The Island Girls: A heartbreaking historical novel

by Noelle Harrison

  My lecturer is from Norway and she’s a woman too! Her name is Hanna Anberg, and I think when I am her age I would like to be just like her. She wears these fabulous Norwegian sweaters with brightly coloured patterns on them. Oh, you would love them, Katie. I keep meaning to build up the courage to ask her what the patterns are called and where I might get one for you. Dr Anberg has studied all over the world. Norway, of course, but also she has studied at Oxford in England, and written a paper on Matthew Hopkins, who was a terrible witch-hunter at the time of the English Civil War. She also lived in Florence in Italy to research witch persecutions, in Munich in Germany, and in Edinburgh in Scotland. She’s a sort of witch trial detective with a mission to explode all the myths and get to the truth of why the witch hunts happened. She’s here at Harvard researching the persecutions in Salem. Remember we did them at school? It’s fascinating, and I know this is just one of my courses in the whole of the history degree, but I am already certain I’m going to write my final papers on something to do with witch trials.

  Okay, I guess you’re pretty bored by now! And really all you want to know about is Mrs Whittard and all her pretty clothes, right? Boy, she really does have a lot of them! Every week there’s a social, whether a cocktail party or a dinner, and Mrs Whittard (her name is Jean but I always call her Mrs Whittard) dresses up in a new frock every time. Her family must be wealthy because I don’t think her husband’s salary could stretch to all her furs and silks. I think her most spectacular outfit was a gold sheath dress she wore with high-heeled shoes in gold satin, a gold purse all sparkly, and so many jewels it was blinding. It was a bit much for me. But I do like her rhinestone-studded housecoat. She got the idea from this television programme called I Love Lucy with a funny actress called Lucille Ball in it. (The Whittards have a television, Katie!) Well, she wears this black rhinestone-studded housecoat, which has capri pants as part of it, and a turban on her head. It looks super, Katie. Now that would suit me perfectly. When Mrs Whittard put on her housecoat, Professor Whittard didn’t like it all. I heard him say to her he couldn’t see her legs and it wasn’t feminine enough!

  But best of all is Gertrude. It’s like she understands how you’re feeling without you having to tell her. Sometimes I do get homesick. Yes, I do! I miss you so much and she always knows without me saying it. Gets me to sit down with her and have a glass of milk and one of her cookies, and play a game of gin rummy after the boys have been put to bed.

  But now I come to the most exciting part of my letter, and the reason I’ve been bad at letter writing. A friend of mine called Ava, who literally saved my life one day (I will tell you the story when I come home for Thanksgiving) has introduced me to place called Club 47, where we’ve gone the last two Sunday afternoons to listen to music. Both times another student called Joan Baez sang and played her guitar. Oh, she is quite incredible, Katie. At first I didn’t like her so much. Her voice is very high and it can really get inside your head, and I’d never heard music like it – Ava says it’s folk – but then I started listening to all the words and they were so powerful. She writes about how it is to be a woman in a man’s world, and she doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her! At Club 47 I’ve met lots of young people who want to change things in America for the better. Give black people like Gertrude equal rights to white people. It’s so important, Katie, don’t you think? I never really thought about it until I came to Harvard but I had never seen a black person before until I arrived in Boston. Everyone on Vinalhaven is white. Why do you think that is? Maybe it’s just because the black people don’t want to live there?

  Write back soon, do, dear sister. I’m keen to hear how your last year at school is going. I am sorry I upset you in my last letter going on about college. You’re right, just because it’s my dream, it doesn’t have to be yours. We do all have different talents. But Katie, I was thinking, what about coming to Cambridge when you finish school and working in one of the stores? Wouldn’t that be swell? I could get a job in a coffee shop near college and we could get our own place. You could learn all about fashion in the store, and make clothes at night. We could sell them! There is so much opportunity, really, Cambridge is the place to be right now. I want to share it with you so much.

