The Lightkeeper's Wife (36 page)

For a while, she sat in the lounge room with the children, trying to knit. Gary was on the floor working on a piece of wood he’d been carving for days and Jan was curled up on a chair, reading a book. Outside, the wind gusted and shuddered under the eaves, whistling around the walls and pressing under the door. Eventually, Mary set her knitting aside and went to the kitchen where she could watch the tower. Jack was up there somewhere, observing the weather, like her.

She wished this thought might give her comfort, but the vibe between them had not been good lately. She couldn’t remember how long it was since they’d turned to each other in intimacy—Jack had locked that part of himself away. And they hadn’t talked about anything of consequence for months. At the dinner table, they kept up appearances for the benefit of the children, but beyond that it seemed there was little love left. And yet, there must be something in her that cared for his well-being. In threatening conditions like this, she still worried that he might be injured. He was her husband, and she felt loyalty towards him, even though their relationship was hollow.

She watched as the rain arrived in large fat drops, slung into long smudges on the windows. Her view of the hill became bleary, and the tower seemed bent and twisted. Time moved slowly as she watched the clouds sink and the raindrops thicken. Halfway down the paddock, the pony huddled against the wind, his tail pressed into the rain. She felt sorry for him, alone out there when he could have been in the protection of the shed. Perhaps he’d let her catch him now. She set the kettle on the warmer and pulled on her coat and hat, calling to Jan and Gary not to venture outside. On the porch, she paused to listen to the wind roaring across the cape and the sheds banging and clattering in the blast, the rain pounding on tin. Then she hurried to the paddock. It’d be best to get this job over quickly and retreat inside.

The pony hadn’t moved. He was standing by the fence, and as she approached, her coat flapping, his eyes widened and nostrils flared. She managed to tie a rope to his head collar and turn him uphill, but he strained against her, trying to keep his rump into the wind.

At first she handled him gently, but as the cold and the rain beat into her face and he wouldn’t budge, she grew rougher and more insistent, dragging at his head. Exasperated, she leaned against his shoulder and tried to push him backwards. He took a step back, then another and they slowly progressed up the hill and out through the gate. Then the real trouble began.

Beyond the security of the paddock, the pony became even more skittish and uncertain, prancing and jostling and stepping on Mary’s feet. The wind was unbelievably strong and Mary clung to the rope, trying to use the pony as a shield as they laboured down the track towards the shed. The door had blown open and was slamming against the wall. At the sound, the pony propped, shied and snorted, wrenching the rope from her hands. Then he took off. Cursing, she followed him over the hill.

On the western side of the cape, the land fell away quickly, diving through grasses and scrub then arriving suddenly at the cliffs. Mary was worried the pony might not see the edge until too late. He could go over, scrabbling at the lip with his hooves. She ran down the slope after him, exposed to the full force of the gale. The rain was dense and sharp, driven by the wind. Further west, she saw the pony bounding across the slope. She tried to hurry towards him, but he disappeared into cloud. She paused, unsure whether he’d fallen or was just out of view.

Then she saw him again, trotting jerkily across the slope to the north, zigzagging among the scrub, head low. She followed him, clutching bushes to steady herself. He stopped at a high point where the vegetation grew dense. Quickly, she scrambled across, feet skating in the gravel. Suddenly her foot slid on loose rocks, caught for a moment then slid again. She grasped at a tussock but it whipped out of her fingers, and then she was sliding, slipping down a steep gully, too close to the edge.

She dug her fingers into the mud, and scraped at anything solid. Her fingers raked on stone. There was a scream in her throat. Then air, all around. And space. She thudded against dirt. Rock.

It ended in a thump and a crack as her leg folded. Air huffed out of her like closed gallows. Slipping in and out of awareness, she wondered whether she was warm or cold.

