The Light Between Oceans: A Novel

by M. L. Stedman

  Isabel paces. It is three o’clock in the morning, and she has slipped out through the back door of her parents’ house. A ghost gum has trapped the moon between two of its long branches like spindly fingers. The dry grass crackles faintly under her bare feet as she walks on it—from the jacaranda to the flame tree, from the flame tree to the jacaranda: the place of the old wicket, all those years ago.

  She is flicking in and out of understanding, in and out of being, in that fluttering of thoughts that came originally with the loss of her first baby, and grew with the snatching away of two more, and now Lucy. And the Tom she loved, the Tom she married, has disappeared too in the fog of deceit—slipping away when she wasn’t looking: running off with notes to another woman; plotting to take her daughter away.

  “I understand.” Tom’s message is puzzling. Her gut tightens in a knot of fury and longing. Her thoughts fly out in all directions, and just for a moment she has a bodily memory of being nine, on a runaway horse. The tiger snake on the track. A sudden rearing and off the horse shot, between the trunks, heedless of the branches and the child clinging desperately to its mane. Isabel had lain flat against its neck until its fear and its muscles were exhausted, and it finally came to a halt in a clearing nearly a mile away. “There’s nothing you can do,” her father had said. “Once a horse bolts, you can only say your prayers and hang on for all you’re worth. Can’t stop an animal that’s caught in a blind terror.”

  There’s no one she can talk to. No one who will understand. What sense can her life make by itself, without the family she lived for? She runs her fingers over the bark of the jacaranda and finds the scar—the mark Alfie carved in it to show her height, the day before he and Hugh left for France. “Now, I’ll be checking how much you’ve grown when we come back, Sis, so mind you get on with it.”

  “When will you be back, really?” she had asked.

  The boys had shot one another a look—both worried and excited. “By the time you reach here,” Hugh had said, and nicked the bark six inches higher. “Once you get there, we’ll be home to bother you again, Bella.”

  She never grew that tall.

  The scurrying of a gecko brings her back to the present, back to her predicament. The questions harangue her as the moon languishes in the branches above: who is Tom, really? This man she thought she knew so well. How could he be capable of such betrayal? What has her life with him been? And who were the souls—that blending of her blood with his—who failed to find their way into being within her? A goblin thought jumps onto her shoulder: what’s the point of tomorrow?

  The weeks following Grace’s return were more harrowing for Hannah than the weeks following her loss, as she was faced with truths which, long pushed away, were now inescapable. Years really had passed. Frank really was dead. Part of her daughter’s life had gone and could never be brought back. While Grace had been absent from Hannah’s days, she had been present in someone else’s. Her child had lived a life without her: without, she caught herself thinking, a moment’s thought for her. With shame, she realized she felt betrayed. By a baby.

  She remembered Billy Wishart’s wife, and how her joy at the return of a husband she had believed dead on the Somme had turned to despair. The gas victim who came home to her was as much a stranger to himself as to his family. After struggling for five years, one morning when the ice was thick on the water in their tank, she had stood on an upturned milking bucket in the cowshed and hanged herself, leaving her children to cut her down because Billy still couldn’t grip a knife.

  Hannah prayed for patience and strength and understanding. Every morning, she asked God to help her get through to the end of the day.

  One afternoon as she was passing the nursery, she heard a voice. She slowed her pace and tiptoed closer to the door, which was ajar. She felt a thrill to see her daughter playing with her dolls at last: all her attempts to get her to play had been rejected. Now pieces of a toy tea set were strewn about on the bedcovers. One doll still wore its exquisite lace dress, but the other had been stripped to a camisole and long bloomers. On the lap of the one with the skirt lay a wooden clothes peg. “Dinnertime,” said the skirted doll, as the child held the tiny teacup to the clothes peg and made “nyum nyum” noises. “Good little girl. Now time for bed, sweetie. Ni-nigh,” and the doll lifted the peg to its lips to kiss it. “Look, Dadda,” it went on, “Lucy’s sleeping,” as it touched the clothes peg with a dainty hand. “Goodnight, Lulu, good night, Mamma,” said the doll in bloomers. “Got to light up now. Sun’s nearly down.” And off the doll trotted under the blanket. The doll with the skirt said, “Don’t worry, Lucy. The witch can’t catch you, I maked her dead.”

