with long, woolly combinations, neck- She smiled patiently. was not a door but a guillotine. And it
high and elbow-sleeved, decorated with ‘Nonsense,’ she said. ‘Everyone wears had just chopped of_f from me, utterly and
a row of neat pearl buttons down the them. If you went about in anything else irrevocably, every single thing which,
front… you’d collect a crowd.’ for twenty-eight years, had made up my
Next came the modern version of the life. Henceforward I was a being without
corset. It was the merest strip of elastic One further shock awaited me. a background. And no one who has not
brocade from which suspenders, in a An object was handed to me which I actually experienced that sensation can
surprising number, dangled. I thought it can only describe as a very realistically know how grim it is.
a great improvement on the fourteenth- modelled bust-bodice. That its purpose The other thought flashed in upon me
century idea. The only drawback was was to emphasize contours which, in my with the urgency of a commandment:
that you had to insert your person into it girlhood, were always decorously con- Thou shalt not look back!
serpent-fashion, as it had no fastenings. cealed was but too evident. And I knew instinctively that, if I
What bothered me most were the ‘This,’ said my sister cheerfully, ‘is a wanted to keep my balance on the tight-
stockings. The kind I was used to were brassiere. And it’s no use looking so hor- rope stretched before me, I must slam
enormous things, far thicker than those rified, because fashions to-day go out the door behind me and keep on looking
men wear for tramping the moors and of their way to stress that part of one’s straight ahead. Otherwise I should have
shrunk by repeated boiling to the shape anatomy. These things are supposed to to pay the penalty.
and consistency of a Wellington boot. fix one’s chest at the classic angle. Like I crossed the courtyard and went out
The pair with which Freda had provided this –’ she adjusted the object with expert into the pale October sunshine.
me were of silk, skin-coloured and so fingers. ‘There – you see the idea?’ For good or ill, I had leapt over the
transparent that I wondered why anyone wall.
bothered to wear the things at all. Now we were on the threshhold. – I Leap Over The Wall: A Return
I said firmly, ‘Freda, I can’t possibly As I crossed it, two thoughts occurred To The World After Twenty-Eight
go out in these. They make my legs look to me. One was that the door, which at Years In A Convent
naked.’ that instant was being locked behind me, by Monica Baldwin
IlluStratIoN: JaSoN loGaN
1seven.oldstyle
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