Lighthouse Bay (22 page)

Isabella quickly but gently brushes them out of his hands. They fall to the ground, and she sees that there are dozens of them, right under a window. She goes through the downstairs floor plan in her head, and realizes they are outside the forbidden room. There will be trouble if she is found here. She pulls Xavier to his feet. “No, Xavier, those things are very dirty. Must not touch.”

He holds his hands out, the signal that he wants her to wash his hands. She quickly but quietly leads him back to the laundry, pushes an empty barrel against the broken board so he can’t make his way through again, and takes him to the tub to soap up his hands. As she tends to him, she considers what she has just seen. A collection of cigar butts just outside the window, as though they have been thrown there by somebody inside. Is this Katarina’s terrible secret? That she enjoys smoking cigars? It isn’t a sin, but Isabella can imagine if Arthur had discovered she had such a habit: he would have given her the cruelest edge of his tongue. So, perhaps she can understand the secrecy.

She dries Xavier’s hands briskly and looks down. His little face is turned up to hers, shining with happiness. She smiles and the
words are on her lips before she has the wisdom to recall them. “My little boy,” she says. He throws himself at her, wrapping his arms around her legs and burying his face in her skirt. He is hers, just as she is his. They belong to each other.

I
sabella tries not to think about Matthew during the day, but at night she sometimes lifts the corner of her restraint and lets thoughts of him in. It has been so long since she has seen him that he has almost become a fictional character in her world: the dark-eyed, musk-scented man who rescued her, who holds her at arm’s-length for her own good. She is almost surprised, when she sees him at the greengrocer’s one morning, to find that he is real.

Xavier’s hand is warm in hers as she approaches him, thoughts of buying potatoes for supper forgotten. “Matthew?”

He glances up and sees her, smiles almost as though he cannot help it. “Mary,” he says carefully. “And this is little Master Fullbright.”

“Xavier,” she says, a protective hand on the child’s shoulder. “Xavier, meet Mr. Seaward, the lighthouse keeper.”

Xavier is shy or frightened or both, and hides his face in Isabella’s skirts. Isabella rubs his back softly. “There, darling, don’t be afraid.”

“Hello, Xavier. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” says Matthew, crouching to be at the little boy’s level.

Xavier risks a glance, responds to Matthew’s warm smile with a shudder and buries his face again. Matthew stands, chuckling. “Children never much like me on first sight.”

“You are rather tall and foreboding,” Isabella says, then regrets it. Will he take it as an insult? She changes the subject quickly. “You haven’t yet heard back from my sister, Mr. Seaward?”

His forehead crumples in concern. “No. No telegram. I hope
that she has sent you a letter and it is taking time to get here. I will alert you the minute I know.”

“Yes, a letter will take time to come, I expect. It has only been six weeks.”

He nods. “Yes. It feels longer since . . .” He doesn’t finish his sentence and she knows why.
It feels longer since I last saw you
sounds romantic, not pragmatic. And Matthew Seaward, she knows, is a pragmatic man. Isabella can tell he is thinking about saying something more, but his eyes go to Xavier and he remains silent. The silence lingers. She doesn’t want him to go, but she knows he will.

“I must get on,” he says.

“It was lovely to see you.” She wants more. She wants him to invite her for tea. Invite her to stand on the deck of the lonely lighthouse at dusk and watch the night roll over the sky, with her hand in his. But where do these errant thoughts come from?

“Farewell, Master Fullbright,” Matthew says, and Xavier risks a slight nod.

Then Matthew is gone. She squeezes Xavier’s hand. “Come, little one,” she says. “Cook needs a few things for supper.”

M
atthew paces.

On the stairs. Around the deck. Through the cottage. Finally he comes to a stop in the telegraph office, his long blunt fingers making delicate patterns on the desk. Night has fallen, the light is working, he has a little spare time.

Isabella hasn’t heard from her sister. Matthew knew this, but seeing her disappointment has woken an itch in his belly. Isabella is still stuck here in Lighthouse Bay, and she calls the Fullbright child “darling” as if he were her own.

