The Lightkeeper's Wife

30



Afternoon. Soft mellow light melting through closed curtains. Mary was in her parents’ house, coiled in a chair. Jack was at the lighthouse alone. Rose was gone now, he said, she was leaving the island. Mary had been grimly pleased about this. After all that had happened, the Masons didn’t want Rose back at the farm. They had tolerated her presence all these years, but even they had their limits.

On the low table in front of Mary was Jack’s letter, begging for her return. She had read it, but felt nothing. It was all too much.

Slowly she drifted, fragile and damaged. The fire crackled intermittently. Hurt and rejection had swallowed themselves and she was numb. She didn’t know what she should do.

A rap on the door startled her. She knocked her cup of tea from the broad arm of the chair and watched the sepia stain spread across the carpet. The sound came again, but she didn’t have the strength to get up. She was buried by an immense inertia, eyes fixed on the fire, watching the flame trickle lazily along the glowing log. Back and forth. Back and forth. The clock ticked on the mantelpiece. The fire popped and flickered. The house was so quiet with the children and her parents having gone to the circus.

She heard the click of a handle being turned. Wind gushed through the door and then subsided. She heard footsteps in the hall. Then there was nothing. It was just a trick of the wind. Her eyelids drooped shut.

She dreamed of a soft hand touching her hair, fingers sliding through her loose brown curls. Soothing fingers massaged her head, warm and real. It had been a long time since she had known such tenderness. She was cold, but these fingers were bringing her back. They belonged to someone alive and warm.

Gently the fingers crept over her scalp. They circled at her temples and made tracks across her forehead. She felt the soft whisper of exhaled air on her head, heard the steady sound of breathing. The fingers slid down the bridge of her nose, below her eyes, across the arches of her cheeks, around her chin. They lingered on her lips, tracing them. Her heart fluttered and her breathing deepened. She was afraid to open her eyes.

There was a rustle of movement. A shifting shadow. A body, blocking the light and heat of the fire. She sensed someone kneeling. Her hands were enclosed by strong fingers, warm palms. Hands that belonged to a man. He guided her fingers to his face and drifted them over his cheeks, his eyes, eyebrows, across a corrugated brow. She felt hair—wavy, longish—and hooked her fingers in it, feeling the texture, her breathing light.

Her hand was drawn to warm lips and then her fingertips were kissed, one at a time, slowly, deliciously.

She woke, eager; her eyes flew open and he was smiling at her. A mouth that she remembered. Eyes she still fell into. ‘How did you find me?’ she asked.

‘Apple season,’ he said. ‘I come looking for you every year. I waited near the house and watched the others leave.’ He smiled, something hidden in his eyes. ‘The girl is you all over again, but darker, less hopeful. I see you in the boy as well.’

He lifted her left hand. Studied it. Then he turned it over and traced circles in her palm. Goosebumps spread up her arm. His smile was thick with intent. He kissed her palm and the touch of his lips was almost unbearable. She grasped his hair again, this time to push him away, but her hand softened amid its coarseness and her fingers tumbled to his ear, then his cheek.

‘What have you done?’ she whispered.

‘By coming here? By touching you?’

She pulled her hand away, trying to withdraw, to hold down the surge in her chest. He sat back, smiling.

‘How long has it been?’ His voice was a purr. ‘How old is the girl?’

‘Her name is Jan.’

‘I don’t need names.’

No. He didn’t need names. But it reminded her. It recalled her to the fact that she had a life beyond this moment, beyond the liquid depths of his eyes, beyond the heat of his hand resting on her knee. ‘Jan is thirteen. Gary’s eleven.’

‘They should have been mine.’

His eyes flashed and she felt a chill. There was much more to this man than the little she knew. She suspected he had violence within him. But he quickly smoothed his lips to that gentle smile.

‘Fourteen years since I saw you last. In the park.’ He lowered his head and touched a finger to her ring. ‘It was torture to see this on your finger. You cheated me. You gave him what was mine.’ His eyes brimmed with tears; he gripped her hand again and the warmth of his touch shot through her.

‘I’m still married.’

