The Island Girls: A heartbreaking historical novel

by Noelle Harrison

  ‘Are you okay?’

  She saw the girl’s eyes first. So dark, almost inky blue-black.

  ‘What happened?’ Susannah asked shakily as the girl helped her up.

  ‘Well, you nearly got run over,’ the girl said, picking up her books. She was shorter than her, but Susannah could see strength in her body as she piled up Susannah’s library stash. ‘I pulled you back just in time.’

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ Susannah said. ‘I wasn’t thinking straight…’

  ‘Yeah, lots of students get knocked down, especially round exam time!’

  Susannah tried to pick up her books, but her arms felt weak and her legs were wobbly.

  ‘Hey, take it easy, you’ve had a shock.’

  ‘I’ve got to be somewhere. I can’t be late.’

  ‘I can help you. I’ll carry your books and you tell me where we’re going.’

  Susannah was amazed by such generosity from another girl. A boy might help you in the same way, but then usually he’d be looking for a date.

  ‘Say, what’s your name? Mine’s Ava Greenman.’

  Straight dark hair with bangs framing her eyes, the same colour. Mouth ever so slightly open, smiling. Susannah had never seen a girl like her before.

  It had stopped raining, although it was still gusty, which made it easier to talk. Ava was a freshman as well. Had just started a degree in law, on a scholarship too.

  ‘No one goes to college where I come from,’ she explained. ‘It was like everyone was part of it, you know, when I got in. One big party when I left.’

  ‘Where did you grow up?’ Susannah asked her.

  ‘Washington State, north of Seattle.’

  ‘That’s a long way from Harvard.’

  ‘You’re telling me. Took three days on the Greyhound bus.’ Ava whistled. ‘Boy was that some trip.’

  ‘It must have been awfully boring.’

  ‘You know, it wasn’t so bad. I got to meet a lot of interesting folk and I saw a lot of scenery. Did you know the middle of America is one big plain that goes on and on and on and on…?’

  Susannah started giggling. ‘I’ve never been anywhere but here and Vinalhaven, where I was born.’

  ‘And where is Vinalhaven? It sounds very idyllic,’ Ava said as they walked in step along the sidewalk.

  ‘It’s an island, about five hours on the bus north. And then you have to take a ferry.’

  ‘So I guess we both are from the sea, but opposite sides of the country. You’re the Atlantic and I’m the Pacific.’ Ava smiled at her. She had a very warm, generous smile, with perfectly straight white teeth.

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  Ava shifted the weight of Emer’s books to her other arm. ‘Well, I’m bigger for a start, and I think deeper, and you can get very, very lost in me.’

  Susannah felt herself blushing for some reason.

  ‘But the Atlantic is wild. Big storms!’ Ava enthused.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Susannah groaned.

  By now they had reached the Whittards’ mansion. It felt as if the walk had gone in an instant.

  ‘Well, this is me,’ Susannah explained, pointing to the front porch.

  ‘You live here?’ Ava looked impressed.

  ‘I look after the kids in exchange for board and lodging.’

  ‘That’s great,’ Ava said. ‘I’m in student halls. Women only, with a curfew of ten o’clock every single night. It’s like being in prison. Still, it’s better than being back home.’

  ‘Yeah, anything is better than being back home,’ Susannah said vehemently, taking the books from Ava.

  There was an awkward pause. She sensed Ava wanted her to say something, but she couldn’t invite her in.

  ‘Say, would you like to go to Club 47 with me Sunday afternoon?’

  Susannah had no idea what Club 47 was, but had a feeling she should. ‘Sure,’ she said, feeling herself blush.

  ‘Joan Baez is playing. Have you heard of her?’

  Susannah looked up to see Ava’s excited expression.

  ‘She is totally awesome. Mostly it’s jazz at Club 47, but she’s different. Sings about important stuff.’

  ‘That sounds great,’ Susannah said, wondering what the important stuff was.

  ‘Shall I see you there?’ Ava asked. ‘Around three o’clock.’