That’s the point that troubles him the most. She looked so happy with Xavier. She looked like a mother, proud of her child. But Xavier isn’t her child; Xavier belongs to the Fullbrights, who are as volatile as they are wealthy. Matthew should have realized that taking care of another woman’s child was no fit task for Isabella, who had lost her own. He should never have recommended the position to her. Isabella needs her sister; she needs a reason to get away.

He has kept the address, of course. This time, he sends the telegram from himself, a single line asking whether or not Mrs. Victoria King is still at the address. He also sends it because he cannot be sure the original message made it. Every telegrapher relies on the next in the chain.

He pushes back his chair and walks up the steep spiral staircase, to stand alone on the deck awhile. The sea has been his only companion for twenty years; this view for the last six. But tonight her ceaseless movement cannot comfort him. Seeing Isabella is no good for him, no good for him at all. Her wild sweetness gets between his skin and his bones. It makes him feel bruised from the inside.

In the distance, the light picks up the ghostly shape of a ship at full sail. Fewer and fewer ships now come to Australia under sail. Lumbering steam ships beetle along the horizon more often now. He feels the passing of one time into another; the passing of elegant might into ugly practicality. He thinks about Clovis McCarthy, descending the lighthouse stairs for the last time. One day that will be Matthew, too old to manage the light anymore, a relic from the past. And what then? What loneliness and emptiness lie beyond that date?

Now he is getting sentimental. He gathers himself, goes back down the stairs and busies himself with his usual night duties. As he does every night. And it is after three more nights like this
that the return telegram comes to him:
No longer at this abode. No forwarding address given.

Matthew closes his eyes and rubs the bridge of his nose. Isabella’s sister has moved. That is why she hasn’t responded. She doesn’t know Isabella needs her. Matthew feels Isabella’s helplessness in the world. What will she do if she can’t get to her sister’s? Go back to the family-in-law she despises? Stay at the Fullbrights’ until they throw her out for getting too close to Xavier? She is as fragile as a bird. These things might break her. The vision of her, collapsing at the door that first night he met her, comes to mind. And while he knows that her collapse was due to the hardship of her journey on foot, he can’t help but see it as a signifier of her nature: she can only go so far, and then she will simply stop, crumple, disintegrate.

Matthew sighs, opens his eyes. He has at his disposal a telegraph machine. Whatever he can do, he will do to track down Isabella’s sister.

T
he sky burns blue above Isabella and Xavier as they walk hand in hand along the beach collecting shells. It is only recently that Isabella can set foot on the sand without cold dread creeping through her: the memories of her long trek are still shadowy nightmares in her mind. But it helps that Xavier loves the beach and the sand, and so before the heat of the afternoon sets in she helps him pull on his hat and shoes and bag, and off they go.

Xavier particularly loves the slender dark pink shells. Isabella is always looking out for perfect white ones. Together they walk on the hard sand near the shore line, occasionally disappearing up to their ankles as the waves wash around them. The big blue-green rollers lift and curl, white horses on their backs, then crash and echo against each other. The sun is warm but not harsh. Xavier
finds a long stick of driftwood and shows it to Isabella. Its end is worn down to a point, like a pencil.

“That is a wonderful stick,” she says. “Good lad.”

Xavier pushes the end into the sand, then turns around slowly, drawing a circle around him. Isabella claps, then goes up the beach for seaweed to arrange at the top of the circle for hair. Xavier watches as she makes eyes from shells, then finally a big grin from a collection of moss green pipis. Xavier finishes it off by drawing two uneven ears.

The sea roars on. A seagull flaps past overhead, crying loudly.

They smile at each other in the sunshine. Isabella remembers Daniel’s face, and tries to imagine what he might have looked like, had she been smiling at him now rather than at Xavier. But his baby features were not yet distinct enough, and she finds herself imagining that he would simply look like Xavier. That somehow Xavier and Daniel, having shared a birthday, were the same person. Dimly, she is aware that this is not rational, but in her heart she feels it is good sense. There is a rightness about her and Xavier being together, alone on the beach in the sunshine, while the world and all its petty mundaneness ticks along on the other side of the pandanuses and wattle trees.

Then Xavier points at the drawing and says, as clearly as the seagull’s cry, “It’s a smiling face.”

