‘You know whose fault that is,’ Michael said sharply. ‘Don’t you be landing that at Mammy’s door.’
‘I’m not. I am just saying…’
‘Well, you are saying it to the wrong person.’
‘Well, I am not saying it to any other bugger,’ Damien said.
Michael crossed the room and cuffed him on the side of the head. ‘Less of that sort of language.’
Damien rubbed his head as he remarked ruefully, ‘I wouldn’t say anything to Daddy, would I? No one would, unless they had a death wish.’
‘Stop arguing,’ Eve cried, coming in at that moment. ‘I heard what you said, Michael. Have you thought it through?’
‘Not really,’ Michael said. ‘I mean, I have only just thought of it, but there really is no reason why I shouldn’t be there too. I will obviously have to arrange time from work, but that won’t be a problem since I have never had more than a few days off from when I began. I will give Carmel away if she is agreeable.’
‘Oh, Michael, I would love it,’ Carmel said. ‘It would be like the icing on the cake to have you there.’
‘Where would he stay?’ Eve asked. ‘He can hardly bide with us at the convent.’
‘Might put a smile on the old nuns’ faces if he did,’ Siobhan said with a impish grin.
‘Siobhan, behave yourself,’ Eve chided, but her heart wasn’t in the rebuke, as she was trying to control her own features and Michael was laughing too.
‘Oh, I will sleep anywhere,’ he said. ‘Someone’s floor
will do me fine. The one who will be on the sharp end of this when Daddy realises I’m gone, however, will be Siobhan. How do you feel about me hightailing it to England?’
Siobhan wanted to say that she had never thought he would do such a thing and that she needed him there, but then she thought of her sister being given away by a stranger and knew she couldn’t do that to her. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘For a few days I will manage fine without you. It shouldn’t be too much of a problem.’
‘There will be one big problem if you three do not get on with your homework,’ Eve said to the children around the table, and though there was a collective groan, they did settle down over their books again, cheered no end by Carmel reminding them that when they were finished there was a big bag of sweets for them to share, courtesy of Paul.
The children had seldom seen a sweet, let alone eaten one, and they settled quickly to their work at the thought of such of treat awaiting them.
Carmel had actually been having pangs of conscience about her younger siblings since she came home. Although her mother had told her the things they had done in her weekly letters, Carmel had thought about them seldom, scrubbing them from her earlier life along with her father. And though she knew they would have grown and changed in the three years she had been away, in her mind’s eyes she had seen them as the same ages as when she had left. But now Thomas was nearly eight, Kathy ten and Damien fourteen. As for Siobhan, at fifteen she was a young lady on the verge of womanhood,
and Michael a fine young man, muscled by the farm work he did and yet still as alarmed by his father as he ever had been.
Much to everyone’s surprise, Paul arrived home just after ten o’clock, alone and comparatively sober. ‘I never intended stopping out until all hours,’ he said in explanation. ‘Nor did I intend to drink myself senseless, but I did have a sort of plan.’
‘What?’ Carmel wanted to know.
‘Your father introduced me as his future son-in-law and so I just waited until I gauged your father had drunk enough and then I let it slip that when we married the following summer, your father was more than agreeable for your mother to travel to England to be there on our special day. I made him sound like some sort of magnanimous saint to do this. His friends were surprised, right enough, especially when your father, sensing their approval, I suppose, made out it had been his idea all along. Anyway, they all thought him grand fellow for it, clapped him on the back, bought him one pint after the other. When I left him, he was well away and being regaled as a sort of hero. The point is, because now he has said what he intended to do in front of so many witnesses, he can hardly renege on it.’
Eve let out the breath she hadn’t been aware that she was holding in an audible sigh of relief. She looked at Paul as if he was some sort of being from outer space, because she knew as well as everyone else that now she would be allowed to go to Carmel and Paul’s wedding. Paul had achieved the almost impossible. She had no
words to convey how much this meant to her and how grateful she was to Paul, but he waved away her thanks and just said he was glad to help.
Both Paul and Carmel were very tired by the time the train pulled into New Street Station where Chris and Lois were waiting for them.
