They’ve dressed her in fresh clothes—a dress Jan selected from her wardrobe. Her cheeks have been padded with cotton wool and her lips have been tweaked into an almost smile. She’s been carefully made up with powder and lipstick, and her eyes have been somehow fixed shut. It’s not the face I know. She’s a study of absence, nothing of life left in her.
Seeing Mum resurrects the pain of my return from down south. It reminds me of all the losses I bore back then. My father. Leaving Antarctica. My marriage.
Debbie wouldn’t meet with me till three months after I disembarked in Hobart. Every time I rang she fobbed me off with excuses. I was still reeling from the implosion of my life. Debbie could no doubt hear it in my voice, but I was preoccupied with finding my feet on non-Antarctic ground. I didn’t realise how broken I was. How maladjusted.
Debbie finally agreed to meet me at a café near Constitution Wharf. Hobart was already bearing down towards winter and it was a dim grey day—I clearly remember it. In the café, she sat opposite me, sipping a latte. And she dodged my eyes carefully, furtively.
I had to admit she looked well. Her cheeks were pink, her lips red and full. She was uncomfortable in my presence, but smiles still came to her easily. Somebody was being kind to her, making her feel loved. I didn’t remember her looking so self-assured when she lived with me.
‘How are you going?’ she asked.
She didn’t really want to know, so I fed her an appropriate lie. ‘I’m fine.’
‘I’m sorry about your father,’ she said. ‘He was a good man. You’re like him, the way you hold everything inside.’
I didn’t want to be compared to my father. And I didn’t want to talk about him. ‘I love you, Debbie,’ I said. ‘We can try again. I’m sorry about Antarctica. It wasn’t supposed to work out that way. But we had something before I left. A plan. Things we wanted to do together. I can be the man you want. I’m willing to change.’
‘You did try from down there,’ she said. ‘All those emails you sent me . . . they were lovely. But they didn’t help. They emphasised the separation. It was so lonely here. So isolating. Who would think that you could live in a city full of people and feel alone? It felt like you were on another planet. You tried to share Antarctica with me, but it wasn’t possible. Only people who’ve been down there understand what it’s like to be there. And only people who’ve stayed at home understand what it’s like to be left behind.’
I reached for her hand, but she had tucked herself safely behind the table. ‘Look at you,’ she said. ‘Antarctica still has a hold on you. It’s in your bones. And there’s a wild look in your eyes. It frightens me.’
If I looked wild, it had nothing to do with Antarctica. ‘I want to come home to you,’ I said. ‘I haven’t stopped loving you. Can’t you see that?’
She sipped tidily at her latte and set her cup down again, avoiding my eyes.
‘Why did you let things drift so far?’ I asked, desperate now. ‘You could have warned me our marriage was slipping. I couldn’t tell from down there. If I’d known I could have done something about it.’
She smiled sadly and shook her head. ‘What could you have done? You were so far away.’
‘I would have come back. I would have leaped on the next ship and returned to you.’
She didn’t seem to understand. ‘What about the job?’ she said.
‘To hell with the job. We had a marriage to defend.’
For a moment, she looked struck, as if this option had never occurred to her. Then her face shuttered. I knew then I shouldn’t have arranged the meeting. I was clinging to the fragile threads of recovery and just seeing her undid me. But there was something more in her eyes, the dark shape of something concealed.
‘What is it?’ I asked, pressing further. ‘There’s something, isn’t there? Something you should tell me? Please. It might help me understand.’
She hesitated and bowed her head, staring at her lap. ‘I didn’t want to mention this,’ she said. ‘And it will only hurt you. It can’t change things for us.’ She looked away from me, out the window across the wharf where salt-stained fishing boats were moored.
