Return to the Island: An utterly gripping historical romance Read online

  Ellen had read in the newspaper about the huge cattle farms out west, in Alberta. Thousands and thousands of cattle, and acres and acres of empty grassland for them to roam. It was a good life if you had the means, but it wasn’t the way things were done on Amherst Island, where islanders had been farming their smallholdings for nearly a century.

  “I suppose there’s no harm asking Mr. Lyman at least, is there?” she asked, trying to inject a note of pragmatic cheerfulness into her voice.

  Rose sighed. “I’d hate him to buy it out of pity.”

  “I don’t think he would.” Ellen smiled wryly. “Times are too hard for that.”

  “Yes, that’s true.” Rose straightened and gave one brisk nod as she did her best to banish her worries. “You’re right, we could talk to him, at least. And then we’d have to see the man Dyle dealt with at the bank in Kingston. He’ll help arrange things, I’m sure, so it’s all above board and proper.”

  “Yes…”

  Rose bit her lip. “Would you… would you mind going, Ellen? I don’t think I can face it. The bank… all those papers and bills… ” Rose smiled in apology and Ellen reached over to squeeze her hand, conscious of how much her aunt had coped with in the long years she’d been gone—widowed, her oldest son going to war, two daughters having left to find their own fortunes, and now a failing farm she was trying so desperately to keep going.

  “Of course I’ll go, Aunt Rose,” she said as they sat in the pool of afternoon sunshine, their hands still clasped. “I’ll do whatever I can to help you… and the farm.”

  Chapter Two

  Later that day, as the sun was starting to sink towards the tranquil surface of Lake Ontario, Ellen walked the familiar path between the McCafferty and Lyman farms. The leaves on the birch and maple trees that served as an informal border between the two properties were bright and green, and everything felt fresh with the promise of early summer, the air sweet with the smell of wild strawberries. Black flies buzzed around Ellen’s head and she swatted them away as she walked by the pond, its waters still in the oncoming twilight, the last of the sunlight burnishing its placid surface like a golden mirror.

  How strange and yet how right it felt to be back on the island, walking this familiar and beloved path. The view had changed little over the course of the years, but Ellen knew she was no longer the shy yet carefree young girl who had once skipped across the path, a sketchbook under her arm, intent on an afternoon’s drawing.

  In truth, she hadn’t picked up a pencil or paintbrush in years and, more depressingly, she hadn’t even wanted to. Her friend and mentor from her Glasgow days, Norah Neilson Gray, had been inspired by their time serving as nurses for wounded French soldiers at Royaumont Abbey, and had written Ellen a letter describing the painting she was working on, a portrait of a Belgian refugee, that she hoped would be exhibited.

  Ellen had felt no such inspiration when she’d been nursing. It had been all she could do simply to survive the days, each one holding its own horror and challenge as the wounded had poured into the hospital and the sky had been lit orange from the shelling. And now that she was back on the island, she wanted only to forget the memories that still plagued her nights and haunted her dreams—skies orange from shelling, the crack and boom of guns, the men who came into the abbey hospital with sightless eyes and shocked faces, missing limbs and torn-open stomachs… No, there was nothing from those years that she wished to capture on canvas, or sketch with a pencil. Nothing at all.

  Even here, in the place she loved more than any other, with the sun’s final rays glinting off the pond in a shimmer of gold, the leaves on the trees as jewel-bright as the feathers of a peacock, she felt nothing but a weary sort of satisfaction at being back where she’d been happiest. Once, her fingers would have been practically itching to clasp a bit of charcoal, but not now. Now she simply wanted to be. Perhaps in time the urge to draw or paint would return. But she was too busy with the concerns of the farm to worry much about it now, or even care about the lack of desire she felt in herself. After all she’d seen in France, art seemed like a luxury, even a frivolity, that neither she, nor anyone else, could afford.

  A dog barked as Ellen approached the Lyman farmhouse, the first stars coming out in a violet, twilit sky, and then fell silent as he recognized Ellen. The old beagle trotted up to her and lowered his head for a pat, his drooping ears nearly touching the ground, and she caressed its silky head before mounting the weathered porch steps.

