The Light Between Oceans

by M. L. Stedman

  then stretched his arms up in appeal. “For heaven’s sakes, Isabel! When I tell them about the fellow in the boat, eventually someone will know who he is. And they’ll work out that there was a baby. Maybe not straightaway, but in the long run…”

  “Then I think you shouldn’t tell them.”

  “Not tell them?” His tone was suddenly sober.

  She stroked his hair. “Don’t tell them, sweetheart. We’ve done nothing wrong except give shelter to a helpless baby. We can give the poor man a decent burial. And the boat, well—just set it adrift again.”

  “Izzy, Izzy! You know I’d do anything for you, darl, but—whoever that man is and whatever he’s done, he deserves to be dealt with properly. And lawfully, for that matter. What if the mother’s not dead, and he’s got a wife fretting, waiting for them both?”

  “What woman would let her baby out of her sight? Face it, Tom: she must have drowned.” She clasped his hands again. “I know how much your rules mean to you, and I know that this is technically breaking them. But what are those rules for? They’re to save lives! That’s all I’m saying we should do, sweetheart: save this life. She’s here and she needs us and we can help her. Please.”

  “Izzy, I can’t. This isn’t up to me. Don’t you understand?”

  Her face darkened. “How can you be so hard-hearted? All you care about is your rules and your ships and your bloody light.” These were accusations Tom had heard before, when, wild with grief after her miscarriages, Isabel had let loose her rage against the only person there—the man who continued to do his duty, who comforted her as best he could, but kept his own grieving to himself. Once again, he sensed her close to a dangerous brink, perhaps closer this time than she had ever been.

  CHAPTER 11

  An inquisitive gull watched Tom from its seaweed-cushioned rock. It followed him with an implacable eye as he wrapped the body, now pungent with that smell of the dead, in the canvas. It was hard to tell what the man might have been in life. His face was neither very old nor very young. He was slight; blond. He had a small scar on his left cheek. Tom wondered who missed him; who might have cause to love or hate him.

  The old graves from the shipwreck lay on low ground, near the beach. As he set about digging the fresh hole, his muscles took over, executing their familiar task from blind memory in a ritual he had never expected to repeat.

  The first time he had reported for the daily burial parade he had vomited at the sight of the corpses stretched out side by side, waiting for his shovel. After a while, it became just a job. He would hope to get the skinny bloke, or the one with his legs blown off, because he was a bloody sight easier to move. Bury them. Mark the grave. Salute, and walk away. That’s how it was. Hoping for the one with the most bits blown off: Tom went cold at the thought that there had seemed nothing strange about that back then.

  The shovel gave a gasp at each contact with the sandy soil. Once the ground had been patted back into a neat mound, he stopped to pray for a moment for whoever the poor wretch was, but he found himself whispering, “Forgive me, Lord, for this, and all my sins. And forgive Isabel. You know how much goodness there is in her. And you know how much she’s suffered. Forgive us both. Have mercy.” He crossed himself and returned to the boat, ready to drag it back into the water. He gave it a heave, and a ray of light pricked his eyes as the sun glinted off something. He peered into the hull of the dinghy. Something shiny was wedged under the rib of the bow, and resisted his first attempt to grasp it. After pulling for a moment he prised away a cold, hard shape, which came to life, jangling: a silver rattle, embossed with cherubs and hallmarked.

  He turned it over and over, as if waiting for it to speak to him, to give him some kind of clue. He thrust it in his pocket: any number of stories might account for the arrival of this strange pair on the island, but only telling himself Izzy’s story that the child was an orphan would allow him to sleep at night. It did not bear thinking beyond that, and he needed to avoid any proof to the contrary. He fixed his eyes on the line where the ocean met the sky like a pair of pursed lips. Better not to know.

  He made sure that the boat had been picked up by the southerly current before wading back in to the beach. He was grateful for the salty stink of the green-black seaweed rotting on the rocks, which washed the smell of death from his nostrils. A tiny purple sand crab ventured out from under a ledge, sidled busily over to a dead blowfish, swollen and spiky even in death, and began to pincer little pieces from the belly into its own mouth. Tom shivered, and started the steep trek up the path.

