She felt Susannah’s forehead, but to her relief it was a normal temperature, and she was breathing steadily. Even so, Emer wasn’t taking any chances. Going downstairs, she rang the number of the medical centre in Vinalhaven which Lynsey had given her, asking if one of them could come out and take a look.
‘Sure,’ said the friendly voice on the end of the line, ‘but we’re physician assistants. You’re as qualified as us. If you think it’s serious, we can get her on a plane to the mainland.’
‘No, it’s grand,’ Emer said, just imagining how mad Susannah would be if taken off her beloved island.
She made herself a cup of coffee and headed back upstairs to check in on Susannah. She was still sound asleep. She took her temperature again and left a fresh glass of water by the bed before slipping out of her room.
Her own bedroom was up another flight of stairs right at the top of the house. She hadn’t even unpacked. The innards of her case were spilled upon the floor, but she didn’t have the energy to pick anything up or put them away in the drawers of the dressing table. There were two single beds in the room. Old-fashioned iron frames, with very hard mattresses. Both were covered in beautiful patchwork quilts just like on Susannah’s bed. One was made up of lots of patterns of red and white with heart shapes, and evergreen trimming. It made Emer think of Christmas. The second quilt was mostly in different shades of pink, with some lemony yellow flower prints to contrast. Emer had chosen the bed with the Christmas quilt. Never went for pastel shades. Nor did Orla. Her sister had always worn jewel colours – emerald green, sapphire blue, ruby red – to bring out her pale skin, red hair and blue eyes.
Emer’s room was long and narrow, but her bed faced two windows set into the eaves of the house. The view from one looked down onto the boughs of the apple tree. If she leaned out her window, she could count all its red apples. She thought it must be a very old apple tree to be so big, and indeed she could see its age in the twistings of its gnarled trunk. If she lay down on her bed, the other window gave her a vista of the island, the rooftops of other houses, tips of trees, and beyond that a distant sliver of bright blue sea. She had made her escape now from real life and yet she felt entrapped already on this small island.
Emer closed her eyes, took a breath. What was it Orla always said?
Everything passes, even the darkest night.
Her phone began to vibrate in her pocket, and without even having to look at it, she knew who it was. She took a breath and answered it.
‘Emer! Where are you? I’ve been so worried.’
His words came out in a panicked jumble and she instantly felt guilty. It wasn’t his fault, and yet she felt their fledgling relationship had been irredeemably damaged by the fact her sister had died the night they first made love.
‘I’m sorry, Lars.’
She saw him again in her memory. The last time they’d spoken. He’d been in his blue scrubs, and she’d been walking away from him after giving in her notice at the hospital. She’d already had her interview with Lynsey and everything had been set up for her journey to Vinalhaven. But Lars hadn’t known that.
He’d followed her down the corridor and touched her arm. Forced her to turn around.
‘How can I help?’ he’d asked, quite simply. She hadn’t been able to bear to look at the compassion in his eyes. He felt sorry for her. But she didn’t deserve it.
She had shaken her head, tight-lipped, terrified she might break down and sob in the middle of the hospital lobby. A place lots of people cried, thick with suffering and loss, but she couldn’t let her professional veneer slip. Not there.
‘I’m here for you,’ he said, touching her hand lightly. ‘Please let me in.’
‘I can’t,’ she had croaked, shaking her head at him.
‘Emer, Orla wouldn’t have wanted this.’ He looked into her eyes, and it was all she could do to stop herself from falling into his arms. ‘You won’t let me near you since she passed away.’
‘I should have been there, with her,’ she managed to whisper.
‘Emer, darling,’ he said, ‘it’s not your fault.’
Someone was calling him. He was needed on ward, but Lars held her gaze.
‘I’ll call you later,’ he said. ‘I’ll come over, we’ll talk.’
But when he’d called that night, she’d already left. Said her goodbyes to Ethan and walked away from the house in Quincy.
‘I went over to your house, but Ethan had gone,’ Lars said on the phone now. ‘The neighbours said back to New York. Where are you?’