  She hesitated, her hand at the door, part of her deeply reluctant to knock and disturb Jed. Things had become so strained between them, any remnant of their old friendship feeling like a distant memory in light of all that had happened over the years—Jed and Louisa’s marriage, as well as the war with all its injury, grief, and loss. Yet they had to move forward somehow, into whatever future they could fashion. Taking a deep breath, Ellen knocked on the back door.

  Jed answered after a few moments, looking tired and careworn. He wore his shirtsleeve pinned neatly up to his shoulder, the other one rolled up his strong left forearm. He nodded a curt hello to Ellen.

  “May I come in, Jed?” Ellen asked and he stepped aside with a gruff apology.

  “We don’t get many visitors these days. Coffee?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Jed had become adept at doing things with a single left hand, and now he poured Ellen a coffee from the tin pot keeping warm on the range. Ellen knew better than to ask to help; her years in France had taught her that those with amputations needed to manage on their own, for their own dignity and wellbeing. Helping would hurt him more, and in any case Jed had never been one for being mollycoddled.

  “How are things here?” Ellen asked, trying for a friendly, casual tone, as she sipped from her mug.

  Jed shrugged, bracing one hip against the range. “Same as everywhere else, I suppose. We do all right, but it’s not easy.”

  “No.” Ellen sipped her coffee as she eyed Jed covertly. Lines ran from his nose to his mouth, lines that she didn’t think had been there a year ago, when she’d seen him in France. Jed’s return to the island had been difficult, thanks to his injury, but also to his absent wife Louisa and the loss of his son Thomas. Louisa Lyman had left the island when Jed went to war, returning only for a few months when he’d come back wounded. After Thomas’ death she’d returned to Seaton once more and seemed to have no intention of coming back to her husband.

  But Ellen knew better than to ask Jed about Louisa. Their own past was too tangled and fraught to speak easily of those days—although Jed had never made a declaration of love or even affection, there had been both an ease and expectation between them that once had filled Ellen with hope.

  Once, and only once, had he mentioned the words they should have had, and Ellen had cut him off before more could be said. It had been too late anyway; he’d already pledged himself to Louisa. But more than one lonely evening had passed with her wondering just what those words might have been.

  “You and your father seem to be doing all right,” she said as she took a sip of coffee, banishing futile thoughts of what-if from her mind. “I saw your fields as I walked by the pond—the corn’s already coming up nicely.”

  Jed merely gave a grunt in reply, and sipped his coffee. Ellen gazed at him with a growing sense of despair. Jed had never had the ease of conversation like Lucas, but there had been a familiarity between them that would have once made a conversation like this one a simple pleasure. Instead, now it felt like so much hard work, Ellen decided to do away with pleasantries.

  “Aunt Rose is thinking of selling some land,” she said bluntly. “The farm’s too big for her to manage now with Dyle gone, and the truth is we need the money. I thought you should get first refusal, since your land borders the McCaffertys’, and I heard your father was thinking of taking on more livestock, so I thought he could use some extra pasture—”

  Jed shook his head, the movement definitive enough that Ellen fell silent, feeling chastised.
“We can barely manage what we have.” He gestured to his shoulder, the missing limb. “You think I can manage more?”

  Ellen heard the bitterness in his voice and saw the anger snapping in his gray eyes, and her heart twisted in sympathy. “I thought your father was thinking of hiring more men.”

  “We can’t afford more men.”

  “The price of beef is going to rise, so they say—”

  “We can’t buy your aunt’s land, Ellen.” Jed’s voice was curt and Ellen felt rebuked.

  “I understand,” she said quietly.

  Jed dumped his coffee in the big stone sink, the mug rattling in the bottom. He turned back to Ellen, a challenge in his eyes as well as a dismissal. He wanted her to leave.

  “I’m sorry for asking,” she said, and Jed just shrugged.

  Ellen hesitated, wanting to say something more, wanting to reach him, but everything about him—his expression, the tension in his body, the anger in his eyes—made her too apprehensive to say anything else. She tried not to feel stung by his overt unfriendliness.

