Beyond the security of the paddock, the pony became even more skittish and uncertain, prancing and jostling and stepping on Mary’s feet. The wind was unbelievably strong and Mary clung to the rope, trying to use the pony as a shield as they laboured down the track towards the shed. The door had blown open and was slamming against the wall. At the sound, the pony propped, shied and snorted, wrenching the rope from her hands. Then he took off. Cursing, she followed him over the hill.
On the western side of the cape, the land fell away quickly, diving through grasses and scrub then arriving suddenly at the cliffs. Mary was worried the pony might not see the edge until too late. He could go over, scrabbling at the lip with his hooves. She ran down the slope after him, exposed to the full force of the gale. The rain was dense and sharp, driven by the wind. Further west, she saw the pony bounding across the slope. She tried to hurry towards him, but he disappeared into cloud. She paused, unsure whether he’d fallen or was just out of view.
Then she saw him again, trotting jerkily across the slope to the north, zigzagging among the scrub, head low. She followed him, clutching bushes to steady herself. He stopped at a high point where the vegetation grew dense. Quickly, she scrambled across, feet skating in the gravel. Suddenly her foot slid on loose rocks, caught for a moment then slid again. She grasped at a tussock but it whipped out of her fingers, and then she was sliding, slipping down a steep gully, too close to the edge.
She dug her fingers into the mud, and scraped at anything solid. Her fingers raked on stone. There was a scream in her throat. Then air, all around. And space. She thudded against dirt. Rock.
It ended in a thump and a crack as her leg folded. Air huffed out of her like closed gallows. Slipping in and out of awareness, she wondered whether she was warm or cold.
Eventually, she felt rainwater running inside her coat and realised she’d have to move and find a way up the cliff. It took forever to edge up the rock wall and then roll over and arrange herself in an awkward sitting position with her leg stretched in front of her. After heaving the leg into place, she slumped against the cliff with her coat tucked around her. Rain sluiced over her. She melded with the darkness all around.
Hours passed before Jack and the other keeper found her. They scrambled down ledges to reach her, and then carried her up to the cottage while she reeled in a fog of pain. Jack was needed on the cape; he couldn’t leave. So his brother, Sam, came from the farm and drove her to hospital in Hobart. It was a wretched journey: her leg throbbed, and despite blankets and hot water bottles, she couldn’t get warm.
At the hospital, they confined her to bed in traction until the leg straightened. Then they set it in plaster and sent her to her parents’ place to recover. She was furious and bereft. The pony was safely back in his usual paddock, but she was here, stranded away from her family. Her mother patted her arm, smiling maternally. You’ll be all right, dear. They’ll manage without you. But Mary knew they wouldn’t manage. Jack was useless in the kitchen and Jan was too young to shoulder the load. The head keeper’s wife wasn’t well, so it was too much to ask her to care for the children.
It was no surprise when Jack’s letter arrived.
Dear Mary,
I hope you are recovering well. It has been very difficult to manage both the light-station duties and the family on my own. I have decided that I must call on Rose to come and help us while you are away. She can cook and look after the children while I attend to the many jobs that must be done after the storm.
Get well quickly. The children are missing you.
Jack
Mary was irritated. Rose was an ineffective solution. She was simply too lazy, and she’d be no use around the house. But of course, Jack, would be blind to that—all he’d see was an extra pair of hands.
Sitting by the fire in her parents’ home, Mary had much time to contemplate. She thought about Jack’s letter and everything it represented. She read it over and over, looking for something that wasn’t there. The fall and the broken leg had shaken her and she needed something from Jack, some reassurance that she mattered and that she was important to him. She wanted to know how he’d felt when he discovered she was missing. She wanted him to tell her about the search and rescue. She wanted to hear of his concern, the revival of his love and affection when he knew she was hurt. But the letter gave her none of this.
