To Have and to Hold (19 page)

‘Both girls understand. We’ll save and do one room at a time.’

‘Paul, James intends to furnish Lois’s part of the house as a wedding present,’ Jeff said. ‘He came to see the house and that’s what he decided. Told me himself only yesterday.’

‘Chris didn’t say,’ Paul said

‘Chris doesn’t know, Lois neither,’ Jeff said. ‘James
intends it as a surprise and I would like to do the same for you and Carmel. James can get it all at cost from Lewis’s and, as he said to me, the more he orders, the cheaper it is. Think about it, Paul. You can’t expect Carmel to struggle along with rubbish, when beside her Lois has everything new and modern.’

Paul sighed. He knew he could not ask that of any woman. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘It’s just that you have already spent so much on me, funding me through university, and I was grateful until I realised by accepting sponsorship I was giving Mother a stake in my life. I swore then that I would accept nothing else.’

‘Right,’ Jeff said. ‘Now listen. First of all, this is me you are talking to, not your mother, and the new me. It is perfectly normal for a parent to give their marrying children a wedding present if they can possibly afford to and this will be mine to you. Your mother will have no part in it and therefore no say. And there will be no strings, no conditions. All I ask is that when you marry, you work to keep the spark alive between you, for when it goes out, it is almost impossible to rekindle.’

Paul felt immeasurable sadness when he saw his father’s stark eyes. He felt as if he had been given a glimpse of the bleakness of his life. And he felt a lump rise in his throat as he took his hand firmly and shook it.

There is not a woman living who would not be ecstatic on being given a free hand to choose the furniture and fittings for her new home, knowing someone else would pick up the bill at the end of it, and Carmel was no different from anyone else. What was even better was that it was so unexpected. In Camel’s world, people didn’t do things like that.

Paul watched her face as she sat opposite him in a coffee shop one lunchtime, and he knew he had made the right decision in accepting his father’s offer. How could he have faced her and told her what his father had proposed and said he had rejected it
carte blanche
, without even consulting her?

He knew that, even worse, she wouldn’t say a word in condemnation. The disappointment would be in the dullness of her eyes, the lack of expression in her face and the general slump of her body, and he would have felt the worst heel in Christendom.

‘What about Lois?’ Carmel said suddenly. ‘Won’t she feel it awfully? Maybe we can share some of the things.’

‘There is no need,’ Paul said. ‘Uncle James is doing
the same thing for Lois and Chris. That is the good of it. With her father manager of a huge department in Lewis’s, he can get us top-quality goods at a fraction of the cost. You and Lois can pore over the catalogue or wander around the store and make your choices to your heart’s content, once Lois is told. At the moment it is all hush-hush. Uncle James wants to surprise her. My father wouldn’t take that risk, because he wasn’t sure that I would accept it.’

‘Oh, I’m so glad you did,’ Carmel said.

‘What would you do if I had said no?’ Chris said with a smile. ‘Get angry with me? Rant and rail and call me stupid?’

‘I can’t think of any occasion when I would be angry with you,’ Carmel replied simply. ‘As for being stupid…when someone does something unexpected, there is always a reason. Maybe I would like to find out that reason, not to change your mind, but perhaps to try and understand.’

‘D’you know, Carmel, you are a very special lady?’

Carmel gave an impish grin and said, ‘Oh, you’re not so bad yourself.’

Paul laughed at her. ‘You just wait. If we weren’t sitting in a very refined coffee shop finishing a substantially good lunch, I would show you what’s what, my girl.’

A delicious tremor ran all through Carmel at Paul’s words and the expression in his eyes.

‘I can barely wait,’ she said, springing to her feet and tugging at his arm. ‘Come on. Let’s go. We are wasting the daylight and we have little enough of it.’

Paul found keeping the secret from James far less irk-some than Carmel did. For a start, although he and Chris shared a house, they seldom met up and if they did, they were too tired or too rushed to talk much. The scant time they had free, they usually spent with their fiancées.

With Carmel and Lois it was different. They were often on similar shifts, on the wards together, in the canteen together. They sometimes went to the theatre or cinema for a treat and they talked about everything under the sun. Now, for the first time, there were vast unchartered waters that Carmel couldn’t even dip her big toe in. But because the girls talked and confided in one another, it was Carmel who told Paul one day, at the end of January, that Lois and Chris were going looking at beds on his next day off.

‘Trust him to think of double beds first, the dirty old roué,’ Paul said with a smile.

