The Lightkeeper's Wife

4



When Jacinta left that afternoon, the cabin swelled with a beautiful quiet and Mary’s soul hummed. Slowly she succumbed to the soft ripple of remembered happiness. There was work to be done, yes—places she must visit, plans she must make—but for now she could eddy with the flow of time and sit in memory, striving for nothing.

Gazing through the rain-streaked windows, she heard the whisper of the sea. Persistent, threaded through everything, it was the rhythm of life here. She remembered how she and Jack had delighted in it when they first moved back to the island from the grey dreariness of Hobart. Those first nights, as they lay together in the lightkeeper’s cottage, taking stock of their new lives, the sound had murmured through their dreams. It was there each time they woke, reminding them of this chance to start over.

Jan and Gary were still small, and Mary and Jack enjoyed watching them expand into the freedom. Grim, confined poverty in Hobart versus the isolated, wind-scraped cape: Mary knew they had chosen well. The melancholy that had settled on her and Jack in Hobart shifted like mist. In Jack’s few free hours, the family traipsed the cape together, making discoveries. At the same time Mary and Jack were finding each other again, uncovering the precious small gems that had first drawn them to one another. They had been good times, those early months on the cape. Jack had revelled in the return to physical work. The children had grown brown and strong and wild. And Mary had sung in the wind and thrived. Now, in this place at Cloudy Bay, she would find strands of peace like those that had cradled her life so snugly back then.

In the bedroom, she unpacked her case, laying neat piles of clothing on the spare bed. The photo album she placed on the coffee table in the living area. Down here, she would have space to meander through the past, exploring the peaks and valleys of her life with Jack. All this was regular and systematic—she knew the dimensions of these things. But whenever she thought of the letter, tucked in the side pocket of the case, something in her jolted. Frowning, she pulled it out and set it on the couch. She must not be afraid of it. She was in command.

As she lit the stove and set the kettle on to boil again, she contemplated this strategy of the letter. It was clever, she decided, grudgingly conceding the letter bearer’s ingenuity. Naively, she had considered him safely submerged in history. But now he had resurfaced with a triumphal stroke.

Her immediate thought had been to destroy the letter. That would be the simplest and most sensible option. There was little to gain from distressing people. But the letter bearer could re-emerge. He could materialise again with another letter. And what then?

She didn’t understand his thinking. Why had he given the letter to her? Why hadn’t he delivered it to the addressee? Was it because he wanted to inflict pain on Mary? To make his intentions known to her? Or was it because he wanted the decision to rest with her? And yet, at that terrible meeting, which she did not want to recall, he had expressed an expectation that she would deliver it. He was cruel, forcing her to have a hand in her own demise. That was intolerable. And she could not yield to it.

Did he really think she had a conscience? Or did he consider that he still had a hold on her? How ridiculous, and how arrogant! The time to give him shape had passed. She’d smudged him out long ago. And she would not bend to him. She must burn the letter and be done with it.

Reassured by this decision, she poured tea and fetched a can of tomatoes to have with toast for dinner. It was an inadequate meal. But she wasn’t hungry, and at least she was eating. Tomorrow, she would organise something more substantial. By then, she’d have settled in a little more. And if she had the energy for a short walk, she might even rouse an appetite.


Her first night at Cloudy Bay was a restless tussle with the strangeness of a new bed. She shifted and tossed, rediscovering her hip joints and knees. Solid sleep was rare these days, but this was worse than usual. Sometime during the night a soft cough started, rattling her upright. It was heart-related: she knew the signs.

The letter was drifting in the back of her consciousness too, denying her the luxury of rest. Exasperated, she lurched out of bed and scuffed barefoot into the kitchen with the envelope clutched in her hand. Holding it over the sink, she lit a match. When the letter was ash, she would find release.

But the lighted match hovered away from the corner of the envelope and she could not bring it closer. Was this the right choice? What would happen if this letter were delivered after she died? Would it really matter? But then again, could she die peacefully while it still existed?

Too weary to answer her own questions, and too uncertain to act without careful reflection, she blew out the match and took the letter back to bed. Tonight was too soon. She had days to resolve the matter. Blurry with exhaustion, she propped herself up with pillows so she could breathe more easily. At home, everything was as she needed. Here, she’d have to improvise to find comfort.

