Chapter XXXVI

10th June 1944

Dearest friend,

Thank you ever so much for your long and detailed letter which explained your entire new position in life and so the fact that there's a new man in your life. May I then congratulate you, dear, on your engagement to Mr Marshall Douglas. I wish you two the best of luck and happiness in this world which I do hope will soon change into a better place than it is now and will allow both of you to be together.

Of course, I don't mind you keeping this secret from me, Hester, how could I ever hold anything against you anyway? It was actually quite wise to keep your sweethearting with Marshall in hiding as obviously, like you explained yourself, this allowed you two to be only you two and not everyone else and you two. Your whole story is quite remarkable, may I add.

I do remember when Seb sent you that memorable letter and you said to me that you "can feel that someone" is waiting for you as you're waiting for him. I remember your excitement when you realised it might be a man who you know already and there you go, it was a man you knew all your life, even before you met me! I would have never thought, out of all the people in the world, that the man who would steal your heart is going to be Marshall Douglas, never.

Hester, dearest, I knew you'd ask me about my own feelings ("because… because you know, Phillip…?") and I will tell you the truth which you deserve to know. I love you, as a friend and maybe even a bit more still but all the events happening in your life and mine too only convey that the two of us are not meant to be together, at least not in that way like you and Marshall are. The way you described him to me in your latest letter, Hester… Even a blind person would have been able to read the love shining through your writing there. You've never spoken about Seb that way and I know that, as you wrote yourself, "never will about anyone else". And I am truly and most profoundly happy for the both of you. I will pray for your Marshall to come back home safely to you, dearest, I know he will.

How wonderfully pleasant it was to read about the reaction of your family about your engagement which appeared to them, or at least some of them, out of nowhere. Daria, of course, knew and I don't blame her (I myself knew from your letters that your spirit developed sudden and unexplained wings and I would catch myself questioning what has happened in your life that caused them to grow so quickly) at all, her squeaking was truly very funny to read about.

Your parents are so understanding and always happy that I really do envy you. My parents only worry and see the world in black colours. There's not a letter in which my mother doesn't say something along the lines of "My son, my son what will I do if anything will happen to you? Any scratch on your beautiful skin will kill me entirely…" I simply can't stand it sometimes.

It is truly funny, like your father said, that in some ways your story with Marshall mirrors his and your mother's love story. No wonder they are so happy about your engagement to Marshall then. I can only imagine how happy and excited your Gil will be once he hears about it (he is Marshall's best friend after all!).

Your grandma Anne… Well, of course, she is the queen of matchmaking and no wonder that she knew from the first glance on Marshall when you played the piano that you two are going to be together eventually. I suppose that without her manipulation on that day nothing would have happened between you two… Or maybe it would anyway? Who knows?

And then, of course, your grandparents Ford all embracing you tightly at the news… I so wish I was there to witness all of this secret key to happiness and simple joy I haven't seen in a while now…

What jolly news that Walt and Cornelia are back in Canada! I can only imagine both Walt's and Cornelia's parents and siblings crying from joy over seeing them both all together. No matter the amputated foot of Walt, I can truly see in my own mind his shining eyes as he looks down at Vance's sister…

Tell Walt: good idea on deciding to go to Redmond in September to study Physics before he'd settle down for good. That's very wise of him and, of course, your Uncle Jem must be very happy about his oldest son to be studying Physics. I envy him so much! To be able to come back to your own home, your own people and roots, with a beautiful wife on his shoulder and future right in front of him… Even though he has been through a very difficult time, like all of us here.

It's all fine, dear Hester. Don't worry about me because I know that now you're asking me whether I'm fine, you kind soul. Sure I am! How can I not be? After all, if I lose hope what will be left here in the trenches of Italy? Nothing at all. Hope is the key to survival over here.

I wish I could squeeze this small sister of yours, dear Poppy. Such a sweet photograph you've sent me of her in your last letter. She is really messy when she eats, isn't she? A sweetheart and she does look like you, Hester. The same shape of the eyes, nose, lips… all the same apart from, as you said yourself, the hair which is purely red, I can even guess that from this photograph.

I shall be going now, dearest. Again, congratulations on your happiness with Mr Douglas. What a lucky, lucky man he is!

Goodnight, friend.

Always yours,

Second Lieutenant Phillip Jones

12th June 1944

My honey,

This is a short letter that I'm writing at the post office in Dover. I do want to write a long one but I can't because I'll be on the ferry to Europe in an hour and a half's time. However, I had to write something to you from this city of white cliffs. I've been here for two weeks for my final and last tests, as you know already, and now I am finally (or rather unfortunately because if I could I'd go back to you, kid) going to meet Gil once again and go back to the front.

Darling, I can't say anything now but that I want to take your hand in mine and walk on those white cliffs with you. I can see them very clearly from here right in this very moment. It's the third time I have seen them and every time but now I always wanted to go to the front right now and do my duty now and with no delay whatsoever. Now, though, all I want to do is to hop on a different ship I'm about to come aboard soon and come all the way back to Canada, then I want to put your head on my chest so that you can hear my heart beating, darling girl, because it's beating for you.

