Anne Bennett - To Have and To Hold

‘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?’

‘Come on, then,’ Jane said. ‘Let’s try it.’

With the combined efforts of Jane, Lois and Sylvia, and using all the grips the girls possessed, Carmel’s hair was finally up, or most of it, though tendrils of it had already escaped. Carmel felt the rest of it pulling against the restraining grips, threatening any moment to break free. She surveyed herself critically in the mirror.

‘It won’t do, will it?’ she said. ‘Even if I had the time to do this every morning and could manage it without help, I have the feeling it would burst out and cascade down my back as soon as I began work.’

‘Oh, can you imagine the matron’s face if that happened?’ Sylvia said.

‘And her comments,’ Lois added.

‘I’d rather not think of either,’ Carmel said drily. ‘The woman would probably scalp me into the bargain.’ She released her hair and lifted the curls critically. ‘It will have to come off,’ she said. ‘It is the only way.’

‘It seems such a shame when it’s so lovely and thick,’ Lois said. ‘But I do see what you mean. I’ll do it for you, if you like. I was a dab hand at cutting my mother’s.’

‘Well, I’d rather you than Matron,’ Carmel commented grimly, ‘and I suppose it had better be done sooner rather than later.’

Despite Carmel’s spirited words, she felt more than a pang of regret as the Titian curls fell to the ground. Lois, though, didn’t just hack the hair off, but took time to shape it. The other girls were impressed.

‘Years of practice,’ Lois said. ‘My mother hasn’t been able to visit a hairdresser for some time and Carmel’s hair is so soft and luxuriant, it’s a joy to work on.’

Jane laughed. ‘Whatever you say,’ she said. ‘It’s another string to your bow. If ever the wish to tell Matron where to go overcomes you totally, then at least you can take up hairdressing, I’d say.’

‘I’ll keep it in mind,’ Lois said grimly, ‘for I’d do anything rather than go back home again to live.’