Lighthouse Bay (45 page)

She stands and begins to pace. Across the rough-hewn boards to the water’s edge. Back to the seat. Touch the sawmill wall. Across to the water’s edge. She counts while she paces. Every hundred paces she stops for a moment to peer downriver. Paces again. A strong wind springs up, rattling the upper branches of the tall gums behind the wharf. Crows and seagulls flap away, startled.

Matthew watches her—stooped and pale—a slight smile on his lips. “Don’t worry. If the snake didn’t stop us, then nothing can.”

“I’ll just be happier once we’re on the way.”

“I know.” He moves to get to his feet, but she hurries over to push him back down.

“Still and quiet,” she says.

She moves back to the center of the wharf. Three other people have joined them, all men with tickets for the deck. She feels a little safer with more people around. She turns, looks back up the wharf to the road.

And freezes.

In a second, she has her trunk in her hand and she pulls Matthew from his seat and yanks him with her down the wharf.

“What?” he gasps.

“Percy,” she replies. They duck in between two wooden buildings. One is the sawmill, abandoned now with its door sagging on its hinges. She cracks open the door and pulls Matthew inside. It is cool and dark, and smells of sawdust and oil. Pigeons roost in the roof beams, up near a series of high, grimy windows.

“Are you sure?” Matthew asks.

“I saw him stepping out of a coach up on the road. He didn’t see me. Oh God, how did he find us?” Her heart thuds.

Matthew shakes his head, moving to stand by the door to guard it. “Deduction, I imagine. The nearest port. It was the most likely place for us to go.”

“Then why did we come here?” She sinks to her knees, her hands in her hair. “And now, he will wait right there, hoping to see us. And he
will
see us if we try to board the steamer.”

Matthew is there a moment later, pulling her to her feet. She remembers that he is ill, and shakes herself out of self-pity.

“Let us wait and see,” he says. “The steamer doesn’t depart for another two hours.”

She searches the space with her eyes. Machinery, dusty and perpetually stopped, fills the building. Wheels with belts on them, pumps and ropes and chains. A large platform catches her eye, and she takes Matthew to it—his arm over hers—and sits him
down on the bottom stair. She climbs onto the platform, where she can see a beam of daylight through a chink between boards.

Isabella lowers herself to her knees and presses her left eye against the chink. It affords her a view down to the wharf. She holds her breath. Percy walks past. Then a few moments later he walks back. He is pacing the wharf.

She comes back to sit with Matthew. “He is certainly waiting for us.”

“Let me think.”

She returns to the chink and watches. There he is, in his yellow waistcoat, reappearing and disappearing in a slow rhythm. More passengers begin to crowd onto the wharf. She knows Percy will search every one of their faces, looking for hers. And then . . .

“What would he do to you?” Matthew asks, as if reading her thoughts. His body flexes forward protectively.

Isabella rises, and comes to sit with him on the step. “He would hand me over to the police.”

Matthew nods. “Then why hasn’t he called the police? Why does he not have them here with him?”

“Because he wants me alone first.” Helpless desperation crosses Matthew’s brow. She drops her head, her cheeks flaming as she remembers the liberties Percy took with her in her own home. “Would I hang for stealing the mace?” she asks. It is the first time she has acknowledged it is stealing. Until now, until this moment of reckoning, she saw it as keeping something that was presumed lost, something nobody expected to see again anyway.

He doesn’t answer, and she wonders whether he doesn’t know or whether he doesn’t want to say.

Then, in the distance, they hear the sound of the steamer’s whistle.

“She’s coming,” Isabella breathes.

Matthew puts his elbows on his knees and drops his head to his hands. They wait in the quiet mill, as the sound of the steamer draws closer. Isabella returns to her vantage point to watch the steamer dock, watch the passengers leave, watch supplies be lifted off and on. The crowd disperses a little: many of them were waiting to greet friends. The loading of the steamer takes forever, and still Percy strides about, eyes towards the road, waiting for them.

