Chapter Eight

LONDON, England In The Year 1967.

22 Years After The End Of The Second World War.

I was sitting in my surgery waiting for the next patient to come in and with little on no possibility of going home as it was still early in the day and I was on duty at the surgery until six that evening. I thought of my past life and how things could have been so different if there had been no war in 1939 . . . I thought if I had married Austin Fairhead and had never entered the convent, as I never would have done if Austin had lived. I had never ever thought to become a nun before he died. Certainly not into an order of enclosed nuns where prayer and hard labour was the order of the day and that was simply day after day until my superiors suggested I should go to one of their convents in Germany as my German was equally as good as my English and it was considered that I would do well there in encouraging vocations. . . . an obedience that rather surprised me as I had entered the order to pray and not to converse, but the need for religious vocations in Germany was very poor as a war had been anticipated and young women had their minds full of ‘the power and strength of the Fatherland’ and not so much on God.

Why could I not have simply remained in the Religious order without upheaval of the war where I was taken as prisoner in Germany, even if I was a nun at that time and also qualified as a medical doctor. Should I ever have considered coming out of the convent after I was released from the concentration camp even if the war had still been going on. YES, that was the big question in my life when I removed my religious veil where I was known as Sister Evangelist and reverted to simple Miss Anna Carpenter, but the memories of the concentration camp in German would never leave my mind and I knew that would be true until the very day I died That was a special time in my life; a time that had been thrust upon me; a time that gave me great happiness, perhaps a happiness that I didn’t deserve and yet that happiness was accompanied by a great sadness. A sadness that had changed my life forever. I knew I would never; COULD never ever fall in love again in the way I did with Austin even if several ‘candidates’ turned up from time to time with ‘hopes’ or whatever else they called it, but my heart was closed. I felt that I could serve God better as a doctor than I did when I wore the veil and my medical experience was in better use than when I was struggling with my modest prayers in the convent. I didn’t feel particularly proud of my achievements, but with some little boy needing a stitch or two to his knee where he had fallen and cut himself came crying into my surgery or when Priscilla Kent was distraught when she realized she was pregnant at sixteen, or when young Robbie Macalpine was struggling with suicide when he was fourteen because he thought he was gay, I somehow felt that I COULD help in my own chosen profession as a doctor, better than I could have done in the cloisters of love.

I was absorbed in my thoughts of the past when Sarah my receptionist came in to tell me that all the patients had gone home and the surgery was empty.

“All right then Sarah, you can go home now, but please don’t forget that I won’t be in the surgery for a few days and doctor Baltimore is taking over until I come back.”

“Oh yes, I remembered now. You’re going up to Scotland for a while, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am going up to Edinburgh for my daughter’s wedding.” I said as I reached for my coat and the furry little Pekinese toy dog fell out from the pocket. Sarah looked strangely at me for a moment as she picked up the furry toy and replaced it on a nearby shelf where it was usually kept before she spoke.

“But I didn’t think you were married, doctor,” she said and I could see the suspicious look in her eye. Sarah was a good Christian woman and children outside of marriage was something that she didn’t accept or approve of, but I looked back at her and smiled.

“You don’t have to be married to have children,” I said and although I could see her disapproval, she went on to ask me if my daughter was being married in a church and I told her that as my daughter was a Catholic, as I was a Catholic, she was indeed being married in a church . . . a church of Rome and Sarah gave me a look of satisfaction after I told her that and more particularly when I told her that my daughter was a lawyer and she was marrying another lawyer as they had both worked together in London for the past four years, but that Eric, her fiancée was a Scot and that they hoped in time to settle down in Scotland and raise a family

“Eric,” repeated Sarah and her eyes lit up, “That’s a nice name for a man, I like it,” she said and then after a few moments of hesitancy, Sarah spoke again, “You never told me your daughter’s name, doctor Carpenter,” Sarah added with deep concern in her voice and with another look of anxiety.

“Oh yes, I didn’t tell you, did I? My daughter’s name is Freya and I have always called her FREYA TWINKLE TOES and if you really want to know, she was born in Germany in 1939, just as the last war started. Good afternoon Sarah. . .”

The End