Chris was bursting with an idea that he spilled out in the taxi. He had been hunting for a house just as earnestly as Paul and, like Paul, had found any they could afford to rent were in very bad condition and in very run-down areas, and the better ones they couldn’t afford yet as very junior doctors.
‘The point is, bigger houses aren’t that much more expensive in comparison,’ Chris said. ‘Harder to let, I suppose. So how about if we have a big house, instead of two small ones and share it?’
Carmel was very taken with it. She and Lois were good friends and it wasn’t as if they had no experience of living together, so when Paul said, ‘What do you think?’ she said, ‘It sounds a great idea.’
‘It would be a solution for now,’ Chris said. ‘And then after we are married and the girls living there too, they would be company for each other when we are working all hours.’
‘All right,’ Paul said. ‘We’ll look for a larger house and see what’s what.’
‘The point is, we’ve found one already,’ Chris said. ‘Number 17 York Road, Erdington. I have got the details and put a holding deposit on it until we all have a chance for a proper look round it.’
‘I hope you weren’t thinking of tonight,’ Paul said. ‘The only thing I want to look at and then fall into is my own bed.’
Chris laughed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow is soon enough, but I would like to get it all wrapped up before we start back to work.’
Paul had no argument with that.
York Road was in a prime position, just off Sutton New Road, which had trams running along it to the city centre and the General Hospital, and was just yards from the High Street of Erdington Village. Carmel was impressed by the position before she even saw the house.
Number 17 had three stone steps running up to the solid wooden door, which opened into a long and narrow hall. There were stairs to the left, and to the right were doors to two sizeable rooms.
‘See, one each,’ Chris said. ‘So we can be by ourselves sometimes if we want to be.’
Carmel thought that a good idea because however fond you were of someone, you probably didn’t want to live in their pocket. They followed Chris down the passage. He suddenly came to a stop and they saw a small door to their left-hand side.
‘That’s probably the entrance to the cellar,’ Chris
said. ‘The agent did say the house had one. And I came armed with a torch, just in case.’
Paul opened the door and peered into the darkness.
‘I’m not going into that nasty, smelly place,’ Lois declared. ‘It’s probably jammed full of spiders.’ Carmel agreed with her and the girls stayed in the hall and waited for Chris and Paul, who went exploring the depths.
‘It was a coal house once,’ Paul said when he emerged, covered with dust and sneezing his head off.
‘There is not a trace of coal there now, though,’ Chris said, in the same condition as Paul. ‘It’s just full of junk.’
‘The coal is probably kept in the coal bunker in the back garden, which Lois and I spotted when we were having a shufty of the outside,’ Chris said. ‘I’ll show you.’
There was another sizeable room at the end of the passage, but this one led on to the kitchen, scullery and the door to the back garden. The garden had been very neglected, and Paul said that if they took this place that was one of the things they had to attend to first.
‘I’ll say,’ Chris agreed. ‘The coal man would have trouble even finding the bunker, with the grass so long. Still, I’d say a couple of scythes will make short work of it. And that gate at the side leads to the entry this house shares with the neighbours, and then on to the street.’
They trooped back into the house and up the stairs, delighted to find the house had four bedrooms and an inside bathroom and toilet.
‘Now isn’t that the height of luxury?’ Chris said.
Carmel agreed it was and Lois said, ‘Every small terrace house we looked at had an outside toilet down the
yard, next to the coal house, and no bath at all.’
‘Fancy,’ said Carmel with a smile, remembering the even more primitive conditions in her own home. She said as much to Lois and commented, ‘I must be getting soft.’
Lois gave a toss of her head and said, ‘You just want better standards now, that’s all, and so do I.’
Carmel looked at her friend. Although she had never been to Lois’s house, she could imagine that it was fairly luxurious and though for her to be renting a house like this was terrific, she knew Lois might feel differently about it—not that she had ever been the slightest bit snobbish about having more money than the rest or anything like that.
However, when she asked Lois if she didn’t perhaps want something a bit better, she shook her head. ‘Chris couldn’t afford much better than this yet and we really do want to stand on our own two feet as far as possible.’
