The Forgotten Letters of Esther Durrant

by Kayte Nunn

  Glancing at her watch, Rachel saw that she had about fifteen minutes before she was due to check in. She finished her drink, paid the bill, hauled her backpack onto her shoulders, and lifted the new suitcase bought to accommodate her recent purchases.

  After checking her luggage and boarding the ferry she found herself a seat on deck, staring at the slate roofs of the mainland and feeling the throb of the engines beneath her as they got under way. The light was soft, the colors muted, as if someone had turned a dimmer switch down. It was a far cry from the golden haze of the South Pacific, the rich greens of the taro leaves and the brilliant colors and intoxicating fragrances of the tiare flowers . . . cream and yellow frangipani . . . She squashed the thought that she might have been hasty in her decision to come so far, to the other side of the world where everything seemed so unrelentingly gray. She pushed her earbuds into her ears, pulled her beanie down over her hair, and turned up the volume. Unsentimental rock blasted through any lingering doubts.

  * * *

  When the ferry docked alongside the quay at Hugh Town, the main port for the Isles of Scilly on St. Mary’s, which was also the largest island in the group, Rachel was surprised. The journey had passed without incident, she’d not felt the slightest twinge of nausea. In fact she’d been on rougher trips on the Manly ferry, which plied its way from her northern beaches home across the harbor to the heart of Sydney.

  She hadn’t been able to see much of her surroundings as, almost as soon as they had left the mainland, a light misty drizzle had begun to fall, obliterating the landscape. She had no idea in what direction they were traveling. Despite the weather, she had remained outside—the only passenger crazy enough to do so—and tipped her face to the elements, feeling a little rain drip inside her collar and snake its way down her neck. The thrill of a new adventure quickly displaced her earlier misgivings.

  As she disembarked, she noticed a number of smaller fishing vessels at anchor in the bay. The ferry had docked behind a bright yellow and green catamaran with the word Ambulance emblazoned across its hull in enormous letters. She could see a man and a woman in green uniforms loading a patient onto the wharf and into a wheelchair and stopped for a moment, intrigued by the sight. A water ambulance. Of course. It made perfect sense in such a place.

  Gathering herself and her belongings, she pulled up the hood of her jacket and walked along the main street. As she wound her way east, she stopped in the lee of a small shop and pulled out a piece of paper from her pocket. Shearwater Cottage. Church Street. Green gate and front door. Key will be under the flowerpot, it read. Trouble was, she couldn’t see a sign for Church Street. Then a thought struck her and she looked up, turning around to survey the small town. Sure enough, a little farther ahead she spied the steeple of a church, and then another. It stood to reason that was where Church Street would be.

  It was only later that she realized she could have checked the maps app on her phone, but she had never been in need of it on Aitutaki, even when she first arrived there, and so wasn’t in the habit of using it.

  As it turned out, finding the cottage and the key was easy and she pushed the door open, the width of her backpack causing her to ricochet off the walls of the narrow hallway. Dr. Wentworth had been correct: there were just two rooms downstairs, a small living room furnished with a floral sofa and a couple of armchairs, and then the kitchen. She could make out a blur of garden through the wavy glass panes of the back door. She also noticed that someone had turned on the radiators and left a plastic-wrap-covered plate of food and a container of what looked like soup on the kitchen table.

  Rachel rested her backpack against the wall, shucked off her jacket, and picked up a note that was resting against the soup. It was succinct and to the point: The Bishop and Wolf. 7 p.m. Ask for Janice.

  She unwrapped the plate and picked up the sandwich that had been left there. Sea air always made her hungry and the cold weather even more so. She took a huge bite, put the remainder back on the plate, and then walked upstairs to explore.

  There were two quaint bedrooms. The main room was papered in a delicate flowered pattern and furnished with a comfortable-looking bed made up with a thick duvet. Several rose-pink woolen blankets lay folded at its foot. There was a large pine chest of drawers and an upholstered chair near the window, which overlooked the street. It wasn’t exactly her taste, but she’d never been that fussy about her surroundings as long as they were clean and kept out the drafts. Next door, a bathroom—with a large tub, she noted—and then the other bedroom, which contained a single bed and a desk. Excellent. She would make that her study.

