Hello, my lovely readers! I want to wish you all a wonderful New Year of 2017. I hope you will experience the greatest happiness a person can ever get and that you'll make such memories that will last a lifetime and more. Happy New Year everyone! Thank you all for reading and reviewing! Enjoy the new chapter :) - Bathsheba Blythe
Chapter XXVII
23rd September 1943
Dearest Phillip,
I am extremely glad that you're well, especially with all the worrying news coming over from overseas and your Italy too. The Germans really do try their best to take over this whole, as you said yourself so many times before, beautiful country but I don't care about that at all as long as you're alright, my dear friend. Please, always take care, my darling Phillip, you know that I can pray for you and hope for the best but after all it is also some part that you play into having at least a small bit of safety.
Yes, I am alright too, just incredibly busy. So busy indeed that I am writing this letter to you at eleven at night, and I have to wake up at six in the morning! So many things have happened during the last four days since I've written to you that you won't believe it until I'll write it all here in this letter to you.
Firstly, David left for France on Monday and he is to arrive there, at the front I mean, in two days time. We all keep our fingers crossed for him and we hope that he'll be sent over to the trenches with Selwyn, as they were and still are very close friends. I suppose there's nothing else for us to do now but to wait for his first letter from the battlefield.
Will is all good and training hard as he said in his last letter to me. I still can't believe that all of those boys who are my brothers, cousins and friends (yes, this includes you, my dear Phillip) are now truly and wholly involved in this war. It feels so terrifying but yet it somehow gives me hope that this war will come to an end quicker because of you all being involved in it. Oh, I would give everything, truly every money I've made so far, all of my clothes and possessions so that this war would end right now and you, all of you, would come back home safely.
Cornelia is now very impatiently waiting for Lily to join her at her hospital. Yes, Lily is now on the ship over the ocean, crossing it just like you did, Phillip, and she's excited and ready, too excited and too ready I almost think. I do hope that this spark in her eyes will never vanish or even faint a little because of the journey she's about to embark. You know Lily yourself, she is just this happy and bright spot in your life with those red locks of hers and freckles all over her face, the halo of optimism floating above her like a magical aura. That is exactly why I hope that whatever she'll see and do, she'll never change or at least not for the worse in any way.
Lily left and you won't believe it: a day after her very own little sister has fallen in love! Yes, Phillip, I know that right in this moment your jaw has dropped and you're staring at this piece of paper with a smile on your face but it is the truth, I am not lying and you know that I never do anyway.
His name is Harry Newton and he is the new Science teacher at Marion's school, which is, of course, as you know Glen's school. I saw him yesterday when he was walking Marion back to Ingleside for the tea and biscuits Grandma Anne and Grandpa Gilbert promised for me and Vance after our day at the orphanage and for Marion after a day at school. He is very handsome indeed. He's not very tall but he's not short either. He is very well built, though, and Grandpa thought, when he saw him, that he was a born swimmer and Marion confirmed that later on. Mr Newton has a delightful face with bright blue eyes, small lips, and very dark hair on the top of his head.
Most important of all, however: he had eyes only for Marion.
You have no idea how overwhelmed by this phenomenon I am but also how excited, intrigued and joyful I am about this whole new situation! I mean, of course, they've just met, a few days ago only but it's as clear as day what they feel about each other simply by seeing them gazing into one another's eyes.
Marion told Vance and me immediately and now the whole family knows anyway because we've all met Harry yesterday at that tea at Ingleside. I'm very interested to read about Lily's reaction to this news. Marion told me that the minute she saw him in the staff's room, looking up from his cup of water, she just knew that he's the "one" and now she is simply muddled up in the process called love.
Phillip, you know the other side of how I must feel about it. How much I yearn for something like this! To just know, plain as day, as soon as you see this one person, this stranger to be exact, that this is the person you'll marry one day. Marion described her seeing Harry for the first time like accidentally falling into the lake, it's terrifying at first and you're shocked for sure but then you laugh as soon as you reach the surface again and you then swim across it, wishing to never go back to the shore again.
It is truly wonderful, however, and I wish for both of them to (if they truly are meant to be together!) simply always be happy with their other half. Isn't happiness the key to everything, after all? What do you think, Phillip?
But here comes the news which I just… Well… I never thought I'd have to say. Vance's brother, Marshall, has been reported "wounded and missing" today.
