The Polish Connection 10

October 1915

I am so upset with the news in the paper about Edith Cavell. I suppose this has finally come to show me what this war is now all about. With having so many Belgians (and pretend Belgians) here living in our community now, we cannot but share their sorrow how one of our women who helped them has suffered in such a way.

Last fall, two stranded British soldiers found their way to Nurse Cavell’s training school in Belgium and were sheltered for two weeks. Others followed, all of them spirited away to neutral territory in Holland.

An ‘underground’ lifeline was established and some 200 allied soldiers were helped to escape. All those involved knew they could be shot for harbouring allied soldiers.

Edith also faced a moral dilemma. As a ‘protected’ member of the Red Cross, she should have remained aloof. But she was prepared to sacrifice her conscience for the sake of her fellow men. To her, the protection, the concealment and the smuggling away of hunted men was as humanitarian an act as the tending of the sick and wounded.

This August, a Belgian ‘collaborator’ had passed through Edith's hands. The school was searched while a soldier slipped out through the back garden, Nurse Cavell remained calm - no incriminating papers were ever found (her Diary she sewed up in a cushion). Edith was too thorough and she had even managed to keep her ‘underground’ activities from her nurses so as not to incriminate them.

Two members of the escape route team were arrested on July 31st. Five days later, Nurse Cavell was interned. During her interrogation she was told that the other prisoners had confessed. In her naivety she believed them and revealed everything.

The German military authorities, having sentenced Edith and four others to death, were determined to carry out the executions immediately and she was shot yesterday, October 12th.

The paper thinks that Nurse Cavell will be considered as a martyr and those responsible for her execution as murdering monsters. She forgave them before she died.

I know my situation is not the same at all, but I take courage from the fact that she sheltered those who would be captured and helped them escape. In my own small way I feel like I also am helping in the war effort.

November 1915

One day in November, Peter came upstairs after dark as was his want, and he had somehow found out that it was my birthday. I expect Rebecca had let it slip. He shyly presented me with a small box, and when I opened it, I found the most beautiful gold chain with a pearl drop. He fastened it around my neck, and then kissed me, gently at first, but then with an urgency that meant business. I succumbed to his charm and kissed him back with equal relish. I had so wanted this to happen. I knew it was wrong, but it was oh so good. How could anything that felt so good be bad? I knew I loved him, and had done almost from our first meeting. It didn’t mean I didn’t love John. Of course I loved him too, but Peter was the one here, the one with his arms around me, the one who gently laid me on the floor in the dining room, placing a cushion beneath my head, and the afghan from the top of the couch onto the carpet to make a love nest in front of the open fire.

Shutting the door with his foot, he then proceeded to slowly and sweetly remind me of all the aspects of love that I had nearly forgotten. Near the fire  the room wasn’t cold, and as he unbuttoned my blouse and pushed down my bodice. I slipped out of my skirt, petticoat and small clothes. He quickly shed his too, and we melted together for added warmth as well as the need to touch each other all over. He kissed me from head to toe, dwelling some places longer than others, finding new sensations and new excitement with each move.

But before long, the act was over, and we were one. But my lovely glow and feeling of content didn't last long. I hastily dressed, straightened my hair, told him that I couldn’t stay another moment, and fled the room.

What had possessed me to do allow him to do that? I might well be pregnant! We had taken no precautions, we had only thought of our selfish needs and not the wider implications. I rushed to the bathroom and found my lavage bulb. I quickly ran a bath, and got into the water as hot as I could manage, and pushed what seemed like gallons of hot soapy water up my insides until I felt that I was as washed out as thoroughly as could be under the circumstances. Not a nice ending to a beautiful experience, but already my regrets far outweigh my joy.

I was now officially an adulterer. So, of course, is Peter, and he like me, a Catholic, would immediately recognise that a sin such as this is grievous and very, very wrong. No matter how much we loved each other, it was wrong and we had no right to do it. Then I cried, and cried, because as much as I knew I was wrong, I knew that I couldn’t honestly say I was sorry, that I regretted it, that I would never do it again. I could not ask forgiveness in confession if I could not say those words and mean them.

So as from now, unless I could change my mind, I had put myself outside the grace of God as far as my church which is also Peter’s church was concerned. I wondered if these thoughts were growing in his mind as well. Did he worry about sin like I do?

Just as I was finally falling asleep, sick from all my crying, I wondered if John had remembered my birthday and was thinking of me. I started crying all over again.