The Lightkeeper's Wife

25



I always go for a walk early in the morning; it’s fresh and cool and quiet. This morning I particularly want to do normal things for Jess after the horror of that trip to the hospital last night. Like me, Jess is a creature of routine, and she takes comfort from these rituals.

We never usually meet anyone on our dawn jaunts, so it’s a surprise to both of us when we see Laura wandering along the bush track ahead. She floats through the scrub, her gaze focused somewhere out over the channel. I slow down, hoping to avoid her, but she hears Jess rustling in the grass and she turns.

‘Oh, hello.’ She doesn’t smile and her face is drawn. ‘Sorry. I wasn’t expecting to see anyone.’ She waits for me to join her. ‘You walk often?’ she asks.

‘Most days.’

She nods and I follow her onto the beach.

‘Is Mouse okay?’ I ask.

‘He’ll be all right. It was pretty horrible, though.’ She stops walking and sighs. ‘I didn’t sleep much.’

I hesitate, unsure whether to push on with my walk or whether I should wait for her. Jess trots along the beach and up into the grass along the shore, sniffing animal trails.

‘I didn’t stay at the hospital,’ she says, staring across the water. ‘There wasn’t much point. Once they sedated him, he slept. And they said they wouldn’t let him wake properly for a while. So I caught a taxi home.’ She turned to look at me. ‘I don’t like seeing him like that.’

‘No.’ I thrust my hands in my pockets.

‘He has paranoid schizophrenia,’ she says. ‘I thought he was taking his medication, but apparently not. After I got home last night I found a pile of pills stashed in one of my pot plants.’

‘Will he be home soon?’

‘Not for a couple of weeks. They have to wean him off sedation and then stabilise him on medication before he can come home.’ She looks up at me and I notice dark patches under her eyes. ‘Thank you for what you did for us,’ she says.

‘That’s all right.’

She glances at Jess snuffling up on the bank and then she gazes along the beach. ‘Do you mind if I walk with you?’ she asks.

I’d rather be alone, but what can I say? I shrug. ‘Okay.’

We wander along the sand, not exactly walking together, but not completely apart. Laura strolls along, distracted. At the end of the beach, she follows me up along the cliff trail. I feel a bit awkward, but I try to pretend she isn’t there. Unperturbed by the addition to our party, Jess trots quietly ahead.

The bush along the cliff is drier and we see thornbills and scrub wrens. A butcherbird chimes from high in a straggly eucalypt. I keep hoping Laura will turn back, but she comes all the way to the next beach and we walk back together along the road. At my driveway, I bid her farewell, but she stops and looks at me.

‘That was nice,’ she says. ‘Can we do it again? Maybe tomorrow?’

‘I’m not sure what I’m doing tomorrow,’ I say. What if Emma’s here? Laura could go walking by herself. She doesn’t need to come with me.

‘I’ll look out for you if I’m up,’ she says. ‘Walking’s good for me. I feel a bit better already.’ She stares down at her house where it snuggles behind a string of tree ferns. ‘It’s so quiet without Mouse,’ she says. ‘I suppose I should enjoy the break.’ She smiles at me sadly and I feel the weight of her loneliness.

‘I’d better go,’ I say. ‘I have to get ready for work.’

‘Thanks again for last night,’ she calls after me.


When I leave the garage that afternoon, the car is in a rush to get to the antdiv. I try to slow it down, but it takes corners recklessly and drives too fast along the highway towards Kingston, swinging into the carpark.

As arranged, Emma is waiting on the pavement in front of the building. But there’s a complication: Nick is standing there too. He’s standing too close to her, staking his claim. What did she say about him not owning her? I stop the car at the far end of the carpark, about fifty metres away, and sit, watching them converse. Neither of them has seen me yet and I’m unsure whether to stay or go.

