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.You’re a pioneer and St Hilda’s is a pioneering college.I can remember how they welcomed speakers from the WSPU.’Lizzie smiled at that, for the first time since she’d entered the room.She liked the idea of being a pioneer.It made solutions seem possible.Octavia pressed home her advantage.‘If you will take my advice,’ she said, ‘you won’t do anything precipitous.Things change all the time during a war, habits, opinions, lifestyles, even in the most entrenched sectors of the establishment.What was thought to be totally out of the question in peacetime becomes an imperative when we’re at war.You’ve only got to look at the suffragette movement to see that.We campaigned for women’s suffrage for years and years but it wasn’t until we were needed for war work that we finally got the vote.I would say press on with your application, visit St Hilda’s and see what it has to offer you, attend your interview, sit your Higher Schools and make up your mind to get the highest grades you can and then bide your time.Make your decision as late as you can.There’s no rush.’‘Well…’ Lizzie said, thinking about it.It sounded sensible, just so long as Smithie understood that there was no question about whether she would marry Ben or not.‘I shall marry him sooner or later,’ she warned.‘That’s a given.’‘Of course,’ Octavia said, ‘and good will come of it.We need young women like you to show that it is possible to marry and have a career.Change doesn’t usually come of its own accord.We need someone or something to give it a push.’So it was settled.Lizzie would go ahead with her application, sit her examinations, do everything according to her original plan, but not lose sight of the possibility that she might marry at any time.When she finally said, ‘Thank you, Miss Smith’ and left, Octavia was exhausted.She stayed where she was beside the fire and lit a cigarette to give herself a chance to recover before she had to take her next study period.As she drew in her first calming lungful of smoke she began to make plans.She wouldn’t tell Tommy what had been said.It would only upset him and then there would be ructions and that wouldn’t do at all.She wanted Lizzie’s life to be as calm as possible in the weeks ahead.But thinking of Tommy and remembering what she’d been saying here in this room only a few minutes ago made her feel ashamed.‘We need young women like you to show that it is possible to marry and have a career.’ What a hypocrite she was being.I must make my mind up and set a date and tell him, she thought.I can’t put it off any longer.I will do it as soon as I get home.But she got home to two letters that took her mind away from weddings and dates for the rest of the evening.The first one was a happy note from Janet announcing the birth of her baby.‘There you are,’ Emmeline said.‘Didn’t I say it would be January? What did she have?’‘A boy,’ Octavia told her, handing her the letter.‘A canny lad, so she says.They’re going to call him Norman.She’s staying with her mother because her husband’s at sea and she can’t get the pram up and down the stairs on her own.’Emmeline said that was very wise.‘She was always sensible even if she did get herself into trouble, if you know what I mean.’That made Octavia smile because she knew so exactly what her cousin meant.But the smile was frozen as soon as she opened her second letter because this one was from Mr Mannheim and the news it contained was so grim as to be almost unbelievable.My dear friend, he wrote,I hope you will forgive me for unburdening myself to you again but I feel I must pass on this news to everyone who might be able to help.It is necessary that these terrible things be revealed.To conceal them would be to condone them as I am sure you would agree and these are horrors that should never, never be condoned.To put the matter briefly, there is news coming out of Germany that what they are now openly calling ‘the Jewish solution’ has become a full scale programme of mass extermination.It is terrible to write such words, hard to believe that there are human beings who would do such inhuman things, but there are such men.One is the man in charge of the programme.His name is Rienhard Heydrich.He is second in command to Himmler of the Gestapo.According to my informant, who I must tell you is usually reliable, he has plans to kill all the Jews now under German rule in Europe, which is to say over eleven million men, women and children for they do not spare the young.There are now several concentration camps built and in action with gas chambers equipped for the killing and crematoria to dispose of the bodies.It is hard for us to comprehend such ruthless enormity but I fear that news of what they plan is true.Do please send this letter on, I beg you dear friend, and forgive me for bringing such distressing things to your attention.There are days when I am half mad with the terror of the things I hear.We live in evil times.Octavia lit a cigarette and smoked as she tried to digest the horror on the page [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]