The Forgotten Letters of Esther Durrant

by Kayte Nunn

  “What happened to her?”

  “Died on the descent from Sasso delle Dieci in the Val Badia. The Dolomites. 1981. She was forty-eight.”

  “Oh gosh. How did you cope with that? Did it make you think twice about continuing to climb?”

  “Climbers die all the time, Eve; it’s one of the risks you take every time you make an ascent. And I was no stranger to death by then. I thought of those I’d lost every time I stepped on a mountain, they walked beside me, never left me.”

  “Oh, Grams.” Eve immediately thought of her own mother, of the times that she imagined her close by even though she was no longer alive. “Did it help you cope when . . . well, when Mum died?”

  The old woman rested her head against the back of the sofa. “Not really. Losing a child, no matter how old they—or you—are is different. Far, far worse. Always heartbreaking.”

  “Like losing your mother,” said Eve quietly.

  “Yes, my dear, as bad as losing your mother.”

  Eve squeezed her grandmother’s hand, feeling the fine bones beneath the thin skin. “We’re lucky we’ve got each other, hey?” she said, swallowing the lump in her throat.

  “For now, darling,” her grams sighed. “Then all you’re left with at the end are the memories. Good and bad. But you’ve got to go out and make them, no matter what risks there might be.”

  Eve didn’t feel as if she were making any particularly exciting memories, not at the moment anyway.

  “Oh, I know you’re stuck here with me, watching the days pass by—” Eve went to object. “And I do appreciate it, Eve; I really do. I know what you’ve given up, to take care of me.”

  “If you mean David, I’m not certain it was ever going to be a long-term thing anyway,” Eve admitted.

  “There’s plenty of time for love in your life and when you meet the right person, you’ll know in an instant—but promise me that as soon as I’m well again you’ll go and have adventures, make use of that degree of yours—one of my great regrets is that I wasted mine. And then come back and tell an old lady all about it.”

  “Of course, Grams,” Eve reassured her. “Though I haven’t a clue what I might do with myself actually.”

  “Something will come along, you’ll see.”

  They sat for a moment in easy silence.

  “Did you know?” Eve asked, thinking again of David. “That you’d met the right person? Right away?”

  “I’m afraid I did,” her grams said and Eve heard an unmistakable sadness in her voice. “But by then it was far too late.”

  Chapter Ten

  St. Mary’s, Spring 2018

  She’s seen better days, but she’s seaworthy enough. I had the boys down at the boatshed check her over. They gave her a clean bill of health.” Janice patted the hull of the aluminum runabout affectionately.

  It was the next morning, and they had arranged to meet down at the quay, near the Mermaid, at low tide.

  Rachel looked dubiously at the small craft. White paint flaked from its sides and the name on one side was almost worn away. The Soleil d’Or. “Golden Sun,” said Janice, seeing her looking at it. “It’s a type of flower that grows on the islands, a narcissi. The season’s almost over—it’s much earlier here than on the mainland—but you’ll see a few rogue late bloomers if you look carefully.”

  Rachel rolled the boat from one side to the other and as far as she could tell there were no obvious weak spots. The outboard motor looked in okay condition. She’d piloted worse. “All right then, let’s take her out for a spin,” she said.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” said Janice, handing her the keys. “I’ve got a date with a firing kiln.”

  After leaving the pub the night before, Rachel had spent several hours familiarizing herself with the nautical charts of the islands that her supervisor had provided. It would take weeks to plan out an observational strategy, but for now she simply couldn’t wait to get out on the water and start to explore.

  “There’s plenty of fuel,” said Janice before she left. “And a spare tank in the boatshed.” She indicated a small wooden shack farther along the beach, past the slipway. “You can keep her moored here too.”

  “Cheers,” said Rachel. “I reckon I’m all set.”

  “Have fun.” Janice waved her good-bye.