While she wafted somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, the wind whined around the house and racketed at the windows. It was noisier than she’d expected. She’d forgotten the way it moaned in the eaves. How unrelenting it could be. How it could seed doubt in the most determined mind.

Nights like this on the cape, she used to creep closer to Jack, the large solid slab of him, soaking up his warmth. Now she was alone. Jack gone nine years ago. She missed his secure presence, the acceptance and lack of expectation. It had taken a lifetime to achieve, a rough ride on a hard road. But surely that was love; not the flare of a bright light that glimmered briefly and then disappeared.

She lay there seeking steadiness. Thinking of Jack. Thinking of the wind roaring up from the south-west. In time, she would become accustomed to it again. The wind would once more become part of her psyche. Instead of shrinking away you had to embrace it. This place was not for the weak and suggestible.


In the morning, after a slow breakfast of porridge with partly frozen milk, she adjusted the thermostat in the gas fridge then sat wearily on the couch beneath the rug and stared out across the bay. It was another world out there. The wind had whipped the waves to white-capped fury and the scrub rustled and sighed, branches waving in the blast. Clouds and sea spray swept over the distant cliffs and the light was grey. Occasional rain spattered against the window.

A thread of icy air from beneath the front door wound itself around her legs, and she was cold despite the closely tucked rug. She got up and lit the gas heater. At the lighthouse, she never sat still long enough to get chilled. There were always jobs to do. But here, the morning was long. She was waiting for the ranger to come. And he must come soon.

She was eager to meet this ranger. He was important to her plan, and she needed to befriend him quickly. Removed from her family, she had to rely on someone else to drive her around the island, taking her to places of importance to her and Jack. This ranger was it, whether he liked it or not. She disliked this deliberate intent to use another person, but it was necessary. And perhaps it mattered less if she manipulated a stranger. What else could she do?

Leaning back and closing her eyes, she listened to the dull thud of waves smacking onto the beach. Sometimes, it was clear and strong. Then it faded as her mind focused elsewhere—on a memory or the song of a bird down in the scrub. It was Tom who had taught her to notice birds. Even as a lad, he’d wanted to know all about nature: the birds’ names, what they ate, where they nested, what their eggs looked like. When he was small, he chased robins around the cottages where they hopped and fluttered, common as chooks. He mimicked the bird calls—even the complex lyrical song of the tawny-crowned honeyeater that fluted across the cape in autumn. As he grew older, he would sit on the grass reading books amid the whirr of brown quails as they fled across the hillside. After lessons each day, he used to climb the hill past the light tower and follow the track down the other side where he had a special nook. There, he liked to sit watching sea eagles circling over Courts Island, or Tasmanian wedge-tails roosting on low branches in the scrub. When the mutton birds were nesting, he’d be gone for hours, coming back with stories of eagles plucking fat chicks from burrows and tearing them apart with their beaks.

Mary had realised long ago that a boy who grew up with eagles could never be ordinary. At age ten, he announced his theory on life. She had been in the kitchen, kneading dough, when he came in and flung himself into a chair. She saw his face, luminous. And his wind-tousled hair. His cheeks bitten pink by the cold. A person could be like an albatross or a sea eagle, he said, as she went back to pounding dough. If you were an albatross, you flew low over the waves where there was less wind and the flying was easier. You didn’t risk landing too often, because there was a chance you might not get airborne again, and it took energy to get going after you’d stopped. If you were a sea eagle, however, you soared high and fancy on the winds where you could see everything, and pounce down on things that interested you. You perched on rocks and branches, because you were strong and could easily launch into the air again. But a sea eagle was visible and confident, and other birds didn’t like you—they attacked, sweeping out of the sky and dive-bombing to scare you away. This, he said, was the cost of being magnificent.

He looked at her then, as she paused over the dough, hands dusted in flour. ‘I’m an albatross, Mum,’ he said. ‘I like to be in the wind, but I want to be safe.’

She had taken him in her arms, aching with love for him, and snuggled him close, wrapping him up as safely as she could. Even then she had known that no-one could ever be safe. Within the cocoon of childhood she could protect him—that much was possible. But she couldn’t keep him from the world. Instead of disillusioning him she had kissed the top of his head, burying her face in the wiry mop of his hair. How did you tell a ten-year-old boy that life and its dangers would find him? You could map out life as you hoped it might unfold, but there were always unexpected deviations. Nobody could plan for those.

