ she murmured. ‘Everyone would have found out that she was carrying a child. I see; so she had to give up her ambition, her dream.’

  ‘Impossible to conceal, but she had to give it up in any case,’ he said. ‘As soon as her parents heard she was banned from their presence and her home, as if in some early Victorian melodrama.’ His voice was sharp and angry. ‘Her father cut her off without a penny, only the clothes on her back, and she never saw them again. To my knowledge they never enquired about her or the child, their grandchild. I tried to contact them after the accident, but there was no response.’

  ‘And what of Papa? What did he do?’

  ‘He brought her home to our parents; they had a house on the Beverley Road, and they somehow understood, although of course they were shocked and disappointed. They packed Joseph off to London again and Alice stayed with them until the marriage was arranged. Which was when I came home to be your father’s witness and met your mother for the first time.’

  He took a deep breath and then exhaled as if he had been holding it and all his emotions inside for many a year. Then he smiled. ‘They made a very handsome couple. Your mother was beautiful, Lucy – you are very much like her – and they were very happy together, even though for only a few short years.’

  ‘She must have had some regrets,’ Lucy said sorrowfully. ‘To give everything up.’

  ‘Perhaps, but I never saw any trace of it,’ he said. ‘They had you, their love child, and adored you; her dreams must have changed.’

  Lucy fought back tears. ‘I must fulfil her hopes and vision.’ Her voice trembled. ‘I will try to make her sacrifice worthwhile.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Lucy called at the grocery shop to talk to Edie the next morning, but a rather surly Jenny broke off from stacking the shelves to tell her that she had left.

  ‘Max is here if you want to talk to him?’ she added as an afterthought.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Lucy said. ‘I’ll drop in to see Edie at home.’

  Max came out of the back room when he heard voices. ‘Edie’s not working here any more,’ he said, as Jenny had. ‘She wasn’t pulling her weight, asked for time off and wouldn’t say why, so she had to go.’

&nb
sp; ‘Really? Good gracious,’ Lucy protested. ‘After all the years she’s worked here you mean to say she couldn’t ask for any time off?’

  He shook his head. ‘If it had been an hour or so and she’d said why, then I might have done. But she wanted two days and wouldn’t say where she was going so I had to make a decision.’ His cheeks flushed as he spoke and Lucy guessed that he realized he’d acted hastily.

  She shrugged. ‘Oh, well, she’ll get another job easily enough I expect, an energetic young woman with her experience.’

  ‘Not without a reference she won’t,’ he said caustically.

  She gazed at him witheringly but didn’t answer and simply turned on her heel and left the shop.

  What a nerve! She marched away in the direction of Edie’s home. No wonder women are joining the suffragettes. Would he have done that to a man? Just dismissed him without a reference? Her former admiration of Max was lessening, such was her fury at his behaviour. She rapped on Mrs Morris’s door, still feeling cross, and was surprised when Edie opened the door with a huge smile on her face.

  ‘Oh, just ’person I was hoping to see,’ Edie exclaimed. ‘Come in. Come in.’

  Dolly Morris’s rooms were very cosy and welcoming, even though the furniture was shabby and worn and the place was now filled to overflowing with people. Lucy exclaimed when she saw two soldiers, Josh and Stanley, and young Charlie, who was now of course no longer a child but a strapping boy of about sixteen. Their mother was sitting contentedly by a low fire.

  ‘Cup o’ tea?’ Edie asked. ‘I’m just about to mek a pot.’

  ‘Yes, please.’ Lucy took the chair vacated by Charlie. All three of the young men had got up from their seats when she came into the house. ‘How good it is to see you all together,’ she said. ‘It’s such a long time since we all met.’

  ‘We don’t get home as often as we’d like,’ Stanley told her. ‘We’re allus off somewhere or other.’

  Lucy thought how handsome the two older boys were, very much alike with their dark hair and eyes; Stanley was quieter and more serious than Josh, who was always fooling around. Charlie was fair-haired and blue-eyed like Edie and not quite as sure of himself as his brothers.