She wasn’t content, though, with just being able to dance; she wanted to dance well, really well, and she was constantly rolling back the rugs and practising the steps. Lois would help her, taking the man’s role, full of admiration for the dedicated way Carmel had approached ballroom dancing. Lois knew when Carmel had the opportunity to show her skill and expertise in front of her future mother-in-law, the woman would be astounded and she hoped she was there to see the look on her Aunt Emma’s face.
‘Does your mother know about Paul?’ Lois said when they were halfway though their night duty in the new year.
‘Well she knows that I am seeing him, though just at the moment, not seeing him would be more accurate,’ Carmel said.
‘You haven’t said that you are engaged?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘No reason really,’ Carmel said. ‘They would probably wonder at the length of the engagement, because the wedding is going to be over a year away yet. Plenty of time to let them know.’
Lois could read Carmel like a book. She looked at her and said, ‘You don’t want any of them to come at all, do you?’
‘No, if I am honest,’ Carmel admitted. ‘If they came, I just know that they would show me up, and I know it’s not nice, but I am ashamed of them. Anyway, they wouldn’t have suitable clothes and they wouldn’t be able to raise the fare.’
‘Then shouldn’t you go over there? Wouldn’t your mother at least like to meet the man her eldest daughter is marrying?’
‘Time enough,’ Carmel said. ‘And don’t raise your eyes to the ceiling, Lois. You know that Paul has barely time to blow his nose, never mind gallivant over to Ireland. And just how many times have they made arrangements with us, only to break them at the last minute?’
‘Too many times,’ Lois said grimly. ‘And I do hear what you say, but your family will have to know sometime.’
‘After I have taken the exams I will concentrate on it,’ Camel promised. ‘Mammy will want to know how I did anyway. When Paul and Chris have done a full year in September maybe life will settle down more.’
‘And maybe pigs might fly,’ Lois said.
‘They just might,’ Carmel agreed, and the two girls laughed together.
Carmel had thought that her twenty-first birthday would pass unnoticed like the previous one, which was annoying because she finished her spell of night duty just beforehand and that meant she had the day of her birthday and the day after off duty. She tried very hard not to feel sorry for herself.
‘We have to go out for a drink at least,’ Jane said.
Carmel wasn’t keen. Pubs weren’t her favourite places, but she knew that Jane and Sylvia were trying to be kind and so she agreed to go—to find half the staff at the hospital gathered in the back room of the pub, which Jane and Sylvia had decorated for Carmel’s coming of age. She was so overcome with their thoughtfulness and kindness that she felt tears sting the back of her eyes and knew she was lucky to have so many good friends.
She didn’t let anyone see the tears and threw herself into enjoying the party, knowing this was the way to please them most. She was even inveigled into drinking the odd glass of sweet white wine instead of her more usual orange juice.
She had been at the party more than an hour or so when Paul turned up. Though Carmel noticed the fatigue etched on his grey face and the bags beneath his
slightly rheumy eyes, she said nothing, knowing Paul wouldn’t want her to. She loved the gold locket he gave her, which she would treasure always, but most of all she was glad to see him. She wanted to feel his arms around her, his lips on hers. Paul was more than willing to oblige and Carmel returned to the nurses’ home happier and more content than she had been for a long time.
Then it was heads down to revise for the final exams. There were three components: written, oral and practical. Everyone during this time was very stressed, constantly testing themselves and one another, and convinced they were all going to fail drastically.
On the day of the exam itself, Carmel was given practical tasks that she could do well and efficiently. She could answer all the oral questions without faltering, and when she turned over the written paper, all the things she thought had flown out of her head came back to her.
‘I think it went all right,’ she told Paul, who arrived that evening with Chris to see how the girls had got on.
‘I don’t doubt it for a minute,’ Paul said. ‘And I’m sure that you’re going to pass with flying colours. Now that you’ve got that out of the way, you must write to your parents.’
Immediately the image of her bullying father towering over her cowering mother with his fist balled, a scenario she had witnessed many times, superimposed itself over the memories of the day, yet she said, ‘I know.’
‘And,’ added Paul, ‘so must I.’
‘You?’
