The Color of Secrets

by Lindsay Jayne Ashford

  “Do you feel up to sorting through the rest of the letters?” Rhiannon asked. “There are quite a few addressed to your mother—I’ll open them if you’d rather . . .”

  “No, it’s all right,” Eva said. “I’ve got to face it sooner or later.” She shifted her weight onto her knees and, with an effort, rose to her feet. Tucking Bill’s letter into the pocket of her smock, she walked purposefully toward the farmhouse, determined to get through the next half hour without crying.

  Eva wrote half a dozen letters to Bill over the next few weeks, but none of them could be posted. The farm was so remote that deliveries only came once a week. She tried not to get excited when the ancient postman wheeled his bike into the farmyard on Tuesday mornings. But every time he came, the sense of anticipation followed by crushing disappointment grew stronger. How could she write to Bill if she didn’t know where he was?

  On the last day of May there was a letter from Dilys. Her neat, round handwriting sent a pang of guilt through Eva’s heart. That big, awful lie was like a concrete wall between them. If they hadn’t been parted so soon after their mother’s death, Eva doubted she could have kept up the pretense. She knew Cathy had been right. That it was better for Dilys not to know why their mother had been chasing her across the street in the dark. But to Eva it still felt like a betrayal.

  Dilys was with an anti-aircraft battery of the Royal Artillery, learning to track enemy planes and direct the gunners’ fire. It sounded terribly dangerous, but the tone of the letter was cheerful enough. She warned Eva not to worry if she didn’t hear from her for a while because a lot of the Allied forces’ mail was going astray with all the movement going on. Perhaps that was why there was nothing from Bill, Eva thought.

  The next day she wrote back to Dilys. It was a difficult letter to write. She tried to make it lighthearted, but as she began describing the advantages of life on the farm, she was only too aware of how miserable that might make her sister feel. In the end she settled for a few short lines. Then she composed a much longer letter to Cathy:

  “I feel as if I’ve been wrapped in cotton wool and packed away in a drawer,” she wrote. “It’s so quiet in this part of Wales, it’s hard to believe there’s a war on. We can’t even get the wireless up here in the mountains. The only news we have is from the paper, which comes once a week with the post. I’m not complaining, though, because the food is fantastic. It’s as if rationing didn’t exist. We have eggs every day, and there are huge slabs of bacon hanging up on hooks in the kitchen. At breakfast time Uncle Dai just slices great thick pieces off and we eat it with homemade bread.”

  She paused for a moment, glancing out of the window. “David is putting on weight at last,” she went on. “He’s starting to talk a lot now. Sometimes he asks where Nanna and Dilys have gone, which is upsetting. Often he talks in Welsh. It’s funny to hear him come out with things I don’t understand. He knows there’s a baby coming, but I don’t think he grasps what it really means.” She hesitated before writing the next line. Cathy was the only person in the world she could confide in, and she felt an overwhelming need to unburden herself. “I’m due in three weeks and I still haven’t told my aunt the whole truth about Bill,” she wrote. “It’s partly because I’m afraid of what she’ll say and partly because I don’t want to upset her. It’s going to be a terrible shock. I don’t think she and Uncle Dai have ever seen a black person—not even in a film, because the nearest cinema is in Aberystwyth, which is miles away.

  “Bill said in his letter that he’d tried to get a pass to come and see me. But even if I could find a way of letting him know where I am, he’d use up all his leave just finding this place. I’ve got no idea where he is now, and I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever see him again.”

  Perhaps you never will, a voice whispered somewhere in her head. She bit the end of her pen, panic swirling in her stomach.

  “I feel so useless,” she went on, her fingers slippery with perspiration. “I’ve asked if I can help on the farm—milk the cows or something—but they won’t let me do a thing. It gives me too much time to think and that’s bad. I miss work and I miss you. I wish I could talk to you. I hope that once the baby’s born, I might be able to come back, for a visit at least (if they haven’t thrown me out, that is). Can’t plan much further ahead than that at the moment.

  “Thanks for collecting the mail. Please keep sending it on. I’m sure there’ll be something from Bill soon.”

