Sometime towards the end of the war, Cynthia Ewing got a teaching job in Cambridge and moved south. It was a much happier situation for her- she was on her own, living away from home; in a much prettier city, probably less war-torn than Newcastle; nearer to London for holidays and closer to friends. She lived in a house with other women, where they seemed to have their own rooms or suites but shared common areas, and sometimes ate together or went out in the evenings or to visit friends on weekends.
Cynthia’s letters to her mother at this period are undated, probably because the postal service was so good that a letter dated Sunday would arrive the following day in the north, and there would be no doubt in the reader’s mind which Sunday it had been written on! The first letter seems to have been written in April 1945 because there are references to her recent birthday (April 3rd) in letters that her mother has forwarded to her. (Once more, it seems she has started at a new school in the middle of the school year, like her mother before her!) The Easter holidays would have been about a month long, time to move and set up, but the letter to her mother describes the few days with her American friend Hugh on leave in London, and only briefly alludes to work at the very end. Then there is one written on VE Day, when the war was over in Europe. Four letters from the 1945/46 school year follow, starting after a visit from her mother at half term in the autumn, and ending with a hint at Cynthia planning for a more drastic change.
I have included at the end of this wartime section excerpts from a letter my godmother sent me summing up this period, and finished with an article Cynthia wrote years after, ‘Remembering’.
A Family History in Letters 