I waited. Her face lost its glow and her eyes became watery with tears. Eventually she looked at me. ‘I was pregnant, Tom,’ she said. ‘I found out two months after you left. I was so sick and lonely. And you were so far away. I don’t know, something creeps into relationships when a partner goes to Antarctica. It’s like this other love. This ridiculous magical bond with the ice. I could feel it in your letters, in all those beautiful descriptions you were writing to me. You were sharing it with all those other people. People who didn’t matter. But you couldn’t share it with me—the love of that place that I could feel growing in you . . . And then there was this thing growing in me. A baby we hadn’t planned . . . and there was all that distance. The silences. The empty days. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go through with it alone.’
Her face was white and strained. ‘I terminated the pregnancy, Tom. It was the best thing for both of us. I couldn’t ask you to come back. And by then, I didn’t even know whether I wanted you. I felt like I didn’t know you anymore. You were so lost to me down there. So lost.’
Her words fell like stones. I hear them now. My mother’s death. My father’s death. Debbie telling me she destroyed our baby.
Death so many times over.
34
The day of the funeral is grey and heavy with clouds. At first, there’s only a cluster of us standing mute and tense in the grounds of the crematorium. Then cars began to arrive, slotting themselves into neat rows in the carpark. People in sombre clothing emerge and approach slowly across the grass. Some faces are familiar to me, but most are not.
Jan, Gary and I stand beside each other as if someone has placed us there, lined up like garden gnomes. My face feels rigid, almost as cold as Mum’s. Soon, there are people milling everywhere. Some are crying. I’m hugged by old ladies I’ve never met before. People reach out to express sympathy. I feel like a rock in a storm, struggling to find stillness within, while waves wash all around.
Jacinta, who was probably closer to Mum than any of us in recent years, stays locked to Alex’s arm, her face white and drawn. Judy keeps close to Gary, watching out for Jan. Anyone would think this was Jan’s day, the way she pours out grief. She’s like a well overflowing. Alex carefully steers Jacinta away from her. The swelling mood of sorrow in the gathering crowd is overwhelming. There are so many people here who knew and admired my mother. People I’ve never met from parts of her life I’ve never known. How little we understand of our parents. How little credit we give for their achievements.
I knew your mum from the opportunity shop. She was a fine lady. A great contributor.
Your mum and I did Meals on Wheels together years ago. We didn’t see each other often, but we kept in touch. She was very proud of all her children.
I’ ll miss Mary terribly. She was a good friend.
We played bowls together till her arthritis became too bad. She still helped out, though. Making cups of tea and serving cakes. That’s what she was. A real helper.
She was a community person . . . A strong lady . . . Helpful . . . Unselfish.
I’m from the bridge club and your mother was a fearsome card player. She always thrashed me. I don’t know how she did it.
I didn’t know Mum had so many friends and admirers. Despite the years of isolation at the cape, she still had a strong community spirit. Seems she must have involved herself in everything when she and Dad moved back to Hobart. I guess she was never one to sit around, until her arthritis incapacitated her.
At one point I notice Leon at the edge of the crowd, waiting to speak to me. He manages a brief smile when our eyes connect, but he looks terrible. We shake hands and he grips my arm firmly. Memories of the last time we saw each other are thick between us; Mum lying dead in the cabin. Now, both of us struggle to speak and Leon’s eyes fill with tears. I choke out a thanks for his presence
and then the celebrant sweeps us into the crematorium.
Gary presents an excellent eulogy summarising Mum’s life, especially her bond with Bruny Island. His observations on Mum and Dad are astute and it’s a surprise to realise that he has understood them and known them better than me, despite his distance from Mum in recent years. A demanding spouse can force a degree of distance into family relationships, I suppose. But today, Judy’s behaviour is faultless. She’s there to stand by Gary in his role as the male head of our family. Not for the first time, I appreciate being the youngest. Little is expected of me. And I certainly wouldn’t have been able to deliver the eulogy with the passion and confidence that Gary manages to muster.
Jacinta somehow holds it together to read from Kahlil Gibran’s book The Prophet. At the podium she stands, tremulous, and reads with a quavering voice, rich with emotion.
This is when I am reminded how grief can be like a tsunami—how it can rise and rise and then swell and collapse over you, rolling and tumbling you beneath its weight while you struggle to resurface. I’m unable to look at Jacinta as she leaves the podium, and I’m glad she has Alex to give her love and courage, because I’m incapable of anything.
