To Have and To Hold

‘No secrets about where you come from,’ Lois said. ‘Your accent is lovely, and what gorgeous hair.’

‘Thanks,’ Carmel said, liking the look of Lois too, with her dark brown curls and merry brown eyes.

‘Where is everyone?’

‘Well, we’ve not long had breakfast,’ Carmel explained, hauling her case from beneath the bed as she spoke. ‘We haven’t got to report for duty until one o’clock in the lecture theatre, and most of the girls have gone into the common room. I only arrived last night myself, though, and was too tired after the meal to unpack so I’m doing it now. I’m not sure when I’ll have a spare minute again.’

‘Good idea,’ Lois said. ‘I’ll do the same.’

As Lois hauled her case up onto the bed as Carmel directed her to, she said with a wry smile, ‘I find it hard to believe I am here at last. There were times I didn’t think I would make it.’

‘Nor me,’ Carmel said. ‘Did your father object too?’

‘No, it was my mother,’ Lois said. ‘She kicked up a right shindig about it. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Daddy and his support, I wouldn’t have made it.’

‘Why did she object?’

‘Well, she’s an invalid, you see,’ Lois said. ‘At least…’ she wrinkled her nose, ‘she’s supposed to be an invalid. I have my doubts. Well, more than doubts because I have caught her out a time or two. She’s not half as helpless as she makes out.’

Carmel couldn’t quite believe that anyone could act that way. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Oh, I’m sure, all right, but…well, what can I do? All the years I was growing up, it was impressed upon me—on all of us—that Mummy wasn’t very strong. You get sort of conditioned. I have a brother and a sister both older than me and they got away in time so there was just me left.’

‘What about your father?’

‘Daddy is marvellous and he said I should run while I had the chance. Now he pays a woman, an ex-nurse, to come in and see to Mummy.’

‘Is your father rich to be able to just employ someone like that?’

‘I don’t know,’ Lois said. ‘I’ve never thought about it.’

‘What does he do?’

‘He’s a department manager in Lewis’s.’ Then, at the perplexed look on Carmel’s face, Lois went on, ‘It’s a big store in the city centre, bigger even than Marshall & Snelgrove. D’you know how Daddy got around my mother in the end?’ Carmel shook her head and Lois continued. ‘Told her that I was training as a nurse so that I could look after her more effectively.’

‘And will you?’

‘Not likely,’ Lois said determinedly. ‘She is a slave-driver and not averse either to giving me the odd hard slap or pinch for little or nothing at all. She behaves better with other people. Daddy has the patience of Job with her—with everyone, really. He is a wonderful person. What about you?’

Carmel was laying the pin cushion and pin tray on the dressing table as the letter had directed her to but her hands became still at Lois’s question. She didn’t want to bring the details of her former dirty, gruesome existence and the deprived brothers and sisters she’d left behind into this new and clean life.

She gave a shrug. ‘I may tell you about myself some other time,’ she said. ‘But if you have finished your packing, we’d best go down and meet the others.’

‘I’m all done,’ Lois said, snapping the case shut. ‘What do we do with the cases?’

‘Leave them on the bed,’ Carmel said. ‘That’s what I was told. The porter or caretaker or whoever he is comes and takes them away later.’

‘Right oh, then,’ Lois said. ‘Lead the way.’

The lecture theatre was in the main body of the hospital, which was connected to the nurses’ home via a conservatory. Outside the room it was fair bustling with noise as Carmel, Jane, Sylvia and Lois congregated there with everyone else.

‘Out of the way!’ said a grumbling voice suddenly. ‘Bunching together like that before the door. Ridiculous! Get inside. Inside quickly.’

Carmel had never heard the words ‘lecture theatre’ before, never mind seen inside one and she surged inside with the others and looked around in amazement at the tiered benches of shiny golden wood that stretched up and up before the small dais at the front.

The woman’s entrance into the room had caused a silence to descend on the apprehensive girls. The woman spoke again. ‘I am Matron Turner and when you refer to me, you just call me Matron. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, Matron.’

‘Remember that in future and now I want you all against the wall,’ Matron said.

Carmel found herself next to Jane. ‘Now prepare to face the firing squad,’ Jane whispered, and Carmel had to stifle her giggles with a cough, bringing Matron’s shrewd eyes to rest upon her.

She found fault with many of them and when she got to Carmel, the girl wasn’t surprised to be told her hair was too wild and frizzy. ‘You will have to do something with it,’ she said. ‘You’ll never get your cap to stay on that bush. Our standards are high,’ Matron’s voice rapped out, ‘and hygiene is of paramount importance. Hold out your hands.’

Wondering why in the world they had to do that, Carmel nervously extended her hands and tried to still their trembling as the woman walked up and down inspecting them.

‘Before going on to the ward, your hands must be scrubbed, and before you attend a patient, and between patients,’ the matron said. ‘Nails must be kept short at all times and dirty nails will not be tolerated. And,’ she went on, fixing the students with a glare. ‘if you have been prone to bite your nails in the past—a disgusting habit, I might add—then you must stop. A nurse cannot run the risk of passing on the bacteria in her mouth to a sick and vulnerable patient. I hope that I have made myself clear.’

Again came the chorus, ‘Yes, Matron.’

‘We expect high standards. If you have come here as some sort of rest cure, then you are in the wrong job. The hours are long and some of the work arduous. You must understand that from the outset.

‘Before you even start a shift, your bedroom must be left clean and tidy at all times,’ the matron continued, fixing them all with a gimlet eye. ‘This shows that you have refinement of mind, clean habits and tidy ways. If you are careless or slovenly, then these same attributes will be carried on to the ward, and let me tell you,’ she added, ‘I will not have any slatterns on my wards.’

‘No, Matron,’ chorused the girls in the pause that followed this declaration.

‘You are on the brink of entering a noble and respectable profession and this must be shown in your manner at all times. There is to be no frivolous behaviour in wards or corridors and, of course, no running at any time. No nurse is to eat on the wards, there is to be no jewellery worn, nor cosmetics of any sort, and the relationship between nurse and patients must be kept on a strictly professional level. There is to be no fraternising with the doctors either, and no nurse is to enter any other department without permission. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, Matron.’

‘Now, you are each required to have a medical examination, as the list of rules explained, so if you make your way down to the medical room you will be dealt with alphabetically.’

‘Phew, she must have been practising that sort of attitude for years,’ Jane remarked when the matron had gone.

‘I know one thing,’ another girl put in, ‘the army’s loss is our gain. God, wouldn’t she make a first-class sergeant major?’

‘Oh, no,’ Lois said. ‘She wouldn’t be happy unless she was a general.’

‘You’re right there,’ the first girl conceded, and there were gales of laughter as the girls left the room.

That night, after being declared fit and healthy, Carmel examined her hair ruefully. The matron was right about one thing.

‘How the hell am I going to get any sort of cap to stay on my head under my mass of hair? After the initial six weeks I’ll have to wear one,’ Carmel lamented.

Jane gave a hoot of laughter. ‘It will be like getting a quart into a pint pot,’ she said.

‘Let’s not be so defeatist about this,’ Lois said. ‘Your hair will have to be put up, and surely that is just a matter of a thousand Kirbigrips or thereabouts?’