Free The Colours of Love by Rita Bradshaw

this young woman’s husband was a fighter pilot, and the RAF was taking a hell of a hammering in this damned war. Gently he said, ‘You are young and healthy, and a baby is always a blessing, child.’
    Esther nodded, but in truth she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She wanted Monty’s babies, of course she did, but they had thought children would be in the future – not now. Not when they were apart and Monty was in constant danger, and a madman was centre-stage in the world.
But a new life was growing inside her
. A little thrill, deep inside, caused her heart to race. Part of her, and part of Monty; a unique little being, their own tiny miracle. Her hand covered her stomach protectively as she murmured, ‘It’s just not a good time to bring a baby into the world.’
    ‘Our twin girls were born a few months after I left for France in 1914,’ Dr Boyce said quietly, ‘and my wife felt exactly as you are feeling now. But our girls proved to be a great comfort to her, as this baby will be to you. The older one becomes, the more one realizes that life doesn’t come in neat packages wrapped exactly the way we’d wish. I was badly injured in France and there were to be no more children for us, so our twins were a double blessing. One we’ve thanked God for every day. Don’t try and understand or predict the future, Mrs Wynford-Grant. Take what you are given, and be grateful for it.’
    It was exactly what she needed to hear. Esther’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Thank you. Thank you so much, Doctor.’
    Priscilla was waiting for her when she came out of the doctor’s house, where he held his daily surgery in the front room. ‘Well?’ she asked, as Esther made her way out of the front garden along the thin concrete path, which had neat rows of vegetables on either side of it. These had replaced the flowers that had formerly been the doctor’s wife’s pride and joy, but this same lady had taken ‘Dig for victory’ to heart. ‘What did he say?’
    Esther opened the wooden gate and joined her friend. ‘You were right,’ she said quietly, taking her bicycle from Priscilla. ‘I’m expecting a baby.’ It had been the worldly-wise Priscilla who had urged her to go and see the doctor, when the time for Esther’s second monthly had come and gone with no bleeding.
    They walked a few yards pushing their bicycles, before Priscilla said softly, ‘I know it wasn’t what you and Monty had planned right now, but it’ll work out for the best, Est.’
    ‘That’s what Dr Boyce said too.’ Now that it was sinking in, she wanted this baby desperately.
    ‘What are you going to do? I mean, about carrying on here? When I think what we did during the hay-making and harvest . . . ’ Priscilla shook her head. ‘That baby must be very firmly entrenched and determined to stay put, that’s all I can say.’ In the agricultural year, hay-making occurs before the harvest and is even more of a nail-biter. When Farmer Holden had said that a weather-window of dry, breezy and sunny days had made it perfect for hay-making, Esther and the others, and three Italian prisoners-of-war who had been ‘borrowed’ from a neighbouring farm, had worked from eight in the morning until late twilight, to make good hay. Due to the lack of petrol because of the war, Farmer Holden had gone back to basics, with a couple of the men scything a swathe all around the outside of a field of standing grass, and then two horses harnessed to the mowing machine taking over.
    Esther nodded. ‘And that hateful mowing machine during the hay-making, too.’ The girls had all taken a turn with the mowing machine, and it had been a bone-shaking job sitting on the seat; there were no springs and certainly no cushions, simply a hessian bag folded and laid in the big metal ‘pan’ seat. The continual jolting had been almost unbearable, and the girls had had to keep their wits about them every moment, and the horses on the move at the right pace. Fortunately