However, while the house was very handy for the girls to reach their hospital, it wouldn’t be that easy for Paul and Chris at the Queen’s, but as Chris said, they would hardly be able to use public transport at all anyway because of the unsociable hours that junior doctors were expected to work.
‘So what will you do?’ Lois asked.
‘Well, a car is out of the question,’ Chris said. ‘But we have been talking to the others and many are buying motorbikes.’
‘A motorbike,’ Carmel cried. ‘Wouldn’t you be scared?’
‘What’s there to be scared of?’ Lois said. ‘As Chris said, if you can ride a push bike, you can ride a motorbike.’
‘But they are very powerful, and with all the traffic on the roads I would be petrified.’
‘Well, I can’t think of a better solution,’ Paul said. ‘We will have to look around and check out the prices.’
‘And quick,’ Chris said.
It was quick. The very next day Chris and Paul found a small garage in Deritend down way past the Bull Ring, which did second-hand motorbikes. Soon they were the proud owners of two Triumph Royal Enfield bikes that were just a few years old and in very good condition. They already had panniers fitted and a pillion seat, though Carmel thought she might be too scared ever to ride on the back.
Paul understood her reticence and he said, ‘I’ll not force you to go on it if you really don’t want to, but it is our transport problem solved.’
Jane and Sylvia were green with envy when the other two told them what their plans were. Carmel could understand how they felt, for she knew many young people had to start in poky rooms or, heaven forbid, with parents. She tried to imagine what it would be like for her, living with Paul’s parents. God, it would be a fate worse than death and didn’t really bear dwelling on.
As for the two powerful and noisy machines that Paul and Chris were the very satisfied owners of, although they still frightened her a little, Carmel couldn’t help being a little awed by them. The news, of course, flew
around the hospital and she couldn’t help the little thrill of pride she felt when Paul and Chris both pulled up their motorbikes in the hospital car park the following day and were surrounded by a gaggle of interested nurses.
No one could believe that Carmel was too nervous even to sit astride Paul’s machine, while Lois straddled Chris’s with ease and claimed that she couldn’t wait to go for a ride.
‘Do you really feel like that?’ Carmel asked Lois, ‘because I think it is all eyewash. I know you too well and I think you are just saying it for effect,’
‘All right,’ Lois admitted. ‘I am a bit apprehensive, but I am not saying it for effect, but to please Chris. He would like me to feel as excited about that blooming motorbike as he is and he would be disappointed if I wasn’t. I know that, so to please him I say what he wants to hear.’
‘Paul isn’t like that,’ Carmel told her. ‘He says—;’
‘I don’t care what he says,’ Lois said, cutting across her. ‘Look at his eyes if you want to know what he thinks. That motorbike is his pride and joy. Obviously he wants you to feel the same way. Chris wants to take me out for a spin on Sunday. What will you and Paul do then, and how do you think Paul will feel?’
The two other girls thought the same way as Lois. Jane said, ‘If you don’t want to go out with dishy Paul on that fabulous machine then move over, I will.’
‘I think,’ commented Sylvia wryly, ‘you would have to join the queue, but Jane is right in a way because you do have to put yourself out when you love someone. It tells you this in all the women’s books—you know, the
tips they print on keeping a man happy. They all tell you to take an interest in his hobbies.’
‘Are you saying regardless of how I feel I should force myself to go on that dreaded thing?’ Carmel demanded.
‘In a nutshell, that is exactly what we are saying,’ Lois said. ‘If I can do it, then so can you.’
The result of this was that when Carmel saw Paul that evening, she told him that if he wanted she would go out on the bike on Sunday, the day before their holidays were over. She was rewarded by a smile that lit up all of Paul’s face. Then he lifted her in the air and told her that she was the greatest girl in the world, and she knew then her decision had been a wise one.
He had told her to wrap up well and put a scarf around her head that she could tie securely.
‘Are you sure about this?’ he said as she attempted to mount the machine behind him. ‘I always said I would never force you.’
Carmel hoped Paul couldn’t feel the shaking of her limbs as she settled herself behind him and grasped him tight around the waist and she fought to keep the tremor out of her voice as she said, ‘But you haven’t forced me. This was totally my decision.’
