The Light Between Oceans: A Novel

by M. L. Stedman

  CHAPTER 22

  Mamma, can we have a cat?” Lucy asked the next morning as she followed Isabel into the Graysmarks’ kitchen. The child had been fascinated by the exotic marmalade creature called Tabatha Tabby that patrolled the house. She had seen cats in storybooks, but this was the only one she had ever touched.

  “Oh, I don’t think a cat would be very happy on Janus, sweetie pie. He wouldn’t have any friends to play with.” Isabel’s voice had a distracted air.

  “Dadda, can we please have a cat?” asked the child without missing a beat, oblivious to the tension in the air.

  Tom had got home after Isabel was asleep, and risen before anyone else. He was sitting at the table, flipping through a week-old copy of the West Australian.

  “Lulu, why don’t you take Tabatha out into the garden for an adventure—go hunting for mice,” he said.

  She hauled the compliant animal up by its middle and stumbled to the door.

  Tom turned to Isabel. “How much longer, Izz? How much bloody longer?”

  “What?”

  “How can we do it? How can we carry on with this every day? You knew the poor woman had gone out of her mind because of us. Now you’ve seen her with your own eyes!”

  “Tom, there’s nothing we can do. I know it and so do you.” But Hannah’s face came back to her, her voice. As Tom set his jaw, she searched for some way of placating him. “Perhaps…” she ventured, “perhaps—when Lucy’s older, perhaps we can tell Hannah then, when it won’t be so devastating… But that’s years away, Tom, years.”

  Astounded both by the concession and by its inadequacy, he pressed on. “Isabel, what’s it going to take? It can’t wait years. Imagine her life! You even knew her!”

  Fear awoke in Isabel in earnest. “And it turns out you did too, Tom Sherbourne. But you kept that pretty quiet, didn’t you?”

  Tom was taken aback by the counter-attack. “I don’t know her. I met her. Once.”

  “When?”

  “On the boat from Sydney.”

  “That’s what’s brought this on though, isn’t it? Why didn’t you ever tell me about her? What did she mean, ‘You’re very gallant’? What are you hiding?”

  “What am I hiding? That’s rich.”

  “I know nothing about your life! What else have you kept secret, Tom? How many other shipboard romances?”

  Tom stood up. “Stop it! Stop it right there, Isabel! You’re carrying on like a two-bob watch over Hannah Roennfeldt to change the subject because you know I’m right. Makes no odds whether I’d seen her before or not.”

  He tried an appeal to reason. “Izz. You saw what she’s become. That’s our doing.” He turned away from her. “I saw things… I saw things in the war, Izz. Things I’ve never told you and never will. Christ, I did things…” His fists were closed tight and his jaw stiff. “I swore I’d never make anyone suffer after that, not if I could help it. Why do you think I went on the Lights anyway? I reckoned I could maybe do a bit of good, maybe save some poor bastard from being wrecked. And now look what I’ve gotten into. I wouldn’t want a dog to have to go through what Hannah Roennfeldt’s been through!” He searched for words. “Christ, I learned in France that you’re bloody lucky if you’ve got tucker for tea and teeth to chew it with.” He balked at the images that flooded his mind. “So when I met you, and you even looked twice at me, I thought I was bloody well in heaven!”

  He stopped for a moment. “What are we, Izzy? What do we think we’re playing at, for crying out loud? I swore I’d stay with you through thick and thin, Isabel, thick and thin! Well all I can say is, things have got pretty bloody thin,” he said, and strode away down the hall.

  The child stood in the back doorway, watching the end of the argument, spellbound. She had never heard so many words come from Tom’s mouth, never so loud. Never seen him cry.

  “She’s gone!” Isabel’s words greeted Tom as he returned to the Graysmarks’ that afternoon, in the company of Bluey.

  “Lucy! I left her outside playing with the cat while I went to pack. I thought Mum was watching her, and she thought I was watching her.”

  “Calm down. Calm down, Izz,” he said, and put a hand on each arm. “Take it quietly. When did you last see her?”

  “An hour ago? Two at the most.”

  “When did you realize she’d gone?”