She wondered what would have happened if she’d died. The children might have grieved for a time, but what of Jack? How long would her death have affected him? Over the years they had become like ghosts to each other, shadows passing along the walls, beings without substance or reality. At best, she figured Jack would have noticed her absence more than he noticed her presence. The space in his bed. His dinner plate unfilled. The empty kitchen. Nobody to nurture the children. The cow waiting by the gate to be milked.
Their conversations, he would not miss—they were devoid of anything that mattered, littered with necessary facts, but bearing nothing of warmth, no connection or intimacy. In recent years, their eyes had flattened during speech. They had closed each other out like a door pulled shut. And their jobs had become the reason for existing. Jack, the lighthouse keeper. Mary, the mother.
If she had died in the accident, Mary was aware that Jack could have written a new future for himself, one without the burden of a wife. He could have sent Jan and Gary to boarding school. He could have become one with the wind and melted into the solitude he wrapped so closely around himself. She often wondered if he would have been happier that way.
After ten weeks, the leg mended and she went home, aware there was much work to be done to knit her marriage back together. But it seemed she was too late. The Jack she arrived home to was a stranger, aloof and unwelcoming, disinterested in her return. Aware of her own fragility, and shocked by Jack’s detachment, she took the children and went back to her parents’ house. She needed space to find her way out of the debilitating grip of despair before she could attempt to revive her relationship. Two months later, she returned once more to the cape; this time she was ready to fix things with Jack.
At first, she and Jack edged around each other like skittish crabs, not knowing how to reconnect. There were times when she considered leaving for good, but commitment was something her parents had taught her, and divorce never seemed a real option. It might have been possible if she’d been a different person in a different era. But society frowned on separation, and she was in her mid-thirties with two children. Jan and Gary had to be considered too. Jack was their father, and they needed him.
There was also the burden of her guilt. Over the years at the lighthouse as Jack had become more distant, instead of retreating and dreaming of a life with Adam, she could have put more effort into her marriage. Jack might not be passionate like Adam, but he was solid and dependable, with an inner strength that matched the place they lived in . . . Bruny Island. Yes, the island was part of what held them together. How lucky they were in their mutual love of this place. It gave them a base on which to reconstruct themselves.
In the end, it was Mary’s task to remake the family. She strived to avoid conflict, steering cautiously around prickly issues. She organised weekly picnics down in their quiet cove where sometimes they saw seals or dolphins. She re-ignited their sex life. Despite his initial resistance, she could see this was important to Jack. Sex reunited him with his physical self and it brought touch back into their relationship. Touch and intimacy. She also ensured they holidayed away at the farm, where Jack fished and walked and laughed with Max and Faye.
Jack started to put in more effort too. Instead of hiding in a book or escaping early to bed each evening, he stayed in the living area with the family. He talked books with Jan and spent more time with Gary: fishing, walking, teaching him carpentry in the shed. Then, when the children were in bed, Mary and Jack played canasta, five hundred, Scrabble. They reminisced on good times, unearthing their favourite memories. It was all so laborious and forced at first, but the new habits gaine
d momentum.
Then Tom came along. The gift and the inspiration. The precious one who made them whole again. Mary didn’t tell Jack she was pregnant until they’d begun to heal, and when she gave him the news, he wept. Jack liked babies. If he hadn’t been so crushed by Hobart life, he’d have been more involved when Jan and Gary were small. Even so, he’d done as much as he could, cradling them to sleep, walking them in the pram, bringing them in to be fed. When Tom arrived, he took extra care with him. If Tom cried at night, Jack was there, taking the baby in his arms and walking up and down the corridor. Or he would sit on the couch stroking Tom’s feathery little head with a hand already twisted with arthritis.
Jack could not be remade. Yet he did mellow, and she loved him for what he had been and also for what he was—a man of commitment. He was never particularly close to the children as they grew up, being too awkward and inscrutable for that. And he never completely recovered from the air and distance of the cape. But he and Mary were at ease together. And there was satisfaction in the achievement of a long marriage. By staying together, they had accomplished something valuable and intangible—an unspoken trust and solidarity that came from the knowledge they’d survived hardship and had not been destroyed.