‘I’m on an island.’
‘In Ireland?’ he asked. ‘I can take some time off. Fly over…’
‘No. I’m not in Ireland. I’m on Vinalhaven; it’s an island off the coast of Maine.’
‘What are you doing there?’
‘I’ve a job. I’m looking after an old lady who has pancreatic cancer. Helping manage her pain relief.’
There was a pause. Emer imagined putting her hand on Lars’ heart, feeling its steady beat.
‘Do you think that’s a good idea, after everything you’ve been through with Orla?’
‘I just can’t be in Boston, Lars. Working every day in the hospital where she was… I can’t…’
She could feel the hysteria rising in her chest and she forced it down.
‘I get it.’ He paused. ‘I’ve got some time off. We could go somewhere. A place you’ve never been.’
‘It’s no good,’ she said, her voice breaking despite herself. ‘Don’t you see? How could it ever work between us? I was with you when I should have been with Orla. She must have been so frightened and I wasn’t there for her.’
‘But Emer, please…’
‘It’s never going to work between us, don’t you see? What we have will always be tainted.’
‘You can’t mean that?’ She could hear the disbelief in his voice and it broke her heart.
‘I’ve got to go,’ she said, whispering, ‘sorry,’ before she cut him off.
She waited for him to ring back, but he didn’t. She sat on the quilted bedspread and stared at her phone, willing it to ring, although knowing she wouldn’t answer it again. But the phone remained silent. She threw it on the floor. He’d given up on her, finally. She should be relieved. She’d told him it could never work, and yet her heart was breaking all over again. She threw herself face-first on the bedspread. Buried her face in its soft contours and sobbed, clutching on to its trimmed ends. She let her grief rip loose as a loud wail escaped her mouth. She listened to her own crying, and tried to soothe herself. Soften your hands, child. Was it her mother or Orla speaking to her? Let go.
She released her hold on the quilt, but as she did so, she felt an opening in the seam and something hard inside it. She sat up and pulled the edge of the quilt towards her. Examined the seams. It was ripped. No, not ripped – the opening was too neat for that, and about the size of her hand. She pushed her hand into it and felt her fingers touch paper. She pulled the paper out and unfolded it. It was a letter, dating back to 1958 and addressed to Dearest Katie. Without reading the whole letter, she scanned the neat black script to see who it was from, already suspecting the answer. Sure enough, it was signed ‘your sister, Susie’, the capital ‘S’ an exuberant flourish, contrary to Emer’s perception of Susannah’s personality. Emer pushed her hand inside the quilt again, pulling out letter after letter. She stacked them up, putting them in date order, while managing not to read a word of the content, which was clearly private. When she’d finished, Emer thought about bringing the letters to Susannah. But considering Susannah’s mental state at the grave, it was possible that these missives from the past could make her feel worse. Even so, they were her letters to her sister, and she might not even know they were there in the quilt.
Emer lifted the stack of letters off the bed, placed them on the dressing table and stared at them. What should she do? Stuff them back in the quilt? Try to forget she ever found them? Tell Susannah, and risk distressing
the old lady further? Or read them herself? If she knew what was in the letters, perhaps she could work out when the best time to give them to Susannah would be. Maybe she would find out why Susannah was so defensive and bad-tempered all the time. But that would be a terrible invasion of privacy.
Emer circled the room before picking the letters up again. She took them towards the bed to stuff them back into the quilt. It would be a terrible betrayal of her position as Susannah’s nurse to read them. But as she reached the bed, one of the letters fluttered off the top of the pile and onto the wooden floor. As Emer bent to pick it up, she couldn’t help but read the first line, and then she was hooked.
