The Forgotten Letters of Esther Durrant

by Kayte Nunn

  A portrait.

  It was her, unmistakably her. Lying on the green sofa in the borrowed twinset, her dark hair swirled about her, her eyes closed. The vintage clothes made her seem like a woman from a different time, but Leah had captured Rachel’s likeness exactly. Rachel stood and stared at the painting, didn’t know what to think.

  Eventually, she took another quick snap of the half-finished portrait and hurried out of the room, not wanting to risk being caught. Did she dare confront Leah about the paintings? She wasn’t supposed to have been in the studio in the first place, but really, now that she knew, she had to do something about it, even if it meant interfering . . . work like this shouldn’t be hidden away.

  * * *

  After she had left the studio, Rachel threw on the black-collared coat and went outside to try and give herself time to think. She walked down to the jetty once more, though there was no sign of Leah fishing this time. Sitting down and swinging her legs over the end, she wondered what to do. Should she confront her? She was so lost in thought that she didn’t at first register the bright yellow and green catamaran speeding toward her. The boat she’d been hoping to see most of all.

  When eventually she did spot it, she jumped to her feet and began to wave her good arm manically, yelling out to the boat. It didn’t matter, it was headed straight for her.

  Delight and relief flooded through her like a drug as she saw Jonah’s cheery face behind the windshield. He waved back at her, calling out her name. She’d never been so happy to see a familiar face in her life and she continued to wave excitedly until the boat pulled up alongside the jetty. Before it had even tied up, he hopped out of the boat and landed a few steps away from her.

  “Rachel!” Jonah went to wrap her in a hug, but stopped as he saw the sling. “I thought I’d never find you. What happened? Are you okay?”

  “Slight argument with a few rocks, nothing serious,” she said, feeling suddenly bashful.

  He raised a disbelieving eyebrow at her.

  “But Leah pulled me free and has been looking after me. I’m fine, really,” she said.

  “I’ll be the judge of that in a minute.”

  “How did you know where to find me?”

  “Janice and I were worried when we realized the Soleil was missing after the storm and you weren’t at the house . . . I imagined the worst—”

  “I should have checked the weather,” she interrupted. “But I’m okay. Though I could do with getting off this island and back to work. I need to report in to my supervisor.”

  “So where’s your boat?”

  “Um, yeah, well, about that . . .” She kicked at a loose board, too embarrassed to look at him. “I lost power to the motor so I decided to swim it in to shore. Turned out not to have been the smartest decision I’ve ever made.”

  “No kidding,” he said, an incredulous expression on his face. “What on earth did you think you were doing?”

  Rachel held up her good hand. “It’s okay, I don’t need you to tell me anything I don’t already know.”

  “And your arm?” he said, eyeing the sling.

  “It’s a little sore,” she admitted. “But I’m sure it’ll be fine in a few days.” She’d never been one to make a fuss about things.

  “Yes, well, we’ll see about that. Hello, Leah,” he said, looking past her.

  Rachel turned around to see her rescuer coming down the jetty to meet them. She must have heard the sound of the boat.

  “I see you’ve found her then,” said Leah.

  “We’ve been searching since the storm, but I didn’t think she would have been this far east. It was only on a hunch that we came out this way today. Rachel says you rescued her. That’s very good of you.”

  “No more than anyone would have done in the same situation.”

  “We’ll take her off your hands now, get that arm looked at properly.”

  “Right you are then. Some peace around here would be good,” said Leah brusquely.

  Rachel turned to Leah. “I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done. I really am grateful.” She stopped, remembering something. “Oh, I need to get my camera,” she said, rushing past Jonah and Leah and running back to the house.

  When she got inside, she went to the living room, found her camera and then saw the copy of Rebecca with the letters hidden between its pages. Before she could think better of it, she slipped it into her coat pocket.

  She ran into Leah on her way back.

  “Glad they found you, hey?” she asked.

  Rachel nodded. “Thank you again, Leah. I’ll come back and see you if I may? Once I get a new boat sorted out.”

  “Oh, there’s really no need.”

  “Well, I’d like to return the clothes.” Rachel indicated the coat, feeling a twinge of guilt as she remembered what she’d shoved into the pocket.

  “No one here was using them; you’re welcome to keep them. No good to anyone else.”

  “Well, I’ll come and see you then.” It was a promise she knew she would keep.

  To her surprise, Leah leaned forward and engulfed her in a hug. “I suppose that’d be all right,” she said gruffly.

  They were interrupted by the blast of the boat’s horn. “Sounds like your bloke’s in a hurry.”

  “Oh, he’s not my bloke,” said Rachel. “Just a friend.”

  The horn sounded again.

  “I’d better run,” she said. “Thanks again, Leah!”

  She ran back down the path.

  “Sorry about that,” said Jonah as she stepped aboard. “But the tide’s turning and we need to be back by lunchtime. I’ll have a look at that arm as soon as we get back, but you might need to see the doc as well.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Rachel. “I can’t believe you found me.”

  “I can’t either,” he said, giving her a grin that was three parts relief and one part amusement.