  “Most days, there’s nowhere to escape the wind around here. It’s all right if you’re a seagull, or an albatross: see how they just sit on the currents of air, like they’re having a rest?” As he sat on the veranda, Tom pointed to a great silver bird which had made its way from some other island, and seemed to hang in a still sky on a thread, despite the turbulent air.

  The baby ignored Tom’s finger and instead gazed into his eyes, mesmerized by the movement of his lips and the deep resonance of his chest. She cooed—a high-pitched half-hiccup. Tom tried to ignore the way his heart kicked in response, and continued his discourse. “But in that bay, just that little cove, it’s one spot where you’re most likely to find a bit of peace and quiet, because it faces north, and the wind hardly ever comes in due north. That side’s the Indian Ocean—nice and calm and warm. Southern Ocean’s on the other side—wild and dangerous as anything. You want to keep away from that fella.”

  The child flung an arm above her blanket in response, and Tom let her hand wrap around his index finger. In the week since her arrival, he had become accustomed to her gurgles, to her silent, sleeping presence in her cot, which seemed to waft through the cottage like the smell of baking or flowers. It worried him that he could find himself listening out for her to wake in the morning, or going by reflex to pick her up when she started to cry.

  “You’re falling in love with her, aren’t you?” said Isabel, who had been watching from the doorway. Tom frowned, and she said with a smile, “It’s impossible not to.”

  “All those little expressions she does…”

  “You’re going to be a beaut dad.”

  He shifted in his chair. “Izz, it’s still wrong, not reporting it.”

  “Just look at her. Does she look like we’ve done anything wrong?”

  “But—that’s just it. We don’t need to do anything wrong. We could report her now and apply to adopt her. It’s not too late, Izz. We can still make it right.”

  “Adopt her?” Isabel stiffened. “They’d never send a baby to a lighthouse in the middle of nowhere: no doctor; no school. No church probably worries them the most. And even if they did put her up for adoption, they’d want to give her to some couple in a town somewhere. And besides, it takes forever to go through the rigmarole. They’d want to meet us. You’d never get leave to go and see them, and we’re not due back onshore for another year and a half.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “I know we’ll cope. I know you’re going to be a wonderful dad. But they don’t.”

  She gazed at the baby, and put a finger to her soft cheek. “Love’s bigger than rule books, Tom. If you’d reported the boat, she’d be stuck in some dreadful orphanage by now.” She rested her hand on his arm. “Our prayers have been answered. The baby’s prayers have been answered. Who’d be ungrateful enough to send her away?”

  The simple fact was that, sure as a graft will take and fuse on a rosebush, the root stock of Isabel’s motherhood—her every drive and instinct, left raw and exposed by the recent stillbirth—had grafted seamlessly to the scion, the baby which needed mothering. Grief and distance bound the wound, perfecting the bond with a speed only nature could engineer.

  When Tom came down from the lantern room that evening, Isabel was sitting beside the first fire of the autumn, nursing the baby in the rocking chair he had made four years ago now. She hadn’t noticed him, and he watched her in silence for a moment. She seemed to handle the child by sheer
instinct, incorporating her into every move. He fought back his gnawing doubt. Perhaps Isabel was right. Who was he to part this woman from a baby?

  In her hands was the Book of Common Prayer, to which Isabel had turned more frequently after the first miscarriage. Now, she read silently “The Churching of Women,” prayers for women after childbirth. “Lo, children and the fruit of the womb: are an heritage and gift that cometh of the Lord…”

  The next morning, Isabel stood beside Tom below the lantern room, holding the baby as he tapped out the signal. He had thought carefully about the wording. His fingers were unsteady as he began: he had been dreading sending news of the stillbirth, but this felt much worse. “Baby arrived early stop took us both by surprise stop Isabel recovering well stop no need for medical help stop little girl stop Lucy—” He turned to Isabel. “Anything else?”

