The Light Between Oceans (42 page)

She never grew that tall.

The scurrying of a gecko brings her back to the present, back to her predicament. The questions harangue her as the moon languishes in the branches above: who is Tom, really? This man she thought she knew so well. How could he be capable of such betrayal? What has her life with him been? And who were the souls – that blending of her blood with his – who failed to find their way into being within her? A goblin thought jumps onto her shoulder: what’s the point of tomorrow?

The weeks following Grace’s return were more harrowing for Hannah than the weeks following her loss, as she was faced with truths which, long pushed away, were now inescapable. Years really had passed. Frank really was dead. Part of her daughter’s life had gone and could never be brought back. While Grace had been absent from Hannah’s days, she had been present in someone else’s.
Her
child had lived a life without her: without, she caught herself thinking, a moment’s thought for her. With shame, she realised she felt betrayed. By a baby.

She remembered Billy Wishart’s wife, and how her joy at the return of a husband she had believed dead on the Somme had turned to despair. The gas victim who came home to her was as much a stranger to himself as to his family. After struggling for five years, one morning when the ice was thick on the water in their tank, she had stood on an upturned milking bucket in the cowshed and hanged herself, leaving her children to cut her down because Billy still couldn’t grip a knife.

Hannah prayed for patience and strength and understanding. Every morning, she asked God to help her get through to the end of the day.

One afternoon as she was passing the nursery, she heard a voice. She slowed her pace and tiptoed closer to the door, which was ajar. She felt a thrill to see her daughter playing with her dolls at last: all her attempts to get her to play had been rejected. Now, pieces of a toy tea set were strewn about on the bedcovers. One doll still wore its exquisite lace dress, but the other had been stripped to a camisole and long bloomers. On the lap of the one with the skirt lay a wooden clothes peg. ‘Dinner time,’ said the skirted doll, as the child held the tiny teacup to the clothes peg and made ‘nyum nyum’ noises. ‘Good little girl. Now time for bed, sweetie. Ni-nigh,’ and the doll lifted the peg to its lips to kiss it. ‘Look, Dadda,’ it went on, ‘Lucy’s sleeping,’ as it touched the clothes peg with a dainty hand. ‘Goodnight, Lulu, good night, Mamma,’ said the doll in bloomers. ‘Got to light up now. Sun’s nearly down.’ And off the doll trotted under the blanket. The doll with the skirt said, ‘Don’t worry, Lucy. The witch can’t catch you, I maked her dead.’

Before she knew what she was doing, Hannah marched in and snatched the dolls away. ‘That’s enough of those silly games, you
hear
me?’ she snapped, and smacked her daughter’s hand. The child’s limbs stiffened but she did not cry – she just watched Hannah silently.

Instantly, Hannah was flooded with remorse. ‘Darling, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.’ She remembered the doctor’s instructions. ‘They’ve gone, those people. They did a bad thing, keeping you away from home. And they’ve gone now.’ Grace looked puzzled at the mention of home, and Hannah sighed. ‘One day. One day it’ll make sense.’

By lunchtime, as Hannah sobbed in the kitchen, ashamed of her outburst, her daughter was playing the game again, with three clothes pegs instead. Hannah stayed up late into the night, stitching and cutting, so that in the morning, the child awoke to a new rag doll on her pillow – a little girl, with ‘Grace’ embroidered on her pinafore.

‘I can’t bear the thought of what it must be doing to her, Ma,’ said Isabel, as the two women sat together on wicker chairs under the eaves at the back of the house. ‘She’ll be missing us, missing home. The poor little thing won’t know what on earth’s going on.’

‘I know, dear. I know,’ replied her mother.

Violet had made her a cup of tea and settled it on to her lap. Her daughter had altered dreadfully – sunken eyes shadowed beneath in grey; hair dull and tangled.

Isabel spoke aloud the thought that had occurred to her, perhaps to understand it better. ‘There’s never been a funeral …’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Violet. Isabel was not making much sense, these days.