Nick is leaning in towards Emma as they talk, and even from here, I can see him gazing at her intently. They look accustomed to being in each other’s space. Their body language makes my suspicions harder to deny. I want to think of Emma as my girlfriend, but really, I have no idea what goes on during the day when she’s at work. For all I know, she could go home with Nick at lunchtime. There are many hours in a day during which Emma could explore options other than me. I’ve been a fool to imagine that Emma could be mine. A few dinners and a night away together and I’m gone.

Finally, I move the car forward. I might be outshone by Nick’s predatory masculinity, but I won’t sit by watching like this. Emma asked me to pick her up. And if she asked me, then she didn’t ask him.

Nick notices the Subaru before Emma does, and scowls when he sees me behind the wheel. He murmurs something in her ear. She turns and looks at me, her face flushing pink and her body tensing. The intimacy between them is erased as she pulls away, holding him off with her hands. ‘I’m going with Tom,’ I hear her say.

‘What?’

‘You heard me.’

Scooping up her backpack, she bounds towards the car, pulls the door open and flings herself inside, closing the door with a thud. Nick bangs the top of the car with the flat of his hand. He bends down to stare in the side window at Emma, his eyes possessive.

‘See you for morning coffee,’ he says. ‘The usual. In the café. Nine o’clock.’ He mouths something else, but Emma is already looking away from him. She’s looking at me, it makes my skin tingle.

‘Rescued,’ she says with a laugh. ‘He’s persistent, isn’t he?’

As we drive home, unspoken questions are thick between us. I want Emma to negate Nick. But she keeps her thoughts hugged close and prattles on instead about tidying her office and a trip she’s planning up north to visit her family. She’d like to see them again before she goes back south, and now’s the time to do it, before the frenetic pre-expedition rush begins. Her sister has two kids and she’s only seen them once or twice. Perhaps she should take a gift for them, but she doesn’t know what to buy. She doesn’t know much about kids, she says. In fact, she knows more about penguins.

I tell her we have something in common—I know more about birds than about people too. The look she casts my way is tinged with annoyance. She was only joking, she says. Of course she knows more about people than penguins. She was just speaking figuratively.

I don’t know what to say after that. All I can think of is Nick, and yet I can’t bring myself to say his name aloud. I can’t make myself ask her what’s going on between them. I’m afraid she’ll admit everything and then ask me to turn around and take her back to the antdiv. I couldn’t bear it. Last night after the hospital, I lay awake in bed thinking of her. Remembering the feel of her skin against mine. Trying to recall the smell of her hair and the curve of her smile. Trying to convince myself that Nick doesn’t exist for her.


At home, I light the fire and boil the kettle.

Emma doesn’t give me a chance to pour tea. She descends on me with a look of fierce determination. I wanted to allow room for discussion, but with her hands and eyes on me, it’s impossible to resist, and I submit willingly. This is what I’ve been wanting, after all—Emma’s lips on mine, her body against me, tight with need, her hands gripping me close.

It’s desperate love-making. All my unasked questions slip away, knocked aside like vases of flowers spilled in our wake. We grasp each other in the kitchen, tumble into the lounge room then make our way slowly to the bedroom, peeling off clothes, sliding shivery beneath the doona, feeding off the combined warmth of our bodies.

After a makeshift dinner, Emma pulls a bottle of whisky from her backpack with feigned stealth and a provocative smile. ‘Leftover duty-free,’ she says. ‘I brought it back from down south.’

I shake my head. ‘I’m no good at whisky.’

She strokes the stem of the bottle with a finger. ‘Let’s see if we can help you to become friends.’ She finds ice in the back of my freezer, cracks several cubes into a couple of tumblers and pours a generous shot into each, then passes me a tumbler. ‘Cheers. And hey, we’re having a party on Saturday night. Eight o’clock start. Will you come?’

‘I’m not good at parties either.’

‘You’ll be fine. Bring your own grog.’

We sit down together in the lounge room. The fire burbles quietly, the flames licking at the glass, the muffled crackle of burning wood. Jess is curled up in the corner on her rug. It’s dark outside, and here in our circle by the fire, all is cosy.