‘Yes,’ Paul said. ‘I must ask your father for your hand in marriage formally and it’s no good putting up your hand, or saying he wouldn’t be interested,’ he went on as Carmel was about to protest. ‘It is the correct way to go about things. I would never have your father be able to level at me the criticism that things were done in an underhand way.’
Carmel shook her head. ‘You really don’t understand how my parents are.’
‘Do any of us really understand our own parents, let alone the parents of our boyfriends and girlfriends?’ Paul asked. ‘But we need to observe traditions and then we will be married and can live in any way we want and see the parents as little or as often as we want to.’
‘Paul, it sounds marvellous.’
Paul kissed her and said, ‘It will be marvellous. How could it be any other way, with two people who love each other as much as we do? I have some holidays due and you must have too. September would be a good time for me to go over, because most people from the hospital will be back from their holidays by then, but the illnesses of the autumn and winter will not have begun.’
Carmel sent her letter together with one from Paul, introducing himself to the family and asking her parents’ permission to marry their daughter. Two days later came the reply.
‘They want to meet you,’ Carmel told him. ‘Mammy must have written by return and she says my father won’t give his permission unless he meets you, and September suits them fine.’
‘Well, as you are over twenty-one we don’t really need
their permission, but I can quite see why he wants to see me,’ Paul said.
‘I can’t,’ Carmel said. ‘Is he going to ask you if you can keep me in the manner I am accustomed to?’ she went on drily. ‘It would be easy enough—some old slum to live in and surviving on St Vincent de Paul vouchers and fresh air and I’d definitely feel I was back home.’
Paul laughed, though the word ‘slum’ brought to mind his mother’s angry words and his own fruitless searching for a property. He said, ‘We might both be living in a slum before we are much older, and glad of it. I think your father’s concern is just to see the type of person I am; that I will treat you right.’
‘Yeah, like he never did.’
‘That’s people for you,’ Paul said. ‘Book a fortnight off and I will do the same and we will spend the first few days at your home. It makes sense to go now too, because I have the funds at the moment. My paternal grandfather left money in a trust fund, for myself and Matthew to be given when either we graduate or reach the age of twenty-five, whichever came first, and so mine, at the moment, is just resting in the bank. When we come back we will have to get down to some serious house hunting.’
Paul had made the odd enquiry about somewhere to live, and so had Chris, for the lease on the lodgings they shared would have to be renewed for a further year or else they had to find somewhere else to live. With marriage planned the following year, it seemed sensible to look around for a house that the men would live in alone for the time being. ‘Even if we could move
into their lodgings I wouldn’t,’ Lois said. ‘Apart from its nearness to Queen’s it has got little to recommend it.’
Carmel knew just what she meant. The house Paul and Chris shared with two other men was worse than seedy.
‘Anyway, I don’t want to live in Edgbaston,’ Lois went on. ‘I fancied living closer to my family.’
‘Won’t the houses in Sutton Coldfield be expensive to rent?’
Lois wrinkled her nose. ‘That’s what Chris said. But Erdington is right next door and so we are going to concentrate our search there.’
‘And we might help you,’ Carmel said, ‘when we have been to Ireland to see the family.’
First, though, there was the formal presentation that both Chris and Paul attended to see Carmel and Lois and many other friends receive badges from the GNC (General Nursing Council) and their registration numbers, qualifying them as state registered nurses.
It meant all the girls who had got this far would now be junior staff nurses. As Matron said, ‘There will be no more exams, no lectures, but you will all have another twelve months on the wards under the direction and guidance of a senior staff nurse. This will enable you to consolidate all you have learned in training before receiving your certificates next year and I trust you will make full use of this coming year.’
Chris and Paul were immensely proud of the girls, knowing how hard they had both worked, and Carmel’s head was in the clouds for she knew the dream of being a proper qualified nurse was now in sight. It was what
she’d hankered after for years. Now, though, there was an added complication because she also hankered after Paul, longed and yearned to become his wife, and she fervently hoped she hadn’t to ditch one of her dreams to achieve the other.
As they alighted at Letterkenny station, the September sun was sinking and, in its golden light, Carmel saw the speculative looks thrown her way by some of the people on the platform, and even a nudge from one woman to her husband to alert him to the fact that Carmel Duffy was back.
