An End of Poppies
talk. Apparently he was a most handsome fellow but Mathilda says his bowed legs and pigeon chest were most comical. We all cannot help but laugh when she describes him. Cruel I know.
She calls her affair with him her 'summer of love' and says that love making is the most natural and beautiful thing in the world. It is, she says, what men and women were designed for, so there should be no shame in admitting it. Her ideas are all full of women's emancipation; she argues that women should be equal in all spheres of life and that should include sex and sexuality. I must be clear though Jimmy, that these conversations only take place amongst us, in the privacy of our own home, Mathilda is much more guarded in company. Of course mother always tries to interject, when Mathilda is preaching women's equality. Mother holds to her beliefs that sex should be within holy matrimony, and that it is the natural place of women to be wives and mothers. She says it is God's will although to be honest I am not sure that she really believes this. Not really. I think she says such things for the sake of Dulcie and I. Anyway she doesn't get very far when airing such views; as this seems to goad Mathilda into saying even more radical things! Mathilda chided mother about her views on women and marriage by saying that she shouldn't talk like the Pope since we aren't Catholics!
I suppose I am telling you all of this Jimmy, and being so unbecomingly frank, because it is, of course, something that I think about too, even though I know I must be blushing most awfully as I write this. To think that you will be reading my thoughts about sex. I am not sure what to think about Mathilda's dalliance. It was wrong, of course, for a husband to deceive his wife and I wouldn't countenance that kind of behaviour. But I can recognise that, for Mathilda, it meant that she has known what it is to be a woman, something that is denied so many women in our nation. So I do not think it is wrong that Mathilda experienced love, even if it was only for the briefest of summers. The affair ended when her lover was promoted and sent to Manchester to help oversee food production in the northern counties. Apparently his wife never knew about the affair, so I suppose at the end of the day no harm was done, apart from an unspoken deception.
I must tell you about the experiences I had at the concert we attended Jimmy, you know, the one I said Aunt Matilda had purchased tickets for in Victoria park. It was just Mathilda and I, mother said it was too late on a school night for Dulcie to go up to the city. Dulcie was most upset not to go I have to say. But considering the frightful things that happened it was best in hindsight that she didn't go.
Mathilda said it would be a fine girl’s night out for the two of us and, at least for the first part of the evening, it was. I wore my best dress, a lovely floral one, with a big pattern of roses. It has quite a decadent wide flowing full skirt and tight bodice; makes me want to twirl and swish around when I wear it. Mathilda lent me some long claret gloves and mother lent me her precious pearls; necklace and earrings. I was going to put my hair up, but couldn't get the bun just so, so instead I pushed it back with a black alice-band. I felt like a princess. It was as if one could forget the war and all its privations; as if I were going to a ball or some such highly sought after social event.
They erected an enormous circus tent on Victoria Park and we took the tube. The tent must be seventy five or eighty years old or even more, goodness knows where they got it from. It was blue with the words 'Sangers Circus, brought to you by Lord George SANGER' emblazoned on it in faded gold letters. I suppose he must have been some famous circus promoter back before the war. I was quite taken aback by the size; it must have covered fifty allotments!
Mathilda says there must have been three or four thousand women there. You really should have seen it Jimmy. Such a spectacle. We had seats right up in the gods near the back and the Women's Symphony Orchestra was assembled in a space in the centre; the circular space where the acts and animals would have performed back in the days when we still had circuses.
It was all so exciting Jimmy, but when the conductor tapped her baton and the music started! Well! I really can't describe how that felt; the soaring strings and brass of Vaughan Williams filled the air to bursting inside the whole enormous dome of canvas. Its beauty honestly brought tears to my eyes and seemed to fill my very soul. There really is nothing like it. I apologise if my description seems childish and melodramatic but I know of no other way to tell it. I was lost. Lost in those melodies and chords. So lovely. It made me think of love and beauty, and my dear Jimmy, it made me think of you and the only downside was that you couldn't have been there with me.