Still married. What sort of feeble defence was that? Thank God, he didn’t know the half of it. Married, in what sense of the word? Her husband at the light station dreaming of another woman. And here she was, broken and unable to rise from her chair.

‘So where is he now?’ His face was triumphant. He knew. He bent over her hand again, kneaded his thumbs into her palm, kissed her fingertips. She moved to protest, but he slipped her sleeve up and ran his fingers along the underside of her arm, and she sat transfixed, watching him.

He led her to the couch and her body followed him, her mind receding. She was cold and his fingers had warmed her. She wanted to know more.

Softly, he made circles on her thigh with his thumb. She was all at once liquid and light and hot. The touch of his lips on her neck was the promise that had faded from her dreams over the years.

As he kissed her, the pain flowed away, draining like sand through straw. She wanted his hands on her. Wanted him to reach beneath her clothes. Wanted him to take what had always been Jack’s. Surely, it was hers for the giving. Jack hadn’t wanted it for years. She’d been invisible to him. And now, here was a man who made her feel alive again. All need. How could it be wrong?

It happened in her bedroom. A small death that made her a woman renewed. Afterwards, he lay replete beside her, his sweaty skin sticking softly to hers. She knew she ought to feel guilt, but all she felt was euphoria. What she had done felt right. It felt good. And if she had this past hour over, she’d do it again, and without regret.

His hands explored her lazily, languorously, a fat smile on his lips. Then he became insistent, teasing her, seeing what was left of her. And she was his all over again, drowning in the delight of it, years of desire unleashed.

When it was over, he lay looking at her, his cheek on the pillow beside her. ‘You should have seen yourself when you were sixteen,’ he said.

‘That was a long time ago.’

‘You were so beautiful. So untouched . . . That’s the way I always think of you. Young and undamaged. The only woman I’ve ever desired.’

‘Everything changes,’ she said. ‘Nobody stays sixteen forever.’

His eyes were soft with the image of a girl that no longer existed. ‘You don’t have to go back,’ he said.

She hesitated for a moment before slowly shaking her head. It wasn’t a future she could seriously consider. Maybe in her dreams, but in reality, she had only ever seen herself with Jack. ‘He’s the father of my children.’

Adam’s face flickered with sadness. ‘So that’s your last word?’

She nodded silently.

His smile was resigned. ‘Well, I suppose that’s it then.’ He sat up, swiped moisture from the corner of his eyes. ‘You see, I promised myself this was the last time. All these years my life has been on hold: picking fruit and shifting to the next town. It’s amazing how fast the days slip by. And then your youth is gone and you wonder what you’ve got to show for it. I’ve been hoping you’d come back to me. But I’ve been fooling myself, haven’t I? Using you as an excuse to avoid commitment. You’ve never come seeking me. So I have to stop doing this to myself. There might still be time to find a wife and have a family of my own.’

Her cheeks were wet with tears for him. She reached out and drew him back down to her. And he took her once more and then dressed and slipped quietly out the door.





31



She was lying sprawled, her legs heavy, when the light came on and she thought she heard a murmuring of voices, a conversation far away. The light went off again. And then it came on. Blindingly.

She dreamed of a voice, vaguely familiar. ‘It’s the sun, Mary. See, it’s come out from behind a cloud.’

The sun?

Then it was dark again. And cold. She thought perhaps she wanted to speak. But everything in her was so slow. So weighty. She wanted to open her eyes, but it was too difficult.

Light, dark, sound, breathing. All of it, a burden.

Someone was speaking again, a breathy whisper of sound. ‘We’re outside, Mary . . . Let me sit you up a bit. I’m going to cup my hand over your eyes to shield out the sun . . . There it is, blazing from behind a cloud again.’

She was vaguely aware of movement; somebody shuffling her arms and legs and propping up her torso. She struggled to open her eyes, and tied to focus on the blur before her. Blue and grey, shadow, fog.

‘You’re on the beach, Mary,’ the voice said. ‘I’ve brought you out so you can see the sky. I wanted you to feel the wind.’