Eventually, she felt rainwater running inside her coat and realised she’d have to move and find a way up the cliff. It took forever to edge up the rock wall and then roll over and arrange herself in an awkward sitting position with her leg stretched in front of her. After heaving the leg into place, she slumped against the cliff with her coat tucked around her. Rain sluiced over her. She melded with the darkness all around.

Hours passed before Jack and the other keeper found her. They scrambled down ledges to reach her, and then carried her up to the cottage while she reeled in a fog of pain. Jack was needed on the cape; he couldn’t leave. So his brother, Sam, came from the farm and drove her to hospital in Hobart. It was a wretched journey: her leg throbbed, and despite blankets and hot water bottles, she couldn’t get warm.

At the hospital, they confined her to bed in traction until the leg straightened. Then they set it in plaster and sent her to her parents’ place to recover. She was furious and bereft. The pony was safely back in his usual paddock, but she was here, stranded away from her family. Her mother patted her arm, smiling maternally.
You’ll be all right, dear. They’ll manage without
you
. But Mary knew they wouldn’t manage. Jack was useless in the kitchen and Jan was too young to shoulder the load. The head keeper’s wife wasn’t well, so it was too much to ask her to care for the children.

It was no surprise when Jack’s letter arrived.

Dear Mary,

I hope you are recovering well. It has been
very difficult to manage both the light-station duties
and the family on my own. I have decided that I
must call on Rose to come and help us while you
are away. She can cook and look after the children
while I attend to the many jobs that must be done
after the storm.

Get well quickly. The children are missing you.

Jack

Mary was irritated. Rose was an ineffective solution. She was simply too lazy, and she’d be no use around the house. But of course, Jack, would be blind to that—all he’d see was an extra pair of hands.

Sitting by the fire in her parents’ home, Mary had much time to contemplate. She thought about Jack’s letter and everything it represented. She read it over and over, looking for something that wasn’t there. The fall and the broken leg had shaken her and she needed something from Jack, some reassurance that she mattered and that she was important to him. She wanted to know how he’d felt when he discovered she was missing. She wanted him to tell her about the search and rescue. She wanted to hear of his concern, the revival of his love and affection when he knew she was hurt. But the letter gave her none of this.

She wondered what would have happened if she’d died. The children might have grieved for a time, but what of Jack? How long would her death have affected him? Over the years they had become like ghosts to each other, shadows passing along the walls, beings without substance or reality. At best, she figured Jack would have noticed her absence more than he noticed her presence. The space in his bed. His dinner plate unfilled. The empty kitchen. Nobody to nurture the children. The cow waiting by the gate to be milked.

Their conversations, he would not miss—they were devoid of anything that mattered, littered with necessary facts, but bearing nothing of warmth, no connection or intimacy. In recent years, their eyes had flattened during speech. They had closed each other out like a door pulled shut. And their jobs had become the reason for existing. Jack, the lighthouse keeper. Mary, the mother.

If she had died in the accident, Mary was aware that Jack could have written a new future for himself, one without the burden of a wife. He could have sent Jan and Gary to boarding school. He could have become one with the wind and melted into the solitude he wrapped so closely around himself. She often wondered if he would have been happier that way.

After ten weeks, the leg mended and she went home, aware there was much work to be done to knit her marriage back together. But it seemed she was too late. The
Jack
she arrived home to was a stranger, aloof and unwelcoming, disinterested in her return. Aware of her own fragility, and shocked by Jack’s detachment, she took the children and went back to her parents’ house. She needed space to find her way out of the debilitating grip of despair before she could attempt to revive her relationship. Two months later, she returned once more to the cape; this time she was ready to fix things with Jack.

At first, she and Jack edged around each other like skittish crabs, not knowing how to reconnect. There were times when she considered leaving for good, but commitment was something her parents had taught her, and divorce never seemed a real option. It might have been possible if she’d been a different person in a different era. But society frowned on separation, and she was in her mid-thirties with two children. Jan and Gary had to be considered too. Jack was their father, and they needed him.

