The Lightkeeper's Wife

by Karen Viggers

  One night at a party on station, she came to me, drunk, and asked me to dance. But I declined and stayed in my post against the wall, swigging my beer.

  ‘Come into the field with me again,’ she said over her shoulder, as she swivelled back out to dance. ‘You need to get off station more. And I need a hand. There’s been a flush of pups up in Long Fjord.’

  In the morning I packed my field bag, roped it to a quad bike and followed her out from station across the sea ice. We spun far out on the frozen waste, whizzing north past two islands locked like black hummocks in the ice. Far out, the sea ice was like a highway. We saw lines of black Adelies as they headed for their rookeries, their feathers ruffling in the wind.

  Navigation in the Vestfold Hills wasn’t easy and we had to look for specific landmarks that would direct us to the fjords. Until you knew the characteristics of the hills, they appeared featureless, rolling low and monotonous to the grey dome of the plateau. But once you knew what to look for, the hills became familiar friends, and the frozen fjords were the roads we raced along on our quad bikes.

  The fjords were a place of relative protection from the wind and the blizzards; the wind could still barrel down from the plateau and along the valleys between the hills, but there were sheltered areas—often around islands in the fjords—and these were the sites where Weddell seals gave birth to their pups each year in spring. Bull males defended breathing holes where their harem of females hauled themselves out of the water onto the ice.

  As Sarah and I drove through the frozen fjords, we passed several clusters of dozing seals. We stayed wide of them, not wanting to disturb them until we returned later with our tagging gear after offloading our luggage at the field hut.

  Brookes Hut was a splash of red—a converted shipping container—at the end of a small bay overlooking the sea ice. Sarah and I bounced our quads over the rumpled tide cracks and drove up the track behind a mound of dirty snow to park just outside the hut. We lugged our gear inside where it was dull and quiet and the whine of the wind seemed distant. We stashed our food on the shelves among the existing cans of baked beans and powdered milk, sultanas and frozen cans of beer. Then we tossed sleeping bags on bunks, opened the vents and set up the toilet with a plastic bag that we would take back with us to station to be burned.

  While Sarah boiled water for cups of tea, I went outside to watch tiny brown storm petrels flittering over the rocks near the hut. The morning light had shifted to grey and the ice was flat and featureless. Somewhere across the fjord the hollow bray of a Weddell seal echoed. Cold air froze in my nostrils and drew tears. The landscape was beautiful; it was rugged, harsh and wild. And it felt good to be off station, away from the gossip and pernickety human interactions. Sarah was easy to be with. She was undemanding and I knew we’d have a good few days. The mechanics’ shed would survive without me.

  After tea and chocolate, we gathered our equipment and set out across the ice, shattering the silence once more with the reverberating noise of our quads. Sarah led the way to the nearest colony—a gathering of dark grey spotted slugs lying stretched on the ice. We cut the engines and stood listening to occasional coughs and snorts. A pup barking at its mother. The hollow echoing bray of another seal, further along the fjord. Then the sound of our crampons, crunching and scratching on ice as we walked towards the group.

  We circled the harem, counting pups and cows. Several seals raised sleek pointed heads to look at us, opening and closing their slit nostrils, prickling the air with pale whiskers. One spun to watch us, spreading its hind flippers to reveal a coloured tag in the webbing. The pups dozed, floppy bags of grey-brown fur lying prone on the ice. It’d be my job to dance in and drag a pup away while Sarah distracted the mother with a flag on a pole. While she kept the mother entertained, I would quickly tag the pup and let it go.

  We had a successful day, tagging numerous pups and adults. That evening, Sarah cooked dinner with fresh vegies from the resupply ship, and served it with wine. It was a good start to the season. We sat rugged up on the deck watching the sky darken towards a midnight sunset, the air chilling our wine, our gloved hands fumbling with our forks.