The light disappeared once more to bleary grey. She thought she heard a rattling sound. Or maybe she just felt it. Gurgling. Hollow rumbling.

Everything about her was rigid. Her body, unyielding. She was dissolving into the ground. Cold creeping through her. Such coldness. Her body not her own anymore.

She forced her eyes open, fluttering, and thought she saw the outline of a face, misty, framed with ginger hair. Her eyelids slid down again thankfully, into darkness.

‘Mary. It’s me. I’m here to look after you.’

Jack was with her. He was holding her. His arms strong around her. He forgave her for everything. Even that which he didn’t know. He had to forgive her. She needed his forgiveness.

‘Do you feel the wind on your face, Mary?’

The wind. Yes, the wind. They had been at home in it together. But she couldn’t feel it now. She couldn’t feel anything. Just heaviness. A great weight. A sense of sliding. Of light fading. Flashes of light returning again.

‘I promised I’d bring you out here, didn’t I?’

She felt Jack’s breath on her face. His head beside hers on the pillow. She had always liked to feel him close to her. Such comfort.

There were shadows slipping across her face. Then the voice again, like an echo. ‘The clouds are skating across the sky, Mary. There’s a strong wind high up. Cirrus clouds. A front coming in.’

She struggled to open her eyes again. She was beneath the skies at Cape Bruny. This was a grey she knew and loved. It was the colour of her southern home: the long, shimmering silver light.

She waited for the shadows to come again, flitting, her head feeling light.

‘It’s a big cloud this time. We’ll have to wait awhile before the sun comes through . . . Are you warm enough?’

What was warmth if it was not these arms around her?

The flashes of light and dark. The cold of the wind. Lightness. Her body detaching.

‘Mary. The sun has come out again. Can you see it?’

She felt a strange warmth. Jack reaching for her. Adam’s touch.

Then the warmth was giving way to cold again. But she was not afraid. She would be safe. All was glowing around her.

She heard humming. It must be Jack. But no, not Jack. It was something more. The rhythm of all things. The hum of life. She felt it deep within. The glow of living. The joy of knowing that Jack was waiting. And Adam. The great release of letting go. Of knowing all things would be happy in their own way. As she had been.

The humming.

The light.

Yes. She could see it. The light of the sun. So great. So beautiful.

Yes, Jack, I am coming . . .





PART IV



Resurrection





32



‘It’s a guy called Leon. Says he’s calling from Cloudy Bay.’ Nick passes the phone to me as I dash up onto the deck. ‘Thanks, mate,’ he says. ‘We’ll be off now. Hope everything’s all right.’

I curl my fingers around the receiver and Nick ceases to exist. I barely see him as he slips down the driveway and tucks Emma into his car.

‘Hello?’ I’m hardly breathing as I wait to hear Leon’s voice.

‘Tom.’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m really sorry, mate . . . but she’s gone.’ He sounds exhausted, bereft.

‘Gone?’

‘Yes. It was just a little while ago. On the beach.’

‘On the beach?’ I feel like an echo, distant, hollow. ‘How did you get her out there?’

‘I carried her. I promised I’d take her out. She wanted that. Said she didn’t want to be trapped under a roof. That she wanted to be beneath the sky.’

‘She told you that?’

‘Yes. She mentioned it a week ago. When we were talking.’

I sit down on the hard wood of the deck. Jess presses against me, her body warm against my arm. ‘Where is she now?’

‘In bed. I tucked her in . . . to keep her warm. I know it’s strange but I didn’t want her to get cold . . .’ His voice drifts off, and the silence stretches. I can’t comprehend that my mother is dead. I was going to see her this morning. I was going to sit with her and hold her hand. But I’m too late. ‘What do we do now?’ Leon asks. ‘Who do we call?’

‘I don’t know. I’ll find out. Then I’ll come down. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

‘I’ll stay with her till you get here.’

He hangs up and I begin dialling. First Jan, then Gary. Jan is distraught, weeping, hysterical. She’s too late, she says. And I say yes, it’s too late for everything. Gary is more rational. He says he was expecting something like this; Mum looked so terrible the other day. I ask him to find out what to do about Mum’s body. I trip over the words. The body. It’s such a term of separation. The body disconnected from life, separated from contact, from affection. I feel nauseous.

