No Place for a Woman

by Val Wood

  ‘How long are you on leave?’ she asked. ‘Because it’s my birthday next week and I’d like you all to come to lunch.’

  ‘We’ve got till next weekend,’ Josh said. He turned to Stanley. ‘That would be good, wouldn’t it? Is Oswald at home?’ He and Oswald had kept in touch from time to time.

  She told him that he was and then Charlie said, ‘I can’t come, Miss Lucy. I’m working on ’railway as a porter and I’m on shifts. I’ve tekken on our Bob’s job. He’s going to be an engine driver.’

  ‘Is he?’ Lucy was delighted. ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘He’s onny just heard,’ Dolly said. ‘He wanted a better job now that he’s wed. We’re that proud.’ She beamed, then added quickly, ‘Of all of ’em. But I’ll let our Edie tell you her bit o’ news.’

  ‘I went to the shop,’ Lucy said, taking the cup of tea from Edie. ‘I saw Max and he said …’ She hesitated, wondering if Edie had told her mother.

  ‘He told you he’d sacked me, did he?’ Edie interrupted. ‘He was peeved cos I wouldn’t tell him why I wanted ’time off.’

  ‘I’ll have summat to say when I see him,’ her mother said grimly. ‘It was nowt to do wi’ him why she wanted time off. He’ll not find a better worker than our Edie; not that she’ll need him now.’ Then her face broke into a grin. ‘Go on, tell her,’ she said. ‘Tell Miss Lucy what you’re going to do.’

  Edie couldn’t hold back her wide grin. ‘Lucy knows what I was planning. We had a discussion about our futures, didn’t we, Lucy?’

  Lucy nodded. She almost knew what was coming next. ‘Don’t keep me in suspense, Edie.’

  ‘I went to see Dr Murdoch like you suggested, and she said I was just ’right calibre of woman they wanted as nurses. She gave me a reference and I’m to go for an interview at ’London Hospital to be considered for training.’ Edie gave out the information on one long breath. ‘Week after next.’

  ‘And if ever we’re injured and our Edie’s in a military hospital we’ll run or stagger to another one,’ Josh grinned. ‘We know what she’s like for bandaging scabby knees.’

  ‘Oh, that’s marvellous!’ Lucy resolved not to tell Edie her own news just yet as she didn’t want to take the shine away from her.

  ‘But I’ll need to find a job, just to tide me over for ’time being, you know,’ Edie said.

  ‘We’ll manage,’ her mother interrupted. ‘Don’t go worrying about that.’

  Stanley broke in. ‘We’ll all chip in to help, Edie. Like Ma says, we’ll manage. Don’t worry.’

  ‘I know who’ll have you,’ Lucy said. ‘Annie at the café. She told me that she wished you worked for her.’

  ‘Did she?’ Edie’s face brightened. ‘What time is it? I’ll go straight away and see her. But first,’ she paused and held up both her hands, ‘first we want to know what Miss Lucy Thornbury has been up to.’

  Lucy took a sip from the cup. ‘Oh, you know, this and that,’ and looked down into her lap, then lifted her eyes to Edie.

  ‘Come on then,’ Edie pleaded. ‘I can’t be ’onny one wi’ a story to tell. Let’s be hearing what you’ve been up to for ’last few days.’

  Lucy lifted her head and glanced from one to the other. ‘I’ve been to London,’ she said quietly. ‘I got back yesterday. I’m going to begin training too.’ She could feel laughter and joy bubbling up inside her. ‘As a medical student. I’m going to be a doctor.’

  Lucy and Aunt Nora agreed that Lucy should have her birthday luncheon on the actual day, 10 August, so that Stanley and Joshua could come before leaving to go back to their regiment at the weekend.

  They decided that roast pork and a joint of beef, with apple sauce and horseradish relish as accompaniments, would satisfy the appetites of three young men, and even though the weather was warm and sunny they would also have Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes and various vegetables, with apple pie and custard and a syllabub for dessert.

