To Have and to Hold Read Online Free PDF Page B

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