The Lightkeeper's Wife

by Karen Viggers

  Emma stares off over the fire into the dark. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘There are always ways to work things out.’ She seems suddenly abstracted and I wonder what she’s thinking. ‘We had a successful season,’ she says eventually. ‘Lots of data.’ She pokes the fire with a stick and a log crumbles and flickers into energised flame. ‘My assistant was good most of the time—when she wasn’t trying to run back to station to see her beau. But this year I’ve decided I need a man. To help with the heavy work.’

  I swallow the tightness in my throat, waiting for her to tell me whether she thinks I’ll get the job, but she remains silent, and I force myself to speak. ‘I’d really like to go south with you,’ I say. ‘But only if you think it can work.’

  ‘If what can work?’

  ‘Us . . . and being together in the field.’

  Emma lifts her head and laughs. The light of the flames flickers on her throat. ‘You want to try it?’ she asks. ‘Even after your marriage breakup?’

  I nod, unable to speak.

  ‘And it’ll be all right this time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She studies me carefully. ‘How can you know?’ she asks.

  I shrug and her face softens in the firelight.

  ‘You loved her, didn’t you?’ she says.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So why did you go?’

  ‘To pay off the mortgage.’

  Emma stabs at the coals with a stick and stands up. ‘We all think we’re safe,’ she says quietly. ‘But all of us are vulnerable.’ She tosses the stick into the fire. ‘Let’s go to bed.’

  PART III

  Disintegration

  22

  ‘The scouts are here!’ Leon burst through the door with a blast of fresh air, enthusiasm written all over his face.

  Mary was on the couch, folded up in her rug. She was slow and bleary-eyed after a bad night; Jacinta and Alex had stayed over again and she’d relinquished two of her pillows. Unable to prop herself up she’d had no rest, struggling to breathe through fluid-filled lungs. They left early to catch the ferry back to Kettering and it was a relief to collapse on the couch, drifting in and out of weary slumber.

  She peered blurrily up at Leon, trying to look responsive.

  ‘Are you ready?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to say.’

  He brushed away her reluctance. ‘You’ll think of something. And they’re looking forward to it. I’ve told them all about you.’

  ‘I can’t do it. I’m too tired.’

  He continued as if he hadn’t heard her. ‘Just think! You could be sitting in a hospital bed accepting cups of tea from grumpy nurses. But instead, here you are, still giving public speeches.’

  His attempt at humour failed to move her. ‘When you put it that way, a hospital bed sounds blissful.’

  ‘You’ll be fine. Now, where’s your coat?’

  While Leon gathered her things, Mary hunched beneath her blanket and gazed miserably out the window. Curtains of rain blotted the cliffs, and the bay was flat and featureless, obscured by drizzle. Wind gusted under the eaves and there were whitecaps riding angrily in to shore. It was silly to think she could go out there. But Leon would not be persuaded. She supposed she should capitalise on this opportunity to convince him to take her part way up East Cloudy Head.

  He came back with her scarf. ‘I see you’ve written a letter.’

  She jolted. ‘What letter?’

  ‘The one on your bedside table. Do you want me to put a stamp on it and post it for you? I’ll be going by the post office later today.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing,’ she snapped.

  His face fell. ‘I was only trying to help.’

  ‘It’s not help. It’s interference,’ she said. She knew she was over-reacting but his intrusion was dangerous. If he saw who that letter was addressed to, he might deliver it. And what then? Her whole life could come tumbling down.

  Huffily, she scrambled to her feet and shuffled into the bedroom. How could she have left the letter somewhere so obvious? She’d had it out this morning, ready to tear it up and burn it, but she’d put it down while she made her bed and had forgotten it. Now she swung back to see if Leon was watching. No, he was out of sight. She grasped the envelope, her hands shaking. Where to put it? Nobody must find it. Dear God, how many times had she hidden this thing, only to lose it for a day? This time she must remember where she concealed it.

  She folded it into her nightgown and tucked it beneath her pillow. It would fall out when she readied herself for bed tonight. She couldn’t possibly miss it.

