The Magdalene

Then, when I arrived one morning, he was simply gone. I literally ran -- imagine a proper woman at that time doing that! -- to the Dying Room, then to the Morgue. Only when I had checked both those horrors could I breath again.

I could have saved myself the effort. The Medical Corps was finally recovering from the press of the offensive and patients were being moved back to more appropriate facilities.

Looking at his name on the transfer papers, it occurred to me that I didn't even know what colour his eyes were.

+

The celebrations for the Armistice a week later were enthusiastic, but muted in the Manor. The patients, those of whom would ever be whole again, realized that it meant a reprieve from going back to the trenches. Manor staff began looking forward to beginning their lives again. On the other hand, the crippled, the half-men, were in many ways quite subdued. For them, an entirely new battle was about to start.

And then again the influenza - the 'Spanish' Influenza. We had been almost too busy to notice its second wave hitting Britain in October, but hit it had. By the time it faded away in 1919, a quarter of a million Britons had died.

Including my parents.

When all it had ended, after the funeral, after the reading of the will, I was left at the age of 24 with about £18, the lease on their cottage, Michael's locket and my memories.

The money didn't last all that long. Perhaps I could have been more prudent, but to me at the time, under the circumstances, it seemed a windfall to be used for the common good. There were a lot of other widows in the village and surrounding area and few of them were lucky enough to own their own accommodation. And many of them had children.

Things were however tight. And they got tighter as inflation continued. There was now little hope of my finding employment, either. Literally millions of men were being released from service and employers of course preferred men. Indeed, those women holding jobs at the Armistice were lucky to hold onto them at a reduced wage.

I was, to my surprise, finding it difficult to make ends meet. I could have cancelled those allotments to the other widows, but that would've been heartless.

I certainly didn't plan what followed, but I was, much to my shame, to learn that every attractive young woman always has something to sell.

Yes, of course, Michael and I had enjoyed the marriage bed. I'd fancied myself an intelligent and broad-minded woman in a brand-new and progressive century and, in any case, I was determined -- as a good wife should be -- to please my husband. Despite my initial ignorance and my mother's veiled counsels, I even found the act something to look forward to.

Michael had been a reservist before the war -- actually, I first saw him when he was in uniform, a member of the local Regiment's bicycle battalion before the war. While no rake, he brought to our bed enough experience in such matters to save us both from the embarrassment and awkwardness otherwise almost inevitable in the early days of a marriage, given the mores at the time.

We'd moved into his flat and had had enough privacy that we could experiment without risk of embarrassment. Michael was a good husband, a patient and loving man. Protected from the world and its long noses by the closing of our flat door, he taught me much about what pleased him -- and me, too.

That of course had ended when he was called back up in 1914. Twice he'd been given leave in England and each time I'd hoped to have been left with his child, but it wasn't to be for us, not then -- or ever, of course, had we known.

But how and why, you ask?

As I said, it wasn't a real decision.

The Manor was closing down as a medical facility, the last of the patients being shipped off to proper hospitals and only a few administrative tasks left. Matron had been pleased with my efforts in those frantic days before the war ended and I'd been kept on to help with those -- still as an unpaid volunteer, of course.

I'd mentioned to one of the few remaining doctors over a tea one afternoon how difficult it would be for we widows. Sympathetically, he'd offered to take me to dinner that night at the local's snug. Both male and female staff had, almost without issue, been going there since the Manor had opened as a care centre. That night, I was lonely and worried and, well, one thing led to another. I dare say that I wasn't the only widow to have that happen and I doubt I will be the last.

When I awoke in my own bed the next morning, I found I was without my nightie. The doctor was gone but there were however two guineas neatly stacked on the table.

My initial embarrassment turned to anger at the thought of his buying me in such fashion. More recently, I've come to think that he was merely trying to be generous to a woman about to enter hard times, but at the time, I hated him for it as much as I hated myself for having fallen to such a state.

From there, you might say, I rather drifted into it. Apparently, the doctor had talked and, well, sometimes it it's easier to just let go of one's principles.

My terror at the possibility of pregnancy died two weeks later with the arrival of my monthlies, but in the meantime, I had resolved to never again put myself at such risk. With the money he had left me, I took a quiet trip into the anonymity of London, returning with a small packet of French letters.

Fortunately for me, the men in the area were, shall we say, uncomplicated in their needs. I had one gentleman, early on, actually ask me to beat him. I stamped my feet and pointed at the door, suggesting in my horrified wrath that he go back to his posh school where such things were reputed to be common. For a moment, I thought he would hit me, but anger and embarrassment turned to shame and he slunk out.

Others wanted more 'sophisticated' pleasures, but I got the reputation for being, as strumpets go, a good girl - meat and potatoes, so to speak.

I beg your pardon? Did I enjoy their attentions? Don't be silly.

Even in these ever-so-modern days -- the 'Roaring 20's', I think they're calling them now -- that is such a sad, sad question.

Yes, women are now entitled to enjoy sexual acts, I know. But no, not that, not then, not there. What woman in her right mind enjoys being fondled, pawed and used as impersonally as a public spittoon? Even for the nicer customers I was little more than an expedient way to relieve tension.

Some may have felt guilt for using me, I know that, but none felt a shred of sympathy  for Mary Hughes. None cared for me. Some of the stiffer moralists among them, believe it or not, even felt that paying me was a more decent thing than their sleeping with their lawful mates, for their wives were ladies, for whom sex was of course expected to be repulsive. By coming to me, they spared the women they loved...

It didn't take long until I was one of the village pariahs. The men ignored me, pretended not to see me lest I greet them in public. The women on the other hand, ranged from frigid to openly and vocally hostile. For them, I was an indictment of their being incapable of pleasing their men, a constant reminder that they were found wanting in an area which, no matter what theory they and society held to, still defines a woman.

