The Colours of Love

by Rita Bradshaw

  RITA BRADSHAW

  The Colours of Love

  PAN BOOKS

  For our precious and beloved granddaughter, Chloe Elizabeth Bradshaw, born 14 May 2014; cherished baby daughter for Ben and Lizzi and beautiful little sister for Reece; adored new cousin for Sam and Connor, Georgia and Emily, and Lydia. You are the most exquisite little baby in the world, darling one, with your big brown eyes and wide smile. Daddy is going to have to fight the boys off in droves when you get older!

  We praise the Lord for your safe arrival in the world (and so quick, Lizzi!) and give thanks to God for His treasured gift. He truly does do all things well – alleluia to the King of kings and Lord of lords.

  Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not arrogant; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

  Love never fails.

  1 Corinthians 13, v.1–8

  Author’s Note

  This is a story I have wanted to write for years, and I must thank my lovely editor, Wayne Brookes, for trusting me to do it sensitively. Having said that, I think I have wrestled with disgust and horror at man’s inhumanity to man more during the time of writing The Colours of Love than at any other point in my life. My research threw up horrible facts and figures about the slave trade, the English oppression of the Irish during the potato famine, and much more. It is ironic that in America during the 1850s the black populace, who hated the Irish even more than the average white American did, were the first to call the Irish ‘white niggers’. Throughout the book, incidentally, I have not used this offensive term – not because of issues of political correctness (I always aim to be factual about an era that I’m writing about, however unpleasant the subject), but because I couldn’t bear to put the word on the printed page. My darling son-in-law, Roy, has come in for abuse on the football field and that word has been used, and on the few occasions I was there, I wanted to take the perpetrator by the throat.

  Several great Americans who didn’t agree with the oppression of any peoples – be they slaves brought by force to the United States, or immigrants like the Irish, Jews, Slavs and Italians – predicted a change in future thinking. Orestes Brownson, a celebrated convert to Catholicism, stated in 1850: ‘Out of these narrow lanes, dirty streets, damp cellars, and suffocating garrets, will come forth some of the noblest sons of our country, whom she will delight to own and honour.’ And in little more than a century his prophecy came true: Irish-Americans had moved from the position of the despised to the Oval Office. And now, in the twenty-first century, there is a black President in the White House. This is encouraging and is not to be underestimated, even though the world is in such a terrible state, with countries, cultures, religions and individuals fighting each other.

  In my story, it is love that overcomes prejudice and fear and hatred; love between a man and a woman, and the love of a family, and steadfast friends. In the real world I truly believe love is the only answer, too.

  Contents

  PART ONE

  Two Mothers, 1923

  PART TWO

  Esther, 1942

  PART THREE

  Caleb, 1944

  PART FOUR

  The End of the End, 1945

  PART FIVE

  All Things Work Together For Good, 1946

  Epilogue, 1976

  PART ONE

  Two Mothers

  1923

  Chapter One

  She was whimpering – she could hear herself. Or perhaps it was Harriet making the animal-like sound? No, it was her. The occasional tortured moan came from Harriet, but she seemed better able to manage the unspeakable pain they were both enduring.

  She hoped she died; she hoped the baby died too, because death would be preferable to having the baby given to the nuns at the Catholic orphanage. Her grandmother had told her enough stories, about her own terrible childhood in one of those loveless places, for her to be sure of that. She couldn’t bear the thought of her own and Michael’s precious child suffering such cruel treatment; far better that they went together now, and then she could hold her baby safe for all eternity.

  Ruth Flaggerty raised her head to glance across at the woman in the other bed that the room held. She hadn’t known Harriet Wynford before they had boarded the passenger ship bound for England, but the fact that they were both with child had drawn them together on the journey from America. Then had come the severe storm, which had blown the ship off-course and finally onto rocks close to a little fishing village somewhere along the Welsh coast. She didn’t know exactly where, and she didn’t care, for the trauma of the shipwreck had brought on her confinement, and Harriet’s too. Several people had been injured; and three, including Harriet’s personal maid, had lost their lives whilst attempting to reach safety. Once on the shore, she and Harriet had been carried to the village inn and an old crone of a midwife summoned, a near-toothless hag who stank of gin and was clearly inebriated. The woman was at present snoring loudly in the chair she’d positioned earlier between the two beds.

  ‘She’s been like that for the last little while,’ Harriet whispered weakly, as their eyes met. ‘She’s as drunk as a lord, dreadful woman, but we’ll see this through together, you and I. Are your pains very bad, Ruth?’

  Ruth nodded. Another contraction was coming and her body tensed against it. ‘I can’t bear much more, Harriet,’ she gasped. ‘Really, I can’t.’

  ‘It will soon be over.’

