‘Oh, lovely! I’ll bring the bags in then, shall I? There’s one of Mrs Holden’s fruitcakes, which are absolutely divine, and a ham-and-egg pie and all sorts of goodies. She adores cooking, Mrs Holden and, being a farmer’s wife, the rationing hasn’t really affected her at all. Whoops! I shouldn’t really say that, should I, but it’s the truth.’ Priscilla gave a peal of laughter, taking Eliza’s arm as if she was an old friend. ‘Come and see what we’ve got. There’s a ham we can cut up, once they start putting the food out too, and . . . ’
As Priscilla disappeared with Eliza, Caleb grinned at the other two. ‘My mother doesn’t know what’s hit her, with Cilla,’ he said wryly. ‘She’s never come across anyone like her before.’
‘Who has?’ Kenny responded, a wealth of love and pride in his voice.
Esther merely smiled. At this moment she had never envied Priscilla’s easy way and total lack of shyness more. For herself, she felt as tongue-tied with Caleb as she did with his mother, who she was sure did not approve of her son’s friendship with a married woman with a mixed-race daughter. As though he had picked up on her thoughts, Caleb said softly to Joy, who was sitting on Esther’s lap sucking her thumb, ‘How’s my big girl then? My, you’ve grown.’
Joy stared at him without replying and Esther said hastily, ‘She’s going through a shy stage. She’s the same with everybody. Just ignore her for a bit, and she’ll settle down.’ Joy had had her second birthday in the middle of April, and almost from that very day had decided all men were suspect. Priscilla had remarked that Joy showed great wisdom for one so young.
‘She’s beautiful,’ Caleb said quietly.
Esther smiled a more natural smile. She had put Joy in her best dress – a pretty, pale-yellow smocked frock with matching pants, which Rose had made her for her birthday on Mrs Holden’s little sewing machine – and brushed her burnished curls until they hung in shining ringlets framing her heart-shaped face with its huge green eyes, and to her Joy looked enchanting. ‘Thank you.’ Clearing her throat, she added, ‘I hope we haven’t put your mother out, coming like this. We should have let you know.’
‘Don’t be daft.’
He had spoken too quickly, and they both knew it. Kenny spoke into the embarrassing pause that followed, making some comment about the forthcoming speech from Winston Churchill, scheduled to be broadcast at three that afternoon, after which the festivities would begin in earnest, and as the two men continued the conversation, Esther hugged Joy to her again. Caleb’s mother’s disapproval had made up her mind about one thing: she wouldn’t take him up on his offer to help her find somewhere in the immediate district to live. In fact, it was probably better if she cut all contact with him. She didn’t want to come between him and his family. His mother didn’t like her and that was fair enough, she told herself silently, swallowing against the lump in her throat. But if Eliza was openly hostile, or unkind in any way to her daughter, then she would take her to task, Caleb or no Caleb.
Outside in the street Priscilla had opened the door of the truck, but hadn’t immediately reached for the bags wedged at the back of the long seat. Instead she said – very quietly for her – ‘Can I have a word with you in private, Mrs McGuigan?’
Eliza looked at the fancy toff, as she had termed Priscilla in her mind. ‘Well, there’s no one listening, as far as I can tell, lass.’
‘It’s about Esther.’ Priscilla had seen the way Caleb’s mother had looked at her friend and, as always, had decided to rush in where angels fear to tread. ‘I don’t know what Caleb has told you, but whatever he has said, you might be thinking that he has merely been fooled by a pretty face.’
Completely taken aback, Eliza rallied enough to say, ‘It wouldn’t be the first time a lad has been taken in by the turn of an ankle.’
‘I dare say, Mrs McGuigan, but in Esther’s case you couldn’t be more wrong. She’s a good girl and a fine person, and has been treated shamefully, first by the man she thought was her father and then by her husband. Has Caleb told you the circumstances of her birth? About her real father and mother?’
Stiffly now, Eliza said, ‘He told me what she told him, aye.’
