by Kayte Nunn
* * *
It was pitch dark when Rachel woke again. She was certain she’d heard a noise and lay completely still, her heart pounding as she listened hard.
Nothing.
She moved her hand across her pillow and encountered dampness. She blinked. Her eyelashes were wet. The full force of her dream came rushing back to her. She’d been struggling against something that had her in its grip. She was searching for something, something that meant a great deal to her, that she longed for, but now that she was awake again she couldn’t figure out what it was. A line from one of the letters floated back to her: “there is a hole where my heart once was.” She let out an involuntary sob while at the same time scarcely believing that she was crying over a few sixty-plus-year-old letters. Blinking rapidly to stanch the tears that were threatening to brim over once more, she gave herself a stern talking-to. Rachel Parker didn’t cry over nothing. Certainly not over people she’d never even met. What was wrong with her? Had a near drowning had more of an effect than she thought?
She closed her eyes and tried to dismiss her fanciful imaginings, telling herself it was nothing more than delayed shock, but they swirled around in her brain, giving her no peace. As she was on the point of falling asleep, the thought occurred to her that she had spent her whole life avoiding the kind of connection that the letters told of so poignantly.
* * *
When Rachel woke late the next morning, it appeared that Leah was long gone, judging by the lukewarm porridge she found in the pan in the kitchen. She helped herself to what was left and contemplated the bandage on her wrist. Her natural inclination was to remove it and take a look. It no longer ached so fiercely if she kept it absolutely still, but the slightest movement and she recoiled in agony, gritting her teeth to keep from yelling out. Realizing that if she took the bandage off she would never be able to wrap it up again, she decided against it. Seeing what her wrist looked like wouldn’t change anything. Perhaps there was a way to bind it to her, stop herself from knocking it?
She remembered seeing a scarf in the suitcase and sure enough, tucked away in an elasticized pocket on the side of the case was a large olive-green and brown satin square. Try as she might though, she was unable to tie it in a knot to make a sling. She needed Leah’s help.
After the laborious process of getting herself dressed, Rachel pushed her feet into a pair of oversize boots that lay abandoned at the front door and went in search of her rescuer.
She tramped around to the back of the house, being careful not to trip in the too-big boots and found an old orchard, trees with wizened apples hanging from their branches. To one side, a few chickens scratched at the scrubby grass and she could see a brown-and-cream–colored cow in the pasture beyond standing in front of a ramshackle stone building.
She shivered as a gust of wind blew off the ocean. “Hey . . . ,” she called. “Leah!”
There was no answer aside from a deep baritone “moo” from the cow. She went over and watched her mulch grass between her rubbery lips, grinding the green pulp in a continuous, ruminant cycle. “Margaret, old girl. Any sign of your mistress?” she asked.
The cow continued chewing, completely ignoring Rachel.
“Thought so.” Rachel was just about to turn back to the house when a flash of something red in the long grass at the side of the cow shed caught her eye. She moved closer for a better look: a spade, rusted and disintegrating at the edges, the wooden handle thick and splintered. She stepped away and the toe of her boot encountered a solid object. She glanced down. A bottle. In fact, she saw as she went closer, probably more than fifty of them, hidden by the overgrown greenery that snaked its way up the brick wall. Their labels were torn, faded, gin and possibly vodka judging by the shape and color of the bottles. All empty.
* * *
Having found no sign of Leah in the immediate vicinity of the house, Rachel took a narrow path that led toward the beach, being careful not to jostle her arm too much. She felt the sand crunch under her boots and noticed small wavelets rippling toward the shore. She recognized the shoal of rocks on which she’d foundered during the storm and shuddered at the memory. A brace of gulls screeched and carried on, squabbling over the bloated carcass of a fish.
She scanned the water in the vain hope that she might spy a passing boat, but water traffic was rare this far out among the islands and the ocean remained resolutely empty. To her left was an old wooden jetty; a figure was sitting at the end of it wearing an old raincoat and holding a fishing rod.