‘Drink up,’ Emma insists.

I take a reluctant sip and brace myself as the whisky burns down to my chest.

‘Good, isn’t it?’ Emma smiles. ‘Have some more.’ She jiggles the ice around her glass and takes a gulp, sighing with pleasure.

Mincingly, I sip a little more, preparing myself for the shocking burn.

‘Not like that,’ Emma says. ‘That’s pathetic.’ She crawls forward across the couch and takes the glass from me. ‘Tip your head back. I’m going to teach you how to take a proper mouthful.’

She pours a slug of liquor into my mouth then covers my lips with hers and kisses me, forcing me to swallow. I gasp as the whisky scalds its way down. It doesn’t take long to feel a creeping warmth oozing through my body. Emma pours more whisky into my mouth, kisses me again, teases me with her tongue and with her hands, then passes whisky from her own mouth into mine and forces me to swallow that too. She sits back laughing, and the room is warm, and my body is comfortable and growing looser by the minute.

‘You need this.’ She smiles at me persuasively. ‘You’re so tied up inside. Here.’ She sloshes more whisky into my glass. ‘I’ll just get more ice.’

I sip obediently while she fetches the ice tray and drops a handful of cubes into my glass. She tops up her own glass and then switches off the light as she sits down. Now the room is dark except for the dim glow from the lamp, and the rosy shimmer of the fire.

‘There, that’s better.’ Emma tugs off her fleece and stretches her legs out across the couch. ‘How are you feeling now? Do you like it?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Have more, then.’

I take another good sip and the spreading warmth is wonderfully soothing. A smile plays on my lips as smooth as liquid.

‘Hold your glass towards the fire and have a look,’ Emma suggests.

I do as she says and find myself entranced by the fiery swirling bronze liquid. It really is a fine drink—complex, structured and colourful.

‘It’s like your skin,’ I say.

‘What?’

‘It reminds me of your skin.’

Emma laughs. ‘You want to feel my skin?’

‘Always.’

She laughs again and comes across the couch to kiss me. Everything about her feels fluid and light. I run my hands over the curves of her face, tracing her cheekbones, her lips, her eyebrows, losing myself in the outline of her face, the texture of her skin, my whole being swelling to have her close, pressed against me like this, intimate. My hands move urgently over the contours of her body, discovering and rediscovering, memorising her.

She pulls back too soon and pours more whisky into my glass.

‘So, are we going out?’ I ask bluntly, my tongue blurring in my mouth.

She laughs. ‘Of course we’re not going out. We’re staying in.’

She’s deliberately misunderstanding me, teasing me. I drink more, trying to find a way to overcome my shyness. I want her to tell me what Nick is to her.

With each sip of whisky, the next mouthful becomes more appealing. The urge in my groin simmers and subsides, eases to a mellow warmth. Her hand on me is heaven. I’m a bottomless well. Feeling is flowing in me, rippling back and forth, swirling and tumbling. And then the room is gently tipping, the curtains swaying, the couch rocking.

‘You need to talk.’ Emma massages my head with her fingers. ‘You need to let it all out. Let it come.’

Her voice seems thick around the edges, her words less distinct. I wonder if she’s riding on the same wave as me. I toss back the contents of my glass and reach for hers, toss that back as well. Pleasure shivers through me as the whisky intensifies its hold. Emma is staring at me, her face still with concentration, her eyes great wells of studious empathy and understanding. She’s hearing what I’m saying without words. She’s feeling my grief, my emptiness, my loneliness.

I lean back on the couch and start to talk without looking at her. ‘Emma, there’s so much I need to tell you . . .’

The sentences are halting at first. It’s easier without eye contact so I fix my gaze on the fire. ‘I had such a hard time down south . . . The winter was terrible. So dark. And so isolating . . . It had just started when my wife left me . . . Her name’s Debbie, my wife . . . My ex-wife, I mean . . . But the ship was gone, so I couldn’t go back . . .’

