М Стедман - The Light Between Oceans - A Novel

As the night falls, lights begin to twinkle in the gloom. Dots in the darkness, sometimes from a gas lamp in a window; sometimes electric lights, from the newer houses. The main street of Partageuse has electric street lights strung along its length on either side. The stars, too, illuminate the clear air, and the Milky Way rubs a bright smudge across the darkness.

Some of the bright dots amongst the trees sway like fiery fruit: people with lanterns are searching the bush. Not just police, but men from Potts’s timber mills, men from Harbour and Lights. Hannah waits anxiously at home, as she’s been instructed. The Graysmarks walk the bush paths, calling the child’s name. Both ‘Lucy’ and ‘Grace’ fill the air, though only one child is lost.

Clutching her drawing, of Mamma and Dadda and the light, the child recalls the story of the Wise Men finding their way to Baby Jesus by a star. She has spotted the light of Janus, out to sea: it’s not far at all – the light never is. Though there’s something not quite right. The flash has a red beam between the white ones. Still she follows it.

Down towards the water she heads, where the swell has picked up for the night and the waves have taken the shore hostage. At the lighthouse, she will find Mamma and Dadda. She makes her way down towards the long, thin isthmus – the ‘Point’ of Point Partageuse, where years before, Isabel taught Tom to lie down when looking into the blow-hole, to avoid being swept away. Every step takes the little girl closer to the light, out in the ocean.

But it’s not Janus’s beam she’s following. Each light has a different character, and the flash of red that punctuates the white in this one tells mariners that they’re nearing the shoals at the mouth of Partageuse Harbour, nearly a hundred miles away from Janus Rock.

The wind picks up. The water churns. The child walks. The darkness abides.

From his cell, Tom heard voices carried on the air outside. ‘Lucy? Lucy, are you there?’ Then ‘Grace? Where are you, Grace?’

Alone in the cells, Tom called out towards the front of the station, ‘Sergeant Knuckey? Sergeant?’

There was a rattling of keys, and Constable Lynch appeared. ‘Want something?’

‘What’s going on? There are people outside, calling Lucy.’

Bob Lynch thought about his response. The bloke deserved to know. Nothing he could do about it anyway. ‘She’s gone missing, the little girl.’

‘When? How?’

‘A few hours ago. Ran off, by the looks.’

‘Christ Almighty! How the bloody hell did that happen?’

‘No idea.’

‘Well what are they doing about it?’

‘They’re looking.’

‘Let me help. I can’t just sit here.’ The expression on Lynch’s face was reply enough. ‘Oh for crying out loud!’ said Tom. ‘Where am I likely to get to?’

‘I’ll let you know if I hear anything, mate. Best I can do.’ And with another metallic clang, he was gone.

In the darkness, Tom’s thoughts turned to Lucy, always curious to explore her surroundings. Never afraid of the dark. Perhaps he should have taught her to be fearful. He had failed to prepare her for life beyond Janus. Then another thought came to him. Where was Isabel? What was she capable of in her current state? He prayed she hadn’t taken things into her own hands.

Thank Christ it wasn’t winter. Vernon Knuckey could feel the coolness setting in as midnight approached. The kid was wearing a cotton dress and a pair of sandals. At least in January she had a chance of making it through the night. In August she’d have been blue with cold by now.

No point in searching at this hour. Sun’d be up not long after five. Better to have people fresh and alert when the light was on their side. ‘Spread the word,’ he said as he met Garstone at the end of the road. ‘We’re calling it off for tonight. Get everyone to the station at first light, and we’ll start again.’

It was one a.m., but he needed to clear his head. He set off on the familiar route of his evening walk, still carrying his lantern, which took a swing at the dark with each of his steps.

In the little cottage, Hannah prayed. ‘Keep her safe, Lord. Protect her and save her. You’ve saved her before …’ Hannah worried – perhaps Grace had used up her share of miracles? Then she soothed herself. It didn’t take a miracle for a child to survive a single night here. She just needed to avoid bad luck. That was a different thing altogether. But that thought was pushed aside by the more panicked, more urgent fear. Exhausted, a thought came to her with a twisted clarity. Perhaps God didn’t want Grace to be with her. Perhaps she was to blame for everything. She waited, and prayed. And she made a solemn pact with God.

There’s a kicking at the door of Hannah’s house. Though the lights are off, she’s still wide awake, and springs up to open it. Before her stands Sergeant Knuckey, with Grace’s body in his arms, her limbs floppy.

‘Oh dear Lord!’ Hannah lunges for her. Her eyes are fixed on the girl, not the man, so she doesn’t see that he’s smiling.

‘Almost tripped over her down on the Point. Fast asleep,’ he says. ‘She’s got nine lives, this one, that’s for sure.’ And though he’s grinning, there’s a tear in his eye, as he recalls the weight of the son he couldn’t save, decades before.

Hannah barely registers his words as she hugs her daughter, who sleeps on in her arms.

That night, Hannah laid Grace beside her in her bed, listening to every breath, watching every turn of the head or kick of a foot. But the relief of feeling her daughter’s warm body was overshadowed by a darker knowing.

The first sound of rain, like gravel scattered on the tin roof, carried Hannah back to her wedding day: to a time of leaking ceilings and buckets in their humble cottage, and love and hope. Above all, hope. Frank, with his smile, and his cheerfulness no matter what the day brought. She wanted Grace to have that. She wanted her daughter to be a happy little girl, and she prayed to God for the courage and strength to do the things needed to allow it.

When the thunder woke the child, she looked sleepily at Hannah, and snuggled in closer to her, before returning to her dreams, leaving her mother to weep silently, remembering her vow.

The black house spider has returned to its web in the corner of Tom’s cell, and is going over and over the higgledy-piggledy threads, setting the shape in order to a design which only it can know – why the silk must be in this particular place, at this particular tension or angle. It comes out at night to repair its web, a funnel of fibres that accumulate dust and form haphazard patterns. It is weaving its arbitrary world, always trying to mend, never abandoning its web unless forced.

Lucy is safe. The relief fills Tom’s body. But there is still no word from Isabel. No sign that she has forgiven him, or that she ever will. The helplessness he felt at being unable to do anything for Lucy now strengthens his resolve to do what he can for his wife. It is the one freedom left to him.

If he is going to have to live his life without her, somehow it makes it easier to let go, to let things take their course. His mind wanders into memory. The woomph of the oil vapour igniting into brilliance at the touch of his match. The rainbows thrown by the prisms. The oceans spreading themselves before him about Janus like a secret gift. If Tom is to take his leave of the world, he wants to remember the beauty of it, not just the suffering. The breaths of Lucy, who trusted two strangers, bonding with their hearts like a molecule. And Isabel, the old Isabel, who lit the way for him back into life, after all the years of death.

A light rain wafts the steam of forest scents into his cell: the earth, the wet wood, the pungent smell of banksias with their flowers like big, feathery acorns. It occurs to him that there are different versions of himself to farewell – the abandoned eight-year-old; the delusional soldier who hovered somewhere in hell; the lightkeeper who dared to leave his heart undefended. Like Russian dolls, these lives sit within him.