The Lightkeeper's Wife (13 page)
After dinner they had walked the beach under the white wash of the moon, stopping to grasp each other in passion, or to lean into each other’s warmth while the air settled bitingly cold around them. That night, they lay together, listening to the sound of the waves breaking on the beach, their bodies enmeshed, warmth rising between them. Intimacy was something they’d dreamed of for years, and yet it was almost overwhelming when reality arrived. All that yearning. So much anticipation. So little experience.
After the farm, there had been the burden of their lives in Hobart; Jack’s retreat into himself and her own misery. The lighthouse gave them a temporary reprieve, but then the wind wore Jack down. Truly, it was a wonder they made it through. If she hadn’t been so patient, so committed, so determined, they could have easily blown away like the marriages of today. But a failed marriage was destitution back then. There were few options for women. A divorce was a public disgrace. And she loved Jack, despite his foibles.
Often she had wished she could teach her children how to prevent a relationship from going into decline. The art of marriage maintenance. But even if she had been able to verbalise all that was in her heart, she couldn’t dictate how they should live their lives. It wasn’t her place to steal from them the bittersweet pain of their own discoveries and mistakes. The resuscitation of a relationship was something you could only learn between the lines of your own history. And grief was not something you could save people from. It was the destiny of everyone. Yet, if she could do those years again, perhaps she would have done them differently.
From the grand plateau of age, she could see where she and Jack had allowed room for slippage. But it had taken her years to understand how words could become lost if they weren’t spoken. And then it was too late to retrieve them. When she began to comprehend the barrier in her relationship with Jack, the thread of contact was already broken. The wind had carried it away, and all that remained was empty air.
Their lives at the cape were dominated by the lighthouse. It was there on the hill each time she looked out the kitchen window. Its rotating beam punctuated the night. And Jack’s alarm woke them each morning at four so he could do the weather observations and then be ready to extinguish the light at dawn. The two keepers were busy: reporting the weather six times a day, servicing and fuelling the generators, washing the lighthouse windows, cleaning the lenses and prisms, painting the tower, maintaining fences and slashing the grass.
While Jack was occupied with keeping the light, Mary maintained the family. She kneaded dough, baked cakes, prepared the evening meal. As she worked, the children did their lessons, bent over books and pencils and little piles of shavings. Outside, she milked the cow twice a day, hung out the washing, cared for the chickens and the pony. In the evenings, she sewed clothes and knitted jumpers and socks. She made butter and cheese, and tended the miserable vegie patch, trying to coax the wilting plants to grow. Always, in the background, the kettle sizzled on the stove, ready for Jack when he came in looking for a cup of tea and some food.
As time wound around them at the lighthouse, the wind had started eating at Jack. It mottled him slowly, grinding him down. His hands, already stiff from working in rain and cold at the farm, began to warp. And there was no escaping the wind in that southern reach of land. At first, it made Jack restless. He came home each night with an edginess that could not be relieved by sleep. Then his mood progressed to grumpiness. Mary had to deflect the children from him, diverting them into their rooms, into books, into games, anything to give him quiet and rest.
On days off, the family retreated to their favourite cove where there was stillness beyond the lash of the wind. Jack sagged in the quiet; something invisible lifted from him, and if they stayed there long enough, there would be small flashes of warmth and engagement. But those moments were brief and increasingly feeble. Distance diffused into their relationship, its invasion so insidious that it spread wide and long before Mary realised what was happening. Somehow, they had evolved into different people, and a bridge had to be remade—a task Mary couldn’t tackle alone.
At night, she lay in bed, listening to Jack’s breathing. Sometimes she reached for him—darkness gave sufficient anonymity to ignore the rift—and they’d take each other raggedly, desperately, trying to clutch onto something they both needed but couldn’t ask for. In the grip of each other’s bodies, they held on in silence and pretended the chasm between them didn’t exist. Then he lost his interest in sex, complaining about his arthritis. She worked to ease his load, busying herself with extra jobs to protect him from labour around the house. If she could just help him a little bit more, she thought, his impatience might soften. He might remember to embrace the children. He might lift his eyes for long enough to see her.
