Okay, I guess you’re pretty bored by now! And really all you want to know about is Mrs Whittard and all her pretty clothes, right? Boy, she really does have a lot of them! Every week there’s a social, whether a cocktail party or a dinner, and Mrs Whittard (her name is Jean but I always call her Mrs Whittard) dresses up in a new frock every time. Her family must be wealthy because I don’t think her husband’s salary could stretch to all her furs and silks. I think her most spectacular outfit was a gold sheath dress she wore with high-heeled shoes in gold satin, a gold purse all sparkly, and so many jewels it was blinding. It was a bit much for me. But I do like her rhinestone-studded housecoat. She got the idea from this television programme called I Love Lucy with a funny actress called Lucille Ball in it. (The Whittards have a television, Katie!) Well, she wears this black rhinestone-studded housecoat, which has capri pants as part of it, and a turban on her head. It looks super, Katie. Now that would suit me perfectly. When Mrs Whittard put on her housecoat, Professor Whittard didn’t like it all. I heard him say to her he couldn’t see her legs and it wasn’t feminine enough!
But best of all is Gertrude. It’s like she understands how you’re feeling without you having to tell her. Sometimes I do get homesick. Yes, I do! I miss you so much and she always knows without me saying it. Gets me to sit down with her and have a glass of milk and one of her cookies, and play a game of gin rummy after the boys have been put to bed.
But now I come to the most exciting part of my letter, and the reason I’ve been bad at letter writing. A friend of mine called Ava, who literally saved my life one day (I will tell you the story when I come home for Thanksgiving) has introduced me to place called Club 47, where we’ve gone the last two Sunday afternoons to listen to music. Both times another student called Joan Baez sang and played her guitar. Oh, she is quite incredible, Katie. At first I didn’t like her so much. Her voice is very high and it can really get inside your head, and I’d never heard music like it – Ava says it’s folk – but then I started listening to all the words and they were so powerful. She writes about how it is to be a woman in a man’s world, and she doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her! At Club 47 I’ve met lots of young people who want to change things in America for the better. Give black people like Gertrude equal rights to white people. It’s so important, Katie, don’t you think? I never really thought about it until I came to Harvard but I had never seen a black person before until I arrived in Boston. Everyone on Vinalhaven is white. Why do you think that is? Maybe it’s just because the black people don’t want to live there?
Write back soon, do, dear sister. I’m keen to hear how your last year at school is going. I am sorry I upset you in my last letter going on about college. You’re right, just because it’s my dream, it doesn’t have to be yours. We do all have different talents. But Katie, I was thinking, what about coming to Cambridge when you finish school and working in one of the stores? Wouldn’t that be swell? I could get a job in a coffee shop near college and we could get our own place. You could learn all about fashion in the store, and make clothes at night. We could sell them! There is so much opportunity, really, Cambridge is the place to be right now. I want to share it with you so much.
November 16th, 1958
Ava was waiting for her on the sidewalk and together they went down the steps into Club 47. The past two Sundays Susannah had skipped dinner at the Whittards’ to meet up with her new best friend. Ava had opened her world up. Not just to the new folk music, which Susannah loved with a passion, but also to the injustices going on in her own country every single day. If she was going to make her study of witch trials relevant, she had to acknowledge this truth. As soon as she’d told Ava her interests, her friend had asked her if she’d read or seen the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller, about the Salem witch trials.
‘The whole play is an allegory for the McCarthy trials,’ Ava told her.
Susannah was embarrassed to admit not only had she not read The Crucible, but she didn’t know what the McCarthy trials were.
‘I guess you would have been a kid when they went on; my dad told me all about them because he had friends working on the sets in Hollywood and they told him about writers and directors who got blacklisted,’ Ava told her. ‘It was a very aggressive campaign led by a senator called Joseph McCarthy, accusing people of being communists.’
‘I know about the communists,’ Susannah had said. ‘I mean, that was a real threat.’
Ava cocked her head on one side. ‘You think? Really?’
Susannah was shocked but also a little excited by Ava’s brazenness. What if they were overheard? They could be accused of anti-American talk.
‘In my opinion, it suits