  November 16th, 1958

  Ava was waiting for her on the sidewalk and together they went down the steps into Club 47. The past two Sundays Susannah had skipped dinner at the Whittards’ to meet up with her new best friend. Ava had opened her world up. Not just to the new folk music, which Susannah loved with a passion, but also to the injustices going on in her own country every single day. If she was going to make her study of witch trials relevant, she had to acknowledge this truth. As soon as she’d told Ava her interests, her friend had asked her if she’d read or seen the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller, about the Salem witch trials.

  ‘The whole play is an allegory for the McCarthy trials,’ Ava told her.

  Susannah was embarrassed to admit not only had she not read The Crucible, but she didn’t know what the McCarthy trials were.

  ‘I guess you would have been a kid when they went on; my dad told me all about them because he had friends working on the sets in Hollywood and they told him about writers and directors who got blacklisted,’ Ava told her. ‘It was a very aggressive campaign led by a senator called Joseph McCarthy, accusing people of being communists.’

  ‘I know about the communists,’ Susannah had said. ‘I mean, that was a real threat.’

  Ava cocked her head on one side. ‘You think? Really?’

  Susannah was shocked but also a little excited by Ava’s brazenness. What if they were overheard? They could be accused of anti-American talk.

  ‘In my opinion, it suits the government just fine if they make people scared of communists, and black people, and women even,’ Ava said. ‘That’s how they keep us down!’

  At Club 47, the girls drank red wine, smoked cigarettes and listened to Joan Baez’s political ballads. Ava had lots of friends, girls and boys, and both Sundays after the music they all headed off to one of the coffee houses and talked until late into the night. Some couples got together, but that wasn’t the most important thing about hanging out. Susannah loved it. She was listened to by boys, not because they wanted to date her, but because they thought she had something interesting to say.

  She had tried to communicate her excitement at her transformation to Kate, but when her sister wrote back, she didn’t seem to understand any of the new experiences Susannah described. In response to Susannah’s idea that she come to Cambridge and work in a store, Kate told her she couldn’t leave their mom all on her own on the island. This made Susannah feel guilty, although Kate reassured her she didn’t want to live in the city.

  We’re different, Susie, remember. I need to be on the island to be happy, Kate wrote to her. Walking in the woods is my socialising, the trees are my friends, and listening to the sea as it laps against Lane’s Island Bridge Cove is my music. I don’t need to be in coffee houses or clubs to be happy. And wearing something pretty I’ve made for Matthew is enough dressing up for me. Please don’t worry. I am content here, and excited to soon be done with school.

  Susannah had planned to go home for Thanksgiving, but the Whittards asked her to help Gertrude because they had family visiting.

  ‘We were going to hire help,’ Mrs Whittard told her, ‘but Peter thought you might be glad of a few extra dollars.’

  Susannah couldn’t turn down the money. She needed every cent for her new social life with Ava.

  ‘Are you going home for Thanksgiving?’ Susannah asked Ava. She was going to be flat-out at the Whittards’ all day, but if Ava was around, maybe they could meet up later in the evening? Ava gave her a funny look.

  ‘It’s not a date my family celebrate.’

  ‘Oh. Why?’ Susannah thought every American celebrated Thanksgiving.

  ‘I’ll tell you about it another time.’ Ava shrugged. ‘But no, I’m going to be here.’

 
; Thanksgiving, November 27th, 1958

  They arranged to go for an evening stroll. The moon was full, but it was terribly cold. Susannah hadn’t even thought about the consequences of walking in such cold without being able to dive into a coffee house. But all their regular places were closed for Thanksgiving.

  ‘I think it’s going to snow,’ Susannah said to Ava.

  ‘How’d you know?’

  ‘I can smell it!’

  Ava gave a quick laugh. ‘Doesn’t snow much on Puget Sound.’

  ‘I can tell by your coat!’ Susannah put her arm around Ava to stop her from shaking.

  ‘We have to find somewhere warm, else we’d better go home.’

  ‘We could go to mine,’ Ava suggested. ‘My roommate has gone home for Thanksgiving and most of the girls are away. We could play records.’

  The girls linked arms and made their way across Harvard Square in the stark brittle air. Susannah fell in step with Ava. She had never felt so close to anyone else before, not even Kate.

  In Ava’s tiny room, Susannah marvelled how two girls managed to share such a small space.