Carmel smiled too and snuggled into the crook of Paul’s arm. Outside, snow was being blown into drifts by the wind that howled and gusted against the house, but inside all was cosy and warm where a bright fire crackled in the grate. One of the first things Jeff had done, after having his offer accepted, was to arrange for the chimneys to be swept and a few hundredweight of coal to be delivered into the coal bunker. He also filled the shed with bundles of sticks and told Paul to light a fire if he was asking Carmel to the house and not to have her shivering in the breakfast room, and Carmel was very glad that Paul had done as he was told.

‘The point is, though,’ she said, ‘what if they go and buy a bed? Don’t you think this secrecy thing has gone on long enough?’

‘I do. It has,’ Paul agreed. ‘And first thing tomorrow I will phone my father from the hospital and tell him. Now that is out of the way, come here and tell me that I am the most wonderful, terrific lover you have ever had.’

‘I haven’t had that many to compare you with,’ Carmel said with a smile and then added, ‘What I do know about you is that you are the most conceited, big-headed—’ She could say no more, for her mouth was covered by Paul’s. As the kiss grew in passion and intensity, Paul couldn’t help wishing that he had a double bed upstairs, or anything more comfortable than his rickety old camp bed.

Paul wasn’t so consumed by lust though, that he forgot what Carmel had said. The following day, as soon as he had a minute, he found a phone.

‘I was only talking of this to James the other day when we met up,’ Jeff said. ‘I mean, surprises are all very well, but if you are not careful they can turn into shocks—and unpleasant ones, at that. Thanks for telling me. I’ll get on to him.’

Two days later, Carmel was getting ready for bed when Lois, who had been over to see her parents, came in. Carmel looked at her glowing face and said with a wide grin, ‘I presume that you have spoken to your father.’

‘Yes,’ Lois almost squealed. ‘It’s wonderful terrific news and I can’t believe you knew and said nothing.’

‘It was awful,’ Carmel said, ‘but I had made a promise. It will be even better now you know.’ The two girls threw their arms around each other and danced a jig around the room. Jane and Sylvia, who came in just moments later, were amazed at their good
fortune and could quite understand their excitement.

News of it flew around the hospital and most of their colleagues were full of admiration, though some of that was grudging. Then the following week, Lois and Carmel took Jane and Sylvia along to the house to see it for themselves and they were delighted for their friends. ‘You can understand some people being a bit resentful, can’t you?’ Carmel said. ‘I mean, we already had so much, with the house and all.’

‘That’s hardly your fault,’ Sylvia said. ‘And don’t you think if the same chances had come their way they wouldn’t have grasped them with both hands? I know I would have done, and anyone who says differently is a liar.’

‘That’s right,’ Jane said in agreement. ‘You just enjoy it and don’t you bother about anyone else.’

Carmel was so glad that Sylvia and Jane felt that way. Their opinion mattered a lot to her.

When, shortly after this, Carmel and Paul began to make arrangements for their wedding, Carmel was surprised that Paul wasn’t to be Chris’s best man as she had almost assumed he would be.

‘But why not?’ she asked.

‘Because I am a Catholic.’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘We can’t take part in a service of any other Church,’ Paul said. ‘Didn’t you know that?’

‘No,’ Carmel said, ‘but then it would never have come up, would it? I mean, until I came here I seldom even met anyone who wasn’t a Catholic. But what is the reason for a ban like that? Do they think we’ll become
corrupted by other Churches’ services or what?’

Paul laughed. ‘I don’t know why. I have never asked. That is just the way it is.’

Carmel thought it stupid, but knew that she could do nothing to change it, and together with Chris and Lois they began to lay out their wedding plans. Carmel and Lois’s time as junior staff nurses would end on Friday, 19 July and the ceremony when they would receive their certificates and any medals they might be awarded was the following week, on 26 July. In view of this, and because Paul and Carmel were having no honeymoon, it was decided that their wedding would be first, on 3 August, and Lois and Chris’s would be the following week as they were having a few days away in Blackpool afterwards.

Carmel and Paul’s marriage was being conducted at the Abbey, though Father Donahue from St Chad’s was officiating and, their fairly modest reception was to be in the upper room of the Cross Keys public house, just a few yards down the road, as it was all they could afford. After the gift of the furniture, Paul refused to take another penny piece and Carmel was glad, for anything more salubrious would have completely overawed her mother and probably would have spoiled the day for her.

The following day, Paul went up to tell his parents of the arrangements. Emma wasn’t a bit impressed. She bitterly resented the fact that her niece was to be married in the imposing Holy Trinity Church in Sutton Coldfield and then the guests were to be taken in chauffeur-driven cars to the Royal Hotel, the oldest and most expensive in the town, for James had pulled out all the stops for
his younger daughter. Paul could have had that and more, and then she would have been able to hold up her head with pride, despite the doubtful pedigree of his bride.