I have a sensation of stumbling over rocks and logs, trying to find my feet. But I struggle on. Emma is right. I need this. It’s good for me. Slowly I gain momentum. I allow the flickering flames to soothe me, and I talk and talk, the words rolling out like a hidden river.

‘Antarctica was tough for me. I loved it but I hated it.’ It’s the first time I’ve acknowledged this. Nine years to permit myself an honest analysis. ‘I blamed Antarctica for losing Debbie. And I blamed myself for going. Our relationship was good before I left. We were solid. Antarctica was our plan to get ahead. To make some money . . . I had this feeling I shouldn’t go. But I didn’t listen. Going was a choice. A conscious decision. I knew we were at risk, but I overrode it. The promise of the south was too good.’

Memories wash through me with the whisky, gaining strength in recollection. I am immersed in my own world and I continue, talking about Antarctica, the devastation of my marriage breakup, followed by Sarah’s rejection of me, and then my father’s death. Then all my baggage about Dad comes tumbling out, surprising me. ‘I keep remembering all those times I watched him leave the house when I was a boy, and I wished he’d ask me to come. I should have just tagged along; I’m sure he’d have let me. But I was afraid of him. Mum was easy. So kind and full of love. I felt safe with her. But Dad and I weren’t quite connected. I regret missing my chance with him. I can’t forget that.

‘And now my mum is dying.’ The last of it is welling out now. ‘But this time I’m here to watch over her. I’d be with her now, but she won’t let me. She’s in a cabin on Bruny Island. All I can do is make sure I’m there when the time comes. It’s what I want to do. To see her through to the finish.’

As I talk, I feel the weight coming off me, rising like a heat haze. Emma listens in silence and I talk until I’m spent and there are almost no more words to say.

For a suspended moment, I watch the flames licking slowly in the wood heater, not looking at her. Finally, I know I can tell her what I feel. ‘I didn’t expect to meet you, Emma. And you’ve changed me. You’ve given me back part of myself I didn’t think I’d find again . . . You’re so bold. So alive and confident. And you’ve made me feel like living again. You’ve made me want to embrace life. To clutch it with both hands. The way you do. I love you.’

Then, I’m ready to ask her about Nick. Having emptied myself out for her, at last I’m able to mention his name. ‘Emma . . . is something happening with Nick? Or are you with me?’ I turn to look into her eyes, to see what they reveal. And what I see is a woman asleep on the couch. Her head is cushioned on her elbow and her mouth is slightly open, her body slack.

I have no idea how much of my confession she has heard, if anything, and for a moment it is almost amusing. I allow myself a wry smile at the bungled timing of all this—my life story poured out to deaf ears. Then it occurs to me she certainly hasn’t registered the question about Nick. And with that realisation my soul folds.

I pour another whisky and drink it quickly, both despising and enjoying the renewed burn of it as I swallow.

And then, a glimmer in my mind. The birth of release. Despite the sludge of my drunkenness, I am aware enough to understand that whether Emma remembers any of it or not, she has triggered my purging, which was, perhaps, all that I needed of her.

I should thank her for that.





26



The morning was wet and miserable, and even though she’d been in bed since eight the previous evening, Mary was tired. Nights were no longer a time of rest. She propped herself up with every pillow in the cabin, but she still couldn’t breathe. If she lay down it was easy to imagine what it’d be like to die from drowning.

She’d been awake since dawn, listening to the weather. Intermittent rain drummed on the roof and spattered the windows and the clouds were low and sombre. She would have stayed in bed, but she couldn’t sleep for the coughing. And because of Jack, wandering through her room all night. He’d been watching her. Reminding her.