I was eating breakfast at the window (like I usually do) while Mum was nursing Poppy on the couch, and I saw Vance running madly in the direction of the House of Dreams. I dropped the plate to the floor and thankfully (I don't even know how) it didn't break but it scared both Mum and Poppy. After apologising to both, I ran out of the house onto the lane, expecting either the worst or the best news Vance running like that could bring to us in the morning.
When she fell into my arms and weeped breathlessly I knew that it definitely was not the best news, they were not happy tears at all. She then told me and I too felt my eyes filling with tears even though I didn't let them roll down my cheeks. It took me a while to calm Vance down and send her back home but I achieved this goal more or less smoothly and so off she went, slowly this time. I watched her go and I couldn't move for a few minutes at all.
It's the third boy out of our family to get reported "wounded and missing" (and yes, Marshall is the part of my family too just like his sisters are) and I don't like that at all, it's absolutely horrible and nerve-wracking. I'm not sure how Gilly feels right now, with his very bestest of all friends gone missing somehwere where he can't find him on his own no matter how much he'd try and Gilly would try everything to find Marshall, if he could.
I never liked Marshall, you know that yourself. He always used to tease me. Even when he was going off to the training camp and I was already fifteen years old (which seems such a long time ago!) he still called me a "kid" even though I already didn't feel like a child anymore. Not only that! A day before his going off to training with Gilly, he actually put his feet up and I fell straight into the moody patch of flowers (it was a warm day in January and so the snow was beginning to melt)! How much I actually hated him that day! But Gilly, being my protective older brother, slapped the back of Marshall's head and told him off. Marshall apologised but winked at me anyway, and I remember very well that I clenched my fists at this and you know that I never do such a thing.
However, when I was standing there on that lane, watching his sister and one of my bosom friends walking back to her home with her wet cheeks and shaking hands from worry and fear, I couldn't feel anything but worry in my own heart. I'll pray for Marshall Douglas tonight, I always prayed for his safety but tonight I will pray for him especially. I'll pray to get him home safetly and without any bruise or a scar whatsoever. Funny, how our perspectives and views change when the world around us turns into this unpredictable globe of war. I hope Marshall will be fine. He must be!
I can hear Poppy's about to cry and because I know that Mum had a very hard afternoon with her as she has a colic, I will be going and trying to comfort her, never mind the late hour. Daria does it sometimes but I'll let her sleep too.
Goodnight dear friend,
Stay safe, wherever you are,
Goodnight,
Yours,
Hester
Just like that, when October has only started, Hester found herself rushing through the road leading up to her aunt Nan's and uncle Jerry's house just like she was back in February that year. She was walking there with actually the same amount of worry in her heart as she did those few months earlier.
A day before that morning her family got a telegram from Will saying that he has just arrived in England and will be sent to the front in France the day after which was today. That in itself made Hester's fingers twitch with nerves but now, or rather half an hour earlier, she got a 'phone call from the Honey Cottage with Nan saying that Jo has just received a telegram announcing death of Cal Sutton and she has been crying in her pillow ever since, not wanting to see anyone but "her Hester and Daria" and so Hester, as well as Daria, quickly put on their coats over their nightgowns and rushed outside their home and onto the lane both of them knew very well.
"Do you think she'll be fine?" Daria asked Hester whilst both were walking hurriedly arm-in-arm, closing their eyes from time to time as the autumn's wind was gushing into their eyes.
"She must be." Hester replied "But I don't think she'll be entirely fine today." and both shared a knowing and full of worry look while continuing on walking.
Jerry opened the door to them both with a tired look upon his face and little Fleur smiling in his arms whilst putting her small fists into her mouth. He smiled, though, when he saw both Hester and Daria ready for the battle ahead of them "Come on in, girls." he said and so they did "Would you like something to eat or drink before you'll go up and see Jo?" he asked them and that was when Nan rushed downstairs and upon seeing Hester and Daria she kissed both of their faces tenderly.
"I can't deal with this child of mine." she announced helplessly "She won't listen to anything I say! Thank you so much you came, my dears!" she smiled weakly at her nieces and they smiled back at her, listening out for the faint weeping from upstairs.
"I don't think we'll eat or drink anything just yet." Daria said eventually and Hester nodded along.
"No, we'll go and see to Jo first of all." Hester added as Daria took the reaching out to her Fleur into her arms "And we'll take Fleur, Jo might feel better perhaps because of her company." and so she smiled knowingly at Daria and the baby-girl she held and off they went straight into Jo's room.
