Return to the Island: An utterly gripping historical romance

by Hewitt, Kate

  “I’ll send Lizzie,” Caro said, hope flaring briefly in her eyes. “She knows the way into Emerald, at least.”

  Upstairs, Iris lay in bed, her body as still as a waxwork, her face pale and lifeless, the rise and fall of her chest barely visible.

  “What do you think?” Caro demanded as Ellen took the poor woman’s pulse.

  “I couldn’t say,” she said again, although she feared she could. She’d seen soldiers in Iris’ condition back at Royaumont—men who had been conscious and even cheerful one day, and then slipped into rest that seemed peaceful, yet with the slow breaths and clammy pallor that so often preceded death.

  “It doesn’t look good, though, does it?” Caro said quietly. “She’s barely stirred all day, not even to open her eyes.”

  “It’s usually not a good sign,” Ellen admitted quietly. “But let’s leave that to the doctor.”

  The doctor, when he did come, agreed with Ellen’s assessment. A tired, harried man with too many patients and not enough time, he checked Iris over, took her pulse, and then gave them a level, not unkind look. “I’d give her twenty-four hours, not much more.”

  “Oh.” Caro put her hand to her mouth, her eyes wide. Even though she’d been speaking practically, she hadn’t expected such a blunt assessment, and neither had Ellen, despite her fears. “What shall we do?”

  “There’s no kin?”

  “A brother-in-law in Oshawa,” Ellen said. “I sent him a telegram last week, but there’s been no reply.”

  The doctor shrugged; the children were not his concern. “I don’t suppose you’d take them in?”

  Ellen gave Caro a quick, questioning look. “We can’t,” Caro replied regretfully. “We haven’t the money or the space.”

  “Then they’ll have to go to an institution. St Mary’s in the Lake is well run by the nuns of the House of Providence. I would advise sending them there, if they have the space.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Ellen said, and with a brief nod, he took his leave. When Ellen was sure Iris was comfortable, she headed downstairs to see Caro, who was bustling about, making supper for the children, who remained silent, no doubt sensing the somber mood.

  The oldest, Lizzie, had a quiet, worldly-wise air at only eight years old that made Ellen’s heart ache. The younger two, a tow-headed boy and girl, couldn’t be more than five or six. She couldn’t imagine them in a place like St Mary’s, no matter how efficiently it was run. It was still an institution, not a home.

  Ellen glanced at Caro, noticing how worn out and grim-faced she looked. “Caro, why don’t you come back to the farm?” she suggested. “I can stay here.”

  Caro shook her head, the movement almost frantic with determination. “No, I want to be here.”

  “You look so tired. It doesn’t have to be your responsibility, Caro—”

  “But it is,” Caro said with sudden, surprising fierceness, rounding on Ellen with an aggressiveness that made her take an instinctive step back. “I know I’m unlikely to get married or have children of my own, not with the war having taken so many men. But here are three children who need me, and a woman besides, at least—at least for a little while—and I’m not beholden to anyone otherwise. You can manage the farm without me, can’t you? And the guests?”

  “Yes, of course—”

  Caro lifted her chin, her eyes glittering with both frustration and tears. “Thank you. Then I’ll stay.”

  Ellen hesitated, knowing she needed to tell Caro about Peter, yet unwilling to broach such a thorny subject when the moment was so fraught, and Caro already seemed so fragile.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow,” she promised. “To check on Mrs. Wilson… and on you.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  As Ellen drove up the lane, her breath caught as the screen door slammed and Peter strode out of the house towards the fields, his face darkened with fury. A few seconds later Lucas followed, remaining on the porch as Ellen drove the wagon up.

  “You spoke to Peter, I see,” Ellen said as Lucas came down the steps to her from the wagon.

  “I did, and you no doubt also saw that it didn’t go very well. I suppose he needs a bit of time to get used to the idea.”

  “Should I talk to him…?”

  “I’d leave him be for now. Let him cool down.” He took the reins as Ellen started into the house. “Shall I see to the horses?”

  “Thank you, Lucas.”

