PART III
CHAPTER 25
AS SOON AS they disembarked, Sergeant Spragg drew a pair of handcuffs from his pocket and strode towards Tom. Vernon Knuckey stopped him with just a shake of the head.
‘It’s correct procedure,’ said the Albany sergeant, who outranked Vernon in importance of station.
‘Never mind that. There’s a little girl here,’ Knuckey said, nodding towards Lucy, who ran to Tom, grabbing his leg. ‘Dadda! Dadda, pick me up!’
Naked distress flashed across his face as the girl’s eyes met his, with this most routine of requests. At the top of a peppermint tree, a pair of willy wagtails chittered away. Tom swallowed hard, digging his nails into his palms. ‘Look, Lulu! Look at the funny birds up there. You don’t see those at home, do you?’ Keeping his eyes on the birds, he urged, ‘Go and have a proper look.’
Two motor cars were parked near the jetty, and Sergeant Spragg addressed Tom. ‘This way. Into the first one.’
Tom turned back towards Lucy, now distracted by the play of the birds wiggling their long black tails. He was about to reach out a hand to her, but imagined her anguish: best if he slipped away.
She caught sight of his movement and stretched out her arms. ‘Dadda, wait! Pick me up!’ she urged again, her tone betraying her sense that something was wrong.
‘Now, if you please,’ urged Spragg, taking Tom’s elbow.
As Tom walked away, every step more awful, Lucy pursued him, arms still outstretched. ‘Dadda, wait for Lulu,’ she begged, wounded and confused. When she tripped and fell face down on the gravel, letting out a scream, Tom could not go on, and spun around, breaking free of the policeman’s grip.
‘Lulu!’ He scooped her up and kissed her scratched chin. ‘Lucy, Lucy, Lucy, Lucy,’ he murmured, his lips brushing her cheek. ‘You’re all right, little one. You’ll be all right.’
Vernon Knuckey looked at the ground and cleared his throat.
Tom said, ‘Sweetheart, I have to go away now. I hope—’ He stopped. He looked into her eyes and he stroked her hair, finally kissing her. ‘Goodbye, littlie.’
The child showed no sign of letting go, so Knuckey turned to Isabel. ‘Mrs Sherbourne?’
Isabel prised her from Tom. ‘Come on now, sweet thing. You’re all right. Mamma’s got you,’ she said, though the girl continued to call, ‘Dadda, I want to go with you, Dadda!’
‘Happy now, Tom? This is what you wanted, isn’t it?’ Tears ran down Isabel’s face and on to Lucy’s cheek.
For a moment, Tom stood paralysed by the sight of the two of them, the pain etched on their faces – the two he had promised Bill Graysmark he would protect and care for. Eventually, he managed to say, ‘Christ, Izz – I’m sorry.’
Kenneth Spragg had lost patience, and grabbed him by the arm again, shoving him along to the car. As Tom ducked into the back of the vehicle, Lucy began to howl. ‘Dadda, don’t go! Please, Dadda! Please!’ Her face was crumpled and red and tears ran into her open mouth, as Isabel tried in vain to console her. ‘Mamma, stop the men! They naughty, Mamma! They being nasty to Dadda!’
‘I know, darling, I know.’ She put her lips to Lucy’s hair and murmured, ‘Sometimes men do very bad things, sweetie. Very bad things.’ As she said the words, she knew there was worse to come.
Ralph watched the scene from the deck of the boat. When he got home to Hilda, he looked at her: really looked at her for perhaps the first time in twenty years.
‘What’s that for?’ asked his wife, disconcerted by the attention.
‘Just – oh, just for nothing,’ he said, and drew her into a long hug.
In his office, Vernon Knuckey addressed Kenneth Spragg. ‘I’m telling you again, Sergeant. You’re not taking him to Albany this afternoon. He’ll be transferred in good time, when I’ve had a chance to ask a few more questions.’
‘He’ll end up as our prisoner. Lighthouses are Commonwealth, remember, so we do this the right way.’
‘I know the rules as well as you.’ Every policeman this side of Perth knew how Kenneth Spragg loved to throw his weight around. Still had a chip on his shoulder about not enlisting, and tried to make up for it by carrying on like a sergeant bloody major. ‘He’ll be sent to Albany in due course.’
‘I want a crack at Sherbourne – I’ll soon get to the bottom of things. I’m here now. I’ll take him with me.’
‘If you want him that badly you can bloody well come back. I run this station.’
