To Have and to Hold (33 page)

Jeff chuckled. ‘You know how hard I find that,’ he said. ‘For that cheeky little smile would melt a heart of stone. And yes, I know you go on all the time about my spoiling her, and within reason sometimes, I have to say, but in this instance I know what you mean and I will keep a weather eye on Beth, don’t worry.’

‘What shall I do about Jane and Aileen?’ Carmel said. ‘They are being buried on the same day as Daddy and I feel so bad I can’t go and show my respects.’

‘People will understand why you can’t,’ Jeff said. ‘It isn’t something you designed on purpose.’

Jeff was right. Lois and Sylvia both accepted that she had to attend her father’s funeral, even though they knew what her feelings about him were. Lois said she knew Eve would value the support of her eldest daughter at the funeral of the man she had despised and feared.

‘Your mother fully supported you when you wanted her to,’ she pointed out. ‘Look at the way she came hotfoot over here for your wedding. Now it is your turn, because this funeral is bound to be a strain on her.’

Carmel knew that every word Lois said was true, and she told Jeff to go ahead and book everything while she arranged time off from the hospital, and sent a telegram home detailing when they would arrive.

Michael withdrew all his savings from the Post Office and Jeff sent fifty pounds ‘to help with things’, and so Eve had herself and the children kitted out respectably for once in their lives for the funeral.

In fact, Eve displayed more grief when Carmel told her about the raid and the subsequent deaths of Jane and Aileen and the others than she had over her husband. She was genuinely very sorry about the deaths of the two girls she had met, and she remembered Aileen flirting with Michael at the wedding, to his obvious discomfort, and found herself smiling at the memory. Both Aileen and Jane had seemed so determined to enjoy life to the full and it was terrible that they had been killed in such a way. She definitely felt their deaths to be more of a tragedy, not to mention more of a loss to society, than the demise of Dennis Duffy.

Eve knew too the dilemma her daughter would have been in and was very glad that she had chosen to come to her father’s funeral, rather than her friends’, for she’d felt she needed her there. She also wanted to express in person how devastated they all were to hear of Paul’s death. Wee Beth, of course, whom they all adored, was like the icing on the cake for Eve, and she hoped she had proved a consolation to Carmel when she had lost her soulmate.

She hadn’t been that surprised that Jeff had come as well, ostensibly in place of his son, but really, Eve suspected, to give Carmel a hand and to see how she herself was coping. She didn’t mind why he was there, she was just glad he was, because she liked him a great deal.

First, though, they all had to cope with the funeral. The church was quite full, the coffin by the altar covered with a black cloth bedecked with Mass cards. The Duffys and Jeff took up two complete rows and the younger ones, having been threatened by Michael what he would do to them if they should misbehave and shame their mother, were very subdued. The Requiem Mass was long and sometimes tedious, but no one shuffled or turned around or whispered. The priest, with the Mass nearly over, mounted the pulpit and described a man they had never seen, this devoted husband and father, and his family in mourning for him.

Carmel stole a look at her mother. Beneath the very proper and respectable widow’s bonnet, Eve’s eyes sparkled with relief and even happiness because she knew no one would ever hurt or terrorise her or the children again.

Carmel felt the same way and later, at the graveside,
rather than throw a clod of earth on the coffin she had the urge to leap on it and dance a jig of thankfulness that at last the man was dead and gone. She felt the pressure of Jeff’s fingers on her arm and was grateful for the show of support. The moment passed and she felt the hate and resentment she had for her father seep away to be replaced by a feeling of peace.

There was no room for all the mourners back at the house. The landlord of Dennis’s local, where he had spent considerable time and more money than he could afford, offered them the back room, and Jeff paid for food and drink to be laid on. There Carmel’s hand was pumped up and down by men who might cross the street to avoid the living Dennis, but they declared the dead one to be ‘a grand fellow altogether’, ‘one of the best’ and one who they were sure ‘would be greatly missed’.

‘Aye,’ Siobhan whispered to her sister when she overheard this remark, ‘like I might miss a headache when it is over.’

‘Who’s the girl Michael seems so pally with?’ Carmel asked, glancing across at her brother.

‘That’s Bridget McCauley,’ Siobhan said. ‘She’s the daughter of the farmer Michael works for. Like to be more than pals, if you ask me. Anyway, now the old bugger is dead and gone, maybe Michael will feel free enough to have a life of his own.’

