The Lightkeeper's Wife

12



The phone call came about six months into my stay in Antarctica. The summer season was over, the last ship had departed, and the sea ice had refrozen and locked us in. I had just returned from a long ski around the icebergs near station, wandering out to Gardner Island, barren and quiet now with the Adelies gone and their nests a field of scattered stones.

Debbie sounded surprised when I answered the phone, as if she’d expected the answering machine. Her voice was distant, tinged with the sense of dislocation that had entered our conversations over the past months. ‘Tom. I didn’t expect to find you in your room.’

‘I was just about to go down to dinner.’ The smell of food was wafting up the stairs through the LQ.

‘Is it dinner time down there? I keep forgetting the time difference.’

When Debbie and I talked on the phone, we usually chatted about the small things that made up our everyday lives. Debbie would give me a description of the curtains she’d ordered or the new items she’d bought for the kitchen, the colour she’d put in her hair. She’d tell me about the people that were annoying her at work, how her boss was giving her the creeps. And then I’d tell her what was happening on station. The silly things people were doing. The party that had spontaneously erupted on Saturday night while I was reading in my room. The tedium of work in the shed. The complexities of living in a small insular community. But this time, she was strangely quiet. People were passing my room, heading down to dinner. I got off my bed and closed the door.

‘How are you?’ I asked.

‘I’m okay . . . Actually, I’m less than okay, Tom . . .’

Silence spun out, filling with my fear. This was the phone call all winterers dread. Something had happened at home. Maybe Mum or Dad; possibly an accident. I couldn’t breathe.

‘Tom?’

‘I’m still here.’ My soul was whirling with the wind outside, my eyes fixed on white distance. ‘Are Mum and Dad all right?’ I asked.

‘They’re fine. Everyone’s fine except me.’ She sounded mournful. ‘You’re such a long way away.’

Yes. So far away. A world away over ice. ‘We knew it’d be like this,’ I said.

‘Like what, Tom?’ Her voice welled with emotion. ‘Did we know how lonely it would be for me? That I’d be sitting here looking at four walls with only the TV for company while you’re down there with a crowd having a party?’

‘I don’t go to many parties.’ I’ve kept myself separate for her. I’ve thought of her constantly, waiting at home in Hobart. The time passing slowly.

‘. . . I’ve been so lonely, Tom.’

Silence again. I felt myself sinking. What could I do? Nothing could change the fact of my isolation. We sat. The quiet stretched awkwardly. Then I found something that barely resembled my voice. ‘Tell me how it is for you.’

Another awful silence. Then Debbie, tight and hesitant. ‘I just don’t think I can do this anymore. It’s too hard on my own.’

Warning bells in my head. ‘You wanted this—so we could get ahead.’

‘I couldn’t have known it would be this bad,’ she said.

‘Isn’t there anyone you can talk to?’

‘Everyone’s sick of me. Antarctica, Antarctica, Antarctica—it’s all I ever talk about. How do you cope, Tom?’

‘I work.’ Hours in the workshop. Time measuring itself out in the systematic servicing of engines. ‘And I read. And get off station whenever I can. Helping people. I write to you . . .’ Silence. ‘Perhaps you could try talking to the counsellors at the antdiv?’

Debbie’s disgust hammered down the line. ‘It’s no wonder they have counsellors on tap. I bet this happens all the time. Counselling won’t help. All they can tell me is that a bunch of other wives feel just like I do.’

Another silence.

‘I’m sorry, Tom, but I’ve met somebody.’

The slow heavy sound of my breathing. The wind outside. The snow blowing. Everything drifting away.

‘Tom. Are you there? I said I’ve met somebody. Someone who’s here for me.’

A hollow sound. My voice, as if from very far away. ‘I’m here for you.’

Debbie, matter-of-fact: ‘Tom, you’re an impossible distance away. I can’t do this anymore.’

‘How long?’ I asked.

Debbie’s reply was less assured. ‘It’s been a while . . . I didn’t know how to tell you . . .’

