The Lightkeeper's Wife (7 page)

Later, she could see what a special time it was. Her punishment was, in fact, a gift. Through exile, she had escaped grimy Hobart, the prospect of a job in an office, the oppression of her parents’ house and rules. On the farm, she lived outdoors in clean cool air. And there was a pattern to the days, a weekly and seasonal structure. She came to love the rich smell of grass, the sour smell of cow manure, the sweet, musty scent of hay in the shed. She liked to hustle the cows up the muddy track for milking. Behind the cottage, tall white ribbon gums lined the stream, and when the wind was up, she liked to stand beneath them, watching the long loose straps of bark slapping against their trunks and the skirts of foliage in the high canopy swaying against the sky.

Back then, the farm was shrouded with eucalypts and constantly drenched by weather off the southern seas. Rain would sheet from heavy clouds, pounding the paddocks, creating small rivers that ran down the cow tracks to the stream. When the heavens were emptying, she often sheltered in the old barn with the rain hammering on the roof and her cheek pressed against the warm flank of a cow, shooting milk into a bucket with each squeeze of her hands. And that shed was where she had first met Jack.

It was a day of low grey skies, and she was inside clipping wool from a straggly old sheep. Darkness fell across her and she thought more weather was coming in, but when she looked up she saw a tall young man leaning silently in the doorway, watching her. She realised he must be one of the three Mason boys Aunt Faye had told her lived on the neighbouring farm. Her aunt felt sorry for them because their property wasn’t big enough to divide. The oldest son would inherit. The rest would probably have to leave the island for work.

She went back to clipping the sheep, expecting him to go off in search of Uncle Max. But he stayed, and she felt her skin heating up beneath his gaze. Who did he think he was, observing her like a cow?

‘Are you looking for my uncle?’ she asked, shooting him a frown. ‘He’s down by the stream, working on the pump. You’ll find him there.’

The young man flushed and mumbled thanks.

‘I’m Mary,’ she said, standing up. ‘Who are you?’

She offered a hand for him to shake, but he was already turning away. ‘Jack,’ he said, over his shoulder. ‘I’m Jack Mason. Didn’t mean to disturb you.’

Initially she hadn’t been interested in him; she was still consumed by anger and fixed on other dreams. But she was a maturing girl thrown into the company of three young men, so it was inevitable that something would happen.

The two farm cottages were quite close and the families exchanged tools and assistance. They also shared celebrations: Christmas, Easter, picnics, fruit-picking. An only child from a strict Protestant family, Mary’s self-awareness was awakening and she was drawn to men, even though she knew little about them. And there she was, unleashed among approving male attention in the physical world of the farm. Strong bodies. Masculine work. She thrived on stolen glances and quick conversations. A joke here and there. Jack’s brothers were bolshie and fun-loving; they became the siblings she’d never had. But Jack was different. He was quiet and solid and strong. Restrained. There was something attractive in his steady silent presence. Something reassuring. And in his eyes, she saw a sparkle of a guarded interest. Despite herself, she was drawn to him. She wanted to know more.

During hay season, the families helped each other out, lifting bales onto the back of the Masons’ old truck to get them into the barn before the next rain. It was heavy work. Mary could still remember Jack, shirtsleeves rolled up, the tight muscles of his forearms knotting as he swung bales onto the truck. His face had glowed with a sheen of sweat, his lips red, eyes blue, dark short-cropped hair scruffy with dust and stalks of hay.

For part of the day she had worked with the men, bending and lugging bales for as long as her strength held. She could see they approved of her grittiness, the way she flung herself into the task, dragging and lifting and heaving with the rest of them. She had watched Jack secretly, peeking inside his shirt as he bent to hook his fingers into the next bale, his chest muscles twitching beneath a thin smattering of hair as he gripped the baling twine. She imagined the texture of his chest, the hair, the feel of those strong arms pulling her close. Later, when her body was aching with fatigue, she brought water and cakes from the house. As he swigged from a bottle, Jack caught her watching him. His eyes crinkled, a smile flickering on his lips. Tight with embarrassment, she held her face rigid, but his smile broadened.

