The Light Between Oceans: A Novel

by M. L. Stedman

  “Lucy!” said Isabel. “Have you been in my things?”

  “No,” said the girl, eyes wide.

  Isabel blushed. “I don’t usually parade my underwear around,” she said to the visitors. “Come on, Lucy, you’ll catch your death of cold like that. Let’s get your clothes back on. And let’s have a talk about going through Mamma’s things. And about telling the truth.” Smiling as she left the room, she didn’t catch the brief expression that crossed Tom’s features at her last remark.

  Lucy trots happily behind Isabel as they go to gather the eggs. She is mesmerized by the newly hatched chicks which appear from time to time, and holds them under her chin to feel their golden fluffiness. When she helps pick carrots and parsnips, sometimes she tugs so hard that she tumbles over backward, showered with soil. “Lucy-Goosy!” laughs Isabel. “Up you get now.”

  At the piano, she sits on Isabel’s knee and bashes away at notes. Isabel holds her index finger and helps her press out “Three Blind Mice,” then the child says, “By myself, Mamma,” and starts her cacophony again.

  She sits for hours on the kitchen floor, wielding colored pencils on the back of obsolete CLS forms, producing random squiggles to which she proudly points and says, “This is Mamma, Dadda, and Lulu Lighthouse.” She takes for granted the 130-foot castle-tower in her backyard, with a star in it. Along with words such as “dog” and “cat”—fanciful concepts from books—she masters the more concrete “lens” and “prism” and “refraction.” “It’s my star,” she tells Isabel one evening as she points to it. “Dadda gave it to me.”

  She tells Tom snatches of stories, about fish, about seagulls, about ships. As they walk down to the beach, she delights in taking a hand each from Tom and Isabel and getting them to swing her in the air between them. “Lulu Lighthouse!” is her favorite phrase, and she uses it when she draws herself in splodgy pictures, or describes herself in stories.

  The oceans never stop. They know no beginning or end. The wind never finishes. Sometimes it disappears, but only to gather momentum from somewhere else, returning to fling itself at the island, to make a point which is lost on Tom. Existence here is on a scale of giants. Time is in the millions of years; rocks which from a distance look like dice cast against the shore are boulders hundreds of feet wide, licked round by millennia, tumbled onto their sides so that layers become vertical stripes.

  Tom watches Lucy and Isabel as they paddle in Paradise Pool, the girl enraptured by the splashing and the saltiness and the starfish she has found, brilliant blue. He watches her fingers clutch the creature, her face alight with excitement and pride, as though she has made it herself. “Dadda, look. My starfish!” Tom has trouble keeping both time scales in focus: the existence of an island and the existence of a child.

  It astounds him that the tiny life of the girl means more to him than all the millennia before it. He struggles to make sense of his emotions—how he can feel both tenderness and unease when she kisses him goodnight, or presents a grazed knee for him to kiss better with the magic power that only a parent has.

  For Isabel, too, he is torn between the desire he feels for her, the love, and the sense that he cannot breathe. The two sensations grate at one another, unresolved.

  Sometimes, alone in the light, he finds his mind seeking out Hannah Roennfeldt. Is she tall? Is she plump? Is there some trace of her in Lucy’s face? When he tries to imagine her, he sees only hands, covering a weeping face. He shudders, and returns to his immediate task.

  This child is healthy and happy and adored, in this little world beyond the reach of newspapers and gossip. Beyond the reach of reality. There are weeks at a time when Tom can almost rest in the story of a normal, happy family, as if it is some kind of opiate.

  “We mustn’t let Dadda know. Not until I tell you.”

  Lucy looked at Isabel gravely. “I mustn’t tell,” she said, nodding. “Can I have a biscuit?”

  “In a minute. Let’s just finish wrapping these.” The September boat in 1928 had brought several extra parcels, which Bluey had managed to smuggle to Isabel in moments when Ralph distracted Tom with unloading. Engineering a birthday surprise for Tom was no easy feat: it involved writing to her mother months in advance with the list of requests. As Tom was the only one with a bank account, it also required a promise to pay next time they were ashore.