  She didn’t think it would ever be over; there was nothing in the world but this grinding, relentless agony, which went on and on. Ruth twisted on the hard straw mattress, tears trickling from her eyes. Michael, oh Michael. If only her family had let them get wed, this would be so different. She wanted his baby more than anything, but not like this. And they hadn’t even let her say goodbye to him. Her father and two brothers had woken her in the dead of night and pulled her from her bed, and her mother had stood over her while she had dressed. When she had protested, they’d gagged and bound her and carried her to the waiting carriage, along with the valise and bags that her mother had packed. And the ‘companion’ they had hired to accompany her, Miss Casey, was nothing more than a gaoler; she even looked the part, with her big, beefy body and hard, flat face.

  In the midst of her pain Ruth heard the chair creaking as the midwife lumbered to her feet, and then the woman was talking to Harriet, her voice slurred and her sing-song Welsh accent strong. ‘Come on now, you’ve had babies before, so you know what to do. It’s time to push.’

  What a horrible old witch. In the midst of her distress, Ruth wanted to shout at the midwife. Fancy throwing Harriet’s previous history of umpteen miscarriages into her face at a time like this. And Harriet so brave too, and so kind. When they had sat together on the deck of the ship, muffled up against the keen, salty wind and with thick blankets over their knees, they had whispered confidences to each other when they could be sure Miss Casey wasn’t within earshot, and a strong bond had been forged between them. Apart from her family and Miss Casey, Harriet was the only person who knew Ruth wasn’t married to the father of her baby, although she hadn’t explained further than saying that her family deemed Michael unsuitable, and Harriet hadn’t once made
her feel wicked or immoral. And, in turn, Harriet had divulged that, after many miscarriages, the doctors had told her this pregnancy must be her last, and she was desperate to present her husband with a live child.

  Ruth didn’t think she liked the sound of Harriet’s husband. She pictured him in her mind. Theobald Wynford seemed the antithesis of his sweet, well-bred wife and she couldn’t imagine why Harriet had married him in the first place, but then she supposed opposites attract? And Harriet had never said a word against him, but then that was Harriet all over: loyal and good and uncomplaining.

  She was tired now, so tired. It had been twilight when they’d been carried to the inn, and the agonizing night had seemed endless. It was still dark outside, the icy rain lashing against the small leaded window and the pain unremitting. If only she could sleep, escape into the land of dreams, where she met Michael and they held each other close for long, stolen moments. They had planned to run away and start a new life together, far from anyone who knew them, and had been only days from leaving, when her mother had heard her being sick on consecutive mornings and had put two and two together.

  Ruth tried to shut her mind to the scene that had followed, when her mother had seemed to go mad, demanding that she name the man and then becoming hysterical when Ruth had done so. She had been locked in her room, and not even the maids had been allowed to see her; her mother had brought her all her meals on a tray. Her father had come once on that first morning, and it was as well her mother had accompanied him. Ruth’s hand went involuntarily to her throat. If her mother hadn’t pulled her father off her, he would have succeeded in strangling her for sure. As it was, the marks of his fingers had taken some time to fade completely.

  The pain had become unbearable again and she whimpered against it, before clamping her lips together. If Harriet could bear this torture over and over again, to give her husband the child he wanted, then she could suffer it without complaint too. But oh, how she wanted Michael . . .

  How much later it was when Ruth felt the nature of the spasms racking her body begin to change, she didn’t know, but with the urge to push came a strength that she would have sworn moments before she didn’t have. She knew Harriet’s baby still hadn’t made an appearance, from the sounds from the other bed and the midwife’s monologue of ‘Push, push!’, which seemed to have been going on for hours. At one point she had managed to raise herself and glance at Harriet, only to see her friend’s contorted body heaving, and the midwife standing looking down at her while she swigged the contents of a gin bottle that she had clearly brought with her.

  As Ruth began to grunt and strain with the dictates of her body, she became aware of the midwife moving to her side.

  ‘That’s it, dear, you do your job, an’ I can do mine,’ the dreadful woman crooned. ‘Not like this other one,’ she added, as if to herself. ‘Not got the strength of a kitten. Same with all the old wives. If the babbie don’t slip out, then it’s done for. You need youth on your side for this work. Damned men – they have it easy. Sow their seed an’ have their pleasure, an’ to hell with it.’ She continued to mumble and then, as Harriet gave a terrible long howl, there was a scurry followed by the midwife crooning, ‘All right, m’dear, all right. ’Tis as expected. Rest now.’

  Harriet’s baby wasn’t crying. Didn’t all babies cry when they came into the world? Why wasn’t it crying? Ruth’s fevered mind asked the question, even as her body got on with the job in hand. The contractions were tumbling one on top of the other now; as one ended, the next one was already upon her, and with each came the primal urge to bear down.

  The sweat was pouring off her, her back arching and, at the moment the child left her body, she called out, ‘Michael!’ – his name ringing from the rafters. And, as if in answer, the baby yelled, a loud, lusty cry full of life and vigour.