She’d met him months ago, apparently. Two, three, four months. She’d waited until the last ship had left for the season before telling me so I had no escape. No recourse. Why hadn’t I felt her pulling away? Or perhaps I had. Maybe I’d ignored the signs.

‘There was nothing I could say, really,’ she continued. ‘I mean, what would I have said? That the distance was getting to me and I could feel myself becoming vulnerable?’

‘Something like that might have helped.’

She paused. ‘It wouldn’t have changed anything. These things happen, you know. Sometimes, you don’t see them until it’s too late. I’m sorry, Tom.’

The silence of a man drowning.

Then she hung up.


She had called me on the cusp of winter and her rejection destroyed me. It was too much to come to terms with. Too much to accept. My wife with another man—my replacement. And our relationship over.

The last ship was gone. The days getting shorter. There was no way back.

During those early weeks, I rang Debbie many times. If I found her at home, we talked and she cried.

‘What can we do to fix this? I don’t want it to be over.’

‘There’s nothing. It’s too late. You’re stuck down there.’

‘If you’d just told me earlier . . .’

‘But I didn’t. Please don’t blame me. I didn’t want this to happen.’

‘But I was doing this for you. For us.’

‘I’m sorry it hasn’t worked out.’

‘Me too. I love you. I’m your husband. You’re my wife.’

‘I’m sorry, Tom. How many times can I say it? We couldn’t have foreseen this.’

But perhaps we could have. At the pre-departure briefing they gave us the figures on marriage breakup. It was something ridiculous, like eighty per cent for overwintering staff. But you think you’re immune from it. You think your own relationship is different, that you’re stronger than everyone else, and that the figures are just numbers. And then, there you are, just another statistic. The Division of Broken Marriages and Shattered Lives.

She wouldn’t tell me the new man’s name or anything about him. ‘It won’t help, Tom. It’ll just make things worse. You need to get on with things. Enjoy your stay down there. That’s all that’s left now.’

She was patient and she listened to my long silences. Often when I called she wasn’t there and I’d sit dialling her number over and over, waiting for the phone to ring out and then dialling again. Her absence meant she must be with him. That man. She must be talking to him. Or making love. He was there, and I was in Antarctica. Trapped by winter. I couldn’t even fight for her.

Then she asked me not to ring anymore. She said she’d cried all her tears, and there was nothing left. It was best to move on.

But move on where?

Nothing consoled me, not even the shimmering auroras that raged across the sky. Walking up to the workshed each day, I’d push myself as fast as I could, inhaling great breaths of freezing air, never quite managing to release the hysterical sensation of breaking apart. During blizzards, I’d force myself to work when others stayed inside. I’d drag myself up the rope that had been rigged from the LQ to the workshop, fighting with needling ice and blasting snow, almost wishing the roaring wind would blow me away. After battling the shed door shut, I’d hide beneath an engine, finding order in symmetry and pattern, the logic of pulling machines apart and putting them back together.

Alone in the upstairs lounge of the LQ, I passed long hours staring at the light slowly fading from Prydz Bay. Darkest winter came quickly and somehow I was at home in it. The long hours of night matched my internal wilderness. I wanted to suffer. It was as if I had been eaten by darkness and it had seeped into all the corners of my being until there was nothing hopeful left.

Around me, station life carried on. The two overwintering women fixed themselves in safe liaisons, causing resentment among some of the men. I was only vaguely aware of the friction. Strange antics emerged with the shortening days; none of it made sense to me. One of the scientists started talking to his dinner plate. Names appeared on mugs and people became furious if someone sat in ‘their’ chair. With a party of only eighteen on station there were few choices for friends. Rifts developed.

Twenty-four-hour darkness brought my worst moments. People moved around me but I rarely engaged. I spent blocks of time in bed without eating or sleeping. By the time the sun appeared I was hollow and empty, eroded by grief.

