The Light Between Oceans (29 page)

Ralph put an arm around him. ‘There now, boy. Easy does it, easy does it. I’ve been around a shade longer than you. Seen all sorts. Right and wrong can be like bloody snakes: so tangled up that you can’t tell which is which until you’ve shot ’em both, and then it’s too late.’

He looked at Tom: a long, wordless look. ‘The question I’d ask is, how would raking over the coals make things better? You can’t put any of that right now.’ The words, devoid of judgement or animosity, twisted like a knife in Tom’s guts just the same. ‘Christ – the quickest way to send a bloke mad is to let him go on re-fighting his war till he gets it right.’

Ralph scraped at a callus on his finger. ‘If I’d had a son, I’d be proud if he turned out half as well as you. You’re a good bloke, Tom. A lucky bloke, with that wife and daughter of yours. Concentrate on what’s best for your family now. Fella upstairs’s given you a second chance, so I reckon he’s not too fussed about whatever you did or didn’t do back then. Stick to now. Put right the things you can put right today, and let the ones from back then go. Leave the rest to the angels, or the devil or whoever’s in charge of it.’

‘The salt. You can never get rid of the salt. It eats away like a cancer if you don’t watch out.’ It was the day after his talk with Ralph, and Tom was muttering to himself. Lucy sat beside him inside the giant glass cocoon of the lens, feeding her rag doll imaginary sweets as he buffed and polished the bronze fittings. Her blue eyes beamed up at him.

‘Are you Dolly’s dadda too?’ she asked.

Tom stopped. ‘I don’t know. Why don’t you ask Dolly?’

She leaned to whisper something to the doll, then announced, ‘She says no. You’re just
my
dadda.’

Her face had lost its round shape, and was now giving hints of her future self – blonde hair rather than the earlier dark shade, and enquiring eyes, fair skin. He wondered whether she would begin to resemble her mother, or her father. He thought back to the face of the blond man he had buried. Dread crawled up his spine as he imagined her asking him harder questions as the years went on. He thought, too, how his reflection in the mirror now offered glimpses of his own father’s face at his age. Likeness lies in wait. Partageuse was small: a mother might fail to recognise her infant in the face of a toddler, but eventually, wouldn’t she see herself in the grown woman? The thought gnawed away at him. He dabbed the rag into the tin of polish and rubbed again, until the sweat trickled into the corners of his eyes.

That evening, Tom was leaning against the verandah post, watching the wind blow the sun into night. He had lit up, and the tower was now settled down until dawn. He had gone over Ralph’s advice again and again.
Put right the things you can put right today
.

‘Here you are, darl,’ said Isabel. ‘She’s gone off to sleep. I had to read
Cinderella
three times!’ She put an arm around Tom and leaned into him. ‘I love the way she pretends to read as she turns the pages. Knows the stories by heart.’

Tom did not reply, so Isabel kissed him below the ear and said, ‘We could always have an early night. I’m tired, but not too tired …’

He was still looking out at the water. ‘What does Mrs Roennfeldt look like?’

It took a moment for Isabel to register that the reference was to Hannah Potts. ‘What on earth do you want to know that for?’

‘Why do you think?’

‘She doesn’t look a bit like her! Lucy’s blonde with blue eyes – she must have got that from her father.’

‘Well she sure as hell didn’t get it from us.’ He turned to face her. ‘Izzy, we’ve got to say something. We have to tell her.’

‘
Lucy?
She’s too young to—’

‘No, Hannah Roennfeldt.’

Isabel looked horrified. ‘What for?’

‘She deserves to know.’

She shivered. In dark moments, she had wondered whether it was worse to believe your daughter was dead, or that she was alive and you would never see her; she had imagined Hannah’s torment. But even a moment’s agreement with Tom would be fatal, she knew. ‘Tom. We’ve done this one to death. It just isn’t right to put your niggling conscience above Lucy’s welfare.’

‘
Niggling conscience?
For the love of God, Isabel, we’re not talking about swiping sixpence from the collection plate! We’re talking about a child’s life! And a woman’s life, for that matter. Every moment of our happiness is on her tab. That can’t be right, no matter how much we try to think our way out of it.’

‘Tom, you’re tired and you’re sad and you’re confused. In the morning you’ll think differently. I’m not going to talk about it any more tonight.’ She touched his hand, and fought to mask the tremble in her voice. ‘We’re – we’re not in a perfect world. We have to live with that.’

