Wildlight (30 page)

‘Tomorrow,’ she declares, ‘I’ll get up early, watch the sunrise with you.’ Tom nods. He ought to encourage her, he ought to say,
I’d love that.
‘Do you ever miss your old life?’ she says. ‘Being at sea?’

He pulls his jacket close. ‘The skies, I miss. The seasons. Changes in the light.’ He doesn’t speak to Marcie about shooting pots at South West Cape, the cliffs aflame. Mornings when the Mewstone floated on a sky burning like a pyre. A different time. A different life.

‘When are you going to decommission this?’ She tugs at his sleeve. ‘You’ve had this daggy old jacket for as long as I’ve known you. It’s fit for the bin.’

‘Excuse me.’ He pulls his sleeve free. ‘Past its best, it may be. Which makes it an ideal fishing jacket.’

She scoffs. ‘Pardon me for pointing out the obvious. You don’t fish. You don’t even put your big toe in the water.’

‘This,’ he ignores her and pats his jacket, ‘I have to thank for keeping me alive. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.’

Marcie runs her fingers through his hair. ‘Alive, how?’

‘When I decided I’d walk one hundred ks home without gear or a stove, no food to speak of, this was about the only thing of sense I had to keep me warm.’

‘Unlike the Tom Forrest I know.’

‘I was younger. Impetuous. Trying to prove some point or other.’

‘You never had a tent?’

‘I had bugger-all. I slept on bare ground. A plastic tarp I found along the way.’

‘Were you doing a Bear Grylls? Wrestling wombats. Eating raw grubs. Did you drink the blood of leeches?’ She walks her fingers across his forehead.

‘I ate out of an old tin. Made a fire at night—or tried to with a useless box of matches. Luckily for me I met William halfway along. He had everything strapped to his back except the kitchen sink.’

‘I wish I could have met him.’

‘He was one of a kind.’

Marcie pours herself another glass. She passes Tom a second beer. He closes his eyes, listens to the ocean.

Marcie bumps him. ‘Keep talking. You never talk about back then. What else?’

‘Nothing. Just days of being wet and cold, feeling pissed off with myself.’ Tom shakes the box of matches in his hand. ‘What I would have given for a decent box of these. One night I was down to my last matches, hadn’t a hope of finding anything dry to get a fire started. I dug around in my pockets of
this jacket.
’ He pauses for emphasis. ‘Hey presto.’

‘I’m waiting.’

‘Paper, a sprig of dry twig. I can still see it, clear as day. Carefully tearing this small sheet of yellow graph paper into strips, delicately lacing it over the twigs, trying to shield the whole thing from the rain.’

Marcie gives a shrug.

‘It may sound meagre to you,’ Tom sets her straight. ‘Back then it felt like a gift from the heavens. Enough to get a fire started, warm up some packet food. I believe I had a guardian angel looking over me during that time.’

Marcie sits in silence, staring at the flames. ‘Maybe your guardian angel is closer than you think. I was the one who brought your jacket back from Maatsuyker Island.’

Tom rubs her knee. ‘Your big day on the island. I’d forgotten. Thank you.’

‘Did you meet Stephanie’s mum?’

‘A couple of times.’

‘She took care of me like a daughter. She was so kind to me.’

‘They were nice.’

‘Her father was a light keeper, way back.’ Marcie guzzles her drink. ‘You see her after that?’

Tom blinks. ‘Why would I see Gretchen?’

‘Stephanie. Did you get in touch with her?’

‘No.’ He’s told her that before.

‘She never called you?’ Tom takes a breath. This old road. Marcie changes shape if another woman so much as smiles in his direction. She even puts the ladies at the showroom on edge. ‘After the tragedy,’ Marcie clucks. ‘After everything that happened with your brother. Not much compassion.’

‘She was someone I crossed paths with a very long time ago. I’m sure she had her reasons.’ Tom closes his eyes to the crackle of the fire, the ocean stirring.

‘Last night. You sang out in your sleep.’

‘Did I?’