  After we’d washed the dishes we played cards. Then we pulled closed the blackout curtains and slipped into our sleeping bags on opposite bunks. The wind echoed in the vents and buffeted the walls of the hut. It was quiet inside. Quiet and safe. I lay awake listening to Sarah breathe, feeling the night around me, thinking of Debbie at home in bed with a man I didn’t know.

  Like a shadow, Sarah came across the room. I had thought she was asleep, but she must have heard my ragged breathing and felt the weight of my grief. She unzipped my sleeping bag and lay down beside me beneath the cocoon of feathers. Her hands were gentle, running up and down my arms. Her body was a warm entanglement.

  I didn’t want to feel desire, yet I was unhinged by the soft touch of her fingers tracing my cheeks and lips. When she kissed me, I struggled to hold back, but she felt me rise even without touching me. I was too broken to refuse.

  She was refuge.

  My favourite field hut at Davis Station is the melon at Trajer Ridge. It’s shaped like a watermelon—hence the name. To get there you walk out from station over the undulating brown hills. You climb over saddles and walk through rocky valleys, until suddenly you rise above a crumbling ridgeline and see light shimmering on a secret lake tucked below. Beneath the spacious sky you wander down to the lake’s edge and squat by the still water. Early in the season the lake is locked by ice and laced with strings of ascending bubbles. By late spring it has melted to a mirror of light.

  After you leave the lake, you bumble over endless rock fields and snowdrifts, descending gradually out of the hills until you step onto frozen Ellis Fjord. This is when you strap on the crampons that have been bumping and clinking against your pack, and begin crunching over the long flat drudgery of ice, working up blisters on your heels.

  On a still day, the reflected light is hot. You sweat and have to stop to shed layers. Everything is quiet. When you start moving again, all you can hear is the sound of your breathing and the scratch of your spikes. The hills rise around you, and occasionally, along the edge of the fjord where ice meets rock, you find small pools, smooth as glass, melted by the sun.

  At the end of the fjord the land climbs towards the plateau. You trudge up a long ridge with grand views across the desolate snow-patched Vestfolds. On a clear morning, the far hills are dark against the turgid blue of the sky. By afternoon, the light washes out and flattens the landscape, dissecting distance.

  Cresting the ridge, you see the red dome of the hut, balanced on a slab of rock below. It’s attached to the earth by wire, to anchor it in the fierce blast of blizzards and katabatic winds. Beyond, the plateau stretches white. It’s a relief to step inside the hut and take off your pack. On the deck, you open a beer and sit in clean dry socks and thermals, watching the light wash over the hills until the cold drives you inside to cook dinner and read, listening to the voice of the wind escalating in the wires. At night, you slip into your sleeping bag and wait for sleep to find you. The wind buffets the walls and sings in the cables. You hear it whining in the vents, juddering at the door. Within the hut you are safe, curled up within your bag. You could be floating in a womb.

  That is how Sarah made me feel in the aftermath of my marriage collapse. Through Christmas and over the summer, she continued to find excuses to invite me to assist her in the field. And, like a dog, I continued to follow her. Rumour quickly bound us together; this was good for Sarah, as she was safe on station, largely immune from flirtation and propositions. On the whole, there was no ill will towards me. We were discreet and people knew what I’d been through, they knew I had suffered. But questions accompanied me wherever I went. What was Sarah like in bed? How was it that I was the lucky guy? And how did I feel knowing Sarah had a boyfriend back home?

  Sarah never mentioned her boyfriend to me. Other girls had photos of their boyfriends plastered over
the pinboards in their rooms, but Sarah’s photos were of her parents and her cat. I didn’t ask about her home life and she didn’t ask about mine. In the soothing comfort of rebound, I allowed myself to think our relationship could grow into something more. On station, I stayed quiet with my head bowed and my heart closed. In the field, Sarah was my cocoon.

  But eventually the Aurora Australis appeared in Prydz Bay to deliver more supplies and to collect departing winterers, including me. When I told Sarah I’d like to meet her in Hobart when her ship returned, her eyes became cool and her face shuttered. She laughed a tight little laugh. ‘But you knew I had a boyfriend. I thought you understood.’