‘Good cakes,’ he said, taking one from the tin she was carrying and wiping drops of water from his lips.

They saw each other often like this. Small exchanges in a day of work. Accidental encounters on errands. Picking fruit in autumn, they ended up on the same tree, reaching and bending to shepherd apples into buckets. Talk was minimal, but they were alert to each other. Sly glances through a shield of leaves. The flash of a brown arm stretching for the same piece of fruit. Helping to fill a tipped bucket. Watching each other bite into the crisp white flesh of a just-ripe apple.

He came often to the shed while she was milking, begging a jug of cream for his mother, dipping a cup into her bucket and drinking it warm, or simply standing at the shed door watching her, as he had done at their first meeting. She fumbled when his eyes were on her, making the cow tense up and interrupting the flow of milk. ‘Go away,’ she’d pout. ‘You’re bothering my cow.’ He’d laugh, his eyes dancing, and then he’d wander off down the path to find Uncle Max so he could borrow some tool or other.

When she recognised her susceptibility to him, she saw a need to avoid him. If Max and Faye discovered her interest, she’d be parcelled off home. And by that stage, she didn’t want to go. She’d fallen in love with the farm and the island: the trees, the space, the air. When they drove to Lunawanna to collect supplies from the store, she would see mainland Tasmania, shimmering bluish-purple across the channel. As she sat outside the shop with Uncle Max, eating fish and chips, she’d gaze across the water, reminded of where she had come from. The island wove a special magic, and its isolated beauty was emphasised by the proximity of the mainland. They were on Bruny, happy and free. Everybody else was over there, with their complex city lives, buried in urban Hobart.

In small windows of spare time, the two families went to Cloudy Bay for picnics, fishing afternoons, walking and scarpering through the waves. Sometimes, the older generation stayed home, and it was just Mary and the boys. They took the truck to the far end of the beach, built bonfires on the sand, climbed East Cloudy Head in the raw bite of the wind.

One afternoon she found herself alone up there with Jack. The others had forgotten to bring extra layers and they retreated back to the beach as the sharp wind sliced through to hot skin. Snug in a thick woollen jumper, Mary tucked her knees in tight and sat in silence, swirling with the cold air and revelling in the long misty view. Jack stood nearby, and when she glanced up at him, she saw in his expression a kindred exhilaration, a parallel delight.

He looked down at her and his eyes were warm blue beacons. She felt her stomach melting. He sat beside her, blocking the wind, and she could smell the male tang of his sweat and a grassiness like sweet freshly cut hay. Tingling and alert, it was as if Mary’s skin was speaking to him, and her breathing was a butterfly trapped in her throat, tight and light and anticipatory.

She knew he was looking at her, but she was afraid to connect, frightened to look up again. Then his hand covered hers, gently, carefully, and she felt her cold fingers engulfed in the warm dry grasp of his work-roughened skin. He was staring away across the wild spread of land and sea, holding her hand in his like the fragile precious shell of an egg. They breathed together, each raggedly attuned to the presence of the other. He reached out and touched her hair, his hand softly gliding over the tangle of her curls.

She was waiting, her lips already warm for him. Soon he moved closer and kissed her forehead. He was so hesitant, so restrained. She wanted passion from him, released and fervent and strong. But he was cautious and unsure. He desired her, yes, but he was strapped by awkwardness. And yet there was beauty in it, and ardour too. The magnetism was powerful, and there was something in his constraint that only escalated her eagerness. She wanted to lean against that hard chest—her entire body was bent towards it. At last he wrapped her up in those capable firm arms and drew her close.

They descended from the cape like Pacific gulls skimming over sand. Not much had happened really: an embrace, a few tentative kisses. But they had traversed a social gulf; ahead was a long road of caution and concealment, but a seed had germinated and a tendril of promise was flickering. The farm became a landscape of opportunity: chance meetings, stolen kisses in the barn, hands clutched tightly. Eyes locking over tables, tools, behind backs.