  Rachel felt weak with pleasure. As much at seeing him again as the thought that there might be a hot bath waiting for her when she got back to her cottage. “Honestly,” she said, “I don’t mind admitting that I’m glad to leave there. It felt like an island of lost souls. Pretty eerie in places.”

  “I can imagine,” he said. “Though I thought you liked a bit of isolation.”

  “Not like that,” she admitted. “I’m so glad you found me. I can’t believe you cared enough to come looking for me.”

  Jonah gave her a funny look. “Of course I care enough,” he said. “I’d do it for anyone who was lost.”

  * * *

  Jonah examined her hand when they got back to St. Mary’s and sent her straight to the doctor, who diagnosed a Grade II sprain and a broken finger, which he set in a splint before restrapping her wrist. “There’s some serious ligament damage there, but you’re lucky the wrist isn’t fractured. It’ll be at least six weeks before you can use it again.”

  Rachel’s spirits sank. How was she going to be able to do her job with the use of only one hand?

  She was still feeling dejected when she returned to Shearwater. The first thing she did was go to her laptop and check her emails. Sure enough, there were two messages from Dr. Wentworth, the first reminding her that he was expecting her weekly report, and the second asking why she hadn’t filed it. She took a deep breath and began typing, but her one-handed progress was frustratingly slow.

  After she finished and pressed send, she sat back, glancing out of the window and seeing gray clouds hanging on the horizon, a low ceiling capping the sky. She remembered that she hadn’t told Leah that she’d seen the paintings.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Little Embers, Winter 1951

  When Richard had seen Esther standing at the window, her shoulders hunched over the letter, he’d felt compelled to go to her. She looked like a frail bloom, her head angled toward the paper, tendrils of hair curling about her slender neck, and he was helpless in the face of her distress. He knew he was in grave danger of caring too deeply for her.<
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  Their hour together had become the high point in his day and he found himself looking for ways to prolong the time. Esther was well read, well educated, and possessed a lively mind. In addition, her keen sense of the absurd, together with an underpinning kindness that showed itself more and more often, made her only more attractive to him. They talked of books, music, of poetry—she favored the metaphysical poets of the seventeenth century, he those of the First World War: Sassoon, Thomas, and Brooke—of philosophy and astronomy, of politics, history, and economics.

  “But surely you can see that Churchill is a brutal imperialist?” she railed on more than one occasion. “As evidenced by his appalling treatment of the indigenous Kenyans?”

  He tried to argue for the prime minister’s nobler virtues and strong leadership, his stance against Nazi Germany, all of which she only reluctantly acceded to.

  He loved that she wasn’t afraid to disagree with him, but that despite their differences, they saw the world almost through the same eyes, held the same values dear.

  He also spoke to her of his ambitions. “I am writing a paper on new and individualized treatments for patients, based on my experiences at Northfield, and also here. I hope to change the management of psychiatric cases, especially depression, to break new ground,” he confided.

  “For certainly there are better means than electric shock treatment or, God help us, lobotomy,” she said with a shiver. “That does indeed sound like a worthy endeavor.”

  “I confess I have little spare time to work on it, but I am determined to complete it. It could help change the course of so many lives. Shining a light on better treatment, to help those poor souls who have experienced such horrors defending king and country, is the least I can do. I didn’t go to war. I suppose this is my way of making amends.”

  “Making amends? Whatever for? No one thinks less of you because you did not fight, if that’s what you mean. No one that matters anyway.”

  He smiled at the thought that she was counseling him.

  “Tell me, what decided you upon this course of medicine?” she had asked one day. He gave her a brief sketch of his mother and she had looked at him with such sympathy that he felt afresh the wound of that long-ago summer. Had he been given cause to describe the perfect woman, he would not have imagined someone quite like Esther, but now that he knew her, no one else would ever come close. It was as subtle and as simple as the way she held herself, the sideways sweep of her gaze when something amused her, the low timbre of her voice that made him want to lean forward and listen even more closely to what she was saying. It was the way she entered a room, the light in her eyes as if she was about to recount something wonderful that she’d saved just for him. That she was the wife of an old school chum caused him even more anguish than the fact that she was his patient—for she would not be his patient forever, but she would always be married to someone else.

  He found himself to be at the mercy of his own desires in a way that he had never before experienced. It disrupted his sleep, made him careless of the others. Despite the longing that plagued him day and night, he vowed that she should never know of his feelings. He owed that to her as her doctor.

  * * *

  It was ridiculous to hope, but when she called him by his Christian name before Christmas dinner it was as though she too acknowledged their deepening friendship. Such a small gesture meant everything.

  The rest of that day passed in a blur for Richard. After the austerity of prior years the table almost bowed with the weight of food upon it and everyone ate heartily. Mrs. Biggs had boiled up a pudding, sweetened with honey and dried fruit, and he held it aloft as, doused in liquor, blue flames danced about its surface.

  “There’s a thruppenny bit in there for one lucky lad,” said Mrs. Biggs, who had downed several more sherries by this point.

  “Or lass,” said Robbie, angling his spoon at Esther.