The celebrant moves with polished calm and practised compassion to complete proceedings. Gary has put together a computerised slide-show of Mum’s life set to music selected by Jan. It begins after the celebrant’s final sympathetic words.
Mum’s face, young and fresh, topped with a mass of tousled curls.
Her wedding photos, with Dad. My father tall, straight and serious. Mum is radiant.
Then at the lighthouse. Mum’s arms wrapped around Jan and Gary, my siblings squinting in the raw light. Mum is taking it on her face, smiling and unfazed. The tower at the top of the hill behind them.
Mum squatting on the grass with a naked infant me. Chooks pecking beside us. The tails of washing dangling from the clothesline in the background.
Mum beside the lighthouse door with Dad. Their faces closed and unreadable.
Baby Jacinta in Mum’s arms, delight dancing in their eyes.
The sequence of photos continues. It’s beautiful, but it destroys me.
We gather at Jan’s house for tea and recollections. Rain crowds us into the lounge room and the air is thick with voices. After initial awkwardness, the stories begin to flow. This, finally, is the celebration of Mum’s life.
Leon mingles with the group, and I notice him often, chatting with various old ladies who were Mum’s friends. Before he leaves, he comes quietly to my side.
‘Thanks for the wake,’ he says, smiling kindly. ‘I was going to go home straight after the service, but I’m pleased I came.’
I grip his arm. ‘I’m glad you’re here. She would have been touched.’
‘Life on Bruny has changed since she died,’ he says. ‘There’s a new emptiness. I can’t drive past the cabin without choking up.’
I nod.
‘I’ve had an idea,’ he says. ‘I want to do a memorial walk up East Cloudy Head. For her, given that I couldn’t take her there. And I’d like you to come. I’d like to share it with you.’
Emotion threatens to overwhelm me, but I hold it together. ‘That’d be good,’ I say.
We choose a day, and then I watch his bright head disappear among the crowns of grey.
35
After the funeral, I return to work and try to pretend everything’s all right again. A week of compassionate leave, a few pats on the back, and you’re expected to take up where you left off. They say that keeping busy helps with the grief. Yet, again and again I find myself lying with a tool in one hand, staring unseeing into a truck’s undercarriage, or completely distracted by the call of a bird. Often Jess appears in the gloom and licks my face, cleaning away tears I didn’t even know were there.
Emma rings a couple of times. When I play the first message, her voice echoes across the lounge room, asking me how my mother is and if I am okay and could I please ring back. I marvel that her voice fails to move me. I don’t call her back.
The second time she rings, I answer the phone, thinking it might be Jan or Jacinta.
‘Tom,’ she says. ‘I’m so glad I’ve caught you.’
Caught me? She caught me long ago.
‘How’s your mum?’
‘She died.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘She was ill. Heart disease.’
‘Is there anything I can do?’
For a wry moment I consider the many things she could have done, but most of them are too late now. She could have been straighter with me. She could have sent Nick away.
‘No,’ I say. ‘Everything’s done. We had the funeral last week.’
A silence wells between us. From her blanket by the wall, Jess watches me, her eyes shining in the shadows. Outside a cockatoo squawks its way across the sky.
‘I’m really sorry, you know,’ Emma says. ‘About what happened that night with Nick. We were so drunk. And it was all so untimely. I’m embarrassed about it. I didn’t know your mum was sick or it’d never have happened. I wish it hadn’t.’
‘It doesn’t matter now.’
‘Well, yes, it does. I’d like to see you, Tom. Can we catch up soon?’
The gap in conversation grows heavy.
‘Look, I don’t want to hassle you when you’re feeling down,’ she says. ‘But I do want to see you. Please will you call when you’re feeling better?’
‘Sure.’
But when I’m feeling better could be a long time away.
She calls again a week later. ‘Tom. I have great news. Fredricksen’s going to offer you the job. To come south with me. What do you think?’