  Rachel pulled the tinny off the sandbank and out into the water. She’d taken the precaution of wearing her new tall rubber boots and as soon as the little boat was afloat, she hopped onboard, nimble as a cat that didn’t like getting its paws wet. The day was a fine one, though a crisp westerly blew the water into frothing whitecaps. Rachel’s hair whipped about in the wind and she regretted not bringing a beanie to keep it in check. She didn’t let that oversight stop her though and started the outboard. It coughed throatily into life and she opened the throttle, expertly steering out of the harbor and into the channel between St. Mary’s and the other islands.

  She knew from her reading that the Isles of Scilly were made up of more than a hundred and forty islands. Some were wildlife sanctuaries, home only to populations of torpedo-shaped puffins, cormorants, kittiwakes, and gulls. Only a handful were inhabited, and the total human population was around two thousand people, though that number swelled considerably in summer with a seasonal influx of tourists who came to camp and hike or stay in one of the many guesthouses on the larger islands.

  Rachel whizzed past a colony of seals basking on large gray-brown boulders, and thick splinters of stone that tumbled toward the shoreline. Then a red-and-white-striped tower loomed. The St. Martin’s Daymark. She remembered it from her study of the maps. As the boat puttered along, she thrilled to the feeling of salt spray on her face, the freedom of being at the helm, completely in control.

  Slowing eventually, she drew closer to the shore of St. Martin’s and saw the figure of a white-bearded man dressed in a long mustard-colored duster coat, looking for all the world as if he was waiting for an old-fashioned motorcar to drive. He raised his arm at her from where he stood on a small cement quay and she gave a cheery wave in return, wondering why he didn’t appear to be feeling the cold as she was. A little farther along she saw what she thought must be black rabbits, startled and hopping through hedges at the buzz from her engine. It was all new and fascinating to her.

  The tinny’s draft was shallow, but there were sandbars lurking beneath the glass-green water, waiting to ground the unwary, so she steered the boat away from the shoreline and continued on, toward the Eastern Isles, passing Tresco and St. Martin’s, with their green fields and low hedges. There were glimpses of bright yellow among the green and she remembered Janice’s comment about the narcissi. The island’s low slopes, bare of trees, looked like sleeping giants part-submerged by the water and she almost fancied she could see a head, shoulders, and arm of one. Eyes tearing from the wind, she wiped her face and blinked, smiling at her wayward imagination.

  Heading closer to shore once more, she saw perfect crescents of startlingly white sand, and the water turned from bottle green to turquoise. They weren’t dissimilar from some of the beaches on Aitutaki, the only difference being that the water here was likely several tens of degrees colder than the balmy, bathlike conditions of her last posting.

  She puttered steadily across the water, past Teän Sound and then seeing what she thought was Ragged Island, then Great Ganilly, Little Ganilly, Great, Middle and Little Arthur and Nornour. Truth was, they were so small that it was hard to tell them apart. But she had a knack for geography and she’d soon learn.

  Then, just as she was about to turn back, she saw one final island—Little Embers, if she was correct. It was long, narrow, and T-shaped, two humps of land with a sandy neck at the top of the T.

  A large stone house stood halfway up one of the hills. Its gray-brown walls and slate roof gave it the appearance of one of those ancient stone effigies. It looked almost as though it had been part of the landscape forever. Had endured, undaunted by wild winds or seas or storms. Did anyone reall
y live there, in such isolation? Smoke drifted from its chimney, so it appeared that they must.

  Rachel had been under the impression that all of the islands out this way were uninhabited, so made a mental note to ask Janice about it when she next saw her.

  As she motored on, she saw the ruins of two cottages on the other side of the island, their roofs caved in and walls tumbling down. She checked her watch. A couple of hours had passed since she set off and her stomach was beginning to rumble. Perhaps it was time to head back.

  She hadn’t bothered with a trip to the island’s small supermarket earlier in the day—she’d been impatient to get to the slipway—and breakfast had been nothing more than a cup of black coffee, made from the scant supplies that she found in a kitchen cupboard. By the time she got back to St. Mary’s and had tied up Soleil, she was too hungry to waste time shopping.