Afterwards, Carmel wasn’t sure when, despite the cold and the quite bumpy ride, she gave herself up to the exhilaration of the whole thing. Cuddled as she was against Paul, she felt the excitement running through him and that fuelled her own so that she wanted to shout with the joy of it. They left the town far, far behind and set out for the countryside, zooming down lanes, roaring past farms and sleepy villages and that first day they finally came to rest at the edge of a village called Kingsbury.
Paul was glad to get Carmel to himself at last. ‘It seems like ages that I have been sharing you with others, or else on show, like we were in Letterkenny, and not able to be really natural. Soon I will probably have scant time off. Let’s enjoy being together for one day at least.’
Carmel too had longed for time with Paul. They wandered through the village hand in hand and then out on the nearby canal and had lunch at a little pub fronting the water. They watched the shaggy-footed Shire horses pull the brightly painted barges along while the sunbronzed and barefoot children leaped agilely along the barge or on to the bank as confidently and effortlessly as monkeys. After lunch, they turned away from the canal and wandered the lanes hand in hand, and talked about all manner of things. They came to a sunny glade and Paul spread his jacket over the fallen leaves littering the ground so that they could sit in the shade of the oak tree, and when he lay down and pulled Carmel down beside him, she didn’t protest.
His initial kisses left her dizzy and aching for more, and when they grew more urgent, she responded eagerly. She groaned with longing when Paul ran his hands all over her body and wriggled in anticipation. Paul was aching with desire when he gently teased her mouth open for the first time, and when his tongue shot into Carmel’s mouth, she felt as if an explosion had happened inside her. Her tongue responded to his and she was totally unable to stop Paul’s hands slipping beneath her clothes, nor his fumbling fingers snapping her brassiere undone. She felt his hands on her bare breasts and she moaned in ecstasy.
Paul pushed up Carmel’s clothes and put his mouth
around one of her nipples, sucking and teasing and Carmel thought she would drown in pleasure. Feelings new and exciting and more intense than she had ever felt before were coursing through her body and she knew she wouldn’t even try to stop Paul because she wanted him to go on and on.
Paul knew that too. He felt her submission in every vestige of her being. He knew that any warning words her mother, or maybe Sister Frances, might have given her would have fled from her mind in this first overpowering introduction to her sexuality. Nothing else mattered to her at that moment, and he knew he could not debase and defile the love he had for this girl by taking something that she was too vulnerable and naïve to refuse him.
Carmel had no idea what it cost him to roll away from her. She gave a cry of dismay. ‘Don’t stop, for God’s sake.’
‘I must, before I forget myself altogether.’
‘Then forget yourself,’ Carmel cried. ‘I don’t mind. I am ready.’
‘I’m not,’ Paul said, pulling way again with difficulty. ‘You honestly don’t know what you’re saying. Cover yourself up, for Christ’s sake, before I leap on you again—and don’t say I am quite welcome to,’ he went on, seeing Carmel was about to protest.
Carmel was tingling with sexual awareness, but Paul had already withdrawn from her. She tidied herself as best she could and when Paul got up and pulled her to her feet, she went without protest.
After a few weeks, life got into something of a pattern. Paul and Chris continued to work the punishing hours
of the first year, and Carmel worried at the spartan way they were living at the house, but they told her not to worry.
‘But how do you cook anything?’ she asked.
‘We don’t,’ Chris told her cheerfully. ‘We eat mainly in the hospital canteen.’
‘Or we live on fish and chips, or bread and jam,’ Paul put in. ‘To be honest, after we have done a shift we are usually too tired to think about cooking anything.’
Carmel knew that it was right about the tiredness. Both men were often white with exhaustion. And yet when they had any free time they would do their level best to see the girls, although often they didn’t have time off together. Paul would sometimes pick Carmel up on the bike on his way home and then they would maybe see a picture at the Palace picture house on Erdington’s High Street. The cinema had a dance hall above it, but Carmel didn’t suggest going there, because she had never told Paul about the dancing lessons and warned Lois to keep it from Chris as well.