13
Susannah
October 20th, 1958
Harvard, Cambridge
Dearest Katie,
I am in love! Before you get too excited, it’s with a place, not a person, but truly I am besotted with Harvard. I keep thinking I’m in a dream. I wish you could see how different it is here. There’s all this history going all the way back. Most of the buildings are redbrick and, I’ve been told, are just like the houses in England from the seventeen-hundreds. Sometimes I just walk around Harvard Square again and again, breathing in all the learned minds from the past. Reminds me of when you talk about how much you love Vinalhaven, the rocks and the sea, the big skies and tall trees. Now I get it, Katie. This is my haven! The old brick sidewalks full of puddles and wet leaves are my pathway through the woods. The libraries, oh my, it’s a cathedral of books. I want to read them all. I rush to the history shelves as if I’m on a first date. Climb the ladders to the highest stacks, just like you love climbing up Amherst, standing on top of the granite slabs and looking at the world beyond our island life. Harvard is like an island within a very big city, but it is a sanctuary all the same.
I’m up early every day, helping dress and get breakfast for Joshua and Nathan, the two Whittard boys. Professor Whittard is a physicist and, as you know, lectures at Harvard. The man is a genius but all the same very friendly, and his wife is so kind. But Katie, you wouldn’t believe the size of their house. I think it must be at least three times the size of ours. The kitchen is immense, and they also have a housekeeper who lives in. So instead of rent, I help her out. She’s a very nice black lady called Gertrude from down south. Miles away in Philadelphia, I think she told me. Well, I could listen to her talk all day, Katie. I just love her accent. She has to cook the kind of food the family like. Meat pies and potatoes and all that, but sometimes she’ll make some cornbread and it’s the best bread I have ever eaten. Imagine my shock when I found out she has two teenage boys of her own back home, living with her parents. Her husband died in the Korean war, so she has to provide for them all. Isn’t that just so sad? I know people have it tough on the island, we’re not rich like my Cambridge family, but at least mothers don’t have to leave their children. I think a lot about what Mother went through to bring us up. Now we are apart I can love her better. I miss her a little, but most of all I miss you!
My favourite times are the mornings I walk to lectures. All the foliage on the trees is glorious. I feel part of the change in the seasons, because I am changing too. There are still more boys than girls in the lectures, but we girls are connected. Even if we sit apart, we acknowledge each other. Each one of us an island in the sea of male voices! It feels so special to be part of a new generation of women who are independent and have something to contribute to academia in our own right. We are few, but we are steadfast! Just like our island at home, a rock of hard granite, which no number of nor’easters could ever blow away.
Sometimes after lectures, I don’t go to the library but spend the little bit of free time I have sitting in a café and drinking a cup of coffee. I know you might think it odd a girl would sit on her own and look out of the window at all the hustle and bustle of the streets of Harvard, but I love to watch the people. There are so many different kinds here. From all over the world; it is so wonderful. I imagine all their homelands and the different foods they eat and religions they follow. How I dream of travelling beyond America and seeing the whole wide world. But also, I love sitting in my café window, watching the regular folk at work, driving buses, taxi drivers honking at each other, delivery men and construction workers. I like listening to the chat in the café, and watching all the other students weighted down by their study books as they rush to a tutorial or lecture.
Would you like to be here too, Katie? If you work hard this year, maybe you could go to college too? You’ve only one year left in high school, so why not give it your best? I know you can do it. Might it be wise to stay in on Sundays and study? I know you are keen on Matthew Young, but believe me, there’s a big world out here and so many boys who will fall in love with you at the drop of a hat. We could save up for you to come visit me and I can show you all my favourite nooks in Harvard. The Whittards are good people; I’m sure they’d be happy for you to share my bed. Oh, wouldn’t that be so swell?
Time now to get back to my studying (the Reformation in Europe) while sitting in my beloved library as I write to you. But please think about your future, because this year is so important for you, Katie. Don’t let others tell you that you’re not clever enough to go to college. I know you the best, and I know you can do it. If you need me to talk to Mother for you and persuade her, I’ll come home, I promise, and do it at Thanksgiving. Just write me.
Give my love to Mother, and lots of love to you too!
