Lighthouse Bay (31 page)

“Is Cook treating you well?”

He nods.

She nods back. “You should go. I don’t want to get you in any trouble. And you mustn’t let on you’ve seen me. But I’ll be watching over you, Xavier. And I still love you.”

He nods again. Cook’s voice in the woods: “Where are you, child?”

He touches Isabella’s face once, his dark eyes huge and liquid, then he dashes off.

Isabella hunches down among the foliage, breathing deeply. All will be well. Surely all will be well. Just as soon as she is out of Lighthouse Bay.

O
n the Friday she is due to meet Abel Barrett, Isabella’s stomach churns all day. Her imagination, always prone to frightening her, pictures Abel turning up with the police, or denying she ever gave him a sapphire, or not turning up at all. If any of these things happen, would she dare to go through with revealing his affair to his wife? And would his wife believe her?

She need not have worried. Abel waits for her under the mango tree just after dusk. It is a clear, mild evening and the smell of his cigar smoke is strong and aromatic. He sees her approaching and moves into the shadows.

“Here,” he says, thrusting a brown paper bag at her. “It’s all in there. Your supplies, the rest of your money and the jeweler’s address.”

“The jeweler’s address?”

“He surmised from your purchase of equipment that you made the brooch. He’s interested in seeing more.” He holds up his hands. “I don’t want to know.”

Isabella peers into the bag but can’t see anything clearly in the dark.

“Don’t ask me to take anything else for you,” Abel continues. “That’s it. We are square.”

“Yes. We are square.”

He is visibly relieved. “And now, I can’t linger. I can’t be seen with another woman.”

“How is Katarina? And the boy?” Isabella asks quickly. “Is there any news of them?”

“I don’t know. They are both away.”

“Away?”

“Two or three months in Sydney. She is taking the boy to
a specialist who can get him to speak.” He stubs out his cigar against the tree.

Complicated feelings traverse her heart. It will be so long before she can put her plan into action. And Katarina has taken him. Is this the sign of a loving mother who wants what is best for her child? Or is Katarina simply trying to fix him so that she needn’t feel embarrassed about his difference? Isabella can probably convince herself it is the latter, but doubt has tainted her fantasy.

Abel Barrett thrusts his hands in his pockets. “So it is goodbye, and now I do not know you.”

“Don’t worry,” she says. “You have never known me.”

She watches him stalk off purposefully towards the Exchange. Clutching her brown paper bag against her, she heads for the lighthouse. She has at least two months, so this time she won’t make just one piece and sell it. She will make half a dozen, or more. She will travel to New York comfortably and arrive a rich woman.

F
or three weeks Isabella has not left the lighthouse. What would be the point? She will only run into trouble in town; Xavier is away and not likely to be on the beach; and she is busy, so busy, making brooches and bracelets from her dead husband’s treasure. She works to stop herself thinking about the future, the past, even the present—for Daniel’s and Xavier’s shared birthday comes and goes and she feels too far from them both. She works so hard that sleep does not stop her: ghosts of ribbons and shells and gems arrange themselves on the insides of her eyelids. Her hands ache so much at the end of every day that she has to soak them in the icebox.

But she has made beautiful things. She is almost embarrassed about her first brooch now, the one she already sold. These are much more tasteful and pretty. Unique without being odd. Opulent without being ostentatious. Matthew has been asking her for weeks how she intends to sell them, and finally she tells him that she will take the paddle-wheel steamer to Brisbane from the wharf down in the Noosa River. He blanches.

“By yourself?”

“Yes.”

He is afraid, but he lets her go.

And so now she stands on the wharf at Tewantin with her one-pound ticket, in a dress she sewed newly—and rather poorly—for going to town. She holds tightly a small case full of precious jewelry and one spare dress as she waits to board the
Plover
, a ninety-foot paddle-wheel steamer. Dusk is moist and cool. The smell of sawdust and animal droppings hangs on the air. Carts and horses and men carrying barrels move up and down the wharf. She tries not to stand out, but she notices she is the only woman traveling alone on the deck. She hears women’s voices from the saloon, which has already boarded, but Isabella’s fellow passengers are men in faded clothes making their way between their failed dreams of the gold fields and the security of employment in town.

