‘Why horrified?’ she’d asked her father.
‘Because he was an Indian – a native,’ her father had replied, as though she was dense. ‘And of a different religion too. Same with the Jews. They should all be living in Israel.’
‘What does the colour of his skin or his religion matter, if they loved each other?’ she’d replied, starting an argument that had ended up rocking the house. Her father had ranted that if these were the sorts of ideas she had picked up at her private school, and at the finishing school in Switzerland that he had sent her to at great expense, then he regretted every penny; and she had fired back that he was no better than a Nazi. Worse, in fact, because at least the Nazis blatantly declared what they were. Of course she had always suspected how her parents felt, but it had never come out into the open before, possibly because she saw so little of them. A nanny and then boarding schools had seen to that.
Now, remembering all that, she said quietly, ‘Esther, I don’t understand how America can send their black GIs to fight alongside their white countrymen and yet deny they’re equal, or how the colour of their skin makes some people think they are better than other human beings, but it happens. I confess I’d never really thought about such things before the war, so perhaps – if nothing else – it’s good that it has stirred such issues up. Especially among flibbertigibbets like me. Maybe, after the war, the world’s going to be more of a melting pot, because one thing is sure: it won’t go back to how it was. In all sorts of ways.’
Esther had nodded. ‘Maybe,’ she said, with a little catch in her voice, adding, ‘I miss my mother, and Rose. I’m not even sure what Rose thinks about everything. She’s very set in her ways.’
And then, two weeks after Esther had arrived back in Yorkshire, Mrs Holden answered a knocking on the farmhouse door one afternoon, to find Rose standing on the doorstep. She’d come to find Miss Esther and the baby, Rose told the farmer’s wife. Her late mistress had been generous to her over the years, and she had a nest egg put by that would support the three of them for a while. She had stayed just for the mistress’s funeral, but then she had told Mr Wynford what she thought of him and had left, so she wouldn’t be getting a reference from him. But that didn’t matter, not as long as she and Miss Esther and the little one were together. Wicked, it was, how Miss Esther had been treated; she hadn’t been able to sleep since it had happened. So saying, Rose had burst into tears, appearing so bereft that Mrs Holden had whisked her inside and made a pot of tea, over which the two women had chatted for some time.
The upshot of this was that Rose moved into the already crammed labourer’s cottage with the girls and Joy, sleeping in the front room on a pallet bed that Mr Holden put in a corner, as the two bedrooms – one holding three single beds without an inch between them, where Lydia, Vera and Beryl slept; and the other, two single beds for Esther and Priscilla, along with Joy’s cot – were chock-a-block already. It was Mrs Holden who had made it happen, declaring to her dubious husband that Rose’s appearance was the best thing that could have happened. It meant Joy would have a nursemaid during the day when Esther was working, and Rose could lend a hand when required in the house and dairy; and heaven knew she needed help, Mrs Holden had finished darkly. Men had no idea what was involved in cooking and cleaning and washing, besides seeing to the dairy and the swill for the pigs and collecting eggs from the hens.
The farmer had been wise enough not to protest too hard, although he hadn’t relished having yet another female about the place. A man’s man, he’d known where he stood with his male workers before the war. Women were a different species. Not that he had any complaints about the Land Girls; he had to admit they worked like the dickens and tackled anything. They’d even taken the muck-spreading in their stride. The first time he’d told the girls to take the big, steaming heap of manure from a corner of the stable yard out to the fields by horse and cart and spread it on the land, he’d expected some reluctance, but they’d obeyed without protest and worked for hours on end. He knew from experience that it brought on searing backache and raw, aching muscles, but you wouldn’t have known it, except that they were quieter than usual during the evening meal. No, he had no complaint about their work; he just wanted to get back to normal. That was all. Although what normal would be after this damned war was anyone’s guess.
Nancy Holden had known exactly what her husband was thinking when she told him she wanted Rose to stay. He was a transparent individual at the best of times. But from the first moment she’d seen Rose standing on the doorstep, she had warmed to her. They were about the same age, which was nice, and she felt they could be friends.