‘And why not?’ Carmel said. ‘It’s not before time, if you ask me. That bloody man tried to ruin so many lives.’

‘You’re right there,’ Siobhan agreed with feeling.

Carmel moved closer to her mother. She had seldom left her side all day and was glad Sister Frances had
offered to mind Beth until the whole thing was over, to enable her to do just that. She knew that her mother was finding it hard to respond in the way people expected when they expressed their condolence at her loss. In Eve’s opinion, the whole thing was like a farce and she was being worn down by the total insincerity of it. When Jeff saw the jaded look on her face, he suggested to the landlord that he start to clear the tables so that people might take the hint the wake was over, and though some of the men elected to stay on at the pub, most began drifting home.

Siobhan was ahead with the younger ones, Jeff had gone with Michael to fetch Beth home from the convent, and Carmel found herself walking home with her mother.

She knew that such a situation might not arise again and there was something she had been worrying over and so she said, ‘Mammy, how are you off for money?’

Eve smiled. ‘You’re as bad as Jeff,’ she said.

‘Jeff! What’s he to do with this?’

‘He asked me the selfsame thing.’

Carmel felt annoyed suddenly at his muscling in like that, and wondered if it was reasonable to feel cross. She knew, of course, that he had been sending Eve money weekly and that she had been glad enough to accept it, so maybe it was legitimate for him to ask such a question. But still she said, ‘Jeff thinks every problem can be solved with money.’

Eve smiled. ‘He is only trying to be helpful and it has oiled the wheels for me these past years.’

‘Maybe, but between us we can look after you now.’

Eve laughed and Carmel realised that she had never
heard her mother laugh like that before. She smiled at her as she said, ‘All right. What’s so funny?’

‘You,’ Eve said. ‘All of you. Look at me. I am not some decrepit old woman and I am quite capable of looking after myself and even earning my own living, if I have a mind. Your father took away enough of your freedom when you were growing up. You got away, but the others didn’t. I will not chain them further by letting them think they have to support me now.’

‘Michael said once you would be better off if Daddy wasn’t here,’ Carmel said. ‘I just wanted to make sure, that’s all.’

‘Well, don’t worry about me,’ Eve said. ‘I will be fine.’

She told Jeff the same when he asked again the day before he and Carmel were returning to Birmingham. ‘Jeff, you are a good, kind man, but sure I will be in the lap of luxury now they are all working bar Edward and Pauline. With the keep they tip up and the widow’s pension we will manage fine.’

‘What about a better house?’

‘I will be looking for one of those when I see what I can afford,’ Eve conceded. ‘I do know this one is a disgrace.’

‘I could buy a wee place for you.’

‘You could not,’ Eve said firmly. ‘What an idea, Jeff. And if I was daft enough to agree to it, what complexion would the townsfolk put on it? And don’t say it doesn’t matter what they think because in a small town it does matter a great deal. I know that they will view me with a certain amount of suspicion now I am a widow, and we have been the talk of the place for long enough. Even if I could cope with rumour and speculation, I would not have
the children go through it again. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the help you have given me so far, but from now on we will stand on our own two feet.

‘I’ll tell you what worries me more than anything else, and far more than concerns about money,’ Eve went on, ‘and that is where Carmel works. It could have been her killed just as easily as poor Jane and Aileen.’

‘I know,’ Jeff said. ‘You saw where the General Hospital is when you were over, and most of the attacks have been centred around the city centre. You would see a very different skyline now if you came to Birmingham, for the place is bombed and burned to bits, and she is often in the thick of it.’

‘Michael was for going over, you know, to see if she was all right,’ Eve said. ‘But she said she was grand and told me I was not to let Michael go over, for the raids were too bad and she couldn’t guarantee his safety. What about her safety?’

Jeff shrugged. ‘She doesn’t seem to worry about it,’ he said. ‘Or if she does, she hides it well.’

‘Could you not talk her out of it?’ Eve said. ‘Hasn’t she done her bit for long enough now?’

‘D’you think that I have not tried over and over to do that?’ Jeff said.

‘But she has a baby to see to now.’

‘I pointed that fact out to her, but to no avail.’

Eve shook her head sadly. ‘God, but she is an obstinate girl.’