  ‘Sure,’ Susannah said. ‘Thanks again.’

  ‘I’m glad we met!’

  Ava gave her a small wave goodbye as she crossed the road and walked away. Susannah returned the wave, excited to have made her first Harvard friend.

  The hall was in darkness as Susannah stepped inside the Whittards’ front door. She could hear the boys in the kitchen with Gertrude, and the parents upstairs getting ready, but she didn’t call out that she was back. Not yet. She held her books tight to her chest, the ones Ava Greenman had carried all the way home for her. Ava was such a beautiful girl, so unusual. Susannah could still hear her laugh. They had talked so easily. Susannah felt as if she’d known Ava all her life, not just one hour. She couldn’t wait until Sunday when she’d see her again, and not only that – in a jazz club. Imagine if Kate could see her now!

  14

  Emer

  21st October 2011

  It had taken six days of asking, six days of watching Susannah struggle with pain and fatigue at her typewriter, before she had finally agreed to let Emer help her.

  ‘What I’m typing is very personal,’ Susannah said, eyeing Emer from her armchair as she set up her laptop on Susannah’s desk. ‘You’ve got to promise not to talk to anyone about it.’

  ‘Sure,’ Emer said. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’

  Susannah sank back into her armchair, looking relieved.

  ‘It’s better for me to save it on my laptop as well,’ Emer said to her. ‘Then we can put it on a memory stick for you and print out a hard copy.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Susannah said. ‘I want the girls to have a copy each. One for Lynsey and one for Rebecca.’

  The blanket had slipped off Susannah’s knees, and Emer went over and picked up it up, tucking it around her again. She could sense the older woman’s body was tight with pain.

  ‘Can I get you anything?’ she asked Susannah.

  ‘No, I’m fine thank you,’ Susannah said, closing her eyes.

  ‘Let me give you some medication to ease—’

  ‘No,’ Susannah said sharply, opening her eyes. ‘It dulls my mind.’

  ‘Fine,’ Emer said, trying not to get annoyed by the imperious tone of Susannah’s voice.

  ‘I’m okay,’ Susannah said, her voice softening. ‘I appreciate your help.’ She gave Emer a crooked smile, although Emer could see the discomfort in her eyes. ‘You remind me of my sister, Kate,’ she said. ‘She was a carer, too. Always thinking of others.’

  Emer thought of the letters in the quilt on her bed upstairs. She had only read three of them so far. She was trying her best not to continue, but young Susannah and her sister Kate had leapt out at her from the pages. She felt as if she’d met Kate, and she longed to know what had happened to her. She knew she should tell Susannah she’d found the letters. Did Susannah even know they were there? All the letters were addressed from Susannah to Kate. She concluded it must have been Kate who had put the letters inside the quilt. They could have been hidden for years.

  Susannah put on her glasses again, and picked up one of the stack of papers on the table next to her. ‘Let me explain what I want you to do,’ she said to Emer.

  Emer went back to her laptop and sat poised, with her fingers hovering above the keyboard.

  ‘I have been organising all the letters my sister sent me during the time I was away from Vinalhaven,’ Susannah continued.

  Emer sat up with a jolt. Surely now was the time to tell Susannah about her letters to Kate, tucked away in the quilt upstairs? But she was sure Susannah would be furious with her for concealing her discovery. At least for today, she wanted to enjoy their new companionship. Sh
e’d wait and pretend to find them in a few days’ time. Although, if she was honest, it was because she wanted time to read them all.

  ‘These letters are private correspondence from my sister to me,’ Susannah said. ‘No one else has read them, but I want to pass them on to Lynsey and Rebecca when I’m gone.’

  Emer wondered why Susannah had never shown the letters to her nieces before.

  ‘For years, I wondered whether I should share the letters with the girls,’ Susannah said, as if reading Emer’s mind. ‘But I’ve always tried to protect them from the truth about their mother and father.’