He stared at her, seized by the sensation that perhaps she didn’t exist. Perhaps none of this existed, for the inches between them seemed to divide two entirely different realities, and they no longer joined.

Lucy is particularly fond of looking at the photographs taken of her as a baby on her visit to Partageuse. ‘That’s me!’ she tells Tom, as she
sits
on his knee and points to the picture on the table. ‘But I was only little then. Now I’m a big girl.’

‘You certainly are, sweetie. Four next birthday.’

‘That,’ she says, pointing authoritatively, ‘is Mamma’s mamma!’

‘Quite right. Mamma’s mamma is Grandma.’

‘And that’s Dadda’s dadda.’

‘No, that’s
Mamma
’s dadda. That’s Grandpa.’

Lucy looks sceptical.

‘Yeah, it’s confusing, I know. But Grandma and Grandpa aren’t my mum and dad.’

‘Who are your mum and dad?’

Tom shifted Lucy from one knee to the other. ‘My mum and dad were called Eleanora and Edward.’

‘Are they my grandma and grandpa too?’

Tom side-stepped the question. ‘They both died, sweetie.’

‘Ah,’ said Lucy, and nodded seriously, in a way that made him suspect she had no idea what he was talking about. ‘Like Flossie.’

Tom had forgotten about the goat that had become ill and died a few weeks earlier. ‘Well, yes, like Flossie died.’

‘Why did your mamma and dadda die?’

‘Because they were old and sick.’ He added, ‘It was a long time ago.’

‘Will I die?’

‘Not if I can help it, Lulu.’

But lately, every day with this child seemed a precarious thing. The more she had access to words, the greater her ability to excavate the world around her, carving out the story of who she was. It gnawed away at Tom that her understanding of life and of herself would be founded on a single, enormous lie: a lie he himself had helped craft and refine.

Every surface in the light room gleamed: Tom had always kept it diligently, but now he waged war on every screw, every fitting, until it surrendered a brilliant sheen. These days he smelled permanently of Duraglit. The prisms sparkled and the beam shone, unhindered by a speck of dust. Every cog in the works moved smoothly. The apparatus had never functioned with more precision.

The cottage, on the other hand, had suffered. ‘Couldn’t you just put a bit of putty in that crack?’ Isabel asked, as they sat in the kitchen after lunch.

‘I’ll do it once I’m ready for the inspection.’

‘But you’ve been ready for the inspection for weeks – for months, for that matter. It’s not as if the King’s coming, is it?’

‘I just want it ship-shape, that’s all. I’ve told you, we’re in with a chance for the Point Moore posting. We’d be on land, close to Geraldton. Near people. And we’d be hundreds of miles from Partageuse.’

‘Time was you couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Janus.’

‘Yeah, well, times change.’

‘It’s not time that’s changed, Tom,’ she said. ‘You’re the one who always says that if a lighthouse looks like it’s in a different place, it’s not the lighthouse that’s moved.’

‘Well you work out what has,’ he said as he picked up his spanner and headed off down to the storage sheds, without looking back.

That night, Tom took a bottle of whisky, and went to watch the stars from near the cliff. The breeze played on his face as he traced the constellations, and tasted the burn of the liquid. He turned his attention to the rotation of the beam, and gave a bitter laugh at the thought that the dip of the light meant that the island itself was always left in darkness. A lighthouse is for others; powerless to illuminate the space closest to it.

CHAPTER 21

THE CELEBRATION AT
Point Partageuse three months later was big by South West standards. The Superintendent of the Mercantile Marine Office had come all the way from Perth, together with the State Governor. The town worthies were there – the Mayor, the Harbourmaster, the vicar, as well as three of the last five light-keepers. They had gathered to commemorate the day on which Janus was first lit, forty years earlier in January 1890. The occasion brought with it a grant of brief special shore leave for the Sherbourne family.

Tom ran his finger between his neck and the starched collar which imprisoned it. ‘I feel like a Christmas goose!’ he complained to Ralph as the two stood backstage, looking out from behind the curtains. Already sitting in neat rows on the stage were municipal engineers and Harbour and Lights employees who had been associated with Janus over the years. Outside the open windows, the summer’s night was alive with the chirrup of crickets. Isabel and her parents sat on one side of the hall, Bill Graysmark holding Lucy on his knee while she rabbited nursery rhymes.