Jeff laughed. ‘All I can say to that, Eve Duffy, is that it takes one to know one. Carmel is in your mould, my dear, and you have taught her well, for the pair of you are as stubborn as mules at times.’

Carmel returned to a hospital in mourning for the staff and patients killed. Lois said she had seldom seen anyone as distraught as Pete had been, and that without the support of his mate Dan, he would have collapsed altogether. Dan was tremendously affected himself and when he looked at the damage to the General Hospital and the death toll, he told Sylvia he wanted her out of there, and as quickly as possible. Sylvia was not fully recovered herself and, still grief-stricken over the death of her friend, clung gratefully to Dan, whom she wanted to marry more than anything in the world.

So, just a fortnight after Carmel returned to Birmingham, she and Lois were witnesses to the civil marriage ceremony in the registry office between Sylvia and Dan Smiley. There was no time for a honeymoon, or even a night away, but after the wedding, Dan intended installing his bride in his parents’ house in a little village called Wilnecote, near the market town of Tamworth in Staffordshire. Dan said the village had never had the hint of a bomb of any sort and that, apart from rationing and the blackout, you
could almost forget there was a war on at all.

‘I will probably be bored to tears,’ Sylvia told Lois and Carmel. She had been born and bred in bustling Birmingham and didn’t know how she would take to village life at all. ‘But Dan said that in his opinion I have done my share and he has enough to worry about looking after himself on the battlefield without fretting that I will be safe as well.’

‘You can’t argue with that really, can you?’ Lois said.

‘No,’ Sylvia agreed. ‘I do love him to bits and I have always got on with his parents.’

‘Well then,’ Carmel said, ‘why the long face? After the war you will probably have the man you love by your side and a baby or two of your own to rear.’

Sylvia knew she had much to be thankful for, but she left the hospital and her friends with genuine regret, and Carmel and Lois knew that they would miss her greatly.

Afterwards, Lois said it was just typical that Sylvia had left to escape the bombing but that, after another fairly minor raid in May, there were just a few sporadic forays until July and then nothing at all.

‘Seems as if Hitler has really finished with us at last,’ Jeff told Lois and Carmel one evening in September.

‘We all thought that before,’ Lois reminded him.

‘Yeah, I know that, but Hitler hadn’t set his beady eyes on Russia then. Think he has bitten off more than he can chew there. Should have read his history books and learned what happened to Napoleon when he tried a similar tack. Anyway, it augers well for the rest of us if the Luftwaffe are concentrating their energies there. What’s the news at the hospital?’

‘The damage has nearly all been repaired,’ Lois said.
‘Well, what I mean is the ward is useable again, except one side of it, which has been sealed off. If we really are free from raids now they might have a chance to get it back the way it was.’

‘I am out of all that now, anyway,’ Carmel said. ‘I have been transferred to Men’s Surgical.’

‘Oh, why is that then?’

Carmel shrugged. ‘Short-staffed,’ she said. ‘And they are really rushed most of the time because as well as servicemen to deal with, they are having injured Germans in as well. It’s no rest cure, I can tell you.’

By the early summer of 1942, everyone had began to relax, convinced at last the raids were definitely over. Added to that, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on 7 December the previous year, America had officially joined in the war. GIs were becoming common on the streets of Birmingham. ‘Overpaid, oversexed and over here’ they might be, but most people thought having their support had to shorten the war.

There was a rumour flying around the hospital that a bomb had been dropped over Solihull way on the morning of 27 July, but few believed it because there hadn’t been any sort of raid for almost a year.

However, there was no doubting the drone of enemy planes heard heading their way that same evening and then there were the first explosions in the distance.

‘Where’s the bloody sirens?’ shouted one man. ‘Are they all asleep or what?’ The words were barely out of his mouth when the piercing sound rent the air.

And although the raid wasn’t particularly long or fierce, the number of casualties was extremely high, par
tially because the sirens, warning people to take cover, had sounded too late.

Far more worrying, though, was whether the raid had been the forerunner of another blitz, especially when the sirens rang out again in the evening of 30 July, despite the fact that that raid was light and barely lasted any time at all.

The following day, Matron told Carmel she had a specific job she wanted her to take on with one of the patients.

‘Yes, Matron?’