Since the scout camp, time had somehow folded in on itself. Leon came each day, and now he sat with her for longer. Or at least it seemed he was there for longer. He was kinder too, and wore a look of endless patience. Sometimes they sat together for hours. And perhaps sometimes Leon came more than once a day. But there were blank patches in her memory now, as one day collapsed into the next so she was no longer sure whether she’d been to bed, or whether she had slept or eaten. Days were as indistinct as the tufts of grass waving on the dunes in the endless wind.

Earlier in the week, her two sons had come, Gary and Tom. Was it Wednesday or Thursday? It didn’t matter. At least she remembered that they visited. She had known things must be getting worse for the two of them to show up—in her lucid moments she was aware of her deterioration. But Jan hadn’t arrived, so the end was not yet nigh.

It saddened her that Gary was so large these days—he was so big he seemed to fill the cabin, everything soft where it should have been firm. She now had to look hard within her son’s heavy features to see the slip of a boy he once was—all arms and legs, with Jack’s smile. Of course, Gary had never had Jack’s aloof shyness. Tom was comfortable saying only what needed to be said, but Gary seemed compelled to fill all the spaces with words. While Tom set the kettle on to boil in the kitchen, and found cups and biscuits, Gary reclined in the armchair and spun an endless monologue about work, Judy, the B&B, and Jan’s opinions about Mary’s health. Instead of listening, Mary found herself staring vacantly out the window, tuning in to the wind and the short blasts of rain that flushed in and out over Gary’s one-way conversation.

Tom was in a strange mood, very different from his last visit. Mary vaguely remembered something he’d said about a girl and the possibility of going south, but she couldn’t quite recollect the details. Perhaps the girl had already knocked the buoyancy out of him. Tom wasn’t very resilient when it came to relationships. He wasn’t very good at relationships at all. Poor lad.

She sensed he was brooding on something while he waited for the kettle to boil, but she concluded that he was blunted by the overwhelming presence of Gary in the room. She used to wish her two sons could be closer; however, there were too many years between them. They had spent too little time together as boys, and their personalities were too different.

If she’d anticipated what Tom was building up to, she might have been more prepared. But she had no idea what was brewing in his mind, no idea that he could rattle her so suddenly and so unexpectedly. Numbed by Gary’s constant blather, when Tom’s question came, she felt as though she’d been hit with a brick.

‘Mum, what happened in that storm on the cape before I was born?’

Gary spluttered tea and coughed biscuit. And Mary was breathless, unable to speak.

‘Something about a broken leg,’ Tom said. ‘Gary mentioned it the other day. Something to do with Auntie Rose.’

Gary tried to stop him with a voice like iron. ‘I told you to ask Jan. Not Mum.’

But Tom was looking at her, hopeful, unaware that her breathing had stalled and that she was drowning in shock and in lungs full of fluid. Drowning in a past that wouldn’t leave her alone.

Then the boys were hopping around her, white-faced and anxious, rubbing her back, holding her medication, pressing a glass of water to her lips. She was weak, and Tom was so horrified that he didn’t push further. But Mary knew she must provide some sort of answer. When she could talk again, she gave the boys her edited version of the saga. Not the veins and muscles and flesh of it—that was the stuff she planned to die with. Instead, she gave them small pieces of the facts.

‘There was a massive storm on the cape and the pony got out,’ she said. ‘I was trying to get him back inside when I had a fall from a cliff, breaking my leg. Prior to the storm, your father and I had been having a difficult time in our marriage. I suppose the accident saved us, in a way. We’d been on the cape so long we had forgotten how to appreciate it. Over the years we’d started taking things for granted. Like the beautiful place we lived in. And each other. It’s not hard to do. Life gets busy and you forget to look after one another. Then the accident happened. Your Aunt Rose came to stay for a while to help out while I was in hospital. While we were apart, your father and I realised how far our relationship had slipped. When I came home, we worked hard to fix things between us. It took time, and not all couples could do what we did. But we had your father’s courage and my perseverance. And hope arrived, in the form of you, Tom. I fell pregnant. You were unplanned—I’ll admit it. But you were a wonderful and fitting motivation for our recovery.’

