Chapter XXXIX
4th August 1944
Dear Diary,
Two days ago my dear and so very missed brother came back home so this can take a while for me write everything down even though it's been only two days since his arrival.
Selwyn didn't want the whole clan to pick him up from the train station, of course, and so only our parents, Poppy, Daria and myself came. Daria and I planned it all well enough for us to look the best we could so we spent the whole evening before ironing our best dresses which we have sewed last year. I wore a dress in Selwyn's favourite colour, the dark navy-blue which he always thought was the most "outspoken colour which not only is a beauty in itself but also is a beauty on your fair skin, dear sister". I also wore my hair in a short ponytail with a ribbon matching my dress (it was a very hot day!). Daria chose her favourite dark-green dress which is a mirror, in terms of the pattern, of mine (it has a heart-shaped neckline with a leaf pattern on it) and I pinned a violet in her short hair. She looked like a dream.
Mum was losing her mind an hour before we were to pick Selwyn off the station because only then she realised that she really was going to see her youngest son in such a short amount of time. Poppy did not know what was going on and entertained us all with giggling at everything and everyone as we were dressing her in her darling white dress.
I couldn't believe it either that we were all going to have Selwyn back once more and for once and for all. I was terrified of the state he would be in with this war still in his mind, but I couldn't help to smile through my tears just at the thought of having him back home. I was rejoicing in the fact that I could, and everyone in our family at that, finally make this war inside of his head come to an end, peacefully.
Selwyn came through the steam coming from the train, with a suitcase in his hand and in his normal clothes which he surely was happy to wear instead of his uniform. He looks… different. I have tears in my eyes even now, thinking about that moment when I first saw him.
His auburn hair turned darker although it's not entirely brown just yet, it has this rusty feel to it. A few silver strands are behind his left ear, the one from which he can never hear again. He lost weight, not a lot but he certainly did and his skin lost its glow. His beautiful hazel eyes aren't as shining as they used to, with a curiosity of the world. Especially his right eye, which will never see again and is overcome by an eternal, misty cloud. However, despite all of this, there is still Selwyn in him, some pieces and fragments of his soul from the time before the war are somehow translucent in his being.
When he saw us all, he stopped as if frozen. He then smiled widely with tears already running down his cheeks as he dropped his suitcase in time to catch our running Mum into his open arms. Daria and I cried with smiles on our faces and to the not such a big surprise so was Dad, whilst holding Poppy in his own arms.
Then it was all almost a blur. I can only remember being full of every emotion possible: happiness, fear, sadness, melancholy, gratefulness, anger… Everything that I have been trying to hide all those years of the war and still keep on trying to hide them with only people I trust most in this world knowing how I really feel.
Selwyn was kissed countlessly by both Mum and Dad first before being introduced to his youngest sister Poppy. She giggled at him and reached out for the collar of his shirt which made him laugh as well, still through tears which he couldn't help. It was like the most beautiful music, Vivaldi's for example, filling the air, to hear even for that split of a second, Selwyn's laughter.
I jumped on his neck and kissed his entire face including his right eye and left ear especially. He smiled down at me then and kissed my own forehead whispering "Hester, my dearest sister." and that was all he said, all he had to say.
I smiled up at him and squeezed his hands hard "My dearest brother." I whispered back and could not manage to say more and I didn't even try. I could see on his face that I didn't have to.
Eventually, he met Daria who also kissed his cheeks tenderly and he said to her: "You look as if you were born into the Fords!" and we all chuckled merrily with Daria beginning to blush like she always does and she kiss his cheek once more.
We went home then and we stayed there for our small gathering, with no guests just yet, talking about all the news from our family and listening to my records. Selwyn was smiling all evening and we could see, even Daria who has never seen him before, that there was something of a spark lacking in all of those grins and chuckles even though they were honest and true.
Mum could not leave his side and neither could I so we were sitting at both his left and right side on the couch respectively, holding onto his arms as if he could disappear at any moment. Poppy was delighted by her older brother as she especially enjoyed playing with the pockets of his shirt and was seated on his lap the whole evening.
Before we went off to sleep, Dad took Selwyn on the side and they took a half an hour long walk along the lane. When they came back everyone, including me, were in our beds and after I heard Dad coming into his and Mum's bedroom, I sneaked out of my own room and came into Selwyn's quietly just as he was sitting at his old desk, his eyes suddenly red from apparent sobbing beforehand yet with something of a shadow of a twinkle in his eyes.
He smiled at me as I walked in and arose from his chair. "I can't believe I'm back." he whispered, looking around his old room.
I came over to him and embraced him tightly, feeling how his arms were enveloping me too "I can." I whispered back and we stayed like this for a while.
"When I left, you were only sixteen." he said to me, suddenly looking down at my face "Now you're twenty and quite a woman. I am so very happy to see you again, Hester." his voice cracked a little then and we both started off silently crying again, whilst chuckling at our mutual reaction.
"I am very happy to see you too, Selwyn." I said to him.
"I wish I heard your composition back in May." he replied softly "It must have been spectacular."
"You will hear it." I said to him but before I knew it we were both sitting on his bed, me cradling his head to my chest as he cried and so was I. It was both the most dreadful and the most wonderful moment between us both and I don't have words to describe it.
Yesterday, we had a family dinner at Ingleside to welcome Selwyn back. Walt was the first one to greet him with tears in his eyes as they both embraced one another for a long time and then wondered off to the Rainbow Valley together, with a certain John Meredith in both of their minds, I'm sure.
Everyone was, of course, delighted to have him back. All Grandmas and Grandpas were trying to talk to him all at once (even Grandma and Grandpa Ford came for that special day yesterday!) and they all wanted to feed him which I thought must have been the mirroring of the times from when Susan Baker was still around.