  Tom was both easy and difficult to buy for: he would be happy with whatever he got, but he didn’t really want anything. She had settled on a Conway Stewart fountain pen and the latest edition of Wisden: something practical and something entertaining. When she had asked Lucy one night as they sat outside, what she wanted to give Dadda, the little girl had twirled her hair around her finger as she thought for a moment and said, “The stars.”

  Isabel had laughed. “I’m not sure we can manage that, Luce.”

  The child had said crossly, “But I want to!”

  An idea came to Isabel. “What if we gave him a map of the stars—an atlas?”

  “Yes!”

  Now, as they sat in front of the hefty book, Isabel asked, “What do you want to write in the front?” She held the pen, her fingers around Lucy’s, to inscribe in jerky letters, as instructed, “For my Dadda, love for ever and ever…”

  “More,” Lucy insisted.

  “More what?”

  “More ‘ever.’ ‘Ever and ever and ever and ever…’”

  Isabel laughed, and “ever and ever and ever and ever” trailed like a caterpillar across the page. “What comes next? Shall we say, ‘From your loving daughter Lucy’?”

  “From Lulu Lighthouse.”

  The little girl started shaping the letters with her mother, but got bored and climbed off her knee in mid-stroke.

  “Mamma finish it,” she commanded casually.

  So Isabel completed the signature, and added in brackets, “(Per Isabel Sherbourne, scribe and general factotum of the above-mentioned signatory).”

  When Tom unwrapped the parcel, a difficult maneuver with Lucy’s hands over his eyes, he said, “It’s a book…”

  “It’s a antless!” shouted Lucy.

  Tom took in the present. “Brown’s star atlas, showing all the bright stars, with full instructions how to find and use them for navigational purposes and Board of Trade examinations.” He smiled slowly, and turned to Isabel. “Lucy’s a clever girl, isn’t she, organizing this?”

  “Read, Dadda. Inside. I did writing.”

  Opening the cover, Tom saw the long dedication. He still smiled, but there was something about the words “For ever and ever and ever and ever and ever…” that stabbed him. Forever was an impossible concept, particularly for this child, in this place. He put his lips to the top of Lucy’s head. “It’s just beaut, Lulu Lighthouse. The loveliest present I’ve ever had.”

  CHAPTER 19

  At least if we can win this one, it won’t be a complete washout,” said Bluey. The Australian cricket team had lost the first four test matches of the 1928/29 Ashes series on home ground, and the March boat arrived while the final test was still going on in Melbourne. Bluey had been regaling Tom with highlights as they did the unloading. “Bradman got his century. Still not out. Gave Larwood all sorts of trouble, the paper said. I tell you what, though—the match’s been going four days already. Looks like we’re in for a long one this time.”

  While Ralph went to the kitchen to deliver another of Hilda’s regular presents to Lucy, Tom and the deckhand finished stacking away the last of the flour sacks in the shed.

  “I got a cousin works there, you know,” Bluey said, nodding at the stencil of the Dingo brand on the calico.

  “Up at the flour mill?” asked Tom.

  “Yeah. Reckons it pays good. And all the free flour he wants.”

  “Every job’s got its perks.”

  “Sure. Like I get as much fresh air as I can breathe, and as much water as I need to swim in.” Bluey laughed. He looked round, to be sure there was no sign of the skipper. “Reckons he can get me a job t
here any time I want.” He paused. “Or sometimes, I think of working—in a grocer’s, maybe,” he said, making the jump in subject with a studied, casual tone.

  This wasn’t like Bluey. Occasionally he’d discuss the Sheffield Shield results, or report winning a bit of money on the horses. He’d talk about his brother Merv, who’d died on the first day at Gallipoli, or the formidable Ada, his widowed mother. Tom sensed something different today. “What’s brought this on?”

  Bluey gave one of the sacks a kick to straighten it. “What’s it like, being married?”

  “What?” Tom was startled at the change of tack.

  “I mean—is it good?”

  Tom kept his eyes on the inventory. “Something you want to tell me, Blue?”

  “No.”

  “Righto.” Tom nodded. If he waited long enough, the story would make sense. It usually did. Eventually.