  ‘Rosie isn’t here often,’ Ava explained. ‘Her parents have an apartment in downtown Boston and she stays there a lot.’

  Susannah sat down on Ava’s bed, while her friend put on a record. Woody Guthrie, one of her folk heroes.

  The two of them sang along together, beaming at each other.

  ‘We sound like two screeching cats!’ Ava laughed.

  ‘Speak for yourself.’ Susannah nudged her.

  Ava caught Susannah’s hand in hers. Wrapped her fingers around it. The mood changed instantly. Susannah’s breath shortened, and she was aware of every muscle in her body tensing.

  ‘I’ve never met a girl like you, Susannah,’ Ava said to her.

  ‘Sure you have!’ Susannah brushed her off, feeling heat rising to her cheeks. ‘I’m very average.’

  Ava shook her head. ‘Well, you know Miss Susannah Olsen, that just isn’t true.’ Ava let go of her hand. ‘Let me turn the record. The B-side is just as good. ‘

  She got up off the bed, and Susannah instantly felt bereft. All she wanted was to hold Ava’s hand again.

  She watched Ava as she lifted the record off the turntable. She was wearing a red sweater and a plain black skirt and stockings. No shoes on. Her hair was loose and fell in a long stream of ebony down her back. Susannah felt an ache throughout her whole body. Ava was the most beautiful person she had ever seen. She looked away, out of the window of the tiny room.

  ‘Oh, it’s snowing! Ava, come look.’ Susannah knelt on the bed, pointing out of the window.

  Ava jumped onto the bed next to her, and the two girls looked out at swirling snowflakes. How quickly it blanketed the trees and houses, the cars, the whole street in virgin snow, falling thick and fast.

  They sat in silence, watching winter’s magic unfurl before them.

  ‘I will never forget this moment,’ Susannah whispered. ‘It has to be the best in my life so far.’

  ‘Me too,’ Ava whispered back.

  They turned to look at each other. Ava’s dark hair was thrown into contrast by the falling snow outside her window. Her dark eyes even darker against the white.

  ‘You can’t walk home, the snow is already too thick,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to telephone the Whittards. Tell them you’re staying with a friend tonight.’ She sat back on the bed, crossed her legs. ‘There’s a telephone in the hall downstairs.’

  ‘Okay,’ Susannah said, her heart beginning to race again.

  ‘But before you do, let’s dance!’ Ava slipped off the bed and turned up the music. She held out her hand and without thinking, Susannah took it.

  16

  Emer

  26th October 2011

  It was their third afternoon hike together. Henry had promised to take Emer to his five top places on Vinalhaven in ascending order of preference. On their first afternoon together, they had walked the two-mile loop trail in Huber Preserve, crossing wetlands to walk up a slope with views overlooking Burnt Island and Penobscot Bay, both a giant’s hop from the shore. Another afternoon, while Susannah had her rest time, Henry brought Emer to Starboard Rock Sanctuary. She had been entranced by the views from the cliff top. Interlacings of land and sea, dramatic outcroppings of granite and canopies of huge spruce trees. Henry’s third favourite place on the island was the Watershed Preserve, a little further inland and a few miles north of the ferry.

  ‘What happens when we get to number one?’ she’d asked him.

  ‘Well, the time after we’ll take my boat to North Haven,’ Henry said, grinning at her. ‘I know a great restaurant there. Not as good as mine, but nearly!’

  ‘You’ve got a boat?’ she said, feeling a little clench of nerves in the pit of her belly, and ignoring the mention of a restaurant. Had he just asked her on a date? Were these hikes dates?

  ‘Sure, every man needs a boat on Vinalhaven, fisherman or no.’ He pushed his hand through his thick brown hair to get it out of his eyes. It gleamed auburn and magenta in the fall light. ‘It’s real small. Just a dinghy with a sail, but it gets me places.’

  Henry was such easy company. Emer never felt any pressure to talk, and sometimes they walked in silence as if the nature they immersed themselves in was hallowed ground. Always by Henry’s side was his white husky, Shadow. On their second hike of one whole hour, the three of them walked together, the only sound the hum of nature and Shadow’s steady pant. Today Henry was more talkative, asking after Susannah. Emer found it touching how concerned he was for her welfare.