  Try as he might, Richard could not keep his eyes from returning to Esther, caring less as the evening wore on and the level in the wine bottles grew lower, that anyone might notice. He watched the way her face glowed in the candlelight; how gentle she was with Robbie and his doll. As they ate the pudding, he saw her take a spoonful and a puzzled look appeared on her face. She raised her napkin to her lips and delicately spat into it and he worried for a moment that something was wrong.

  “It appears I am the lucky one in this instance,” she said, holding a coin up for all to see.

  He caught a split-second look of disdain on Jean’s face, as if she’d just at that moment thought of something unpleasant. He couldn’t be certain, but it looked very much like jealousy. He dismissed the notion. Jean was an excellent nurse, even if she was at times a little humorless.

  He returned his attention to Esther, who was beaming at them all, delighted by her good fortune. He hoped the coming year would prove luckier for her than the current one had—she, as much as any of the men under his care, deserved it.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  St. Mary’s, Spring 2018

  Rachel was soaking in a scalding hot bath, her injured hand hanging over the side, when there was a loud banging at her door. Scrambling to wrap herself in a towel, which was no easy task with only one usable hand, she went downstairs to see who it could be.

  “Halloo!” A male voice boomed through the door.

  Jonah.

  “Come on in,” she called out from the bottom of the stairs. “It’s unlocked. I won’t be a sec, just getting changed.” She raced back up the stairs and awkwardly pulled on a pair of tracksuit pants and a sweater. It felt good to be back in her own clothes again. Pushing her feet into a pair of UGGs and drying her hair with a towel, she padded back down to the kitchen.

  Jonah was there, filling the small space as he unloaded a large shopping bag. “Dinner,” he said. “I thought you might appreciate the help. Hope you don’t mind if I make myself at home in your kitchen.”

  She blinked. “Be my guest. And you’re a star. Both for bringing me back to civilization and for thinking of my stomach.”

  “Actually, it was more the thought of you trying to do everything one-handed,” he said. “Speaking of which, how is the paw?”

  She looked down at her bandaged wrist. “I can’t use it for at least six weeks.”

  “Bummer.”

  “Exactly. I’ve had to explain myself to my supervisor—I don’t know what he’s going to be more pissed off about—the fact that there will be a delay to the research or that I’ve lost the boat they’ve given me. Personally, I’m laying bets on the boat.”

  “Doesn’t rain but it pours, eh?” he said, opening the wine. “Here, drown your sorrows in a glass of this.”

  She took a hefty slug, hoping it might anesthetize her disappointment and frustration with herself, now the euphoria of being rescued had worn off.

  “Tell me something good, Jonah. I’m sick of wallowing in my own troubles,” she said.

  He glanced up from the chopping board, where he was dicing tomatoes, and grinned at her. “Okay. Well, this morning we answered a call about a suspected heart attack, but it turned out to be severe indigestion.”

  “Really? That’s the best you’ve got?”

  He shrugged. “Well, actually, this afternoon, after finding someone I’d been rather worried about . . .” He winked at her. “I got to visit the primary school and teach a class of ten-year-olds first aid. They loved it. Wanted to know how many lives I’d saved, whether I’d seen a dead person, and could they have a go on the defibrillator. One cheeky so-and-so tried to nick my stethoscope.”

  Rachel laughed. “You like kids?”

  “Course,” Jonah replied. “What’s not to like?”

  Rachel thought of her two nieces and three nephews, growing up so far away, and what she had missed out on. She looked at Jonah, imagining him for a moment as a father, two, or even three kids hanging off him. She knew instinctively he’d make a good one.

  The smell of garlic and frying onions m
ade her mouth water, reminding her of her mother’s cooking, and she continued to watch Jonah as he stirred the pan, tasting, adding a few grinds of pepper. Eventually he put a lid on the pan and then picked up his wineglass, joining her at the table. “That’ll take half an hour or so. Hope you like bouillabaisse.”

  “Smells like heaven.”

  “Good. So tell me about Leah. What’s she really like?”

  “Tough. Terse. Doesn’t suffer fools. Independent. But then I guess you’d have to be, living on your own like that.”

  Jonah nodded.

  “But she was nice to me. Bandaged me up . . . Did you know she was an artist?”

  “Really? I don’t think anyone on the islands knows her well—in fact, you may have found out more than most around here.”

  “I found an old catalog from an exhibition of hers from years ago,” Rachel said, taking another sip of wine. “She said she only dabbles now, that her talent deserted her, but what I saw in her studio was more than that. I’m not sure why she doesn’t exhibit anymore. Also, she has a daughter, but they’re not in touch.”

  “That’s sad. Did she say why?”

  “Something about her being a difficult teenager—drugs, that kind of thing.”

  “Might go some way to explaining why she’s living on Little Embers all by herself.”

  “Oh, and there was something else.”

  “What?”

  “There was a suitcase. Mostly full of clothes—in fact, the ones I was wearing when you picked me up came from there. But I also found letters—love letters.”

  “Leah’s love letters? Isn’t that a bit of an invasion of her privacy?” He looked at her in astonishment.

  “Oh God no. These weren’t hers,” she reassured him quickly. “They were written in the 1950s.”

  “Wow. Okay, now I’m interested. Tell me more.” He leaned toward her, anticipation lighting his face.