The Island Girls: A heartbreaking historical novel

by Noelle Harrison

  ‘I am sad it is clear you don’t like him. Please can you try to understand how I feel about him? It is the same as what you feel for Ava. My love for Matthew fills me right up and I couldn’t bear to be without him. You did not see the best side of him on our wedding day. He was nervous and drank too much. But he is a good man, provides well for me and Mother, and he will be a good father.

  ‘I can’t wait to get pregnant, Susie. Every day, the hope for it consumes me. A baby will bring us all together, don’t you think?

  ‘I have to go now. Time to cook the dinner as Matthew will be home soon. He has such a tough life out on the sea every day in all weathers. You know how dangerous it can be. The least I can do is make his life at home easy.

  ‘Say hello to Ava from me!’

  Susannah put the letter down on the table and took a breath.

  ‘Well that’s good isn’t?’ Ava asked her, getting up from the green chair.

  ‘I guess,’ Susannah said. ‘But why do I feel so flat?’

  ‘Because she’s tolerating us, not accepting us,’ Ava said, wrapping her arms around Susannah’s shoulders and kissing the top of her head.

  ‘Is there a difference?’

  ‘Yes, a big one,’ Ava sighed.

  ‘She’ll understand, one day,’ Susannah said. ‘She has to, because she’s Katie. She’s my sister.’

  27

  Emer

  August 2011

  They had fought as children. It was hard to believe it now. As adults, she and Orla had been so close. More than sisters: best friends and confidantes. But when they were little, their different personalities had clashed. Emer couldn’t even remember what they’d fought over. But she did remember terrible, vicious fights. Hair-pulling, kicking; Orla even bit her once. Another time, she knocked out Orla’s front baby teeth. Their mother had been driven demented by the two girls. Because she was the eldest, Emer felt as if Orla got away with more than her. Orla always started crying when they were getting told off, so that Emer received more of the blame. She remembered feeling so furious with Orla. Running out into the garden after her and screaming, I hate you! I wish you were dead!

  How could she have said such awful things to her own sister? How could she have been so angry with her? In her heart, Emer had to admit she’d always been a bit jealous of Orla. She was the favourite. The prettier sister, better at singing, dancing, and all sports. Emer was the bookish one. Boring.

  Things had calmed down a little when they were teenagers. Apart from the fact that Emer had to hide all her good make-up and lock her wardrobe. She didn’t mind the fact that Orla ‘borrowed’ her stuff, it was that she either never returned it, or returned it damaged. Emer’s favourite dress crumpled on the floor, or put in the wrong wash. Her lip glosses stuck with bits of grit, the end of her eyeliner pencil blunt. No apology, ever.

  For a couple of years, Orla had gone through an emo-goth thing, only wearing black and getting her nose pierced. Their dad had gone mad, but their mam had said it looked good, and bought Orla a little silver stud for her nose.

  ‘I might get my nose pierced too,’ she’d announced, much to the horror of both girls.

  Orla was just so cool. Everyone wanted to hang out with her at school. Boys were drawn to her. Orla had her first boyfriend way before Emer. Lost her virginity before her, too. Emer remembered Orla ringing her in Dublin, and telling her in excited whispers how she and her first boyfriend, Sean, had done it in the back of his father’s big Audi.

  ‘It’s not that big a deal,’ Orla had told her. ‘I don’t know why there’s so much fuss over it.’

  ‘You did use protection, didn’t you?’ Emer asked her. Always the older sister.

  ‘Of course, I’m not thick.’

  Emer always associated Orla’s dark phase with the time preceding their mother’s cancer. The once sunny little girl turned taciturn, monosyllabic. Spending hours in her room with Sean, playing morose music and then painting on her own in the good room. Orla had been obsessed with graphic fiction, and horror. Even as an adult, Orla had still loved horror movies. Something Emer found very hard to understand. She hated any hint of horror. Wasn’t there enough frightening, dark stuff in real life? She didn’t want to fill her head with zombies, devils and poltergeists.

  As soon as their mam got sick, Orla dropped the whole emo thing, spending more time in the good room painting. She was in her final year in school, and Emer had already left home for nursing college. When she looked back now, those months with their sick mother had become a sort of blur. Emer had come home every weekend to help, but it had been so intense and exhausting. Often, their dad would have gone off drinking in the pub with his pals, unable to cope with his wife’s sickness. Orla was with their mam on her own, trying to keep her positive. Was that when Orla’s personality had transformed? In her fight to save their mother? She dropped all the black clothes, along with Sean, and wore colour again. Sat in the bedroom with their mam for hours, reading to her. Painting the view from the window, while their mam slept, just to keep her company. No wonder her Leaving Certificate was such a disaster.

  Emer had never asked her sister how she must have felt when she’d been told she had cancer too. Had she believed she could beat it? Or had the experience of watching her own mother die from the disease right from the start made her feel hopeless? Emer had been angry. Wasn’t one loss in a family enough?

