Chapter XI

28th November 1941,

Dearest sister o'mine,

I am very, very glad that you're all well at home and I want to let you know that I feel incredibly grateful for all of your letters, they do make me smile, even on the hardest of days out here.

So many things are happening in this dreaded war this month that just like you, I can't get my head around it all especially because it is really hard to imagine all of this to be happening in our seemingly beautiful world. Sometimes I envy Gil and Marshall that they don't necessarily do the kind of "job" Walt, John and I do every single day out here in the trenches and that instead they can at least see the world from a different perspective, from the above. But then, as you know my dear sister, I have a large fear of heights unlike the two of them.

It is really getting nearer to the point where all of us here think America will be joining us soon in this pile of mud and blood. But don't worry, dearest, I know that now you're thinking about your friend Phillip but truly this is actually quite a positive news in a way (I do, like all of us here really, try to be as positive as we can because well, otherwise I'm pretty sure I, if not everyone, would go mad) and what I mean by this is that, if America enters the war, the sooner the war will end.

I won't be telling you more about the war in this letter, I can't quite stand it myself anymore I must say. Especially because it blocks my mind to write anything at all. But don't worry, Hester, I truly am alright, in body most definitely, and in spirit I am not that bad either. The most terrible thing for me would be for you or our parents to worry over me and how "my soul is doing" (as that's how our Mum phrased it in her last letter to me). So please, both you and our parents, just keep on smiling for me because I am fine.

There, I am going to actually reply to your letter correctly now, shall I?

Cousin Bruce is enlisting soon, yes, I know as everyone wrote to me about it, and even Bruce himself did. He asked me so many questions I actually smiled when I saw how many question marks I could see on the page he sent me. The whole letter of his looked more like a drawing rather than a letter, at first glance at least.

Both Bruce and I hope to meet each other here in the trenches but God only knows where he will be sent over. But it still will be a long while when he will even get to Europe, as he told me that he will go for a training after New Year's. I feel grateful that he'll spend this Christmas with our family though, and especially with his wife and children. I do admire his bravery that he actually has made a conscious decision of going to the unknown place filled with a certain horror and leaving his young wife and two small babies. I don't think that I would be bold enough to make the same decision, I must say.

And now Hester let me congratulate you, you amazingly wonderful creature of a talent only one in a million people possesses out there in the entire world. Dear Miss Posy has officially stated that she has taught you everything she knows! I can't stress this enough, I just can't even tell you how proud I am! I am so terribly proud to have such a gifted beautiful sister! Really Hester, do not be modest about it because not every other musician hears, at the age of seventeen, that their teacher has taught them everything they could about both a violin and a cello. I'm sure that our parents are ecstatic (our entire family sure is! - there John and Walt send their pride over your achievements as well!) and that you are pretty pleased yourself, at least you should be!

This only makes me feel so very downhearted that I can't hear you play right in this moment. It's been so long, over a year now, when I've last heard you play and I miss it very much. But I do remember how you play your cello (yours and mine favourite instrument of all three that you can play), I do remember its sound and how perfectly beautiful you look while playing it. Like a perfect definition of peacefulness and music itself. See, the memory of you playing a cello on its own brings a grin to my face.

I am very pleased that this Seb of yours takes good care of you. You know, Hester, that even I, Selwyn Ford, would be willing to "give him a deserved walloping" like Gil would say (as politely as he'd be able to of course), if Seb would harm you in any way a person can harm another human being.

But it does make me happy to read everything you write about him. He does seem like a nice fellow, and a passionate one too. You know, Hester, that I do like people who are passionate about something, even if it means being passionate about being kind to others. The two of you (yes, I received the photograph) look very nice together as well. But goodness gracious, dear sister, I will never be able to truly realise that you, my dearest baby sister, has a sweetheart of her own! And that your red thin lips were kissed and that your eyes now shine in the way they never did before… It does make one wonder, you know.

But I do wish the two of you all the best. And especially I wish the best of luck to Seb as he'll be off for training after New Year's too, you said? Maybe I'll meet him here too, I'm sure we'll get on, because even if we won't have mutual interests we will have one and the same passion: you, dear Hester.

Now, I have to finish off this letter because the torch we're using here for writing our letters will surely switch off in a moment, it flickers and it makes our eyes hurt already.

So I just want to say: don't worry about us, dear Hester, and thank you ever so much for all your prayers (all of them! For everyone you pray for, keep on doing it for we all need it! The Germans and our "enemies" in general as well…) and thank you for all your letters. Both them and your prayers keep us all going, I want you to know that.

