Lighthouse Bay

by Kimberley Freeman

  “You flatter me, Berenice. Really, I am nothing special nor interesting.”

  Berenice seems about to say something when her eyes catch across the room. “Ah,” she says, “there’s Lady Lamington. Wait right here.” She elegantly climbs to her feet and heads across the ballroom. Isabella watches her, then sees a flash of light from the corner of her eye. She turns. Two tables away, a photographer is taking a picture of a group of women.

  Her heart bangs. A photographer. And she is fairly sure she is in the frame. He says to the assembled group, “Just hold still. One more for the society pages.” And she knows she must leave. Now.

  She shoots from her chair and hurries, Cinderella-like, away from the ballroom. Berenice sees her and calls out, but she runs, head down. Matthew is still in the courtyard. She calls to him, “We must leave. Now.”

  He hears the urgency in her voice and hurries to her side. Seconds later they are safely inside their apartment.

  “What happened?” he asks, as she falls into a chair with her head in her hands.

  “A photographer for the newspaper.”

  His grunt of disapproval tells her what he is thinking. He knew it, he knew she shouldn’t have taken the risk of coming out so publicly, not when Percy is searching for her. And yes, she knew it too. She knew it, but she still did it because she wants saloon-class tickets to Sydney and New York for her and Xavier, and she wants to be able to take a lease on a good home when she gets there. She wants too much. And those who want too much are often foolish enough to risk everything.

  Isabella stands on Berenice’s front doorstep in one of Berenice’s altered dresses. Matthew waits across the road with their luggage. A maid has gone to fetch the lady of the house, and Isabella has no idea if Berenice will be angry with her for running off last night. But she has brought a gift and she wants to make sure Berenice gets it.

  The door opens again and Berenice stands there, her pretty mouth is pressed into a line.

  “Berenice. Lady McAuliffe. Please let me apologize for—”

  “For embarrassing me in front of the governor’s wife? By all means. Go ahead and apologize. I shall be living down that particular mortification for months to come, but there’s no reason you shouldn’t make yourself feel better with a simple ‘I’m sorry.’”

  Isabella swallows over her guilt. “I had to go, right at that moment and not a second later. And I am sorry. I would have saved you the embarrassment, but I . . . My safety was at risk.”

  “More mystery, Mary?”

  “I’m afraid so. You’ve been so kind to me, kinder than I deserve. Please, may I come in just for a few moments? I have a gift for you.”

  Berenice wavers, but her heart is good and her temperament is naturally sunny, so she smiles a little and stands aside to let Isabella in.

  “Come to the parlor, dear. I’ve just finished my tea, but there are some crumpets left over if you want one.”

  “No, no,” says Isabella, untying her hat. “Your generosity has already been too much. I am here to give you something.”

  Berenice closes the parlor door behind them and invites Isabella to sit on the chaise. Isabella opens her silk bag and withdraws a pendant: the only pendant she has made. The links nearly killed off her fingers. A single diamond—the only diamond on the mace—hangs at the center of the pendant. At equal spaces on either side are two shining black stones, which she found on the beach in Lighthouse Bay: twins, exactly the same size and shape. For days she had looked over them again and again, unable to believe they were identical. Then she decided that these special stones belonged in a special gift for Berenice. The stones are wrapped in narrow pink silk ribbons. The diamond is held gently but firmly between tight coils of silver.

  Berenice gapes at it. “You made this for me? But it’s worth a small fortune.”

  “I have all that I need, now,” Isabella answers.

  “But so do I, dear. I’m a rich woman.”

  “This is not a gift of wealth,” Isabella says. “It is a gift of gratitude and love. Every good fortune that has come to me of late has proceeded from you and your actions.”

  Berenice looks away. Her eyes are misty. “You continue to fascinate me, Mary Harrow. I presume this is the tenth piece? I had wondered why you only brought nine to the tea.”

  “This is the tenth and last piece. I have come to say good-bye to you, Berenice. I will soon go on a long journey, and I can’t tell you where I’m going, so please don’t ask.”