It seems they stand waiting in the late-afternoon sun a long time, but finally she is ushered up the gangplank and on board. The deck is covered by a large, striped canopy, but the sides are open and it is a cool day. Some men unfold chairs and sit to read their papers in the last light. A number of the rougher-looking men gather towards the stern to smoke cigarettes. Isabella is not sure what to do, where to sit or stand, so she stands near the railing and watches the river disappear under the big wheel amid the smell of coal and the hiss of steam. They slowly pull away from the wharf. The evening air is chill and the wind makes her ears ache.

They won’t arrive in Brisbane until tomorrow morning, and then Isabella has a room in a boarding house that Matthew organized for her over the telegraph. He was solicitous when he bundled her into the hired carriage that morning—telling her to keep her bonnet down low and glancing about all the time to see if anyone had spotted her—and then when he’d dropped her at the wharf he’d said she must be terrified of traveling alone. But
she is not. Yes, there is a prickle of apprehension, but mostly she is excited. Her plan is unfolding. There is even a small, vain part of her that enjoys making jewelry and selling it. She is good at it. She has never really been allowed to be good at anything.

The
Plover
moves very slowly through the calm water of the river, then out through the mouth into the sea. She is reminded of the day she left England—it seems a million years ago now. She was surely a different person then. Night settles in and the coastline is too dark to see anymore, so she unfolds a chair and sits back. A purser brings her supper in a brown paper bag: a wizened apple and some bread and cheese. She puts hers under her chair and pulls her legs up next to her.

The smoking men pass around hip flasks, and start to grow rowdy. At first, Isabella finds it easy to ignore them, but then they start to sing in rough voices: songs with dirty lyrics. She is keenly aware that she is a woman, alone. She puts her feet back on the deck, an ankle on either side of her case.

She leans her head back and closes her eyes, trying to let the rocking water soothe her, but their voices are hard and loud and she understands this will be a very long night.

Then a woman’s voice breaks through the rough sounds. “Do you mind?”

Isabella opens her eyes and sees a beautifully dressed woman in her late thirties standing at the top of the stairs between the deck and the saloon. She is pleasingly curvaceous in the way only wealthy, well-fed women can be, with dark auburn hair and a pretty mouth. She wears a well-cut shirtwaister with a large collar and full sleeves, and carries a silver-tipped cane. The authority in her voice is enough to make the men stop and turn, open-mouthed.

“I can hear every dirty word you’re singing downstairs, and I am
most
unimpressed,” she says, pointing her cane at them. “Let
me ask you, what would your mothers think if they could see you now?”

Sheepish looks, mumbled apologies. The woman scans the deck and sees Isabella, lifts a curious eyebrow and flounces over. “You there,” she says. “Why are you up here alone? Do you not have a father or a husband?”

Isabella is taken aback, searches for words. “I have neither.”

“Why are you on this journey alone?”

She doesn’t want to say that she has a case full of jewelry, so instead she says, “I am traveling to Brisbane for a . . . business meeting.”

“Business? What business?”

Isabella thinks quickly. “It’s private . . . personal.”

Despite her plain answer, the woman softens. “A businesswoman, eh? And all you can afford is a seat up on deck with those ruffians?”

Isabella nods.

The woman offers her a soft hand, which Isabella takes curiously. A moment later she is hauled to her feet.

“Come,” the woman says. “You can join me and my entourage in the saloon.”

“I haven’t the right ticket.”

“A minor matter. Let me take care of it. I’m Berenice. Well, I’m Lady McAuliffe, but you may call me Berenice.”

“Mary Harrow,” she says, picking up her case and following.

“Mary Harrow, I hope you have learned your lesson. The twenty-five extra shillings for a saloon ticket are
always
worth it.”

Isabella is led down the stairs and into the saloon. It is lit with dozens of candles. A semi-circular leather seat is built into either end, with a large table covered in food: roast turkey and potatoes and china bowls full of peas and gravy. Well-dressed people play cards at small, round tables. It is quiet and calm.

The purser pounces on them the moment they set foot on the carpeted floor. “She can’t be here.”

Berenice waves him away. “Nonsense. I know you have a free berth back there, and Miss Harrow is going to sleep in it. She’s going to share the food my friends and I have paid for, and you’re not going to say a word about it.”