For her part, Rose was delighted. She’d be looking after little Joy, which couldn’t suit her better; and giving a hand to the farmer’s wife, in return for bed and board, meant that her nest egg stayed intact. After an emotional reunion with Esther when they had both cried, Rose settled into life at the farm like a duck to water.
It had been balm to Esther’s sore heart when Rose sought her out, and she had told herself that, with Rose understanding and supporting her, nothing else mattered.
But – and Esther would rather have walked on hot coals than admit this to a living soul – it hurt when people misjudged her and took satisfaction in making their feelings known. Because it was assumed she had slept with a black GI and had been ‘caught out’ in adultery, a certain type of man thought Esther was easy prey, and their female counterparts took pleasure in slighting her. It didn’t help that her speech betrayed her as upper-class, either. She’d actually had one indignant Yorkshire matron accost her in the village shop and declare that with her ‘advantages’ she ought to know better, and set an example to those girls less fortunate than herself.
With British men feeling less than delirious about the GIs in their midst, along with the cartons of Lucky Strike and Camel cigarettes, nylon stockings, scented soap, chocolate and other luxuries that the American servicemen distributed to the local women with their natural and friendly charm, women who succumbed to the GIs were bitterly resented in some quarters.
American slang had swept the nation too, and even children – who’d learned of comic-book heroes such as Superman with his X-ray vision, and supercop Dick Tracy with his two-way wrist TV – were caught up in the bad feeling generated by the adults. Fathers and older brothers took umbrage at younger family members, who’d previously thrilled to the heroics of Arsenal or Tottenham footballers, renouncing their allegiance to all things British and gawping at the statistics of the B-17 Flying Fortress, with its bomb-sight so accurate that, it was claimed, it could drop a bomb on the Germans into a pickle-barrel from 20,000 feet; or saying to all and sundry that the American troop carriers – huge four-engined monoplanes – made British biplanes look like rubbish from the Science Museum.
Mostly, Esther maintained an aloof front against the spitefulness and criticism, but in the early days of it all, when the pain of Monty’s rejection had been unbearable, she’d often cried herself to sleep. And she was a lioness where Joy was concerned, her overwhelming love for her beautiful healthy baby bringing out a protectiveness that was as fierce as it was passionate. And Joy was beautiful, and grew more so with every month that passed. The baby’s eyes turned an amazing jade-green some weeks after her birth, and her brown curls had a golden tint to them. This, combined with her coffee-coloured skin and ready smile, made her enchanting. The mix of races in her genes had combined to produce a loveliness that was as unusual as it was striking, and even Farmer Holden had become Joy’s devoted slave. On the days when it was warm enough to wheel her pram into the fields, so that Esther could have Joy with her while she worked, Esther would look at her child and marvel at how something so perfect could have come from her body.
And now it was the summer of 1944. In the last fourteen months Esther had relinquished the hopes and dreams she’d woven around Monty, mostly without even realizing it, and with their passing had come a healing of sorts, although she was still full o
f emotions that made sleep difficult some nights. She loved and missed Harriet; unashamedly loathed Theobald; and hated Clarissa. Her feelings weren’t so clear-cut regarding Monty. Sometimes she felt she hated him, at other times she felt that a small semblance of love remained; but more often of late she felt nothing at all. It was as though he was dead to her, as she had maintained he would be that last day, when he and his parents had come to the house. From the way Clarissa had talked then, Esther had expected divorce papers to come her way at some point over the last few months, but there had been nothing.
At first, in her grief and rage, Esther had wanted to end the marriage immediately and cut all ties with the past. Now she felt that a piece of paper didn’t really matter, one way or the other. She knew she would never marry again, or get close enough to a man that he could hurt her, as Monty had hurt her. How could the colour of their baby’s skin, or the fact that her own father must have been black, matter so much to Monty? But it had. And she soon came to realize that Monty wasn’t alone in his prejudice. Whenever she left the farm with Joy there were subtle reminders of it, but it had the effect of rousing her fighting spirit and putting iron in her backbone. She wasn’t ashamed of who she was, she told herself many nights as she looked into the old spotted mirror in the cottage, and she wouldn’t let anyone else make her so. As Priscilla said, it was ignorance and fear of the pack mentality at something (or someone) different that bred intolerance and discrimination – the parents of cruelty and hatred.