Paul felt the trembling of her whole body against him and he was filled with compassion for her. ‘Chin up,’ he whispered. ‘You’re worth ten of these any day.’
Paul’s words gave Carmel the courage to lift her head and she inclined it to those they passed in greeting, but didn’t try to speak because she wasn’t sure that she would be able to. Her heart was thumping in her chest for she couldn’t still the panic coursing through her every time she thought of coming face to face with her father, despite Paul’s dependable presence beside her.
Carmel knew the landlady of the lodging house that Sister Frances had found for them a little. She had been one of the kinder of the townsfolk and she greeted them both warmly and showed them to the rooms where they could leave their cases. As Carmel expected, the rooms
were very basic, but they were clean and she looked longingly at the comfortable-looking bed, wishing she could slip into it and sleep away the weariness of the journey. But her mother would be expecting her.
‘We must buy food,’ she said, when they were once more in the street.
Paul nodded. He had expected that really. A family as poverty-stricken as Carmel said hers was would have no spare cash to provide for visitors and he intended to buy plenty. He wanted them all well fed for once in their lives.
So the grocer, the butcher, the greengrocer and the baker were all introduced to Paul and all admired the ring and wished the young couple their very best. As they walked towards Carmel’s home with their laden bags, the news flew around the town that the eldest Duffy girl, her that went in for the nursing, was back to see her mother and sporting a ring that would dazzle the life out of you to look on it. And would you credit it, the man she was engaged to was a doctor!
In that small community, the doctor was only one remove from the priest in the hierarchy, and a tad more respected than the school teacher, and between these types of people and the ordinary folk there was a deep chasm that it was unheard of to cross. For one of the weans of Dennis Duffy to even speak to a doctor was bad enough, but to be engaged…! It was totally outside their understanding.
‘Mind you,’ said one women spitefully, ‘the man is in for a rude awakening, I’m thinking, for he hasn’t seen the house yet. Nor has he met the brute of a father. I just hope Carmel hasn’t got her heart set on him. I think this
will be his first and last visit, and when they go back to Birmingham or wherever it was she went, she’ll not see him for dust.’
‘Aye,’ the women said collectively.
And one commented, ‘After all, it stands to reason, you can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. Carmel must see that they are streets apart.’
Carmel was too nervous for small talk and so she walked beside Paul in silence. Then suddenly, as the lane turned a corner, a small boy slithered out of a tree in front of them. He made no move to approach them, however, but ran the other way instead, shouting, ‘Mammy, they’re here. Our Carmel’s come.’
Paul raised quizzical eyebrows and Carmel said, ‘That will be my little brother Tom. He has grown and must be nearly eight now, but it was him all right.’
Paul was shocked. Nearly eight! The child was no bigger than one of five years old. His dirty feet were bare and his arms and legs so spindly he resembled one of the destitute children that hung about the barrows in the Bull Ring, begging. He could say none of this to Carmel and he had no time, for a woman came into view, dancing children surrounding her. When she saw Carmel she ran towards her and, ignoring Paul, she threw her arms around her daughter, as tears rained down her cheeks.
‘Oh, my darling, darling girl, how I have longed to see you.’
Guilt smote Carmel and she gently unwound her mother’s arms from around her neck and held her hands, giving them a little shake as she said, ‘Come, Mammy,
this isn’t the time for tears. This is my fiancé, Paul.’
Paul shook hands with the woman and made the right responses, but his mind was reeling with shock for he was looking at a carbon copy of Carmel, though a faded bedraggled copy.
He wondered if her eyes ever lit up with excitement or joy, as Carmel’s often did, or if she had ever laughed at something that amused her. He doubted it somehow, for everything about her was muted and sad.
When Paul had his first sight of the cottage, he was glad that Eve had kept hold of her daughter’s hand as if her life depended on it. He brought up the rear, with the cavorting children leaping beside them, and that gave him time to compose his face. The state of the house astounded him, for it was little more than a shack.
But if Paul was horrified by the house, Eve was mortified. For so long she hadn’t seen how bad it was; it was just where they eked out an existence. They had never had visitors and so, until this moment, she had never had to look at her house through someone else’s eyes. Now that she did she wanted to sink down to the ground and weep with shame.