  Uncle William took the day off and gave permission for Oswald to do the same, except that he must make up the time in the following week. William expected and received full commitment from Oswald whilst he was working at the bank.

  Before the day came, Lucy asked her aunt and uncle if she might be able to help Edie financially if she should be accepted for nursing training. She knew that Edie’s family had little money and she hated to think that her friend would be barred from doing something she wanted to do because of lack of funds. ‘Can I afford to?’ she asked anxiously and was relieved when her uncle gave her a gentle nod and said he would arrange it for her.

  They hatched a plan between them. Nora suggested that she herself should approach Edie’s mother and intimate that William’s bank would be willing to advance a low interest loan towards Edie’s expenses. She believed that a woman to woman discussion would satisfy Mrs Morris, but she wouldn’t tell her that the funding of the loan would come from Lucy’s bank account.

  ‘And Edie won’t find out?’ Lucy asked anxiously. ‘Because I know she wouldn’t like it. She’s very independent.’

  ‘Leave it to me,’ Nora said, relishing a little intrigue. ‘I’ll speak to Mrs Morris and we’ll arrange it between us. She might well suspect something but she won’t say. She’s a woman who wants the best for her children. As we all do,’ she added.

  For the birthday luncheon Josh and Stanley were both in uniform and each was bearing a gift. Josh brought Lucy a posy of flowers and Stanley came with a box of Turkish Delight.

  ‘I didn’t expect presents,’ she exclaimed. ‘Your company was what I was really looking forward to.’

  ‘You don’t want this box of bon-bons then?’ Edie clutched them to her chest. ‘Good, cos they’re my favourite.’

  Lucy laughed. ‘I’ll force myself to eat them.’

  Eleanor, dressed in her prettiest dress, had embroidered her some dainty handkerchiefs and Oswald had already given her his gift in the morning: a leather-bound anthology of Lord Byron’s and Wordsworth’s poetry with tooled bookmarks in two pages that he said marked his own special favourites. When she read the two chosen poems, she smiled and murmured, ‘I hadn’t thought of you as a Romantic, Oswald. I am seeing another side of you.’ When he laughed, she wondered if he had fallen in love with someone, as each poem described a dark-haired beauty.

  They sat down to eat. Ada carried in the plates of pork and beef for William to carve and gave a wink and a grin to her brothers and sister sitting as honoured guests at her employer’s table. When Cook had brought in the Yorkshire pudding and vegetables and returned to the kitchen, William asked Ada to stay and have a glass of wine with them.

  ‘You’ve known Lucy for many years, Ada,’ he said. ‘We would very much like you to.’

  And although Ada wasn’t a young woman accustomed to blushing, she did so now as she thanked him and wished Lucy a happy birthday.

  ‘I was thinking that it would have been nice to have invited Elizabeth and Henry Warrington,’ Lucy murmured. ‘We all met here as children on another birthday. It was remiss of me not to think of it.’

  ‘I was thinking it would have been nice too,’ Oswald agreed. ‘Although I didn’t really take to either of them at the time. I’m sure they were all right, but I was a self-righteous killjoy back then!’

  ‘You were,’ Lucy, laughing, agreed. ‘You wouldn’t play games with anybody.’

  ‘I heard only yesterday that Elizabeth’s engagement to be married is about to be announced,’ Nora told them, ‘and Henry has gone abroad with his regiment, so they wouldn’t have been able to come.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve missed my chance with Miss Warrington then,’ Josh said mournfully, ‘and I can’t fight Henry as I once wanted to as he’s my superior officer!’

  ‘Do you remember when Edie said her name was royal,’ Oswald reminded them, ‘and Elizabeth and Henry both said theirs were too, and I was really mad because I thought that mine wasn’t?’

  Lucy shook her head. She couldn’t recall it at all, but both Edie and Joshua
said they did, and Oswald went on, ‘Then later when I started at Pocklington school I discovered King Oswald of Northumbria and I desperately wanted to tell Henry that my royal name was much older than his.’