I sit blankly. This was what I’d hoped for. But I find I can’t even contemplate going south.
‘Are you okay?’ Emma asks.
‘I need some time,’ I stammer. ‘It’s too soon after . . .’
She’s quiet for a long moment. ‘I’m sorry. I was so thrilled, I couldn’t wait to tell you. But it wasn’t very tactful of me to blurt it out like that. Are you all right?’
‘I’m okay,’ I lie.
‘Look, Tom. I have to go. Take care and we’ll speak soon.’
The next day Bazza is on the phone. ‘I heard Fredricksen offered you a job,’ he says.
‘I haven’t made any decisions.’
‘Good. Because I want to offer you a job too—on a better wage than Fredricksen can give you. We’re having troubles finding good diesos for the summer. You can winter, if you like. And you can have Mawson Station if that’s what you want. So you can see those emperor penguins you’re always talking about.’
‘I’m not sure I want to go to Mawson.’
‘But that’s where Fredricksen’s job is . . .’ There’s a pause, and I hope Bazza will give up, but of course he’s onto it like a dog at a bone. ‘It’s because she’s going there, isn’t it? Emma.’
‘Maybe.’
‘I thought you wanted to go with her . . . ? Ah, well then, if that’s the case, I suppose there’s something else I should tell you. Then maybe you’ll take up my offer at another station. Nick Thompson’s going to Mawson too.’
‘Great.’
‘He’s a prick,’ Bazza says. ‘Emma’s not his first antdiv conquest. Look, come and see me, we’ll discuss things. How about some remote field work? A traverse? Would you consider that?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Think about it. These opportunities don’t come up very often.’
‘Why are you doing this?’
‘I need a good dieso. And you’re my mate. You need picking up. Don’t worry about Nick Thompson. Emma will drop him before the ship leaves, mark my words. He’s playing the field, can’t help himself.’
‘You haven’t seen them together.’
‘Yes, I have. I work here, remember? His eyes are everywhere.’
‘I don’t want to talk about him.’
‘Neither do I. Come and see me tomorrow lunch
time. I’ll buy you a sandwich.’
I meet Bazza in the antdiv cafeteria. We take a table in the back corner and drink awful coffee with flabby sandwiches. Bazza says they have new cafeteria staff, but things haven’t improved. He asks me what I think about his proposition, but it’s too soon to make decisions. I’m still laden with the burden of Mum’s death. And home is no escape. Jan’s been calling and leaving messages for me to come and visit. She’s rotten with guilt and she wants me to reassure her, to absolve her of her sins. But I can’t do it. Neither can Jacinta. We have enough of our own grief to deal with. But Jan keeps finding ways to beg for support. She insists she needs help to go through Mum’s things, but I can’t face riffling through Mum’s wardrobe—all those clothes she’ll never wear again. It’ll only intensify the emptiness. In the past few days, whenever the phone has rung, Jess and I have left the house and gone for a walk. Every time we hear Jan’s voice we need fresh air and wind.
Bazza watches me across the table. ‘You’re doing it tough,’ he observes. ‘Shit of a thing, losing a mother. Mine died a decade ago.’
‘How long did it take?’
‘To get over it?’
I nod.
‘I’m still not over it. But you cope, with time.’
‘That’s about what I thought.’
We sit and chew our sandwiches. I drink the coffee, trying not to grimace at its bitterness. Bazza nods towards the counter and I see Nick there buying his lunch. He’s leaning over the counter in intense conversation with one of the staff. I hope he isn’t here to meet Emma.
‘Look at him, chatting up the cafeteria girls,’ Bazza says. ‘He’s a waste of space. I don’t know what Emma sees in him.’
We watch Nick collect his order from the girl behind the counter. He’s smiling at her in an intimate way and shortly afterwards she comes to sit with him.
‘See what I mean?’ Bazza says. ‘He’ll be out to dinner with that one tonight. You should forget about him and come south. Have you given any more thought to it?’
The Lightkeeper's Wife Page 33