  “The weight. People always ask the weight.” She thought back to Sarah Porter’s baby. “Say seven pounds one ounce.”

  Tom looked at her in surprise at the ease with which the lie came to her. He turned back to the key and tapped out the figures.

  When the reply arrived, he transcribed it and noted it in the signals book. “Congratulations stop marvelous news stop have officially recorded increase in Janus population as per regulations stop Ralph and Bluey send cheers stop grandparents will be informed pronto stop.” He sighed, aware of a pressure in his chest, and waited a while before going to report the response to Isabel.

  In the weeks that followed, Isabel bloomed. She sang as she went about the cottage. She could not keep from showering Tom with hugs and kisses all through the day. Her smile dazzled him with its sheer uninhibited joy. And the baby? The baby was peaceful, and trusting. She did not question the embrace which held her, the hands which caressed her, the lips which kissed her and crooned, “Mamma’s here, Lucy, Mamma’s here,” as she was rocked to sleep.

  There was no denying that the child was thriving. Her skin seemed to glow with a soft halo. Isabel’s breasts responded to the baby’s suckling by producing milk again within weeks, the “relactation” Dr. Griffiths described in clinical detail, and the child fed without a moment’s hesitation, as though the two of them had agreed some sort of contract. But Tom took to staying a fraction longer in the lantern room in the mornings after extinguishing the light. Time and again he would catch himself turning back the page of the log to 27 April, and staring at the blank space.

  You could kill a bloke with rules, Tom knew that. And yet sometimes they were what stood between man and savagery, between man and monsters. The rules that said you took a prisoner rather than killed a man. The rules that said you let the stretchers cart the enemy off from no-man’s-land as well as your own men. But always, it would come down to the simple question: could he deprive Isabel of this baby? If the child was alone in the world? Could it really be right to drag her away from a woman who adored her, to some lottery of Fate?

  At night, Tom began to dream he was drowning, flinging his arms and legs desperately to find ground somewhere, but there was nothing to stand on, nothing to hold him afloat except a mermaid, whose tail he would grasp and who would then pull him deeper and deeper into the dark water until he awoke gasping and sweating, while Isabel slept beatifically beside him.

  CHAPTER 12

  Gedday, Ralph. Good to see you. Where’s Blue?”

  “Back here!” shouted the deckhand from the stern, hidden from view by some fruit crates. “How ya doing, Tom? Glad to see us?”

  “Always, mate—you’re the blokes with the grog, aren’t you?” he laughed as he secured the line. The old engine chugged and spluttered as the boat drew alongside, filling the air with thick diesel fumes. It was mid-June, the first time the store boat had visited since the baby’s arrival seven weeks earlier.

  “Flying fox is set up. Got the winch all ready too.”

  “Struth, you’re a bit keen, Tom!” Ralph exclaimed. “We don’t want to rush things now, do we? It’s a grand day. We can take our time. We’ve got to see the new arrival, after all! My Hilda’s piled me up like a packhorse with things for the little ’un, not to mention the proud grandparents.”

  As Ralph strode off the gangway he grabbed Tom in a bear hug. “Congratulations, son. Bloody marvelous. Especially after—after all that’s happened before.”

  Bluey followed suit. “Yeah, good on you. Ma sends all her best too.”

  Tom’s eyes wandered to the water. “Thanks. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it.”

  As they hiked up the path, Isabel was silhouetted against a washing line of nappies strung out like signal flags flapping in the brisk wind. Strands of her hair escaped from the roll she had just pinned it in.

  Ralph held his arms out as he approached her. “Well, can’t you just tell, hey? Nothing makes a girl bloom like having a littlie. Roses in your cheeks and a shine in your hair, just like my Hilda used to get with each of ours.”

  Isabel blushed at the compliment, and gave the old man a quick kiss. She kissed Bluey too, who bowed his head and muttered, “Congratulations, Mrs. S.”

  “Come inside, all of you. Kettle’s boiled, and there’s cake,” she said.

  As they sat at the old deal table, Isabel’s glance strayed now and then to the child asleep in her basket.