  As she wrote the last sentence, she willed it to be true. She couldn’t stop torturing herself with thoughts of him going out in some new town, dancing with other girls the way he’d danced with her.

  She stuffed the letter into an envelope and grabbed her knitting needles, forcing herself to concentrate on the fancy pattern for a matinee jacket her aunt had bought on her monthly ride into Aberystwyth. Eva had not been allowed to go with her. “Too risky,” Rhiannon had said. “All those potholes in the road. You stay here where it’s safe.”

  Eva’s only excursions from the farm were to attend chapel on Sundays. On the fourth of June she was there, as usual, after a hot, dusty ride down the farm track and along the narrow, winding lane that led down the valley.

  David had leaned over the sides of the cart to grab at the wildflowers sprouting from the hedgerows, and now he was sitting underneath the pew, poking the stems of campions and dandelions through the buttonholes of his jacket.

  The service was conducted entirely in Welsh, which Eva was struggling to master. Her attention often wandered, and she would find herself studying the rapt faces of the other members of the congregation instead of listening to the sermon. One thing that had surprised her on her first visit to the tiny chapel was the way people stared. Her auburn hair and freckles and David’s blond curls made them objects of curiosity. Like her uncle and aunt, most of the congregation had dark, almost olive skin, tanned nut-brown by the summer sun. The younger ones all had jet-black hair, and if she hadn’t known they were Welsh, Eva would have taken them for Italians or Spaniards.

  As they left the chapel that Sunday there was a strange stillness in the air, as if the world had paused to take a breath. Although the heat was overpowering, Eva shivered as she walked through the door. She blinked as the sun’s blinding light hit her eyes. Bill’s face flashed in front of her, his eyes wide and frightened. “Where are you?” she murmured, as the image disappeared. “Where have they sent you?”

  That same Sunday Cathy was at home in Wolverhampton listening to a news broadcast. One of the war correspondents was on board a sealed troopship with forces that were about to stage an invasion of occupied France.

  “All contact with the shore has ended,” the reporter said, his voice edgy with the drama he was about to witness. “No one may come aboard. No one may go ashore. In navy jargon, all of us aboard the ship are sealed. We’re sealed because we’ve been told the answers. The answers to the questions that the whole world has been asking for two years and more. Where. And how. And when.

  “The troops swarmed up the rope ladders last night. Strong, healthy, formidable men, many of them going into battle for the first time. As you walk along the decks, men are reading or sleeping or talking in small clusters. Across the water we can hear the jazz from a minesweeper’s gramophone . . .”

  Cathy clicked off the set. It was so horribly familiar. Like Dunkirk all over again. Reaching up to the mantelpiece she took down Stuart’s photograph. “Please, God,” she said. “Not again. Not this time.”

  Eva was in the farmyard when the postman arrived two days later. She saw him from a distance, pushing his bike up the hill. The bike was almost as ancient as he was, but there was something different about the way he was moving. He was pushing with one hand and waving something in the other: the newspaper, by the look of it. As he wheeled the bike over the rutted mud, he panted for breath, thrusting the paper into Eva’s hand.

  “D-day!” he gasped. “They’ve landed in France!”

  As Eva unrolled it, the headlin
es jumped out at her: “Waves of Khaki on the Beaches: British and Americans in D-Day Invasion.” She dropped the paper as if it were red-hot.

  “What is it? What’s happened?” Her aunt came, scooping the paper up from the dusty yard.

  The postman opened his mouth, but before he could get the words out, Eva doubled over, crying out in pain.

  “Eva!” Rhiannon shouted something in Welsh, which sent the old man hurtling off, bumping along the track with his mail sack flying out behind him.

  It was all over long before the midwife arrived. Rhiannon had never delivered a baby before but had brought enough lambs into the world not to be fazed by it. She was as calm and steady as a rock until she cut the cord and the newborn girl began to wail. Tears streamed down her face as she wrapped the tiny body in a towel. She dabbed water on the baby’s face and wiped the mop of hair, which was slicked down like sealskin.