  Bluey straightened another sack. “Her name’s Kitty. Kitty Kelly. Her dad owns the grocer’s. We’ve been walking out together.”

  Tom raised his eyebrows and gave a smile. “Good for you.”

  “And I—well, I don’t know—I thought maybe we should get married.” The look on Tom’s face prompted him to add, “We don’t have to get married. It’s nothing like that. Struth, we’ve never even—I mean, her dad keeps a pretty close eye on things. And her mother. So do her brothers. And Mrs. Mewett’s her mum’s cousin, so you know what the family’s like.”

  Tom laughed. “So what’s your question?”

  “It’s a big step. I know everyone does it eventually, but I just wondered—well, how you know…”

  “I’m hardly a full bottle on it. Only been married the once and I’m still getting the hang of it. Why don’t you ask Ralph? He’s been hitched to Hilda since Methuselah was a boy; raised a couple of kids. Seems to have made a fair job of it.”

  “I can’t tell Ralph.”

  “Why not?”

  “Kitty reckons that if we get married I’ll have to give up working on the boat, and come and work in the grocery business. Reckons she’s too scared I’ll get drowned one day and not come home from work.”

  “Cheery sort of soul, eh?”

  Bluey looked worried. “But, you know, seriously. What’s it like being married? Having a kid and all that?”

  Tom ran his hand through his hair as he considered the question for some time, deeply uneasy. “We’re hardly your typical setup. Not many families like us around the place—out on a lighthouse in the middle of nowhere. The honest answer is, it depends which day you ask me. It brings its share of good things, and its share of hard ones. It’s a lot more complicated than being on your own, I can tell you that much.”

  “Ma says I’m too young and I don’t know my own mind.”

  Tom smiled in spite of himself. “I think your Ma’ll probably still be saying that when you’re fifty. Anyway, it’s not about your mind. It’s about your gut. Trust your gut, Blue.” He hesitated. “But it’s not always plain sailing, even when you’ve found the right girl. You’ve got to be in it for the long haul. You never know what’s going to happen: you sign up for whatever comes along. There’s no backing out.”

  “Dadda, look!” Lucy appeared at the doorway of the shed, brandishing Hilda’s stuffed tiger. “It growls!” she said. “Listen,” and she turned it upside down to produce the noise.

  Tom picked her up. Through the small window he could see Ralph making his way down the path toward them. “Aren’t you the lucky one?” He tickled her neck.

  “Lucky Lucy!” she laughed.

  “And being a dad? What’s that like?” asked Bluey.

  “It’s like this.”

  “No, go on. I’m really asking, mate.”

  Tom’s face grew serious. “Nothing can prepare you for it. You wouldn’t believe how a baby gets through your defenses, Bluey. Gets right inside you. A real surprise attack.”

  “Make it growl, Dadda,” urged Lucy. Tom gave her a kiss and turned the creature upside down again.

  “Keep it under your hat, all this, could you, mate?” asked Bluey. Reconsidering, he said, “Well, everyone knows you’re quiet as the grave anyway,” and he made his own version of a tiger’s growl for the little girl.

  Sometimes, you’re the one who strikes it lucky. Sometimes, it’s the other poor bastard who’s left with the short straw, and you just have to shut up and get on with it.

  Tom was hammering a plank onto the wall of the chookhouse, to cover a hole the wind had blown in it the night before. Spent half his life trying to protect things from the wind. You just had to get on with things, do what you could do.

  Bluey’s questions had stirred up old feelings. But every time Tom thought about the stranger in Partageuse who had lost her child, Isabel’s image took her place: she’d lost children, and would never have any more. She had known nothing about Hannah when Lucy arrived. Just wanted what was best for the baby. And yet. He knew it wasn’t just for Lucy’s sake. There was a need in Isabel that he could now never fill. She had given up everything: comforts, family, friends—everything to be with him out here. Over and over he told himself—he couldn’t deprive her of this one thing.

  Isabel was tired. The supplies had just come in and she’d set about replenishing food—making bread, baking a fruitcake, turning a sack of plums into jam that would last out the year. She’d left the kitchen for barely a moment—the moment Lucy had chosen to step closer to the stove to smell the delicious mixture, and had burned her hand on the jam pan. It wasn’t severe, but enough to keep the child from sleeping soundly. Tom had bandaged the burn and given her a small dose of aspirin, but by nightfall she was still unsettled.