  Back in the living room, she sat down again. ‘Please, Leon, I’m in no state for public lectures. Can we just drive down and say hello?’

  He looked at her, and she knew he wouldn’t relent. ‘We have a deal,’ he said. ‘And it won’t take long.’ He found her coat on a hook behind the door. ‘Here, let’s put this on. We can’t have you freezing out there.’

  He helped her up and lifted the coat over her shoulders. Then he bundled her out into the four-wheel drive. From the driver’s seat, he paused and examined her, his face puckered with something that hovered between confusion and concern. She drew breath raggedly, fear hammering in her chest. He might be thinking about that letter. He might be wondering at her extreme response. She tried to look grey and strained and exhausted. She wanted him to feel guilty for forcing her into this. And she didn’t want him to ask about the letter.

  He looked out through the windscreen and she thought he was about to say something. Then he started the vehicle and she knew she was safe. A tacit truce had been declared.

  The scouts had set up camp all over Cloudy Corner. It wasn’t just an influx, it was an inundation: there were tents everywhere, and wood had been dragged into stacks, ready for the cold night ahead. Adults strutted about like commanders, marshalling hordes of children. Packs were lumped in piles and two big campfires blazed, billies sizzling over the coals. Mary had never seen so many people here, and the noise was startling.

  Leon jabbed stubby fingers in his mouth and emitted a piercing whistle. The scouts stood quickly to attention. ‘Gather round,’ he yelled. ‘Mrs Mason’s here. She’s going to talk to you about the lighthouse.’

  The scouts flocked around them, the youngest flinging themselves to the ground and the older ones approaching more slowly and casually, feigning disinterest. Mary thought of Jan and Gary when they were teenagers—trying to appear grown up when they were far from it, struggling to subdue that flagrant enthusiasm of youth. Even so, she was overwhelmed by the proximity of so many energetic young bodies, all those unlined faces staring up at her expectantly.

  ‘I need to sit down,’ she said.

  A campchair appeared from nowhere and Leon helped her into it. As soon as the weight was off her legs, the shakes took hold. It wasn’t nervousness, but excitement—adrenalin competing with all the medication in her body.

  Leon waited till the restless movement subsided, and Mary observed his patient demeanour. He wasn’t uncomfortable with this group. In fact, he seemed quite confident. He was under–utilised here. He ought to be involved in greater duties than checking toilets and clearing rubbish bins. She wondered why he stayed, deliberately limiting his future.

  ‘This is Mrs Mason,’ he said, deferring to her with a polite nod. ‘She’s a walking encyclopaedia on Bruny Island and the lighthouse.’

  Mary smiled. These days she felt more like an encyclopaedia of ailments.

  ‘Mrs Mason lived at the lighthouse on Cape Bruny for twenty-six years,’ Leon continued. ‘Her husband was the lighthouse keeper. They had three kids and there were no schools nearby, so her children had to do lessons at home until high school. Imagine that.’

  He nodded to her to begin. The scouts were regarding her like a museum specimen, and some of them were already staring up at the trees or pinching their nearest neighbour. The older scouts wore an air of faint boredom. She decided to make her
speech quick so they weren’t standing around for too long.

  Struggling off her chair, she was surprised at how stiff she had become. Her bones were protesting at the cold. She clutched the arm of the chair, aware of her heart pounding. The wretched coughing started and she sat down again, accepting that it was too hard to stand. Then she began to tell the boys about the light.

  ‘Cape Bruny is a place of vast distance and secret magic,’ she said. ‘When you drive out there, it’s like a camel hump on the horizon, and the lighthouse is a pillar on the highest point of land. The tower’s blinding white, so you can’t miss it. If you climb this headland here, up onto East Cloudy Head,’ she pointed to the start of the track, ‘and if the weather is clear, you can see the lighthouse, even from this far away. That’s why lighthouses are so important. And they were especially useful in the olden days, well before my time, when ships didn’t have radar and GPS like they do today. Back then, the lighthouses were the eyes of the coast. The lights told sailors where there were rocks and reefs to avoid. Each lighthouse has its own special signal. In my day, the Cape Bruny light had a group flash. That meant two flashes every thirteen seconds with two dark periods in between, one short, one long. That’s how sailors could tell their position, by the character of the flashes from each lighthouse.

