Chapter XIV

6th May 1942

Dear Diary,

Yesterday Japanese artillery attacked Corregidor and we all know already that the month of May will be absolutely filled with war even more than before, if that's possible at all. And to be honest I do try my best not to listen to the war news each morning, especially when I'm going to school and that is because my final exams are starting off in a few days time and at school we have time to revise everything and also to ask all the most necessary questions our teachers who are extremely helpful but do want us all to focus not on war but on our exams and that is what I'm trying to do. But I can't block it all out entirely, how can I when Selwyn and John are fighting at the front in France, our dear Gilly is still missing and now Walt has been reported wounded and missing as well.

It's been a week since Walt has gone missing and so we had a week to get past the first wave of another shock. Auntie Faith was and still is the definition of her name and although we know that she did cry when she found out about her oldest child to be "wounded and missing", she is now very hopeful just like my parents and I are about both our Gil and her and Uncle Jem's Walt. Marion firstly went into hysterics but soon enough, she too overcame her fears and started to feel a blossoming of hope in her heart. Uncle Jem is, of course, worried, like the rest of us but he is the strongest of us all and maybe it's because he was wounded and missing too in the first war. He has an idea of what kind of things might be happening to his son but he is keeping up hope that whatever it is that is happening, Walt will get out of that place called "missing" and he'll be found. We think the same of our Gilly.

We all had time to recover from shock after Gil was announced wounded and missing over three weeks ago now and I am extremely proud of all of us, to stay so positive and hopeful in this stressful time of not knowing what happened and what is still happening to our Gil. But like I always love to highlight: we are Fords, Blythes and Merediths, and we are one big family who always was and always will be hopeful and will "have faith" just like Uncle Walter told us to have, all of those twenty years earlier.

However, there's one person who completely lost her mind when she found out that Walt is "wounded and missing" and that person is Vance's older sister Cornelia and therefore Walt's fiancee. When she found out, Vance told me, she sobbed terribly at first but then she said almost angrily: "You said you'll be fine, you said you'll be alright!" as if she was talking to Walt who was in front of her. Then she flew out of the house and when she came back a few hours later she announced seriously, with all the energy she suddenly found in herself, that she has joined the VADs and is to go for a nurse training next month which will follow her going off to England and working there.

She didn't ask either her mother or her father for their permission and apparently there was a gigantic fight over her decision. However, the argument ended with the entire Douglas family embracing each other and crying together.

Vance said that Cornelia signed up because she wanted to make sure that when her fiance was found, she would be the one to tend to him and also to any sort of wounds he would be carrying on his body. I admire her bravery and her passion, and especially her determination because if anyone knows Cornelia Douglas they know that she is extremely stubborn and could pass as a Blythe already. Both Vance and I are glad, though, that she's going to go and help out in that special way all the boys, not only our own (please God don't let our boys even be at any hospital, ever!) but all the other Canadian, British, American or any other soldiers needing help. Aunt Faith already had a long conversation with Cornelia about being a nurse at the war and for which Mrs Douglas thanked her greatly.

I know that I wouldn't be able to go overseas and be a nurse myself. I'm this kind of person who needs to help others but in a more… emotional way, not the physical way. I love making other people smile by something I say or do, like play my cello for example. That is probably why this is my passion, music I mean. It makes other people smile, even the ones who thought they could never smile again. But I can't be strong enough to help someone physically, I just can't look at blood, not lots of it anyway. That is why I admire my grandpa Gilbert and my Uncle Jem, they are both such wonderful doctors and did so much for people in this need. But of course, I do very very much admire Auntie Faith as well. We've heard of some of the things she has seen at the front while being a nurse, all of those hundreds of men lying in their own blood waiting hopelessly for her help… I shiver at the very thought that all of this is happening all over again. I can only hope and pray that in another twenty years time there won't be any third war which would involve the entire world around us.

Seb is going to the front today. He is in England for three days now and now he'll be joining our boys in the trenches, in France as well, where Selwyn and John are right at this moment. I hope they will all meet each other and keep each other's company while awaiting the coming-back of Walt's.