  The Mermaid stood right in front of her, beckoning. She’d lay bets there was a fire blazing inside too. She was numb from her nose to her toes and once the thought of a fire had snagged in her brain, it was impossible to resist.

  The pub was quiet, just a handful of customers sipping on pints, and she took a menu from the bar, settling into an armchair by the fire.

  “Fancy running into you again. How are you getting on?”

  Rachel looked up from the menu to see Jonah’s cheerful face, noticing again the laughter lines fanning out from his eyes. He was in uniform, a high-vis waterproof hung open to reveal dark green twill trousers. His shirt, of the same material, was emblazoned with a gold badge. There was a faint but reassuring smell of liniment about him, reminding her of grazed knees and Band-Aids.

  She grinned back. The exhilaration from her boating expedition had put her in a good mood. “Better now I’m starting to warm up,” she said. “I can’t remember the last time I was so cold.”

  “This?” he laughed. “Count yourself lucky you weren’t here a few months ago. You do know it’s spring now?”

  Rachel shuddered, holding her numb fingers out to the fire to warm them. “I’m sure I’ll get used to it,” she said, though her teeth were still chattering.

  “How about a drink?” he asked. “That is, if you’re not meeting someone else? I’ve got an hour’s break.”

  “Thanks. Lemonade perhaps? I’ve got work to do this afternoon.”

  “We can do better than that. They do a good spiced cider here. That’ll warm you up from the inside.”

  She nodded. “Perfect.”

  He came back a few minutes later carrying two glasses of cloudy, golden liquid and a plate of pork pies. “You look like you might be hungry too.”

  “Oh really, you didn’t have to,” she protested.

  “Nonsense. Go on—help yourself. I can’t eat all of them.”

  “Okay, if you’re sure.” She cut into one of the pies and took a bite. “How long have you been a paramedic?” she asked after she swallowed her first mouthful.

  “Nearly fifteen years—” he reached across and wiped a stray crumb from her cheek. The gesture was intimate, assured, and Rachel felt a spark at his touch, as if there was too much static electricity in the air.

  “And have you always lived on St. Mary’s?”

  “Born and raised. Went to the mainland to study of course. But I couldn’t wait to come back. Why wouldn’t you when there’s all of this here?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Let me fill you in on the place,” he said. “One of the islands is said to be the resting place of King Arthur. Another story is that there was a tsunami in the eleventh century and the islands are tips of old mountains. Some people still believe that there are churches and houses down there, stretching all the way to Land’s End. Fishermen have said they can hear bells tolling at night . . .”

  She looked incredulously at him, finding the story hard to believe.

  “These days, people say that eventually St. Mary’s will be cut in two,” he continued. “Hugh Town is on the narrowest part of the island—there’s Town Beach on one side and Porthcressa on the other, but there’s not much that separates them. It’ll only take a few meters’ rise in sea level and half the town would be underwater. Global warming and all that. The island’s highest point is at Telegraph Road, a hundred and eighty-seven meters above sea level. For now anyway.” His eyes danced at her.

  “You are well informed. And can you tell me about this place?” Rachel raised her head and looked around. She was intrigued by the old pub. It reminded her a little of one of the bars in Aitutaki—both were filled to the brim with sailing memorabilia.

  “It was originally a warehouse, but it’s been a pub since the 1950s I think. The décor hasn’t changed much since then either,” he said ruefully.

  “I guessed as much. I like it though. There’s a nice sense of history.” Rachel wiped the crumbs from her hands with a napkin. “Luckily, the pork pies are considerably fresher.”

  She was rewarded with his loud, rollicking laugh. Surprisingly, it warmed her almost as much as the fire.

  “So what do you do for fun, Jonah?” She took a sip of her cider and fixed him with a deliberately wide-eyed, innocent gaze, teasing him. She was gratified to see him confused as to her meaning, but he chose not to take the bait.

