М Стедман - The Light Between Oceans - A Novel

When he had finally tracked down his mother, he was twenty-one and just finishing his Engineering degree. Finally, he was in charge of his own life. The address the private detective gave him was a boarding house in Darlinghurst. He had stood outside the door, his gut a whirl of hope and terror, suddenly eight again. He caught the sounds of other desperations seeping out under the doors along the narrow wooden passage – a man’s sobs from the next room and a shout of ‘We can’t go on like this!’ from a woman, accompanied by a baby’s screaming; somewhere further off, the fervent rhythm of a headboard as the woman who lay before it probably earned her keep.

Tom checked the pencilled scrawl on the paper. Yes, the right room number. He scanned his memory again for the lullaby-gentle sound of his mother: ‘Ups-a-daisy, my young Thomas. Shall we put a bandage on that scrape?’

His knock went unanswered, and he tried again. Eventually, he turned the handle tentatively, and the door gave no resistance. The unmistakable scent rushed to meet him, but it was a split second before he recognised it as tainted – with cheap alcohol and cigarettes. In the closed-in gloom he saw an unmade bed and a tatty armchair, in shades of brown. There was a crack in the window, and a single rose in a vase had long ago shrivelled.

‘Looking for Ellie Sherbourne?’ The voice belonged to a wiry, balding man who had appeared at the door behind him.

It was so strange to hear her name spoken. And ‘Ellie’ – he had never imagined ‘Ellie’. ‘Mrs Sherbourne, that’s right. When will she be back?’

The man gave a snort. ‘She won’t. More’s the pity, ’cause she owes me a month’s rent.’

It was all wrong, the reality. He couldn’t make it fit with the picture of the reunion he’d planned, dreamed of, for years. Tom’s pulse quickened. ‘Do you have a forwarding address?’

‘Not where she’s gone. Died three weeks ago. I was just coming in to clear the last of the stuff out.’

Of all the possible scenes Tom had imagined, none had ended like this. He stood completely still.

‘You planning on moving? Or moving in?’ the man asked sourly.

Tom hesitated, then opened his wallet and took out five pounds. ‘For her rent,’ he said softly, and strode down the hallway, fighting tears.

The thread of hope Tom had protected so long was snapped: on a back street in Sydney, as the world was on the brink of war. Within a month he’d enlisted, giving his next of kin as his mother, at her boarding house address. The recruiters weren’t fussy about details.

Now, Tom ran his hands over the one piece of wood he had lathed, and tried to imagine what he might say in a letter to his mother today, if she were alive – how he might tell her the news of the baby.

He took up the tape measure, and turned to the next piece of wood.

‘Zebedee.’ Isabel looked at Tom with a poker face, her mouth twitching just a touch at the corners.

‘What?’ asked Tom, pausing from his task of rubbing her feet.

‘Zebedee,’ she repeated, putting her nose back down in the book so that he could not catch her eye.

‘You’re not serious? What kind of a name—’

A wounded expression crossed her face. ‘That’s my great-uncle’s name. Zebedee Zanzibar Graysmark.’

Tom gave her a look, as she ploughed on, ‘I promised Grandma on her deathbed that if I ever had a son I’d call him after her brother. I can’t go back on a promise.’

‘I was thinking of something a bit more normal.’

‘Are you calling my great-uncle abnormal?’

Isabel couldn’t contain herself any longer, and burst out laughing. ‘Got you! Got you good and proper!’

‘Little minx! You’ll be sorry you did that!’

‘No, stop! Stop!’

‘No mercy,’ he said, as he tickled her tummy and her neck.

‘I surrender!’

‘Too late for that now!’

They were lying on the grass where it gave way to Shipwreck Beach. It was late afternoon and the soft light rinsed the sand in yellow.

Suddenly Tom stopped.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Isabel, peeping out from under the long hair that hung over her face.

He stroked the strands away from her eyes, and looked at her in silence. She put a hand to his cheek. ‘Tom?’

‘It bowls me over, sometimes. Three months ago there was just you and me, and now, there’s this other life, just turned up out of nowhere, like …’

‘Like a baby.’

‘Yes, like a baby, but it’s more than that, Izz. When I used to sit up in the lantern room, before you arrived, I’d think about what life was. I mean, compared to death …’ He stopped himself. ‘I’m talking rubbish now. I’ll shut up.’

Isabel put her hand under his chin. ‘You hardly ever talk about things, Tom. Tell me.’

‘I can’t really put it into words. Where does life come from?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Does it matter ?’ he queried.

‘That it’s a mystery. That we don’t understand.’

‘There are times I wanted an answer. I can tell you that much. Times I saw a man’s last breath, and I wanted to ask him, “Where have you gone? You were here right beside me just a few seconds ago, and now some bits of metal have made holes in your skin, because they hit you fast enough, and suddenly you’re somewhere else. How can that be?”’

Isabel hugged her knees with one arm, and with the other hand pulled at the grass beside her. ‘Do you think people remember this life, when they go? Do you think in heaven, my grandma and granddad, say, are knocking around together?’

‘Search me,’ Tom said.

With sudden urgency, she asked, ‘When we’re both dead, Tom, God won’t keep us apart, will He? He’ll let us be together?’

Tom held her. ‘Now look what I’ve done. Should have kept my silly mouth shut. Come on, we were in the middle of choosing names. And I was just trying to rescue a poor baby from the fate of life as Zebedee blimmin’ Zanzibar. Where are we with girls’ names?’

‘Alice; Amelia; Annabel; April; Ariadne—’

Tom raised his eyebrows. ‘And she’s off again … “Ariadne!” Hard enough that she’s going to live in a lighthouse. Let’s not lump her with a name people will laugh at.’

‘Only two hundred more pages to go,’ said Isabel with a grin.

‘We’d better hop to it, then.’

That evening, as he looked out from the gallery, Tom returned to his question. Where had this baby’s soul been? Where would it go? Where were the souls of the men who’d joked and saluted and trudged through the mud with him?

Here he was, safe and healthy, with a beautiful wife, and some soul had decided to join them. Out of thin air, in the farthest corner of the earth, a baby was coming. He’d been on death’s books for so long, it seemed impossible that life was making an entry in his favour.

He went back into the lantern room, and looked again at the photograph of Isabel that hung on the wall. The mystery of it all. The mystery.

Tom’s other gift from the last boat was The Australian Mother’s Manual of Efficient Child-Rearing , by Dr Samuel B. Griffiths. Isabel took to reading it at any available moment.

She fired information at Tom: ‘Did you know that a baby’s kneecaps aren’t made of bone?’ Or, ‘How old do you think babies are when they can take food from a teaspoon?’

‘No idea, Izz.’

‘Go on, guess!’

‘Honestly, how would I know?’

‘Oh, you’re no fun!’ she complained, and dived into the book for another fact.

Within weeks the pages were frilly-edged and blotted with grass stains from days spent on the headland.

‘You’re having a baby, not sitting for an exam.’

‘I just want to do things right. It’s not like I can pop next door and ask Mum, is it?’