  “Mysterious till the end, eh? Well, I can’t say I’m not a little offended. I would have kept your secrets.” She puts her arms around Isabella and hugs her tightly. “Take care and be well, my dear. And do let me know, some day, if you are still in the world and well.”

  “I will try my best,” Isabella says. “But rest assured I will never forget you.”

  “Nor I you,” Berenice replies.

  Isabella leaves the cool house and finds herself once again on the humid street. Matthew greets her as she ties her hat back on.

  “You look sad,” he says.

  “I am sad,” she replies. “I’m getting ready to leave everything behind.”

  He averts his eyes, and she realizes he is sad too. She thinks that if either he or Berenice knew what she was planning, they wouldn’t be sad about her going. They would be glad. They would be angry. They would judge her. This thought makes her sadder still, and it is with a very heavy heart that she walks alongside Matthew to the wharf.

  Twenty-five

  The days grow increasingly warm and humid on Isabella’s return to the lighthouse. Matthew tells her this happens every year as if to remind them what is to come: a few hot days in spring, cracking thunderstorms in the evening, then cooling off until Christmas. Isabella finds the warm, moist air enervating. She is tired deep in her joints.

  Every afternoon, while Matthew sleeps, she goes down to the beach to let the ocean wind cool her. She collects shells and stones, still idly imagining pieces of jewelry she might make but never putting the thought into action. Matthew asks her daily when she intends to go, but she says she wants to wait just a week or so, until this hot spell has passed, because she is fearful of being at sea during a storm. Perhaps he thinks that she is reluctant to go because she does not want to say good-bye to him; this is partly true. But she knows she can and must leave him, if she is to live the life she has imagined for herself.

  Although she finds lately that imagining that life leaves her with a sick guilt in her stomach.

  When she trudges down the grassy dune and onto the firm sand this afternoon, she knows it will be a short visit. Already clouds like gray anvils are rolling in on the horizon. She thinks about going directly back to the lighthouse, but then something catches her eye: a dark-haired boy in the distance in the company of a tall, thin woman.

  Her heart leaps in her chest. Could it be? Has Xavier returned? And who is this woman? It is not Cook, and it is not Katarina. Perhaps she is mistaken. Perhaps it isn’t Xavier.

  She climbs back up the dune and, keeping close to the trees, makes her way down the beach to see more closely. Yes, it is Xavier, and her body flushes warm at the thought that the moment is coming, very soon. Not today, for he is in company and she is not ready. But soon she will be ready, and she will find a way.

  How she longs to hold him in her arms.

  He is searching for shells while his nanny keeps a wary eye on the storm clouds. Closer and closer Isabella creeps, worried they will hurry off before she gets near enough to see them properly, then realizes that she need fear nothing. This new nanny doesn’t know her. Xavier does not speak. She can approach and say hello and perhaps even find out from the nanny how long they have been home, how long they intend to stay. She leaves the cover of the trees and walks down the sand directly towards them.

  The nanny looks up. She is a young woman with a hard face and big square hands. Her expression becomes puzzled as she realizes Isabella is coming to talk to her.

  Isabe
lla smiles. “Hello!” she calls.

  The child looks up. His brow twitches, then settles. He grasps his nanny’s hand and moves behind her.

  Isabella’s blood goes cold. Is he afraid of her? Has Katarina taught him to fear her?

  “Can I help you?” the nanny says.

  Isabella stops before them, her eyes on Xavier’s face. He won’t meet her gaze. “I am an old friend of the boy’s mother,” she lies. She crouches in front of Xavier. “You’re not afraid of me, are you, little one?”

  He shakes his head, then says clearly, “I don’t know you.”

  “You don’t . . . ?” A rumble of thunder. The wind suddenly changes direction, coming cold and laden with the scent of rain from the south.

  “You’ll have to forgive the little master, ma’am,” the nanny says. “We are just back from Sydney today, where he has been in much society. There are a lot of faces and names for him to remember.”