Now she thought of her own younger self, before she met Jack and became a mother. Passionate. Impetuous. Quick to anger. Would she have listened if anyone had warned her about life? Likely not. She was too full of hopes and dreams, quite indifferent to her parents’ acquired wisdom. When they sent her to Bruny Island to protect her from herself, had she believed she needed saving? Of course not. But in hindsight, perhaps there had been some wisdom in it.

Poor Uncle Max and Aunt Faye. There they were, quietly farming their patch of South Bruny close to Lunawanna, and she had arrived, furious and emotional, on their doorstep. Despite her moody reluctance, they had been kind and welcoming.

At first the island had seemed gloomy to her, with its small rough houses and few people. Ripped from life in Hobart and deposited in a strange, quiet backwater, she was determined to dislike it. Nothing was going to make her fit in. Her heart was elsewhere. Exile was meant to extract her from danger, but she clung to the mast of her dream. She would hold her attachment close and strong. Her parents would not break her.

But Uncle Max deflected her with gentle purpose, directing her sulkiness into lifting hay bales and milking cows, raking silage, picking apples. He kept her busy: digging and weeding the vegie plot, pruning fruit trees. She also helped her aunt with the multitude of domestic tasks: washing, making jam, mending clothes. Labour had gradually knocked the petulance out of her. Physical work bred satisfaction. It soothed her bruised soul and calmed her indignation.

Later, she could see what a special time it was. Her punishment was, in fact, a gift. Through exile, she had escaped grimy Hobart, the prospect of a job in an office, the oppression of her parents’ house and rules. On the farm, she lived outdoors in clean cool air. And there was a pattern to the days, a weekly and seasonal structure. She came to love the rich smell of grass, the sour smell of cow manure, the sweet, musty scent of hay in the shed. She liked to hustle the cows up the muddy track for milking. Behind the cottage, tall white ribbon gums lined the stream, and when the wind was up, she liked to stand beneath them, watching the long loose straps of bark slapping against their trunks and the skirts of foliage in the high canopy swaying against the sky.

Back then, the farm was shrouded with eucalypts and constantly drenched by weather off the southern seas. Rain would sheet from heavy clouds, pounding the paddocks, creating small rivers that ran down the cow tracks to the stream. When the heavens were emptying, she often sheltered in the old barn with the rain hammering on the roof and her cheek pressed against the warm flank of a cow, shooting milk into a bucket with each squeeze of her hands. And that shed was where she had first met Jack.

It was a day of low grey skies, and she was inside clipping wool from a straggly old sheep. Darkness fell across her and she thought more weather was coming in, but when she looked up she saw a tall young man leaning silently in the doorway, watching her. She realised he must be one of the three Mason boys Aunt Faye had told her lived on the neighbouring farm. Her aunt felt sorry for them because their property wasn’t big enough to divide. The oldest son would inherit. The rest would probably have to leave the island for work.

She went back to clipping the sheep, expecting him to go off in search of Uncle Max. But he stayed, and she felt her skin heating up beneath his gaze. Who did he think he was, observing her like a cow?

‘Are you looking for my uncle?’ she asked, shooting him a frown. ‘He’s down by the stream, working on the pump. You’ll find him there.’

The young man flushed and mumbled thanks.

‘I’m Mary,’ she said, standing up. ‘Who are you?’

She offered a hand for him to shake, but he was already turning away. ‘Jack,’ he said, over his shoulder. ‘I’m Jack Mason. Didn’t mean to disturb you.’

Initially she hadn’t been interested in him; she was still consumed by anger and fixed on other dreams. But she was a maturing girl thrown into the company of three young men, so it was inevitable that something would happen.

The two farm cottages were quite close and the families exchanged tools and assistance. They also shared celebrations: Christmas, Easter, picnics, fruit-picking. An only child from a strict Protestant family, Mary’s self-awareness was awakening and she was drawn to men, even though she knew little about them. And there she was, unleashed among approving male attention in the physical world of the farm. Strong bodies. Masculine work. She thrived on stolen glances and quick conversations. A joke here and there. Jack’s brothers were bolshie and fun-loving; they became the siblings she’d never had. But Jack was different. He was quiet and solid and strong. Restrained. There was something attractive in his steady silent presence. Something reassuring. And in his eyes, she saw a sparkle of a guarded interest. Despite herself, she was drawn to him. She wanted to know more.