There was also the burden of her guilt. Over the years at the lighthouse as Jack had become more distant, instead of retreating and dreaming of a life with Adam, she could have put more effort into her marriage. Jack might not be passionate like Adam, but he was solid and dependable, with an inner strength that matched the place they lived in . . . Bruny Island. Yes, the island was part of what held them together. How lucky they were in their mutual love of this place. It gave them a base on which to reconstruct themselves.

In the end, it was Mary’s task to remake the family. She strived to avoid conflict, steering cautiously around prickly issues. She organised weekly picnics down in their quiet cove where sometimes they saw seals or dolphins. She re-ignited their sex life. Despite his initial resistance, she could see this was important to Jack. Sex reunited him with his physical self and it brought touch back into their relationship. Touch and intimacy. She also ensured they holidayed away at the farm, where Jack fished and walked and laughed with Max and Faye.

Jack started to put in more effort too. Instead of hiding in a book or escaping early to bed each evening, he stayed in the living area with the family. He talked books with Jan and spent more time with Gary: fishing, walking, teaching him carpentry in the shed. Then, when the children were in bed, Mary and Jack played canasta, five hundred, Scrabble. They reminisced on good times, unearthing their favourite memories. It was all so laborious and forced at first, but the new habits gained momentum.

Then Tom came along. The gift and the inspiration. The precious one who made them whole again. Mary didn’t tell Jack she was pregnant until they’d begun to heal, and when she gave him the news, he wept. Jack liked babies. If he hadn’t been so crushed by Hobart life, he’d have been more involved when Jan and Gary were small. Even so, he’d done as much as he could, cradling them to sleep, walking them in the pram, bringing them in to be fed. When Tom arrived, he took extra care with him. If Tom cried at night, Jack was there, taking the baby in his arms and walking up and down the corridor. Or he would sit on the couch stroking Tom’s feathery little head with a hand already twisted with arthritis.

Jack could not be remade. Yet he did mellow, and she loved him for what he had been and also for what he was—a man of commitment. He was never particularly close to the children as they grew up, being too awkward and inscrutable for that. And he never completely recovered from the air and distance of the cape. But he and Mary were at ease together. And there was satisfaction in the achievement of a long marriage. By staying together, they had accomplished something valuable and intangible—an unspoken trust and solidarity that came from the knowledge they’d survived hardship and had not been destroyed.

There was cause for celebration in that.

27

Saturday night is Emma’s party, and I don’t think my acceptance was a particularly good idea. I haven’t been to a party in years. I’m useless at small talk. And I don’t want to see Nick again. If Emma gets a chance to line us up side by side in a social setting, I know which man will be found wanting. I’ll be the gangly awkward one who can’t even paste a friendly smile on his face.

I don’t know why I’m going to this party anyway. I should be down at Bruny with Mum. She looked dreadful when I visited with Gary on Wednesday, weak and vague. That cough is killing her. Gary said Dad was the same.

I pull on jeans, a green shirt and a grey fleece top. It’s not even worth looking in the mirror—all I will see is my inadequacy. I grab my keys from the bench before I can convince myself not to go.

Jess is waiting at the front door. I’m not sure if I should take her: I don’t want to leave her in the car for three or four hours, but then again, if I have to check on my dog perhaps it’ll give me an excuse to leave. I open the door and follow Jess to the car. She’s joyous to be going out and I wish I could share a fraction of her excitement. All I feel is dread.

Outside Emma’s house, I sit in the car with the radio on, waiting for eight o’clock. When the ABC news fanfare starts, I stay in the car a few minutes longer to hear out the news and get the weather forecast. Then I get out and shut the car door. I stand awhile in the street. The house is lit like a birthday with fairy lights strung up specially for the party. I jingle the keys in my pocket, open the gate and plod up the steps to the front door to ring the doorbell. There are footsteps and a shadow moving inside and the door finally swings open. It’s Nick.