‘His name is Terence Martin,’ Matron said, ‘and he was admitted after the first raid on 27 July. Some of the vertebrae in his back were crushed or cracked. Apparently he was helping people escape from a cellar and the lot collapsed top of him. He now has metal rods inserted in his spine. He is confined in a cage of sorts to prevent movement and it is hoped that in time the spine will heal and the bones knit back together. He’s also had a neck brace fitted, mainly as a precaution. An added difficulty is that either because of shock or trauma he hasn’t spoken one word since the accident. I thought you might understand how he feels better than anyone else. I am assigning Cassie Browning to help you. She is only a first-year probationer, but shaping up very nicely and it will be very valuable experience for her.’

Carmel had worked with Cassie on the wards and thought she had a lot of promise, and she was looking forward to being so involved with the total care of one particular patient.

‘You will be directly answerable to Dr Stevens, who
operated on Mr Martin,’ Matron said. ‘However, you must report to me on his progress every day and especially if there has been any deterioration in his condition. Now, I am sure you will want to meet him.’

Mr Terence Martin was held rigid in his bed, his light brown hair flopping over his forehead, stubble covering the lower part of his pale face. In his pain-filled eyes, Carmel saw the misery and despair that had locked him away from everyone and everything. Oh, how well she remembered feeling that way, for she too had once been in that black pit of depression.

From the first she had felt drawn to help the desperately unhappy man, and by the end of the first week she had seen a slight improvement. It was small but significant. Every day, with Cassie’s help, she would wash and shave the patient. She would be as gentle as she possibly could because his body was very battered and bruised, and she was aware too that sometimes she was washing very intimate parts of him, but he seemed unaware of it.

The second week, he began lifting his arms as they washed him and when Carmel thanked him, she knew he had heard and understood what she had said. His food had to be puréed, and each day Carmel would check it for lumps before either she or Cassie would spoon it into his mouth. He would purse his lips when he had had enough.

The first time he did this, Carmel, who was feeding him, smiled and said. ‘Well, I don’t see that you need much stoking, lying there all day and every day. When we have you on your feet and charging up and down the ward, I imagine that there will be no filling you. No,
indeed, none at all. What do you think, Cassie?’

‘I think you are right, Nurse Connolly,’ Cassie said. ‘I’ll bet there will be little food refused then.’

Terry Martin wanted to smile. He often wanted to smile at the things Carmel said, and the way she had of saying them, and at the banter between her and the young one. From the beginning Carmel had been glad of the younger girl’s cheerful disposition, for she found it was harder than she had imagined working with a silent and virtually unresponsive patient. As they weren’t on the ward and were working so closely together, Carmel had allowed Cassie greater licence and so there was a lot of banter between them and some of it was amusing, but Terry had forgotten how to smile. He hadn’t done so since that terrible day in November 1940, not that it did any good to remember that. It was like probing a sore tooth: better by far to push it down to the furthest recesses of his mind.

‘Would you like a drink now?’ Carmel asked, and she helped him take a drink out of the metal, lidded cup by his bed, which he had trouble using unaided without soaking the front of himself.

A few days later, Carmel was aware that Terry’s eyes had left the point on the ceiling on which they had seemed fixed, and were following her and Cassie around the room and listening to their chat as they dealt with some aspect of his care.

That night, she wrote letters to her family in Letterkenny and to Sister Frances, telling them what she knew of Terence Martin and asking for him to be included in their prayers. She also sought out Father Robertson after nine o’clock Mass the following Sunday,
which day she had off, and, after explaining, she asked to have a Mass said for Terry.

‘I don’t know if he is a Catholic, Father,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if he is anything at all, if you know what I mean, but I thought God wouldn’t mind that if he is in need.’

‘No indeed,’ Father Robertson said. ‘I mean, Jesus didn’t ask the blind man if he was a regular at the synagogue before he restored his sight, now, did he? Is this man very badly injured?’

‘Yes, Father,’ Carmel said. ‘Though they say he will recover eventually. But it’s his mind, you see. He is a poor tormented soul who doesn’t feel worthy even of being alive.’

‘But how do you know this, my dear?’ the priest asked. ‘I thought you said he couldn’t or wouldn’t talk.’

‘Terence Martin doesn’t need to talk, Father,’ Carmel said earnestly. ‘You can read all this in his eyes. They are dark grey and fathoms deep, but so expressive.’

