by Kayte Nunn
It would be a long five days before she could return to St. Mary’s, though at least Leah didn’t seem too unwelcoming, nor especially loony, despite what Jonah had told her. A little bossy and rather remote, but then who wouldn’t be, living by themselves for years on end?
* * *
Leah reappeared briefly at lunchtime and cut a few slices from a loaf of bread and a hunk of cheese, taking it up to her studio, indicating with the minimum amount of words that Rachel could help herself to whatever she found.
After chewing on a slice of bread, Rachel spent a good part of the afternoon sleeping, but then as the sky began to darken, got up and made herself useful in the kitchen, finding boxes of pasta and canned tuna in the pantry, cheese and milk in a kind of cool store fronted with chicken wire. She’d managed to open the boxes and cook one-handed without having to call for assistance, though it had been more of a challenge than she expected and by the time she had finished she was quite exhausted. As she was doing her best to clean up, Leah had emerged once more, hands covered in paint, another layer of dark green and white flecks on her sweater and a streak of carmine through her long auburn hair.
“What flowers are they?” Rachel asked as Leah cleared the table of some of its detritus and placed a jug containing a few sprigs of a prickly yellow-flowered plant. Rachel knew a great deal about biology, but considerably less about botany, particularly European species.
“Gorse. Ulex europaeus. Supposed to represent the darker qualities one needs to survive the journey of life, to give you the energy you might need to make difficult decisions. In Scotland it’s associated with the Cailleach, the Divine Hag, or the spirit of winter.”
“Oh,” said Rachel. “Right. The spirit of winter.” She’d only asked its name.
“It’s also not bad in gin,” said Leah, with a cackling laugh.
“So what brought you to Embers?” asked Rachel as they sat down to eat.
“Pretty bloody direct, you Aussies, aren’t you?” said Leah through a mouthful of pasta. “If you must know, I’d been living in the Highlands of Scotland. But it was too bloody cold there in winter, even for me, so I started looking for somewhere down south. A friend of mine knows the leaseholder of this island, a doctor, I believe, and he let me have it on the condition that I keep the place from completely going to wrack and ruin.”
“But why an island? And you the only inhabitant?”
“That way I’m in control, you see. I get to decide who comes, and mostly it’s no one, which is just fine.”
“Unless they shipwreck themselves on your doorstep,” Rachel said wryly.
“Yes, well there is that unforeseen interruption.”
Rachel couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to be so cut off from the world, entirely on their own, the only company a cow and a few chickens. Yes, she’d lived in some pretty remote places, but there had always been other people around. “Don’t you miss things?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know . . . conversation, someone to share a sunrise or sunset with, the occasional glass of wine . . .”
“Don’t really drink,” Leah said bluntly, cleaning her plate with a slice of bread. “Not bad having another cook around the place for a change though.”
That was the most thanks Rachel was going to get for dinner.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Little Embers, Autumn 1951
Richard, who was making notes at his desk, glanced up to see Esther flying up the path from the boat, her arms dangling at her sides like a loose-jointed marionette, a stricken expression on her face. He put down his pen and went to meet her, catching her as she arrived at the front door. He had been anticipating this. He’d seen the alacrity with which she volunteered to meet the weekly boat and guessed that she was waiting for news from her husband.
“It’s all right,” he said, holding up a warning hand and standing in her way. “It’s all right, Esther,” he repeated. “Why don’t we go inside and talk about it?”
Esther went to move past him, shaking her head, refusing to speak to him, but he stepped to one side, preventing her escape. “I think I know what’s going on.”
He steered her into the drawing room and she looked up at him, her eyes a stormy violet. “I don’t know that you do.”
He blinked to keep his focus. “You had a letter from John. Am I correct?”
She nodded.
“And he is telling you that it is best if you stay here for the time being.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I advised him before he left that it would take some time before you were truly well again, no matter what you might communicate to him.”
She narrowed her eyes, scowling at him. “I see. Clearly you both know better than I what is best for me. You collude with each other; I should have known.” Agitated, she turned away from him, her fists clenched by her side and her whole body quivering.
“Come on now, Esther. We are all on the same side here. John cares deeply about you and I’m here to help you, if you’ll let me.”
There was silence and then the fight went out of her, her shoulders slumping. “I suppose you are.”
He closed the door and indicated that she should take her customary seat opposite him. It was time to broach the subject that they had been skirting since her arrival.
“Do you blame yourself for what happened?” he asked once they were settled.
“What do you mean?”
“For what happened to Samuel?” It was the first time he had mentioned the baby by name.
She hesitated, but then began to speak. “He died,” she said in a flat tone. “And yes, of course I am to blame. I was his mother; I should have known that something was wrong, very wrong.”
“Why don’t you tell me exactly what happened?” he said gently. “You have to tell someone, at some point. Why not me? I shall not think any less of you, that I can promise.”
She took a deep breath and gripped the edge of the chair, her knuckles white against its dark green fabric. Richard could see that she was battling to control the pain she held folded inside herself. “You can trust me, Esther, always,” he reassured her. “You can trust me with anything.”