  “Just now. Dad’s gone to look for her, up in the bush at the back.” Partageuse frilled in and out of native bush land at its fringes, and beyond the Graysmarks’ neat, lawned garden lay acres of scrub that led into forest.

  “Tom, thank goodness you’re back.” Violet came rushing on to the veranda. “I’m so sorry—it’s all my fault. I should have checked on her! Bill’s gone to search up along the old logging track…”

  “Are there any other places she’s likely to have gone?” Tom’s methodical, practical reflex came to the fore. “Anywhere you and Bill told her stories about?”

  “She could be anywhere,” said Violet, shaking her head.

  “Tom, there are snakes. Redbacks. God help us!” Isabel implored.

  Bluey spoke up. “I used to spend all day in that bush when I was a kid, Mrs. S. She’ll be all right. We’ll find her, no trouble. Come on, Tom.”

  “Izz—Bluey and I’ll head into the bush, see if we can find any tracks. You have another look around the garden and out the front. Violet, double-check the house—all the cupboards and under the beds. Anywhere she could have followed the cat. If we don’t find her in the next hour, we’ll have to send for the police, get the black-trackers out.”

  Isabel flashed him a look at the mention of police.

  “It won’t come to that,” said Bluey. “She’ll be right as rain, Mrs. S., you wait and see.”

  It was only when they were out of earshot of the women that Bluey said to Tom, “Let’s hope she’s been making a racket as she goes. Snakes sleep during the day. They’ll get out of your way if they hear you coming. But if they’re surprised… Has she ever wandered off before?”

  “She’s never had any-bloody-where to wander to,” Tom said sharply, then, “Sorry, Blue. Didn’t mean to— It’s just she hasn’t really got much of a feel for distance. On Janus, everywhere’s close to home.”

  They walked on, calling the child’s name as they went, and waiting in vain for a reply. They were following the remnants of a path, now mostly overgrown at adult height, where branches reached over the empty space below. But at her height, Lucy would have met no resistance.

  About fifteen minutes in, the path opened out into a clearing, then forked in opposite directions. “Loads of these trails,” said Bluey. “They’d clear a route, back in the old days, when they went scouting for good timber country. There are still soaks here and there, so you’ve got to watch out. They’re usually covered over,” he said, referring to the wells dug to get at groundwater.

  The child from the lighthouse has little fear. She knows not to go too near cliff edges. She understands that spiders can bite, and should be avoided. She is clear that she mustn’t try to swim unless Mamma or Dadda is beside her. In the water, she can tell the difference between the fin of a friendly dolphin, which goes up and down, and of a shark, which stays steady as it cuts the surface. In Partageuse, if she pulls the cat’s tail it might scratch her. These are the boundaries of danger.

  So as she follows Tabatha Tabby beyond the borders of the garden, she has no concept of getting lost. After a while she can no longer see the cat, but by then it is too late—she is too far away simply to retrace her steps, and the more she tries, the further she wanders.

  Eventually, she comes to a clearing, where she sits down by a log. She takes in her surroundings. There are soldier ants, which she knows to avoid, and she makes sure she’s a good distance from the trail they’re making. She’s not concerned. Mamma and Dadda will find her.

  As she sits there, drawing patterns in the sandy soil with a twig, she notices a strange creature, longer than her finger, approach from under
the log. It’s like nothing she’s ever seen before: a long body, and legs like an insect or a spider, but two fat arms like one of the crabs Dadda catches sometimes on Janus. Fascinated, she touches it with the twig, and its tail rapidly curls up in a beautiful arch, pointing to its head. In that moment, a second creature appears, a few inches away.

  She is mesmerized by the way the insects follow her twig, trying to grab it with their crab claws. A third one emerges from under the log. The seconds pass slowly.

  As they reach the clearing, Tom gives a start. He sees a small, shod foot protruding from behind a log.

  “Lucy!” He races to the log, where the little girl sits playing with a stick. He freezes as he recognizes the shape clinging to the end of the twig as a scorpion. “Jesus, Lucy!” He grabs the little girl under her arms and lifts her high in the air as he dashes the scorpion to the ground and crushes it under his foot. “Lucy, what the hell are you doing?” he cries.