  ‘We lived in a red-roofed brick cottage below the lighthouse. To get up to the tower, you had to climb the concrete path. The weather was often terrible—so much wind. You could feel it through your clothes and aching in your ears. As you climbed the hill, you could see crumbling cliffs around the edges of the cape. And way out was the shifting face of the ocean, always heaving up and down. Below our cottage was a lovely stretch of sand called Lighthouse Beach. And to the west, you’d see all the jagged shadows of Recherche Bay.’

  Mary noticed most of them were only half listening and she wondered how she could draw them in. ‘Close your eyes,’ she said, and they obeyed. ‘Imagine you’re standing on the cliffs near the light tower, looking south. You have to think south. And you have to take your mind out over the water and ride the waves as far as they go until you reach the ice. That’s where the wind is born, and by the time it reaches Cape Bruny, it’s still carrying Antarctica on its breath.

  ‘Now turn around and walk to the door at the bottom of the tower. It’s black and heavy, hard to open. You have to undo the lock and swing the door inwards. Then you step inside out of the wind. You can feel the stillness of the tower. And then you can hear the clank of your boots on the iron steps as you climb. When you speak your voice bounces around the walls.

  ‘Now you’re in the lantern room. There’s a huge lens almost filling the room. It’s domed like a beehive out of Winnie the Pooh. Prisms and faces of glass, all yellow with age. Imagine you’re looking out through the windows. Way down below, the sea is foaming over the rocks around Courts Island. But the sound of the waves is dull because of the stone walls of the tower. And the wind is echoing. You’re gloriously high. The view is wide. The ocean is rippling far to the south.’

  She paused. ‘You can open your eyes now.’

  The boys’ eyes flashed open. There was some squirming and giggling.

  ‘Now we’ll go back down to the keeper’s cottage,’ she said, trying to regain their attention. ‘It wasn’t very fancy back then—just bare walls and high ceilings. No posters or paintings or anything like that. There’s a black kettle always hissing and simmering on the stove. And on the table there are pencils and paper. That’s where my children did their lessons. They’re all grown up now. But when they were younger they had maths and grammar to learn just like you. I had to be their teacher. They didn’t always like that.’

  Some of the boys laughed.

  ‘And what do you think we did on bad days?’ she asked them.

  ‘Watch TV?’ one of them said.

  Mary shook her head. ‘No. TV was only just coming in back then, and reception was poor out at the light station.’

  ‘So what did you do?’ Leon prompted her.

  ‘Well, sometimes the wind was so strong you couldn’t go out or you’d get blown over. So we used to do inside things. Like make pom-poms. Or draw pirate maps. Write letters and poke them into bottles to send out to sea. If the weather was good, we were outside flying kites, making bonfires, jumping over waves.

  ‘Our beach was good for fossicking and we collected all sorts of things: shells and stones, feathers, lots of beach junk, like broken buoys and penguin skulls and old rusty knives. My children used to make things from sticks too: spears, bows and arrows, skis and poles. Sometimes, on a really good day, we’d go up past the tower and down the path on the other side. If the tide was low, we could go across the stony walkway to Courts Island. In among the grass, there were mutton-bird burrows, and at the right time of year, we’d pull out fluffy chicks with black shiny eyes.’

  She stopped, drained of energy, and the children stared up at her, their imaginations fired, and shot out questions. Had she ever seen pirates? Could the wind really blow you off your feet? Did she see any wrecks? What happened when there was lightning? Was there treasure on Courts Island? Could kids go up the tower?

  She answered as best she could. Unfortunately, no pirates. Yes, the wind really could bowl you over. They had seen a few sailing boats wrecked, and they’d assisted stranded sailors. No treasure had yet been found on Courts Island, but perhaps it might be there. And finally, yes, children could go up the tower these days—on guided tours with their parents. Back then, they were only allowed on special occasions.