‘Telephone Perth.’
‘What?’
‘Let me telephone Perth. If I hear it from District Command, I’ll leave him here. Otherwise he’s in the motor car and off to Albany.’
It had taken Isabel so long to persuade the distraught child to get into the second motor car that Tom was already in a cell by the time they arrived at the police station.
In the waiting area, Lucy sat on Isabel’s knee, fractious and exhausted by the long journey and the strange goings-on. She kept touching Isabel’s face – patting and prodding it to get a response. ‘Where’s Dadda? I want to see him.’ Isabel was pale, her forehead set in an absent frown. Time and again, her thoughts would drift off, her attention focussed on a notch in the wood of the counter, or the call of a distant magpie. Then, Lucy’s fingers, prodding with another question, would bring her back to the sickening knowledge of where she was.
An old man who had come to pay a fine for letting his cattle stray onto the highway stood at the counter, waiting for his receipt. He whiled away the time by trying to tempt Lucy into a game of peek-a-boo.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
‘Lucy,’ she said shyly.
‘That’s what you think,’ muttered Harry Garstone with a sardonic smile, as his pen scratched across the receipt form.
At that moment, Dr Sumpton arrived from his surgery, puffing, bag in hand. He nodded perfunctorily at Isabel, but avoided eye contact. She blushed scarlet, recalling his last examination of her, and its devastating conclusion.
‘Through here, sir,’ said Garstone, ushering him into a room at the back. The constable returned to Isabel. ‘The child has to be examined by the medico. If you’d just give her to me.’
‘Examined? What for? There’s nothing wrong with her!’
‘You don’t get a say in this, Mrs Sherbourne.’
‘I’m her—’ Isabel stopped herself before the word came out. ‘She doesn’t need a doctor. Please. Show some common decency!’
The policeman grabbed the child and took her away, screaming and struggling. The shrill cries rang throughout the station, reaching as far as Tom’s cell, where they seemed even louder as he imagined what might be happening to her.
In Knuckey’s office, Spragg replaced the receiver and scowled at his Partageuse counterpart. ‘All right. You’ve got your way for now …’ Hoisting up his belt, he changed tactics. ‘The woman should be in the cells too, as far as I’m concerned. She’s probably in it up to her neck.’
‘I’ve known that girl all her life, Sergeant,’ said Knuckey. ‘She never so much as missed church. You heard Tom Sherbourne’s story: sounds like she’s his victim too.’
‘His story! I’m telling you, she’s not all butter wouldn’t melt. Let me at him on my own and we’ll soon find out how that Roennfeldt chap really died …’
Knuckey was well aware of Spragg’s reputation in that department too, but overlooked the comment. ‘Look. I don’t know Sherbourne from a bar of soap. Could be Jack the Ripper, for all I can tell. If he’s guilty, he’s for the high jump. But locking up his wife for the hell of it’s not going to help anyone, so just hold your horses. You know as well as I do that a married woman isn’t criminally responsible for anything her husband makes her do.’ He lined up a stack of papers with the corner of his blotter. ‘This is a small town. Mud sticks. You don’t throw a girl in the cells unless you’re pretty bloody sure of your facts. So we’ll take it a step at a time.’
Once the thin-lipped Sergeant Spragg had stalked out of the station, Knuckey entered the examination room and re-emerged with Lucy.
‘The doctor’s given her the all-clear,’ he said, then he lowered his voice. ‘We’re going to take the child to her mother now, Isabel. I’d be grateful if you didn’t make it any harder on anyone than it has to be. So if you – if you’d like to say goodbye to her?’
‘Please! Don’t do this!’
‘Don’t make things worse.’ Vernon Knuckey, who for years had observed the plight of Hannah Roennfeldt, sure she was basking in a sad delusion, now looked at this woman and wondered the same thing.
Believing she was back safe in her mother’s arms, the child gripped her tight as Isabel kissed her cheek, unable to take her lips away from the soft skin. Harry Garstone put his hands around the girl’s waist and yanked at her.
Even though everything in the past twenty-four hours had been leading to this, even though it was a fear Isabel had harboured from the day she had first laid eyes on Lucy as a baby, still, the moment ripped through her.
‘Please!’ she pleaded through tears. ‘Have some pity!’ Her voice reverberated around the bare walls. ‘Don’t take my baby away!’
As the girl was wrenched from her screaming, Isabel fainted onto the stone floor with a resounding crack.
