Tuesday, July 3
At last, a letter came from Jack and it was to me. He got my letter telling him we were going to Guelph. He wants me to go and visit Norah, his old sweetheart, and tell her that he has fallen in love with someone in England, and he is sorry but he does not want her to build up false hopes.
How could he have done it in such a short time? Well, I suppose six months is time enough.
I don’t see how I can do it. I let Aunt Martha read the letter, even though he asked me not to tell Father and Mother. He does not want to worry them.
Aunt M. sighed and gave me a strange look. Then she said I must go. She will drive me over there tomorrow and I can walk home.
The girl’s name is Rosemary and she is a nurse. He and Rufus met her at a hospital in England when they were visiting a fellow pilot who had been injured.
Wednesday, July 4
I did it. Aunt Martha drove me in the buggy to Norah’s today. I told her that Jack was in love with an English girl. That was what he asked me to say.
She looked as though I had stabbed her in the back. Her eyes scared me, dear Reader. She is always pale, but she looked as though she might swoon like some girl in a romance novel. Then she cried without making a sound. I went to put my arms around her but she stiffened like an ironing board and backed away. At last, she spoke in a thin hard voice.
“I suppose he has found someone prettier,” she said. “Trust Jack to pick up a sweet little English floozie instead of keeping his word to me.”
I just looked at her. I do not know what Rosemary looks like, but there are not many girls prettier than Norah. I almost told her so because I did feel sorry for her, but Jack said, in his letter, that he was glad now that Norah had insisted they make no promises to each other about the future. She had told him that they must stay free. And I wondered, all at once, why. Had she wanted him to be free, or herself?
It was a horrible moment, dear Reader. I was sorry for her, but I was angry deep inside to hear her lie about my brother Jack, who is the soul of honour.
“You had better go home, Eliza,” she said. She didn’t offer me a cool drink. She didn’t even walk me to the door. But I could see she was going to really start crying as soon as I shut it behind me. Maybe I should have tried to hug her but I could not do it. She had put up a wall.
I was halfway home and crying myself sick when along came Aunt Martha and Blueboy to pick me up after all. “Was it very hard?” she asked. I nodded.
“Well, Eliza my dear, don’t break your heart over Lady Norah,” she said. Then she told me that Norah has not missed a party since Jack left, and is going out steadily with the Burrows boy. I remember him. He has poor eyesight. “Norah will not stay on the shelf grieving, you may be sure,” Aunt Martha finished as we arrived home. I got out of the buggy and, although it was so hot, I felt cold inside as well as sad, and somehow ashamed. But not of Jack. I think Jack is almost noble.
Friday, July 6
We go home tomorrow morning. Aunt Martha is coming with us to help while Moppy goes for her visit to her sister’s. A neighbour girl will stay here with Grandmother. Belle still is pale, but her eyes shine at the thought of being home with Mother.
They are not saying anything about Jack. I hope he has been writing to them. I feel guilty when I get a letter if they have had none.
Monday, July 9
We are back now. And Father is better, although quieter, and he looks older. He has stopped teasing too. He and Belle sit together and say not a word, just somehow take comfort from each other.
I actually found I was trying to stop thinking of Hugo’s being dead. I wanted to stop hurting. I was furious with myself.
Thursday, July 12
It is Orangemen’s Day and there’s to be a parade. Father says he wants us to stay home. He says the parade is perpetuating hatred. He is hard to understand.
Mother says she has plenty of work for us to do tending the garden and starting preserving. I cannot believe it is really time for that, not after such a slow spring. I like eating what is in the jars, but preserving is such long hot work and it goes on forever.
Sunday, July 15
Father preached about the Prodigal Son this morning. Do you like him, dear Reader? I never have. I feel too sorry for the elder brother, although he does sound a little like Verity. Father says the story should not be called the Prodigal Son but the Forgiving Father. This morning I wondered, for the first time, what really made that father run. I don’t think my father would run, but he is a dignified man. Maybe the bad son felt ashamed at the last minute and turned away. Then his father would have run. But the boy does not sound like someone who would feel ashamed.
Cornelia has recovered but she looks so different. She does not have a pudding face any more. She is pale as milk and has no strength. She reminds me of a stalk of celery that has been left in water too long, all limp and bendy. Dr. Webb is talking of moving away from Uxbridge.
Guess what, dear Reader? This will astonish you. I truly hope she does not go. She is not a kindred spirit, but we are friends.
No letters have come from Jack to Mother or Father for nearly three weeks. Nobody says anything. Verity seems to get all the mail these days and she is secretive about it. The envelopes are big and official looking. I wonder what she is up to.
I miss being in the country. I wanted to come home so much, but it is a bit tame here. We still have war work, of course. Bandages to roll, boxes to pack and soldiers to write to. I am glad I don’t have to write to strangers the way some girls do. I write to Jack. We also go out collecting bits of scrap metal for the war effort. We also weed the stupid garden. Everyone was too busy while we were gone so the plants are not all that healthy. The watermelon vines I planted are growing well though. It will be lovely to eat something so sweet and not have to stint.
