М Стедман - The Light Between Oceans - A Novel

It made Tom smile. The absurdity of the picture. More than that, the innocence of it. Somehow his body felt lighter just to hold the letter in his hand.

‘Can you hang on a tick?’ he asked Ralph, who was gathering his things for the journey back.

Tom dashed to his desk for paper and pen. He sat down to write, before realising he had no idea what to say. He didn’t want to say anything: just send her a smile.

Dear Isabel

,

Not blown away or swept (any further) out to sea, fortunately. I have seen many whales, but none has tried to eat me so far: I’m probably not very tasty

.

I am bearing up pretty well, all things considered, and coping adequately with the absence of roads. I trust you are keeping the local birdlife well fed. I look forward to seeing you before I leave Partageuse for – who knows where? – in three months’ time

.

How should he sign it?

‘Nearly ready?’ called Ralph.

‘Nearly,’ he replied, and wrote, ‘ Tom .’ He sealed and addressed the envelope, and handed it to the skipper. ‘Any chance you could post that for me?’

Ralph looked at the address and winked. ‘I’ll deliver it in person. Got to go past that place anyway.’

CHAPTER 5

AT THE END of his six months, Tom savoured the delights of Mrs Mewett’s hospitality once again, for an unexpected reason: the Janus vacancy had become permanent. Far from finding his marbles, Trimble Docherty had lost the few he still had, and had thrown himself over the vast granite cliff-face at Albany known as the Gap, apparently convinced he was jumping onto a boat skippered by his beloved wife. So Tom had been summoned to shore to discuss the post, do the paperwork, and take some leave before he officially took up the job. By now he had proved himself so capable that Fremantle did not bother to look elsewhere to fill the position.

‘Never underestimate the importance of the right wife,’ Captain Hasluck had said when Tom was about to leave his office. ‘Old Moira Docherty could have worked the light herself, she’d been with Trimble for so long. Takes a special kind of woman to live on the Lights. When you find the right one, you want to snap her up, quick smart. Mind you, you’ll have to wait a bit now …’

As Tom wandered back to Mrs Mewett’s, he thought about the little relics at the lighthouse – Docherty’s knitting, his wife’s jar of humbugs that sat untouched in the pantry. Lives gone, traces left. And he wondered about the despair of the man, destroyed by grief. It didn’t take a war to push you over that edge.

Two days after his return to Partageuse, Tom sat stiff as a whalebone in the Graysmarks’ lounge room, where both parents watched over their only daughter like eagles with a chick. Struggling to come up with suitable topics of conversation, Tom stuck to the weather, the wind, of which there was an abundance, and Graysmark cousins in other parts of Western Australia. It was relatively easy to steer the conversation away from himself.

As Isabel walked him to the gate afterwards she asked, ‘How long till you go back?’

‘Two weeks.’

‘Then we’d better make the most of it,’ she said, as though concluding a long discussion.

‘Is that so?’ asked Tom, as amused as he was surprised. He had a sense of being waltzed backwards.

Isabel smiled. ‘Yes, that’s so.’ And the way the light caught her eyes, he imagined he could see into her: see a clarity, an openness, which drew him in. ‘Come and visit tomorrow. I’ll make a picnic. We can go down by the bay.’

‘I should ask your father first, shouldn’t I? Or your mother?’ He leaned his head to one side. ‘I mean, if it’s not a rude question, how old are you?’

‘Old enough to go on a picnic.’

‘And in ordinary numbers that would make you …?’

‘Nineteen. Just about. So you can leave my parents to me,’ she said, and gave him a wave as she headed back inside.

Tom set off back to Mrs Mewett’s with a lightness in his step. Why, he could not say. He didn’t know the first thing about this girl, except that she smiled a lot, and that something inside just felt – good .

The following day, Tom approached the Graysmarks’ house, not so much nervous as puzzled, not quite sure how it was that he was heading back there so soon.

Mrs Graysmark smiled as she opened the door. ‘Nice and punctual,’ she noted on some invisible checklist.

‘Army habits …’ said Tom.

Isabel appeared with a picnic basket, which she handed to him. ‘You’re in charge of getting it there in one piece,’ she said, and turned to kiss her mother on the cheek. ‘Bye, Ma. See you later.’

‘Mind you keep out of the sun, now. Don’t want you spoiling your skin with freckles,’ she said to her daughter. She gave Tom a look which conveyed something sterner than the words, ‘Enjoy your picnic. Don’t be too late back.’

‘Thanks, Mrs Graysmark. We won’t be.’

Isabel led the way as they walked beyond the few streets that marked out the town proper and approached the ocean.

‘Where are we going?’ asked Tom.

‘It’s a surprise.’

They wandered along the dirt road which led up to the headland, bordered with dense, scrubby trees on each side. These were not the giants from the forest a mile or so further in, but wiry, stocky things, which could cope with the salt and the blasting of the wind. ‘It’s a bit of a walk. You won’t get too tired, will you?’ she asked.

Tom laughed. ‘I’ll just about manage without a walking stick.’

‘Well I just thought, you don’t have very far to walk on Janus, do you?’

‘Believe me, getting up and down the stairs of the light all day keeps you in trim.’ He was still taking stock of this girl and her uncanny ability to tip him a fraction off balance.

The trees began to thin out the further they walked, and the sounds of the ocean grew louder. ‘I suppose Partageuse seems dead boring, coming from Sydney,’ ventured Isabel.

‘Haven’t spent long enough here to know, really.’

‘I suppose not. But Sydney – I imagine it as huge and busy and wonderful. The big smoke.’

‘It’s pretty small fry compared to London.’

Isabel blushed. ‘Oh, I didn’t know you’d been there. That must be a real city. Maybe I’ll visit it one day.’

‘You’re better off here, I’d say. London’s – well, it was pretty grim whenever I was there on furlough. Grey and gloomy and cold as a corpse. I’d take Partageuse any day.’

‘We’re getting near the prettiest bit. Or I think it’s the prettiest.’ Beyond the trees emerged an isthmus which jutted far out into the ocean. It was a long, bare strip of land a few hundred yards wide and licked by waves on all sides. ‘This is the Point of Point Partageuse,’ said Isabel. ‘My favourite place is down there, on the left, where all the big rocks are.’

They walked on until they were in the centre of the isthmus. ‘Dump the basket and follow me,’ she said, and without warning she whisked off her shoes and took off, running to the black granite boulders which tumbled down into the water.

Tom caught her up as she approached the edge. There was a circle of boulders, inside which the waves sloshed and swirled. Isabel lay flat on the ground and leaned her head over the edge. ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Just listen to the sound the water makes, like it’s in a cave or a cathedral.’

Tom leaned forward to hear.

‘You’ve got to lie down,’ she said.

‘To hear better?’

‘No. So you don’t get washed away. Terrible blow hole, this. If a big wave comes without warning, you’ll be down inside the rocks before you know it.’