  She rose from her chair, even though she hadn’t finished her drink. “Thank you for the coffee,” she said quietly, putting the mug in the sink with Jed’s.

  At the door, she turned back, again wanting to say something, but it was all too clear that Jed was simply waiting for her to leave.

  “Goodbye, then,” she said.

  Jed didn’t reply.

  Dusk had fallen as she headed back towards the McCafferty farm, skirting the pond that was now a dark oval, brushed by moonlight, weary in both body and spirit. Shadows gathered under the trees and the sky had darkened from gold to violet to indigo, the stars twinkling so high above like promises no one could keep.

  Ellen drew a deep breath, breathing in the island she so loved—the sharp tang of cedar and pine, the sun-warmed scent of berries and daisies that lingered on into the evening, the honest, earthy smells of animal and dirt. In the twilit distance, a cow lowed, a soft, mournful sound. Ellen let her breath out in a disconsolate sigh.

  She had no solution for Aunt Rose, but far worse was the realization that she may have lost Jed’s friendship forever. Of course, she’d lost it long ago, when he’d married Louisa. But even though there had been a certain proper and respectful distance between them upon his marriage, she’d still counted him as a friend, a good one. Someone who understood her, who loved her, in his own, quiet way. Now he seemed more like a stranger, and a hostile one at that.

  He was cutting everyone off, retreating further and further into himself, because of the losses he’d experienced in life, and she had no idea what she could do about it, if anything.

  Back at the McCafferty farm, Rose had already gone to bed. Ellen came in quietly, the old floorboards creaking as she tiptoed across the kitchen floor, feeling her way in the moonlit darkness.

  “You needn’t be so quiet.” The voice, coming from the kitchen table, was disembodied in the darkness.

  “Oh!” Ellen pressed her hand to her chest. “Peter,” she said, as she blinked and began to make out her cousin’s shape sitting at the kitchen table. “What are you doing here in the dark? It’s getting late—”

  “No point in wasting precious oil,” Peter answered with a shrug, his voice flat. “And, in any case, I couldn’t sleep.”

  “I could make you some hot milk,” Ellen suggested. “Sometimes that helps.”

  “Nothing helps, Ellen.” Peter sounded so bleak and yet so matter-of-fact that Ellen’s heart ached. Where was the little boy who used to run up and down the stairs, whooping and pretending he was an Indian, armed with a wooden spoon?

  “Oh, Peter.” She moved to the icebox where the leftover milk from that morning was keeping cool with the last of the melting ice. “Let me make you some, anyway. It can’t hurt.” She felt a desperate need to do something—she couldn’t help Jed, but perhaps she could help Peter.

  Her cousin didn’t answer as Ellen stirred up the coals in the range and poured some milk in a pan to heat. The kitchen was quiet and dark, the only sounds the embers settling in the grate and the gentle hiss of the milk warming in the pan. Outside, a whippoorwill gave its familiar, lonely call.

  Peter shifted in his chair, his face unreadable in the darkness. “Do you get nightmares, Ellen?” he asked and she stiffened in surprise, one hand still stretched up for one of the mugs hanging on hooks above the sink.

  “Sometimes,” she said, turning slowly to face him. “Sometimes, especially about the mad rush in 1918, and the evacuation from Villiers-Cotterets, back to Royaumont. I can still hear the whistling of the shells, and feel the earth shake when they landed.” Peter nodded, and Ellen asked cautiously, “What about you? Do you get nightmares, Peter? Is that why you can’t sleep?”

  In the three months since she’d been back on the island, Peter had never spoken about his three years of military service. He’d hardly spoken at all since his return. He would busy himself with farm work, some days working until he was wrung out and exhausted, other days leaving a job half-done, only to wander off and return after dark, refusing to answer any questions, seeming as if he were existing in another place, a different universe.

  Rose had tried everything, from leaving him alone to demanding he talk to her, all attempts to bring the light of the living back into Peter’s eyes. None of it had worked; Peter sat and ate with them, moved about the house and farm, but it was as if the person inhabiting the young, vital body wasn’t there anymore. He had gone somewhere else, and no one knew where.