  Isabella cannot speak. He has forgotten her? After only three months? She has thought of him every day and he has forgotten her? Racking pains take over her body. She wants to crush him in her embrace. She longs for the nights breathing his scent in the narrow bed at the Fullbrights’ house.

  The nanny grows suspicious of her long silence. “Ma’am?”

  “I . . .” Her mouth opens and closes, like a fish dying on the sand.

  “What is your name, ma’am?” she says. “If you tell him, it might remind him.”

  But she can’t say her name, not either of her names. She shouldn’t even be talking to them. If the nanny goes back and tells Katarina, if Katarina deduces it’s her, if she has seen the advertisement in the paper . . . Isabella stands. “I’m sorry to trouble you. Perhaps I have the wrong child.”

  The wrong child. Oh, yes. He was always the wrong child.

  “Very well, ma’am. I need to get the little one out of the storm, now.” The nanny gathers Xavier against her, and he goes readily and happily. Isabella watches them go, then tries to walk back up the beach. Her knees are like rubber. One step. Another. Then she can’t go farther so she lets herself fall, on her side, on the sand. Her hair spreads out around her and across her face. She curls herself into a ball and sobs, sand and hair sticking to her mouth. The first cold, fat raindrop splats onto the back of her hand. She doesn’t move. The trees in the wood go wild, whipped one way and then the other. The wind stings sand against her. Thunder cracks in the distance. She doesn’t move. The rain descends, driving round divots into the sand, soaking her clothes. She doesn’t move. She cannot move. Her dream has cracked open and inside it is the hard, blackened kernel of truth: Daniel died and there is no comfort. There will never be any comfort. She lies in the driving rain and wishes for the ocean to rise up and swallow her, as it should have done months ago.

  Matthew wakes to the rattle of thunder. He turns on his side and flaps the sheet to let some cool air into the bed, then closes his eyes and tries to chase sleep. The rain is heavy. He cracks open one eye again. It is very dark. There are stormy seas. He needs to put the light on.

  He rises wearily: maybe he can catch an hour or two after the storm. He pulls on his shirt and his shoes, and makes his way up the ladder. He pumps the pressure tanks and ignites the light, adjusts the weights and then comes back down. Isabella’s jewelry-making things are all packed away now and he admits he misses seeing her sitting there working. She had seemed so happy in those times, focused and busy.

  It is only then that he realizes he hasn’t heard Isabella moving around anywhere in the lighthouse. Frowning, he returns downstairs, expecting to find her in the galley kitchen or even in the telegraph office. But she is nowhere.

  She is not inside. This means she must be outside. In the storm.

  Matthew tells himself not to worry. She goes every afternoon to the beach. Perhaps she was caught unawares in the storm and now shelters in the woods. Does she know to stay away from tall trees during lightning?

  Underscoring this thought, a violent flash of lightning and a simultaneous crack of thunder makes him jump. Should he go out to look for her? Isabella is made of strong stuff: she survived a shipwreck and walked miles and miles to find him. But there are darker thoughts: he is always worried that her husband’s family will catch up with her somehow, while he isn’t around to protect her. He goes to the door, pulls on his raincoat and wellington boots, and trudges outside into the storm.

  The wood is awash, the ground muddy, leaves and branches blown down. The rain is torrential, finding inlets behind his collar and inside his boots. His beard is dripping water before he has even reached the beach. He scans the gray distance and cannot see her at first, but that is because he is looking for somebody standing upright. She is, in fact, curled on her side in a drenched, pale blue dress in the distance. What on earth is she doing? His heart starts. Is she dead? He runs to her, stumbling over sand in his sodden boots. “Isabella!” he calls, but she doesn’t lift her head. He falls on his knees next to her. Her eyes are closed and she does not acknowledge his arrival. He rests a hand over her ribs and holds as still as he can.

  She breathes. She is alive.

  “Isabella, what is wrong? Can you hear me?”

  She shakes her head. “Leave me be,” she says over the wind and the rain and the wide ocean. “The tide will come in and carry me away.”