I could see in Grandma Anne's eyes though that she especially viewed Selwyn's arrival as a way of seeing the ghost of her son Walter through him as if he too came back in his person: that hope of poetry being the link between those two family members who have never met. It was so touching, that special look she had in her eyes whilst asking him about his preference of cake, that I could hardly focus on anything else.
Vance saw him yesterday and she could hide her feelings well. I could see them but nobody else could and I thought about how strong she is for doing such a brave, as it really is, gesture. Selwyn was incredibly joyful to see her and he put her into a tight embrace, saying something into her ear that made her smile.
In that moment I could see it. I could see how they belong to each other, always have ever since that day when Selwyn rescued Vance from nearly drowning during Christmas back in 1936. It was always there between them; it is called fate and it's inevitable for them. If I doubted it even slightly beforehand, yesterday was the proof that indeed that is the truth.
On that note I shall be going up to my room, it's already half past ten in the evening and I have to check that ten pages long homework I have asked my student Betty to bring for our last lesson. She did bring it and I promised to mark it for the next one which is exactly in twelve hours time.
I shall get on then.
Yours,
Hester
"Did he really draw it from memory?" Daria asked softly, still slightly in awe.
It was a calm evening at the shore, near the old Lighthouse. Hester and Daria decided to go for a walk without even taking their shoes with them and simply enjoy the warm waves of the ocean whilst the sky above them was painting its way through life like Monet's painting. Walt took Selwyn on their stroll down the Rainbow Valley whilst Vance, Marion and Cornelia decided to cook all evening together at the Rosefield House, and so the Douglas' mansion. Therefore, there was no reason for the two Ford sisters to decide upon a stroll with just the two of them on that perfect evening at the end of August.
"He did." Hester said with her hazel eyes overcome by a thin wall of fresh tears yet her lips smiling as she held onto Daria's hand and their dresses moved softly in the rhythm of the wind "And he wrote underneath that this is how he always pictures me whenever I write to him on my happier days."
Daria smiled down at Hester "Dancing between the trees in Rainbow Valley…" she murmured dreamily.
"He told me to always stay that way." Hester's lip trembled slightly and Daria immediately put her arm round Hester's shoulders and kissed her forehead tenderly.
"What is it, kochanie?" she asked her gently.
Hester looked up into her eyes and sighed deeply "His last letter to me was very gloomy, and you know yourself, Daria, that his letters never are." she tightened her lips for a second "He said that he's scared of death. He doesn't feel that it will come… to him, no, but he started to think about it recently because one of his co-pilots died, and he was his friend." she took a deep breath then, feeling a bit tight in her chest.
Daria smiled wistfully at her "Thank the Lord that Marshall and Gilbert have each other." she said to her, her own lip shaking slightly at the sound of her husband's name.
"Yes, thank God for that." Hester agreed a bit more merrily with a grin "Marshall said that he now understands what Gilly means by constantly saying that all he ever wants to do is not to fight but to come back to the Island to his "most wonderful wife"." she winked at her sister-in-law who blushed a little and smiled widely, instinctively touching the gold ring on her left hand.
"Gilbert always exaggerates but I love him all the more for that!" she laughed sweetly "So does Marshall prefer to go back to Canada then?" she asked Hester curiously.
"No, not exactly." Hester replied calmly now "He still has a heart of a soldier and he always will, I think. Even though he still wrote that "all I want to do in this moment is to be with you, kid, down in the Rainbow Valley and kiss your pretty hair and even prettier lips."." Hester blushed upon remembering the moment she read that line in his letter and Daria chuckled softly.
"I can imagine him saying that." Daria agreed.
"Yes," Hester added with a smile "-but then he also wrote "but instead I will fight for you, my dearest honey-kid and I will pretend that this is enough for me at the moment"." Hester grinned at Daria who returned the expression of their knowing exchange of silent thoughts.
"I love how he still calls you a "kid" yet you don't mind that anymore." she grinned lightly as she looked in the direction of the ocean, her eyes somehow far away.
Hester chuckled "I suppose that it…" she started but then saw Daria's gaze overshadowed by fear which Hester knew the reason of. She touched her arm gently and caused Daria to look back at her with again a wistful smile on her face "Are you still thinking about the Uprising?"
"There's not an hour when I don't think about it." she whispered almost through tears in her eyes "Hester, it's my homeland, the city I was born and raised in, where I have my childhood memories as well as the last ones of which my family was still well and alive." she said passionately and waved her hands "I love Canada and its people, my family is from here," she smiled tenderly at her sister-in-law and touched her ring again "-but I also still love Poland and its people, my people. And my Warszawa is being completely destroyed..." she smiled through her tears painfully and Hester embraced her swiftly.
"I'm so sorry, Daria." she managed to whisper into her ear.
"I wish I was there to help those young boys and girls who fight arm-in-arm ever so bravely." a few of her tears soaked into Hester's dress' sleeve.
"I'm glad you're here, Daria, out of danger." Hester whispered back "Darling, everything happens for a reason and I encourage you to remember that it is more you than me who always says that. So please, don't wish things to be different and simply hope for the best."
"And pray." Daria murmured and pulled away to smile at her sister of the heart.
"And pray." Hester repeated with her own eyes misty "Always that if nothing else." she said and then both of the girls laughed aloud suddenly, merrily. They were looking into each other's eyes for a while, those silent thoughts passing through the air between them like a warm summer breeze. They needed those thoughts to disappear into this air, out of their minds.
"Who's the first one to get entirely soaked?" Daria squeaked suddenly as she started to run into the waves, laughing even louder and more cheerfully. She had freed her mind and was now inviting Hester to follow her in doing so.
Hester laughed as well and started running too, to those waves of a short-lived freedom of pain and fullness of hope and joy.