At first Isabella cannot believe what she has heard. Xavier, nearly three, has never spoken.
Never
. Not “Mama” nor “Dada” nor “supper” nor “play with me.” And here, now, he has said a complete sentence. She is so shocked that at first she doesn’t answer, then suddenly realizes she
must
answer or risk discouraging him from ever speaking again.

“Yes,” she says. “He must be happy.” Then for good measure she adds, “As happy as I am when I’m with you.”

“He must be happy,” Xavier echoes, then his thumb goes back in his mouth.

“Are you happy, Xavier?” she asks.

He nods silently; then, as if nothing astonishing has happened, he continues up the beach looking for more pink shells.

Isabella gathers herself. She knows she should take him home and tell Katarina, but she relishes being the only woman to have heard the child’s sweet voice. She is special to Xavier: this surely proves it. He didn’t speak to his mother, he spoke to Isabella.

She knows, then, that she will not tell Katarina. Let her spend enough time with her son that she finds out herself.

Isabella hides a smile: perhaps Xavier won’t talk to anyone but her. The bright sun shines just for her.

“Xavier, wait for me, my love,” she calls after him, as a wave runs onto the beach, washing away their sand picture.

I
sabella is on the floor, on her stomach, pretending to be a worm. Xavier giggles madly, as sweet as a little chiming bell. He is supposed to be the bird but cannot stop laughing long enough to play his part. From here, Isabella can see the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle under her bed and knows that it won’t be long until Cook or Katarina or perhaps even Ernest tells her she spends too much time playing and not enough time cleaning up. But when she is with Xavier, tidy doesn’t count. Just the present counts, and holding on to it for as long as possible.

“Worm,” says Xavier, pointing at her. “Worm.”

She is used to him speaking now, although it has only been a few words each day. He still hasn’t made a sound in front of his parents. She points back at him. “Bird. Come along. Your turn.”

Footsteps approaching make him shrink and pop his thumb back in his mouth. Isabella sits up, brushing dust from the front of her dress. The door to the nursery opens and Katarina stands there.

“I’m sorry if we’re too noisy—” Isabella starts, but Katarina holds up her hand to silence her.

“Mr. Seaward from the telegraph office is here to see you.”
Her words suggest she is puzzled, perhaps disapproving, but mostly irritated.

Isabella leaps to her feet. It must be news from her sister. She doesn’t want anyone to overhear anything, so she says to Katarina, “Would you mind sitting with Xavier while I talk to Mr. Seaward?”

Katarina glances at Xavier as though she might be frightened of him, then forces a smile. “Why, no, I don’t mind.” Then as Isabella leaves the room she adds, “Don’t be long, will you?”

Matthew waits at the door, two steps down. Isabella doesn’t know whether Katarina didn’t invite him in, or whether Matthew refused to come in. Probably the latter. He speaks without greeting her. “I haven’t a telegram for you. I’m sorry.”

Isabella realizes he is managing her anticipation. She deflates. “No word?”

He shakes his head, spreads his hands and speaks quietly. “I’m sorry, but your sister isn’t at that address anymore.”

Silence. No, not silence. She can hear the sea in the distance, the wind in the tops of the tall eucalypts, the crows in the garden. Above it all, she can feel the loud thrum of her blood coursing around her body. But there is a pause in life, as everything she believes becomes something new. “Not there?”

“She must have moved house.”

“But why would she not tell me?”

“Perhaps she did. Perhaps she sent a letter to you in England.”

Yes. That was it. And even now that letter is waiting for her back in the house she once shared with Arthur. “But how am I ever to find her now?”

Matthew moves to touch her hand, then pulls back at the last moment. She tastes the regret in the space between them. “I am doing what I can to find her.”

“If you don’t find her . . .” A wave of desolation rises up,
crashing over her. What is she to do? Where is she to go? Her hand flails out, reaching for the doorjamb to support herself. She loses her balance, but he catches her hand, grasps it firmly. He steadies her with his grip, and she can see his forearm flexing against the cotton of his sleeve. She is on her own feet again and he doesn’t let go. He doesn’t let go. Still he doesn’t let go. His heat travels through her fingers to the rest of her body. She flushes. He tries to pull his hand away, but she clasps his fingers in her own. “Don’t let me go,” she whispers.