Love-making was the final thread that held them together. But when the wind blew even that away, they were left with nothing but a vast expanse of mist and air, both of them lost in fog.
They should have found a way back to each other in all that time and sky and wilderness. They ought to have found reconnections in a place they both loved. But the only element of Cape Bruny that penetrated their relationship was space—that great expanse of it stretching all around. Eventually, she stopped reaching across the bed for Jack, and he slept facing away. Instead of trying to pull him back, she turned to the children, and allowed Jack to retreat into his silences and his solitude.
It had been easy to lose herself in daily activities. She’d used them as a prop to carry her through. Built routine around her like a fortress. The tasks became the purpose, and everything else became obscured beneath the rigid pattern of life: a structured string of days adding up to a year, and then more years when the passing of seasons and the growth of the children marked the passage of time. Somehow, she and Jack had disengaged until they arrived at a grim place that was neither love nor hatred. They existed in an empty place which, over the years, she came to know as indifference. Left alone there, she was forced to depend on secrets and fantasy to feed her soul—a dangerous place for a woman to go.
Though she didn’t like to remember those times (and she still wasn’t ready to think about them now), she had always blamed the storm, her accident, and all that followed for the near-demise of her relationship with Jack. And, because of that, within the deepest recesses of her being, she had long blamed the lighthouse itself. It had been their making, their breaking, and their making again. The life–death–life cycle of everything. But it had been the fault of neither, really. She and Jack had been already crumbling. The other factors were simply catalysts. They had made choices which led them to a place where there were, perhaps, no choices. They’d created a situation where the actions that came after became the only possibility. And the events that unfolded were consequence, not causality.
The awful truth was that the aftermath to those events became the path which would eventually lead to that letter hidden in her suitcase in the cabin at Cloudy Bay.
It’s the day of my visit to check on Mum. As I eat breakfast, Jess skulks around my feet under the table. Occasionally, she peeks out at me with tragic eyes which switch to hopeful when she sees the toast in my hand. She’s disappointed I haven’t taken her for a walk. Usually, we head out early to the beach and watch the sunrise creeping across the water. At this time of year, the mornings are often stunning and the sea is like liquid glass. When it’s clear, smoke haze hangs over the mountains from the forestry burns and the sun is a blazing ball of orange. But this morning a walk is not an option, despite Jess’s pleading eyes. She’ll have plenty of time to run at Cloudy Bay, even though she doesn’t know it yet.
As the car slips down the driveway, I notice a removal van outside one of the houses across the road. I see the dark shape of a man at the window of the house. I wonder who’s moving in and what they’ll be like, whether they will expect anything neighbourly of me. I’m not good at change and it’s enough to start a churring in my stomach.
It’s not far from Coningham to Kettering and I’m still brooding on the prospect of new neighbours when we arrive at the wharf. We don’t have to wait long before boarding, and there’s hardly anyone heading out to the island at this time of day, so loading is quick. When we push out from the terminal, I’m the only one standing at the bow.
As the ferry hums across the channel, I meditate on emptiness. The morning is quiet and sleepy, and a few cormorants beat across the water, flying low. I stand in the cold wind watching North Bruny inch closer, immersing myself in the grinding throb of the engines, feeling the rhythm of the lapping waves, doing anything to avoid thinking about Mum. But the restless workings of my mind won’t be suppressed. I missed the opportunity to say goodbye when Dad died and I’ve been determined to be here when Mum’s turn comes. Now the time is approaching, I can’t think of anything to say.
Since Dad’s death I’ve visited Mum every week. Usually I stop in after work for dinner and mostly we have something simple: sausages and mash, or chops and vegies. Sometimes I buy a nice steak for her. She can’t afford much on her pension, so I often tuck something extra in her fridge: a small roast for the weekend, some chocolates, maybe a few rashers of bacon.
