Really, Emer had been surprised. ‘Are you sure you want to meet someone new? In here?’
‘He’s not new to you,’ Orla had said. ‘Besides, he’s not going to be shocked. He’s a medic. Seen it all.’
Emer had been so nervous about introducing Lars to Orla. She needn’t have worried. They had hit it off immediately. Lars noticed the stack of graphic fiction by Orla’s bed, and revealed his passion for the medium.
‘What’s your favourite comic book of all time?’ Lars asked Orla.
‘Oh I love so many! Watchmen, Wonder Woman and then there’s Persepolis and Maus which are totally different,’ Orla declared.
Lars also got on really well with Ethan, the two of them discovering a mutual love of sailing, as they sat either side of Orla’s bed and talked about boats.
‘I love him!’ Orla had said to her, as soon as the boys had left the ward to go get coffee.
‘Orla’s amazing,’ Lars had said to Emer the next day, as they’d eaten lunch together in the hospital canteen.
She could have been jealous at how easily Orla and Lars had hit it off, but of course, she wasn’t. Ethan was Orla’s soulmate. They could have been the perfect double dates. If only. If only.
28
Susannah
August to October 1960
Susannah and Ava worked as many shifts as they could in the coffee house over the whole summer. Long, lazy evenings were spent in Harvard Square, listening to all the new folk singers who’d turned up in Cambridge. There was a sense they were part of something important. A change in the spirit of America, and a desire from all the young liberals to tear down old prejudices.
Ava was getting more and more involved in the civil rights movement for American Indians.
‘It’s time people stopped thinking American Indians can’t help themselves,’ she told Susannah. ‘Or that we need to become like white Americans. Adopt your society.’
Susannah was proud of Ava’s passion and her involvement in some of the protests she went on, although sometimes it meant she was away for nights on end. She also was ashamed of how ignorant she had been of American Indians, all the different tribes and their history until she’d met Ava. She had been aware of some tribes from Maine, but knew very little about them. It hadn’t been covered in school at all.
‘I’ve never asked you what tribe you’re from,’ she admitted to Ava one evening, as they were sharing cigarettes, sitting outside on the stoop. ‘Why have you never told me?’
‘I was raised to be careful whom I told,’ Ava said, inhaling deeply and letting smoke plume from her nose. ‘My skin is quite fair. I can get away with not looking American Indian.’ She sounded sad. ‘My parents instilled a fear in me to reveal who I really am.’
Ava took up one of the chalks left lying on the sidewalk from kids who’d been playing hopscotch earlier. She drew a small leaping salmon on the sidewalk.
‘That’s one of our symbols. We are a coastal nation. My people from the Swinomish Tribal peoples of the North West,’ she said. ‘Like I told you the day we first met, I am from the Pacific.’
Susannah couldn’t believe how many different tribes there were, and had been, in America.
‘Do you speak Swinomish?’ she asked Ava.
‘Sadly not.’ Ava shook her head. ‘My dad speaks very little. But we were forced to learn English in school, and in his day if he spoke his own language he was beaten.’
Susannah felt so ashamed of her white American heritage. ‘I know there were American Indians where I come from.’ she said. ‘The Abenaki people. But where are they now?’
‘They got decimated during the colonisation. Disease was the worst offender,’ Ava told her.
Susannah was so proud of Ava’s commitment to her cause. Sometimes she was almost a little jealous. Wished she were American Indian. It would give her purpose. Once, when she’d admitted this to Ava, Susannah had been surprised by how angry Ava got with her.
‘Do you realise how patronising that is?’ she said. ‘You have no idea how privileged you are, being a white person. I know there are prejudices against women, but there is no comparison to being a black woman or an American Indian woman.’
‘But it’s just you have such purpose,’ Ava said. ‘Such vision!’
‘And so do you!’ Ava berated her. ‘Your historical research is a study of witch persecutions. How relevant is that right now? Rather than wish you were one of us, you can use the fact that you are listened to as a white person to help us.’
The hot, sticky summer in Cambridge burnt out into busy fall days back at college. Ava was swamped by all her law studies. After the summer of protests, she was even more determined to qualify as soon as possible and become a civil rights lawyer, with emphasis upon rights for American Indians. Money was always an issue for the two of them. As well as their coffee house jobs, which provided them with free food and coffee, Susannah took on private tutoring in Newton for the kids of wealthy banking friends of the Whittards. But despite always being on the run, and some weeks the two of them scrimping to get together enough dollars for cigarettes, Susannah had never felt so happy. Ava’s love and patience was a constant presence. She was also doing well at college. Dr Anberg had put her forward for a tutoring position in the history department once she’d delivered her dissertation. She had chosen her topic and was very excited. It was an assessment of the causes of witch hunting in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with particular focus on Scotland and Norway.
Three weeks after the letter from Kate in October, another one arrived in the post before Susannah had even had a chance to reply.
Dearest Susie, I’ll keep the letter brief but I’m so excited I need to tell you