As Rachel walked toward her, Leah turned around, a finger to her lips. “Quiet, or you’ll disturb the fish.”
“Okay,” she whispered back, treading carefully now. “I was wondering if you might be able to tie this in a sling for me,” she said as she reached her, holding out the scarf.
Leah grunted but put the rod down on the jetty and got slowly to her feet. Rachel pulled her hair to one side while Leah folded the scarf into a triangle and wrapped it around her neck, tying the two ends in a firm knot. Up close, Rachel could see the deep grooves on either side of her mouth and the crow’s feet that fanned from her eyes. She’d initially put Leah at about mid to late forties, but exposure to the elements could have made her look older than she was. She was certainly weathered, though that, contrary to Leah’s earlier statement, might have been as much from booze as the passage of time.
“Thanks,” she said when Leah had finished. “That’s a big improvement.”
“No bother.” Leah returned to her fishing.
“Caught anything?” Rachel asked.
“Not yet.” Her back was still turned away.
Not exactly in the mood for a chat again. “Okay, well, I’ll see you later then.”
Another grunt.
Rachel retraced her steps along the jetty and wondered what to do with herself. She wasn’t used to being inactive and unproductive. There was always the book to return to, but she’d had enough of being stuck indoors and the prospect of exploring the island was more appealing, so she turned right when she reached the sand and began to walk along the beach. The sand was fine and white as sugar and littered with seashells. She picked up several particularly fine Trivia arctica—cowrie shells ridged like gnocchi on their undersides—that were hidden amid dark tranches of dried seaweed. The sharp, sour smell of iodine and salt prickled her nose and made her feel at home. A couple of seagulls pecked at the weed, flying off as she approached, complaining in noisy squawks at being disturbed.
When the beach came to an end she scrambled up a rocky bluff, stumbling as she almost lost her balance. By the time she reached the top she was completely out of breath, but the views, across the whole island and out to sea, were astonishing. It was a clear day and she could see the other islands in the group, small treeless hummocks on the horizon separated by a silver-blue ocean. Their presence brought her some comfort and reminded her that she would, in a few days’ time, be back on St. Mary’s, safely at Shearwater Cottage.
She continued, forcing her way through swaths of rusty bracken and brambles that tore at her borrowed trousers, snagging the fine wool. Reaching a low, lichen-covered drystone wall, she saw the ruins of a couple of old cottages, heaping piles of limpet shells nearby. They looked desolate, empty and hollow. At the first one, the door hung on one hinge and she tentatively pushed it open. She nearly jumped out of her skin as something fluttered inside and a large blackbird flew out, just missing her ear. The air was dank and musty. There were two rooms and when she went into the second, which was furnished with an old metal bed frame and a torn and stained mattress, the hair on the back of her neck stood up. All of a sudden she felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her; she couldn’t breathe. She stumbled out of the house, taking deep lungfuls of clean air as she emerged. She wasn’t tempted to enter the second cottage.
Deciding she had done enough exploring for one day, she walked back in the direction of the main house, leaving the bracken behind and passing bright yellow gorse and banks
of heather. She eventually found herself on the far side of the orchard and plowed her way through the long grass in between the old apple trees. The temperature here was cooler than out in the open and her skin prickled again, as it had at the old cottage. There were the beginnings of blisters on her heels from the borrowed boots, and her wrist, even though it was resting against her chest in the sling, was starting to ache again. Fighting the feeling that she was being watched, she hurried to the back of the house, kicking off her boots at the door before going inside.
Leah was in the kitchen when she got back, and was holding something. Rachel recognized it immediately. Her camera. Bulky in its waterproof housing.
“Oh my God!”
Leah gave her a grudging smile as she reached for it. “Found it washed up by the tide as I was on my way back from the beach.”