It was my job that saved me. The winter cold meant that planning was required to complete any task. A machine that wasn’t housed indoors needed three to four hours of heating before it could be started. If there’d been a recent blizzard, piled-up snow had to be moved first. This meant prewarming the loader or the Bobcat so I could shift the snow and ice. When a machine was finally moved into the workshop after being outside at minus thirty degrees Celsius, the dense steel sucked the warmth from the building. Two more days would pass before the shed and the machine were warm enough to begin work.

Nothing happened quickly. But it was this step-by-step routine that held the pieces of me together and enabled me to play out the actions of life as Tom Mason had known it. Each morning I showered and walked downstairs, one foot after the other, into the dining room. Food tasted like cardboard. There was a tightness in my throat from all the emotions knotted there.

When the light returned, I took to walking on the sea ice within station limits; as the sun grew in strength, I wandered the hills and watched the skies. There was solace to be found in landscapes and in distance and ice. The light was my saviour, and the colours of ice and sky: pinks, mauves and apricots, gradually intensifying to orange, silver and white. Light brought balance. In the shed, work increased. Spring was barely underway but preparations began for the summer season. I started talking to the others again.

And soon the Adelie penguins came tobogganing over the ice.


The first ship arrived in late October.

After seven months of isolation, we made a pretence at excitement about the new arrivals. But dread and anxiety soon took over. None of us was sure we could cope with the invasion. Who would be coming? How would they behave? What changes would they impose on the patterns of our lives? We were ready to prejudge the new expeditioners as insensitive, loud and pushy. And they were all three; how could they not be, after the months of quiet we had lived through, the months of space we had known, and our knowledge of the dark that we could not share? The summerers waltzed in like they owned the world. They violated our peace and privacy. They were boisterous, overly enthusiastic.

I avoided them by immersing myself in unloading the resupply ship. We worked around the clock, snatching meals when we could. The new biologists wafted around the LQ and skied out to the islands. Now that they’d escaped the ship it was as if nothing mattered beyond their leisure. In the dining room, the new crowd was amused by us, not understanding our strange little routines—the anchors that had carried us through the long days of darkness.

When the ship pulled away at the end of resupply, I sat along the wall of the LQ with a few other overwintering men and drank beer, speaking little. It was somehow shocking to watch the young women, some of them drinking too much and flirting outrageously. They danced provocatively and laughed too loudly. The old dieso sitting beside me grunted and stood up with his beer.

‘They shouldn’t be here,’ he said. ‘I can’t stand it. I’m going to my room.’

Our world had transformed: giggling in the corridors, crowds in the computer room, always someone in the dining room, talking and making coffee.

I retreated to the workshop, trying to find normality among the machines. One of the new helicopter engineers came in to book a quad bike. ‘Got your eye on any of the sheilas?’ he asked jovially.

The question floored me. ‘No,’ I mumbled. ‘I have a wife at home.’ Still in denial.

He laughed. ‘I didn’t think any of that mattered down here.’ He winked as I passed him the keys.

As usual, there was no privacy on station. Word quickly spread that I needed cheering up because of my marriage breakdown. People invited me into the field. The new scientists soon learned I was useful. On a remote island, I helped the biologist studying snow petrels. With a different scientist, I captured and tagged Adelie penguins, helping to monitor populations on the icebound islands near station. I also assisted Sarah, who was working on Weddell seals for the summer. She hadn’t worked with Weddells before and she appreciated the advice and experience I’d developed helping out the previous summer.

One night at a party on station, she came to me, drunk, and asked me to dance. But I declined and stayed in my post against the wall, swigging my beer.

‘Come into the field with me again,’ she said over her shoulder, as she swivelled back out to dance. ‘You need to get off station more. And I need a hand. There’s been a flush of pups up in Long Fjord.’

In the morning I packed my field bag, roped it to a quad bike and followed her out from station across the sea ice. We spun far out on the frozen waste, whizzing north past two islands locked like black hummocks in the ice. Far out, the sea ice was like a highway. We saw lines of black Adelies as they headed for their rookeries, their feathers ruffling in the wind.