Dear Priscilla. Esther glanced at her friend, who had just returned from the village with the daily newspaper. For days everyone had been rejoicing because the Red Army had swept the Germans out of the Crimea, and Allied forces had broken the enemy hold in Italy, and Rome had been liberated. Apparently a short, low-key announcement from General Eisenhower’s HQ had followed, telling the world that the long-awaited invasion of Europe by the Allies had begun. Now it appeared that RAF bombers had pounded the German batteries along the French coast two nights ago, and at daybreak they had been joined by the US Eighth Air Force, along with naval forces, in the land and air offensive.
‘They’re saying the war could be over by Christmas,’ Priscilla informed everyone sitting around the farmhouse’s huge kitchen table, where they were eating their evening meal.
‘Do they indeed,’ said Farmer Holden morosely. ‘And of course “they” are always right, aren’t they?’
The women looked at each other. The farmer had been like a bear with a sore head for a while, mainly due to the number of soldiers and their equipment moving southwards for the build-up to the D-Day landings that were now taking place. It would have taken a brave individual to point out to him that it was southern England that had borne the brunt of the move. The country roads in that part of the country had become dedicated convoy routes, the local woods crawling with soldiers who moved silently under the cover of trees like swarms of jungle ants. But the farmer had lost a portion of his land to the army the year before, and hadn’t forgiven the powers that be. New airfields, troop camps and munitions factories were deliberately being placed in rural areas, to avoid the towns and cities that were more likely to be a target of the Luftwaffe, but Farmer Holden refused to see the sense of this.
Esther stifled a sigh. They had been working a twelve-hour day in the fields and she was exhausted; the long June days and short nights were a mixed blessing. On fine days it was good to be out in the sunshine after the harsh winter, but on chilly or rainy days, when she couldn’t have Joy with her and Rose took care of the baby while she worked, she hardly saw her daughter. She trusted Rose with her precious baby, and knew that Joy was happy with Rose and the farmer’s wife, but as the little girl was often tucked up in bed and fast asleep by the time she came in from the fields, there could be days on end when they were parted.
Overall, though, Esther knew she was lucky at the way things had worked out. She felt she would never be able to repay the kindness shown to her by these simple, good folk, and she would be forever grateful to the farmer and his wife for taking her in without demur, when she had arrived back at the farm like little orphan Annie; and then for welcoming Rose later too.
She finished Mrs Holden’s delicious steak-and-kidney pie quickly. It was her turn to settle the calves down for the night in the calf-pens. It was her favourite job. The farmer was building up his dairy herd, and four days after they were born – when the cow’s yellow colostrum turned into ordinary saleable milk – the calves were removed from their mothers, which went back into the herd for normal milking in the parlour. The very young, small calves were transferred to the calf-house, an airy barn in one corner of the farmyard, in which individual pens were made for them from straw bales, giving them a snug home of their own in which to recover from the shock of being separated from their mothers.
Esther had found the sight of the newborn calves hidden away in their pens distressing when she had first come to the farm, but had felt better about the process when Mrs Holden had taken the time to explain that in the wild it was natural for the calves to ‘lie up’, hidden in undergrowth or long grass, while the cows returned to the herd to graze, visiting at intervals to suckle their babies. In the calf-house they were suckled by a human-held bottle, but never seemed to mind the process, guzzling away with their doe-eyes closing in ecstasy every so often. The next stage was teaching them to drink their milk from a bucket, and this was Esther’s job that night. She had learned the hard way that the calves were no respecters of decorum, and it needed a firm hand to hold the bucket when they nuzzled their heads into the warm frothy milk.