Mary continued with her story, watching the attentive looks on the faces of her sons. She described Rose’s selfishness. Her laziness. The way she did little to help Jack around the house while Mary was in hospital. How Rose was more of an impediment to Jack than an assistant. She gave them a coloured truth.

Coloured truth, she believed, was far less sinful than a direct lie.


They had received an early storm warning from Maatsuyker Island to the south-west of Cape Bruny. Radio communication between the three south-eastern lights—Bruny, Maatsuyker and Tasman Islands—was a regular part of the daily routine. But even before the warning, they’d known the storm was coming. Purple clouds had been massing to the south all morning and the mountains of mainland Tasmania were obscured by a darkness that only came with heavy rains. By early afternoon, the skies were dark as dusk and the wind was shrieking.

From the moment they’d received the message from Maatsuyker, Jack and the head keeper had been skating over the cape, checking that everything was tied down. The grounds were always meticulously tidy, but they were worried about damage if the storm lived up to its potential. While the men were busy, Mary worked with Jan and Gary, bringing toys and bikes inside off the verandah. The cow was pleased to be led into the shed but they were unable to catch the pony. He was excited and skittish in the wind, galloping wildly across the slope, charging through each attempt to secure him. As the wind escalated, Mary and the children retreated to the cottage.

Jack dived in for a restless lunch, tossing back sandwiches and tea. His eyes were fastened on the window and the racing clouds. Little was said. Spattering rain was blowing in and out. He left quickly, hurrying to finish his tasks. Within the cottage, Mary knew they were safe; it had been built to withstand immense storms. And the light, too, had been constructed to stand for eternity. Jack would be safe up there.

For a while, she sat in the lounge room with the children, trying to knit. Gary was on the floor working on a piece of wood he’d been carving for days and Jan was curled up on a chair, reading a book. Outside, the wind gusted and shuddered under the eaves, whistling around the walls and pressing under the door. Eventually, Mary set her knitting aside and went to the kitchen where she could watch the tower. Jack was up there somewhere, observing the weather, like her.

She wished this thought might give her comfort, but the vibe between them had not been good lately. She couldn’t remember how long it was since they’d turned to each other in intimacy—Jack had locked that part of himself away. And they hadn’t talked about anything of consequence for months. At the dinner table, they kept up appearances for the benefit of the children, but beyond that it seemed there was little love left. And yet, there must be something in her that cared for his well-being. In threatening conditions like this, she still worried that he might be injured. He was her husband, and she felt loyalty towards him, even though their relationship was hollow.

She watched as the rain arrived in large fat drops, slung into long smudges on the windows. Her view of the hill became bleary, and the tower seemed bent and twisted. Time moved slowly as she watched the clouds sink and the raindrops thicken. Halfway down the paddock, the pony huddled against the wind, his tail pressed into the rain. She felt sorry for him, alone out there when he could have been in the protection of the shed. Perhaps he’d let her catch him now. She set the kettle on the warmer and pulled on her coat and hat, calling to Jan and Gary not to venture outside. On the porch, she paused to listen to the wind roaring across the cape and the sheds banging and clattering in the blast, the rain pounding on tin. Then she hurried to the paddock. It’d be best to get this job over quickly and retreat inside.

The pony hadn’t moved. He was standing by the fence, and as she approached, her coat flapping, his eyes widened and nostrils flared. She managed to tie a rope to his head collar and turn him uphill, but he strained against her, trying to keep his rump into the wind.

At first she handled him gently, but as the cold and the rain beat into her face and he wouldn’t budge, she grew rougher and more insistent, dragging at his head. Exasperated, she leaned against his shoulder and tried to push him backwards. He took a step back, then another and they slowly progressed up the hill and out through the gate. Then the real trouble began.