  They had told each other everything. All their feelings, and fears. It was this which had tortured Emer during her sister’s final weeks. For everyone else, Orla had put on a brave face, but with Emer she’d told her how very frightened she was. Emer would wake up in a cold sweat every night, just thinking about how her sister must be feeling. She’d told Orla about Lars as a distraction. To lighten the conversation.

  ‘I met this cute guy at the vending machine downstairs. We went to the canteen together.’

  ‘Oh yes? Tell me more.’ Orla had broken out in a smile.

  Every day, Emer would tell Orla a little bit about her and Lars’ chat. Her sister had insisted she invite him up to her ward so she could meet him.

  Really, Emer had been surprised. ‘Are you sure you want to meet someone new? In here?’

  ‘He’s not new to you,’ Orla had said. ‘Besides, he’s not going to be shocked. He’s a medic. Seen it all.’

  Emer had been so nervous about introducing Lars to Orla. She needn’t have worried. They had hit it off immediately. Lars noticed the stack of graphic fiction by Orla’s bed, and revealed his passion for the medium.

  ‘What’s your favourite comic book of all time?’ Lars asked Orla.

  ‘Oh I love so many! Watchmen, Wonder Woman and then there’s Persepolis and Maus which are totally different,’ Orla declared.

  Lars also got on really well with Ethan, the two of them discovering a mutual love of sailing, as they sat either side of Orla’s bed and talked about boats.

  ‘I love him!’ Orla had said to her, as soon as the boys had left the ward to go get coffee.

  ‘Orla’s amazing,’ Lars had said to Emer the next day, as they’d eaten lunch together in the hospital canteen.

  She could have been jealous at how easily Orla and Lars had hit it off, but of course, she wasn’t. Ethan was Orla’s soulmate. They could have been the perfect double dates. If only. If only.

  28

  Susannah

  August to October 1960

  Susannah and Ava worked as many shifts as they could in the coffee house over the whole summer. Long, lazy evenings were spent in Harvard Square, listening to all the new folk singers who’d turned up in Cambridge. There was a sense they were part of something important. A change in the spirit of America, and a desire from all the young liberals to tear down old prejudices.

  Ava was getting more and more involved in the civil rights movement for American Indians.

  ‘It’s time people stopped thinking American Indians can’t help themselves,’ she told Susannah. ‘Or that we need to become like
white Americans. Adopt your society.’

  Susannah was proud of Ava’s passion and her involvement in some of the protests she went on, although sometimes it meant she was away for nights on end. She also was ashamed of how ignorant she had been of American Indians, all the different tribes and their history until she’d met Ava. She had been aware of some tribes from Maine, but knew very little about them. It hadn’t been covered in school at all.

  ‘I’ve never asked you what tribe you’re from,’ she admitted to Ava one evening, as they were sharing cigarettes, sitting outside on the stoop. ‘Why have you never told me?’

  ‘I was raised to be careful whom I told,’ Ava said, inhaling deeply and letting smoke plume from her nose. ‘My skin is quite fair. I can get away with not looking American Indian.’ She sounded sad. ‘My parents instilled a fear in me to reveal who I really am.’

  Ava took up one of the chalks left lying on the sidewalk from kids who’d been playing hopscotch earlier. She drew a small leaping salmon on the sidewalk.

  ‘That’s one of our symbols. We are a coastal nation. My people from the Swinomish Tribal peoples of the North West,’ she said. ‘Like I told you the day we first met, I am from the Pacific.’

  Susannah couldn’t believe how many different tribes there were, and had been, in America.

  ‘Do you speak Swinomish?’ she asked Ava.

  ‘Sadly not.’ Ava shook her head. ‘My dad speaks very little. But we were forced to learn English in school, and in his day if he spoke his own language he was beaten.’

  Susannah felt so ashamed of her white American heritage. ‘I know there were American Indians where I come from.’ she said. ‘The Abenaki people. But where are they now?’

  ‘They got decimated during the colonisation. Disease was the worst offender,’ Ava told her.

  Susannah was so proud of Ava’s commitment to her cause. Sometimes she was almost a little jealous. Wished she were American Indian. It would give her purpose. Once, when she’d admitted this to Ava, Susannah had been surprised by how angry Ava got with her.

  ‘Do you realise how patronising that is?’ she said. ‘You have no idea how privileged you are, being a white person. I know there are prejudices against women, but there is no comparison to being a black woman or an American Indian woman.’

  ‘But it’s just you have such purpose,’ Ava said. ‘Such vision!’

  ‘And so do you!’ Ava berated her. ‘Your historical research is a study of witch persecutions. How relevant is that right now? Rather than wish you were one of us, you can use the fact that you are listened to as a white person to help us.’

  The hot, sticky summer in Cambridge burnt out into busy fall days back at college. Ava was swamped by all her law studies. After the summer of protests, she was even more determined to qualify as soon as possible and become a civil rights lawyer, with emphasis upon rights for American Indians. Money was always an issue for the two of them. As well as their coffee house jobs, which provided them with free food and coffee, Susannah took on private tutoring in Newton for the kids of wealthy banking friends of the Whittards. But despite always being on the run, and some weeks the two of them scrimping to get together enough dollars for cigarettes, Susannah had never felt so happy. Ava’s love and patience was a constant presence. She was also doing well at college. Dr Anberg had put her forward for a tutoring position in the history department once she’d delivered her dissertation. She had chosen her topic and was very excited. It was an assessment of the causes of witch hunting in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with particular focus on Scotland and Norway.