Navigation in the Vestfold Hills wasn’t easy and we had to look for specific landmarks that would direct us to the fjords. Until you knew the characteristics of the hills, they appeared featureless, rolling low and monotonous to the grey dome of the plateau. But once you knew what to look for, the hills became familiar friends, and the frozen fjords were the roads we raced along on our quad bikes.

The fjords were a place of relative protection from the wind and the blizzards; the wind could still barrel down from the plateau and along the valleys between the hills, but there were sheltered areas—often around islands in the fjords—and these were the sites where Weddell seals gave birth to their pups each year in spring. Bull males defended breathing holes where their harem of females hauled themselves out of the water onto the ice.

As Sarah and I drove through the frozen fjords, we passed several clusters of dozing seals. We stayed wide of them, not wanting to disturb them until we returned later with our tagging gear after offloading our luggage at the field hut.

Brookes Hut was a splash of red—a converted shipping container—at the end of a small bay overlooking the sea ice. Sarah and I bounced our quads over the rumpled tide cracks and drove up the track behind a mound of dirty snow to park just outside the hut. We lugged our gear inside where it was dull and quiet and the whine of the wind seemed distant. We stashed our food on the shelves among the existing cans of baked beans and powdered milk, sultanas and frozen cans of beer. Then we tossed sleeping bags on bunks, opened the vents and set up the toilet with a plastic bag that we would take back with us to station to be burned.

While Sarah boiled water for cups of tea, I went outside to watch tiny brown storm petrels flittering over the rocks near the hut. The morning light had shifted to grey and the ice was flat and featureless. Somewhere across the fjord the hollow bray of a Weddell seal echoed. Cold air froze in my nostrils and drew tears. The landscape was beautiful; it was rugged, harsh and wild. And it felt good to be off station, away from the gossip and pernickety human interactions. Sarah was easy to be with. She was undemanding and I knew we’d have a good few days. The mechanics’ shed would survive without me.

After tea and chocolate, we gathered our equipment and set out across the ice, shattering the silence once more with the reverberating noise of our quads. Sarah led the way to the nearest colony—a gathering of dark grey spotted slugs lying stretched on the ice. We cut the engines and stood listening to occasional coughs and snorts. A pup barking at its mother. The hollow echoing bray of another seal, further along the fjord. Then the sound of our crampons, crunching and scratching on ice as we walked towards the group.

We circled the harem, counting pups and cows. Several seals raised sleek pointed heads to look at us, opening and closing their slit nostrils, prickling the air with pale whiskers. One spun to watch us, spreading its hind flippers to reveal a coloured tag in the webbing. The pups dozed, floppy bags of grey-brown fur lying prone on the ice. It’d be my job to dance in and drag a pup away while Sarah distracted the mother with a flag on a pole. While she kept the mother entertained, I would quickly tag the pup and let it go.

We had a successful day, tagging numerous pups and adults. That evening, Sarah cooked dinner with fresh vegies from the resupply ship, and served it with wine. It was a good start to the season. We sat rugged up on the deck watching the sky darken towards a midnight sunset, the air chilling our wine, our gloved hands fumbling with our forks.

After we’d washed the dishes we played cards. Then we pulled closed the blackout curtains and slipped into our sleeping bags on opposite bunks. The wind echoed in the vents and buffeted the walls of the hut. It was quiet inside. Quiet and safe. I lay awake listening to Sarah breathe, feeling the night around me, thinking of Debbie at home in bed with a man I didn’t know.

Like a shadow, Sarah came across the room. I had thought she was asleep, but she must have heard my ragged breathing and felt the weight of my grief. She unzipped my sleeping bag and lay down beside me beneath the cocoon of feathers. Her hands were gentle, running up and down my arms. Her body was a warm entanglement.

I didn’t want to feel desire, yet I was unhinged by the soft touch of her fingers tracing my cheeks and lips. When she kissed me, I struggled to hold back, but she felt me rise even without touching me. I was too broken to refuse.

She was refuge.