  The ground rocked beneath me.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tom. It’s been fun. But I’m engaged,’ she said.

  ‘Engaged?’

  ‘You know how it is,’ she said. ‘It’s not convenient to wear a ring down here.’

  A ring was not convenient and yet I had been convenient. She kissed me blithely on the lips. ‘Come to my cabin tonight.

  It’s our last time.’

  So why did I go to her that night? What was it that took me unhesitatingly to her door? Why did I lace my boots in the foyer of the living quarters, don my coat and walk down the dirty melted-out path to her donga where candles and soft music waited for me?

  She let me in and undressed me, and in the space of that one night I was splintered again, smashed apart. There had been no healing from Debbie, only avoidance, replacement and self-delusion. But I let Sarah take me. I lay beside her that last night, clinging to the warmth of her body, feeling myself blowing away like dust in the wind.

  The next morning, the helicopter took the husk of me to the ship and I returned to Tasmania.

  13

  Mary had imagined that returning to Cloudy Bay would restore the peace she had known here when she was young. But anxiety overcame the solace of solitude. And sleeplessness was dulling her short moments of pleasure. The insomnia derived from many sources: the wind, her cough, mulling on what to do with the wretched letter, fear that Jan might materialise and insist on taking her home. On top of that, she was aware of time passing, and her duty to Jack was far from complete. Of her list of promised destinations, she had only visited one, Cloudy Corner. There was still much work to do.

  Her health was deteriorating, there was no denying it. At night she could hardly breathe and the tablets seemed to make little difference. True rest had become rare; much of her waking time was spent dithering over the letter. This was the irony of it all. She was here to disperse her guilt at last and the letter was a constant reminder of what she had done.

  Jack was with her in this place, she knew it. She could feel him in the vast measure of silence. He was watching her, waiting. Sometimes he came riding on the wind, and other times he seemed to pass, invisible, through the cabin. Knowing he was present reassured her. The long ache of her loneliness was subsiding.

  Whenever Leon came, she strived to enjoy his company— there was little enough of human companionship in her days. But his visits had become a drama of tension. Could she persuade him to take her out? How might she shift the conversation her way? Would she stir his pity or his anger?

  He came every day as arranged, stopping for a quick cup of tea and a short discussion of the weather. She tried to ease him into longer conversations, looking for opportunities that might allow her to tag along with him on his duties. But he remained quiet and reserved. The only thing that interested him was the lighthouse, but his attention was fickle; often he was focused elsewhere, and he left again too quickly.

  Today, though, he arrived like a thunderstorm, banging into the cabin without saying hello, and marching to the kitchen to put the kettle on. Mary offered a polite good morning, and he glared at her beneath knitted brows.

  ‘What do you mean, good morning?’ he said.

  ‘It’s not raining,’ she pointed out. ‘That’s good for Cloudy Bay.’

  He scowled at her. ‘The weather’s not the only way to judge a day.’ He slapped the Hobart Mercury on the bench. ‘Here’s a newspaper. It’s yesterday’s, but I thought you might want to see what’s going on in the world. And here’s some milk.’ He put the carton in the gas fridge. ‘Is there anything else you need?’

  ‘My granddaughter’s coming this weekend, so you can have a couple of days off.’

  He swung away to find some cups, and she heard him muttering, ‘There’s no such thing as a day off.’

  ‘Perhaps you could have a day with your family,’ she suggested. ‘Go for a picnic.’

  The look he gave her was ferocious. ‘Who says I want to go for a picnic with my family?’

  ‘It was just an idea.’

  ‘Yeah, well, family picnics are not my idea of fun.’ He set two cups on the bench.

  ‘It sounds like you need a holiday,’ she said, trying again.

  ‘Not much chance of that at the moment, is there?’ Even as he said it he glanced at her with a flicker of guilt in his eyes.

  ‘This won’t go on forever, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘You’re thinking of going back?’