  Emer felt a cold shiver down her spine at the change of tone in Susannah’s voice.

  ‘They’d lost both of their parents in tragic circumstances,’ she said. ‘I thought it was better to look to the future rather dwell on the past. For a start, they had my mother to deal with as well.’ Susannah sighed. ‘Not long after Kate passed away, my mother began to develop dementia. I think it was the shock of losing her youngest child.’ Susannah shook her head sadly. ‘She’d forget Kate was gone, and nearly every day we’d have to tell her she was dead. It was very hard for me, and in particular for Lynsey and Rebecca, to live with.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Emer said.

  ‘That’s why I encouraged the girls to leave Vinalhaven,’ Susannah said. ‘Get away from all the stories and gossip about their parents, and my poor mother ranting on about it. She was in that state for years. Absolute hell for her.’

  ‘That’s terrible,’ Emer said.

  ‘My mother only died eight years ago,’ Susannah said. ‘Imagine all that time, every day, finding out your child has died?’

  It sounded horrific. Emer hadn’t liked the sound of Susannah’s mother from the letters she’d read, but now she found herself feeling sorry for her.

  Susannah gave a big sigh, and picked up the first letter on the pile.

  ‘Well, let’s start from the beginning again since you’re putting it all on the computer,’ she said. ‘I’ve organised the letters in order. So this is the first one Kate sent me after I arrived in Harvard. It’s dated October 18th, 1958.’

  Susannah read the letter out in a steady voice, careful not to betray the emotion she must have been feeling as Emer began to type. Strictly speaking, as her nurse, Emer should have been advising her to take more rest, not push herself, but it was quite clear these letters were Susannah’s legacy to her two nieces. As the hours passed, the older woman’s intense focus on her project reminded Emer of the times she’d watched Orla painting when she’d come home from nursing college at the weekends. During Orla’s Leaving Cert, when their mammy had been at the beginning of her chemo, she had let Orla take over the good room and turn it into a painting studio of sorts. Their father had given out, but Mam was right, the room was never used. Emer remembered the glee with which her mother and sister had stripped all the furniture of its plastic coverings and opened up the dusty curtains. Emptied the sideboard of glasses, plates and useless Feeney knick-knacks, before filling it with all of Orla’s art materials.

  Emer remembered there had been one drawer full of leaves that her sister had dried in the autumn, and flower heads she’d picked. She had been particularly obsessed with red roses and Emer could still conjure that intense perfume of drying roses from all those years ago. Another drawer had been full of stones she’d collected in the woods. Orla prided herself on her collection of witches’ stones, as she called them, which were small stones with natural holes all the way through them. She used to make them into necklaces and give them to all her friends at school. Emer had liked nothing better than to curl up on a beanbag in the corner of the room after a busy week at her nursing studies in Dublin and watch her sister create – painting, making witches’ stone necklaces, using all her materials from nature to create artwork. It had relaxed Emer, and often she’d fall asleep, to be woken by the squeaking and scratching of the bats in their attic. The good room would be in darkness and Orla gone. Only then would Emer go look at her sister’s pictures. They were all stories, taken from where they lived. The big lime tree in the middle of a circle of faery-sprites, mist curling off the lake with the white pooka horse at its shoreline, yellow eyes staring out of the frame and making Emer shiver. The two white swans which came to nest every year taking flight above the rippling lake. Orla had told her she believed them descendants of the swan-children of Lir, flying off to the sea of Moyle after three hundred years, and now returned to their lake to sing of peace and harmony to the two sisters. The pictures had such presence, it felt as if they were alive in the good room with her. Part of her was in awe at her sister’s talent, but a small part also envied it. Orla possessed something so special. Everyone in the family said how talented she was. But Emer was ordinary.

  It was only when Ethan had been packing up to move to New York that he had given Emer the drawings. A whole sketchbook full of charcoal studies of her – Emer – looking out of the window of their childhood good room, and asleep on the beanbag, all those years ago. Her heart had skipped a beat and she’d given a little cry.