Susannah folded the letter up and put it in the envelope. She’d post it first thing tomorrow. In her heart, she knew Kate would no sooner apply to go to college at Harvard or anywhere else than she would go to the North Pole. Of course, she was clever, but she didn’t work hard enough. The only shot Susannah had had was to get a scholarship, and she had had to work day and night the last few months to get the grades to even be considered. Kate was too distracted by Matthew Young to study. The first letter Kate had sent just the day before had been full of him. What Matthew wanted was to build his own house on a tiny islet that his family owned across the water from Lane’s Island Bridge Cove. Matthew wanted to have his own pleasure boat one day, to take his future family out. Matthew wanted to go hunting with Silas this season and Kate was hoping they’d be successful and bring back a deer. He gets so sick of fish! Kate had written. But where were her sister’s wants in all the tales of Matthew Young? He’s so good to me, she wrote, describing a bracelet he had bought for her in Rockland when he’d gone for fishing supplies. Mother and I are making him new nets, she wrote, as if it was a good thing. Susannah felt annoyed. The nets must be saving Matthew Young a fair bit, and were another task which distracted her sister from school. She also felt cross with her mother. Shouldn’t she have Kate’s best interests at heart? But it seemed their mother thought Matthew Young a marvel.
Mom says it’s great to have a man about the house again, Kate gushed. Remember the leaking tap in the kitchen sink? Well, Matt fixed it for us! Mom was so pleased.
Susannah closed her eyes for a moment and pictured the kitchen in the house in Vinalhaven, with the old electric stove and the big sink they’d bathed in as babies. That tap had dripped for years. It was the sound of their home. She felt annoyance at the fact an outsider had come in and fixed it, which was dumb of course, but she couldn’t help it. Of course Mom and Kate didn’t think Matthew Young was an outsider. They thought he was the best thing ever. She’d tried to like him, for Kate’s sake. But during those last weeks of summer before she’d left for Harvard, Susannah had really grown to dislike him strongly. She didn’t like the way he patronised them all, talking down to them just because they were women. She particularly disliked how he called Kate ‘baby’ and ‘little bird’, and how he addressed their mother as ‘Judith’ rather than ‘Mrs Olsen’. Susannah was certain if there’d been a man about the house, Matthew Young would not have taken such liberties sitting down at the head of their table and eating the biggest slice of pie every night. Worst of all, he took Kate away from
her all the time. Whenever Susannah had suggested she and Kate go bathing in one of the old granite quarries or picking berries again, Kate would invite Matthew too. Once, she had even asked Susannah if she wanted Silas to come and was surprised by Susannah’s vehement, ‘No way!’ The only time they had free together was when Matthew was out lobstering. Most of the other fishermen, including Silas, went to bed at four in the afternoon so they could get up early, but not Matthew. All summer he had seemed to be fuelled on so little sleep. Kate had confided he said being with her made him feel rested, but Susannah knew it was a game he was playing. His only real competition for Kate was not another boy, but Susannah. Her theory had been proved correct when Kate had complained in her letter that Matthew wasn’t spending as much time with her as he had during the summer. The darker mornings meant he needed to get to bed good and early. But Susannah knew it was because she was out of the picture. Or so he thought.
Susannah sighed and opened her eyes. She looked at the clock on the wall. It was time to go. She was babysitting for the Whittards tonight, as they were going to a cocktail party and it was Gertrude’s night off. Besides, the boys had asked for her. They both loved their books and she was looking forward to reading the next instalment of Treasure Island to them.
Outside, the wind had intensified, sending the fallen leaves into aerial whirlpools of gold and red foliage. She buttoned up her coat, pulling on her gloves before wrapping her blue scarf around her neck. It was already getting dark and she berated herself for being so slow getting her things together. The Whittards were expecting her and she didn’t want to make them late for their party. Just as she was about to cross the road, her scarf blew up into her face. She should have stopped, but she was in such a rush she stepped off the sidewalk all the same. She heard the screech of brakes and felt a strong jerk as someone grabbed her arm and pulled her back. Losing her balance, she dropped all her books on the sidewalk and fell over onto her backside. The car she had just missed walking into honked loudly before taking off again.
The Island Girls: A heartbreaking historical novel Page 11