  “I don’t get nightmares,” Peter told her as he leaned back in his chair, angling his head so the moonlight caught his cheekbone, and Ellen could see how closed his expression was. “Not if I stay awake.”

  “Oh, Peter…” Sympathy and apprehension tangled inside her. Too many young men, young men who’d once had hope and a future, had the same blankness inside that Peter did. She’d seen it at Royaumont, and she saw it here on the island. The trouble was, no one knew what to do about it.

  “Don’t feel sorry for me,” he told her sharply. “I couldn’t stand that, Ellen. I only mentioned it to you because I thought you might be a little bit the same. You know what it was like out there, at least a little.”

  “A little,” Ellen agreed. But serving as a nurse on the Front had been far safer and easier than serving as a soldier. She’d dodged shells and taken cover from the bombing, but she’d never had to hold a gun, much less shoot it. “Perhaps you should talk to Jed, or one of the other boys who came home…” Sadly there were only a handful of them.

  “Oh, Ellen.” Peter shook his head and gave a weary, cynical laugh. “The last thing any of us want to do is talk about it. Do you think we’d like to gather together like a group of old women with their knitting, and chat about the old days?” His voice was hard and flat. “It’s hard enough to forget as it is.”

  “If you can’t forget, then perhaps talking would help.” Ellen took the pan of milk off the hob and poured it into a mug. But when she offered it to Peter, he shook his head and rose from the table.

  “No, thank you. I don’t actually want help to sleep.” In the darkness, she could not make out his expression, and she watched with both sorrow and alarm as he headed for the kitchen door. “I think I’ll walk.”

  “It’s dark, Peter, at least take a light—”

  “There’s a moon.” They both glanced at the rising, full moon, queen of a tranquil sky, bathing the farmyard in lambent silver. “Lovely, isn’t it?” Peter remarked. “No need to be afraid of it now.”

  It wasn’t until he’d gone outside with the quiet creak of the door that Ellen realized what he meant, how a full moon on the battlefield had made it easy for German snipers to pick soldiers off. She shivered despite the balmy night air, the peaceful silence of a summer’s evening, because the remark made her realize afresh how haunted Peter was by the war. How all the veterans must be. Would they ever recover? Or would the whole world live in thrall to those four desperate, dreadful yea
rs?

  She drank the milk herself, alone in the dark of the kitchen, and then headed upstairs to bed. She doubted tonight was the first time Peter had gone walking out in the darkness, and she knew she simply had to trust that he would make his way back safely.

  Caro peeked her head out of her bedroom as Ellen came down the hall. “Did you only just get back from the Lymans’, Ellen?”

  “A little while ago.” Rose had told Caro and Peter her plans to sell some of the farm land at suppertime, and neither of them had protested. It was clear to everyone that something had to be done, and Ellen had left for the Lymans’ farm as soon as the dishes were cleared.

  “And what did he say?” Caro asked. She stepped into the hallway, barefoot and in her nightgown, one golden-brown plait lying over her shoulder, her forehead creased with worry. She was twenty-two years old, but she looked as if she carried the weight of the world on her young shoulders, often working from dawn to dusk to keep the farm going.

  “Jed’s not interested,” Ellen admitted. “Wouldn’t entertain the notion for a moment. Things are hard over there too, it seems, in more ways than one.” She sighed, shaking her head. “Will any of the men who came back ever be themselves again, do you think?”

  “I hope so, in time.” Caro wrapped her arms around herself. “In time, surely,” she repeated, as if to convince herself. “It’s early days yet. That’s what Mother keeps saying about Peter.”

  Ellen met Caro’s worried gaze in silent acknowledgment of Peter’s troubles. “Yes, in time,” she agreed, although she felt far from convinced. But time was the only thing they had, the only thing they could pin their hopes on. “I’m going to Kingston tomorrow, to talk to the man at the bank. It won’t be a very pleasant chore, but Kingston is always nice to visit. Why don’t you come along?” She smiled, hoping to lift Caro’s troubled spirits. “Fancy a day gadding about town? We could say hello to Gracie and Andrew, as well.”