I call Jacinta. She and Alex are on their way to pick up Jan when I tell her about Mum, Jacinta is silent on the end of the phone. It’s as if she has been frozen. I stammer out broken condolences and hang up.

Around me, the day resumes its shape, thick with ludicrous sunshine and wavering shadows. I glance down at the road—the Commodore is long gone. It’s hard to believe Emma and Nick were ever here. It’s all so incongruous: my mother’s death, Emma drunk on my doorstep last night, Nick sleeping in my house. I rest my chin on my knees, hugging my legs tight. Everything looks so normal. The trees, the quivering leaves, the sky, the puffy clouds. How can it be this way? How can everything go on like this when my mother has died?

I stand and walk slowly down the hill with Jess at my heels. We slot ourselves into the car and drive.



On the ferry, I leave Jess in the car and wander to the bow, leaning against the cold metal railing. Beneath my feet, the deck throbs. The light is shimmering on the water. I breathe with the rhythm of the engines, trying to empty myself, to be one with everything, to be non-existent. Wind pours over the bow as the ferry swings around the headland south of Kettering and angles across the channel.

Closer to Bruny, the wind increases and chops the water to small waves, spray hitting my face. In weather like this I should be cold, but instead I am numb. I grip the railing with hard fists, trying to feel some sort of emotion, to feel pain, or grief, or sadness. Anything.

When finally I release the railing and return to the car, my body is rigid, and then I’m gripped by a deep chill that leaves me shaking as if I’ll never stop. I can hardly steady my hands to fit the key in the ignition.

Jess stares at me sadly. Usually she’d jump on the front seat for a pat, but today she sits miserably on the floor. She sniffs the hand I extend towards her and cautiously licks my fingers.

Her tongue is soft and warm and my hands are icy. I tuck them beneath my armpits and gaze through the windscreen. Vapour fog creeps quickly around its edges as I breathe.


North Bruny passes in a blur and I can hardly recall disembarking from the ferry. The sky above the Neck is brooding; no patches of blue or breakthrough shafts of light. It seems appropriate.

I swing around the bends and curves of South Bruny, skipping from gravel to brief breaks of tar and back to gravel, through Alonnah—the school, the playground, the post office—and on to Lunawanna, past the mudflats, thick with mustering gulls. I turn east towards Cloudy Bay, past the store, and then the road sweeps out of town, passing cottages with thin streamers of smoke coiling from their chimneys and washing hung beneath their eaves. When at last I arrive at Cloudy Bay, I pull over in the Whalebone Point carpark and clamber out, unable as yet to tackle that final stretch down the beach to the door of the cabin where my mother’s body lies.

I walk to the edge of the carpark and gaze south where the grey sea travels in between the heads. Those long arms of headland reach to embrace the bay, but fail to curb the magnetism of the ocean. Closer in, the waves are tinged with red. I’ve only ever seen this phenomenon here: the colour of blood in the waves. It flies up in the spume as the swell rears and collapses on itself. Today, it seems as if I’m watching the essence of my mother slipping away. I stumble west on the trail from the point, stopping eventually to lower myself onto a damp bench seat. I sit with my head in my hands, the heels of my palms pressing into my eyes creating spirals of colour.

Time withers. The sea roars, my heart beats—two separate rhythms. Eventually tears come, another rhythm rising from somewhere deep in my chest, the choke of contorted sobs, a welling emptiness. I lose myself in the sludge of it, thought dissolving.

Then a wet nose presses against my hands. A lick. A quick swipe across my fingers. I release my fists.

Jess is watching me with steady eyes. She doesn’t shy from my grief. My hands sag to her head and knead the softness of her ears, feeling her warmth beneath my fingers.

Slowly, we walk back to the car together.


The cabin at the end of the beach.

Leon’s four-wheel drive is parked on the grass, and I pull up alongside. Jess gallops around the lawn, her belly damp and heavy with sand after her run up the beach beside the car. I dig an old towel from the back seat and rub her down.