Jack’s younger brother, Frank, took a job at Clennett’s Mill up the mountain beyond the farm. Sometimes she accompanied Jack up there to deliver special luxuries: cakes and biscuits, fresh bread, newly picked fruit. They rode on horses, winding up the track into tall wet forest till they came to the camp where aromatic curls of smoke wafted among the tree trunks, men shouted, metal clanked and saws rasped at dense wood. They would leave the horses near the huts and she would follow Jack’s straight back over fallen logs and mounds of stripped bark. Frank would be either in the noisy clattery mill, hacking at chunks of wood to toss into the furnace, or he’d be off somewhere across the steep slope, on the end of a saw felling a massive tree. In quiet pockets of forest, she and Jack would linger, pressing tight to each other, breathing into urgency, kissing, discovering one another.

The island had defined them then. They were the cool green grace of the farm. They were the eclipsing grandeur of the tall forests. They were the rhythmic slump of waves on the beach at Cloudy Bay. Their love was entangled in the place. Looking back, she was unsure whether it was Jack she had fallen in love with, or Bruny Island and the exhilarating freedom it offered. Or perhaps, a typical young girl, she’d been in love with the idea of being in love. The heady romance of it.

The truth was she hadn’t expected to meet her future husband on Bruny. And it wasn’t the outcome her parents had planned. It was, however, a consequence of the exile they had arranged for her. The island had slung her together with Jack; their relationship was an inevitable conclusion born out of isolation and awakening sexuality.

For a year, they navigated a secret liaison, built on stolen touch. Then they grew bolder. By that time, Mary had been on Bruny Island almost four years, and at twenty, she felt she was old enough to make her own decisions. Her upbringing insisted on propriety, and Jack, too, wanted to do things the right way. She knew that integrity and commitment were important to him. They discussed the next step, and after dinner one night, Jack told her of his conversation with his parents.

‘I’m very fond of Mary,’ he had said. ‘She likes me too, and I want to marry her.’

His father had initially gaped, but once he’d recovered from his surprise, he nodded his approval. But Jack’s mother’s face had immediately expanded with a warm smile. ‘She’s a lovely choice, Jack,’ she had said. ‘A lovely steady girl. She’ll make a good wife.’

A good wife
, Mary had thought. What a challenge!

Encouraged by his parents’ support, Jack visited Max and Faye to gauge their opinion. They were privately pleased but also concerned; Mary had been entrusted to them for safekeeping and this development might not be so welcome back in Hobart. Predictably, her parents weren’t pleased that she planned to marry a farmer. They had higher aspirations for her than that. But Mary was determined to have Jack. Her mother and father had intervened in her life once already, and they knew they had less hold over her on Bruny. After a series of discussions, they gave permission reluctantly. She was in charge of her own life now.

In the wake of the announcement, Jack and Mary felt released. Discretion was still necessary, but secrecy wasn’t required. Now they could hold hands in public and no longer shield glances. Chaperoning was insisted upon, but they stole away for private moments to kiss, to touch, to explore. A path to increased intimacy opened before them, and they tried new things—kissing with tongues, caressing beneath clothes. Mary would have gone further, but Jack was restrained. Everything must wait, he said, until the ring was on her finger.

They were married in a Hobart church, but returned to Bruny to work on the Masons’ farm. Jack’s father was becoming increasingly crippled with arthritis, and with Frank still away in the hills cutting wood, Jack was needed to help Sam, his older brother. The farmhouse was crowded, but it functioned in harmony. It was the happiest of times.

Whenever there was a break in the work schedule, Jack and Mary visited Cloudy Bay, taking each other in privacy. It was the place where they first made love and they regarded it as their haven—the sea, the salt, their bodies. Alone, they ran naked on the sand, laughing and shouting at the gulls. They fished off the beach and the rocks, eating their catch after cooking it over the flames of Jack’s efficient little fire.

At the farm, intimacy had been slower to evolve than Mary had anticipated. In Jack’s narrow bed they spooned into each other’s warmth. But the house was small and they were afraid of making noise, so their passion was restricted. They learned each other in careful, drawn-out ways. With so much expectation, dissatisfaction was possible, and yet Mary was strung so tight with desire that her pleasure flowered easily. Once she discovered how to manage him, she guided him with such subtlety he hardly knew she was in control. And Cloudy Bay was their utopia where they could cry out without inhibition.