During hay season, the families helped each other out, lifting bales onto the back of the Masons’ old truck to get them into the barn before the next rain. It was heavy work. Mary could still remember Jack, shirtsleeves rolled up, the tight muscles of his forearms knotting as he swung bales onto the truck. His face had glowed with a sheen of sweat, his lips red, eyes blue, dark short-cropped hair scruffy with dust and stalks of hay.

For part of the day she had worked with the men, bending and lugging bales for as long as her strength held. She could see they approved of her grittiness, the way she flung herself into the task, dragging and lifting and heaving with the rest of them. She had watched Jack secretly, peeking inside his shirt as he bent to hook his fingers into the next bale, his chest muscles twitching beneath a thin smattering of hair as he gripped the baling twine. She imagined the texture of his chest, the hair, the feel of those strong arms pulling her close. Later, when her body was aching with fatigue, she brought water and cakes from the house. As he swigged from a bottle, Jack caught her watching him. His eyes crinkled, a smile flickering on his lips. Tight with embarrassment, she held her face rigid, but his smile broadened.

‘Good cakes,’ he said, taking one from the tin she was carrying and wiping drops of water from his lips.

They saw each other often like this. Small exchanges in a day of work. Accidental encounters on errands. Picking fruit in autumn, they ended up on the same tree, reaching and bending to shepherd apples into buckets. Talk was minimal, but they were alert to each other. Sly glances through a shield of leaves. The flash of a brown arm stretching for the same piece of fruit. Helping to fill a tipped bucket. Watching each other bite into the crisp white flesh of a just-ripe apple.

He came often to the shed while she was milking, begging a jug of cream for his mother, dipping a cup into her bucket and drinking it warm, or simply standing at the shed door watching her, as he had done at their first meeting. She fumbled when his eyes were on her, making the cow tense up and interrupting the flow of milk. ‘Go away,’ she’d pout. ‘You’re bothering my cow.’ He’d laugh, his eyes dancing, and then he’d wander off down the path to find Uncle Max so he could borrow some tool or other.

When she recognised her susceptibility to him, she saw a need to avoid him. If Max and Faye discovered her interest, she’d be parcelled off home. And by that stage, she didn’t want to go. She’d fallen in love with the farm and the island: the trees, the space, the air. When they drove to Lunawanna to collect supplies from the store, she would see mainland Tasmania, shimmering bluish-purple across the channel. As she sat outside the shop with Uncle Max, eating fish and chips, she’d gaze across the water, reminded of where she had come from. The island wove a special magic, and its isolated beauty was emphasised by the proximity of the mainland. They were on Bruny, happy and free. Everybody else was over there, with their complex city lives, buried in urban Hobart.

In small windows of spare time, the two families went to Cloudy Bay for picnics, fishing afternoons, walking and scarpering through the waves. Sometimes, the older generation stayed home, and it was just Mary and the boys. They took the truck to the far end of the beach, built bonfires on the sand, climbed East Cloudy Head in the raw bite of the wind.

One afternoon she found herself alone up there with Jack. The others had forgotten to bring extra layers and they retreated back to the beach as the sharp wind sliced through to hot skin. Snug in a thick woollen jumper, Mary tucked her knees in tight and sat in silence, swirling with the cold air and revelling in the long misty view. Jack stood nearby, and when she glanced up at him, she saw in his expression a kindred exhilaration, a parallel delight.

He looked down at her and his eyes were warm blue beacons. She felt her stomach melting. He sat beside her, blocking the wind, and she could smell the male tang of his sweat and a grassiness like sweet freshly cut hay. Tingling and alert, it was as if Mary’s skin was speaking to him, and her breathing was a butterfly trapped in her throat, tight and light and anticipatory.

She knew he was looking at her, but she was afraid to connect, frightened to look up again. Then his hand covered hers, gently, carefully, and she felt her cold fingers engulfed in the warm dry grasp of his work-roughened skin. He was staring away across the wild spread of land and sea, holding her hand in his like the fragile precious shell of an egg. They breathed together, each raggedly attuned to the presence of the other. He reached out and touched her hair, his hand softly gliding over the tangle of her curls.