She bounds onto the deck where Leon is leaning against the wooden railing, his face ashen. I reach to shake his hand and he grips mine hard. He nods at me sympathetically, taking in my red eyes. ‘You made it,’ he says, releasing my hand.

‘Yes. Tough trip.’

‘Pretty tough night too.’ His voice is rough with feeling.

‘I should have been here. I should have stopped work a week ago to look after her.’

Leon shrugs a little uncertainly, as if afraid he might offend me. ‘She talked about that a few times,’ he says. ‘But she really didn’t want anyone. She was quite clear about that.’

‘You don’t think she was lonely?’

‘No,’ he says.

‘Perhaps we should have called a doctor . . .’ I’m riding on a moment of guilt.

He shakes his head. ‘She didn’t want to prolong things.’

I know what Mum wanted, but I need reassurance. I considered discussing death with her, but it was too hard. Now I feel inadequate; it seems Leon managed to achieve what I couldn’t. He sighs deeply and I see tears brimming in his eyes.

‘She was my friend,’ he says.

I pat him on the shoulder. It’s the best I can do.

Jess whines up at me and I glance uneasily at the front door. ‘I suppose I should go in,’ I say. Hesitantly, I step inside. Leon follows.

It’s hot in the lounge room, unbearably so. The wood fire is glowing and the gas heater is on too, pumping out heat. I peel off a couple of layers. ‘It’s hot in here.’

Leon’s face is haggard. ‘She was cold.’

‘Yes, but she’ll turn to soup.’

His lips quiver. ‘I didn’t think of that.’

He slams the flue shut on the wood heater and extinguishes the gas while I open windows. Jess is sitting by the door to Mum’s room, whimpering.

‘She knows,’ Leon says. ‘Dogs know everything.’

I glance into the room and swallow hard. Jess looks up at me. We step slowly inside.

The bedroom is dim. Mum is in the bed by the window, and a flickering candle on the bedside table makes her look not of this world. Her face is waxy and grey, and her eyes stare into nothing. There’s a strange smell permeating the room, slightly rancid. Leon has pulled the blankets high under her chin. I reach forward and touch her cheek with the back of my hand. Jess whines. Mum’s skin is cold and firm, like plastic. Something in my chest tightens. I sit on the bed and run my hand over the covers. Mum is so flat under there. So depleted. So absent. The silence that lingers over her is oppressive; the lack of movement, of breathing. I bend my head and weep while Jess circles restlessly. Mum wasn’t supposed to die without me. I wanted to be here with her. That’s what I promised myself. I let her down.

Then suddenly I need to speak. I meant to do this while she was alive. To thank her for everything—for my childhood, for her love, for being patient with me.

‘Mum,’ I say gently. ‘I’m here . . . It’s me, Tom.’

I shift the covers slightly and touch her arm. It’s cold and wooden and heavy. I fold my hand around hers and lift it. I want to cradle her fingers in mine and warm them. I want to inject back into her all the vibrancy of life that has carried her these past seventy-seven years. Emotion curdles in my throat and for a moment I can’t talk. Then I collect myself.

‘Mum, you came down here to prepare yourself for this, didn’t you? You’ve been sending messages to Dad. Maybe you found him here. I guess I’ll never know. If he’s anywhere, I’m sure he’s with you.

‘You’ve been a tremendous mum, you know. Nobody could have been better. When I came back from Antarctica you had enough of your own strife, with Dad just gone, but you propped me up. I couldn’t have come ashore without you . . . And the way you never expected me to talk about things. That’s a gift. You’ve always accepted me the way I am . . .’

I try to press heat into her freezing fingers. ‘It was wonderful growing up at the lighthouse, Mum. You know how I loved it. Just like you did. I appreciate you giving us that opportunity. You were the rock of our family . . . I don’t know what I’ll do without you . . .