  “Dadda! But you killed it!”

  “Lucy, that’s dangerous! Did it bite you?”

  “No. It likes me. And look,” she says, opening the wide pocket at the front of her smock, proudly displaying another scorpion. “I got one for you.”

  “Don’t move!” he says, feigning calm and returning her to the ground. He lowers the twig into the pocket until the scorpion locks onto it, then slowly raises it and flings it onto the dirt, stamping on it.

  He inspected her arms and legs for signs of bites or stings. “Are you sure it didn’t sting you? Does it hurt anywhere?”

  She shook her head. “I did an aventure!”

  “You certainly did an adventure all right.”

  “Have a close look,” said Bluey. “You can’t always see the puncture marks. But she doesn’t look drowsy. That’s a good sign. Tell you the truth, I was more worried she was at the bottom of one of those soaks.”

  “Ever the optimist,” muttered Tom. “Lucy, darl, we don’t have scorpions on Janus. They’re dangerous. You mustn’t ever touch them.” He hugged her. “Where on earth have you been?”

  “I did play with Tabatha. You said to.” Tom felt a stab as he recalled his instruction earlier that morning to go outside with the cat. “Come on, sweetie. We’ve got to get you back to Mamma.” His mouth seemed newly aware of the significance of the word, as the previous night’s events came back to him.

  Isabel rushed from the veranda to meet them at the edge of the garden. She grabbed Lucy and sobbed with relief.

  “Thank God,” said Bill, standing beside Violet. Her put his arms around her. “Thank the blessed Lord. And thanks to you too, Bluey,” he said. “You’ve saved our lives.”

  All thoughts of Hannah Roennfeldt were swept from Isabel’s mind that afternoon, and Tom knew he couldn’t raise the subject again. But he was haunted by her face. The figure who had existed in the abstract was now a living woman, suffering every minute because of what he had done. Every aspect of her—the gaunt cheeks, the harrowed eyes, the chewed fingernails—were vivid in his conscience. Hardest to bear was the respect she had shown him, the trust.

  Time and again, Tom wondered at the hidden recesses of Isabel’s mind—the spaces where she managed to bury the turmoil his own mind couldn’t escape.

  When Ralph and Bluey cast off from Janus the following day, having delivered the family back to the light, the younger man said, “Cripes, things seemed a bit frosty between them, don’t you reckon?”

  “Piece of free advice, Blue—never try and work out what’s going on in someone else’s marriage.”

  “Yeah, I know, but, well, you’d think they’d be relieved that nothing happened to Lucy yesterday. Isabel was acting like it was Tom’s fault she’d wandered off.”

  “Keep out of it, boy. Time you brewed us up some tea.”

  CHAPTER 23

  It was one of the mysteries of the Great Southern District, the riddle of what happened to baby Grace Roennfeldt and her father. Some people said it just proved you still couldn’t trust a Hun: he was a spy and had finally been called back to Germany after the war. Made no difference that he was Austrian. Others, familiar with the oceans, didn’t bat an eyelid at his disappearance: “Well, what was he thinking, setting off into these waters? Must have had kangaroos in his top paddock. Wouldn’t have lasted five minutes.” There was a general sense that somehow it was God expressing disapproval for Hannah’s choice of spouse. Forgiveness is all very well, but look at the sorts of things his lot had done…

  Old Man Potts’s reward took on mythic status. Over the years, it lured people from the Goldfields, from up north, from Adelaide even, who saw a chance to make their fortune by coming up with a piece of splintered driftwood and a theory. In the early months, Hannah listened keenly to every tale that was spun of a sighting, every memory of a baby’s cry heard from the shore on the fateful night.

  With time, even her eager heart could not fail to see the holes in the stories. When she would suggest that a baby’s dress which had been “discovered” on the shore did not match the one Grace had been wearing, the reward prospector would urge her, “Think! You’re overcome with grief. How could you be expected to remember what the poor child was dressed in?” Or, “You know you’d sleep more easily if you just accepted the evidence, Mrs. Roennfeldt.” Then they would make some sour remark as they were ushered from the parlor by Gwen, who thanked them for their trouble and gave them a few shillings for the journey home.