  “I’ll take her up to the light. I can keep an eye on her. I’ve got to finish the paperwork for the inventory anyway. You look done in.”

  Exhausted, Isabel conceded.

  Holding the child in one arm, and a pillow and blanket in the other, Tom carried her gently up the stairs, and laid her on the chart table in the watch room. “There you are, littlie,” he said, but she was already dozing.

  He set about adding up columns of figures, totting gallons of oil and boxes of mantles. Above him, in the lantern room the light turned steadily, with its slow, low hum. Far below, he could see the single oil light from the cottage.

  He had been working for an hour when some instinct made him turn, and he found Lucy watching him, her eyes glittering in the soft light. When his gaze met hers she smiled, and yet again Tom was caught off guard by the miracle of her—so beautiful, so undefended. She raised her bandaged hand, and examined it. “I been in the wars, Dadda,” she said, and a frown crept over her features. She held her arms out.

  “You go back to sleep, littlie,” Tom said, and tried to turn back to his work. But the child said, “’Ullaby, Dadda.” And she kept her arms extended.

  Tom lifted her onto his lap and rocked her gently. “You’d get nightmares if I sang to you, Lulu. Mamma’s the singer, not me.”

  “I hurt my hand, Dadda,” she said, raising her injury as proof.

  “You did, didn’t you, bunny rabbit?” He kissed the bandage delicately. “It’ll soon be better. You’ll see.” He kissed her forehead, and stroked her fine blonde hair. “Ah, Lulu, Lulu. However did you find your way here?” He looked away, out into the solid blackness. “However did you turn up in my life?”

  He could feel her muscles surrender as she edged toward sleep. Gradually her head weighed loosely against the crook of his arm. In a whisper even he could hardly hear, he asked the question that gnawed at him constantly: “However did you make me feel like this?”

  CHAPTER 20

  I never knew he’d tried to get in touch.” Tom was sitting beside Isabel on the veranda. He was turning over and over an ancient, battered envelope, addressed to him “c/o 13th Battalion, AIF.” On every available inch of space were scrawled forwarding addresses and instructions, culminating in an authoritative command in blue pencil to “return to sender”—to Edward Sherbourne
, Esquire, Tom’s father. The letter had arrived in a small packet three days earlier, when the June boat brought news of his death.

  The letter from Church, Hattersley & Parfitt, Solicitors, observed the formalities and provided only the facts. Throat cancer; 18 January 1929. It had taken them some months to track Tom down. His brother Cecil was the exclusive beneficiary, save for the bequest to Tom of a locket of his mother’s, enclosed in the letter which had pursued Tom across the world.

  He had opened the packet after he had lit up that evening, sitting in the lantern room, numb at first as he read the stern, spiky handwriting.

  “Merrivale”

  Sydney

  16th October 1915

  Dear Thomas,

  I am writing because I know that you have enlisted. I am not much of a one for words. But with you so far away now, and with the possibility that harm may come to you before we have an opportunity to meet again, it seems writing is the only way.

  There are many things I cannot explain to you without denigrating your mother, and I have no wish to do any more harm than has already been done. Some things, therefore, will be left unsaid. I am at fault in one respect, and it is this I wish to remedy now. I enclose a locket which your mother asked me to let you have, when she left. It has her likeness in it. At the time, I felt it was better for you not to be reminded of her, and I therefore did not pass it on. It was not an easy decision to make, to determine that your life would be better without her influence.

  Now that she is dead, I feel it right to fulfil her request, if rather late.

  I have tried to raise you as a good Christian. I have tried to ensure you had the best available education. I hope I have instilled in you a sense of right and wrong: no amount of worldly success or pleasure can redeem the loss of your immortal soul.

  I am proud of the sacrifice you have made by enlisting. You have grown into a responsible young man, and after the war, I would be pleased to find you a position in the business. Cecil has the makings of a fine manager, and I expect will run the factory successfully after my retirement. But I am sure a suitable place can be found for you.