  “You were the talk of every woman in Partageuse, having your baby on your own like that. Of course, the farmers’ wives didn’t turn a hair—Mary Linford said how she’d had three without any help. But them in town, they were mighty impressed. I hope Tom wasn’t too useless?”

  The couple exchanged a look. Tom was about to speak, but Isabel took his hand and squeezed it tight. “He’s been wonderful. I couldn’t ask for a better husband.” There were tears in her eyes.

  “She’s a real pretty little thing, from what I can see,” said Bluey. But all that peeped out from the fluffy blanket was a delicate face in a bonnet.

  “She’s got Tom’s nose, hasn’t she?” chipped in Ralph.

  “Well…” Tom hesitated. “Not sure my nose is what you want a baby girl to have!”

  “I take your point!” Ralph chuckled. “Right, Mr. Sherbourne, my friend, I need your autograph on the forms. Might as well sort them out now.”

  Tom was relieved to get up from the table. “Righto. Come through to the office, Captain Addicott, sir,” he said, leaving Bluey cooing over the basket.

  The young man reached into the cot and jangled the rattle at the baby, who was now wide awake. She watched it intently, and he jiggled it again. “You’re a lucky one, aren’t you, getting a fancy silver rattle! Fit for a princess: I’ve never seen anything so grand! Angels on the handle and everything. Angels for an angel… And your nice fluffy blanket…”

  “Oh, they were left over from…” Isabel’s voice dropped, “from before.”

  Bluey blushed. “Sorry. Putting my foot in it. I… Better get on with unloading. Thanks for the cake,” and he beat a retreat through the kitchen door.

  Janus Rock,

  June 1926

  Dear Mum and Dad,

  Well, God has sent us an angel to keep us company. Baby Lucy has captured our hearts! She’s a beautiful little girl—absolutely perfect. She sleeps well and feeds well. She’s never any trouble.

  I wish you could see her and hold her. Every day she looks a bit different, and I know by the time you see her she’ll have lost her baby looks. She’ll be a toddler when we come back on shore. But in the meantime, here’s the nearest thing to a picture. I dipped the sole of her foot in cochineal! (You have to be inventive on the Lights…) See masterpiece attached.

  Tom is a wonderful dad. Janus seems so different now that Lucy’s here. At the moment it’s pretty easy to look after her—I pop her in her basket and she comes with me when I have to get the eggs or do the milking. It might be a bit harder when she starts to crawl. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself.

  I want to tell you so much about her—how her hair is dark, how beautiful she smells after her bath. Her eyes are quite dark
too. But I can’t do her justice. She’s much too wonderful to describe. I’ve only known her a few weeks and already I can’t imagine my life without her.

  Well, “Grandma and Grandpa” (!), I’d better finish this so that the boat can take it, otherwise it’ll be another three months before you get it!

  With fondest love,

  Isabel

  P.S. I’ve just read your letter from the boat this morning. Thanks for the beautiful bunny rug. And the doll is just lovely. The books are wonderful too. I tell her nursery rhymes all the time, so she’ll like these new ones.

  P.P.S. Tom says thanks for the jumper. Winter’s starting to bite out here!

  The new moon was barely a crescent stitched into the darkening sky. Tom and Isabel were sitting on the veranda as the light swept around far above them. Lucy had fallen asleep in Tom’s arms.

  “It’s hard to breathe differently from her, isn’t it?” he said, gazing at the baby.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s like a kind of spell, isn’t it? Whenever she’s asleep like this, I end up breathing in the same rhythm. A bit like I end up doing things in time to the turning of the light.” Almost to himself, he said, “It scares me.”

  Isabel smiled. “It’s just love, Tom. No need to be scared of love.”

  Tom felt a shiver creep through him. Just as he couldn’t now imagine having lived in this world without meeting Isabel, he realized that Lucy, too, was making her way inside his heart. And he wished she belonged there.

