To Have and To Hold

To Have and To Hold
Anne Bennett

A stirring saga of a nurse who only wants to do her duty in World War Two – and who ends up having to make an agonising choice. Set in Ireland and Birmingham, this is the latest from emerging star of the genre Anne Bennett.Carmel Duffy is the eldest child of a brutal and abusive marriage, and she can’t wait to leave home. She’s equally determined to have no husband or children of her own – what she wants more than anything is to be a nurse. As soon as she turns eighteen, she heads for Birmingham and begins her training.With her beautiful auburn curls, she draws plenty of attention and her resolve to concentrate on her career is tested when Dr Paul Connolly comes onto her ward and into her life. Gradually he wins her heart, and they agree to marry, both certain that they want no children. They have valuable jobs to do – all the more so when World War Two looms. But those years will change everything: their relationship, their priorities, their very characters. Carmel will find that the future is very different to the one she thought she wanted for so long…

To Have and to Hold

ANNE BENNETT

To my eldest grandchild and onlygranddaughter Briony Wilkeswith all my love.

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page (#u63bb35cf-5bea-5220-8bdc-2bc506c8fae9)

Dedication (#u13623874-9ca1-5417-bdcf-a2e2cff0fc84)

Chapter One (#u93ba71b1-324e-54fa-8dae-15bf7b24ef3a)

Chapter Two (#u7fb7b9b2-9611-5707-82ec-ba7ce56a2f1f)

Chapter Three (#u70ef3387-b1e4-5318-bea4-c720ddc17ee3)

Chapter Four (#udde3dc62-7373-5c63-ae39-7c1048dcf3cd)

Chapter Five (#uda9af0d2-8168-56dd-8f0a-69d0a201f62a)

Chapter Six (#u235fd967-a756-5556-be49-5ceb8c5a6e4f)

Chapter Seven (#u0ded352a-f021-5b09-baf8-a3ccd866684e)

Chapter Eight (#u8eb57639-56ff-521d-b120-37b471b3a682)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

About The Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Other Books By (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_18e08e31-cdca-56e6-b5bf-b2afa8e82310)

Carmel was positively mesmerised by the bustling docks at Belfast. She could barely wait to board the mail boat anchored in the dock, fastened tightly to the solid concrete bollards with ropes as thick as a man’s forearm. Yet still the boat moved ever so slightly and Carmel tingled all over as she wondered how it would feel to be aboard that vessel and moving out into the open sea.

Just a little later she stood at the rails and watched the shores of Ireland disappear. She felt not homesickness, but relief, and she gave a defiant toss of her head that set her auburn curls dancing, while the excitement shone in her flashing dark brown eyes as the boat ploughed its way through the waves. Many were sick as the boat listed from side to side, including the nursing nuns that she was travelling with, but Carmel discovered her sea legs and explored the mail boat from end to end.

She was quite disappointed to leave the boat in Liverpool, yet as she and the nuns boarded the train for New Street Station in Birmingham, her insides turned somersaults with excitement—and a little trepidation. From the station she would be taken to the nurses’ home attached to Birmingham’s General Hospital where she would live for four years. She could barely believe that she was really here at last, and just as far from her family as she had wanted to be. She had known she wouldn’t feel free of her father’s dominance until she reached the shores of Britain. From now on, she decided, her life was to be her own. She would start the same as all the other probationers and no one need know about her earlier life at all. She would try to scrub it from her mind and forget it had ever happened.

But as the train rattled over the rails, taking her to her new life, she allowed herself to remember with great relief all she was leaving behind, like the abject terror her brutal father had always induced in her till she didn’t know that there was any other way to feel, and regarded herself as worthless and of no account.

She would never forget her horrifying schooldays, especially that awful day when she was about seven, when Breda Mulligan, the post mistress’s daughter, had pushed her face close to Carmel’s and said, ‘My mammy said I am not to play with you because you are dirty, smell bad and have nits in your hair.’