She was waiting, her lips already warm for him. Soon he moved closer and kissed her forehead. He was so hesitant, so restrained. She wanted passion from him, released and fervent and strong. But he was cautious and unsure. He desired her, yes, but he was strapped by awkwardness. And yet there was beauty in it, and ardour too. The magnetism was powerful, and there was something in his constraint that only escalated her eagerness. She wanted to lean against that hard chest—her entire body was bent towards it. At last he wrapped her up in those capable firm arms and drew her close.

They descended from the cape like Pacific gulls skimming over sand. Not much had happened really: an embrace, a few tentative kisses. But they had traversed a social gulf; ahead was a long road of caution and concealment, but a seed had germinated and a tendril of promise was flickering. The farm became a landscape of opportunity: chance meetings, stolen kisses in the barn, hands clutched tightly. Eyes locking over tables, tools, behind backs.

Jack’s younger brother, Frank, took a job at Clennett’s Mill up the mountain beyond the farm. Sometimes she accompanied Jack up there to deliver special luxuries: cakes and biscuits, fresh bread, newly picked fruit. They rode on horses, winding up the track into tall wet forest till they came to the camp where aromatic curls of smoke wafted among the tree trunks, men shouted, metal clanked and saws rasped at dense wood. They would leave the horses near the huts and she would follow Jack’s straight back over fallen logs and mounds of stripped bark. Frank would be either in the noisy clattery mill, hacking at chunks of wood to toss into the furnace, or he’d be off somewhere across the steep slope, on the end of a saw felling a massive tree. In quiet pockets of forest, she and Jack would linger, pressing tight to each other, breathing into urgency, kissing, discovering one another.

The island had defined them then. They were the cool green grace of the farm. They were the eclipsing grandeur of the tall forests. They were the rhythmic slump of waves on the beach at Cloudy Bay. Their love was entangled in the place. Looking back, she was unsure whether it was Jack she had fallen in love with, or Bruny Island and the exhilarating freedom it offered. Or perhaps, a typical young girl, she’d been in love with the idea of being in love. The heady romance of it.

The truth was she hadn’t expected to meet her future husband on Bruny. And it wasn’t the outcome her parents had planned. It was, however, a consequence of the exile they had arranged for her. The island had slung her together with Jack; their relationship was an inevitable conclusion born out of isolation and awakening sexuality.

For a year, they navigated a secret liaison, built on stolen touch. Then they grew bolder. By that time, Mary had been on Bruny Island almost four years, and at twenty, she felt she was old enough to make her own decisions. Her upbringing insisted on propriety, and Jack, too, wanted to do things the right way. She knew that integrity and commitment were important to him. They discussed the next step, and after dinner one night, Jack told her of his conversation with his parents.

‘I’m very fond of Mary,’ he had said. ‘She likes me too, and I want to marry her.’

His father had initially gaped, but once he’d recovered from his surprise, he nodded his approval. But Jack’s mother’s face had immediately expanded with a warm smile. ‘She’s a lovely choice, Jack,’ she had said. ‘A lovely steady girl. She’ll make a good wife.’

A good wife, Mary had thought. What a challenge!

Encouraged by his parents’ support, Jack visited Max and Faye to gauge their opinion. They were privately pleased but also concerned; Mary had been entrusted to them for safekeeping and this development might not be so welcome back in Hobart. Predictably, her parents weren’t pleased that she planned to marry a farmer. They had higher aspirations for her than that. But Mary was determined to have Jack. Her mother and father had intervened in her life once already, and they knew they had less hold over her on Bruny. After a series of discussions, they gave permission reluctantly. She was in charge of her own life now.

In the wake of the announcement, Jack and Mary felt released. Discretion was still necessary, but secrecy wasn’t required. Now they could hold hands in public and no longer shield glances. Chaperoning was insisted upon, but they stole away for private moments to kiss, to touch, to explore. A path to increased intimacy opened before them, and they tried new things—kissing with tongues, caressing beneath clothes. Mary would have gone further, but Jack was restrained. Everything must wait, he said, until the ring was on her finger.

They were married in a Hobart church, but returned to Bruny to work on the Masons’ farm. Jack’s father was becoming increasingly crippled with arthritis, and with Frank still away in the hills cutting wood, Jack was needed to help Sam, his older brother. The farmhouse was crowded, but it functioned in harmony. It was the happiest of times.