  ‘You were right,’ Emer said. ‘It’s made such a difference, typing for her.’

  ‘See, I told you so,’ he said. ‘What’s she writing?’

  ‘Oh, she’s not writing anything new,’ Emer said. ‘She’s a stack of old letters her sister, Kate, sent her when she was away at college, and she wants to type them up so they’re documented for Lynsey and Rebecca.’

  Henry paused, looked at her intently.

  ‘Lynsey never told me about any letters her mom wrote,’ he said. ‘She was always so frustrated she knew so little about her mom and dad.’

  ‘I don’t think Lynsey knows about the letters,’ Emer said, suddenly feeling awkward as she remembered her promise to Susannah not to tell anyone about them.

  ‘Don’t know why Susannah never showed them to Lynsey when she was growing up.’ Henry said, sounding a little annoyed. ‘When we were dating Lynsey was still really screwed up over what happened. She was only five when her mom and dad died, Rebecca even younger. Might have helped her if she’d read those letters.’

  ‘I believe Susannah didn’t want to upset the girls further; apparently her mother had dementia and kept forgetting Kate was gone,’ Emer said, in defence of Susannah. ‘They had to tell her Kate was dead nearly every day.’

  ‘Oh yeah, Lynsey would tell me all about her crazy granny,’ Henry said.

  Emer felt awkward to be talking about Susannah and her family behind her back, but she was curious about Henry and Lynsey. There was clearly a big age gap between them.

  ‘How long did you and Lynsey date for?’ she asked Henry.

  ‘Not long,’ he said. ‘Just the summer before I left for art college. But you should have seen her back then.’ Henry whistled. ‘Lynsey really turned heads. I was crazy about her.’

  Emer felt a bit irritated. In her eyes, Lynsey was still a very beautiful woman.

  ‘She was really there for me when my dad died,’ Henry continued. ‘But then Susannah got wind of our relationship and put a stop to it. I guess I wasn’t good enough for Lynsey in her eyes. She said the age gap was indecent!’

  Emer detected a slight bitterness in his tone.

  Henry turned to her, holding out his hand to help her climb over a rock slippery with moss as Shadow ran on ahead. ‘But does age really matter when it comes to love?’

  She shook her head. He really did have the most astonishing eyes. In the
shade they were as dark green as the pines, in the light, hazel flecked with amber and bright green.

  The weather had turned mild, with sunshine warming their backs, their jackets tied around their waists. They’d parked in the gravel lot overlooking a small lake called Folly Pond. The trail led them across Old Woods Road, before entering wetlands and forest. As the ground began to rise, maple trees filtered into a dense spruce-fir forest. Even higher up, Emer saw ancient pine trees twisting out of fissures in the granite ledges, as if the roots themselves were fossilised in rock. Up they went, Henry showing her huckleberries, juniper and crowberry shrubs on their way, while Shadow foraged in the undergrowth.

  On the summit of the granite dome, Henry spread his arms wide and closed his eyes. Emer did the same. Sea breezes caressed her face and the warmth from the October sun kissed her forehead. She found herself swaying, letting herself be pushed a little by the wind’s gentle direction. The life of the forest floor below them flickered as shadows behind her closed eyes. She listened to the birds, unable to make out which was which, but hearing the diversity of their songs: a steady chirrup, chirrup; a lone call.

  ‘Do you hear the warbler?’ Henry whispered, as she opened her eyes to find the sun glaring at her. ‘He sounds so lonely. Always searching for his mate.’

  He stood as a dark silhouette, his dog on his haunches at his feet. Emer had no idea of the expression on his face.

  They climbed back down the granite dome and into the woods. The trees became more sparse and they sat on a mossy rock, littered with old needles from the pine tree above, their backs pressed against its wide girth as Shadow lay at their feet. Emer imagined the deep grooves of the tree’s thick bark imprinting her skin. They waited, and after a while, their patience was rewarded as giant red and blue butterflies fluttered among the grasses, before the biggest dragonfly Emer had ever seen hovered right in front of her.