The Forgotten Letters of Esther Durrant
Page 31
“That’s wonderful,” said Janice, who had been looking on with the proud gaze of a godmother.
“It is,” said Rachel. “I can’t believe it. And thank you again for the boat; that’s going to make everything so much easier. My supervisor will be delighted.”
“Actually, I have a favor to ask.” Leah shifted from foot to foot. “I was wondering if you’d sit for me? I know you saw the painting I’d started—Max told me. I think it’ll be not too terrible. If I can finish it that is.”
“I’d be honored,” said Rachel. “I’ll be over just as soon as my wrist is healed.”
“Good. This is yours,” she said, handing over the key. Rachel took the opportunity to give Leah a hug. The older woman briefly resisted, but then relaxed, leaning into her and hugging her back just as strongly.
“How are you getting back to Little Embers?” Rachel asked.
“Oh, it’s all arranged. Tom’s giving me a ride home when he’s closed up.” She whirled around and strode off in the direction of town.
“I’d better be off too,” said Janice as Leah walked away. “I’m due at the museum at eleven.”
When they’d both gone, Rachel sat on the stone wall that surrounded the beach and looked across the water. Now that her boat had been recovered, she began to wonder if Eve might consider coming down to help her with the study. She had a spare room and she reckoned she might be able to re-jig the funding to afford an assistant. It would be fun to have a protégé, not to mention helpful, especially while her wrist was healing.
She was happy to have the boat back and even more pleased that Leah was no longer angry with her, but still she felt an underlying sadness, as if the world was no longer such an exciting place as it once had been. It felt like the end of everything, even the research project no longer seemed as compelling as it once had.
Something her mother once said echoed in her head. “Sometimes love finds you, Rachel, when you’re ready. But other times you have to decide. You have to recognize it, to go out and grab it.”
She jumped up. The choice was hers to make this time. She knew exactly what she had to do. And who she had to find. This wasn’t the end; in fact, it was only just the beginning.
Acknowledgments
When I was about nine or ten and we lived in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, my mother would often take us to visit a ruined, abandoned mental asylum called Steilacoom—it was her idea of an outing. The eeriness of the ruined rooms, the broken furniture, the seemingly random objects left behind, and the air of desolation and menace within those walls have stayed with me.
Some years later, my mother told me of my great-grandmother, who was confined to a mental hospital in England with postnatal depression when my grandfather was a small boy. She said that my grandfather almost never spoke of it, and it was a source of great shame to the family. I only recently discovered that she remained there for the rest of her life. While the reasons for this have been lost in time, it strikes me as utterly tragic.
In addition, when I began to think about this book, I came across stories of belongings—often quite prosaic but that nevertheless had meaning to their owners—left behind in mental asylums, the inhabitants never leaving.
These things gave me the starting point for the novel.
In the course of my research, the Imperial War Museum’s oral histories, particularly Ernest Rex Chuter and Eric Norman Foinette’s recollections as POWs in Germany in the Second World War, and Percy James Mutimer’s recollection of his imprisonment in Changi, were a privilege to listen to. Their accounts of torture and deprivation are bravely and stoically told and their testimonies helped to inspire the characters on Embers Island.
In researching the lives of female mountaineers in the middle of the twentieth century, I came across The Summit of Her Ambition: The Spirited Life of Marie Byles by Anne McLeod, and it provided me with such a wonderful example of an adventurous, intelligent woman (she was also the first woman to practice law in New South Wales, the cofounder of the Australian Buddhist Society, an environmentalist, and a staunch advocate for women’s rights). I also read of the exploits of three intrepid Englishwomen, Anne Davies, Eve Sims, and Antonia Deacock, who drove sixteen thousand miles from London to India and back, and who trekked for three hundred miles to remote Tibet in 1958. I hoped to instill something of their collective indomitable spirit in the character of Esther Durrant.