  ‘Is the tower still functional?’ a scout leader asked.

  Mary explained that yes, the tower could still be used, but it wasn’t. The old light had been decommissioned in 1996, replaced by an automated beacon on the adjacent headland. She smiled sadly; Jack had detested automation. The beacon was a stunted thing, locked into the ground by concrete. It was cheaper to run and more efficient than the original light. Now the lighthouse keepers had become caretakers: they maintained the light station as a historic site and recorded weather observations for the Bureau of Meteorology so aeroplanes could land confidently at Hobart airport.

  The caretakers were custodians of the stories of the lighthouse keepers. This was as precious as the lighthouse that stood as a monument to them. To those that lived there long before Mary’s time.

  The boys were getting restless and Mary could see their legs jiggling from inactivity. Of course they were done with it. They had listened well, but history was for old people, not for young things zinging with energy. She should stand up to finish and thank them . . . but as she struggled out of her chair, her legs wobbled and the breath seeped out of her. She felt herself sway, and there was an unusual lightness, as if all her blood was draining to her feet.

  Suddenly, Jack was there in the branches above her, swimming in light. She felt a flush of heat. The trees spun. She heard panting. Then, all was quiet and black.

  When she woke, Leon was leaning over her. She recognised his shape, hazy and undefined. The blur of his frown. Above him, the tops of trees swayed.

  She was cold. So very cold. And heavy. Leaden. She closed her eyes, hearing the wind sighing in the leaves . . . or was it the pumping rush of blood, the sound of her own heart magnified in her ears? When she opened her eyes again, Leon was lifting her head to place a blanket beneath.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

  She tried to struggle up, but he pressed her down gently. ‘Lie still a moment. You fainted.’

  She relinquished herself to heaviness and felt blankets being drawn over her.

  ‘Here’s a cup of tea,’ someone said.

  And then someone else: ‘Is she going to be okay?’

  Leon was sitting beside her on the ground. ‘Don’t get up till you’re ready.’

  It seemed she’d never be ready. She lay beneath the weight of the blankets, breathing shallowly. There was a great lump somewhere on her chest that was pressing, pressing, and then she was coughi
ng, curled in a foetal ball. She rolled to her side, looking for something to spit into. Leon pressed a bowl beneath her face and then, thank God, she could breathe again.

  He helped her to sit up and someone placed a warm cup of tea in her hands. She was feeble. Cold. Stiff. And her body was slow. Her lips were stubborn and refused to form words.

  ‘Don’t try to talk,’ Leon said. He paused. ‘Should I find a doctor? I can send someone for the nurse at Lunawanna.’

  ‘No,’ she croaked. ‘I’ll recover in a while.’

  As she slurped tea, she began to feel stronger. Leon sat by, his face furrowed with worry. The scouts and their leaders had dispersed to other activities in order to give her some privacy.

  ‘I’m better,’ she said, after a while. ‘And I have a request.’

  He raised surprised eyebrows.

  ‘The track up East Cloudy Head. After I’ve rested a little longer, could you support me so we can walk up there a short way?’

  ‘What?’ Leon laughed. ‘That’s a joke, right? You’re having me on.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I want to go up there.’

  ‘You just fainted. I’m taking you back to the cabin.’

  She saw the firm line of his lips and knew that the issue was closed. She felt a twinge of regret. She wouldn’t be communing with Jack up on the head today. And there wasn’t much time left. Her opportunities were shutting down.

  Leon reassured the scout crowd that she was recovering. Then he lifted her into the car, the cup of tea still in her hands, and drove back down the beach. In the cabin, he propped her up in bed with pillows and a hot-water bottle, and then he sat down beside her, his face pale.

  ‘What happened out there?’ he asked.

  She shrugged. ‘I must have sat for too long . . .’

  He shook his head. ‘I doubt it. You’re always sitting. So it can’t have been that.’ He smiled wryly. ‘Just remind me not to put you on the speaking circuit again. You upset a few people, fainting like that. The kids thought you were dead.’