‘Well, every word is true. I’ve never seen anyone more in love than Esther was with her husband, and she never even looked at another man, let alone kissed one. When he treated her as he did, it broke something in her and it was terrible to see. He even said that if she abandoned Joy – had her brought up in an orphanage somewhere, or given to someone else so that she would never see her again – he would stay with her; but they would have to adopt children, if she wanted more, because of her father being black. But there was no way Esther was going to have Joy put away. Did Caleb tell you that too? And that Esther is proud of her daughter, as she has every reason to be; and neither is she ashamed that her father’s skin was a different colour from her mother’s. I think that is as it should be, and if more people thought that way, this terrible war and all the millions of deaths would never have happened. What does the colour of a person’s skin matter, Mrs McGuigan?’
‘It does to some folk round here, lass.’
‘And to you, Mrs McGuigan? Does it matter to you? It doesn’t to your son, and you ought to be proud of him.’ The quick jerk of Eliza’s head and the straightening of her lips told Priscilla that Caleb’s mother didn’t appreciate being taken to task in this way, but Priscilla didn’t care.
‘I can tell you that Esther has been hurt so badly I don’t know if she will ever trust a man again, and she certainly has no plans to ensnare Caleb, Mrs McGuigan. Now, I also think that Caleb is biting at the bit to be ensnared, but it takes two, and in this case it’s far too early for Esther. That is the truth. She isn’t trying to trap him, whatever you may think.’
‘She certainly has a friend in you.’
‘Yes, she has.’ Priscilla had been leaning close to Caleb’s mother. Now she straightened, reaching for the bags and passing one to Eliza. ‘And if you give her a chance, you will see she is a lovely person, and that little Joy is the sweetest child imaginable. And, Mrs McGuigan,’ Priscilla’s voice lowered still further, ‘if you rebuff Esther now, you run the risk of losing your son: here inside, where it matters.’ She touched her heart. ‘Their relationship might never come to anything – who can say? – but Caleb will always think that you had a hand in spoiling it for him.’
Just as quietly Eliza said, ‘You can say all that, and then you can swan off back to your highfalutin friends and la-di-da family and forget us. I have to live round here, and so does Caleb, and I know the way they think. He’ll be hanged, drawn and quartered in their gossiping, and it’ll break him.’
‘If you think that, then you don’t know your son very well, Mrs McGuigan.’
Strangely, Eliza did not turn on her, as Priscilla expected, knowing that she had gone a mite too far. Instead Caleb’s mother looked at her levelly for a moment, and her voice was flat as she said, ‘You think you know him better than me?’
‘I think your love as a mother is blinding you to the way he has grown up and matured during the war, and especially after his injuries. He’s a strong man, in every sense of the word, Mrs McGuigan, and I think you are a strong woman too. Esther needs friends like you and Caleb.’
Eliza stepped back with a bag in each hand. ‘I can’t put things like you do – I haven’t had your education and I don’t know how to express meself – but I do know my neighbours, and they can be as cruel as any of Hitler’s lackeys.’
They stared at each other. ‘Change is coming, Mrs McGuigan. The war has seen to that. Nothing will be the same again. And, incidentally, I won’t be going back to my old life; not if Kenny asks me to marry him, which I hope with all my heart he will do. My place will be with him and he’s a working-class man, just like Caleb. Class and all that – it’s rubbish. It’s what we do with our lives that counts. The First World War started the change, and this one has stirred things up even more. And I think that’s so, so good.’
�
��And you think your mam an’ da will welcome Kenny into the fold? I think not, lass.’
‘It doesn’t matter, one way or the other. Now is the time to think for ourselves and stand up for what’s right. Or what have we been fighting for these last awful years? Don’t you see, Mrs McGuigan?’
‘What I see, lass, is that there is much more to you than you first let on.’ Across the bags the two women surveyed each other for a long moment. Then Eliza said, ‘Bring them bags in and we’ll see what’s what. And you’d better drive that big old truck round the back, or they’ll be banging on the door asking for it to be moved.’
Priscilla nodded, her voice chirpy again as she trilled, ‘Righty-ho, Mrs McGuigan. We don’t want to upset the natives, do we?’