“But her ticket is for the deck.”

And now all Berenice’s lightness is gone. Her voice is made of iron. “Yes, and there are a bunch of monstrous, noisy men up there whom I had to go and silence because you aren’t doing your job.”

When it looks as though he might speak again, Berenice presses a finger against his mouth firmly. “This young woman is traveling to Brisbane
alone
. I won’t have her sitting among ruffians. Now do not speak to me of it again or I shall think you less than a gentleman.”

The purser, angry but resigned, leaves them be. Berenice turns a twinkling smile on Isabella. “I always get my way,” she says. “Now, something to eat?”

Isabella helps herself to a small plate of food as Berenice introduces her to her friends: two women and one portly man with a mischievous grin. They greet her easily and continue talking and laughing as if she has been their friend her whole life. Isabella deduces from the conversation that Lady McAuliffe is a rich widow whose husband, son of a London MP, owned a lucrative gold claim in Gympie. Now Berenice runs the business and lives the high life in Brisbane. She is an extraordinary woman, imbued with the energy and glow of the sun. Her friends hang on every word she says as she offers her opinions, thinks aloud through her philosophies and tells jokes far dirtier than the ones the men on the deck were singing. Isabella is fascinated by her.

And Berenice is fascinated by Isabella. Isabella, guilty for lying
about her name and intentions, tries not to answer any of Berenice’s questions directly. But somehow it slips out that her husband is dead, that she has a sister in New York whom she hopes to reach very soon, and that she owns only two dresses, one of which she is wearing.

“How long will you be in Brisbane?” Berenice asks thoughtfully, after hiding her shock at the idea of owning only two dresses.

“I’m booked to return three days hence.”

“And where are you staying?”

“A boarding house in New Farm. I’m told it’s clean and it takes women and children.”

Already Berenice is waving her hand dismissively. “New Farm is
miles
from Eagle Street, where the steamer docks. You mustn’t stay there. You must come to stay with me.”

“Truly? That is too generous an offer.”

“Yes, yes, you must. Then I’ll send you in my carriage to your business meeting. A pretty, well-bred girl such as you shouldn’t have to rough it.”

Isabella realizes that she cannot say no: Berenice is not a woman to whom people say no. “I will happily accept your offer of a place to stay, but you must allow me to be free to make my own way between appointments.”

Berenice momentarily withdraws her dazzling smile. Her friends watch carefully to see what she will do with this resistance—they look almost frightened—but then she smiles again and rubs Isabella’s wrist. “You remind me of me at your age,” she says. “You know what you want. An independent spirit.”

The purser approaches them and hands Isabella a pillow and a blanket. “For your berth,” he says. “It’s the last one on the starboard side.”

“Thank you.”

He glances at Berenice, then back to Isabella. Nods once and heads off. She is suddenly very tired.

“I’m very sorry,” she says, “but I’m exhausted.”

“Of course you are, you poor dear. We will see you at breakfast.” Berenice kisses her cheek. “Dream beautiful dreams.”

Isabella makes her way to her berth, a fold-down bed in a shallow alcove concealed by a thin curtain. She climbs into it and curls on her side under the blanket.
Dream beautiful dreams
. She tries, she really tries, but the moment she is alone the melancholy comes back and her dreams are a confused jumble of images: water and steam and coal and thunder, and a little boy slipping away from her forever in a dark wood.

I
sabella holds the address of Maximillian Hardwick the jeweler in her left hand, her case in her right. She is tired in her body and her mind. Berenice continued to probe her with questions over breakfast. The more Isabella deferred and demurred, the harder Berenice prodded. She wonders if she’d have been better at the boarding house.

A well-dressed man on a bicycle speeds past, his warning bell jolting Isabella out of her thoughts. It is a busy town, with flat roads and new buildings. A horse-drawn tram rattles along in the middle of the unpaved road. She notices all the women have parasols, and with the bright sun full on her face—even in this cool season—she understands why. She tries to cling to shade as she finds her way to Queen Street and looks out for the jeweler’s sign. Finally, she spots it in an upper-story window. Isabella pats her case for good luck and walks up the stone stairs and into the jeweler’s store.