  They all laughed, and then William stood up to make a toast. ‘As this is my niece’s special day and in the autumn she will be leaving us to begin a professional career, I would like to wish her health and happiness throughout the rest of her life, wherever it takes her.’ He paused. ‘And I would like to link that toast to all of you young people on the threshold of your lives. May you be kept safe and free from harm wherever life and circumstances take you. I wish you good health and strength in the years to come, and that you always have love in your lives.’

  Lucy found it hard to swallow as she looked at her uncle and then round the table at her good friends as they all raised their glasses. Her eyes caught Oswald’s; he was gazing at her with a smile on his lips and in his soft grey eyes. They had all been laughing and jesting and making merry, but now, to Lucy, the scene seemed to still, caught in an ethereal bubble of portentous significance as if all their destinies were entwined together in a haunting and prophetic moment of a lifetime.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  1914

  By the beginning of 1914 Lucy was firmly and resolutely entrenched in her medical studies. It had been much harder than she had foreseen, even though she had accepted right from the first that the work would be difficult and perhaps even incomprehensible at times. There were occasions when she had doubted her own intellect or capacity for understanding, and she remarked to Oswald on one of their rare meetings that it must be like learning a new language, Chinese, Japanese or Arabic perhaps, where none of the sounds or symbols made any sense to our Western ears.

  She had also been cajoled into attending some of the suffragette meetings with Dr Schultz, who was a keen supporter; and after seeing photographs in the newspapers of women chained to railings in their attempt to bring the discrimination to public notice, and quite by chance when out in the streets one day, witnessing the horrific spectacle of women being roughly hauled off into police vans, she was convinced that the activists had justice on their side. She had been told of the cruel and degrading forced feeding when the prisoners went on hunger strikes, and of the poor conditions they were subjected to in Holloway and other women’s prisons.

  She was annoyed and infuriated that women had to be so vocal to justify their claim to what should be theirs by right, but in spite of her empathy for them she did not join the cause, being intent on continuing with her vocation and considering that in doing so she too was proving her worth as a woman.

  On several occasions she had been sharply informed by intelligent young men who she considered should have known better that she ought to be at home tending a husband and children, or at most, if she was hell bent on a medical career, should become a midwife, which they claimed was a right and proper role for a woman. She was furious and told them that she would do whatever she considered was important and didn’t need to take advice from an immature and uninformed subspecies, which had startled and silenced them. This made her even more sympathetic to the suffragettes’ cause, but nevertheless she felt that without becoming an agitator she could fight back for what she believed in by continuing her medical studies and becoming a doctor to battle in her own way against all physical and humanitarian ills.

  She had become even more positive when in the June of 1913, to draw attention to the suffragettes’ purpose, Emily Davison had thrown herself in front of the king’s horse at the Derby. Such a waste, Lucy had thought when she read of her death in the newspapers. I doubt that it will change the minds of any of those who regard women as second class citizens.

  While Lucy was studying at the all-female Hampstead hospital, she could concentrate wholly on her training without disturbance, but on several occasions she had been sent to other London hospitals to observe their procedures in comparison with those at the Royal Free. She was not made welcome, was totally ignored by the senior male surgeons and not invited to watch theatre surgery. When questions were invited from the students, hers were not answered even though they were valid points.

  In one hospital she was unaccountably befriended by a young male student who asked if he might sit at her table when she had gone, dejected, for a lunch break. He was handsome and knew it and very friendly, and after chatting for a while almost caught her out by asking her if the studying was very difficult for her. ‘You must find it very challenging,’ he said sympathetically. ‘Not what you expected?’ He reached for her hand and murmured, ‘Though I imagine you have a lovely bedside manner!’

  She had snatched her hand away, offended by his suggestive remark, and retorted, ‘Do not patronize me. I find the study no more challenging than you do; the most demanding part of my training is dealing with schoolboys such as you. Now kindly leave my table before I report you for troubling me.’

  As he left she saw a group of other male students watching, and by their faces knew he had been dared to come over. She had wondered afterwards if she had been sent to these hospitals deliberately by her female senior tutors to assess her ability to cope with such provoking and confrontational demands.