We sit and watch the news together and we don’t talk much. There’s simple comfort to be had in quiet company; she likes to know I’m okay, and I’m reassured each time to see her relatively well. At her age there are always health complications, but the medication has kept her stable for a while. Jacinta has me worried, though. If she’s concerned about Mum then maybe her heart condition is worsening. Perhaps Jan is right and I should be bringing oxygen bottles with me. You can hire them from hospitals, I think. After I see Mum, I might look into that . . . or would she see it as unwanted intervention?
I wish Jan could work out a smoother way to interact with Mum. I know it bothers Mum that they can’t get on. And it’s a shame she and Gary don’t visit more often. Since Mum’s mobility has declined she doesn’t get out much. It must be an empty life, sitting in that musty old house, listening to the radio or watching TV. Sometimes I leave Jess with her for the day. They’re quite good friends and I know it can be uplifting for Mum just to have Jess around.
I try to think of sensitive ways to discuss Mum’s heart disease. She’s a shrewd old lady and she’ll have her defence strategies worked out. I guess all I can do is express my concern and the rest is up to her. It’s a pity, though; she might benefit from a proper medical assessment. And a doctor could have some suggestions to make her more comfortable.
I don’t blame her for wanting to get away. With Jan lurking around talking nursing homes, I’d orchestrate an escape too. And her choice of Bruny Island shouldn’t be a surprise to any of us. We all know how she loves the place. But it’s typical of Jan to rant about it. She refuses to go there on principle, saying the island stole her youth. God knows why she has to be so dramatic. I’m not surprised her husband left her. And how did she produce someone as incredibly likeable as Jacinta? It’s a mystery.
Off the ferry, I head east and then south over the island, driving through memories of my childhood. I’ll be visiting Mum at Cloudy Bay today, but it’s at Cape Bruny that I remember her best. Working at the kitchen sink with the smell of baking bread thick in the air. Gazing through the smeary window towards the light tower on the hill. Scattering pencils across the table for lessons. Serving dinner in the steamy kitchen. Digging in the vegetable garden.
She was always so affectionate with me when I was small. Always so generous with her hugs and reassurances. Perhaps she knew I needed it—I’ve never been a particularly confident person. I suppose she was my first friend; after all, there were no other kids around. That wasn’t a bad thing; I learned to be self-reliant and independent. But I guess I was closer to her than most children are to their parents.
Dad was more of an enigma to me, though he did make an effort. We went fishing sometimes and he taught me how to play cards. But during the day he was rarely in the cottage, so then it was Mum and me. We did lessons, played board games, cooked, knitted, wandered around watching birds on the cape.
I remember what an upheaval it was when the school holidays came and Jan and Gary returned home. They were so big and noisy and they frightened me. It was never long before the arguments with Jan started, and then Gary would take to the shed with Dad to dodge the fray. My brother had an affable way about him and he could draw Dad out. I was less capable of this, and Dad was no artist at conversation, so when it was just him and me, the quiet always settled. I was never sure how to lift it. Hearing Gary and Dad joshing and bantering in the workshop always made me feel sad and inadequate.
We were an ordinary family, I suppose. Some good and some bad. Some happy and some sad. Isn’t that the way it is for everyone? We did live in a strange place, and I guess it infused my soul. But even though I’m a little different, I have the same needs as other people. I need love and company and hope, work and leisure. Mum has always been there for me, the silent and invisible force behind my recovery. She never had to do much: just knowing she was there helped. But soon things will change and I’ll be on my own. Then it will be all down to me.
At Cloudy Bay, I ease the Subaru down the track onto the sand. The tide is out and the sea stretches south into the distance. Jess scrambles onto my lap, panting in my face, so I swing the door open and she leaps out, running low and flat, kelpie-style, towards a group of gulls. I yell at her from the driver’s seat and she dashes in a large arc and loops back to me, tongue flapping. When I tell her off, she yaps at the sky, head thrown back. The gulls rise, chortling, and fly out over the water following the wind up the beach. Jess yaps again. She’s telling me the gulls have gone anyway and I ought to have let her chase them.