A
s the afternoon grows cool and the shadows lengthen, Percy begins to doubt himself. Hours, he has waited. Hours upon hours. He could have been farther along, on the way to Mooloolah. Is that where they are? Or are they still in the bush somewhere? Perhaps they have met their death at the hands of natives or wild dogs. The thought gives him no pleasure. He wants to rip her to pieces with his own hands. A quiet death in the wilderness is not revenge. And he wants the mace back. If it were lost in the bush somewhere, it might be lost forever.

A pain blazes in his head. He has never felt so uncertain and it makes him angry. Why did Arthur have to die? He continues to pace, clenching and unclenching his fists, looking out for any flash of fair hair that might be Isabella.

T
he passengers begin to board just as dusk comes to the wharf. Saloon class first: mostly gentlemen in their well-cut suits, but an occasional wife or daughter in broad-brimmed hat and fitted coat. Isabella paces now, while Matthew sits—still and quiet and very pale—on his step.

“We are running out of time,” she says.

“When is the next steamer to Brisbane?”

“Seven days away.”

Matthew climbs to his feet.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“I am going to end this.”

Her stomach turns to water. “Matthew? What do you mean?”

The whistle blows. A bosun walks up and down the wharf ringing a bell. “All aboard who’s coming aboard!”

“That’s it,” she says, panic gripping her. “That’s the last call.”

He walks to the trunk and picks it up. She rattles down the stairs. “What are you doing? You’re not going out there.”

He hands her the trunk. “No. You are.”

“What?”

“Get on the steamer. I’ll try to join you, but don’t wait for me. Go inside and go to your berth and keep yourself and our baby safe.” He swallows hard. “I will distract Percy long enough.”

Her heart feels like it will burst. “Please, Matthew, no. Don’t put yourself in danger.”

“I still hope to join you,” he says.

“But how?”

He grasps her chin gently, his fingers firm and warm on her face. “No matter what you hear, get on the steamer. Do you understand? No matter what you hear.”

She is caught in his gaze. Her mouth trembles. She sobs once.

“Do you understand?” he asks again.

“Yes,” she says. “Yes, Matthew.”

He kisses her softly, then points to the door they came in, and nods once. Then he turns and shuffles to the rear door of the sawmill. He finds it closed and locked, so he picks up a piece of metal from the ground and prizes it open. It gives.

Matthew turns, and points to her door again. She takes a moment to memorize his face, then turns and goes to the door.

She pauses at the corner of the building, in the dark alley between the sawmill and the warehouse next door. The gas lamps along the wharf are now lit. Only one or two people hurry towards the gangplank. Percy, in his yellow waistcoat, stands directly in front of it, with his eyes turned to the road.

Then, she hears her own name called.

“Isabella! Isabella, come on! The steamer is ready to leave!”

At first she is puzzled, because it is Matthew calling her. But he is calling her from the road, his back turned away as though she is up there. Momentarily, the thought flashes across her mind that the snake venom has affected his brain, but then she sees Percy galvanize, start running towards the road, and she knows what to do.

She touches her belly once. “Come, little one.” Then she dashes to the gangplank, brandishing her ticket.

“Downstairs to the saloon, ma’am,” the bosun says.

“There will be another man. A tall man with a beard. I have his ticket.” She shows it to him. “He will be here. I know . . .” She trails off, helplessness stopping up her throat.

“I’ll keep an eye out, ma’am. Make yourself comfortable down there.”

She cannot stay here and look out for Matthew lest Percy see her. She collects her trunk and makes her way down the stairs, through to the berths. She stores her trunk at one end, then climbs onto the bed and waits, eyes open, hoping for the best, but fearing the very worst.

T
ime moves slowly, like molasses. Isabella can hear her heart beating. Flick, flick, flick. It is very quiet in the berth. The noises of the steamer, the voices in the saloon, are all muted by the bedding and the curtains.

Flick, flick, flick.

Did he make it? If he’d made it, he would have been here by now.

Flick, flick, flick.

Deep inside her, another heartbeat. Matthew’s child. She will raise the child to know all about his father. She will instill all the values Matthew held: constancy, patience, wisdom. Tears brim, but she blinks them back. She has always known she would lose him.

With a clunk, the steamer begins to move. She gasps, closes her eyes. She is on her way. Brisbane to Sydney. Sydney to New York. The long, open miles. Alone.