My favourite field hut at Davis Station is the melon at Trajer Ridge. It’s shaped like a watermelon—hence the name. To get there you walk out from station over the undulating brown hills. You climb over saddles and walk through rocky valleys, until suddenly you rise above a crumbling ridgeline and see light shimmering on a secret lake tucked below. Beneath the spacious sky you wander down to the lake’s edge and squat by the still water. Early in the season the lake is locked by ice and laced with strings of ascending bubbles. By late spring it has melted to a mirror of light.

After you leave the lake, you bumble over endless rock fields and snowdrifts, descending gradually out of the hills until you step onto frozen Ellis Fjord. This is when you strap on the crampons that have been bumping and clinking against your pack, and begin crunching over the long flat drudgery of ice, working up blisters on your heels.

On a still day, the reflected light is hot. You sweat and have to stop to shed layers. Everything is quiet. When you start moving again, all you can hear is the sound of your breathing and the scratch of your spikes. The hills rise around you, and occasionally, along the edge of the fjord where ice meets rock, you find small pools, smooth as glass, melted by the sun.

At the end of the fjord the land climbs towards the plateau. You trudge up a long ridge with grand views across the desolate snow-patched Vestfolds. On a clear morning, the far hills are dark against the turgid blue of the sky. By afternoon, the light washes out and flattens the landscape, dissecting distance.

Cresting the ridge, you see the red dome of the hut, balanced on a slab of rock below. It’s attached to the earth by wire, to anchor it in the fierce blast of blizzards and katabatic winds. Beyond, the plateau stretches white. It’s a relief to step inside the hut and take off your pack. On the deck, you open a beer and sit in clean dry socks and thermals, watching the light wash over the hills until the cold drives you inside to cook dinner and read, listening to the voice of the wind escalating in the wires. At night, you slip into your sleeping bag and wait for sleep to find you. The wind buffets the walls and sings in the cables. You hear it whining in the vents, juddering at the door. Within the hut you are safe, curled up within your bag. You could be floating in a womb.

That is how Sarah made me feel in the aftermath of my marriage collapse. Through Christmas and over the summer, she continued to find excuses to invite me to assist her in the field. And, like a dog, I continued to follow her. Rumour quickly bound us together; this was good for Sarah, as she was safe on station, largely immune from flirtation and propositions. On the whole, there was no ill will towards me. We were discreet and people knew what I’d been through, they knew I had suffered. But questions accompanied me wherever I went. What was Sarah like in bed? How was it that I was the lucky guy? And how did I feel knowing Sarah had a boyfriend back home?

Sarah never mentioned her boyfriend to me. Other girls had photos of their boyfriends plastered over the pinboards in their rooms, but Sarah’s photos were of her parents and her cat. I didn’t ask about her home life and she didn’t ask about mine. In the soothing comfort of rebound, I allowed myself to think our relationship could grow into something more. On station, I stayed quiet with my head bowed and my heart closed. In the field, Sarah was my cocoon.

But eventually the Aurora Australis appeared in Prydz Bay to deliver more supplies and to collect departing winterers, including me. When I told Sarah I’d like to meet her in Hobart when her ship returned, her eyes became cool and her face shuttered. She laughed a tight little laugh. ‘But you knew I had a boyfriend. I thought you understood.’

The ground rocked beneath me.

‘I’m sorry, Tom. It’s been fun. But I’m engaged,’ she said.

‘Engaged?’

‘You know how it is,’ she said. ‘It’s not convenient to wear a ring down here.’

A ring was not convenient and yet I had been convenient. She kissed me blithely on the lips. ‘Come to my cabin tonight.

It’s our last time.’

So why did I go to her that night? What was it that took me unhesitatingly to her door? Why did I lace my boots in the foyer of the living quarters, don my coat and walk down the dirty melted-out path to her donga where candles and soft music waited for me?

She let me in and undressed me, and in the space of that one night I was splintered again, smashed apart. There had been no healing from Debbie, only avoidance, replacement and self-delusion. But I let Sarah take me. I lay beside her that last night, clinging to the warmth of her body, feeling myself blowing away like dust in the wind.

The next morning, the helicopter took the husk of me to the ship and I returned to Tasmania.