There was cause for celebration in that.
27
Saturday night is Emma’s party, and I don’t think my acceptance was a particularly good idea. I haven’t been to a party in years. I’m useless at small talk. And I don’t want to see Nick again. If Emma gets a chance to line us up side by side in a social setting, I know which man will be found wanting. I’ll be the gangly awkward one who can’t even paste a friendly smile on his face.
I don’t know why I’m going to this party anyway. I should be down at Bruny with Mum. She looked dreadful when I visited with Gary on Wednesday, weak and vague. That cough is killing her. Gary said Dad was the same.
I pull on jeans, a green shirt and a grey fleece top. It’s not even worth looking in the mirror—all I will see is my inadequacy. I grab my keys from the bench before I can convince myself not to go.
Jess is waiting at the front door. I’m not sure if I should take her: I don’t want to leave her in the car for three or four hours, but then again, if I have to check on my dog perhaps it’ll give me an excuse to leave. I open the door and follow Jess to the car. She’s joyous to be going out and I wish I could share a fraction of her excitement. All I feel is dread.
Outside Emma’s house, I sit in the car with the radio on, waiting for eight o’clock. When the ABC news fanfare starts, I stay in the car a few minutes longer to hear out the news and get the weather forecast. Then I get out and shut the car door. I stand awhile in the street. The house is lit like a birthday with fairy lights strung up specially for the party. I jingle the keys in my pocket, open the gate and plod up the steps to the front door to ring the doorbell. There are footsteps and a shadow moving inside and the door finally swings open. It’s Nick.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ he says, his face expressionless. ‘Emma must have asked everyone she knows.’
Now Emma appears behind him and grabs his arm to pull him out of the way. ‘Isn’t that the idea?’ She smiles up at Nick and then at me. ‘Parties are best when there’s a good crowd. Come through to the kitchen.’
Nick stomps off down the hall and I follow Emma through the house. She’s wearing jeans and a purple top glittering with silver sequins.
‘I like your top,’ I say as we come into the kitchen.
‘Borrowed it from a friend,’ she says. ‘I don’t own anything like this. It’s a bit glitzy for me.’
‘I think it suits you.’ I feel like I’m trying too hard.
Emma glances down at my hands and then opens the fridge. ‘Want a drink?’ she asks.
A drink? Oh God, I feel like a complete idiot. She did say it was BYO. ‘I’m sorry,’ I mumble. ‘I forgot to stop at the pub.’
‘No matter,’ she says vaguely. ‘There’s plenty here.’
‘No. No.’ I’m hoarse with embarrassment. ‘I’ll just pop down the street. It won’t take a minute.’
I retreat quickly down the hall to the door. No wonder she was looking at me like that. I’ve committed a major social faux pas. And I’m here too early. Nobody else has arrived. Only a fool is on time to a party. I’ve forgotten how to be a normal human being.
‘Tom,’ Emma calls. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
She appears from the kitchen, while I stand with my hand on the doorknob. Her face is flushed and smiling. She’s not judging, I realise; it’s me who is doing all the flagellation here.
‘There’s plenty of grog.’ She slips her hand over mine on the doorknob. ‘Just stay.’
‘I won’t feel right.’ My heart is beating hard at her proximity. Perhaps she doesn’t mind me being early after all.
‘Let him go.’ Nick comes down the corridor doing up the cuffs of a white shirt. He looks brown-faced, healthy and masculine. ‘It’s going to be a big night. Won’t hurt to have a few reserves.’
‘I’ll come with you.’ Emma is right beside me at the door.
‘We have to light the candles and put out the food,’ Nick says.
‘Emma,’ another voice calls from the kitchen, ‘where’s the hummus?’
