Evacuees, Episode 5
Created | Updated Aug 18, 2008
For newcomers, previous episodes of this daily serial can be found at
A39606311, A39683974 and A39716706.
It is a biological fact that when a woman is at her most fertile period each month she is also at her most lustful. It is also at this time that she is most attractive to men. God or evolution or both, depending on which system of belief you follow, made us like this with good reason. It helps to perpetuate the race.
Strangely, very few young women are made aware of these facts as part of their education. Or they weren’t in the 1940’s.
It is also a fact, though by no means a scientific one, that none if us has as much control over our destiny as we like to believe. Ivy’s life would surely have been very different had her father not died when she was 12. She had no control over the timing of his death and yet it changed profoundly the course of her future life. Likewise, if Hitler had not invaded Poland, World War Two may never have happened and she would have remained living in London. When evacuation became inevitable before her son’s birth in 1941 she chose to go to Herefordshire because she had been on holiday there many years before. Had that holiday not taken place she may well have chosen to go elsewhere.
In the September of 1944 an event took place, a few miles from her Herefordshire home about which she knew nothing but which was to influence her life and, more especially, that of her son.
Mabel Price was 18. No one had told her about the connection between feeling lustful and being fertile. So when a young man took her into the barn at the rear of the large country house in which she worked and began to fondle her in ways that she knew were wrong, but which were somehow pleasurable, it should have surprised no one that she did not stop him going much further than was wise. Nor should anyone have been surprised that she subsequently became pregnant.
Mabel was not surprised. She was … shocked? …ashamed? … scared? Yes, all of those. Her mother, too, was shocked… and angry. But, to her credit, she supported her daughter and, when her first grand-daughter was born she agreed to look after her so that Mabel could return to work.
Ivy was 9 years older than Mabel so should have known better. And yet, a few weeks after Mabel’s daughter was born Ivy was caught out in similar circumstances. Some of the young women from the village with whom she had become friendly over the preceding three and a half years invited her to a midsummer dance in the village hall. The war in Europe was over at last and victory in the far-East was within sight.
“Surely you can let your hair down a bit,” Marjory had said. And Ivy agreed. Her mother raised no objection. Yes, of course, she would mind Sonny.
Ivy dressed in her favourite white silk blouse with the embroidered flowers on the front and a green skirt. Both had been unworn for more than half a decade. But they still fitted. The austerity diet and plenty of gardening had seen to that. She tied her long red hair in a roll at the back and, for the first time in 6 years went out and enjoyed herself. She should have realised that this was one of the most fertile days of her cycle. She should have known that this explained the excitement she felt in the presence of the young farm hands and former prisoners of war that had crowded the hall after the two village pubs closed. She should have been told that this was the worst time to allow a man to get too close. But, like Mabel nine and a half months earlier – and like millions of women before and since – she was unable to control the force of nature.
A39606311, A39683974 and A39716706.
It is a biological fact that when a woman is at her most fertile period each month she is also at her most lustful. It is also at this time that she is most attractive to men. God or evolution or both, depending on which system of belief you follow, made us like this with good reason. It helps to perpetuate the race.
Strangely, very few young women are made aware of these facts as part of their education. Or they weren’t in the 1940’s.
It is also a fact, though by no means a scientific one, that none if us has as much control over our destiny as we like to believe. Ivy’s life would surely have been very different had her father not died when she was 12. She had no control over the timing of his death and yet it changed profoundly the course of her future life. Likewise, if Hitler had not invaded Poland, World War Two may never have happened and she would have remained living in London. When evacuation became inevitable before her son’s birth in 1941 she chose to go to Herefordshire because she had been on holiday there many years before. Had that holiday not taken place she may well have chosen to go elsewhere.
In the September of 1944 an event took place, a few miles from her Herefordshire home about which she knew nothing but which was to influence her life and, more especially, that of her son.
Mabel Price was 18. No one had told her about the connection between feeling lustful and being fertile. So when a young man took her into the barn at the rear of the large country house in which she worked and began to fondle her in ways that she knew were wrong, but which were somehow pleasurable, it should have surprised no one that she did not stop him going much further than was wise. Nor should anyone have been surprised that she subsequently became pregnant.
Mabel was not surprised. She was … shocked? …ashamed? … scared? Yes, all of those. Her mother, too, was shocked… and angry. But, to her credit, she supported her daughter and, when her first grand-daughter was born she agreed to look after her so that Mabel could return to work.
Ivy was 9 years older than Mabel so should have known better. And yet, a few weeks after Mabel’s daughter was born Ivy was caught out in similar circumstances. Some of the young women from the village with whom she had become friendly over the preceding three and a half years invited her to a midsummer dance in the village hall. The war in Europe was over at last and victory in the far-East was within sight.
“Surely you can let your hair down a bit,” Marjory had said. And Ivy agreed. Her mother raised no objection. Yes, of course, she would mind Sonny.
Ivy dressed in her favourite white silk blouse with the embroidered flowers on the front and a green skirt. Both had been unworn for more than half a decade. But they still fitted. The austerity diet and plenty of gardening had seen to that. She tied her long red hair in a roll at the back and, for the first time in 6 years went out and enjoyed herself. She should have realised that this was one of the most fertile days of her cycle. She should have known that this explained the excitement she felt in the presence of the young farm hands and former prisoners of war that had crowded the hall after the two village pubs closed. She should have been told that this was the worst time to allow a man to get too close. But, like Mabel nine and a half months earlier – and like millions of women before and since – she was unable to control the force of nature.