Jo was lying on her pillow, her face buried inside of it and her body shaking slowly, not hysterically like Hester feared, but trembling nontheless. Hester then closed the door behind Daria and herself. Hester came over from behind Jo and put her hands on Jo's shoulders as she turned around finally. "Oh, thank God you're here!" she gasped out quietly, her cheeks not only red but wet as well. Hester realised then that she has never seen Jo in such a state before, not even when she was giving birth to Fleur. Jo from the past would definitely disapprove of that mess of a hair and a face in which she was at that moment.
Daria sat down next to Hester and placed Fleur near Jo who took her into her arms instantly and kissed her cheeks fiercely as Fleur played with Jo's messy hair. Nobody said anything for a moment and it was only when Jo put Fleur back on the bed and gave her a doll to play with, was when she turned back to her two friends with trembling lip "He was shot in the chest. An instant death they said in the telegram." she whispered, trying not to disturb or worry her daughter.
Hester embraced Jo immediately and Daria did too from the other side. "We're so sorry, Jo, kochanie." Daria said to her calmly and kindly at the same time.
"It will be better with time, dear." Hester added with a soft shaking of her own fingers.
"But he was my husband!" she gasped out quietly, a new wave of tears falling down her cheeks as she finally looked at both of them again "Not lawfully, of course, but of my heart! He was!" she put her hands on her face again and then shook them off once more, taking a deep breath "I know that when I found out that I was pregnant with Fleur I wasn't exactly sure about Cal or our engagement." she said more calmly now as Hester gave her a handkerchief "But then we were writing to one another every day, and I was sending him photographs of my belly getting bigger and then of Fleur…" she looked at her sweet daughter and smiled all of a sudden, even though a few tears were rolling down her cheeks still "And he was just so overjoyed that he has a daughter and that I agreed to our engagement and just…" she gulped and pushed another wave of tears again as Hester squeezed her left hand and Daria squeezed her right one.
"You never told us this, Jo." Hester said to her eventually, softly.
Jo looked up at Hester and grinned weakly at her "It was my sweet, little secret." she replied "I didn't love Cal when I found out we're going to have a baby or when we got engaged when he was already at the front, but I did love him… after all of this." her eyes were overshadowed again and she sighed deeply "And he loved me too." she let the fresh tears to roll down her cheeks once more "And he loved our baby as well." she looked at the oblivious Fleur who was happily playing with a thread coming from the back of Hester's coat.
Daria kissed Jo's cheek as Hester squeezed her hand once again "Jo, I won't tell you that you shouldn't cry or grieve after Cal." Hester said to Jo finally "But, dear, do you know how lucky you are in a way? You experienced real love, something that didn't happen to me at all, and he gave you the greatest gift he could, your very own daughter." she felt how her own eyes were filling with tears as she put Fleur into the arms of Jo who kissed the infant's head tenderly, still looking at Hester and listening to her attentively "She is the greatest gift anyone can ever receive from another person. I know that even though I don't have any children of my own." Hester looked at Fleur and she smiled down at her as her own cheeks were already wet.
"Rejoice in the little flower over here, Jo." Daria added with a smile "She needs you and you need her. Also, remember not to ever close your heart to the world." Daria's eyes filled with a sudden shadow which disappeared with another smile she directed at Jo "When everyone from my family died, I thought that there is no reason for me to live either. That the world was and is unfair but I was wrong. There's always a purpose in everyone's lives, kochanie, and in your own life too." she patted Fleur's chubby hand and then squeezed Jo's hand again.
"You're both so right." Jo smiled at both Hester and Daria and then at her baby "And I'll do just that. I will be rejoicing in this baby of mine, Cal's own skin and blood." she kissed Fleur's chubby cheek once more, chuckling wistfully while wiping away her tears "She does have his eyes and she always will.". As if Fleur knew that she was the topic of the conversation, she looked up swiftly and started to squeak joyfully at their faces, apparently finding them hilarious. Daria was the first one to start laughing, then it was Hester and eventually Jo too let out a quiet giggle which Hester knew in time would be more cheerful.
Nan and Jerry were donwstairs in their living room, sitting next to each other on the sofa when they heard the giggle of their granddaughter. They smiled at one another, as they held each other's hands "Everything happens for a reason, don't you think, dearest?" Jerry asked his wife who leaned in to kiss him softly on the lips and look into his eyes which she could read like a book.
"I don't know, Jerry," she replied quietly, grinning with soft tears in her eyes "-I'm sure of it."