  Inside the kitchen, Rose was slumped at the kitchen table, looking despondent. “Oh, Ellen,” she said as Ellen came into the room. “Peter was so very angry.”

  “I don’t blame him,” Ellen told her aunt with a small, sorrowful smile. “It must have been a surprise to him.”

  “Yes, I feared it was, but even so. He was angry at our interfering, and at Lucas for talking of hospitals and doctors. He wouldn’t hear a word of it. What shall we do?”

  “Perhaps he’ll come round, once he’s had a chance to think about it,” Ellen suggested, although she wondered whether it was very likely.

  “Perhaps,” Rose agreed, “but I fear he won’t, and it made me realize how ill he truly is. He needs help, Ellen. We need to give it to him.”

  “I know,” Ellen agreed softly.

  “Will you talk to him? Try to make him see sense?”

  Briefly, Ellen closed her eyes. “I don’t know that I’m the right person…”

  “It has to be you. He didn’t want it from Lucas, and he won’t listen to his brother or sister, not when they’re all younger than him, and none of them have been over there the way you have. You’re family, Ellen, and Peter looks up to you. Please?”

  Ellen opened her eyes and gave her aunt a weary smile. It seemed she was as good as a McCafferty, after all, at least when it mattered. “Of course I will, Aunt Rose.”

  Outside, Lucas had finished seeing to the horses and he came up to Ellen with a wry look.

  “I think I made a hash of it, I’m afraid.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t your fault, Lucas. Thank you for trying.” She glanced towards the ripening fields of barley and wheat; Peter had disappeared among their waving golden stalks. “Rose has asked me to give it a try now.”

  Lucas nodded his agreement. “Perhaps you’ll fare better than I did.”

  “And perhaps not.” She sighed, swiping a strand of hair behind her ear, and Lucas touched her shoulder.

  “Have you thought any further about New York?”

  “Not a bit,” Ellen confessed. “I can’t—not with everything that has been going on here—Peter, and these guests coming, and poor Iris Wilson likely to die in the next day or two. There’s so much to deal with, Lucas. To bear.”

  “You don’t have to bear it all,” he told her gently.

  “I’m not. Everyone’s helping. Caro’s worn to the bone.” She glanced again at the fields. “I think I’ll go find Peter now.” She started down the porch steps.

  “I want to help, Ellen,” Lucas called after her.

  She glanced back uncertainly. “I know—”

  “Help you,” he emphasized, and she faltered in her step. “I care about you,” he continued quietly. “I always have.”

  Again, Ellen felt that unexpected lurch of her heart. Not knowing how to answer, she just nodded and started after Peter.

  The fields of barley and wheat were golden-green all around her as Ellen walked slowly through them, looking for Peter. It was still well over a month until harvest, but it had been a good summer so far and the stalks were tall and strong, waving in the slight breeze off the lake.

  “Peter?” she called out, but there was no answer.

  The farmhouse grew smaller in the distance as Ellen continued to wander through the fields, until she was all alone, surrounded by a sea of wheat under a wide, flat sky of shimmering blue.

  She stopped in the middle of a field that, from her vantage point, stretched in every direction, and breathed in the still, sun-warmed air. For a few seconds, she let it all fall away—Iris Wilson lyin
g pale and still in bed; the telegram insisting on feather mattresses and fancy dishes; Caro’s ongoing veiled hostility; Rose’s troubled frown and Lucas’s warm, lingering look as she’d walked away across the fields. She stood there, arms outstretched and face tilted to the sky, and didn’t let herself think about anything but this—sun and sky, the stalks brushing against her, the chirrup of the crickets hiding among them. Simplicity. Solitude. She almost wished she could stay there forever, simply breathing the summer in.

  “Ellen! What are you doing?”

  Ellen lowered her head and blinked the shimmering world back into focus and saw Peter striding through the grain, a scowl on his face.

  “I was looking for you.”

  “And they say I’m the one who’s mad.”

  “You’re not mad, Peter.” She dropped her arms with a wry smile. “And neither am I, although I might look it, standing in the middle of a field in the noonday sun.”