That I was taking a guinea from their household budgets on a regular basis was merely adding injury to insult.

The law? Oh, yes. What I was doing was illegal, but both the justice of the peace and the constable were men of the world and were prepared to look the other way provided all was kept quiet. Indeed, the justice of the peace appeared at my back door more than once.

The village physician wouldn't open his clinic door to me, nor the shopkeeper his, but there was another of each a bus ride away. I made sure to get myself checked every fortnight and, praise God and rolled rubber, I never had a problem.

It's a dangerous business, of course. I was luckier than some. I only had one customer raise his hands to me. While the bruises he gave me were hidden under my clothes, my black eye was prominent for the next week. In the anonymity of a big city, the man might have escaped attention. In the village, my state -- and my services being denied to my regulars - were more noticeable. Apparently three of the other lads shortly after had a 'discussion' with him, for I soon saw him with not one, but two black eyes.

Thinking back, that was the only support I received in all that time, the only time anyone came to my defence. And it was only the once. Still, I suppose, it was something.

It was a lonely time, but financially I was doing better than many men in the village. I found that I actually had enough to upgrade the cottage with electricity and a water heater. The ability to sink into a hot tub was -- and remains - a luxury I still find hard to explain.

I was surviving, better than most war widows in all but the loneliness. What hurt the most was just that. They might have been -- were, I am sure -- missing their men, but they still had a place in proper society. That was denied me, even with those I was still supporting financially.

I began to hear myself referred to by the name 'Magda'. Clearly, it was short for 'Mary Magdalene', the harlot who came to serve Jesus. It was a studied insult, but I took comfort in knowing that the Saviour had loved my namesake.

It would've been easy to slip into drink, or worse. There was another 'woman of easy virtue' several villages away. I never learned her whole story, but she'd gone first to drink and then to drugs before she died. I suppose, if you lack all other friends, it's all to easy to let whiskey fill that hole.

+

It was one year to the day after the Armistice that Major Jones returned to my world. With no show or announcement, he had simply moved into a cottage nearby, one of many for let since the war ended. He made no attempt to keep a garden, which was hardly surprising, given his slow and unsteady pace even with his ever-present stick.

And he still looked very old. I had in his file back at the Manor read that he had been born in 1867, but had somehow thought his looking old was due to his harrowing experiences in the trenches. I was now able to put two and two together -- WO2 Jones had entered the war as an old man, one almost due to retire.

He was a painter now. Whenever the weather was fair enough, he could be seen limping to one setting or another, easel, canvas and paint-box competing with his cane.

To my amazement, he was quite civil to me, which made him about the only one in town. I didn't tell him we had met, so to speak, for that would have of course meant admitting that I knew the nature of his injuries. He spoke kindly of Michael, once, which had me in tears and he never repeated it.

Isolated as I was, I found out soon enough that he was not only a hero, but also an uncommonly generous one. From my customers, I learned Jones had signed off almost half of his pension to support the other widows in the village. I had a rough idea of what a crippled major would receive in pension and it didn't leave much room for such acts of kindness. I realized that, for Major Jones, selling his art was what stood between him and poverty.

As he often set up his easel by the canal path, it was not difficult for me to pass by and see his efforts. I was no expert, to say the least, but it was clear that he was quite skilled, both in terms of composition and in execution.

I didn't spend too much time talking to him, for I had no wish to damage the reputation of Major Jones, MC, MM.

One evening, after my customer had left and I had had my bath, I found myself examining myself in the mirror. I ran my hands over my body, turned this way and that and sighed. Beauty is of course in the eye of the beholder, but I knew that age, time and the stresses of my life would soon render that beauty... harder to see, so to speak. If only there was a way to hold time still. Then it struck me.

More than one lady of diminished reputation has had herself immortalized in oil or pastels over the centuries. My father had once taken us into London to see a showing of paintings from the Impressionist school. One of the paintings we had a chance to admire -- briefly, before my scandalized mother chased us out of the room -- was a nude of Victorine Meuren, an artist's model and, yes, a woman with morals 'no better than they had to be'.

That was my solution. I could ask Major Jones to paint me. It needn't be a large painting, I thought to myself, it wasn't for public display. But, 40 years from now, in whatever level Life had reduced me to, I would still have it as a memory of what I had once been.

I could afford a reasonable sum and Major Jones probably needed the money. It seemed mutually beneficial.

I must admit that it took me some time to work up the courage to ask him. To be rejected would be yet another a slap in the face and I had had far too many of those. Moreover, what proper woman would make such a request?

I still wore the locket with Michael's picture, although I will admit that I looked at it less often those days. Michael's smile was unchanged, but what would he think of me?

I spent a lot of time in front of my mirror, thinking.

One cool morning, late in the year, I watched from my window as the familiar figure hobbled its way towards the canal, easel, canvas and paint box in hand.

It would be winter soon, I thought to myself. Soon, even inside with a good fire, it would be decidedly cold.

Too cold to pose.

And if I waited until next year, I would very possibly lose my nerve.

In that instant, I made up my mind and began to dress.

I took my time, for I was only going to have one attempt.

And Major Jones wasn't likely to run away anytime soon.

I took one last look at myself in the mirror, closed my eyes, took a deep breath and reached for the doorknob.

As I closed the door behind me, I could see his seated figure.

If you wish to vote, then please do so. But this story is really to the credit of Oggbashan, to whom I tender my thanks both for the inspiration for this tale and for his admirable example over the years. Here's hoping he'll defy the odds and be around for many years to come.

God bless, Ogg!