  Chapter Two

  Harriet stared at Ruth. Right up to this moment of time she had thought of Ruth as a young girl; a good girl, but one who had fallen in love and had been tempted, and who was now paying a terrible price for that weakness. But the girl had become a woman, and the proof of it was in the words she was speaking now. The midwife had lurched drunkenly from the room a few minutes ago with an armful of soiled bedding, telling them she would return shortly, and immediately she had gone, Ruth had come to sit on the side of her bed, taking her hand and saying softly, ‘I’m so sorry about your baby, Harriet. So very sorry. Listen, I have an idea, but if it is to work we must act quickly. You say your husband is desperate for a child, and I don’t want Miss Casey to hand my baby over to the nuns. You take her. Pretend she is yours. I’ll . . . I’ll say my baby was stillborn.’

  Harriet made an enormous effort to pull herself together. She had been bereft when her last hopes had died, along with her baby, although in truth she had been expecting it. Expecting it, but still hoping God would answer her prayers and end her barrenness. But the baby had come too early, like all the ones before it, and she didn’t think the shipwreck had really been the cause. She had been feeling unwell before the storm came. Wiping her eyes, she whispered, ‘You can’t give me your baby, Ruth.’

  ‘I can. She would have a life with you; parents who love her, and a future. With the nuns’ – she swallowed hard – ‘her childhood would be unbearable. I know. I know what those places are like.’

  ‘But . . . but the midwife?’

  ‘She’s so drunk she can barely walk, and I dare say she’s having another drink right now. She won’t remember which baby is which and, even if she does, it’s our word against hers. But she’ll just take her payment for services rendered and buy more gin; and we’ll be gone from this place soon.’

  ‘It wouldn’t work.’ Fear of Theobald warred with a hundred other emotions. ‘People – Theobald – would know.’

  ‘No one would know, not if we act now, before your husband comes, or anyone else. She . . . she’s beautiful, Harriet. Look at how beautiful she is.’ Ruth slid off the bed and went to the foot of her own bed, where the baby was lying in a makeshift crib of a wicker basket, making little mewing sounds. The other basket, at the foot of Harriet’s bed, was still and silent, the child it contained hidden under the coverlet.

  Ruth bent and tenderly lifted the small infant swaddled in a rough blanket, gazing down into the minute face for a long moment, and then carried the baby over to Harriet and placed her in the other woman’s arms.

  Harriet gazed down at the perfect, fragile features and fell instantly in love. The little girl was beautiful, she thought wonderingly – exquisite, her porcelain skin thrown into greater contrast against the mop of black hair above it. ‘She . . . she’s got such a lot of hair.’

  ‘I know. You could plait it already.’ Ruth gave a little sob of a laugh.

  Harriet looked up from the baby, seeing Ruth’s tears. ‘You can’t give her away – you’re her mother.’

  ‘I want the best for her, and you’re the best, Harriet. You will love her as she deserves to be loved.’

  ‘But your parents might change their minds when they see her.’

  ‘They won’t see her. Miss Casey has strict instructions to dispose of the baby before we return home. But even if they did see her, they wouldn’t change their minds. You don’t know what they’re like, Harriet. They’ll never forgive me for what I’ve done, and if the evidence of my wickedness was in front of them . . . ’ She shook her head. ‘You don’t know them,’ she repeated fearfully.

  ‘Oh, my dear, you’re not wicked,’ said Harriet gently, feeling immensely sorry for the girl who, at fifteen years of age, was twenty years younger than herself. ‘You simply fell in love, and if the young man in question wanted to marry you?’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘Then the fault is theirs as much as yours.’ Harriet looked at the child in her arms. Because the parents did not consider Ruth’s young man good enough for their daughter, Ruth would be deprived of her baby. It was wrong and cruel, but Ruth wasn’t the first to experience such bigotry, and she wo
uldn’t be the last.

  ‘Will you take her, Harriet? Please?’

  ‘But what if you change your mind?’

  ‘I won’t, I promise. This is for the best. I know that.’

  The baby stirred, one tiny hand escaping the blanket. Harriet studied the minute fingers and felt such a surge of maternal love it made her breathless. She had been dreading Theobald’s fury when he discovered he’d been thwarted of an heir yet again – and that was the way he would view the baby’s death. He’d blamed each miscarriage and stillbirth on her delicate constitution, saying that he should have married a wife who was stronger and healthier. It had been on the tip of her tongue many times to ask him why he hadn’t, but, of course, she knew the answer to that. Theobald was a wealthy landowner and local magistrate in the north-east of England, with a gift for business that he’d inherited from his father, a man who had risen from relative obscurity to great wealth during his lifetime. But Theobald had desired the prestige and standing that marrying a daughter of the aristocracy could give him. She was the third daughter of a lord and, unlike her sisters, was plain and awkward and shy. She had felt she was on the shelf, at over twenty years old, and when Theobald had offered her the chance of ending her spinster existence, she had taken it. It had been a marriage of convenience on both sides, but she had lived to regret her foolishness. Bitterly.

  Would things have deteriorated so badly between them if she had given him, earlier in their marriage, the heir he craved? Perhaps Theobald would have been content to leave her alone then. As it was, his increasingly frenzied efforts to make her body bear his child had resulted in Harriet hating him. He was worse than a wild beast in the bedroom, tearing at her, month after month; her only respite occurred during the months she carried a baby in her womb.