  “You looked like a statue… or some sort of sacrifice.” Peter shook his head as if to rid himself of the image. “In France, the villagers used to hide in the fields, to get away from the shelling. The targets. But occasionally a bomb would flatten them all huddled together, even there. The women and children, too…”

  “Oh Peter.” Ellen shook her head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to alarm you, or bring back memories…”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does.” She regarded him silently for a moment, and he stared back, his mouth and eyes both hard. “Lucas only wants to help you,” Ellen said finally. “We all do.”

  “I’m not mad,” he said wearily.

  “No one is saying you are. But the war… it changes people, Peter. It changed me.”

  Curiosity flickered briefly in his eyes. “How?”

  Ellen paused, considering. “It made me tired,” she said slowly, feeling her way through the words. “So, so tired. And not the kind of tired that a good night’s sleep helps.”

  “No,” Peter agreed quietly.

  “I came back to the island because it felt like a—a safe harbor. But there is a part of me that feels like I’ll always be in France—not with the wounded, but with the sense of—of hopelessness. Sometimes I’m afraid that will never leave me, no matter what happens.”

  Peter was silent, his narrowed gaze scanning the peaceful fields. “Yet no one is telling you to go see a doctor,” he said after a moment.

  “No, that’s true.”

  He turned to look at her. “But you think I should?”

  “Yes, I do.” She paused. “There’s a part of you that’s still back there, Peter, just like there is for me, but it’s a bigger part, because you had a bigger role in the war. You have harder things to forget. I can’t even imagine what some of them are—”

  “There’s no forgetting,” Peter cut across her. “Ever.”

  “No,” Ellen agreed, “but there’s making your peace with it, perhaps. And that’s where a doctor could help. Why not go?” she entreated, her voice rising. “If there is any chance it could help, even a little? Surely you don’t want to live like this forever?”

  “Do you?” Peter challenged, his chin thrust out, and slowly Ellen shook her head, decisive now.

  “No, I don’t. I want to hope again. I want to remember how to be happy.” If she could. All these concerns that had dogged her, beaten her down—they wouldn’t have before the war, Ellen realized. They wouldn’t have made her feel so defeated, so desperate, as if there was hardly any point in trying. Just like Peter, she was suffering from the years of heartache and hardship that had been France. “You could at least try,” she said, “and if not for your own sake, then for your mother’s. She loves you, Peter, so much, and she only wants to help. She’d do whatever she could to make you healthy and happy and whole—sell Jasper Lane, sell her own soul. Can’t you do this one thing, for her as well as for you?”

  Peter stared at her for a long moment. Then slowly he nodded. “I suppose,” he said, his voice as flat as ever, “I could try. But the thing about it, Ellen…” He paused, scanning the fields as if looking for snipers, and she tensed, waiting. “What if it doesn’t help? You know what the one thing is that is worse than hopelessness?”

  Wordlessly, Ellen shook her, although she feared she knew.

  “Hoping,” Peter answered flatly. “To no avail.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The next morning, Andrew drove Ellen in the buckboard back to the Wilsons’, the day overcast and muggy, the lake the color of slate. It had rained in the night and everything was damp and dreary, and Ellen couldn’t imagine how the fussy guests arriving that afternoon would take the change in weather. Amherst Island, the jewel of Lake Ontario, looked well and truly tarnished today.

  “Captain Jonah says the weather’s going to stay damp and gray through August,” Andrew remarked. Although hardly an expert on anything, Captain Jonah had, Ellen knew, been predicting the island weather accurately for nigh on fifty years.

  “I shudder to think how our guests will find it,” she replied, and Andrew grinned as he shrugged.

  “Unfortunately for them you can’t pay for good weather.” He nodded towards the sad little house of weathered clapboard as it appeared around a bend in the lane, half-hidden by a cluster of weedy-looking alders. “What do you think will happen to those little mites in there, if Mrs. Wilson passes?”