I have always been fascinated by islands, their separateness and contained nature, and I knew this story needed to be set somewhere remote, but still in England. I have Michael Morpurgo’s Why the Whales Came to thank for inspiring me to visit the Scilly Isles and set my story there.
Thanks to my niece Louise for her company on our visit to the Scilly Isles, to Amanda Martin at the Isles of Scilly Museum for her help, and to my early readers Becky, Mercedes, Sanchia, and Rhonda. To my agent, Margaret Connolly, for her wise counsel and continual encouragement, and to my very clever publisher and editors Rebecca Saunders and Alex Craig, and all at Hachette, for their commitment to producing great books and the huge contribution they make to an increasingly vibrant Australian publishing industry.
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
About the Author
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Meet Kayte Nunn
About the Book
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Behind the Book Essay
Reading Group Guide
About the Author
Meet Kayte Nunn
KAYTE NUNN is a former magazine and book editor, and the internationally bestselling author of four novels, including The Botanist’s Daughter and The Forgotten Letters of Esther Durrant. Originally from Britain, she has also lived in the USA, and she now resides in Australia, in northern New South Wales, with her family.
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About the Book
Behind the Book Essay
The Ideas That Informed The Forgotten Letters of Esther Durrant
Several years ago, I came across a newspaper report that gave details of suitcases, belonging to patients who were never to take them home, left behind in an old asylum. There was something very moving about the abandoned personal items that the suitcases contained—spectacles, alarm clocks, vinyl records, dress patterns, embroidery, satin dancing slippers, silver-backed hairbrushes, and so on—which had once been so precious to someone.
Additionally, when I was about nine or ten, my family lived in the Pacific Northwest, in Tacoma, not far from Seattle. My mother would often take us to visit a ruined, abandoned mental asylum called Steilacoom. We still have an album from the 1970s of faded Polaroids that show us peering through the windows and framed against the graffiti that covered the outside of the buildings. The eeriness of the ruined rooms, the broken furniture, the seemingly random objects left behind, and the air of desolation within those walls are something that has stayed with me.
As I began to research an asylum setting, I was horrified to learn that in England, until the early 1950s, a woman could be committed on the say-so of her father or husband without a doctor having even examined her. I also discovered that postpartum depression was, as late as the 1950s, described as “nervous tension,” and if severe, treated with electroshock therapy. Despite the fact that recent studies have shown that as many as one in six new mothers experience postpartum depression, books on pregnancy and birth published up to and including the 1940s make absolutely no mention of it.
I remembered my mother telling me the story of my great-grandmother, who was confined to a mental hospital in England in the early twentieth century with postpartum depression (my grandfather was the youngest of seven or eight children I believe, so it is hardly surprising that she suffered a breakdown) when my grandfather was a small boy. She said that my grandfather almost never spoke of it, and it was a source of great shame to the family. He had gone to visit her with his father once, hoping to collect her and bring her home, but it was obvious
that she was in no state to leave and it traumatized him to see her like that. I spoke to my uncle, who was able to add a few details about my great-grandmother, including her name: Phoebe. He also told me that she remained there for the rest of her life, dying of breast cancer when she was much older. While the reasons for her continued stay in the asylum have been lost in time, her story strikes me as utterly tragic.
These ideas and events were the starting point for the novel.
I decided to contrast Esther’s suffering with those of returned servicemen from the Second World War, and, thanks to the British Imperial War Museum’s extraordinary oral histories (which are available online), was able to listen to accounts of former prisoners of war, which added depth to my research. I was particularly moved by their matter-of-fact descriptions and the stiff-upper-lip stoicism they displayed in the face of horrific experiences.
I also wanted the novel to have a great love story at its core, and so I rewatched movies such as Brief Encounter and Hanover Street, both to get a feel for the period and because I wanted to write about similarly impossible relationships. An emotional heart to the novel was very important to me and I worked very hard to try and tell a story that would elicit an emotional, empathetic response in the reader.