Chapter Fifteen
Caleb tried not to stare at his mother. Eliza was sitting with Joy on her lap, enjoying a cup of tea before Winston Churchill was due to speak. The child had her thumb in her mouth and was half-asleep, and every so often Eliza caressed the shining curls of the little girl as she chatted with the others. If someone had told Caleb earlier that day they would be sitting here like this, he would have laughed in their face. But then Joy could melt the hardest heart and, with the guilelessness of children, she’d taken to Eliza and showed it.
Caleb breathed a silent prayer of thanks. His mother’s response to the child had knocked him for six. He’d thought, when the little party arrived earlier, that he was going to have to take his mother aside and tell her to behave herself, but instead her initial stiffness with Esther had melted like the morning mist before the sun. And she was behaving towards Joy exactly as she would with any of her grandchildren. He couldn’t get over it.
Esther, sandwiched between two of Caleb’s sisters, who’d arrived to share the momentous day with their mother, was thinking along the same lines, and had come to the conclusion she had misjudged Eliza earlier. Nevertheless she was still wary of Caleb’s mother and of his sisters too; and when the oldest sister, Prudence, who had worked as a nurse before her marriage and had returned to it when war had broken out, came through the back door in the next moment, Esther watched the woman’s eyes widen as they fastened on Joy. Esther gave a silent sigh. She felt horribly awkward and somewhat hemmed in among the company, and her initial misgivings that they were intruding by descending on Caleb’s mother like this returned tenfold.
It was clear to everyone that Prudence had been crying, and Esther understood why. Prudence’s husband wasn’t coming home, like Clara’s and Ida’s. The euphoria of the day and the mad gaiety pervading the streets must be bittersweet to her. Caleb had told her before that, but for the bairns and her nursing work, which Prudence loved, he would have feared for his sister’s state of mind after she had learned of her husband’s death.
Caleb introduced the visitors to his sister, and as Clara stood up to make a fresh pot of tea, Prudence sat down in her seat. The children were playing some game of their own with others from neighbouring houses in the lane beyond the back yards, amid much squealing and shouting and screaming, and Prudence said flatly, ‘They’ll all be as sick as dogs before the day is out, what with the excitement and the party tea, you mark my words. They’re going mad out there.’
‘It’s only one day,’ said Ida, reproof in her tone.
Prudence looked as though she was about to say something, but changed her mind, turning instead to Esther as she said quietly, ‘It’s nice to meet you, lass. Our Caleb has spoken of you often since he’s been back.’
Esther didn’t know quite what to say to that, but something in Ida’s treatment of her sister’s obvious grief made her want to reach out to Prudence. Just as quietly, and hoping she wasn’t putting her foot in it, she said, ‘I’m so sorry about your husband. Caleb said you two had something very special, and today must be difficult for you.’
For a moment Prudence didn’t answer and Esther panicked that she shouldn’t have mentioned him, but then – like a balloon deflating – the rigidity went out of Prudence’s body and she said softly, ‘Thank you, lass. I appreciate that. Everyone thinks I should be over it by now, especially as there are plenty of others in the same boat, and Mam and the others change the subject if I try and talk about him. It’s the way round here, I suppose. Grin and bear it. And I am; I am bearing it, but I keep thinking what a waste. What a terrible waste. He was such a lovely man, always laughing and joking, and never a bad word about anybody. He worked in the docks and he needn’t have gone into the army at all, but no – he had to go and do his bit, as he saw it. And for what? He’s never even seen our last bairn, and she’ll never know what a grand man her da was.’
‘You can tell her.’ Esther reached out and squeezed Prudence’s hand. ‘You can keep his memory alive, and that is only right and proper too. Don’t stop talking about him, and don’t let anyone make you feel bad for grieving.’
Prudence smiled a watery smile. ‘No, I won’t. I won’t.’ She took a deep breath and sat up straighter. ‘Your little un’ is bonny, isn’t she? I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a beautiful little lassie. Our mam is clearly taken with her.’
‘I was worried your mother would think we were intruding – descending without warning.’
‘Oh, Mam loves a houseful, always has; and you’ve made Caleb’s day. Has he told you he’s managed to find himself a job? It’s driven him mad, sitting at home all day twiddling his thumbs.’