Hannah Roennfeldt could not sit still. She consulted her watch, the mantel clock, her sister – anyone who could tell her how much time had passed. The boat had set out for Janus yesterday morning, and each minute since then had inched uphill like Sisyphus.
It was almost unbelievable that she might soon hold her daughter again. Since the news of the rattle, she had daydreamed about her return. The hugs. The tears. The smiles. She had picked frangipani blossoms from the garden and put them in the nursery, so that the scent filled the little cottage. Smiling and humming, she dusted and cleaned, and sat the dolls up on the chest of drawers. Then doubts would dart in: what would she eat? This had prompted her to send Gwen shopping for apples and milk and sweets. Before her sister returned, Hannah suddenly wondered whether she should be giving the child something else. She, who hardly ate, went next door to Mrs Darnley, who had five little ones, to check what she should feed a child Grace’s age. Fanny Darnley, always keen to have a tale to tell, immediately let slip to Mr Kelly at the grocer’s that Hannah had gone completely mad and was catering for ghosts, for word had not yet got around. ‘You don’t like to speak ill of your neighbours, but – well, there’s a reason why we have lunatic asylums, isn’t there? I’m not keen on someone who’s a shingle short living so close to my kids. You’d feel the same in my place.’
The telephone call had been perfunctory. ‘You’d best come down in person, Mr Graysmark. We’ve got your daughter here.’
Bill Graysmark arrived at the police station that afternoon in a state of confusion. With the phone call, his mind had jumped straight to a vision of Isabel’s body lying on a slab, awaiting collection. He had hardly heard the rest of the words that came through the newly connected telephone: death was the most obvious conclusion to jump to. Not a third child. He could not have lost all his children – surely God would not allow that? His mind could make no sense of words about the Roennfeldt baby, and something scrambled about Tom and a body.
At the station he was ushered into a back room, where his daughter sat on a wooden chair, her hands on her lap. He had been so convinced of her death that at the sight of her, tears came to his eyes.
‘Isabel. Isabubba!’ he whispered, pulling her up with a hug. ‘I thought I’d never see you again.’
It took him a few seconds to notice her peculiar state: she did not hug him back; she did not look at him. She slumped down again in the chair, lifeless and pale.
‘Where’s Lucy?’ he asked, first of his daughter, then of Constable Garstone. ‘Where’s little Lucy? And Tom?’ His mind was fast at work again: they must have drowned. They must have—
‘Mr Sherbourne’s in the cells, sir.’ The policeman stamped a piece of paper on the desk. ‘He’ll be transferred to Albany after a committal hearing.’
‘Committal hearing? What the devil? Where’s Lucy?’
‘The child’s with her mother, sir.’
‘The child is demonstrably not with her mother! What have you done with her? What’s this all about?’
‘Looks like the child’s real mother is Mrs Roennfeldt.’
Bill assumed he must have misheard whatever it was Garstone had said, and blundered on, ‘I demand you release my son-in-law right this minute.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir. Mr Sherbourne is under arrest.’
‘Arrest? What the hell for?’
‘So far, falsification of Commonwealth records. Breach of duty as a public servant. That’s just for starters. Then there’s child stealing. And the fact that we dug up Frank Roennfeldt’s remains out on Janus Rock.’
‘Are you out of your mind?’ He turned to his daughter, suddenly understanding her pallor and dreamy state. ‘Don’t you worry about this, dear. I’ll sort it out. Whatever it’s about, it’s obviously all a terrible mistake. I’ll get to the bottom of it.’
‘I don’t think you understand, Mr Graysmark,’ began the policeman.
‘You’re damn right I don’t understand. There’ll be the devil to pay over this! Dragging my daughter into a police station because of some ridiculous story. Slandering my son-in-law.’ He turned to his daughter. ‘Isabel – tell him it’s all nonsense!’
She sat, still and expressionless. The policeman cleared his throat. ‘Mrs Sherbourne refuses to say anything, sir.’
Tom feels the stillness of the cell weigh upon him, as dense and as liquid as mercury. For so long, his life has been shaped by the sound of the waves and the wind, the rhythm of the light. Suddenly, everything has stopped. He listens to the whipbird declaring its territory with song from high in the karri trees, oblivious.