She looked at him, blinked several times, and then began to speak, her voice quavering with barely suppressed emotion. “He was only six weeks old. He’d had a bit of a sniffle and been fussing, but he took my milk and settled quickly when I put him down to sleep.” She stared out of the window. He followed her gaze and saw Robbie coming up the path with the cart.
“Go on.”
“He slept through. I’d not had a full night’s sleep in weeks—I insisted that Nanny wake me for all of Samuel’s feeds—and I was exhausted. When I woke early, I knew immediately that something was wrong. The house was quiet, too quiet. He’d never slept through the night before. I got up and ran to his room—it was at the other end of the corridor from ours—and went to his bassinet.” She gave a sharp sob. “He was so cold. Like marble. Teddy was there—he’d been trying to wake his baby brother, and it was all I could do not to scream and frighten him. Nanny came as soon as she heard me talking to Teddy. Together we tried to revive him, to blow our breath into his lungs, but it was too late. Too bloody late.” She fixed her gaze on the rug between them. “After that nothing really mattered anymore; there didn’t seem to be any point in getting out of bed in the morning, carrying on. Any point in anything actually.”
Richard reached for her hand, to offer what comfort he could. “Thank you for trusting me with that, Esther, but I must confess that I don’t understand why you blame yourself.”
“Don’t you see? I should have known. I should have stayed awake; I had an inkling that something was not quite right, but I ignored it in favor of my own sleep. How could I have been so selfish? A terrible, selfish human being, not fit to be a mother.”
She raised her eyes to meet his, and he nearly lost himself in their depths. He could feel the pain that shimmered from he
r and it was all he could do not to take it on himself. Why did this woman affect him in a way that no other patient had? “It’s so desperately sad to lose a child. But you should not blame yourself. No one blames you, Esther.”
“Oh,” she said with a bitter laugh. “I think John does. He’s not been the same with me since then.”
“You’ve both suffered a great loss; it’s not surprising that things are different between you. But I know he does not blame you—he would not have gone to the trouble of sending you here if he did, surely you can see that?”
“He wants to be rid of me, can’t stand me the way I am now, I am sure of it. I’ve tried, believe me I’ve tried, for Teddy’s sake, but I’m in a hole so unfathomably deep I can’t seem to see a way out of it. I don’t think I’ll ever be the person I once was. Happy, carefree.” She gave him a wry smile. “I don’t deserve to be.”
“Yes you do, Esther, and that’s what I’m here for. Together we can do this. I am good at my job.”
“I don’t doubt it,” she said softly.
“Good, then we have a basis on which to start. Why don’t you tell me what happened after you discovered your baby had died? I know it is painful, but it will help to talk about it.”
Esther’s mouth worked, as if she were deciding where to begin. “John woke up and saw us trying to save Samuel. He ran down the stairs to the telephone to call an ambulance. I heard wailing, almost like an animal in pain; it was a while before I realized that it was me. I couldn’t seem to shut myself up. I held Samuel, wouldn’t, couldn’t let him go. John was downstairs waiting for the ambulance. It was an age before anyone came, but then I remember someone prying my arms from Samuel’s body. John had called our doctor too, and I remember a syringe, and then . . . nothing.” She took a sharp intake of breath. “They must have taken him away from me. I still don’t know where he went. I never saw him again, never even got to say good-bye.” She twisted her hands on the chair. “There wasn’t a burial and I was in too much of a fog to ask why not. It was only later that John told me they had taken his body to the hospital. To see if they could find out what had happened to him. He let them do that, to his own son!” She spat the words out. “They never gave him back.”
“Oh, Esther, I’m sorry,” he said. Hearing her tell the story, even though John had told him some of it already, made his heart ache for her.
“There’s no grave, no way of sending his soul to heaven, no way of telling him how sorry I was, how I had let him down, that it was all my fault, that I hadn’t loved him as a mother should.”
“What do you mean by that? You cared for him, did you not?”
Esther slumped. “In the sense of seeing to his needs, yes.”
Richard watched her carefully. There was still something she was keeping hidden. He hoped that she would reveal it, given time.
“You have every right to be as angry as you are,” he said. “No one should be denied the chance to say farewell to their child.”
“I . . .” She hesitated. “I began to wonder if I had in fact gone completely mad. I couldn’t think clearly, everything was as hazy as the London air, I had trouble remembering even the simplest things.” She gave a shuddering sigh. “Am I? Mad?”
“No, Esther, I don’t think you’re mad, or bad . . . just terribly sad, that’s all.”
“Sometimes it seems as if it’s all I can think about; I can’t get out of my own head. Does that make any sense?”
He nodded. “Yes, it does. We all have to battle demons from time to time—and the ones of our own making are the most fearsome adversaries. But I can reassure you that it will pass. This isn’t the way things will always be.”
“Is that a promise?” She didn’t sound as if she believed him.
“It is. It’ll be all right in the end.”
“How do you know?” Her eyes flashed at him. “How can you say that with such confidence?”
