Sexual Tension in the Forties

Kim’s comment on the photo below of five young people, taken in the Lake District in 1947 got me thinking of how it was then. We had met the day before, sitting at a communal table in a tea place in the Langdales. When they saw us looking at bus time tables they offered us a lift in their car back to our B&B in Ambleside. Sheila and I were going to a dance that evening and they said they would come too.

James and I sort of gravitated to each other but it was all very repressed with just the ‘accidental’ touching of hands and the odd brush against each other. There was a sizzling under current and it was intoxicating just to talk to these knowledgeable, older men – just out of the army and about to go up to Oxford. James was shocked when he learned I was just seventeen.

The next day was their last and they drove us to Coniston. The day passed quite quickly and then in the evening we were thrilled – all of us - to see Sir Malcolm Campbell about to test his Blue bird on the lake. We had been berated for skimming – throwing flat stones - to skim along the lake. The lake was like a mill pond but it was decided it was too dangerous for a Bluebird test. Eventually both Sir Malcolm and his son Donald – who I met whilst modelling – were both killed whilst testing.

On the photograph James and I look quite intimate but that would be a sudden embrace with the camera as an excuse. So different from now – one spent a lot of time just yearning, but not sure what for. It was four years later after marriage that I began to understand. I don’t think I was the exception.