Beyond the security of the paddock, the pony became even more skittish and uncertain, prancing and jostling and stepping on Mary’s feet. The wind was unbelievably strong and Mary clung to the rope, trying to use the pony as a shield as they laboured down the track towards the shed. The door had blown open and was slamming against the wall. At the sound, the pony propped, shied and snorted, wrenching the rope from her hands. Then he took off. Cursing, she followed him over the hill.

On the western side of the cape, the land fell away quickly, diving through grasses and scrub then arriving suddenly at the cliffs. Mary was worried the pony might not see the edge until too late. He could go over, scrabbling at the lip with his hooves. She ran down the slope after him, exposed to the full force of the gale. The rain was dense and sharp, driven by the wind. Further west, she saw the pony bounding across the slope. She tried to hurry towards him, but he disappeared into cloud. She paused, unsure whether he’d fallen or was just out of view.

Then she saw him again, trotting jerkily across the slope to the north, zigzagging among the scrub, head low. She followed him, clutching bushes to steady herself. He stopped at a high point where the vegetation grew dense. Quickly, she scrambled across, feet skating in the gravel. Suddenly her foot slid on loose rocks, caught for a moment then slid again. She grasped at a tussock but it whipped out of her fingers, and then she was sliding, slipping down a steep gully, too close to the edge.

She dug her fingers into the mud, and scraped at anything solid. Her fingers raked on stone. There was a scream in her throat. Then air, all around. And space. She thudded against dirt. Rock.

It ended in a thump and a crack as her leg folded. Air huffed out of her like closed gallows. Slipping in and out of awareness, she wondered whether she was warm or cold.

Eventually, she felt rainwater running inside her coat and realised she’d have to move and find a way up the cliff. It took forever to edge up the rock wall and then roll over and arrange herself in an awkward sitting position with her leg stretched in front of her. After heaving the leg into place, she slumped against the cliff with her coat tucked around her. Rain sluiced over her. She melded with the darkness all around.

Hours passed before Jack and the other keeper found her. They scrambled down ledges to reach her, and then carried her up to the cottage while she reeled in a fog of pain. Jack was needed on the cape; he couldn’t leave. So his brother, Sam, came from the farm and drove her to hospital in Hobart. It was a wretched journey: her leg throbbed, and despite blankets and hot water bottles, she couldn’t get warm.

At the hospital, they confined her to bed in traction until the leg straightened. Then they set it in plaster and sent her to her parents’ place to recover. She was furious and bereft. The pony was safely back in his usual paddock, but she was here, stranded away from her family. Her mother patted her arm, smiling maternally. You’ll be all right, dear. They’ll manage without you. But Mary knew they wouldn’t manage. Jack was useless in the kitchen and Jan was too young to shoulder the load. The head keeper’s wife wasn’t well, so it was too much to ask her to care for the children.

It was no surprise when Jack’s letter arrived.

Dear Mary,





I hope you are recovering well. It has been very difficult to manage both the light-station duties and the family on my own. I have decided that I must call on Rose to come and help us while you are away. She can cook and look after the children while I attend to the many jobs that must be done after the storm.





Get well quickly. The children are missing you.





Jack





Mary was irritated. Rose was an ineffective solution. She was simply too lazy, and she’d be no use around the house. But of course, Jack, would be blind to that—all he’d see was an extra pair of hands.

Sitting by the fire in her parents’ home, Mary had much time to contemplate. She thought about Jack’s letter and everything it represented. She read it over and over, looking for something that wasn’t there. The fall and the broken leg had shaken her and she needed something from Jack, some reassurance that she mattered and that she was important to him. She wanted to know how he’d felt when he discovered she was missing. She wanted him to tell her about the search and rescue. She wanted to hear of his concern, the revival of his love and affection when he knew she was hurt. But the letter gave her none of this.

She wondered what would have happened if she’d died. The children might have grieved for a time, but what of Jack? How long would her death have affected him? Over the years they had become like ghosts to each other, shadows passing along the walls, beings without substance or reality. At best, she figured Jack would have noticed her absence more than he noticed her presence. The space in his bed. His dinner plate unfilled. The empty kitchen. Nobody to nurture the children. The cow waiting by the gate to be milked.