Esther shook her head. For most of the time they had been here the two men had sat together talking, and she and Priscilla and Caleb’s mother had chatted. Or, rather, Priscilla and Caleb’s mother, she corrected herself ruefully. Try as she might, she hadn’t been able to relax and had used Joy as an excuse not to join in the conversation half the time. Joy had had a long nap on her lap after lunch, but had woken up when Clara and Ida had arrived with their children. Esther felt that, with so many folk crammed in the kitchen, her silence hadn’t been so obvious. Not that she was a chatterer anyway; she never had been.
‘Aye, he’s got himself set on at Thompson’s shipyard,’ Prudence said with a hint of pride. ‘He was a riveter there before he decided to go in the army, but course he can’t do that now, not with his leg. The job’s dangerous enough for blokes with two legs, let alone one. Anyway, he took himself off to see his old supervisor an’ had a chat, an’ Mr Brown said he’d see what he could do; an’ true to his word, he got back to Caleb to say he’d arranged an interview for him with someone in the offices. He’s always had a bit up top, has Caleb. Not like the rest of us.’ She grinned and Esther smiled back. ‘So the upshot was they offered to train him up as a draughtsman!’ This was said with a flourish.
‘That’s wonderful.’ Esther glanced across at Caleb. ‘He didn’t mention it in any of his letters.’ She felt a little hurt.
‘Oh, it’s only happened in the last few days, lass,’ said Prudence hastily, ‘and to tell the truth, he feels a bit bashful about it, though I don’t know why. He says being an apprentice at the age of twenty-six is nothing to crow about.’
Prudence clearly disagreed, and her pride in her brother was tangible. Esther found she liked this sister more and more. ‘Well, I think it’s marvellous,’ she said warmly, ‘and I’ll tell him so, when I get the chance. When I first met him he was very down about his leg, and he’s rallied round and is clearly going to make something of his life, no matter what.’
Prudence stared at the girl she had heard so much about from her brother, when he called by some evenings to see her and the bairns. He would share their evening meal and play with the two older children while she put little Emily to bed, and would then help her settle Arnie and Francis. She knew Caleb was trying to do his bit as a stand-in da for the boys, although nothing had been said between the two of them, and she loved him for it. She also knew how much he thought of this beautiful girl with the sad, sad eyes, although clearly Esther was unaware of Caleb’s feelings or the fact that it had been she herself who – as she’d put it – had caused him to rally roun
d and make something of his life. Carefully feeling her way, Prudence murmured, ‘Everyone needs something – or someone – to live for.’ And in case that was too obvious she added, ‘With me, it’s the bairns. I don’t know what I’d have done without them after Dunkirk.’
Esther nodded. ‘He lives on in them.’ Even as she said it, she felt an overwhelming flood of emotion. She wished Monty had died before their baby was born and she could think that way about him; could have believed that he would love her and their child, no matter what the circumstances.
Eliza interrupted her thoughts, saying loudly, ‘Shush, everyone, it’s three o’clock,’ as she motioned to Clara, who was now sitting closest to the wireless, to turn it up.
Right on cue, the familiar and much-loved voice began: ‘Yesterday at 2.41 a.m. at General Eisenhower’s headquarters, General Jodl, the representative of the German High Command, and Admiral Doenitz, the designated head of the German state, signed the act of unconditional surrender of all German land, sea and air forces in Europe, to the Allied Expeditionary Force and simultaneously to the Soviet High Command . . . Today, this agreement will be ratified and confirmed at Berlin . . . Hostilities will end officially at one minute after midnight tonight, Tuesday, 8 May, but in the interests of saving lives, the “Cease Fire” began yesterday to be sounded all along the front.’
At this Eliza, never one to show outward emotion, began to cry unrestrainedly, and Esther quietly got up and took Joy from her lap, before sitting down again next to Prudence.
‘I should not forget to mention that our dear Channel Islands, the only part of His Majesty’s Dominions that has been in the hands of the German foe, are also to be freed today,’ the steady voice went on. ‘The Germans are still in places resisting the Russian troops, but should they continue to do so after midnight, they will, of course, deprive themselves of the protection of the laws of war, and will be attacked from all quarters by the Allied troops.’
The Colours of Love Page 19