  Before she knew what she was doing, Hannah marched in and snatched the dolls away. “That’s enough of those silly games, you hear me?” she snapped, and smacked her daughter’s hand. The child’s limbs stiffened but she did not cry—she just watched Hannah silently.

  Instantly, Hannah was flooded with remorse. “Darling, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.” She remembered the doctor’s instructions. “They’ve gone, those people. They did a bad thing, keeping you away from home. And they’ve gone now.” Grace looked puzzled at the mention of home, and Hannah sighed. “One day. One day it’ll make sense.”

  By lunchtime, as Hannah sobbed in the kitchen, ashamed of her outburst, her daughter was playing the game again, with three clothes pegs instead. Hannah stayed up late into the night, stitching and cutting, so that in the morning, the child awoke to a new rag doll on her pillow—a little girl, with “Grace” embroidered on her pinafore.

  “I can’t bear the thought of what it must be doing to her, Ma,” said Isabel, as the two women sat together on wicker chairs under the eaves at the back of the house. “She’ll be missing us, missing home. The poor little thing won’t know what on earth’s going on.”

  “I know, dear. I know,” replied her mother.

  Violet had made her a cup of tea and settled it on to her lap. Her daughter had altered dreadfully—sunken eyes shadowed beneath in gray; hair dull and tangled.

  Isabel spoke aloud the thought that had occurred to her, perhaps to understand it better. “There’s never been a funeral…”

  “What do you mean?” asked Violet. Isabel was not making much sense, these days.

  “Everyone I’ve lost—they’ve just been ripped away—into nothing. Maybe a funeral would have made it—I don’t know—made a difference. With Hugh there’s the photo of the grave in England. Alfie’s just a name on that memorial. My first three babies—three, Mum—never had so much as a hymn sung for them. And now…” her voice broke into tears, “Lucy…”

  Violet had been glad she’d never given her sons a funeral: a funeral was proof. Indisputable. A funeral meant admitting that your boys were absolutely dead. And buried. It was a betrayal. No funeral meant that one day they might waltz into the kitchen and ask what was for dinner and laugh with her about that silly mistake which had led her to believe for a moment—imagine that!—that they’d gone forever.

  She considered her words carefully. “Sweetheart, Lucy’s not dead.” Isabel seemed to shrug off the comment, and her mother frowned. “None of this is your fault, dear. I’ll never forgive that man.”

  “I thought he loved me, Mum. He told me I was the most precious thing in the world to him. Then he did such a dreadful thing…”

  Later, as Violet polished the silver frames of the pictures of her sons, she went over the situation in her mind for the umpteenth time. Once a child gets into your heart, there’s no right or wrong about it. She’d known women give birth to children fathered by husbands they detested, or worse, men who’d forced themselves on them. And the woman had loved the child fiercely, all the while hating the brute who’d sired it. There’s no defending yourself from love for a baby, Violet knew too well.

  CHAPTER 29

  Why are you protecting her?”

  The question arrested Tom, who eyed Ralph warily through th
e bars. “Plain as the nose on your bloody face, mate. As soon as I mention Isabel, you go all queer and make no sense.”

  “I should have protected her better. Protected her from me.”

  “Don’t talk bilge.”

  “You’ve been a good friend to me, Ralph. But—there’s a lot about me you don’t know.”

  “And there’s a lot about you I do, boy.”

  Tom stood up. “Did the engine get sorted out? Bluey said you’d been having problems with it.”

  Ralph looked at him carefully. “It’s not looking good.”

  “She’s served you well, over the years, that boat.”

  “Yep. I’ve always trusted her, and I didn’t think she’d ever let me down. Fremantle wants to decommission her.” He looked Tom in the eye. “We’re all dead soon enough. Who are you to throw away the best years of your life?”

  “The best years of my life were over a long time ago, Ralph.”

  “That’s codswallop and you know it! It’s about time you got on your feet and did something! For Christ’s sake wake up to your bloody self!”