  ‘They’re brilliant, aren’t they?’ Ethan said, looking at her with big sad eyes.

  ‘I’ve never seen them before,’ she whispered.

  Her sister had perfectly captured the essence of her. Even at the time in their lives when they had been constantly bickering, these drawings revealed that deep down, Orla had seen her. Emer was curled like a cat on the beanbag, in the manner in which she’d always slept, but it was the studies of her looking out of the window which were so telling. Her expression one of a girl who never dared to dream.

  That was why she’d chosen nursing. It had been safe, and she’d loved her training in the Mater Hospital in Dublin. Really had believed she was going to stay in Ireland forever. Her mam had always said she was a little homebody. But when their mam passed away, Orla had gone to teach English in Croatia and her dad had started seeing Sharon, Emer had felt completely at sea. She was still single, having never managed a proper relationship with anyone.

  When Orla met Ethan crewing yachts along the coast of Croatia and curtailed her European trip to live with him in Boston, for the first time, Emer considered leaving Ireland despite the fact she was still at nursing college. Their mam had been born in New York to Irish parents, who’d moved back to Dublin soon after, but this meant both sisters had been able to get American passports before they were eighteen.

  ‘It’s a waste not to take advantage of it,’ Orla persuaded her. ‘After you finish your nursing degree, you can come for a month or two. Go home if you hate it.’

  After graduating, Emer had got a job at the Mater Hospital in Dublin, worked there for a couple of years. But she’d missed Orla badly, and in the end had gone out to join her. She’d only been planning to work at Mass Gen for two or three years. Return to Ireland and pick up where she’d left off at the Mater. But then Orla got sick and Emer wanted to support her. She stayed through all the rounds of chemotherapy, and celebrated with Orla when she went into remission. They planned a trip to Mexico together for the November. But in August, Orla started feeling sick again. The cancer was back. This time it had spread to her lymph nodes. It was everywhere. In Emer’s mind, her sister’s cancer had been a black cloud which had never gone away, billowing toxic in Orla’s body.

  It was also during August, at the worst time of her life, that Emer had first met Lars.

  Had he been the one? As Emer continued to type, listening to Susannah read out Kate’s letters, she became immersed in the romantic aspirations of Susannah’s younger sister. Kate clearly believed in the one. Matthew was her true love, as she kept telling Susannah. But despite saying nothing to her, Emer could detect a tone in Susannah’s voice whenever Matthew was mentioned in one of Kate’s letters. It was clear Susannah had not liked Matthew. Did she blame him for her sister’s early death? What had happened to them?

  15

  Susannah

  November 6th, 1958

 
Harvard, Cambridge

  Dearest Katie,

  Sorry I’ve missed our weekly letter exchange for two weeks. Back home on our island, I was always trying to make time go faster. How many long, boring walks did I take up and down Amherst Hill, staring out to sea and waiting for my life to start? Well, it has started at last and it’s going at such a speed.

  You asked about the Whittard household in your last letter. Every day is busy in this family, but I am very happy in my little room in the eaves of their very big house. Katie, it’s an absolute mansion with such a big garden you can’t see the end of it! They are good people. Professor Whittard can be a little aloof, but he is after all a very clever man, and mostly his head is in all his theories and important calculations. Really, I can’t imagine. You know I am an historian and science has always confused me somewhat. The boys are boisterous, of course. Nathan is eight, and Joshua ten years old, but they are good boys and in the main do what they are told. They both love books and stories and I am enjoying reading them all our old classics at bedtime. Their favourite is The Call of the Wild. I was a little worried the story would be too adult for them, but the boys loved it. The idea of the story being told from the point of view of a dog really appealed to them. When I read it again, I was struck how the story mirrors all the research I have begun on European witch trials. Like Buck, the dog in The Call of the Wild, the women accused of witchcraft were those who didn’t fit in. They wanted to run with the wolves, Katie. But society (the other dogs) wished to destroy them.