The solitude is familiar, carrying him back to his time alone on Janus, and he wonders if the years with Isabel and with Lucy were just imagined. Then he puts his hand in his pocket and retrieves the child’s lilac satin ribbon, recalling her smile as she handed it to him when it slipped off. ‘Hold this please, Dadda.’ When Harry Garstone had tried to confiscate it at the station, Knuckey had snapped, ‘Oh for God’s sake, boy. He’s hardly going to choke us with that bloody thing, is he!’ and Tom had folded it safely away.
He cannot reconcile the grief he feels at what he has done and the profound relief that runs through him. Two opposing physical forces, they create an inexplicable reaction overpowered by a third, stronger force – the knowledge of having deprived his wife of a child. As fresh and raw as being spiked on a meat hook, he feels loss: what Hannah Roennfeldt must have felt; what Isabel has felt so many times, and grips her again now. He begins to wonder how he could have inflicted such suffering. He begins to wonder what the bloody hell he’s done.
He struggles to make sense of it – all this love, so bent out of shape, refracted, like light through the lens.
Vernon Knuckey had known Isabel since she was a tot. Her father had taught five of his children. ‘Best thing you can do is take her home,’ he had told Bill gravely. ‘I’ll talk to her tomorrow.’
‘But what about—’
‘Just take her home, Bill. Take the poor girl home.’
‘Isabel. Darling!’ Her mother hugged her as soon as she stepped through the front door. Violet Graysmark was as confused as anyone, but when she saw the state of her daughter, did not dare ask questions. ‘Your bed’s made up. Bill – fetch her bag through.’
Isabel drifted in, blank-faced. Violet guided her to an armchair, then hurried to the kitchen and returned with a glass. ‘Warm water and brandy. For your nerves,’ she said. Isabel sipped the drink mechanically, and put the empty glass on the occasional table.
Violet brought a rug and tucked it over her knees, though the room was perfectly warm. Isabel began to stroke the wool, tracing her index finger in straight lines over the tartan. She was so absorbed that she did not seem to hear when her mother asked, ‘Is there anything I can get you, pet? Are you hungry?’
Bill put his head around the door and beckoned Violet out to the kitchen. ‘Has she said anything?’
‘Not a word. I think she’s in shock.’
‘Well that makes two of us. I can’t make head or tail of it. I’m going to the station first thing in the morning to get a straight story. That Hannah Roennfeldt’s been daft as a brush for years now. And as for old man Potts: thinks he can throw his weight around because of his dough.’ He pulled the ends of his waistcoat down over his belly. ‘I’m not going to be pushed around by some lunatic and her father, no matter how much money he’s got.’
That night, Isabel lay in her narrow childhood bed, now foreign, constricting. A light wind pushed at the lace curtains, and outside, the chirrup of the crickets reflected the sparkling stars. On a night like this, only moments ago, it seemed, she had lain sleepless and excited at the prospect of her wedding the following morning. She had thanked God for sending her Tom Sherbourne: for letting him be born, for keeping him safe through the war, for wafting him on some breeze of Fate to her shore, where she was the first person he saw as he landed.
She tried to recall that state of ecstatic anticipation, the sense that life, after all the grief and loss the war had brought, was about to bloom. But the feeling was lost: now it all seemed a mistake, a delusion. Her happiness on Janus was distant, unimaginable. For two years, Tom had been lying with every word and every silence. If she hadn’t noticed that deception, what else had she missed? Why had he never said a word about meeting Hannah Roennfeldt? What was he hiding? In a sickening flash she saw a picture of Tom and Hannah and Lucy, a happy family. The thoughts of betrayal which had assailed her on Janus now came back darker, more insinuating. Perhaps he had other women and other lives. Perhaps he had deserted a wife – wives – back east … and children … Fantasy seemed plausible, compelling, as it poured into the gap between her memory of the eve of her wedding and this dreadful, oppressive present. A lighthouse warns of danger – tells people to keep their distance. She had mistaken it for a place of safety.
To have lost her child. To have seen Lucy terrified and distraught at being torn from the only people in the world she really knew: this was already unbearable. But to know it had happened because of her own husband – the man she adored, the man she’d given her life to – was simply impossible to grasp. He’d claimed to care for her, yet he’d done the thing guaranteed to destroy her.
This focussing outward, on Tom, painful as it was, saved her from a more intolerable examination. Slowly, taking shape amongst the shadows in her mind, was an almost solid sensation: an urge to punish; the fury of a wild thing deprived of her young. Tomorrow, the police would question her. By the time the stars had faded in the wakening sky, she had convinced herself: Tom deserved to suffer for what he had done. And he himself had handed her the weapons.