  * * *

  Later that day, having eaten, unpacked her few possessions and soaked some warmth back into her bones in the bathtub, Rachel decided to go for a walk to explore the island. She’d spent so much time on airplanes, trains, and buses in the past month that opportunities to stretch her legs had been few. The earlier drizzle had stopped and a weak sun was doing its best to shine through the clouds. Taking her jacket in case the rain returned, she laced up her new hiking boots, wiggling her toes at the unaccustomed constriction. On Aitutaki she’d been mostly barefoot, and although she’d worn the boots a few times in the previous few weeks, they still felt heavy and cumbersome.

  Janice—at least she presumed it was her—had also left a map of the island on the table and she pocketed that before heading out.

  Rachel had done her research before leaving London, and so she knew that the main island was slightly less than two-and-a-half-square miles. She reckoned she should be able to walk around it in about four hours, but as it was after three o’clock she decided to aim for a quarter way around and then she would turn back. She didn’t want to be caught out when the light went. Sunset was later here than on the mainland, but she wasn’t taking any chances on her first day.

  She headed south, picking up a path that wound its way along the rocky coastline toward a place on the map called Piper’s Hole. The visibility was considerably better than when she’d arrived that morning and a sharp climb rewarded her with a vista of several smaller islands, lying long and low across the milky green water. As she reached the top, she sat down on a wide, flat rock to catch her breath.

  A sense of lightness, something she hadn’t felt since being on Aitutaki, overcame her. She felt as if she could breathe again, fill her lungs, her chest expanding, ribs spreading outward. The cool, pure air smelled of seaweed and salt, wet wood and green, growing things.

  She remembered drawing maps of islands as a child, fascinated by their possibilities: secret springs, hidden forests, buried treasure. Now she was older, she loved them for the sense of isolation that they brought. Self-contained and entire of themselves. Ringed by water. Navigable. Always an abundance of sea and sky. She began to think she could be at home here. Well as “at home” as she ever was anywhere.

  After a while, the cold stone that she was sitting on began to numb her and she got to her feet, checking where the path ahead led. It didn’t occur to her to mind that she hadn’t seen a soul since setting out.

  Chapter Seven

  Little Embers, Autumn 1951

  Esther awoke to the deep, brassy bong of a clock chiming. She swallowed, feeling the pull of her tongue across the dry roof of her mouth. She must have fallen asleep with her jaw hanging open. A seam of light escaping heavy curtains that had been drawn across a window came into focus and she raised her head to fully appraise her surroundings. She had no idea where she was. Beneath her, an eiderdown, on top of her a blanket, though she was still clothed. She tried to move her arms but found that they were securely wrapped around her waist. A coarse fabric chafed at her neck. She rolled to one side in an attempt to free her arms, but it was in vain. She had been bound. The design of the garment was such that it could not be torn, could not be loosened. She’d heard of such things, but never actually seen one: a straitjacket. The realization sliced through her and she cried out without thinking, a whimper at first and then louder. “John!�
� she called out. “John. Help!”

  Silence.

  She rolled herself awkwardly to a sitting position, threw her legs over the bed and onto the floor. She stood up and staggered to the window, pushing her head through the gap in the curtains and blinking at the brightness. Nothing in front of her save rippling grasses, steel-gray ocean, and the soughing of the wind as it caught on the walls of the house. A desolate landscape. The island. The house. Embers. Memories flashed back to her now, like the card game she sometimes played with Teddy. She tried to match them up. Scarlet poppies on charcoal serge. Jaunty flags atop a fishing boat. An olive-green armchair. A ruddy-cheeked face. Chestnut hair.

  Had she perhaps fallen asleep—such an event was entirely possible, given her habits of the past few months—and then been helped upstairs to rest? But that didn’t explain the binding.