“That’s wonderful, thank you.” Rachel checked it over. It was intact, undamaged by its watery adventure. The camera had been a graduation gift from her parents more than a decade before and she was delighted to have it returned to her. She had assumed it was gone forever.
“I don’t suppose there was anything else?” she asked, ever the optimist. “No sign of my boat?”
Leah shook her head.
Even though she knew the answer, Rachel felt disappointment curdle in her stomach, followed closely by hope that someone—Jonah if she was truthful—might by now have noticed the boat missing and would come looking for her, then guilt as she thought of the time they would spend searching, the worry she might have caused. She kicked herself for her impetuousness once more and wondered exactly how she was going to break the news to Dr. Wentworth of the delay to the project, not to mention the abandoned boat.
“Lunch?” Leah interrupted her thoughts.
“Yes please. Can I do anything to help?”
“All under control.”
There was a large stockpot of water boiling on the stove and Leah held up a basket that contained a couple of fair-sized khaki-green lobsters. “We’ve got ourselves a feast.” She looked pleased with herself.
When the crustaceans were ready, scarlet and steaming on a plate, Leah cracked the shells with an old hammer and they dove in. She thoughtfully cracked most of the shells, so that it was easy for Rachel to get at the meat one-handed. The lobster was possibly the best Rachel had ever tasted: sweet and juicy, and they dipped it in melted butter as they ate. She groaned when they had finished, her stomach full.
“Not bad,” said Leah, butter glistening on her chin.
“We have this great dish at home that my mum sometimes makes—chilli mud crab—until now I’d thought it was the best way to eat shellfish, but this is incredible,” Rachel said.
While they were eating, Rachel—who was an inveterate observer of things and also people—had been studying Leah covertly, looking for signs that years of boozing might have left. But her eyes were clear and her hands steady. Perhaps she’d given up, as she’d said earlier? Either way, Rachel knew better than to mention the empty bottles by the cow shed.
She was still wondering about it when Leah looked at her and Rachel colored, aware that she’d been caught staring. “What did you run away from?” Rachel blurted out before she could censor herself.
Leah looked at her in astonishment, as if she hadn’t heard her correctly. “Curiosity killed the cat, you know,” she said.
“Good thing cats have nine lives,” Rachel shot back.
Leah hesitated and then roared with laughter. “Who said I was running away from anything?” she asked, wiping a tear of mirth from her cheek. “Perhaps I was running toward something.”
Leah stood up abruptly, her empty plate in her hands, and Rachel knew she wouldn’t get more of an answer from her than that.
* * *
After lunch, Leah went to her studio and Rachel was left to her own devices once more. Her frustration at being stranded was growing, more so for not being able to communicate or get on with her work than the actual isolation of the island. She relished her own company, but when there was nothing to occupy her, time dragged.
She decided to reread the letters. On her walk that morning, the words had kept returning to her, echoing in her head as her mind tried to guess at the story behind them. She had thoroughly searched the suitcase the previous day, even going so far as to pat down the lining in case anything had been slipped inside, but there were no more clues to be found.
She retrieved the envelopes from the book and spread them out again. Six of them. And then, nothing. They spoke of a love unlike anything Rachel had ever known. Did it really burn that fiercely? And why had they never been sent? Would the two people concerned both still be alive? She desperately wanted to know and it began to dawn on her that she wasn’t going to be able to leave the matter unresolved. She still hadn’t decided whether or not to mention the letters to Leah. Their friendship—if you could even call it that—was a tentative one, forced by circumstances and Rachel had no idea what Leah’s reaction to the letters might be. She wanted the chance to find out more before raising the subject.
She stood up and paced about the small living room, running her hands along the backs of the old-fashioned olive-green armchairs and nearly tripping on the holed, faded rug. The place looked as if it hadn’t been touched for years and a thought suddenly struck her: perhaps it might be hiding other secrets? Over in one corner was a gramophone of a type that she recognized from black-and-white movies and she looked at it curiously, wondering if it still worked. On a shelf nearby was a dust-laden stack of old records, their sleeves faded and torn in places. She picked one at random, slid it out of its paper covering, and placed it on the turntable.
