May 15

​‘When the wartime years came to a close, a traditional way of life was re-established for all of us’ continues Great Grandmother the next day. ‘Those men who did return took up their old roles without a thought. I myself became an obedient wife and daughter in law.

To some extent though that resumption of the old ways was superficial. There were after-effects from those summers of a women’s world that stayed with me and my friends and contemporaries. We kept them hidden. But we each knew they were there’.
 
‘When we came back up here in future years as wives and mothers we always tried to meet alone up by these rocks. We could not get away often, but each year there would always be a few gatherings. I like to tell myself that my friends and I did not lose our questioning around our given roles in life.

​ Now when I hear about the wide horizons of your life, and even see expanded horizons for those women who remain to live here, I feel a sense of continuity with my own generation of hidden subversives’.
 
‘Now I am the sole survivor of that generation. My exact contemporaries have died. But the feelings we had to keep hidden then I can pass on to you today’.