This book only really scratches the surface of Mary’s sojourn from Ireland to England in the early 1950s. The most amazing part of the story is that she is still here to tell the tale, and is still a force to be reckoned with, after 62 years working in the NHS and 80 years of amazing, boisterous and, sometimes, tragic life.
Corinne Sweet
To Ivan Mulcahy, without whom this book would not have happened, and Sallyanne Sweeney, for your excellent assistance. To Natalie Jerome and Kate Latham, for brilliant feedback, editing and guidance. Thanks also for background research to Sgt Mark Bristow, of RAF Northolt. To my family, friends and NHS colleagues for being there for me down the years. To Rufus Potter and Clara Potter-Sweet for patience and forbearance as ever with the writing process.
1
It was so exciting: my first plane journey, ever. Also, my first proper time away from home, especially overseas. It was 10 September 1952, I was seventeen, and only a week away from my eighteenth birthday. I was so proud and independent to be sitting on this silver and dark-green Aer Lingus Bristol 170 Freighter, engines throbbing, propellers whirring, all the way from Dublin. I felt very grown-up, all on my own, with my little bag neatly stowed overhead and my new shiny black Clarks shoes on my feet. My heart was racing the whole time: I was finally on my way to fulfil a life-long ambition. As we descended through dank, grey clouds towards Northolt Airport, west of London, my stomach started churning and jumping in a wild fandango of fear and anticipation. What had I done? What would it really be like? What if my mother was right, and I wouldn’t last a month? I slipped my hand into my skirt pocket, and there was the folded £20 note (about £400 today) for my return fare if I couldn’t stand ‘that evil, black Protestant Godforsaken country’. My mother had screamed, then sulked at me, right up until the last minute, when she had given me a reluctant, brisk kiss on the cheek goodbye. ‘You’ll need this for your return journey, you stupid, wayward girl.’ She’d pushed a rosary, crucifix and little prayer book into my other hand, and stalked off, straightening her hat with its pheasant feather, with an irritated air. On the other hand, my father had folded me into his big arms saying, ‘Let her go, Agnes, she has to find her way,’ which made me sob into his firm, tweedy shoulder. ‘Yer bladder’s in yer bloody eyeballs,’ he teased, as always, which made me laugh through my tears, cheering me up no end.
Now, as the plane descended noisily, bumping through the dense clouds, I noticed the airport buildings rushing up towards me. I leaned towards the window and held my breath: I could just make out dark-grey silhouettes of the Nissen huts, a huge black hangar and a lit-up runway through foggy, late-afternoon light. Suddenly, a front page of the Irish Times flashed across my mind of a fatal air crash only back in January, when the same kind of plane as mine had smashed dramatically into a Welsh mountainside. It was a very rare event, but the memory of twisted wreckage, fatalities and the image of a child’s doll sinking into a bog made me shudder all the same. What on earth was I doing coming all alone to England? Maybe I was mad, like my mother said? Then I made myself get a grip: ‘Come on, Mary, pull yourself together,’ I scolded myself. ‘What are you thinking? It’s all going to be fine. You’ll see.’
Once in the busy airport, I had to find my way to Putney, wherever on earth that was. It was a long, long way from Clonmel, in the south-west of Ireland, that’s for sure. Everything looked so strange and grey, concretey and dull, after the lush green and spreading apple orchards of my beautiful home town. However, I made myself focus, as I wasn’t going to be beaten at the first hurdle (I wouldn’t give my mother that kind of satisfaction), and I soon managed to find a Greenline bus. A friendly conductor explained in broad Cockney I had to change twice to get to Putney: once in Ealing, and again in Richmond. His accent made me laugh, because it sounded so funny – the first English I’d ever really come across in person. All my life I’d dreamed of this moment, of going off to be a nurse. My mother had wanted me to study nursing in Dublin, under the beady, watchful eyes of relatives, but after a lifetime with the nuns, in convent school, I knew I could not bear another moment under their rigid, cruel control. This is where my mother and I came to bitter loggerheads, and the fight was set to continue, even though I was now in England, facing my first six months of State Registered Nurse (SRN) training. As I climbed aboard the coach, I realised it was going to be a long and memorable journey, in more ways than one.
Looking out the window, watching the unfamiliar English streets unfold, I realised I was finally escaping the confines of my home and upbringing to make this new, exciting but scary foreign start. It was 1952, and I was setting out on three years of intensive training. Ireland had been shielded, relatively, from the war, but as we drove towards London I could see bomb damage and that things were still quite austere in England. I was used to the green, lush land of Ireland, the river running past the end of our road, with its neat houses; England looked grey, suburban and a bit dreary. But it was all new to me, an adventure, and I’d finally escaped those religious, social and moral constraints that had driven me to become quite a rebellious girl.
Back home, I was the youngest of five children: four daughters, Una, Betty, Joan and me, Mary Francis, as well as a son, Peter Joseph – all of us with good Catholic names, of course. My mother, Agnes, was a seamstress and milliner, and had left school at fourteen to go into service at first. My father, George, had also left school early, but was bright, and had managed to get a good job in Customs and Excise, going around the bonded stores (which were like government-controlled warehouses), testing the specific gravity of all sorts of things, like rum and whiskey, so people didn’t get short-changed or prosecuted for doctoring goods. We lived in a big, white-painted house opposite a weir on the River Suir, on the Raheen Road, five minutes outside of rural Clonmel. It was a lovely family house, with an apple orchard down the side of the house, and a huge rambling garden with wild roses and heather, high hedges and white metal gate. On one side of the house there were my mother’s raised vegetable and fruit beds, and on the other there was a big lawn where my brother had created a little nine-hole putting course. We were quite well off, and my dad had a car (which few in the town had), a black, four-door Morris 10, which he would steer proudly up the drive, while being greeted noisily by our two liver and white Cocker Spaniels, Ivor and Vanda.
I’d wanted to be a nurse for as long as I could remember. I was always bandaging people, and pushing dolls and babies in my little black pram. I even helped a neighbour with Parkinson’s, Mrs Roach, up the road. I didn’t know what it was in those days, and there was no cure for it. This little old lady shook all the time and dribbled, and her daughter, Nora, gave up her life to look after her. I used to sit with Mrs Roach while Nora, who was a spinster in her fifties, went shopping, and I used to think, ‘I wonder why she’s like that? I wonder what can be done to help her, poor thing?’ I hadn’t a clue, but I was fascinated, and I wasn’t put off at all. I have to admit that I was a bit of a naughty child, a bit wild, I suppose. I liked climbing trees, and we nicked apples out of orchards. I loved wheeling real babies out in their high Silver Cross prams, too, and we used to wheel this baby, Frank, around, when he was about nine months old, and gradually fill up his pram with all these apples and pears we were stealing. One day, a man at the gate of an orchard stopped us, and when he pulled back the blanket, which was covering a huge lumpy heap, including a crying Frank, I was in big trouble. As my punishment, I got a walloping with a rolled-up newspaper from my father and was never allowed out with the big pram and baby Frank again.
We did go back in the orchards, though,