М Стедман - The Light Between Oceans - A Novel

The iron door clanged behind them as they went into the lantern room, and through the opening into the light itself.

‘This is a first order lens – about as bright as they come.’

Isabel watched the rainbows thrown about by the prisms. ‘It’s so pretty .’

‘The thick central bit of glass is the bull’s eye. This one has four, but you can have different numbers depending on the character. The light source has to line up exactly with the height of that so it gets concentrated by the lens.’

‘And all the circles of glass around the bull’s eyes?’ Separate arcs of triangular glass were arranged around the centre of the lens like the rings of a dartboard.

‘The first eight refract the light: they bend it so that instead of heading up to the moon or down to the ocean floor where it’s no good to anybody, it goes straight out to sea: they make it sort of turn a corner. The rings above and below the metal bar – see? Fourteen of them – they get thicker the further away from the centre they are: they reflect the light back down, so all the light is being concentrated into one beam, not just going off in all directions.’

‘So none of the light gets away without earning its keep,’ said Isabel.

‘You could say that. And here’s the light itself,’ he said, gesturing to the small apparatus on the metal stand in the very centre of the space, covered in a mesh casing.

‘It doesn’t look much.’

‘It isn’t, now. But that mesh cover is an incandescent mantle, and it makes the vaporised oil burn bright as a star, once it’s magnified. I’ll show you tonight.’

‘Our own star! Like the world’s been made just for us! With the sunshine and the ocean. We have each other all to ourselves.’

‘I reckon the Lights think they’ve got me all to themselves,’ said Tom.

‘No nosy neighbours or boring relatives.’ She nibbled at his ear. ‘Just you and me …’

‘And the animals. There’s no snakes on Janus, luckily. Some islands down this way are nothing but. There’s one or two spiders’ll give you a nip though, so keep your eyes peeled. There are …’ Tom was having difficulty finishing his point about the local fauna, as Isabel kept kissing him, nipping his ears, reaching her hands back into his pockets in a way that made it an effort to think, let alone speak coherently. ‘It’s a serious …’ he struggled on, ‘point I’m trying to make here, Izz. You need to watch out for—’ and he let out a moan as her fingers found their target.

‘Me …’ she giggled. ‘I’m the deadliest thing on this island!’

‘Not here, Izz. Not in the middle of the lantern. Let’s …’ he took a deep breath, ‘let’s go downstairs.’

Isabel laughed. ‘Yes, here!’

‘It’s government property.’

‘What – are you going to have to record it in the logbook?’

Tom gave an awkward cough. ‘Technically … These things are pretty delicate, and they cost more money than you or I’ll ever see in a lifetime. I don’t want to be the one who has to make up an excuse about how anything got broken. Come on, let’s go downstairs.’

‘And what if I won’t?’ she teased.

‘Well, I suppose I’ll just have to—’ he hoisted her onto one hip, ‘make you, sweetheart,’ he said, and carried her down the hundreds of narrow stairs.

‘Oh, it’s heaven here!’ Isabel declared the next day as she looked out at the flat, turquoise ocean. Despite Tom’s grim warnings about the weather, the wind had declared a greeting truce and the sun was again gloriously warm.

He had brought her to the lagoon, a broad pool of placid ultramarine no more than six feet deep, in which they were now swimming.

‘Just as well you like it. It’s three years till we get shore leave.’

She put her arms around him. ‘I’m where I want to be and with the man I want to be with. Nothing else matters.’

Tom swirled her gently in a circle as he spoke. ‘Sometimes fish find their way in here through the gaps in the rocks. You can scoop them up with a net, or even just with your hands.’

‘What’s this pool called?’

‘Hasn’t got a name.’

‘Everything deserves a name, don’t you think?’

‘Well, you can give it one then.’

Isabel thought for a moment. ‘I hereby christen this “Paradise Pool”,’ she said, and splashed a handful of water onto a rock. ‘This will be my swimming spot.’

‘You’re usually pretty safe here. But keep your eyes open, just in case.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Isabel as she paddled, only half listening.

‘The sharks can’t usually make it through the rocks, unless there’s a really high tide or a storm or something, so you’re probably safe on that count …’

‘ Probably? ’

‘But you need to be careful about other things. Sea urchins, say. Watch out when you’re walking on submerged rocks, or the spines can snap off in your foot and get infected. And stingrays bury themselves in the sand near the edge of the water – if you tread on the barb in their tail you’re in trouble. If it flicks up and gets you near the heart, well …’ He noticed that Isabel had gone silent.

‘You all right, Izz?’

‘It feels different somehow, when you just reel it all off like that – when we’re this far from help.’

Tom took her in his arms and pulled her up to the shore. ‘I’ll look after you, sweetheart. Don’t you worry,’ he said with a smile. He kissed her shoulders, and laid her head back on the sand, to kiss her mouth.

In Isabel’s wardrobe, beside the piles of thick winter woollens, hang a few floral dresses – easy to wash, hard to hurt as she goes about her new work of feeding the chickens or milking the goats; picking the vegetables or cleaning the kitchen. When she hikes around the island with Tom she wears an old pair of his trousers, rolled up more than a foot and cinched with a cracked leather belt, over one of his collarless shirts. She likes to feel the ground under her feet, and goes without shoes whenever she can, but on the cliffs she endures plimsolls to protect her soles from the granite. She explores the boundaries of her new world.

One morning soon after she arrived, a little drunk with the freedom of it, she decided to experiment. ‘What do you think of the new look?’ she said to Tom as she brought him a sandwich in the watch room at noon, wearing nothing at all. ‘I don’t think I need clothes on a day as lovely as this.’

He raised an eyebrow and gave her a half smile. ‘Very nice. But you’ll get sick of it soon enough, Izz.’ As he took the sandwich he stroked her chin. ‘There’s some things you have to do to survive on the Offshore Lights, love – to stay normal: eat at proper times; turn the pages of the calendar …’ he laughed, ‘and keep your clobber on. Trust me, sweet.’

Blushing, she retreated to the cottage and dressed in several layers – camisole and petticoat, shift, cardigan, then heaved on Wellington boots and went to dig up potatoes with unnecessary vigour in the sharp sunshine.

Isabel asked Tom, ‘Have you got a map of the island?’

He smiled. ‘Afraid of getting lost? You’ve been here a few weeks now. As long as you go in the opposite direction to the water, you’ll get home sooner or later. And the light might give you a clue too.’

‘I just want a map. There must be one?’

‘Of course there is. There are charts of the whole area if you want them, but I’m not sure what good they are to you. There’s nowhere much you can go.’

‘Just humour me, husband of mine,’ she said, and kissed his cheek.

Later that morning, Tom appeared in the kitchen with a large scroll, and presented it with mock ceremony to Isabel. ‘Your wish is my command, Mrs Sherbourne.’