Have a beautiful day my dear,

I will forever remain you loyal brother,

Second Lieutenant Selwyn Ford

30th December 1941,

Dear Diary,

We only have one more day of the year 1941 and then the brand new year of 1942 will arrive, but what will it bring us? I sometimes fear God's plans, I must say, and I fear them now as well.

I was so extremely busy this past week that I didn't have time to write in here at all! But I'm glad of it in a way, it only means that Christmas was Christmas in all its fullness. This year Christmas was at Ingleside of course and all of the girls in our Group along with our mothers (my mum, Auntie Faith and Mary Douglas) along with Aunties Nan and Una, all did our best in preparing this year's family dinner and we had so much fun I was almost ashamed of it considering the terrible things happening around the world.

America has joined this dreaded war now and I am so relieved that Phillip still doesn't show any interest in it at all! This whole month has been so overcrowded with war news (we declared war on Japan, there was Pearl Harbor, the murders of Jewish people, sinking of ships and goodness more, more and more!) that I decided I won't be listening to any war news until we'll all going to come back to school, and after my dearest Seb will go off for his training! (I won't be talking about this right now because my heart races at the very thought of it!).

And so let's come back to Christmas. So we all cooked for the family's dinner and although the rationing really is kicking in, we had a wonderful feast and even though it wasn't as filling as it used to be, it was wonderful just because we were all together (most of us anyway) and we all shared it.

It was truly remarkable to just sit with our Group and be joined by my other cousins and friends too. This year was a bit different as not only Lily, Vance, Marion, Ada and myself sat together but we all, all of the cousins and friends sat together in a gigantic circle and talked and talked. I suppose we did it because after all we could all feel the void in our hearts which was created by those five empty chairs standing near the window. I can still hardly bring myself to believe that Jo was sitting among us, even though she didn't say a word to anyone but only a few sentences to Vance's older sister Cornelia who, by the way, wasn't very willing to talk to Jo and neither was Jo herself, we could all see that.

Ada is the best student in each of her Queen's class. She didn't say it herself and it was Auntie Di, her mother of course, who proudly announced it during our dinner. Ada at once said "Oh, Mum!" but she was smiling and her eyes twinkled.

Lily is doing splendidly at Redmond. She is just such a marvelllous creature and I'm certain that she'll be the best lawyer in the entire Prince Edward Island (that's what Auntie Faith said and we are all echoing her words).

But Lily is worried. She worries because John hasn't been writing as long and as detailed letters as he used to. Of course, she realises, he's extremely busy at the front, especially with all the things happening around him but still she does worry because she's not sure whether he is simply "bored of her". I only smiled at her when she said that to me and then I put a strand of her copper hair behind her freckled ear and said: "Lily, nobody of the right mind would ever even be able to be a small bit bored of you. And John is of the right mind, we all know that." and I meant every single word of it.

But apart from that small distress of Lily's, Christmas this year was quite lovely. Delia was running around and singing carols at the top of her lungs and nobody could mind because it was such a funny sight that we all laughed instead. Cousin Bruce's twins, Violet and Rose, were being passed around our "circle of friendship" as the adults called it, and we all played with them. Not even once did they want to go to the arms of their mother Louisa and she was grateful and talked with all the Aunties of mine instead, she does deserve her bit of peace with her being a mother to two year olds (I still can't quite get over the fact that they are two and a half years old already!) and having a husband who is to join the horrors of the war in a matter of few months.

A very romantic thing happened to me during Christmas Eve though. At the end of our family dinner, I was in the kitchen (as I was the one in charge of making more hot drinks) someone knocked on the kitchen window and I saw Seb waving at me through the falling snow. I put on my coat and a hat very quickly and went outside to see what's going on, he already gave me a beautiful hair pin in a shape of a violin as a Christmas gift, and so I feared that maybe he decided to enlist earlier and was here to show me how he looks in his new uniform... I remember shaking from fear while I went outside but I also remember how relieved I was when I saw him dressed in his old winter coat.

Seb smiled at me when he saw me and said "I'm just here for a moment. Mother will be cross with me when she finds out I left our Christmas dinner but I had to come and well…" he then put his right hand high in the air so that a mistletoe he held was directly above our heads. I laughed merrily and said "You are a romantic fool. You can easily catch a cold with all this snow falling down!" and Seb only smiled back and replied "I don't mind being a romantic fool for you." before kissing me straight on the lips. He then left while running back to his house, turning back to wave at me as he knew that I watched him go.

I am so lucky to have him.

I have to go now, I am about to go and help Mum with decorating our house because we'll have a New Year party tomorrow at our house and that means that everyone I know will be in our living room tomorrow night.