  That January, the stephanotis was in bloom again, the same voluptuous scent heavy in the air, but it was an ever more gaunt Hannah Roennfeldt who continued her ritual journey—though less often now—to the police station, the beach, the church. “Completely off her rocker,” Constable Garstone muttered as she wandered out. Even Reverend Norkells urged her to spend less time in the stony darkness of the church and to “look for Christ in the life around her.”

  Two nights after the lighthouse celebrations, as Hannah lay awake, she heard the groan of the hinges on the letterbox. She looked at the clock, whose eerie numerals signaled three a.m. A possum, perhaps? She crept out of bed and peered from the corner of the curtain, but saw nothing. The moon had hardly risen: no light anywhere save for the faint glow of the stars which dusted the sky. Again, she heard the iron clang of the box, this time caught by the breeze.

  She lit a storm-lantern and ventured through the front door, careful not to wake her sister, only vaguely wary of disturbing any snakes which might be taking advantage of the inky blackness to hunt for mice or frogs. Her pale feet made no sound on the path.

  The door to the letterbox swung gently back and forward, giving glimpses of a shape inside. As she held the lantern closer, the outline of a small oblong emerged—a parcel. She pulled it out. Not much bigger than her hand, it was wrapped in brown paper. She looked about for any hint of how it had got there, but the darkness curled around her lamp like a closing fist. She hurried back to her bedroom, fetching her sewing scissors to cut the string. The package was addressed to her, in the same neat hand as before. She opened it.

  As she pulled out layer upon layer of newspaper, something made a noise with each movement. As the last of the packing was removed, there, returning the soft glimmer of the lantern, was the silver rattle her father had commissioned in Perth for his granddaughter. There was no mistaking the embossed cherubs on the handle. Beneath the rattle was a note.

  She is safe. She is loved and cared for. Please pray for me.

  Nothing more. No date, no initial, no sign.

  “Gwen! Gwen, quick!” She hammered on her sister’s door. “Look at this! She’s alive! Grace is alive. I knew it!”

  Gwen stumbled from her bed, ready to hear yet another outlandish idea. But confronted by the rattle, she became instantly alert, for she had sat with her father at the counter in Caris Brothers up in Perth as he discussed the design with the silversmith. She touched it warily, as though it were an egg that might hatch a monster.

  Hannah was weeping and smiling, laughing at the ceiling, at the floo
r. “I told you, didn’t I? Oh, my darling Grace! She’s alive!”

  Gwen laid a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s not get carried away, Hannah. We’ll go and see Dad in the morning and get him to come with us to the police. They’ll know what to do. Now, go back to sleep. You’ll need a clear head tomorrow.”

  Sleep was out of the question. Hannah was terrified that if she closed her eyes she might wake up. She went out to the backyard and sat in the swinging seat where once she had sat with Frank and Grace, and looked at the thousands of stars that dotted the hemisphere; they soothed her with their steadiness, like pinpricks of hope in the night. Little lives could barely be heard or felt on a canvas this vast. Yet she had the rattle, and the rattle brought her hope. This was no hoax. This was a talisman of love—a symbol of her father’s forgiveness; a thing touched by her child and those who treasured her. She thought back to her Classics studies, and the tale of Demeter and Persephone. Suddenly this ancient story was alive for her, as she contemplated her daughter’s return from wherever she had been held captive.

  She felt—no, she knew—she was coming to the end of a dreadful journey. Once Grace was back with her, life would begin again—together they would harvest the happiness so long denied them both. She found herself laughing at funny memories: Frank struggling to change a nappy; her father’s attempt at composure when his granddaughter brought up her recent feed onto the shoulder of his best suit. For the first time in years, her belly was tight with excitement. If she could just make it to the morning.

  When a glimmer of doubt crept into her thoughts, she turned her mind to the specific: the way Grace’s hair was slightly thinner at the back from rubbing against her sheet; the way her fingernails had little half-moons at their base. She would anchor her child in memory and draw her home by sheer will—by ensuring that in one place on this earth there was the knowing of every aspect of her. She would love her home to safety.