The Light Between Oceans (27 page)

This wasn’t like Bluey. Occasionally he’d discuss the Sheffield Shield results, or report winning a bit of money on the horses. He’d talk about his brother Merv, who’d died on the first day at Gallipoli, or the formidable Ada, his widowed mother. Tom sensed something different today. ‘What’s brought this on?’

Bluey gave one of the sacks a kick to straighten it. ‘What’s it like, being married?’

‘What?’ Tom was startled at the change of tack.

‘I mean – is it good?’

Tom kept his eyes on the inventory. ‘Something you want to tell me, Blue?’

‘No.’

‘Righto,’ Tom nodded. If he waited long enough, the story would make sense. It usually did. Eventually.

Bluey straightened another sack. ‘Her name’s Kitty. Kitty Kelly. Her dad owns the grocer’s. We’ve been walking out together.’

Tom raised his eyebrows and gave a smile. ‘Good for you.’

‘And I – well, I don’t know – I thought maybe we should get married.’ The look on Tom’s face prompted him to add, ‘We don’t
have
to get married. It’s nothing like that. Struth, we’ve never even – I mean, her dad keeps a pretty close eye on things. And her mother. So do her brothers. And Mrs Mewett’s her mum’s cousin, so you know what the family’s like.’

Tom laughed. ‘So what’s your question?’

‘It’s a big step. I know everyone does it eventually, but I just wondered – well, how you
know …
’

‘I’m hardly a full bottle on it. Only been married the once and I’m still getting the hang of it. Why don’t you ask Ralph? He’s been hitched to Hilda since Methuselah was a boy; raised a couple of kids. Seems to have made a fair job of it.’

‘I can’t tell Ralph.’

‘Why not?’

‘Kitty reckons that if we get married I’ll have to give up working on the boat, and come and work in the grocery business. Reckons she’s too scared I’ll get drowned one day and not come home from work.’

‘Cheery sort of soul, eh?’

Bluey looked worried. ‘But, you know, seriously. What’s it like being married? Having a kid and all that?’

Tom ran his hand through his hair as he considered the question for some time, deeply uneasy. ‘We’re hardly your typical setup. Not many families like us around the place – out on a lighthouse in the middle of nowhere. The honest answer is, it depends which day you ask me. It brings its share of good things, and its share of hard ones. It’s a lot more complicated than being on your own, I can tell you that much.’

‘Ma says I’m too young and I don’t know my own mind.’

Tom smiled in spite of himself. ‘I think your ma’ll probably still be saying that when you’re fifty. Anyway, it’s not about your mind. It’s about your gut. Trust your gut, Blue.’ He hesitated. ‘But it’s not always plain sailing, even when you’ve found the right girl. You’ve got to be in it for the long haul. You never know what’s going to happen: you sign up for whatever comes along. There’s no backing out.’

‘Dadda, look!’ Lucy appeared at the doorway of the shed, brandishing Hilda’s stuffed tiger. ‘It growls!’ she said. ‘Listen,’ and she turned it upside down to produce the noise.

Tom picked her up. Through the small window he could see Ralph making his way down the path towards them. ‘Aren’t you the lucky one?’ He tickled her neck.

‘Lucky Lucy!’ she laughed.

‘And being a dad? What’s that like?’ asked Bluey.

‘It’s like this.’

‘No, go on. I’m really asking, mate.’

Tom’s face grew serious. ‘Nothing can prepare you for it. You
wouldn’t
believe how a baby gets through your defences, Bluey. Gets right inside you. A real surprise attack.’

‘Make it growl, Dadda,’ urged Lucy. Tom gave her a kiss and turned the creature upside down again.

‘Keep it under your hat, all this, could you, mate?’ asked Bluey. Reconsidering, he said, ‘Well, everyone knows you’re quiet as the grave anyway,’ and he made his own version of a tiger’s growl for the little girl.

Sometimes, you’re the one who strikes it lucky. Sometimes, it’s the other poor bastard who’s left with the short straw, and you just have to shut up and get on with it.

Tom was hammering a plank onto the wall of the chookhouse, to cover a hole the wind had blown in it the night before. Spent half his life trying to protect things from the wind. You just had to get on with things, do what you could do.

Bluey’s questions had stirred up old feelings. But every time Tom thought about the stranger in Partageuse who had lost her child, Isabel’s image took her place: she’d lost children, and would never have any more. She had known nothing about Hannah when Lucy arrived. Just wanted what was best for the baby. And yet. He knew it wasn’t just for Lucy’s sake. There was a need in Isabel that he could now never fill. She had given up everything: comforts, family, friends – everything to be with him out here. Over and over he told himself – he couldn’t deprive her of this one thing.