Yours,

Hester

"Hester! This is such an incredible offer! You have to take it!" Seb exclaimed excitedly, his light-brown curl falling onto his forehead.

It was the last day of the year of 1941, a beautiful and peaceful evening in the old and snowy Rainbow Valley. Hester and her sweetheart were walking together, their hands interlaced together, holding on for everything they loved about each other. It was the day when Seb came back "from town" in his brand new khaki uniform of the Canadian army. He looked so incredibly handsome that when Hester saw him for the first time, the first feeling which passed through her wasn't fear but only pride, such pride that her cheeks turned entirely red from its feeling. Every girl was looking at Seb with their mouth slightly ajar and breathlessly whispering into each other's ears when Seb picked Hester up in his arms, kissed her now trembling from fear lips and twirled her around when the snow was falling on both of them.

It was then when they went together to the Rainbow Valley and talked not of Seb's going away to the training camp after Newy Year's Eve but of every other thing which wasn't that. Hester told Seb of the proposition her grandparents Ford told her about during Christmas. Because it was Hester's last year of High School and she already started to think of what to do next in her life, they suggested her to consider applying and going to study at Toronto's Philharmony College where a certain friend of Leslie's worked there and could be of help when it came to making sure Hester would be very comfortable with studying over there and later pursuing a position of a permanent member of their orchestra.

"Seb, I don't have to if I don't want to." Hester said quietly, her own mind thinking almost aloud.

Seb looked down at her from under his military cap and frowned "You don't want to? Why?" he asked her in disbelief.

"It's just that…" she sighed and then looked up at him "-I've always wanted to become a teacher first, it was my dream ever since I was seven years old. I wanted and still do, extremely, to teach all of those children who only start to play a cello or a violin and who need an incredible encouragment to continue trying to do just that." she said almost passionately, her eyes twinkling.

Seb sighed as well but grinned at her nonetheless while putting his arm around her shoulders "I know it's your dream, being a teacher." he said "But, Hester, you know you can do it whenever you want to, even right now. But this kind of opportunity doesn't happen everyday." he looked seriously into her hazel eyes which looked back at him.

|I know that." she said quietly again and looked at the ground "But I just don't feel… ready yet, you know?" she looked up at him again "And I still have time to decide, which is good, isn't it?" her voice was almost demanding a positive answer.

Seb left a soft kiss on her nose and he smiled at her "It's more than good, it means you have lots of time to think about it." he said and then drew her even closer to him all of a sudden "You'll have a reason to stop worrying for your boys at the front." he looked ahead of him for a second and Hester put her hands on his cheeks quickly so that he'd look at her instead.

Hester looked at him with a sudden gleam of horror in her hazel eyes "Oh, God, Seb, I'm so afraid! I'm so, so, so afraid of the future!" she cried out, which almost startled Seb who was only capable of putting her into an embrace and kissing her hair softly while she sobbed into his chest.

"Everyone of us is afraid of the future." he told her gently as she trembled in his arms "But I promise you, Hester, when this war is over, the world will be a happy place again."

Hester then looked up at him, her face all red and wet and when she saw him smiling, she forced herself to at least manage a small grin of her own "You think so?" she asked him slowly.

"I know it." he told her seriously and then put his large hands on her cheeks and wiped her tears away with a smile on his face "You know what is truly remarkable?" he asked her suddenly.

"What?" Hester asked him curiously, her heart beating slower eventually and her smile becoming wider second by second.

"That you are beautiful even when you cry." he said and then both of them suddenly started to laugh together, not really knowing why and how they managed to bring themselves to laugh in the first place.

"You talk nonsense, Sebastian." she told him, smiling as they both resumed their walk, their hands squeezing each other "But I love you for it."

Seb pulled her hand closer to him and stopped her from walking. He then put his hands around her waist and kissed her softly on the lips. Hester put her arms around his neck, trying everything in her power to remember everything about this moment, the way Seb's hands felt on her slim body, how warm he was, the fact that he smelled like a mixture of the new uniform he wore as well as his own self, and the fact that he also smelled as always of books. She knew she would need all of the memories of him she could possibly get and she was almost on the edge of crying again when their kiss ended. "Goodness, I am a lucky man." he whispered while caressing her flushed cheek. Suddenly everything around Hester seemed simple.

"Seb?" she whispered.

"Yes?" he said.

"Will you come back?" her voice trembled slightly.

"To you? Always." was the simple answer.

And Hester realised that she wouldn't want the beginning of a new year to start any bit differently.