  “What are you suggesting I do, Ralph?”

  “I’m suggesting you tell the bloody truth, whatever it is. The only place lying leads is trouble.”

  “Sometimes that’s the only place telling the truth gets you, too… People can only take so much, Ralph. Christ—I know that better than anyone. Izzy was just an ordinary, happy girl until she got tangled up with me. None of this would have happened if she hadn’t come out to Janus. She thought it’d be paradise. She had no idea what she was in for. I should never have let her come out.”

  “She’s a grown woman, Tom.”

  He looked at the skipper, weighing his next words. “Ralph, I’ve had this coming a long time. Sins catch up with you in the end.” He sighed, and looked up at a spiderweb in the corner of his cell, where a few flies hung like forlorn Christmas decorations. “I should have been dead years ago. God knows I should have copped a bullet or a bayonet a hundred times over. I’ve been on borrowed time a long while.” He swallowed hard. “It’s tough enough on Izz being without Lucy. She’d never survive time in— Ralph, this is one thing I can do for her. It’s as close to making it up to her as I’ll ever get.”

  “It’s not fair.” The child repeats this phrase over and over, not in a whingeing tone, but in a desperate appeal to reason. Her expression is that of someone trying to explain an English phrase to a foreigner. “It’s not fair. I want to go home.”

  Sometimes, Hannah manages to distract her for a few hours. Making cakes with her. Cutting out paper dolls. Putting crumbs out for the fairy wrens, so that the tiny creatures come right to the door and hop about on legs as fine as fuse wire, enthralling Grace while they peck daintily at the stale bread.

  When she sees Grace’s expression of delight at the tabby cat they pass one day, she asks around town if anyone has any kittens, and a tiny black creature with white paws and face becomes part of the household.

  Grace is interested, but suspicious. “Go on, he’s yours. All for you,” says Hannah, putting the kitten gently into her hands. “So you have to help look after him. Now, what do you think his name should be?”

  “Lucy,” says the child, without hesitation.

  Hannah balks. “I think Lucy’s a little girl’s name, not a cat’s name,” she says. “What about a proper cat’s name?”

  So Grace gives the only cat’s name she knows. “Tabatha Tabby.”

  “Tabatha Tabby it is,” Hannah says, resisting the urge to tell her it’s not a tabby cat, and it’s not a girl. At least she’s got the child to speak.

  The next day, when Hannah says, “Come on, shall we give Tabatha some mince?” Grace responds, fiddling with a strand of hair, “She doesn’t like you. She only likes me.” There’s no malice. Just explaining a fact.

  “Perhaps you should let her see Isabel Sherbourne,” Gwen suggested after a particularly fierce round between mother and child over putting on a pair of shoes.

  Hannah looked horrified. “Gwen!”

  “I know it’s the last thing you want to hear. But I’m just saying… maybe if Grace thought you were a friend of her mother’s, that might help somehow.”

  “A friend of her mother’s! How could you even say such a thing! Besides, you know what Dr. Sumpton said. The sooner she forgets about that woman, the better!”

  But she could not escape the fact that her daughter had been irrevocably embossed with the stamp of those other parents, that other life. When they walked by the beach, Grace strained to get to the water. At night, whereas most children would be pleased to identify the moon, Grace could point to the brightest star of the evening and declare, “Sirius! And the Milky Way,” in a voice so confident that it frightened Hannah, and made her hurry inside, saying, “Time for bed now. In we go.”

  Hannah prayed to be freed from resentment, from bitterness. “Lord, I’m so blessed to have my daughter back. Show me the right thing to do.” But straightaway she would imagine Frank, thrown into an unmarked grave in a piece of canvas. She remembered the look on his face the first time he had held his daughter, as though she had presented him with the whole of heaven and earth in that pink blanket.

  It was not up to her. It was only right that Tom Sherbourne should be dealt with according to the law. If a court decided he should go to jail—well, an eye for an eye, the Bible said. She would let justice take its course.

