М Стедман - The Light Between Oceans - A Novel

‘Oh, Izzy Bella,’ Tom laughed.

‘What? What’s funny?’

‘Nothing. Nothing at all. I wouldn’t change a thing about you.’

She smiled, and kissed him. ‘You’re going to be a wonderful dad, I know.’ A question came to her eyes.

‘What?’ prompted Tom.

‘Nothing.’

‘No, really, what?’

‘ Your dad. Why do you never talk about him?’

‘No love lost there.’

‘But what was he like?’

Tom thought about it. How could he possibly sum him up? How could he ever explain the look in his eyes, the invisible gap that always surrounded him, so that he never quite made contact? ‘He was right . Always right . Didn’t matter what it was about. He knew the rules and he stuck to them, come hell or high water.’ Tom thought back to the straight, tall figure that overshadowed his childhood. Hard and cold as a tomb.

‘Was he strict?’

Tom gave a bitter laugh. ‘Strict doesn’t begin to describe it.’ He put his hand to his chin as he speculated. ‘Maybe he just wanted to make sure his sons didn’t kick over the traces. We’d get the strap for anything. Well, I ’d get the strap for anything. Cecil would always be the one to tell on me – got him off lightly.’ He laughed again. ‘Tell you what, though: made army discipline easy. You never know what you’re going to be grateful for.’ His face grew serious. ‘And I suppose it made it easier being over there, knowing there’d be no one who’d be heartbroken if they got the telegram.’

‘Oh, Tom! Don’t even say such a thing!’

He drew her head into his chest and stroked her hair in silence.

There are times when the ocean is not the ocean – not blue, not even water, but some violent explosion of energy and danger: ferocity on a scale only gods can summon. It hurls itself at the island, sending spray right over the top of the lighthouse, biting pieces off the cliff. And the sound is a roaring of a beast whose anger knows no limits. Those are the nights the light is needed most.

In the worst of these storms Tom stays with the light all night if need be, keeping warm by the kerosene heater, pouring sweet tea from a thermos flask. He thinks about the poor bastards out on the ships and he thanks Christ he’s safe. He watches for distress flares, keeps the dinghy ready for launch, though what good it would do in seas like that, who knows.

That May night, Tom sat with a pencil and notebook in hand, adding up figures. His annual salary was £327. How much did a pair of children’s shoes cost? From what Ralph said, kids got through them at a rate of knots. Then there were clothes. And schoolbooks. Of course, if he stayed on the Offshore Lights, Isabel would teach the kids at home. But on nights like this, he wondered if it was fair to inflict this life on anyone, let alone children. The thought was nudged out by the words of Jack Throssel, one of the keepers back East. ‘Best life in the world for kids, I swear,’ he had told Tom. ‘All six of mine are right as rain. Always up to games and mischief: exploring caves, making cubbies. A proper gang of pioneers. And the Missus makes sure they do their lessons. Take it from me – raising kids on a light station’s as easy as wink!’

Tom went back to his calculations: how he could save a bit more, make sure there was enough put by for clothes and doctors and – Lord knew what else. The idea that he was going to be a father made him nervous and excited and worried.

As his mind drifted back to memories of his own father, the storm thundered about the light, deafening Tom to any other sound that night. Deafening him to the cries of Isabel, calling for his help.

CHAPTER 9

‘SHALL I GET you a cup of tea?’ Tom asked, at a loss. He was a practical man: give him a sensitive technical instrument, and he could maintain it; something broken, and he could mend it, meditatively, efficiently. But confronted by his grieving wife, he felt useless.

Isabel did not look up. He tried again. ‘Some Vincent’s Powders?’ The first-aid taught to lightkeepers included ‘restoring the apparently drowned’, treating hypothermia and exposure, disinfecting wounds; even the rudiments of amputation. They did not, however, touch on gynaecology, and the mechanics of miscarriage were a mystery to Tom.

It had been two days since the dreadful storm. Two days since the miscarriage had begun. Still the blood came, and still Isabel refused to let Tom signal for help. Having stayed on watch throughout that wild night, he had finally returned to the cottage after putting out the light just before dawn, and his body begged for sleep. But entering the bedroom he had found Isabel doubled up, the bed soaked in blood. The look in her eyes was as desolate as Tom had ever seen. ‘I’m so, so sorry,’ she had said. ‘So, so sorry, Tom.’ Then another wave of pain gripped her and she groaned, and pressed her hands to her belly, desperate for it to stop.

Now she said, ‘What’s the point in a doctor? The baby’s gone.’ Her gaze wandered. ‘How hopeless am I?’ she muttered. ‘Other women have babies as easy as falling off a log.’

‘Izzy Bella, stop.’

‘It’s my fault, Tom. It must be.’

‘That’s just not true, Izz.’ He pulled her head into his chest and kissed her hair over and over. ‘There’ll be another. One day when we’ve got five kids running around and getting under your feet, this’ll all feel like a dream.’ He pulled her shawl around her shoulders. ‘It’s beautiful outside. Come and sit on the verandah. It’ll do you good.’

They sat side by side in wicker armchairs, Isabel covered with a blue checked blanket, and watched the progress of the sun across the late-autumn sky.

Isabel recalled how she had been struck by the emptiness of this place, like a blank canvas, when she first arrived; how, gradually, she had come to see into it as Tom did, attuning to the subtle changes. The clouds, as they formed and grouped and wandered the sky; the shape of the waves, which would take their cue from the wind and the season and could, if you knew how to read them, tell you the next day’s weather. She had become familiar, too, with the birds which appeared from time to time, against all odds – carried along as randomly as the seeds borne on the wind, or the seaweed thrown up on the shore.

She looked at the two pine trees and suddenly wept at their aloneness. ‘There should be forests,’ she said suddenly. ‘I miss the trees, Tom. I miss their leaves and their smell and the fact there are so many of them – oh, Tom, I miss the animals: I bloody miss kangaroos! I miss it all.’

‘I know you do, Izzy, darl.’

‘But don’t you?’

‘You’re the only thing in this world that I want, Izz, and you’re right here. Everything else will sort itself out. Just give it time.’

A sheer, velvet veil covered everything, no matter how dutifully Isabel dusted – her wedding photograph; the picture of Hugh and Alfie in their uniforms the week they joined up in 1916, grinning as if they’d just been invited to a party. Not the tallest lads in the AIF, but keen as mustard, and so dashing in their brand-new slouch hats.

Her sewing box was as neat as it needed to be, rather than pristine like her mother’s. Needles and pins pierced the cushioned pale-green lining, and the panels of a christening gown lay ununited, stopped in mid-stitch like a broken clock.

The small string of pearls Tom had given her as a wedding gift sat in the box he had made for her. Her hairbrush and tortoiseshell combs were the only other things on her dressing table.

Isabel wandered into the lounge room, observing the dust, the crack in the plaster near the window frame, the frayed edge of the dark-blue rug. The hearth needed sweeping, and the lining of the curtains had begun to shred from constant exposure to extremes of weather. Simply to think of fixing any of it took more energy than she could muster. Only weeks ago she had been so full of expectation and vigour. Now the room felt like a coffin, and her life stopped at its edges.