She found a handle on the side and cranked it carefully. She wasn’t sure how she knew, but she remembered that you had to place the needle onto the record and she lifted it, balancing it carefully on one finger. A hiss of static and a crackle and then the music floated over her, filling the ruined house with sound. She stood and listened for a while, transported back to a sultry afternoon in the school music room, where the sound of the violins competed with the cicadas outside, and the high notes roused a yearning in her for something that she couldn’t put her finger on. The record finished and she shook her head to clear the feeling.
She glanced about the rest of the room. Below the shelves was a cabinet with a carved facade and two wrought-iron handles. She tried one and then the other. They didn’t budge. She cast about looking for any sign of a key. It would be almost impossible to find in this room, drowning as it was in curios, books, and papers, but she looked anyway, peering behind the sofa, feeling between the cushions, on the bookshelves, in various small lidded pots, in ashtrays, underneath a tarnished brass ship’s bell . . . Aha! There was something underneath the bell. A small iron key with a silk tassel looped around it.
The key slipped into the lock as if it had been kept well oiled, and the doors swung open. Unlike the rest of the cluttered room, there was only one object inside. A slim catalog. The words Leah Gill: Recent Works stamped in gold on the front.
It didn’t look like there were going to be any clues about Esther and her mysterious lover in the cupboard, but her heart skipped a beat nonetheless.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Little Embers, Autumn 1951
At supper that night, Esther made a limited contribution to the conversation and avoided discourse with Robbie in particular. He gave no indication to her, or the others, that anything untoward had occurred, though he too appeared quieter than usual. She was embarrassed and ashamed of her actions down on the jetty, but was at a loss as to how to broach the subject with him. He had only been trying to comfort her, but she had taken advantage of that for reasons she couldn’t begin to fathom. The memory of it swirled around in her head, making it pound and forcing her to pinch the bridge of her nose at the pain. As soon as she finished eating, she excused herself from the table with a genuine headache.
Later, she went in search of Jean. She had somethi
ng to ask her.
She came across the nurse in the doctor’s study, tidying papers and files that he had left strewn over his desk. “I wonder if I might have a word?” Esther said.
Jean straightened up to face her. “Of course. What can I do for you, Mrs. Durrant?”
“Well, I–er . . .” Esther hated the groveling tone in her voice but pressed on. “I wonder if you might be able to give me something . . . something for my nerves. I didn’t want to bother the doctor, you see. I thought you might be able to help.”
“I see.”
“Yes, I’ve run out. Damned nuisance, I know.”
“Unfortunately, Mrs. Durrant, we have no such medicines on the island.” Her tone brooked no argument.
“Oh, I see. Very well then. Thank you.” Hiding her shame at having had to ask, Esther retreated to her room, cursing herself for having swallowed her pills like sweets when she had first arrived, and cursing John again for abandoning her in such a far-flung, desperate place. She knew, deep down, that he had likely only been doing his best for her, but it didn’t make things any easier.
Mrs. Biggs had laid a fire and left a hot water bottle under the sheets and this small act comforted her. She lay down, holding Teddy’s cap against her cheek and closed her eyes, remembering the way her son’s hair shone like spun gold as it caught the light, the pearls of his teeth that were revealed when something pleased him. For once the nightmares kept themselves at bay.
* * *
Rising early the next morning, she dressed swiftly, stepping into houndstooth-check trousers and a wool twinset. After the previous day’s conversation with the doctor, she felt clear-headed. It had felt good to finally tell someone, though she pushed down the knowledge that she hadn’t recounted the full story. Some of the burden she had been carrying seemed miraculously to have been lifted, however, and she was anxious to do something useful. She had been wallowing in self-pity for too long and it was time to make amends, however small. She would seek out Robbie and apologize to him as soon as she had an opportunity.