  “Duw, Duw,” she muttered, laying her in Eva’s arms. “Dark hair like Dilys! And such beautiful skin! Anyone would think she’d been sunbathing in there!”

  Eva looked at her baby through a film of tears. Puzzled indigo eyes stared up at her. The hair was beginning to dry into tiny ringlets around a face the color of cinnamon. She was perfect. Beautiful.

  Glancing up nervously at her aunt, Eva saw that she was staring transfixed at the pair of them, a radiant smile on her face. How could she not notice? Surely it was as plain as day that this baby’s father couldn’t be a white man? Eva looked at the child again. Her skin was the same color as the people in the chapel—the ones she had thought looked Italian or Spanish. And her aunt had never seen a black person. Suddenly Eva understood. It simply would not occur to Rhiannon because it was outside her experience. But she was going to have to tell her. This was too big a secret to remain hidden for long. If her aunt didn’t suspect, it wouldn’t be long before someone else told her.

  “Have you chosen a name yet?” Rhiannon sounded fit to burst with excitement.

  “Well,” Eva said, as the baby turned her head and began nuzzling her neck, “I thought I’d call her Louisa. Louisa Ann, after Louisiana, where Bill comes from.”

  Her aunt nodded. “Louisa. That’s a pretty name. I thought you might decide to call her after your mam.”

  “I will,” Eva replied, her voice wobbling with emotion. “Louisa Ann Mary.” It didn’t sound right. One name too many. But she must include her mother’s name. Fresh tears welled in her eyes. “Bill never told me his mother’s name,” she murmured. And what would your mother have made of that? A sudden wail from the baby drowned out the sinister whispering in her head.

  “Oh, she’s hungry.” Rhiannon smiled. “You give your daughter a feed, and I’ll go and tell Dai and David the good news—that little lad’s going to be so excited when he finds out he’s got a baby sister!”

  “Please,” Eva said, holding out her hand to her aunt. “Don’t go yet.”

  “What’s wrong, cariad? Are you in pain?”

  “No, it’s not that.” She took a breath. “There’s something I’ve got to tell you.”

  Chapter 15

  JULY 1944

  A letter was lying on the mat when Cathy got home from work. Recognizing Eva’s handwriting, she ripped it open.

  “A girl!” She ran into the kitchen, spreading the pages out on the table.

  She was two weeks early, but she wasn’t a bad weight: six pounds three ounces. I would have written sooner, but life here has been pretty difficult these past few weeks. My uncle Dai had a stroke three days after Louisa was born. He was shearing the sheep when it happened, and the doctor said it was overwork that caused it. But I can’t stop thinking that it was my fault.

  I hadn’t told them about Bill. Louisa was born so quickly I hadn’t got around to it. My aunt delivered her, but even then she didn’t realize that I’d had a colored man’s child. When I told her, she just looked at me, didn’t say a word, as if it wouldn’t sink in. For a couple of days she spoke to me only when it was absolutely necessary and was very formal with me. But after a while she started to come around. I think it was because she brought Lou into the world. And although I say it myself, she really is a gorgeous baby. But Uncle Dai was different. He wouldn’t even look at her. As for me, well, as far as he was concerned, I no longer existed. It was as if he’d somehow guessed that Bill’s color was linked to Mum’s death.

  It’s awful what’s happened to him. He’s lost the power of speech, and he’s paralyzed down his right side. The doctor says he might get better eventually, but there’s no guarantee. I don’t think he’ll ever be able to do the heavy work on the farm again. So Aunt Rhiannon and I have to do it between us. I’ve learnt how to shear a sheep, how to milk the cows and drive the horse and cart. Luckily Lou sleeps a lot. We take her around with us in a little basket with a sheet rigged over it as a sunshade and David follows, trying to help.

  My aunt keeps saying it’ll be all right when Trefor, her son, comes home from the war. Goodness knows when that’ll be. I can’t stand Trefor anyway. He was horrible to Dilys and me when we were kids.