  Three weeks after the letter from Kate in October, another one arrived in the post before Susannah had even had a chance to reply.

  Dearest Susie, I’ll keep the letter brief but I’m so excited I need to tell you right away. I’m pregnant! I took the ferry to Rockland and went to see Dr Redfern yesterday and he confirmed I was with child. Due next June. We are all so happy – Matthew and I, and Mom. It has really picked her up. Write soon! Regards to Ava.

  Susannah’s heart had dropped a mile. She should be happy for her sister. It was what Kate had always wanted. But a voice inside her head said something else.

  Now she’s trapped forever.

  She realised the final piece in her happiness would have been if Kate had come to Cambridge and never gone back to the island. Been as free a bird, as she was. But as much as Kate couldn’t change Susannah, Susannah could never change her sister. Try as she might, Susannah would never accept Matthew was a good match for her sister, but she’d tolerate him for Kate’s sake, and for the baby.

  29

  Emer

  28th October 2011

  The night after Lars left, Emer dreamt about Orla being alive again. This time, Orla was in a boat in the harbour at Vinalhaven, preparing to set sail. Emer was standing at the wharfside, calling to her to come back.

  ‘You’re very sick,’ she shouted at her. ‘I have to make you better.’

  But her sister laughed at her, hoisted the sails. ‘Come with me,’ she called back. Orla had wanted to go sailing in so long, and she wasn’t coming back even if Emer was too frightened to get on the boat, even if she had cancer.

  Emer woke filled with panic. She had to get her sister off the boat. Time was running out; she had to save Orla. And then the cold realisation. It was too late. She was already dead.

  The sun had just risen as she got out of bed. The sky outside her window was a flat, pale grey, making the foliage look even brighter and more glorious. Fall was nearly over, the colours giving an intense final flare before winter set in. How would she find the dark months on Vinalhaven? Susannah had told her they could be cut off for days if an extreme nor’easter came in with snow. Would she be able to endure the loneliness and the cold? How would Susannah fare?

  A lone pick-up drove by past the house. It looked like Henry’s, and Emer instantly felt guilty. She still hadn’t replied to his text. Why did she always screw everything up?

  Later that day, Susannah asked Emer if she could light the fire in the woodstove in the front room and read to her.

  ‘I feel like revisiting some of my books,’ she told Emer. ‘You have a very pleasing reading voice,’ she complimented her.

  ‘Oh well, one of my many talents,’ Emer said, happy to be of use.

  Susannah’s front room was filled with books. Row after row of packed bookshelves, with an array of titles from old classics, to hardback volumes of history and trashy paperback crime novels, which, Susannah was hasty to point out, belonged to Lynsey. It was the history books Susannah wanted Emer to read to her. At first, Emer thought she’d be bored. She’d never been interested in the past that much. But now she felt herself drawn into the subject matter, pausing to ask Susannah questions if she didn’t quite understand.

  ‘You’re a good teacher,’ she told Susannah, after Susannah had explained to her what the Reformation was and why it had happened.

  From her letters, it was evident Susannah had adored her life at Harvard. Emer was mystified as to why she hadn’t pursued her academic career, rather than live as a recluse on a remote island off the coast of Maine.

  ‘You know so much,’ Emer said. ‘Did you ever teach in a university?’

  ‘No,’ Susannah said. ‘I would have needed to study more, got an MFA. And I had to raise Kate’s girls.’

  ‘But you could have gone back, when the girls left home?’

  ‘I couldn’t leave Vinalhaven. It was my mother who kept me here. It’s not that many years ago that she passed away.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be, she lived to the great age of ninety-six years old. By the end, she had dementia so bad it was a relief when she was finally gone.’

  The letters Emer had been typing up from Kate to Susannah all these weeks had been dated until just before she had got married. Not in one letter was there an indication of any problem with Matthew. However, there were five years from 1961
to the year of Kate’s death without any correspondence between the sisters.

  What had happened to Kate’s marriage?

  ‘What happened between Kate and her husband for him to kill her?’ Emer now asked Susannah, unable to contain her curiosity any more.

  The older woman gave a big sigh. Shook her head. ‘He was a bully and a brute,’ she said to Emer. ‘Beat her up on the regular, I’m sure of it. But in those days, no one batted an eye.’

  Susannah looked at the flames leaping inside the wood stove.

  ‘I don’t know exactly why, but I suppose it was one of his beatings gone too far. I think he killed her by mistake.’

  On her walk into town later, Emer found herself imagining how things would have been for Susannah all those years on Vinalhaven, bringing up her sister’s daughters on her own in the aftermath of such a terrible tragedy. Her heart went out to her. Susannah had given up so much to look after Kate’s girls. Not just her career, but clearly Ava, too.