To Have and To Hold. Anne Bennett

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СКАЧАТЬ the end of this period, there will be exams, which the candidates must pass in order to be admitted to the hospital as probationary nurses for an initial period of six weeks. There is no payment for the first three months and after that, the salary is £20 for the first year, £25 for the second, £30 for the third and £40 for the fourth year. A list of requirements Miss Duffy will need to bring will be sent at a later date.

      ‘What sort of requirements? I haven’t much money, Sister Frances,’ Carmel said in dismay.

      ‘Haven’t you been saving for the last two years, and will have two more years before there is anything much to buy?’ Sister Frances said. ‘Don’t fall at the first hurdle.’

      ‘I don’t intend to fall at any hurdle,’ Carmel said almost fiercely.

      ‘So you’re still as keen as ever?’

      ‘Keener, if anything, now I know it might actually happen.’

      Nearly two years later, in June, Carmel stood before her father and told him of the exam that she had taken behind his back. She also told him that she had passed it with flying colours and that meant she could start her training to be a nurse in a hospital in Birmingham, England.

      She had known that, at first, anyway, her father would protest, for didn’t he protest against every mortal thing as a matter of course? She knew too her father’s protests were usually expressed in a physical way. He wasn’t the sort of man anyone could have a reasoned discussion with. His fists or his belt usually settled any argument to his advantage.

      But Carmel was more determined than she had ever been about anything. She had borne the thrust of his anger more than enough and she’d had as much as she was prepared to take.

      ‘He’ll never agree to it,’ Eve warned her daughter that first evening when her father was out of the house. ‘Sure you must put it out of your head.’

      ‘I will not!’ Carmel shouted defiantly. ‘He’s not thinking of anyone but himself as usual. He’s not objecting to me going because he is going to miss me at all. Huh, not a bit of it. All he’ll miss is the beer money I have to tip up every Friday night.’

      ‘Hush, Carmel, for pity’s sake,’ Eve said, in an effort to soothe her daughter’s temper before Dennis came back, for she was worried what he would do if Carmel stayed in this frame of mind and spoke out, as she was wont to.

      Eve’s words, though, just stiffened Carmel’s resolve and she refused to let the matter drop, though she knew she was sailing nearer and nearer to the wind. Her mother begged her to stop, to give in, and her younger brothers and sisters looked at her in trepidation, mixed with a little awe, especially her brother Michael. At sixteen, he was nearest to her in age and he told her he would rather tangle with a sabre-toothed tiger than his father.

      Eventually, Dennis snapped. Carmel had known he would and though she was scared, she knew it probably had to come to this for her to get her freedom from his tyranny. She groaned as her father’s fists powered into her face, almost blinded by the blood falling into her eyes and so dazed from the blows raining down on her, she fell to her knees. She screamed as her father grasped a handful of her curls and dragged her to the bedroom. Holding her fast with one hand, he loosened his belt with the other. The belt whistled through the air and when it made contact with her skin, ripping easily through the thin fabric of the dress she wore, she thought she would die with the pain of it. He hit her again and again, until the agonising pain was relentless and all-con-suming, and she thought he would kill her.

      It was the combined efforts of Michael and her mother that saved her, although she hadn’t been aware of it at the time, hadn’t been aware of much. She languished on the mattress that did as a bed for three days while Eve settled Carmel’s sisters—twelve-year-old Siobhan, seven-year-old Kathy and the baby, Pauline, who usually shared the mattress—on the floor on a heap of rags lest they hurt her further. Eve then sent eleven-year-old Damien to the hospital with a note saying Carmel had a cold. Carmel didn’t protest. She felt truly ill and in tremendous pain, and was glad she hadn’t got to try to move. At least she was semi-protected from her father.

      The fourth morning, though, she heaved her painful body out of the bed and began to dress.

      ‘Where d’you think you are going?’ Eve asked, but quietly, lest she wake Dennis.

      ‘To see Father O’Malley.’

      ‘Ah, no,’ Eve protested. ‘Surely not. Not with your face the way it is.’

      ‘Aye, Mammy,’ Carmel said. ‘He needs to see it. Know what sort of a madman I have for a father.’

      Eve bit her lip in consternation, but Carmel was right. The priest was horrified at the extent of her injuries. He left her in the capable hands of his unmarried sister, who acted as housekeeper to him, and went down to the Duffy house to have strong words with Dennis.

      According to Eve, who heard the whole exchange and reported it back to her daughter, Dennis said the girl was disobedient and had been deliberately provoking him. ‘And,’ he went on, ‘did you know of the exam that that bloody nun Sister Frances was after encouraging Carmel to take, and this without any knowledge, let alone permission being given? Surely to God such secrecy and deceit is not to be borne if a man is to be master in his own house and can not be blamed for chastising his own flesh and blood.’

      The priest, however, remembered Carmel’s injuries and said maybe it might be better if she was away from the home for a little while, until things settled down.

      Carmel stayed the night in the priest’s house and the next day, Father O’Malley went to see Sister Frances and she told him about Carmel’s love of nursing and the exam she had taken to enable her to attend the nurses’ training school in Birmingham, under the jurisdiction of her friend Catherine Turner, who was the Matron there. Together they went to see Carmel.

      Sister Frances noted the girl’s split lip, grazed, bruised cheeks and black eyes, and when she saw the careful way she sat and held herself, she knew it wasn’t just her face her manic father had laid into and made such a mess of. Her eyes filled with tears and she was ashamed that she had let Carmel cope with breaking her news on her own. She knew the manner of man that Dennis was—why hadn’t she gone with the girl to explain and taken her out of the house that same night?

      She turned to the priest and said, ‘Surely, Father, you can see Carmel cannot go back home after such a beating? And what is wrong with training to be a nurse? It is a very noble profession and Carmel is a natural. She has worked extremely hard, passed the stiff examination and, of course, has much practical experience to draw on too.’

      ‘This is all very well,’ the priest said, ‘but you say she wants to train in Birmingham, England, when we have perfectly good hospitals in Derry. I would understand any parent’s concern at the thought of their young daughter going so far on her own.’

      ‘My father has never had one minute’s concern about me,’ Carmel cried. ‘All he cares about is himself and always has done. I wouldn’t be far enough away from him in Derry.’

      ‘I’ve been to see the father, given him a stern talking-to,’ the priest said stiffly. ‘He says he knows he went too far and it will not happen again.’

      Carmel gave a humourless laugh. ‘And you believe him?’ she asked, adding, ‘Of course you do. But, you see, I don’t, Father. This isn’t the first time that I have been beaten, but it is going to be the last, the very last, and if you won’t help me, or let Sister Frances СКАЧАТЬ