Paul had laughed when she had suggested it—not particularly unkindly, but still it had offended her and more especially when he went on to say with a smile, ‘We can’t afford that kind of wedding, Mother. As I told you, we are to be married in the Abbey just this side of Erdington Village and then just down the road is the Cross Keys pub. They let their upper room out for weddings and functions like that. We have both been to see it and it is perfect, and because it is so close it will save on the hiring of cars.’

‘What rubbish you talk sometimes, Paul,’ Emma said through tight lips. ‘This hole-in-the-corner wedding is not suitable for someone of your standing. I was thinking of something much more lavish.’

‘No, Mother.’

‘Paul, see sense,’ Emma pleaded. ‘What is the matter with you? You don’t need to worry about cost. Your father and I would pay for it. Traditionally, of course, it is the girl’s parents who pay for the wedding, but your father tells me the Duffys are far too poor to be able to do that so we will—’

‘No, Mother,’ Paul said again. ‘For one thing, you have paid too much out on me already, and for another thing, that isn’t the type of wedding that either of us wants.’

‘You haven’t just to consider yourselves in this circumstance.’

‘Sorry, Mother,’ Paul said. ‘It is the one time in our lives when we
can
please ourselves, surely?’

‘And expect us to go on foot from the Abbey to some odious little public house?’

‘It is no distance at all, Mother,’ Paul said. ‘And the room is very nice. If you would just go and look—’

‘I have no intention of going to look,’ Emma snapped. ‘You are doing this to shame me…shame us all.’

‘Not at all. I’m doing this because we want just a simple wedding.’

‘Well, then,’ Emma snapped, ‘if you will not see sense in this matter and will consider no point of view but your own, then you needn’t think your father and I will attend. What will your fine friends think of that?’

Before Paul was able to reply Jeff said calmly, ‘When I need you to make decisions for me, my dear, then I will tell you. If you feel you cannot go to Paul’s wedding, then of course you must stay away, but I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

In one way, Paul was glad of his father’s support, but he caught sight of his mother’s face as she swept from the room indignantly and felt suddenly sorry for her.

Jeff misinterpreted the look on Paul’s face and said, ‘Don’t worry, son. She’ll come round when she has time to think about it.’

Paul didn’t bother contradicting his father, but he knew that his mother’s mind was made up.

‘She won’t come to the wedding because we are having the reception in some place she described as an “odious little public house”,’ he told Carmel.

‘Surely it is just a bit of a pique she is in,’ Carmel said. ‘Disappointment, maybe, but she’ll get over it. She wouldn’t boycott her own son’s wedding.’

Paul said nothing, but he knew his mother was more
than capable of carrying out that threat unless he was to apologise and promise to do things her way, and he had no intention of doing that.

Once the wedding plans were made, the girls set to with a will, choosing the furniture and floor coverings to grace their home. Carmel could scarcely believe that she actually owned such beautiful things.

They also toured the Bull Ring for things for their bottom drawer and for the slinky underwear they wanted for their wedding night, which, they both admitted, they were looking forward to with great relish. They discussed what sex would be like and Lois knew a little bit more than Carmel, for she had quizzed her sister, Sue, but still both were a little bit afraid although Lois did say, ‘It might not be so bad in the end. I mean,’ she went on, ‘when we are kissing and everything, you want them to go on and on, don’t you?’

‘Oh, not half,’ Carmel said with feeling.

‘Well, our Sue says it’s a bit like that, but the point is you
can
go on and on once you are married.’

‘Doesn’t it hurt?’

‘She says only at first and not that much if they are properly gentle and that.’

‘Let’s hope they are then,’ Carmel said. ‘I’ll tell you what, though, whether it hurts or not, I can hardly wait.’

‘Me neither,’ Lois agreed. ‘In fact, in some ways it’s a good job that we don’t see much of our chaps, all told. We might well have pre-empted those marriage vows a time or two.’

And Carmel knew exactly what her friend meant.

The days began to get a tad warmer, and as April drew to a close the talk was all about celebrating the silver jubilee of George V in early May. As an Irish girl, totally unconcerned with the British monarchy, Carmel was perplexed at the patriotic attitude of so many people, just because some old bearded man had sat on the same throne for twenty-five years.

She kept her views to herself, however, when she realised how much in the minority she was. Even the hospitals were celebrating, and the General was no exception. The wards were decorated with streamers of red, white and blue, and Union Jacks, and special food was ordered for the day. A party atmosphere prevailed and the rules for everyone were relaxed. Carmel thought it extremely worrying to see Matron smiling benignly at everyone as she toured the wards. Usually, when anyone saw Matron smiling, they knew some poor soul was going to catch it, but not that day.