“I have faith in you, Esther. You are stronger than this. It will not beat you.” He spoke more forcefully than he had intended. Had he really raised his voice? He had wanted to shock her out of her self-doubt. He couldn’t remember the last time he had lost his cool, but Esther affected him in a way no other patient had. It would not do, he needed to regain control of himself.
“You may well go on to have other children. Life will be whole again,” he insisted.
“No,” she said. “Never. I shall never have another child. What if . . . ? What if the same thing happened again? I could not bear it. No. I do not deserve to be a mother.”
She was beginning to get worked up once more, tapping her foot in agitation against the floor, her leg jerking and shaking. “All in good time, Esther. Do not trouble yourself with such thoughts.” His voice had returned to its normal volume. “Shall we stop now, listen to some music perhaps? It might help.”
“All right,” she said eventually. “But not the bloody Vaughan Williams again.”
“I thought you liked it?”
“I do, but that doesn’t mean I want to hear it all the time.”
He chuckled, pleased that even in this moment she was able to jest with him. “Indeed. Let’s try something different then.” He stood up and went over to the gramophone, riffling through the LPs stacked on the shelf beside it. He selected one and placed the needle on the record. Immediately, a smoky-sweet sound filled the room. “I’ll Get By.”
Esther gave the ghost of a smile and began to sing along, a husky alto, and Richard knew that it was a sound he would remember forever.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Little Embers, Spring 2018
Rachel elected to sleep on the couch again. The rest of the house was arctic and she hadn’t fully recovered from her near-drowning; her bones still held the water’s chill.
Leah had found some sheets and as she shook them out the smell of lavender wafted toward her. She wondered briefly if that was the perfume that the letter writer referred to before reminding herself that the scent would hardly last for more than fifty years. There was a pillowcase for the lumpy pillow, a thick down-filled quilt, and the blanket she’d used the previous night. Before retiring, Leah stoked the fire, adding a couple more logs. “That should stay in till morning.” Their conversation over dinner hadn’t been exactly sparkling, but now she was even more parsimonious with her words and Rachel decided against mentioning the letters she’d found, at least for the time being.
She went to the bathroom and washed herself as best she could with one hand. The water was icy and she was as quick as she could manage, taking just enough time to rinse her face and rub a finger over her teeth, which were by now feeling decidedly furry. Leah had left her the packet of painkillers and she chugged back another two of them with a mouthful of water. Her wrist had begun to ache again.
“See you in the morning,” Leah said as she reappeared in the doorway. She kept early hours then.
“Sure thing.” Rachel had napped earlier and wasn’t particularly tired, so once Leah had left she pulled out the book that had been in the suitcase and settled herself on her makeshift bed. A candle gave just enough light to read by. Propping the book on her knees, she turned the first page, reading the inscription. “For my dear Esther. Christmas 1951.” Esther must be the “E” to whom the letters were written. Esther Durrant: the name was familiar somehow, hooking a memory that for the moment eluded her.
Did the letter writer give Esther the book as well, the year before?
As Rachel turned the pages, a small square black-and-white photograph fell out. She held it up and saw that it was of a group of men and women. They were bundled up in coats and hats and standing in front of a stone house—the same one she was now staying in, she realized with a shock. She flipped the photo over to see if there was anything written on the back. “February 1952.”
One of the women was wearing a cloche hat and a coat with a thick round collar. It was the same as the hat and coat in the suitcase. Was this Esther perhaps? She pored over the image, but it was i
ndistinct and grainy.
She couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that she was intruding on someone else’s life. She felt like an interloper: wearing the woman’s clothes, reading letters written to her—love letters no less—and now, judging by the well-thumbed pages, reading what must have been one of her favorite books. She scanned the faces of the men and women in the photo: was one of these the person who was in love with Esther, the person who had written the letters, or was it someone else? What had they all been doing here? Was it a holiday? If it had been summer, she might have suspected that, but in winter? Somehow they didn’t look like close friends—their body positions were awkward and each was standing just a little separately from the next. There were no arms slung casually around each other’s shoulders, no sisterly encircling of the waist. True, one of the men was resting a hand on the shoulder of another, but it looked awkward somehow. The picture was certainly very different from the selfies that everyone took these days. After a while, she put the photograph down and returned to the book.
The house was quiet. She’d seen a grandfather clock in the hallway, but it no longer tick-tocked away the seconds or sounded the hours. It had stopped at a quarter to twelve, but who knew when—it could have been months ago, but was more likely years. Leah apparently had little use for timepieces. But then why would you, when the rising and setting of the sun told you all you needed to know?
The scrape of the pages as she turned them and her steady breathing were the only sounds and they helped to quiet the chatter in her mind. After a while, her eyelids began to drift downward and she was almost asleep before she suddenly jerked awake. She had forgotten the candle. It could be disastrous to leave it burning. She sat up awkwardly and blew it out. Smoke curled up toward the ceiling and the smell of the molten wax reminded her of long-ago birthday parties. She felt an unexpected pang of homesickness. Wondered what her mum and dad might be doing right at that moment. She vowed to call them as soon as she got back to St. Mary’s. Wouldn’t go into detail about her misadventures though—she didn’t want them to worry about her.