It was important to me for Esther to overcome the harrowing events that befell her early in her marriage, and not to be defined by them. In the course of my research, I came across a book, The Summit of Her Ambition: The Spirited Life of Marie Byles by Anne McLeod, and it provided me with such a wonderful example of an adventurous, intelligent woman (Miss Byles was also the first woman to practice law in New South Wales, the cofounder of the Australian Buddhist Society, an environmentalist, and a staunch advocate for women’s rights). I also read of the exploits of three intrepid Englishwomen, Anne Davies, Eve Sims, and Antonia Deacock, who drove sixteen thousand miles from London to India and back, and who trekked for three hundred miles to remote Tibet in 1958. I was inspired by their stories and hope I managed to instill something of their collective indomitable spirit in the character of Esther.
Finally, there is indeed a giant clam research station on Aitutaki, which I visited with my family a few years ago. I had no idea when I was there that it might end up in a novel one day!
Reading Group Guide
Esther’s husband, John, lets her believe that they’re going on vacation, when in fact he is delivering her for treatment at an isolated clinic. What do you think of this deception and the way Esther is physically constrained at the beginning of her treatment?
The treatments for mental illness—including postpartum depression and posttraumatic stress disorder—were not very advanced in the 1950s. How were you affected by the portrayal of mental illness in the book?
Rachel interferes in both Esther’s and Leah’s life. Was she right to do so in both cases, or should she, particularly in the case of Leah, have left her alone? When is it okay to interfere in someone else’s life?
In contrast to Esther’s cloistered existence on the island, in 2018 marine scientist Rachel is free to roam the world. Rachel’s freedom, however, seems to come at the price of connection or real intimacy. What do you think of the novel’s depiction of the freedoms women enjoy today? Do freedom of movement and career choice always come at the expense of a meaningful personal life for women or is it possible to have both? Is this still different for men than it is for women?
Esther and Richard’s love affair begins despite medical ethics deeming that a romantic relationship between doctor and patient is unacceptable. Do you think Richard acted inappropriately in breaching this rule? Why do you think this rule exists?
Esther makes the difficult decision to forgo her relationship with Richard and return to her husband and child, knowing that she could not, in those times, have both. Do women today still have to sacrifice one love for another? Is it still far less socially acceptable for a mother to abandon her child than a father?
Esther goes on to have another child, and then pursue an unusual career that requires great mental fortitude. What do you think of her resilience and her refusal to let such personal tragedy define the rest of her life?
The forbidden relationship between Robbie and George echoes that of Esther and Richard, but has a far more tragic outcome. How have such things changed from the 1950s to now?
Esther comes to love her life on Little Embers, finding it a refuge rather than a prison, and Rachel too loves the isolation offered by life on a small island. Would you be happy living in such a remote place?
Despite not speaking or writing to each other for nearly sixty years, Richard and Esther never forgot about each other. Do you think love can last that long, without any contact?
Rachel is very curious to find the author of the letters. Why do you think she becomes caught up in this love story while denying it for herself?
Friendship is also a theme of the novel—Rachel and Leah’s fragile friendship, Rachel and Noah’s, Esther and Robbie’s, and Esther and Richard’s. Do you think the portrayals of friendship here are realistic? Why do you think Jean fails to find any meaningful connection with the other characters?
Also by Kayte Nunn
Rose’s Vintage
Angel’s Share
The Botanist’s Daughter
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
P.S.™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.
THE FORGOTTEN LETTERS OF ESTHER DURRANT. Copyright © 2020 by Kayte Nunn. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Originally published as The Forgotten Letters of Esther Durrant in Australia in 2019 by Hachette Australia.
FIRST U.S. EDITION
Cover design by Lucy Kim
Cover photographs © Lee Avison/Trevillion Images (woman); © Victoria Davies/Trevillion Images (cottage); © Youngkyun Lee/EyeEm/Getty Images (daffodils); © Theeradech Sanin/Shutterstock (panel)
Digital Edition MARCH 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-297059-6
Version 01092020
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-297058-9
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