  Esther went to the door but, with her hands useless, she could not turn the Bakelite handle. She knelt instead and attempted to peer through the keyhole, but there was a key on the other side of the mechanism blocking her view. She called out again, bending down and putting her mouth to the hole, and then straightened up and kicked the door, hard, with her foot, ignoring the pain it caused her stockinged big toe. “Help!” she bellowed, as loud as she could. “Help me! Someone! John! Where are you?”

  There was only the answering sound of the wind as it gusted around the thick-walled old house. She collapsed against the door, her knees buckling underneath her as she slid to the floor. As the truth of what had happened began to dawn on her, the words puerperal insanity swam into her head. She’d first heard them spill from the doctor’s lips—another doctor, one who had visited in the days after the baby was born, the same one who later prescribed (“for your nerves, my dear”) the red pills that brought such blissful oblivion. Schoolgirl Latin meant she knew the word puer meant boy, and parere to bring forth. But she was confident that she was not insane by the mere fact of childbirth.

  True, after everything that happened, she had struggled to get out of bed some days, had lost interest in all the things that she normally enjoyed, even, to her horror, becoming short-tempered with Teddy, but nevertheless, that was perfectly understandable given the circumstances . . . But now . . . They were on holiday, weren’t they? Could John have brought her to a virtually deserted island in the middle of the Celtic Sea, to a strange doctor, for some other reason? Esther had never imagined him capable of subterfuge but was now forced to consider the possibility.

  As she sat, there was a heavy tread outside the room, the click of a key turning and the rattle of a door handle.

  “Mrs. Durrant, is that you?”

  A female voice, a clipped accent. It was not the housekeeper then; Esther remembered her. She shuffled away from her position against the door, far enough for the person attached to the voice to push it open and see her sitting there. “Oh my goodness.” A woman with tightly curled brown hair bound by a starched white cap, a spotless apron covering a sky-blue dress, looked at her with concern. “Mrs. Durrant. I expected you would sleep for longer and that I would be here when you awoke. Well,” she said. “This all must be a terrible mystery to you, I suppose.”

  “What am I doing here? And where is my husband?” Esther glared at her, suddenly furious.

  “Please stay calm.” The woman’s voice was soothing but Esther was not interested in being placated. “Your husband is only considerate of your welfare, you must understand that. It was necessary to sedate you, I’m afraid; Dr. Creswell thought it for the best. Your husband has assigned the care of you to us for the time being. This is a place where we heal those who are sick, not in body but in mind.”

  “What? What on God’s earth does that mean? How can he even do that? And who exactly are you?”

  “My name is Jean Bardcombe; I’m a nurse, but you probably gathered that.” The woman touched the cap that indicated her position. “You are unwell and it is our job to help make you better again. The binding is because your husband said that you scratch yourself. Without being aware of it.”

  Shame washed its ruddy tide over Esther, making her shrink away from the nurse. It was true. Ever since the baby had gone she’d woken up every morning with rusty bloodstains streaking the bedsheets and long, angry welts across her forearms and torso, her thighs . . . She had no idea how it happened, for she slept each night as if she had tumbled into a dark well.

  Deep in the marrow of her was the thing she’d been trying to avoid, brought to the surface by this strange new place. She was bad, rotten at the core, not fit to be called a mother. What was worse was that she had brought this on herself. She probably deserved it. That was why he’d been taken from her, her sweet baby, her second son. That was why she was here, locked up.

  Still, some part of her refused to give in. “Where is John? Is he downstairs? I demand to see him. John—” Esther’s voice rose and she shouted through the open door to make herself heard.

  The nurse shook her head. “Your husband has returned to London.”

  Esther was dumbfounded. He’d left her there? She’d heard of husbands committing their wives to insane asylums—for she was under no illusion, now, that was what this godforsaken place must surely be—but had never imagined John would do such a thing to her, despite everything that had happened. She’d always believed that he loved her, depended on his kindness. Would he have really thought this the most appropriate course of action?