‘You know you did, babe. You called your brother’s name.’ She loops her arm around his chest. ‘I think it would help if you opened up. Stop bottling things up. You hear about soldiers who come back from combat and they hold it all in and hide it from their loved ones and then years and years later they begin to unravel—’

‘Hush.’ He squeezes her hand. ‘I’ve never been to war. I’m not wounded. I have a few bad dreams. End of story.’ He doesn’t mean to sound sharp. He sees her chest rise, hears her breath change. This constant withholding on his part. This shabby imbalance. He reaches for her. ‘Don’t go getting upset.’

She pushes him away. Wine spills across his jacket. ‘You always keep me at a distance. You don’t talk to me.’

‘What are we doing now?’

‘Why don’t you say you love me?’

‘Marcie. You’re lovely. I tell you all the time. I care for you. Very much.’

The beam from the tower cuts the sky, nine prisms, nine sweeps of light. A burning log tumbles in a whoosh of sparks. The Milky Way strewn across the sky.

‘Do I make you happy?’

This wariness he feels, headlong toward a trap. ‘Yes.’

‘Then let me move up here. Let’s give it a try. I could help you at home, with the business. What do we have to lose?’ She’s been angling toward this all year, impatient for the world’s worst ditherer to get his act together.

How to put into words something he can’t fathom for himself? ‘It’s a big step. It would mean you giving up your job. Your apartment.’

‘I don’t care about my job.’

‘I’m not sure we’re quite ready.’

Marcie sighs. ‘When will we be ready? How long will
we
wait?’

‘You’re free to make your own choices.’ Heartless, Tom. She drains her glass, moves to pack the things away. ‘Don’t go. Let’s enjoy tonight. Here. Together.’

She cogitates. ‘You have a good business. A nice house. You have me. Zulu. Why can’t all that be enough?’

‘What do you want me to say?’ Any answer will be wrong.

‘I want to know what you want from your life that you don’t already have. I’m serious, Tom. Name one thing.’

Tom turns to the ocean, sees lines of phosphorescence, waves snapping at the sand. He listens hard and hears the ocean cackle. ‘I want peace. I want to be at peace.’

*

Tom wakes on the beach, stiff-necked, pins and needles in the arm crooked beneath his head. Sun drills his back. He stretches, scratches sand from his hair, he clears away the remnants of the fire. He gathers up the rug, a row of empty stubbies.

The cottage stands empty, the covers of the bed thrown back. He sees Marcie at the lighthouse, her hair aflame in morning sun. He dumps his jacket on a post, climbs the hill.

A magazine rests on her lap. ‘You’re up early,’ he says.

‘Couldn’t sleep.’

He slides down beside her. ‘You okay?’

She shakes her head. He loops his arm around her shoulder, she rests her head against him. She starts to cry. ‘Last night. I’m sorry.’

He pulls her in. ‘You have no reason to apologise.’

‘I drank too much.’

They could keep going, coast along for months, years. ‘What you said was honest. It was real.’

She looks to him expectantly.

‘Marcie, you deserve someone who will give you what you want.’

He sees her face deflate. ‘I don’t want someone. I want you. I’m happy to wait.’

‘It isn’t fair to make you wait. You said it yourself.’

‘It’s fine. I’m happy. It wasn’t fair rushing you, putting pressure on you.’

Tom stands at a precipice. ‘It isn’t about needing more time.’ The truth of it shears off as he speaks. ‘It doesn’t feel right. Not the way it should to build a life together.’

He feels her tremble. Her voice remains resolute. ‘We’re meant to be together, Tom. I’ve known that from day one. The day you drove me home. The signal flags.’

Togetherness staked on a haphazard gift. ‘Listen. When I gave you those flags I was happy for you to have them. I was. But that gift was not intended for you, at least not to begin with. You need to understand that. I was nineteen. You were a kid. It was not some grand offering of love.’

‘It was for someone,’ she says.

He doesn’t dare respond.

‘You think that because I was younger than you I didn’t see or understand?’

‘I wasn’t saying that—’

‘I knew the flags were for her. To put in the lighthouse. I knew back then.’

He scratches at his head. ‘Then I don’t get it. You made out they were some kind of cosmic sign. The universe throwing us together.’

Marcie collects her magazine, rolls it up. For a moment he thinks she’s going to swat him. A florid mottling creeps like tide across her throat. ‘You have blinkers on. All you see when you look at me is a stand-in for some idealised concept.’