  “Well, in summer there’s gig racing. Rowing boats, that is. Wooden, with six oars. A bit like your surf lifeboats I think—I saw a TV documentary about them once. Everyone comes out to watch—it’s exciting.”

  “I’m sure it is,” Rachel said. She liked the idea of watching muscled young men wrestling with a wooden boat.

  “But tell me more about you—you didn’t get that tan by spending two weeks in Spain.”

  “No,” she agreed. “I’ve been living in the Cook Islands. Aitutaki, to be exact, for the last couple of years.”

  Jonah whistled. “I can see why you’d be less than impressed with the weather here then.”

  Rachel gave him a stoic grin. “I’ll get used to it.”

  “And what is it exactly that you’re doing here? Local gossip has it that you’re studying clams.”

  She nodded. “Yep. Clams.”

  “What’s the deal with them? I wouldn’t have thought they were that exciting, so I’m hoping you can enlighten me as to otherwise.” He delivered this sentence with a grin and Rachel wasn’t entirely sure if he was taking her seriously or not.

  “It’s part of a study to determine if levels of sea pollution are changing around the islands. We’re so far from the mainland here that there’s always been a flourishing population. My job is to see if numbers have altered since the last survey five years ago, and if their locations have altered in any way. Then, if they’ve changed shape or size.”

  “So essentially you’re here to count clams.”

  “The Venus verrucosa to be specific,” she said.

  “That sounds like a Harry Potter spell,” he laughed. “And just how long is that going to take?”

  “Well, I’ve got to make a survey of the areas that were studied last time and provide an initial report in two months’ time. And then if that all looks fine, I’ll get counting, as you say, and measuring, over the next three or four months.”

  “And after that?”

  “Who knows?”

  “It doesn’t bother you?” he asked.

  “Bother me?”

  “Such short-term work. Not knowing where you’ll be in a year or so’s time? If you’ll even have a job?”

  “I’d be more bothered if I could see the whole of my life stretching out in front of me, with no surprises,” she said.

  Jonah shook his head. “I don’t know if I could live with that kind of uncertainty. I like knowing I’ll be in the one place for as long as I want to be. Besides, staying put doesn’t mean life is boring.”

  Rachel remembered the jolt of electricity at his touch, but chased it from her mind. They were never going to see things in the same way, even though she liked him. “Fair point,” she said, though she didn’t exactly agree
with him.

  Chapter Eleven

  Little Embers, Autumn 1951

  He would always remember the moment he first saw her, as if it were etched on his memory as a photographic negative onto silver. Her profile was classical—straight nose, strong brow, high forehead, a determined chin. Indeed, her stillness made him think she could easily have been carved of marble. Richard could also see that she was painfully thin, but her skin was the perfect ivory of an English rose, her hair, though disheveled, the rich brown of polished wood, and her lips as plump and luscious as a midsummer strawberry. She was tall, nearly on a level with him, straight-backed, long-limbed, and fine-boned. Her hands were large, with long, slim fingers that were, at present, clenched into fists that made her knuckles quite white.

  She reminded him of a sleek, tremulous grayhound and he had known as soon as he looked into her startling violet-gray eyes that accepting her as a patient had been a terrible mistake. A mistake to invite a woman into what, with the exception of Mrs. Biggs and Nurse Bardcombe, was an all-male enclave. He had been expecting a frumpy housewife, not this. Even her voice was a delight—melodious and clear as a treble bell.

  Unfortunately, it was too late to change his mind—she was here now, her husband had departed, and there had been no plausible reason he could summon for turning her away.

  The look on her face was at odds with her careless beauty; it was as contemptuous a scowl as had ever been directed at him. She was rigid with fury, the slight shake of her shoulders a clue to her controlled emotions. The straitjacket had been a sensible precaution, but he couldn’t keep her bound forever, and she didn’t appear, for the moment anyway, to be hysterical.

  He was about to explain things to her when a loud wail caught his attention and he moved to the window to determine the cause of it.