All too soon, as they grew a little older, the calves would be put into larger pens to mingle in groups of the same age, and to learn to accept hay and concentrates instead of milk. This was the start of their very own little herd and they’d form bonds within the group for the rest of their lives, even when they all became part of the larger dairy herd. Esther wasn’t alone in feeling sad when the calves became more independent; the cosy times in the old barn, with the calves’ milky breath and warm little bodies snuggled close, were magical; and magical moments didn’t come too often amid the hard physical work and exhausting routine.
They weren’t supposed to have favourites among the calves, or to become attached to any of the farm animals, come to that. Farmer Holden had been very specific about that, when they had come to the farm as Land Girls, saying it was part of the toughening-up process that was necessary for them to work as they were expected to. But as Esther entered the barn that night she made straight for one particular pen, which housed a dear little calf she had secretly named Bambi, because of her large, seemingly liquid eyes. All the calves were endearingly sweet, but Bambi had almost died at birth and needed extra care and had become a firm favourite with all the girls. Once she was sitting in the pen and Bambi was slurping away, she thought about the news Priscilla had read out that evening. The Normandy operation had been heralded a success so far, and Winston Churchill had revealed that Allied forces had penetrated several miles inland, the resistance of the enemy batteries being greatly weakened by the bombing from war planes and ships. Was Monty in the carnage that must be happening – however the politicians dressed it up?
Esther bit her lip, closing her eyes for a moment. She normally kept all such thoughts under lock and key, but tonight she was particularly tired, the barn was warm and quiet, and the sight of Bambi guzzling her milk out of the bucket on her small knock-kneed legs was poignant.
Would she care very much if she received news that Monty had been killed or injured? It was a question she had asked herself more than once, and she didn’t know the answer. He had written to her twice, soon after she had returned to the farm following Joy’s birth, obviously assuming that she might seek solace there. She’d gazed at his distinctive black scrawl on the envelopes, her stomach doing cartwheels, and both times had returned the letters unopened, writing ‘Gone Away’ in the left-hand corner. Whether he’d believed she was elsewhere, she
didn’t know. Certainly he hadn’t attempted to come to the farm to find out, and as the days and weeks and months had gone by, she had told herself she didn’t care. He had made his choice, and that was that.
Nevertheless, at odd moments when her guard was down, she wondered about Monty; whether he was dead or alive or injured. She’d accepted that she was probably no longer officially his next of kin. Clarissa would no doubt have seen to that and, with his permission, told the authorities it was his parents who must be informed, if the worst happened. There was no way of knowing if she was right in her assumption, not without making enquiries herself, which she was loath to do.
Once Bambi was settled for the night, Esther moved on to the remaining calves, and she was just leaving the barn when Priscilla came bounding across the yard. ‘Come on. I thought you had fallen asleep in there. You haven’t forgotten the dance, have you? We’re all ready, and there’s some hot water for you, and a bar of my lovely oil-of-roses soap to wash away the smell of the farmyard.’
Esther groaned inwardly. The other girls – and especially Priscilla – seemed to have decided that it was time she was ‘taken out of herself’, as they put it; and the only way, according to them, was to dip her toe in the limited social scene of the village, courtesy of the local hop. When she had declared it was the last thing she felt like doing, she’d met united protest. Even Rose had added her two penn’orth.
‘Really, Est,’ Vera had drawled, ‘you can’t carry on being a hermit forever.’
‘I agree,’ Lydia had put in. ‘Do you think Monty is starving himself of female company? He’ll be at it like a rabbit.’
‘And really, when all’s said and done, the village dance isn’t exactly a den of iniquity, now is it?’ Beryl had said earnestly. ‘It’s perfectly respectable, Esther.’
‘More’s the pity,’ Priscilla had grinned, her face white with scented night-cream, a gift from the GIs. They had all been in the sitting room of the cottage in their pyjamas, sipping the hot milky cocoa that Mrs Holden always brought over in a big jug at bedtime. ‘I’m just dying for a smidgen of iniquity now and again, darling. A little sinfulness is so delicious.’
The Colours of Love Page 11