I loved it so, but like so many things in these times it was spoiled, and only the first part of the evening was perfection. It must have been about an hour or so into the concert when the sirens cut through the music. I was so annoyed; we haven't had any air-raids for such a long time. Why did they choose that moment to bomb us? Just when I was enjoying it so. It felt as if they were being so spiteful; those hateful Germans.
At first it was quite orderly, the orchestra stopped playing and announcements were made for people to head safely and calmly to the tube station. People gathered their things and carefully began walking down the steps to leave the big top. Being at the back we had to wait for those below us to vacate their seats. Then, unfortunately the power went, or at least I think that's what happened. Mathilda said it could have been the wardens turning out the lights to stop the tent being a target and seen from the skies above. Either way what happened next was so disastrous Jimmy.
The women began pushing past each other on the dim stairs and gangways to get out. Mathilda could sense the impending danger and she took my arm and told me that we were staying put for a while as that was the safest thing to do. So we simply sat back down in our seats. By now everyone else in our row had gone and, below us in the gloom, you could hear the shouts and jostling of panic and then some screams. It was frightful. And then, to cap it all, the bombs began to hit. Not that close but their explosions large enough to shake the ropes and supports of the tent and, for a while as we sat there in the gloom, the explosions seemed to be getting closer as they mixed their cacophony with the screams of the women trying to escape the tent.
I am sad to say it Jimmy but lots of those women didn't make it out of that tent alive. The papers didn't report that. They just said that the concert was cut short by the air raid. I suppose they thought that such news would be bad for moral. I am not so sure. I think they should have printed the truth about it. The truth that I witnessed Jimmy, with my own eyes. People should know what this war does.
Aunt Mathilda and I sat there, high up in that circus big top, alone in the dark holding each other's hands, for about three quarters of an hour. The screams and shouts began to fade to be replaced by women moaning and crying in the dark and calls for help. The all-clear came and Mathilda and I gingerly made our way down the wooden steps. By now there were a few women with lanterns scouring the seats.
There was a woman lying bent forwards over one of the chairs about half way down. Between us we gently lifted her and sat her down as best we could. She had a broken leg and was gently sobbing at the pain. Her name was Doreen and she said she was fine and that we should help others who must be worse off than her. I remember her fingers shaking as Aunt Mathilda hugged her and told her she would be alright. So brave.
Further down the steps we came upon more bodies. I stood there helpless, not knowing what to do as Mathilda bravely checked them over. Three women, lying there on the steps in the dark. Dead. The life simply crushed and trampled out of them by stampeding women. As if they had been squeezed like a sponge until their souls trickled out.
In hindsight I thought I should have been shocked, but strangely, despite a feeling of helplessness, I was calm. Like most of us in this war I have seen death before.
A fourth woman was moaning for help. Her voice sticks in my head. "Help me...help me...help me..." Mathilda and I tried to lay her straight on the wooden steps as best we could. She was bleeding and in pain. Someone's heel had pierced her stomach and a pool of blood was
dripping down the steps. Mathilda ripped open the woman's blouse and without thinking I took off my long crimson gloves, scrunched them up and pressed them with my hand over the pin-prick hole where the blood was spilling from. I remember thinking that it was such a small hole for so much blood. It must have been a stiletto heel that punched through her belly as someone stepped on her fallen body. I also remember thinking that at least my gloves were red and the blood wouldn't show on them so badly. Of course I lost those gloves.
Mathilda left me with her and went to help some of the other women. Soon the ambulances arrived and wardens and policewomen with lights and torches. I seemed to sit there for a long time pressing hard on that woman's stomach and whispering to her that she would be alright and that help was coming. She fell silent but I could feel the rise of her breathing against my hand.
A couple of the violinists from the orchestra were still there and from a distant corner of the tent they struck up a melancholy refrain. I couldn't see them but later as we were leaving I saw they were playing next to a row of bodies, each neatly covered with a blanket. I don't