‘But you don’t have to worry, Mum. I’m going to be okay. I’ve been doing better lately. Things haven’t worked out with Emma, but I’m looking forward to things now. Not hiding away. I’m going to be all right. And Jan will be fine too. She’s got Jacinta. And you know Gary’s always good. He’s the solid one among us—in more ways than one . . .’ A sniffy gasp of a laugh escapes me.

‘I only wish I’d asked you more about Dad. That’s the only thing I regret.’ I bow my head and drip tears onto her hand. All those years I could have talked about this, and now it has to come surging out when Mum is gone. ‘I wish I knew more about him,’ I murmur. ‘I think he loved me, I’m sure he did. But he was a tough father, Mum. Not easy to love, not like you. I guess it’s hard being a kid. You don’t have the confidence to make things happen. If I’d been more relaxed, I could have spent more time with Dad like Gary did.’

I falter again and look down at Mum’s fingers. The best memory I have of Dad is when I was eight and he showed me how engines work. Over several afternoons he demonstrated how to pull generators apart and put them back together again. We didn’t talk much, but it was comfortable, just doing things with him. I suppose that was his way of teaching me about life. How to fix things.

He was a strange man, my father. So serious about weird things. I remember when we used to play Monopoly on windy cold days. He was so triumphant whenever he won, hotels on all his properties. That was one of the only times I recall him being truly happy, and also when we went fishing down at the cove. When I was small, he’d be pulling in lots of fish, and all I could catch was beach junk. Once we went fishing off the rocks and I kept snagging my line. He had to set up my tackle over and over, and we didn’t catch a thing. He came home so grumpy he didn’t talk all evening and went straight to bed after dinner.

My tears fall onto the sheets. Here I am with my dead mother, and I can’t stop thinking about my father. ‘Mum, there are so many good times I remember with you. Like wandering across to the heath to go birdwatching—all those tawny-crowned honeyeaters, they were my favourites. And sitting on the cliffs watching dolphins out herding fish. You had the wind in your hair, and you looked so smooth and peaceful, as if your heart was singing.

‘You’ve had a grand life, Mum. Not all happy, I don’t suppose. But nobody gets it all good. And it’s the hard stuff that makes you. I’ve been dodging all that for too long, haven’t I?—how to get on with life. But I won’t anymore. I’m going out there, Mum—in my own way. I’m getting into living. The way you’d want me to . . . I love you . . .’

My voice breaks and I give up talking. I linger, holding Mum’s hand, watching the still mask of her face, open-mouthed and expressionless.

The curtains shift as air leaks around the window and light washes across the room. The candle flame bobs and flitters in the draft.

Mum’s gone and there’s nothing I can do.


After a long while I leave the room. The front door is open and Leon is slumped at the picnic table on the porch. I grip the railing and stare out.

‘You okay?’ Leon asks.

I shrug.

‘It’s a bugger saying goodbye to people you love.’ He brushes his hand through his hair. ‘She helped me a lot, your mum.

She listened to me. Most people are too busy for that. Too self-absorbed to hear you talk.’ He nods at me. ‘Your mum was a special lady.’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘She was a good woman.’

‘It was a brave thing to do, coming here alone in her condition.’

‘She knew what she was doing.’

‘Yes, but it must have been difficult to allow it. Knowing something like this could happen.’

I recall Jan nagging at me on the phone. ‘It caused a bit of friction . . . I suppose she talked about my father too . . .’

‘Yes. And life at the lighthouse. She loved this place. It feels lonely here now . . . without her.’

‘You were a great support to her.’

His eyes fill with moisture. ‘I tried to spend more time here as things got worse. I only knew her a few weeks. But she knew me better than my own mother.’

My own tears threaten and I look away. Silence swallows us then. Eventually, I encourage him to go for a walk on the beach. He has sat out a difficult vigil overnight and I want him to take a break. As he steps off the deck and glances back at me, all the pain of the past eighteen hours is reflected in his face. I nod at him in mute thanks, and he wanders down the hill. Turning, I see a four-wheel drive spinning towards us along the sand. It will be Jacinta and Alex, bringing Jan with her bucketloads of guilt and grief. The timing is excellent: Leon has borne enough. He doesn’t need to be here for this.