‘It’s okay. I’ll be back soon.’ I back out the door, feeling Emma’s hand slip off mine, and then Nick has his arm around her waist and is shepherding her towards the kitchen. She might have said that he doesn’t own her, but he’s acting like he does.
In the street, I can breathe again. The best thing I could do right now is to get in the car and drive home. But Emma is expecting me to return, and, pathetic though I am, I can’t let her down. I shove my hands in my pockets and start walking down the hill. My car is the only one parked in the street. Why didn’t I notice this before? I’m so out of practice, it’s a tragedy. If a party’s happening, there should be cars everywhere.
I manage to take more than an hour buying half a dozen beers and a bottle of wine. When I come back up the hill, cars are parked up and down the street. I’m now fashionably late. I stop by the Subaru and let Jess out to stretch her legs. She squats with some embarrassment on the nature strip then bounds back into the car and snuggles down on my seat. She’s happy that I’m back and that I haven’t deserted her. I guess she’s keeping her eye on me, just in case.
I drum my fingers on the roof of the car and watch people climbing out of another vehicle further up the street. They’re laughing, talking animatedly. How nice it would be to enter a party with the added confidence of being with a friend. But I can’t delay much longer. It’s time to go and face the mob. I sweep my plastic bag of clinking bottles off the top of the car and walk through the gate and up the steps to the front door for the second time tonight.
Through the window I can see the lights have been dimmed and music is now throbbing. I bang on the door. Wait. Knock again. Then I let myself in. Music swells out. Music and smoke. I hear laughter from the kitchen, so I shut the door behind me and walk tentatively towards the sound. Somebody sweeps past me in the semi-dark, and then I have to push past bodies in the doorway to get into the kitchen. Everything is candlelit. Faces glow in the flickering light and the smoke haze softens outlines. The hubbub of conversation is loud as I move towards the fridge, weaving around the overheated bodies of people I’ve never seen before.
‘No room in the fridge,’ someone yells. ‘Go to the laundry. There’s ice in the sink.’
I wave and squeeze through another door and someone points me to the laundry where a candle is shivering on the windowsill. While I’m pulling the beers out of their packaging so I can bury them to keep them cool, a guy leans over me and fishes out a couple of drinks. He’s sweaty and his dark hair hangs around his face. I can smell the smoke on his breath. The party’s only been going an hour and this guy is smashed.
‘Get one into you,’ he says. ‘Bloody good party.’ He stumbles out.
I linger in the gloom of the l
aundry with an open beer in my hand before I muster the courage to search for Emma. I can’t face going back into the crowded kitchen, so I follow someone through to the lounge room where party lights are strung around the curtains and light fittings as well as the mantelpiece above the gas fire. I see the glow of Nick’s white shirt in one corner; he’s with a group of people. I can’t see if Emma is among them. In another corner, a cluster of guys is laughing loudly and clinking beers.
I slide further into the room and stand against the wall, sipping my beer. On the couch, a couple is deep in conversation. The guy is obviously chatting up the girl—he’s playing with her hair and her hand is on his leg. Even I can interpret the signals.
Nick breaks away from his group and comes towards the door. Of course he notices me standing there like a wallflower.
‘You’re back,’ he says, eyes and voice flat. ‘You haven’t seen Emma, have you?’
I shake my head.
‘She’s got the shits with me tonight. For sending you off.’
‘I took myself off.’
‘Tell her that, will you?’ He puts his empty bottle on the mantelpiece. ‘How are you off for a beer?’
‘Just started one.’
‘Drink up, then. I’ll get you another.’
He shifts by me, through the door. I hope he won’t come back, but he returns quickly with two bottles. The one he passes to me is dripping. It’s straight out of the ice.
‘Where’d you meet Emma?’ he asks. He twists the top off his beer and takes a swig without moving his eyes from my face.
‘She gave a talk at the antdiv.’ I don’t want to get into a conversation with this guy.
‘How’d you hear about it?’
The Lightkeeper's Wife Page 27