  “Exactly how long will I be here for?” She still couldn’t comprehend that she was a prisoner on this desolate island. Marooned miles from home, miles from Teddy, her fate surely no better than the shipwrecked sailors from the captain’s story.

  “That really depends on you, Mrs. Durrant. If it helps, try to think of it as a convalescence if you like. You’ve been through a great deal.”

  Esther railed at the patronizing tone. She was incensed. How dare John discuss their private matters with strangers—no matter if they were a doctor or nurse—without telling her?

  A tall figure appeared behind the nurse and Esther recognized Dr. Creswell.

  “Ah, Mrs. Durrant, there you are. I trust Nurse Bardcombe has explained matters satisfactorily?” He gave her a smile that momentarily brightened the dim room but Esther did not return it.

  “I’m afraid there’s been a dreadful mistake—” she began.

  “Shush now, don’t upset yourself,” he said. “Perhaps you might like some breakfast? We grow quite a few of our own vegetables, the chickens give us eggs, and Mrs. Biggs is a fine cook.”

  “I don’t think you heard me,” she insisted through clenched teeth. She didn’t give a damn about chickens or vegetables. “My husband would never—”

  “I’m afraid he did,” Dr. Creswell interrupted. “But we’re here to help you, Mrs. Durrant.”

  Esther’s shoulders slumped, not wanting to believe it but hearing the ring of truth in the doctor’s words.

  “As I was saying, a boat comes once a week with other essentials. So you’ll see we manage rather well.”

  Once a week. Esther began to calculate rapidly. At worst, she’d be here for no more than seven days; if she managed to escape the confines of the house, that was. But if she did escape and make her way home, would John not simply send her back, believing it was the best place for her? Where would she go instead? Her parents? Or would they defer to her husband’s authority and insist that she be returned, like an unwanted package, to this windblown, pitiless place? And what about Teddy? Nanny couldn’t look after him all by herself—what about on her day off? Even as she thought this, she acknowledged that Nanny had been looking after Teddy for months, forfeiting any leave owing to her, working around the clock to see to his needs because Esther had been unable to. Her mind whirled as she tried to make sense of her situation, to find a way out.

  “Now, some breakfast, Mrs. Durrant?” the doctor asked again as if she were a welcome guest. “We will, of course, unbind you.” He said this as if it were nothing out of the ordinary to w
rap a person up in thick calico so tightly they could barely move.

  Esther threw him a withering look.

  Chapter Eight

  St. Mary’s, Spring 2018

  Rachel had passed a couple of pubs on her way to the cottage earlier that day. The Mermaid, with its brightly painted sign of a round-bosomed maiden combing her hair, was next to the wharf, its footings in the sand, practically in the water. The other, the Bishop and Wolf, was on the main street and she found it easily.

  It was warm and cozy inside and a fire crackled in the grate. There was a low hum of people chatting, and an occasional metallic clatter and shout from the back of the pub, where she assumed a kitchen must be. She walked up to the bar, ordered half a pint of the local ale, and then asked the girl serving if she knew anyone called Janice.

  She smiled at her. “You must be the new research scientist.”

  Rachel was a little taken aback that even the barmaid knew who she was. It was a small island, but not that small surely?

  “Janice is my mum,” the girl explained.

  “Oh, right.” Rachel smiled back at her. “She left me a note. I’m supposed to meet her here.”

  The girl placed her drink on the bar in front of her and nodded in the direction of a doorway. “In the back bar. You won’t miss her. I’m Lucy, by the way.”

  “Rachel. And thanks.”

  Lucy had been right. Janice was the only woman in the small timber-lined room but Rachel wouldn’t have missed her had there been a sea of other females. She was a symphony in teal, purple, and copper. She would have out-peacocked a peacock had there been any in the vicinity.

  “Hello, love. You must be Rachel.” Her loud voice boomed in the small space. She stood up and shook Rachel’s hand enthusiastically, her beaded earrings jangling, and then waved her toward a seat opposite.