‘Rest easy, Carmel,’ the priest said. ‘I will say a Mass for this man of yours and pray for him each night. Between me, you and the Good Lord himself, the man will have no choice other than to get better and quick.’

Two days later, as Carmel gently spooned puréed stew into Terry’s mouth, he suddenly pushed her hand away. He had eaten little and so Carmel asked, ‘Have you had enough?’

He made no attempt to answer what Carmel asked. Instead, he held her gaze intently for a second or two and then said hesitantly, ‘Why are you bothering with me?’ in a voice husky from lack of use.

However, Carmel didn’t care what the voice sounded like. Terry had spoken for the first time since the accident, and her heart soared in thankfulness. But she reminded herself he’d asked a question that needed addressing. ‘Why wouldn’t I bother with you?’

‘You don’t know me, what sort of person I am.’

‘I know all I need to know—that you are ill and I am tending you because I am a nurse and that is what we do. So shall we go from that premise?’

‘If you like.’

‘So we will have no more of that kind of talk.’

‘If you say so.’

‘I do say so,’ Carmel said with an emphatic nod of her head.

Matron was as pleased as Carmel was at Terence Martin’s progress. ‘The timing couldn’t be better,’ she said. ‘Dr Stevens intended to see how he was getting on tomorrow anyway. This will be a bit of good news for him.’

Dr Stevens was pleased with everything, not least the way that Mr Martin’s back was healing. He praised Carmel for keeping the scar so clean and infection free. He was nearly at the door when he suddenly turned.

‘Connolly?’ he said to Carmel. ‘Were you married to Dr Paul Connolly?’

‘Yes, Dr Stevens.’

‘Heard he had married a nurse,’ the doctor said. ‘You have my sympathies, my dear. It was a tragic waste too, for he was a first-class doctor and a thoroughly nice chap into the bargain. I well remember when he was a student here.’

Carmel was too choked to make a reply and barely
had the door shut on the doctor than Terry called across, ‘What happened to your husband?’

Carmel waited until she had crossed the room and sat on the bed, so that Terry could see her, which also gave her a few seconds to compose herself. Then she said, ‘Paul was with the Medical Corps of the Royal Warwickshires and he didn’t return from Dunkirk.’ She left time for that to sink in, time for Terry to make a comment and when he didn’t she said, ‘Now my turn for a question for you. Were you in the Forces, Mr Martin?’

‘No,’ Terry said. ‘I am a gas fitter, a reserved occupation. And what is all this Mr Martin business? I have a name and it’s Terry.’

‘I’ll call you Terry when we are in here,’ Carmel promised.

‘Have you a name, or have I to call you Nurse Connolly?’

‘My name is Carmel.’

‘Pretty name. Unusual.’

‘Not particularly in the North of Ireland where I came from,’ Carmel told him. ‘And while we can use our Christian names when we are in the room on our own, Dr Stevens and Matron might not like such familiarity so when they are here, I will be Nurse Connolly and you will be Mr Martin.’

‘That’s daft!’ Terry said. ‘Is that the rule for young Cassie too? She told me her name while you were on your break.’

‘’Fraid so,’ Carmel said. ‘We are supposed to treat you in a totally professional way. It is just more difficult in a situation like this. Anyway, your turn for a question.’

‘Right,’ Terry said. ‘Did you and Paul have any children?’

‘Just the one, a little girl that we called Beth. She is just two and a half.’

She saw the blank look suddenly flood Terry’s face as if someone had turned the light off in his eyes, and was alarmed. ‘What is it?’

‘Nothing,’ Terry said. ‘It’s nothing, but I don’t want to play this game any more and I am too tired to answer any more questions.’

Carmel didn’t argue. Terry certainly seemed suddenly very weary and she tucked the blankets around him and left the room, and so didn’t see the tears seep from his eyes as he closed them.

When Terry woke up Carmel realised the shuttered look was still there on his face and he was exactly the same three days later. He answered anything asked him brusquely and sometimes not at all. No one else saw a problem, particularly the doctor, who had popped in a couple of times since Terry’s silence had been broken and was delighted with him. Terry did whatever he asked him and answered his questions, and Dr Stevens remembered how unresponsive and uncommunicative he had been and thought Carmel had worked a miracle.