She was nervous enough of Paul as it was, for she wasn’t used to mixing with doctors. She seldom had reason to call one, for they cost money and few would speak to the likes of her anyway. But now this fine, upstanding doctor man was wanting to marry their Carmel.
She knew she had to meet him, but wished he wasn’t quite so fine and, more than that, she wished that he hadn’t to see the hovel Carmel was reared in.
‘Is Daddy in, Mammy?’ Carmel asked as they neared the house.
‘Why surely, child, and waiting to welcome you like the rest of us.’
Carmel suppressed the exclamation of disbelief and asked instead, ‘Is he sober?’
‘Of course,’ Eve said in a high voice, as if she thought it odd that Carmel had to even ask such a thing. ‘He’s looking forward to meeting you…and…and…your young man too, of course. Now come away in. You must be worn out and famished with hunger.’
‘We have food, Mammy,’ Carmel said. ‘Lots of it. We stopped at the shops and stocked up.’
Carmel saw her mother’s shoulders sag in blessed sheer relief and she knew if they had brought nothing with them, someone would have had to go without in order that they be welcomed properly.
‘I’ll unpack it and you will see,’ she said. ‘And then we will prepare a meal fit for a king. Just wait till I take off my coat.’ She spun round as she spoke and came face to face with her father.
Immediately, she felt as if she had a leaden weight in her stomach and her mouth was so dry she was having trouble swallowing. She felt like she had as a young child when on more than one occasion she had wet herself with fear. Her father was dressed in greasy trousers and a check shirt that had seen much better days and which strained to fasten across his large and flabby belly. He had the sleeves rolled up and the reddened arms protruding from it matched the red of his thick and bulbous face, with his wide cruel mouth, squashed nose and eyes as cold as ice.
‘So,’ said the hated guttural voice, ‘have you brought your fancy fiancé?’
‘Y-Yes, Daddy. He…he’s b-behind you.’ Carmel hated herself for stuttering and betraying her fear, especially when she saw her father was amused by it.
Paul hated hearing it too, and he stepped in front of Dennis. ‘I am Carmel’s fiancé,’ he said, extending his hand. ‘My name is Paul Connolly and I am very pleased to meet you.’
Dennis ignored the hand. He looked at it as if it were an object of disgust and then growled out, ‘Is she up the duff?’
Carmel gasped in dismay as Paul said, ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You heard,’ Dennis said contemptuously. ‘Simple enough question. I asked you if her belly was full?’
‘Daddy,’ Carmel cried in desperation and even Eve said, ‘Ah, Dennis, give over, do.’
‘Shut your mouths, the pair of you,’ Dennis commanded and he turned again to Paul. ‘Well?’
‘I assure you…’
‘Is she or isn’t she?’ Dennis said. ‘That’s all I want to know.’
‘No, she is not.’
‘Then why the bleeding hell are you marrying her?’
Paul found it hard before this objectionable and belligerent man to talk of love and devotion and so he said instead, ‘I care deeply for Carmel and I wish to marry her.’
Dennis shook his head. ‘She ain’t your sort,’ he snarled. ‘Look around you. This is where she comes from, what she is deep down. You best go back and find one
of your own set if you have a yen to marry at all. People like you don’t marry the likes of us.’
Carmel gave a cry of anguish and Paul, seeing her distress, put his arm around her and led her away through the door.
‘I can’t expect you to put up with this,’ Carmel said, as Paul strode across the yard and turned into the lane. ‘We were wrong to come. We should have stayed in our little fantasy cocoon and pretended all in the garden was rosy. And now you know where and how I was dragged up. If you want nothing more to do with me, I will understand.’
Paul stopped, turned Carmel round and gave her a little shake. ‘Look at me!’
‘I hardly dare.’
‘Why? Don’t tell me it is because of anything that brute of a father did or said?’
‘Don’t you care?’
‘Of course I care,’ Paul burst out. ‘I care a great deal that he still has the power to terrify the life out of you.’