I am terribly scared for my Seb, of course, I am! My hands trembled so badly when I received that telegram of his saying that he has just arrived in France and will be at the front in a few hours time. I couldn't even read it properly at first. He's my sweetheart and I intend to have him as my one and only sweetheart for life. I do love him greatly and I know that he loves me too and I do think that our love is strong enough to get him through it all and then make him come back to me when it's all over. I do have such sweet dreams for our future together… I do try not to think about them too much, of course, one shouldn't at the time of war but even Mum said to me that she was thinking them too when she was waiting for Dad to come back from the front.

Seb wrote to me that he's not scared of going to the front and that is because he's carrying the photograph of me in the pocket of his uniform. He thinks of all of the features of my face while looking at it, remembering everything and all the memories we share together of one another. I won't be writing here everything he says to me in his letters but I must say that he's very romantic and I love him for that too because that's also who he is. That love we share keeps me optimistic.

Selwyn is very brave, I am so proud of him my chest aches. When he found out that Gilly is wounded and missing, he was very calm about it and only wrote to us that yes, he did cry for his brother for a bit, but then calmed himself down and is decided, like all of us here, to be strong and to keep hope for his older brother whom he knows as much as we all do, to be alive. Now that Walt, one of his best friends, is also wounded and missing, Selwyn wrote that he too cried with John (both of them holding each other's hands and thinking of their mutual bosom friend) over Walt but after that small moment of giving up, both he and John concluded that there's nothing else they can do but to do just keep on being positive, if not for themselves then for both Gil and Walt. I do hope that Selwyn truly is just that, positive I mean, like all of us here. I won't know for sure of course, and this lack of me knowing exactly how he feels really breaks my heart.

I shall have to leave now, I have to go and revise the Tudors again and I know that the dates are switching their numbers in my head every half an hour so I do have to see them all again and try to memorise them!

I will try to write in here sooner than next week but I'm not promising anything, after all, I can already feel that this month (the month of me turning truly eighteen years old!) will be full of everything.

Yours,

Hester

Somehow, almost miraculously, the month of May came into the world once more. With it came spring and its real definition of the beauty of nature. The soft breeze was causing the leaves on the now fully green trees to flow and the birdsong was filling the air, allowing a strong scent of flowers to be another ingredient of it.

Hester was right, the month of May was pumped with war news but also a lot of revising for Hester and her cousins and friends at school. Because of both the war news and revision, she postponed her birthday celebration to the very last day of the month when the news quietened only slightly but all of her exams were written and done, forever.

"What did you get from your Seb for your birthday, Hester?" Marion asked her friend with flushed cheeks because of the very warm weather on that sunny day.

After a family dinner celebrating Hester officially becoming an adult, after all the talking, eating and even singing and dancing, everyone went back home apart from Hester, Marion and Vance as their trio went together for a stroll down the ancient yet eternally beautiful Rainbow Valley.

All three of them were walking slowly next to one another, all in their best dresses which all of them sewed themselves a few months earlier and also out of the old curtains from their homes. If someone would have looked at them in that moment, with all the trees surrounding them and a sunset appearing behind their slim figures one could think that they couldn't, each on her own, be more beautiful and look more unearthly.

Th only person who was missing on that walk was Lily, of course, but she was in the middle of her last week of exams at Redmond and couldn't come which like she wrote to Hester, "makes me feel so furious I'm positive that if I was to hit a tree trunk right now it would split into two!". Indeed if Lily would be there to join their walk, they would be able to each represent an entirely different person each of them was, of course. If not for their personality then for their hair, as each had a different colour.

Hester blushed under hearing the name of her sweetheart and smiled at both Marion and Vance walking on her right "He couldn't get me anything really as he is at the front but…" she reached out for the piece of paper in the pocket of her pink dress and opened it to reveal an envelope containing four pages long letter written very hurriedly by Seb's hand "He had found the time to write for me a very long love letter which I read every day since I got it and so since last week." she smiled at the pages in her hand before putting them all back into her pocket.

"Why didn't you say that he wrote it to you?" Vance asked, grinning slightly at her friend as she herself knew the answer well.

"I wanted it to be my little secret for a little while." Hester said in her calm voice "Of course, I would tell you sooner or later but I just really did feel that this letter was especially special to me and so I kept it a secret."