  Anyone who’s worked on the Offshore Lights can tell you about it—the isolation, and the spell it casts. Like sparks flung off the furnace that is Australia, these beacons dot around it, flickering on and off, some of them only ever seen by a handful of living souls. But their isolation saves the whole continent from isolation—keeps the shipping lanes safe, as vessels steam the thousands of miles to bring machines and books and cloth, in return for wool and wheat, coal and gold: the fruits of ingenuity traded for the fruits of earth.

  The isolation spins its mysterious cocoon, focusing the mind on one place, one time, one rhythm—the turning of the light. The island knows no other human voices, no other footprints. On the Offshore Lights you can live any story you want to tell yourself, and no one will say you’re wrong: not the seagulls, not the prisms, not the wind.

  So Isabel floats further and further into her world of divine benevolence, where prayers are answered, where babies arrive by the will of God and the working of currents. “Tom, I wonder how we can be so lucky?” she muses. She watches in awe as her blessed daughter grows and thrives. She revels in the discoveries each day brings for this little being: rolling over; starting to crawl; the first, faltering sounds. The storms gradually follow winter to another corner of the earth, and summer comes, bearing a paler blue sky, a sharper gold sun.

  “Up you come.” Isabel laughs, and hoists Lucy onto her hip as the three of them stroll down the path to the glinting beach for a picnic. Tom picks different leaves—sea grass, pig-face—and Lucy smells them, chews on their ends, pulling faces at the strange sensations. He gathers tiny posies of rose banjine, or shows her the shimmering scales of a trevally or a blue mackerel he has caught off the rocks on the side of the island where the ocean floor drops away into sudden darkness. On still nights, Isabel’s voice carries across the air in a soothing lilt as she reads Lucy tales of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie in the nursery, while Tom works on repairs in the shed.

  Whatever the rights and the wrongs of it, Lucy was here now, and Isabel couldn’t have been a better mother. Every night in prayer she gave thanks to God for her family, her health, her much-blessed life, and prayed to be worthy of the gifts He showered on her.

  Days broke and receded like waves on the beach, leaving barely a trace of the time that passed in this tiny world of working and sleeping and feeding and watching. Isabel shed a tear when she put away some of Lucy’s earliest baby things. “Seems only yesterday she was tiny, and now look at her,” she mused to Tom, as she folded them carefully away in tissue paper—a dummy, her rattle, her first baby dresses, a tiny pair of kid booties. Just like any mother might do, anywhere in the world.

  When the blood didn’t come, Isabel was excited. When she had given up all hope of another child, her expectations were about to be confounded. She would wait a little longer, keep praying before saying anything to Tom. But she found her thoughts drifting off to daydreams about a brother or sister for Lucy. Her heart was full. Then the bleeding returned with a vengeance, heavier and more painful, in a pattern she couldn’t fathom. Her head would ache, sometimes; she would sweat at night. Then months would pass with no blood at all. “I’ll go and see Dr. Sumpton when we get our shore leave. No need to fuss,” she told Tom. She carried on without complaint. “I’m strong as an ox, darl. There’s nothing to worry about.” She was in love—with her husband, and with her baby—and that was enough.

  The months trailed by, marked with the peculiar rituals of the lighthouse—lighting up, hoisting the ensign, draining the mercury bath to filter out stray oil. All the usual form-filling, and compliance with the bullying correspondence from the Foreman Artificer about how any damage to the vapor tubes could only be caused by lightkeeper negligence, not faulty workmanship. The logbook changed from 1926 to 1927 in mid-page: there was no wasting paper in the CLS—the books were expensive. Tom pondered the institutional indifference to the arrival of a new year—as though the Lights were not impressed by something as prosaic as the mere effluction of time. And it was true—the view from the gallery on New Year’s Day was indistinguishable from that of New Year’s Eve.

  Occasionally, he would still find himself revisiting the page for 27 April 1926, until the book opened there of its own accord.

  Isabel worked hard. The vegetable patch thrived; the cottage was kept clean. She washed and patched Tom’s clothes, and cooked the things he liked. Lucy grew. The light turned. Time passed.