  But then she would remember the man who had stepped in to save her from God knew what, years ago on that boat. She remembered how safe she’d suddenly felt in his presence. The irony made her catch her breath even now. Who could tell what someone was like on the inside? She’d seen that air of authority he’d adopted with the drunk. Did he think he was above the rules? Or beyond them? But the two notes, that beautiful handwriting: “Pray for me.” So she would return to her prayers, and pray for Tom Sherbourne too: that he be dealt with justly, even though some part of her wanted to see him suffer for what he had done.

  The following afternoon, Gwen slipped her arm into her father’s, as they walked along the grass. “I miss this place, you know,” she said, looking back toward the grand limestone homestead.

  “It misses you, Gwenny,” her father replied. After a few more steps he said, “Now that Grace is home with Hannah, perhaps it’s time you came back to your old Dad…”

  She bit her lip. “I’d love to. I really would. But…”

  “But what?”

  “I don’t think Hannah can manage yet.” She pulled away and faced her father. “I hate to be the one to say it, Dad, but I don’t know she’ll ever cope. And that poor little girl! I didn’t know a child could be that miserable.”

  Septimus touched her cheek. “I know a little girl who used to be that miserable. Fair broke my heart, you did. Went on for months after your mother died.” He stooped to smell one of the old red roses, just past its full, velvet bloom. He breathed the scent deep into his lungs, then put his hand on his back to straighten up.

  “But that’s the sad thing,” insisted Gwen. “Her mother’s not dead. She’s here in Partageuse.”

  “Yes. Hannah is right here in Partageuse!”

  She knew her father well enough not to press the point. They continued to walk in silence, Septimus inspecting the flower beds, Gwen trying not to hear the sound of her niece’s distress, so sharply etched in her mind.

  That night, Septimus thought hard about what to do. He knew a thing or two about little girls who had lost their mother. And he knew a thing or two about persuasion. When he had settled on his plan, he nodded off to a dreamless sleep.

  In the morning, he drove to Hannah’s, and announced, “Right. All ready? We’re going on a mystery outing. It’s about time Grace got to know Partageuse a bit better; learned where she’s from.”

  “But I’m in the middle of mending the curtains. For the church hall. I promised Reverend Norkells…”

  “I’ll take her by myself. She’ll be right as ra
in.”

  The “mystery outing” began with a trip to Potts’s Timber Mill. Septimus had remembered how, as children, Hannah and Gwen had delighted in feeding apples and cube sugar to the Clydesdales there. The wood was moved by rail these days, but the mill still kept some of the old draft horses for emergencies, when rain washed away sections of rail track in the forest.

  Patting one of the horses, he said, “This, young Grace, is Arabella. Can you say ‘Arabella’?

  “Rig her up to the cart, there’s a good lad,” said Septimus to the stable hand, who jumped to. A short while later, he led Arabella into the yard, drawing a sulky.

  Septimus hoisted Grace on to the seat, before climbing up beside her. “Let’s have an explore, shall we?” he said, and gave a giddy-up to the old horse’s reins.

  Grace had never seen such a big horse. She had never been in a real forest—the closest she had got was her ill-starred adventure in the scrubland behind the Graysmarks’ house. For most of her life, she had only ever seen two trees—the Norfolk pines on Janus. Septimus followed the old milling tracks through the towering karri, pointing out kangaroos and goannas here and there: the child was engrossed in the fairy-tale world. From time to time she picked out a bird or a wallaby. “What’s that?” And her grandfather would name the creature.

  “Look, a baby kangaroo,” she said, pointing to a marsupial hopping slowly near the track.

  “That’s not a baby ’roo. That little chap’s a quokka. Like a kangaroo but tiny. That’s as big as he’ll ever get.” He patted her head. “It’s good to see you smile, girlie. I know you’ve been sad… You miss your old life.” Septimus considered for a moment. “I know what that’s like because—well, that’s what happened to me.”

  The girl gave a puzzled look, and he continued, “I had to say goodbye to my mum, and go across the sea, all the way to Fremantle on a sailing ship. When I was just a little bit older than you. Hard to imagine, I know. But I came here, and I got a new mum and dad, called Walt and Sarah. They looked after me from then on. And they loved me just like my Hannah loves you. So sometimes, you don’t just have one family in your life.”