Whenever there was a break in the work schedule, Jack and Mary visited Cloudy Bay, taking each other in privacy. It was the place where they first made love and they regarded it as their haven—the sea, the salt, their bodies. Alone, they ran naked on the sand, laughing and shouting at the gulls. They fished off the beach and the rocks, eating their catch after cooking it over the flames of Jack’s efficient little fire.

At the farm, intimacy had been slower to evolve than Mary had anticipated. In Jack’s narrow bed they spooned into each other’s warmth. But the house was small and they were afraid of making noise, so their passion was restricted. They learned each other in careful, drawn-out ways. With so much expectation, dissatisfaction was possible, and yet Mary was strung so tight with desire that her pleasure flowered easily. Once she discovered how to manage him, she guided him with such subtlety he hardly knew she was in control. And Cloudy Bay was their utopia where they could cry out without inhibition.

Looking back, Mary saw that period as the highlight of their lives together. They were still enveloped in the tranquil world of the farm, they were growing in love and in understanding, pressures were few. Marriage gave them new freedom. They picnicked alone, making love in the forest, at Cloudy Corner, even up on East Cloudy Head on a calm summer’s day. Life was busy and close, hard but rich.

Then things changed. An outbreak of blight in the orchard caused finances to tighten. Jack recognised the burden of their presence and started talking about moving to Hobart for work. And then Rose arrived, Frank’s bride. Being the social member of the Mason family, Frank was always looking for fun. During time off from the mill, he met Rose at the annual dance in Alonnah. She lived on a farm between Alonnah and Lunawanna, taking care of her bedridden mother, a task from which she was obviously keen to escape. Her relationship with Frank progressed quickly, and soon she too moved into the Mason farmhouse.

At first, another woman was welcome in a house of men. But it wasn’t long before Mary started to dislike Rose. There was something not quite honest about her, she was lazy and manipulative, evading tasks so Mary took on more than her share. The men, even Jack, were entranced by her. She wore her fingernails long and polished, and she slicked her lips red. Mary tolerated her, struggling to be polite. But Rose didn’t function by other people’s rules. When she had one of her ‘bad patches’ there wasn’t enough room in the Mason house. Mary abhorred Rose’s selfishness, the way she twisted things to her own advantage. Rose was a snake in disguise, and Mary wanted to be far away from her.

Eventually, Mary persuaded Jack to shift to her uncle’s farm, back into her old bedroom. They stayed there only a short time, aware their presence was a financial imposition. It wrenched both of them, but the move to Hobart was inevitable. Rent was beyond them, so they lived with Mary’s parents. Her father was an accountant who’d managed to retain his property through the Depression, and his old house in North Hobart had space enough for all of them. It was a beautiful house, with squares of coloured glass bordering the window, and cast-iron lace around the verandahs. But the reality of living in it was harsh. Little light penetrated the large rooms with their high ceilings and cold walls, and the house was dark and sullen. Mary felt stifled by her parents’ laws and expectations. When she fell pregnant and developed morning sickness, her mother was grimly pleased. At last, Mary had become the meek and malleable daughter she had desired.

In the city, Jack changed too. He became quieter and more introverted, working long hours in a cannery. The days seemed endless and he hated it, stuck inside with no natural light. Evenings, he sat by the fire with Mary’s father, reading the paper and smoking a pipe—a new habit picked up in the city. The atmosphere wasn’t conducive for talking, and Mary was so nauseous and depleted, she had little to say. Melancholy sat on her soul. She knew she should be pleased about the baby; pregnant women were supposed to be radiant. But Hobart was heavy and Jack was distant and withdrawn, mired in fatigue. At an appropriate hour, they’d retreat to the bedroom and undress awkwardly in the hissing glow of the gas lamp. Then they’d crawl into bed.

Intimacy died quickly with Mary’s morning sickness, and Jack was exhausted, so he slept while she watched the shadows on the roof and wondered what had happened to the passion she’d felt for him on Bruny Island. Mired in loneliness, she dreamed of Cloudy Bay and the farm and the sweet smell of the ribbon gums on a wet morning. It didn’t occur to her that Jack might be homesick too.

Five years later, when the job at the lighthouse came up, they both leaped at it. By then, they had two children and were living in a rented house in Battery Point. Their relationship had become strained and empty, both of them depressed by poverty and the suburban grind. It was easy to leave Hobart behind. The lighthouse was their opportunity to return to Bruny Island. It was also their chance to rediscover happiness.