‘But the things he said, the way he was…I can’t…’
Paul held tight to Carmel’s hands and looked deep into her eyes. He said, ‘Right, let us establish here and now that you were right: your father is a bastard of the first order and a bully as well. No one should ever let a bully win. He is hitting out the only way he knows and trying to drive a wedge between us, which is exactly what my mother tried to do, using different methods. We cannot allow either of them to do that.’
He pulled Carmel into his arms. ‘I love you, Carmel,’ he said, kissing her tenderly. ‘Please believe me. My life is nothing without you. Will you come back with me
now and face your father with your head held high? You have no need to fear him any longer. He has no power to touch our lives in any way.’
Carmel knew that Paul was right and she gave a brief nod. They returned to the house, hand in hand, and she noticed her brothers and sisters looking at her with a kind of awe and suddenly wished she could lift them from this place, give them somewhere where they could be carefree children.
At least, she thought, they could have plenty to eat that day and she was pleased to see that while she had been away from the house, her mother had been busy making a meal from the things they had brought.
Though the food was good, there was tension and apprehension in the air. Dennis demanded that they ate in silence. Only he could speak, and this was usually to pull someone to pieces or make fun or yell at the children or Eve. Carmel remembered it well.
Everyone seemed to breathe easier when Dennis went out to the pub as usual. The children began to chatter and laugh, and were very interested in the tales Paul and Carmel told first about life at the hospital. When they got on to the plans they had for their marriage the following summer, the children were spellbound.
Siobhan and Carmel washed up in the scullery while Eve put Pauline and Edward to bed and settled the others at the table to do their homework.
Siobhan said, ‘Did you see Mammy’s face when you were talking about your wedding? I am sure she would give her right arm to be able to go. I will be sixteen by then and I’m sure I can see to things for a few days.’
‘What difference does that make?’ Carmel demanded.
‘Haven’t you learned yet that the Duffys don’t make plans or have ideas? There’s little point. I mean, think about it, Siobhan. Even if Mammy had the clothes to wear and she could gather up the fare, do you think our father would be agreeable to it? Do you think that he would wave her off with his blessing and a smile of approval decorating his face for once in his life?’
‘No,’ Siobhan said, with a sigh. ‘Bloody shame, though.’
‘I agree,’ Carmel said, and added with a grin, ‘and if Mammy heard you she would wash your mouth out with carbolic.’
And then, suddenly sorry for her sister, she went on, ‘Look, Siobhan, I am taking Paul to see Sister Frances tomorrow at lunchtime and I will have a word with her and see if she can think of something. I’m promising nothing, mind, so don’t tell Mammy yet. Sister Frances might be a nun, but I don’t know how hot she is in the miracle department and I think that is what we need here.’
The following day, Sister Frances considered the problem of Eve seeing her daughter married. When Carmel told her that Siobhan was more than happy to see to things if her mother did this, she nodded her head slowly.
‘I think that is a very good idea.’
‘But, Sister Frances, my father would never allow it.’
‘Well, it would certainly help me if he could be persuaded, for it would not be fitting for a nun to travel alone and I suppose I am invited to this wedding too?’
‘Of course, Sister,’ Carmel said. ‘I’m surprised you even had to ask, but I was also going to ask your sister,
Mrs Mackay, who spoke to you for the job I had in the hospital and got the ball rolling in the first place.’
‘And don’t you think your mother would feel it, you asking your teacher and a former work colleague and her getting no invite at all?’
‘I know, Sister, and yes, she is bound to but I don’t see—;’
‘Unless there is a drastic change between now and the date of your wedding, there is no way my sister, Eileen, will be able to be away from the house overnight,’ Sister Frances said. ‘She has her mother-in-law living with her now, for her mind is wandering. A neighbour woman looks after her while Eileen is teaching at the school, for the old woman cannot be left, and as things stand at the moment, she would be unable to come to your wedding. That means I would have to travel alone, unless your mother was to come with me.’
‘Sister, even if it were remotely possible, Mammy has no suitable clothes,’ Carmel said.
‘Leave that to me,’ Sister Frances told her confidently. ‘We have had some really good quality clothes given in for the missions just lately. There is a costume there would be just the thing for your mother. In fact, it would fit few others. Most people are taller and have more flesh on their bones than Eve. I think too she should have a good haircut.’