Both Marion and Vance smiled at Hester knowingly. "Hester?" Marion said suddenly "Why didn't Flora come to the party?" she asked her and Hester sighed deeply.

"Flora doesn't have this much time to be my friend anymore, it seems, but you know that by now, don't you, girls?" she asked them and they nodded in agreement "She's always somewhere else during breaks and you know… I'm not this sure why all of a sudden she decided to remove me from her life, but girls, I don't mind that much really." she assured them when she saw that both Vance and Marion clutched to her hands instinctively "I mean, I would probably really mind if I didn't have any friends at all, but I have you." she smiled gratefully at both of her kindred spirits walking next to her who returned her smile without a delay "And besides I always have someone to talk to when it's break-time as I always sit at the table with a group of all the other girls." she said and then chuckled "I mean I was! Goodness gracious we finished high school, dears!" she squeezed both hands of Vance and Marion who laughed with her cheerfully, the echoes of their voices filling the entire Rainbow Valley.

"Isn't it strange that we did finish school?" Marion asked her friends excitedly "I am actually really enthusiastic about starting teaching at our Glen school come September and reverse the situation we've all been facing for so many years." she smiled at the idea and the girls grinned at her too.

"And I can't wait to go to auntie Una's orphanage tomorrow and start my regular work there." Hester said and looked at Vance knowingly who smiled back at her.

"I can't wait for that too. I love children." she sighed dreamily and the girls next to her did too.

"And you'll be a teacher too, Hester." Marion pointed out to the black-haired slowly walking girl beside her.

"Yes, but not as much as you'll be yourself, Marion." Hester replied with a grin on her face "But I'm extremely excited for it too. It seems that all I want to do in my life so far is to just keep on being busy to have my mind occupied with something which isn't stressful in any way." she said, a shadow passing through her hazel eyes as well as the rest of her face.

Marion took Hester's hand in her own and squeezed it tightly. Both girls had their older brothers "wounded and missing" and that was another connection they both shared for the past few weeks. That is why with a simple grin they both shared in that moment, Hester's spirits lifted up again.

Vance took Hester's other hand and smiled at her sweetly too, her own eyes turning a bit darker too. Hester and Vance shared a secret, the secret of Vance's hidden feelings for Selwyn and Hester could still remember that one short conversation they had a day after Gilly was reported missing, and Vance desperately saying that she's scared even more not only for her own brother but for Selwyn as well. But now Vance was grinning lightly at her friends and Hester knew that they were all incredibly blessed to have one another. Yes, Flora did talk to her much less and certainly stopped being one of her closest friends some time earlier during that year but that was, after all, because how God planned it to be, Hester knew that very well. Besides, how could she grieve losing Flora as her friend when she had such beautiful, faithful and sweet girls walking right next to her, holding her hands with a certainty that whatever happens they will always hold onto them?

Hester smiled back at her girls kindly "I don't say it enough." she started with shining eyes, slowly filling with warm tears "But I do love you, my dearest friends, and I don't know what I'd have done without you in my life."

Marion's and Vance's eyes filled with fresh tears too and each held one another's hand, grinning at each other through their misty eyes "I love you too, Hester." Marion said quietly but fiercely.

"So do I, dear." Vance assured her and then turned to Marion "And you too, dear Marion." she smiled at the brunette standing next to her.

"I love you too, Vance." she replied and all three of them chuckled together with a sudden lump of joy creating in their hearts.

"I'm not at all too sure what my Seb would say about all of this…" Hester said and all of them started laughing all over again and so hard at that like they didn't in months.

This is how the evening continued for Hester and her friends. They laughed together and talked for the next two hours before each went back to their own homes, feeling more light-hearted than they did probably ever since the war started. As soon as Hester got home she wrote to Lily and wished that that red-haired sweet girl was there with them too but somehow she knew that she was, she was always in their thoughts during the day and that was something none of the members of Hester's Group could ever deny.

It was how Hester's first day of being a "grown-up" ended and with a funny but very appropriate and merry thought she fell asleep that night. The thought that crossed her mind was: "It was my first day of being an adult but I feel more like a child today than I did in the last three years of my life.". And that's how she slept during that night, with a soft smile on her lips.