Then she hears footfalls. Every muscle in her body tenses. Matthew? Percy? She shrinks back into the corner of her berth.

Then, a quiet voice. “Isabella?”

She sits up, hitting her head on the top of the berth. “Matthew?” She flings back the curtain, and there he is: hobbling, but real and present.

She reaches for him, presses him hard in her embrace.

“I must lie down,” he gasps.

“Of course, of course. Here is your berth.”

He climbs into it while she flutters about him, relief making her joints weak. He lies down and closes his eyes.

“What happened?” she asks.

“I managed to trip him. A pile of logs beside the sawmill. He was flat on his face behind one of the warehouses when I dashed aboard.” He groans a little. “I need to rest. The wound is aching.”

“I’ll get the ship’s doctor,” she says, pulling away.

But he grasps her wrist gently and tugs her back. “Not now. Soon. Just hold me a moment.”

So she leans over him, sinks into him, her face against his neck. She can hear his heartbeat.

His heartbeat. Her heartbeat. And the tiny inaudible heartbeat that will bind them together until death.

The river slides beneath them, carrying them into the future.

W
hen Percy finally climbs to his feet, his head is sore. So sore. His brain feels as though it is pressing hotly against the tightening cup of his skull. Are they on the boat? Or have they run into town? He tries to track the steamer with his eyes, but his vision blurs, goes almost double. He can’t think straight. The pain is ablaze in every coil of his brain. He must lie down so he can regroup and plan his next action. He stumbles from the wharf, clutching his skull, all the pain and judgment of doomsday weighing upon his head.

2011

L
ibby still hadn’t signed the contract. The solicitor had reassured her that it was all in order, but she still hadn’t put pen to paper, and she wasn’t sure why. She had already spent the money in her imagination. She was ready, so ready, to leave Lighthouse Bay and get on with her life. But she still hadn’t signed the contract.

“They tell me it’s been a week since they posted it,” Tristan said, as they sat on the small paved area behind her house, soft blue post-sunset air all around them. She smelled the enticing aroma of lamb roasting in the oven and tasted the sweet burn of brandy on her tongue.

“I thought you weren’t supposed to have anything to do with the deal?” she shot back, smiling.

“Well, I’m not. But Yann was talking about it and I overheard. Is everything okay?”

“Yes, everything is okay. I’m just waiting for the solicitor to get back to me. He’s busy.”

“Small-town solicitor. I can give you the number of a good firm in Brisbane.”

“It’s fine. Don’t worry. I’m not worried.” She gave him a brief, brittle smile. “Topic change, please.”

Tristan tipped back in his chair, stretching out his legs. “Have you decided what you’ll do when you move out?”

“I was thinking of heading back to Paris.” She glanced at him to judge his reaction.

“For good?”

“I don’t know. It depends.”

“On what?”

“On a lot of things.” This time she looked at him directly, raising her eyebrow.

He smiled slowly in return. “Well, as long as you choose to stay, I’d like to go on seeing you.” He reached across and grasped her hand, rubbing her fingers gently. “You know I think you’re beautiful.”

They sat like that for a while. She sipped her drink, tried to loosen the knots in her neck. The draft brochure was done and sent. She had no more work lined up. This was the interim: the time between before and after. She tried to enjoy it, but the discomfort was still squirming in her belly, and she was just tipsy enough to say something. Tristan had spent all day with her, the night before too, and they still hadn’t talked about his “flatmate.” So she said, trying to sound more nonchalant than she felt, “So, how’s your flatmate?”

His eyes met hers. He looked at her a long time, and she knew he was trying to read her expression, trying to gauge what she suspected, how she would feel.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I know she’s not a flatmate. I never told you about Mark, did I? Twelve years we were together. The whole time he was married to somebody else.”

Tristan nodded once. “I didn’t lie when I said I wasn’t married. I’m not. But she and I have been living together for four years. It’s not working out. We sleep in separate beds. She’s
having trouble letting go. For all intents and purposes, she is a flatmate. I’m helping her see that she needs to find somewhere else to go.”

We sleep in separate beds.
That was one of Mark’s lines. Perhaps it was one of every cheater’s lines.