Of course, I do want to do my duty still but now I am doing it truly for a different reason, I'm doing it especially for you, Hester-kid. If your brother and my best friend for that matter will disapprove I shall simply slap him across the face, I apologise to you in advance, dearest heart. But I'm sure he's as fine with our engagement as he said to me in his last letter to me.

Honey, I still have your scarf in the pocket of my uniform and believe it or not it still does smell like you, a mixture of the strings of your cello and a baby-smell of your Poppy who always wants to be carried by you.

I couldn't say it before but I will now. You know, dear girl, whenever I saw you playing with small Poppy or when you were holding her asleep in your arms and kissing her chubby cheeks my chest would simply fill with butterflies of all the dreams that so suddenly appeared in my mind, like never before. She just looks so much like you, apart from her red locks, that I can't help but wonder how our children would, no: will look like. I still remember how you told me once that when you and Seb corresponded together still, you couldn't quite agree on either the number or the gender of your children, you'd like to have two boys and two girls like your parents have and Seb wanted to have three boys instead. Hester, if you'd ask me, I simply don't mind either the number or the gender as long as they're all healthy and as beautiful as you are.

I already see that you have made me a more poetic man than I've ever been, if that's possible. You do make miracles happen, Hester, and never think otherwise. Do you think that women who are the most vibrant and outspoken are the ones who are the most successful, passionate and beautiful inside and out? No, dear. Of course, some of them are, I'm not saying that they're not but honey, a person with such full heart and a mind full of intelligence, imagination and creativity will go nowhere but everywhere she wants to. You truly do make me look at you (or in the case of today, at your photograph) in awe and if there's someone who doesn't look at you like that then let them keep on looking.

Here, that's my letter to you, my dearest-girl who sends the longest, the sweetest and the most wonderful letters to your man. For that is exactly what I am. If I'm nobody at all, then at least I know that I belong to you and I always will.

Put your chin up high, kid, and know that I'm thinking of you always and that I will be always going back to you, dear. I will come back.

Forever and ever your fiance,

Marshall

It was a Sunday and the family of Blythes, Merediths and Fords (as well as Douglases) were sitting together outside at the family table; eating, talking, joking and laughing together whilst the miracle called the beginning of summer was floating all around them. The birdsong accompanied the baby-talk of Poppy and Fleur, who spoke the Poppeur-ish together in the most advanced and fluent way possible whilst held by both their sister and mother respectively. Walt and Cornelia were sweethearting together in the corner, causing everyone to look at them from time to time and sigh in contentment. Owen and Leslie Ford visited their family that weekend and they talked passionately together with their old friends Anne and Gilbert whilst another miracle called life was happening all around them too.

"Oh, so he did learn that piece then!" Daria clasped her hands together after Hester told her friends about the funny situation that happened during her music lesson in the morning. Hester chuckled and then shook her head and all the girls, or rather women, sitting around her laughed in unison, their cheeks turning pink. Even Fleur and Poppy started to laugh themselves, wobbling to the front and back.

"I haven't laughed like that in weeks!" Jo wiped away the tears from her flushed cheeks and then kissed Fleur who started to play with her brown braid in her chubby hands.

"It's good to always be able to find something funny, even in times like these." Marion said with a soft smile on her face and all the girls smiled back at her in agreement "I wish that Lily could be here today, though, she'd love this weather." she looked around and up into the sunshine.

All the girls did the same and grinned together "Oh, I wish that too." Hester said melancholically "But then she is doing her own duty and she's happy doing it, and besides we'll see her soon enough, I think." she said.

"You think that the war will end soon?" Vance asked her, both doubtfully and hopefully.

"I don't know… but I have this feeling that everything is slowly falling into place, you know?" Hester said and then bounced Poppy on her knee with skill unachievable sometimes by mothers themselves.

"I know what you mean." Daria agreed merrily "I think so too and also…" she started but was interrupted by a sudden scream coming from the table where the older generation was sitting.

Everyone turned their heads immediately. Hester thought then that her heart was stuck inside of her throat and she could hardly breathe. Nan was gasping for air as she sobbed terribly in Jerry's trembling from his own tears arms. "Not my Johnny! Not my baby…" she wept aloud and Jo's face, as well as Walt's, went entirely white.

Jo quickly put Fleur into Hester's arms that were now filled with both babies and she stood up, looking gravely at her parents who looked at her then and Jerry, with trembling voice, said to her and everyone else "John was killed in action…" and then he too fell into the inevitable circle of grief.

Jo screamed then, mirroring the sound of her mother a few seconds earlier, and collapsed to the ground as Daria quickly appeared by her side, letting her friend's head to rest on her shoulder. Walt put his face into his hands and started to tremble all over whilst repeating "Not John, not dear, dear John…" as Cornelia was stroking his hair, trying to ease his pain somehow. It seemed to Hester as if the world has stopped entirely, nobody could say a word nor move an inch, everything seemed almost artificial and unreal entirely.

Vance and Marion both squeezed Hester's shoulders from both sides as their cheeks started to become wet with tears of their own. Hester's own eyes filled with tears as the vision of a young, handsome, charismatic boy as well as a copy of his father's good looks, was slowly yet surely following the Piper from behind them.

Hester's own grip tightened on both of the babies in her arms and she looked over at Marion with a suddenly doubled fear in her eyes "Oh, my God! Lily!" she whispered breathlessly and she knew that the war hasn't ended just yet.