  Oswald was in his final year of a master’s degree and had set his mind to working in medical research. He had become increasingly interested in biology and natural sciences as his course progressed, particularly in the field of medicine, and he had explained to Lucy and his parents that the interest had begun from the time he had casually picked up a medical magazine whilst waiting for Lucy at her first interview at the Gray’s Inn hospital. Lucy had been thrilled at his choice of chosen subjects as it meant that there was always someone who understood exactly what she was doing.

  He was already making plans for a possible career and had applied to Burroughs Wellcome & Company to work as a research scientist in their London pharmaceutical laboratories. He received a personal letter from the head of research to say he would look forward to granting Oswald an interview once he had heard the results of his master’s degree.

  ‘You’re bound to succeed,’ Lucy told him, having great faith in his superior ability and knowledge. ‘I don’t know of anyone quite as clever as you.’

  Lucy and Edie managed to meet up on occasions as Edie was in London too and making great strides in her training; ‘like a duck to water,’ her mother had told Nora when they had chanced to meet one day. ‘I can’t tell you how proud I am of her, and in some part, ma’am, it’s down to you and Mr Thornbury for your encouragement when she was just a bairn and giving her that grounding in edication wi’ Miss Lucy.’

  Nora had shaken her head. ‘We can’t take any credit,’ she said. ‘Edie’s a natural. She would have succeeded without us.’

  Unlike Lucy, Edie was almost ready to begin hospital work; she had completed a probationary period and was expecting to start as a nurse in a few months’ time.

  ‘I had thought I’d go back to Hull,’ she told Lucy. ‘Mebbe work in ’children’s hospital, and perhaps I will one day, but I love it here at St Thomas’s. God bless Florence Nightingale,’ she added, ‘and Dr Mary Murdoch. I’ll allus remember them in my prayers, but I love having my independence here in London and I can live in at ’nurses’ home and still send money back to my ma even though we’ve paid off ’loan.’ She was still the caring thoughtful daughter she had always been, and had no idea that the bank loan had come from Lucy.

  Unlike Lucy’s, Edie’s coming of age had been and gone without any fuss or acknowledgement, whereas when Lucy came of age this year she would be independent of her uncle and able to claim her inheritance. During the New Year holidays, William had taken her to one side to ask what she would like to happen once August arrived.

  ‘Aunt Nora and I have been looking at properties in preparation for this,’ he said. ‘You may have plans for what you’d like to do with the house, either live in it when you have finished your studies or rent it out; e
ither way it will be your choice.’

  Lucy had looked at him blankly as if she didn’t understand, and then her eyes had filled with tears. ‘Do you mean that you’ll be leaving? Am I to live alone?’

  ‘It’s your property, my dear,’ he said gently. ‘Your inheritance to do with as you wish. Come August you will have full control over your life and income without referring to me.’

  ‘B-but,’ she stammered, ‘is that what you want? This has been your home too. Do you really want to leave and live somewhere else – without me?’

  He took hold of her hand. ‘Lucy,’ he said gently, ‘I told you many years ago that you were like a daughter to me and nothing has changed; I am still of that same mind. But it is your house and as such the decision is yours. No, we do not want to leave, in fact it will break our hearts, mine and your aunt’s and Eleanor’s too I should think, although we haven’t told her yet. This has been our home and we have been happy here, in spite of the tragic circumstances that brought us to Hull.’

  ‘Then please stay,’ she implored him. ‘I don’t want you to leave. I want to know that you’ll be here whenever I come home; why would I want to come back to an empty house?’

  An image from many years before of returning and finding her parents were not there emerged from the shadowy recesses of her memory, and she knew that she didn’t ever want to know a time like that again.

  ‘All right.’ He took a breath as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. ‘But maybe one day, after you are qualified, you might choose to use the house as a surgery or perhaps marry and raise a family here. We are living in difficult times. Who knows what is in store for any of us?’

  ‘That’s so far into the future, Uncle William,’ she laughed and wiped her face of tears, ‘that I can’t think so far ahead.’