Isabel was tired. The supplies had just come in and she’d set about replenishing food – making bread, baking a fruitcake, turning a sack of plums into jam that would last out the year. She’d left the kitchen
for
barely a moment – the moment Lucy had chosen to step closer to the stove to smell the delicious mixture, and had burnt her hand on the jam pan. It wasn’t severe, but enough to keep the child from sleeping soundly. Tom had bandaged the burn and given her a small dose of aspirin, but by nightfall she was still unsettled.

‘I’ll take her up to the light. I can keep an eye on her. I’ve got to finish the paperwork for the inventory anyway. You look done in.’

Exhausted, Isabel conceded.

Holding the child in one arm, and a pillow and blanket in the other, Tom carried her gently up the stairs, and laid her on the chart table in the watch room. ‘There you are, littlie,’ he said, but she was already dozing.

He set about adding up columns of figures, totting gallons of oil and boxes of mantles. Above him, in the lantern room the light turned steadily, with its slow, low hum. Far below, he could see the single oil light from the cottage.

He had been working for an hour when some instinct made him turn, and he found Lucy watching him, her eyes glittering in the soft light. When his gaze met hers she smiled, and yet again Tom was caught off guard by the miracle of her – so beautiful, so undefended. She raised her bandaged hand, and examined it. ‘I been in the wars, Dadda,’ she said, and a frown crept over her features. She held her arms out.

‘You go back to sleep, littlie,’ Tom said, and tried to turn back to his work. But the child said, ‘’Ullaby, Dadda.’ And she kept her arms extended.

Tom lifted her onto his lap and rocked her gently. ‘You’d get nightmares if I sang to you, Lulu. Mamma’s the singer, not me.’

‘I hurt my hand, Dadda,’ she said, raising her injury as proof.

‘You did, didn’t you, bunny rabbit?’ He kissed the bandage delicately. ‘It’ll soon be better. You’ll see.’ He kissed her forehead, and stroked her fine blonde hair. ‘Ah, Lulu, Lulu. However did you
find
your way here?’ He looked away, out into the solid blackness. ‘However did you turn up in my life?’

He could feel her muscles surrender as she edged towards sleep. Gradually her head weighed loosely against the crook of his arm. In a whisper even he could hardly hear, he asked the question that gnawed at him constantly: ‘How did you ever make me feel like this?’

CHAPTER 20

‘I NEVER KNEW
he’d tried to get in touch.’ Tom was sitting beside Isabel on the verandah. He was turning over and over an ancient, battered envelope, addressed to him ‘c/o 13th Battalion, AIF’. On every available inch of space were scrawled forwarding addresses and instructions, culminating in an authoritative command in blue pencil to ‘
return to sender’ –
to Edward Sherbourne, Esquire, Tom’s father. The letter had arrived in a small packet three days earlier, when the June boat brought news of his death.

The letter from Church, Hattersley & Parfitt, Solicitors, observed the formalities and provided only the facts. Throat cancer, 18 January 1929. It had taken them some months to track Tom down. His brother Cecil was the exclusive beneficiary, save for the bequest to Tom of a locket of his mother’s, enclosed in the letter which had pursued Tom across the world.

He had opened the packet after he had lit up that evening, sitting in the lantern room, numb at first as he read the stern, spiky handwriting.

‘
Merrivale
’

Sydney

16th October 1915

Dear Thomas
,

I am writing because I know that you have enlisted. I am not much of a one for words. But with you so far away now, and with the possibility that harm may come to you before we have an opportunity to meet again, it seems writing is the only way
.

There are many things I cannot explain to you without denigrating your mother, and I have no wish to do any more harm than has already been done. Some things, therefore, will be left unsaid. I am at fault in one respect, and it is this I wish to remedy now. I enclose a locket which your mother asked me to let you have, when she left. It has her likeness in it. At the time, I felt it was better for you not to be reminded of her, and I therefore did not pass it on. It was not an easy decision to make, to determine that your life would be better without her influence
.

Now that she is dead, I feel it right to fulfil her request, if rather late
.

I have tried to raise you as a good Christian. I have tried to ensure you had the best available education. I hope I have instilled in you a sense of right and wrong: no amount of worldly success or pleasure can redeem the loss of your immortal soul
.

I am proud of the sacrifice you have made by enlisting. You have grown into a responsible young man, and after the war, I would be pleased to find you a position in the business. Cecil has the makings of a fine manager, and I expect will run the factory successfully after my retirement. But I am sure a suitable place can be found for you
.

It pained me that I had to hear of your embarkation through others. I would have welcomed the opportunity to see you in uniform, to see you off, but I gather that since tracing your mother
and
learning she had passed away, you wish to have nothing further to do with me. Therefore, I leave it up to you. If you choose to reply to this letter, I shall be most pleased. You are, after all, my son, and until you too are a father, you will not fully understand all it means to say that
.