  ‘Not immediately . . . but I’ll have to go back eventually.’

  He slipped her a furtive look and she held back from saying she intended to be here till she died.

  ‘Would you mind bringing my tablets?’ she asked.

  He poured the tea, delivered her tablets and sat down in a chair while she shook out the required medication and swallowed it. A long silence followed in which they sipped tea and stared out the window. The quiet seemed to soften him somehow, and eventually he turned to her, his face calmer.

  ‘The weekend after next, there’s going to be a scout camp out here,’ he said. ‘They’ll be staying at Cloudy Corner.’

  ‘That’s fine. It won’t matter if they’re noisy. I won’t hear them from here.’

  ‘I had an idea you might talk to them,’ he suggested.

  ‘I’m sure I can be polite and say hello.’

  He shook his head. ‘That’s not what I meant. I thought you might talk to them about being a keeper’s wife. I think they’d be interested.’

  The suggestion set her coughing. When she recovered, she stared at him, annoyed. ‘As you can see, I can barely string two sentences together.’

  ‘You won’t have to speak for long,’ he said, leaning forward.

  She paused, considering. Perhaps this was an opportunity, an opening she could exploit. She must suppress her irritation and dive on her chance. ‘All right,’ she said slowly. ‘I’ll do it—in exchange for an outing.’

  His expression soured. ‘Where to?’

  ‘Up to Mount Mangana.’

  He snorted. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You wouldn’t make it more than twenty metres up the track.’

  ‘I don’t need to walk,’ she said. ‘I just want to drive through the forest.’

  ‘When?’ he asked.

  ‘How about now?’

  Surprisingly, he agreed. Still looking disgruntled, he deposited her inside the four-wheel drive and climbed into the driver’s seat, slamming the door. Then he drove fast down the beach, flushing gulls from the sand.

  Sitting quietly in the passenger seat, Mary wound down the window to let the fresh air rush in. Despite Leon’s grumpiness, she was surfing on a surge of triumph and she couldn’t keep the smile off her lips. Soon she’d have another place crossed off her list. And how good it was to leave the cabin again. Sea spray was rising above the beach and light shimmered over the sea with a pearly glow. The world was beautiful and here she was, whizzing through it, watching the sun cutting the clouds and glinting off the water.

  At the end of the beach near the lagoon, Leon drove up onto the road and stopped in the Whalebone Point carpark. He grabbed a bag of toilet rolls from the back seat and swung out of the car. ‘I won’t be long.’

  Mary watched him stride across the tarmac, head down, shoulders rounded. He was brooding today, stewing over something. She
wished she could ask him what was wrong, but his body language didn’t encourage questions.

  When he climbed back in, he wound her window up. ‘We’ll be going faster along the road. You’ll get blown away.’

  Pulling out of the carpark they passed the Pines campground, where a man was bending over a camp stove and a woman was folding away a tent. Leon waved at them.

  ‘That was nice of you,’ she said.

  He grunted. ‘I get paid to be nice to people.’

  They drove past paddocks dotted with sheep and bracken. Then the coastal scrub gave way to greener farms where plump Herefords grazed. Here, taller trees grew along the roadside verges, and occasionally there were quaint cold-looking cottages with smoke coiling from their chimneys. Up high in the mountains bald patches marked recent logging sites.

  ‘Could you slow down?’ Mary asked.

  They were approaching the old Mason farm and the cottage where her uncle and aunt had lived. Years ago the two properties had been amalgamated into a larger farm; Jack’s family home had been pulled down and her uncle’s cottage had been renovated. These days it was let out to tourists looking for a ‘taste’ of Bruny Island. The old barn had gone too. Not surprising, given the years and the weather that had passed since then.

  ‘Stop here,’ she said. They were just near the gate.

  ‘What is it?’ Leon seemed interested now in spite of himself.

  ‘This is where I used to live.’ She pointed to the cottage. ‘Jack’s family lived next door. But the old house is gone.’