Being at Aunt Martha’s was a happy time in some ways. We went on walks in the woods most every day. Because Grandmother and Aunt Martha live close to the edge of town, we could walk down by the river or out to the ridge. I know there are birds and stars and trees and everything in Uxbridge but they seem closer and more our own private blessings at the farm. The moon is bigger and the stars are brighter and closer there without so many buildings close by. My room at Aunt Martha’s had a high casement window and, when I lay in bed, one star shone in at me particularly brightly. I felt as though it knew I was there and I could talk to it about Hugo. It helped, somehow, that he must have seen it shining too, since he was always a stargazer. He taught me how to see the Big Dipper and Orion with his belt and Vega and Cassiopeia and so many more. The others weren’t interested, so it was special between Hugo and me. When I was at Aunt Martha’s, I taught Charlie and Susannah to find them and, when Belle can stay up late enough, I will teach her too.
I kept thinking that Hugo would never again see violets in the grass or the kingfisher down by the pond at Aunt Martha’s or the sun on Belle’s hair when it is just washed and looks like spun gold. Then, today, I made up my mind that it is up to me to see them all and enjoy them for him. I will try anyway. And, whenever I see something special, I will not only see it for Hugo, but remember him while I look. He would want me to be happy remembering him because we were always so happy when we were together.
Oh, that is fancy talk, but I want to feel his arms hug me and hear his laughing voice say, “Hello, Monkeyshines!” I thought, at first, that I could not bear it, but you do not get to stop bearing it if you keep living. So I’ll turn it around and try to make it into something good.
Wednesday, July 18
Dear Reader, another terrible battle in which many Allied soldiers died. We don’t know much about it yet except it is happening at Passchendaele.
I really thought the War would be over by this time, especially now the “Yanks are in it,” as the song says. “Over there, over there …”
Thursday, July 19
Dear Reader, I got another letter from Jack and it is astonishing. He and Rufus both love Rosemary. Jack finally told Rufus that he wanted to ask her to marry him, and Rufus said he thought as much, but he wanted to ask her himself. So — and this is the amazing part — they tossed a coin to see who would propose first. Jack won the toss. But Rosemary said she did not love him like that. She felt like a sister to him.
The next weekend they had leave, Rufus asked Rosemary to marry him and she said yes. They are not supposed to marry while they are at war, or something like that — I don’t understand why not — so they must wait. And Jack will be their best man.
He says he has to talk to someone about it or he might burst, and he is sorry if I don’t want to hear all his news. He would have told Hugo, but Hugo is gone and he thinks Verity would not understand. I think he might be right.
I wrote back and told him I was honoured to be confided in and I thought Rosemary was crazy to like Rufus better. Rufus is nice but Jack is the prime article.
I do feel sorry for him. Rosemary is a nursing sister in a convalescent hospital near their aerodrome. She worked there before the War when it was a children’s convalescent hospital and she stayed on. She is a civilian though, not an army nurse. For some reason, this makes things better for Rufus. Jack did not say why. Maybe she can leave the hospital without having to get permission from an officer. That is probably it.
Saturday, July 21
Jack sent me a picture, but Rosemary is standing between him and Rufus and is too small to show up clearly. They are in uniform and she has on her nurse’s uniform with a strange, high cap.
“Hugo would understand how I feel,” Jack said.
It is true. My brother Hugo was the most understanding person I have ever known. But the strange thing is that I believe I understand too. I have not been in a battle, but I have sat with Richard Webb. I didn’t write about it but he and I have become friends in the past few days.
It was all because of talking about the trenches. He was sitting in their garden after dark, crying. I could hear him and he was going on about the black mud.
I went over because nobody else was paying attention. He had a letter from a friend at the Front. It told terrible things. So many are dying.
I cried too and now he and I are friends but I have not told anyone. They might make fun of us or of him. And Mother and Father might worry. They do worry about unnecessary things.
Jack and Rufus have been flying night after night. They are too busy and tired to write much. That is what he tells Mother and Father. I keep going to the post office to pick up the mail so they won’t know when I hear from him and they do not.
“He is so busy,” Mother says, sighing.
Too busy with Rosemary, I think, but I keep my mouth shut about that.
Mother looks happier. She does not laugh though, even when Charlie is cutting up a lark.
They clearly were comforted by the letter that came yesterday.
Isaac killed a baby rabbit this afternoon. I don’t know if Belle will ever forgive him. He did not tear it apart, just shook it by the neck. It looked exactly like Peter Rabbit in our Beatrix Potter books. Isaac has killed a few rats and even Belle thought that was fine. Her face is swollen from weeping and every time she looks at the poor dog she says, “Murderer!” He hangs his head. I wonder if he will remember next time a little rabbit ventures into the vegetable garden.
Tuesday, July 31
They go on and on fighting at the Front. It sounds dreadful. Richard has nightmares. I told him about my dream after Hugo died. He just looked at me.
“It is bad,” he said, “but worst of all are the ones which cannot be told and which come back again and again.”
He shuddered and sweat came out on his face. I did not ask any questions. It might help him to talk but it would not help me to listen.
I did ask how long a battle could last.
“Weeks,” he said in a dead cold voice that frightened me. When I looked at him, he seemed not to know me. I was so nervous, all at once, I jumped up and ran home.