‘Everyone I’ve lost – they’ve just been ripped away – into nothing. Maybe a funeral would have made it – I don’t know – made a difference. With Hugh there’s the photo of the grave in England.
Alfie’s
just a name on that memorial. My first three babies –
three
, Mum – never had so much as a hymn sung for them. And now …’ her voice broke into tears, ‘Lucy …’

Violet had been glad she’d never given her sons a funeral: a funeral was proof. Indisputable. A funeral meant admitting that your boys were absolutely dead. And buried. It was a betrayal. No funeral meant that one day they might waltz into the kitchen and ask what was for dinner and laugh with her about that silly mistake which had led her to believe for a moment – imagine that! – that they’d gone forever.

She considered her words carefully. ‘Sweetheart, Lucy’s not
dead
.’ Isabel seemed to shrug off the comment, and her mother frowned. ‘None of this is your fault, dear. I’ll never forgive that man.’

‘I thought he loved me, Mum. He told me I was the most precious thing in the world to him. Then he did such a dreadful thing …’

Later, as Violet polished the silver frames of the pictures of her sons, she went over the situation in her mind for the umpteenth time. Once a child gets into your heart, there’s no right or wrong about it. She’d known women give birth to children fathered by husbands they detested, or worse, men who’d forced themselves on them. And the woman had loved the child fiercely, all the while hating the brute who’d sired it. There’s no defending yourself from love for a baby, Violet knew too well.

CHAPTER 29

‘WHY ARE YOU
protecting her?’

The question arrested Tom, who eyed Ralph warily through the bars. ‘Plain as the nose on your bloody face, mate. As soon as I mention Isabel, you go all queer and make no sense.’

‘I should have protected her better. Protected her from me.’

‘Don’t talk bilge.’

‘You’ve been a good friend to me, Ralph. But – there’s a lot about me you don’t know.’

‘And there’s a lot about you I do, boy.’

Tom stood up. ‘Did the engine get sorted out? Bluey said you’d been having problems with it.’

Ralph looked at him carefully. ‘It’s not looking good.’

‘She’s served you well, over the years, that boat.’

‘Yep. I’ve always trusted her, and I didn’t think she’d ever let me down. Fremantle wants to decommission her.’ He looked Tom in the eye. ‘We’re all dead soon enough. Who are you to throw away the best years of your life?’

‘The best years of my life were over a long time ago, Ralph.’

‘That’s codswallop and you know it! It’s about time you got on your feet and did something! For Christ’s sake wake up to your bloody self!’

‘What are you suggesting I do, Ralph?’

‘I’m suggesting you tell the bloody truth, whatever it is. The only place lying leads is trouble.’

‘Sometimes that’s the only place telling the truth gets you, too … People can only take so much, Ralph. Christ – I know that better than anyone. Izzy was just an ordinary, happy girl until she got tangled up with me. None of this would have happened if she hadn’t come out to Janus. She thought it’d be paradise. She had no idea what she was in for. I should never have let her come out.’

‘She’s a grown woman, Tom.’

He looked at the skipper, weighing his next words. ‘Ralph, I’ve had this coming a long time. Sins catch up with you in the end.’ He sighed, and looked up at a spider web in the corner of his cell, where a few flies hung like forlorn Christmas decorations. ‘I should have been dead years ago. God knows I should have copped a bullet or a bayonet a hundred times over. I’ve been on borrowed time a long while.’ He swallowed hard. ‘It’s tough enough on Izz being without Lucy. She’d never survive time in— Ralph, this is one thing I can do for her. It’s as close to making it up to her as I’ll ever get.’

‘It’s not fair.’ The child repeats this phrase over and over, not in a whingeing tone, but in a desperate appeal to reason. Her expression is that of someone trying to explain an English phrase to a foreigner. ‘It’s not fair. I want to go home.’

Sometimes, Hannah manages to distract her for a few hours. Making cakes with her. Cutting out paper dolls. Putting crumbs out for the fairy wrens, so that the tiny creatures come right to the door and hop about on legs as fine as fuse wire, enthralling Grace while they peck daintily at the stale bread.

When she sees Grace’s expression of delight at the tabby cat they pass one day, she asks around town if anyone has any kittens,
and
a tiny black creature with white paws and face becomes part of the household.

Grace is interested, but suspicious. ‘Go on, he’s yours. All for you,’ says Hannah, putting the kitten gently into her hands. ‘So you have to help look after him. Now, what do you think his name should be?’

‘Lucy,’ says the child, without hesitation.

Hannah baulks. ‘I think Lucy’s a little girl’s name, not a cat’s name,’ she says. ‘What about a proper cat’s name?’