  I try not to think about the future—to be honest, I’m too worn out most of the time to think about anything much. I read the paper in bed sometimes and wonder what Bill’s doing. I know he must be in France, but I don’t know whether it’s possible for him to send letters now. I keep telling myself he’s all right—that he won’t be involved in the fighting. But it’s awful, this silence. Just like when Eddie went away.

  With a deep sigh Cathy folded the pages of the letter and slipped them back inside the envelope. Poor Eva, she thought. How terrible it must be for her, not even being able to tell Bill he had a daughter. And then there was the guilt about her uncle’s stroke, which wasn’t going to help ease the blame she already felt for her mother’s death. And all that work on the farm so soon after giving birth. Cathy thought about the time Eva had collapsed in the snow at the railway station. If she wasn’t careful, she was going to make herself ill.

  She sat for a moment staring into space, thinking about Eva and Bill. When Eva went to Wales, Cathy wondered if she might decide to cut him out of her life and make a fresh start, that the guilt she felt about Mary’s accident would kill her feelings for him stone dead. But her letters made it clear that was not the case. And now that she had his baby, the desire to be with him must be all the stronger.

  Cathy glanced at the clock. Mikey had gone to a friend’s house for the day and wouldn’t be back for another hour or so. On an impulse she grabbed her bag and made for the door. There was just time to go around to Eva’s old house. It was only two days since she’d last checked the mail, but if by some miracle a letter from Bill had arrived in the meantime, Eva needed to know as soon as possible.

  When Cathy unlocked the front door of her friend’s house, the musty smell made her cough. With the weather so hot and the windows shut all the time, the place was like an oven. She glanced at the mat. Nothing. She hesitated on the threshold, not sure what to do. She had intended to go straight back home, but instead she went into each room in the house, opening all the windows. “Let the place breathe a bit,” she muttered to herself. She wondered if Eva was going to keep the house now that things had changed so much. It seemed pointless paying rent for the sake of Dilys’s occasional trips home on leave.

  The doorbell rang and Cathy nearly jumped out of her skin. “Who on earth can that be,” she said aloud, peering out of the bedroom window at the street below. Her heart missed a beat when she saw the red bicycle propped against the lamppost. A red bicycle had come to her house the day she received the news of Stuart’s death. A red bicycle meant only one thing: a telegram. She ran down the stairs as the bell rang a second time.

  “Mrs. Melrose?”

  A boy of about fifteen stood in front of her, the soft down on his upper lip glistening in the sunlight.

  “Er . . . no.” Cathy hesitated. “She’s not here at the moment, but I can take it for her.”

  The boy frowned as
if she had suggested something quite improper. “I’m only supposed to hand it over to the person it’s addressed to.”

  “She’ll be back soon,” Cathy lied, “and she’ll be devastated if she finds out there’s a telegram and I can’t tell her what it’s about.”

  The boy looked her up and down, his lips set in a supercilious curl. Cheeky little bugger, she thought, as she smiled beseechingly at him.

  “All right then,” he said grudgingly. “Sign here.”

  As soon as she had closed the door on him, she ripped the telegram open. With a cry of disbelief she sank back against the hall table.

  “AS 5398 Edward Herbert Melrose recovered alive,” the message read. “Arrival in UK to be notified.” Cathy’s hand shook as she scanned the words again. Eddie was not dead. He was coming back.

  The baby. She heard Eva’s voice as clearly as if she were standing beside her. What will he do when he finds out about the baby?

  Part Two

  LOUISA

  Chapter 16

  AUGUST 1944

  Eva poured the last pail of milk into the churn and went over to the corner of the cowshed where baby Louisa was fast asleep in her basket. Her long black eyelashes flickered as Eva picked up the basket, but she didn’t stir. Good, Eva thought. With any luck she’d have time to eat some breakfast before Louisa woke up. It was only half past seven, but Eva had been awake since just after five. She was ravenous and the thought of bacon and eggs made her quicken her step as she made for the door.

  Her aunt usually had breakfast ready. Eva trudged across the farmyard sniffing the air. But there was no smell of cooking coming from the kitchen. She peeped around the door and saw Rhiannon sitting at the table, her head in her hands.