  But he will not leave her be, no matter what she says. He lifts her into his arms and starts back up the beach to the lighthouse. She is limp and she still hasn’t opened her eyes. What has happened to her that she should want to die? Lately she has seemed happy, interested in the world. He carries her home, and inside the lighthouse he lays her carefully on the bed. He strips off his rain gear and returns to her. She shivers and her lips are blue. A flash of memory: Clara returning from the woods, cold and with haunted eyes. Matthew unbuttons Isabella’s blouse and skirt and drops them in a puddle on the floor. He strips her naked. Still she doesn’t move. Still she keeps her eyes closed. It is as though by playing dead she can will herself out of life. He dries her and pulls the sheet up over her naked body, then sits next to her and waits. She cannot play dead forever.

  Isabella plays dead for a very long time. After the first hour, where she neither opens her eyes nor speaks, he decides to get on with his work. He checks in on her periodically, and she remains unmoved. He offers her food at dinnertime, but she doesn’t respond. He demands that she drink water, but she acts as though she hasn’t heard. From time to time he wonders if she is sleeping, but her breathing remains shallow and her face remains unrested.

  Then, much later in the evening, when he is upstairs cranking the weights into the top of the tower, he hears the downstairs door open. He clatters down the stairs to find Isabella, dressed again in her wet things, heading out the door.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going back to the beach.”

  “Why?” But there is no point asking why. She is incapable of rational thought. Her pupils take up nearly her whole irises. So instead of asking questions, he blocks her way, slams the door shut and restrains her with his hands around her wrists. “You are not going out. You are not going to the beach and you are certainly not going to throw yourself in the ocean.”

  “And why should I not?” she spits, struggling against him. “What is there in this world but misery?”

  He tightens his grip, fearful that he might hurt her but more fearful that she will escape and never come back. “Stop it, Isabella. You must tell me what has happened to make you feel this way.”

  “My son died. Is that not enough?”

  “Your son died three years ago. You have lived this long. Why stop living now?”

  Isabella stops struggling. Her weight falls into his hands. He is incredibly aware of her softness, her fragility.

  “Come,” he says. “Take off these wet things and back to bed.”

  She allows herself to be taken back to the bedroom, and leaves her clothes once more in a damp heap on the floor. He l
ights the lamp and sits on the bed, while she turns on her side, the sheet pulled up over her breasts. Her eyes seem enormous in the yellow lamplight. Outside, the storm has long passed, but behind it has come a steady rain. It thrums on the windows and the tin roof of the shed.

  Her hand steals out from under the covers and grasps his. He strokes her hand with his thumb a little while, then says, “Will you tell me what happened?”

  “I saw Xavier on the beach,” she blurts. “And he didn’t remember me.”

  “It has been a long time and he is young,” he says. “Why does this bother you so?”

  She pulls her hand away and places it over her forehead, lying on her back. He watches her awhile.

  “Isabella?”

  “You will hate me.”

  “It isn’t possible to hate you.”

  “You say that now.”

  Another silence. He feels his heart beating, carrying the old blood around the old circuits as it has always done. Why should she care about Xavier remembering her when she had little or no chance of ever seeing him again? Then it dawns. He challenges himself to think not like a middle-aged lighthouse keeper but like a young woman who lost a baby who would have been the same age as Xavier.

  “Isabella,” he says softly, slowly, “had you planned to steal the child?”

  “Not steal, no,” she says quickly. “I had thought to . . . persuade him to come with me.”

  Matthew holds his tongue. Judgmental words will not help.

  She melts into sobs. “I can see now it makes no sense. I can see now . . .”

  “You hoped to replace Daniel with him?”

  She sits up, shaking her head. “I don’t know! Did I try to replace Daniel? I think of Xavier now and he is just a little stranger: somebody else’s flesh and blood. But Daniel is a stranger too. I never knew him to miss him, Matthew.” Her voice breaks and she takes a moment to recover. “But I miss him.” She makes a fist and pounds it between her breasts. “I miss him.”