  “I don’t know.” Ellen felt a flicker of guilt that she had not considered the Wilson children’s predicament more seriously, what with everything else going on. “I just hope her brother-in-law comes, although since he hasn’t responded to the telegram, that possibility seems less and less likely. He might not have received it, or…”

  “He might not have been able to,” Andrew finished grimly. “He did survive the war?”

  “I believe so, but no one seems to know anything about him, except he was last in Oshawa.” She sighed. “But before we worry about him, there is poor Iris to attend to.”

  Ellen climbed out of the wagon with trepidation growing inside her as no one came out of the house. There was, she saw, no smoke from the chimney. And where were the children?

  “Caro…?” she called softly as she tapped on the door. “Are you…”

  “I’m here.” Caro opened the door, looking exhausted and grimy, her apron stained with goodness knew what, her hair falling out of its usual neat bun in careless strands. Ellen gave her a quick hug.

  “I should have come sooner.”

  “It wouldn’t have done any good.”

  Ellen stilled, her hands clasped on Caro’s shoulders. “What do you mean? Has she…”

  “She’s gone,” Caro said simply. “She passed this morning, without anyone even beside her.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I was downstairs with the little ones, and then when I came to check on her, she was already gone.”

  “Oh, Caro…”

  “I knew it was coming, of course, especially after yesterday, but it still feels like a shock. And I didn’t even know her very well, poor woman. Poor wretched woman, with so little to hope for, and now these children…” Her voice choked and Ellen pulled her into a tight hug.

  “It never gets easier,” she whispered, her heart aching with loss. “Never.”

  “What will they do, Ellen? Where will they go?”

  “Let’s deal with the present,” Ellen said firmly. She felt ready to wilt, but she knew she needed to be strong for Caro, who looked as if she could drop where she stood, as well as the Wilson children, who had gathered in the doorway of the kitchen, staring at them both with silent, apprehensive faces. “We must attend to Mrs. Wilson and the children, and let tomorrow take care of itself, at least for the moment.”

  Upstairs, Iris lay in bed, her eyes sightless, her face pale, her poor cheeks already sinking inward. Ellen had seen many dead bodies during her time at Royaumont, and she’d never understood how anyone could think bodies looked as if they were sleeping. Iris did not look peaceful or asleep. She looked d
ead.

  Gently, she closed the woman’s eyes while Caro hovered in the doorway.

  “What should we…”

  “We’ll need to wash and dress her,” Ellen said matter-of-factly, her nursing training thankfully coming to the fore. “Then you can bring the children in to say their goodbyes. I know it might seem ghoulish, but it’s important for them to see her. To know.”

  Caro nodded and Ellen rolled up her sleeves.

  It was neither pleasant nor easy to do the tasks required of her, but Ellen knew the importance of dignity and respect for the dead as she washed and dressed Iris Wilson in her Sunday best, a faded dress with a turned-down hem and patches on the elbows. She brushed out her thin, lank hair, the color of ditchwater, and styled it as best as she could, her heart twisting with pity for the poor woman and the short, hard life she’d led.

  When she’d finished, Caro brought the children to pay their respects; they came in hesitantly, the youngest one looking confused, the oldest, Lizzie, trying to be brave. All of it made Ellen’s heart ache and ache—for the children, and for herself. She remembered all too well what it felt like to lose a mother.

  “I suppose we should call for the minister,” Caro said.

  “And the undertaker as well. Andrew can fetch them.” Caro nodded. “Shall I stay?” Ellen asked. “Until…”

  “Until what? There’s no one to take these children, Ellen, and we can’t leave them on their own.”

  “I know—”

  “I’m going to stay here,” Caro said firmly, “for as long as I need to.”

  “Why not bring the children back to the farm, Caro?” Ellen suggested. “Then you won’t be so alone. I worry for you, stuck out here…”

  “I’m not stuck,” Caro returned. “And you know it’s not possible for me to bring these three back, with guests coming. Besides, this is familiar to them, the only thing that is. I can’t yank them away from the only home they’ve known, not when their mother has just died. I’ll have to wait, at least until Iris’s brother comes.”