Their conversations, he would not miss—they were devoid of anything that mattered, littered with necessary facts, but bearing nothing of warmth, no connection or intimacy. In recent years, their eyes had flattened during speech. They had closed each other out like a door pulled shut. And their jobs had become the reason for existing. Jack, the lighthouse keeper. Mary, the mother.

If she had died in the accident, Mary was aware that Jack could have written a new future for himself, one without the burden of a wife. He could have sent Jan and Gary to boarding school. He could have become one with the wind and melted into the solitude he wrapped so closely around himself. She often wondered if he would have been happier that way.

After ten weeks, the leg mended and she went home, aware there was much work to be done to knit her marriage back together. But it seemed she was too late. The Jack she arrived home to was a stranger, aloof and unwelcoming, disinterested in her return. Aware of her own fragility, and shocked by Jack’s detachment, she took the children and went back to her parents’ house. She needed space to find her way out of the debilitating grip of despair before she could attempt to revive her relationship. Two months later, she returned once more to the cape; this time she was ready to fix things with Jack.

At first, she and Jack edged around each other like skittish crabs, not knowing how to reconnect. There were times when she considered leaving for good, but commitment was something her parents had taught her, and divorce never seemed a real option. It might have been possible if she’d been a different person in a different era. But society frowned on separation, and she was in her mid-thirties with two children. Jan and Gary had to be considered too. Jack was their father, and they needed him.

There was also the burden of her guilt. Over the years at the lighthouse as Jack had become more distant, instead of retreating and dreaming of a life with Adam, she could have put more effort into her marriage. Jack might not be passionate like Adam, but he was solid and dependable, with an inner strength that matched the place they lived in . . . Bruny Island. Yes, the island was part of what held them together. How lucky they were in their mutual love of this place. It gave them a base on which to reconstruct themselves.

In the end, it was Mary’s task to remake the family. She strived to avoid conflict, steering cautiously around prickly issues. She organised weekly picnics down in their quiet cove where sometimes they saw seals or dolphins. She re-ignited their sex life. Despite his initial resistance, she could see this was important to Jack. Sex reunited him with his physical self and it brought touch back into their relationship. Touch and intimacy. She also ensured they holidayed away at the farm, where Jack fished and walked and laughed with Max and Faye.

Jack started to put in more effort too. Instead of hiding in a book or escaping early to bed each evening, he stayed in the living area with the family. He talked books with Jan and spent more time with Gary: fishing, walking, teaching him carpentry in the shed. Then, when the children were in bed, Mary and Jack played canasta, five hundred, Scrabble. They reminisced on good times, unearthing their favourite memories. It was all so laborious and forced at first, but the new habits gained momentum.

Then Tom came along. The gift and the inspiration. The precious one who made them whole again. Mary didn’t tell Jack she was pregnant until they’d begun to heal, and when she gave him the news, he wept. Jack liked babies. If he hadn’t been so crushed by Hobart life, he’d have been more involved when Jan and Gary were small. Even so, he’d done as much as he could, cradling them to sleep, walking them in the pram, bringing them in to be fed. When Tom arrived, he took extra care with him. If Tom cried at night, Jack was there, taking the baby in his arms and walking up and down the corridor. Or he would sit on the couch stroking Tom’s feathery little head with a hand already twisted with arthritis.

Jack could not be remade. Yet he did mellow, and she loved him for what he had been and also for what he was—a man of commitment. He was never particularly close to the children as they grew up, being too awkward and inscrutable for that. And he never completely recovered from the air and distance of the cape. But he and Mary were at ease together. And there was satisfaction in the achievement of a long marriage. By staying together, they had accomplished something valuable and intangible—an unspoken trust and solidarity that came from the knowledge they’d survived hardship and had not been destroyed.

There was cause for celebration in that.