‘I see more than you give me credit for.’

She gives a quiet scoff. ‘Do you? Back then? Before you lit that match?’

‘You’ve lost me.’

‘It pays to be observant, Tom.’

Nothing slips by Marcie. ‘Enlighten me.’

‘I saw her write it. I watched her fold it up and put it in your pocket. A note you tore into pieces and put a match to.’

‘Stephanie? A note that said what?’

Marcie stands to leave. ‘I wouldn’t know,’ she says, the blade of triumph turning. ‘It wasn’t meant for me.’

Tom hammers down the highway, his brain grappling with the sequence of events. Last night they were sitting happily by a fire on a beach. This morning he had his arm around her on a lighthouse balcony. This afternoon she’s gone, a goodbye at the airport that arced into tears and accusation. Tom pulls in through his gate—one day early. He wants to shut himself inside his house, bunker down, write off this fucked-up day.

His Hilux climbs the second rise toward the house, slowing and meandering to avoid the worst potholes. Tom catches a movement in the rear vision, Zulu bounding up from the sheds in pursuit, an escape artist with her collar and lead somewhere back down the hill. He pulls in beneath the house and readies himself for the onslaught. No second-guessing with a dog. When he pulls his keys from the ignition he sees the second pair clipped to the ring. Smoky Cape. The caretaker’s keys. Good one, Tom.

Zulu licks his face, tail beating, quivering with exhilaration. All grievances absolved. Tom dumps the esky, a box of uneaten food, slings his bag on the verandah.

He grabs the spare lead and shakes his car keys. ‘C’mon, girl.’ Zulu looks momentarily confused. ‘Hup.’ She leaps from the step onto the vehicle tray.

Down the hill, past the sheds where Yvette and the horticultural boys stand in a pocket of shade, slugging on coffee and cigarettes. Tom gives a half-wave. He’s in no mood to stop and chitchat. He turns the car north, back to Smoky Cape.

He apologises to the caretaker.
Not a problem, just drove in myself.
Tom makes his way back down the path. It’s late enough in the day that the same long shadows stretch across the car park, the same family of kangaroos grazes on the grass, careless of Zulu tethered to the tray. They scarper when a youth with dreadlocks appears from the beach track and slinks toward Tom’s car, the only vehicle remaining in the car park. Tom pats his pocket to check his wallet. The boy stands in conversation with his dog whose tongue laps at air. ‘You picked yourself a dodgy saviour,’ Tom mutters to the air. The boy catches sight of Tom and saunters off along the road.

Tom feels wired, onion-raw, unready to climb back in his car and face the long drive home. His brain is tired of slapping around the failures of his life. He pokes around the old light keepers’ stables adorned with signal flags and information signs: historic photos of the lighthouse, pictures of Dunghutti women and their dark-eyed daughters digging pipis from the beach.

A memory: being led by the hand by a small Aboriginal girl—strong for her size. When Tom first moved to Camden Haven, he talked to old William about that spirit girl, about waking in a cave atop the Ironbounds.
When I found you, mighty, you were off with the pixies, you didn’t know which way was up.
Why then this knotted scar on his shoulder, this remnant scrap of anchor? Tom had held a blade to his arm in his effort to expunge his brother. He remembers that small girl crying,
No
,
Tom
. She called him by his name.

He’s had a gutful of his head. He pulls a ziplock bag from the glove box and locks the car behind him. He leads Zulu down the beach track, unclips her lead. Tom kicks off boots and socks and dumps them on the boardwalk. The air smells floral with spring pollen, thick with sea salt. Tom sets off across the sand while Zulu races in the opposite direction, rounding up seagulls, regularly diverting up the beach lest her paws be wetted by the smallest lapping wave.

Beyond the point a reef break, a haunt for surfers when the swell is right. A runabout fangs north across the ocean, home to South West Rocks, the day of fishing done. Above the headland, the lighthouse gazes down.

No one up here would credit the swells he and Frank worked in. Not a skipper to compare to his brother behind the wheel, a sorcerer’s magic against a witch of an ocean. Tom paces over sand the same buff colour as New Harbour, as Louisa Bay, as any stretch of beach along that wild angry coast. For his whole time on the boat Tom lived in fear of a malevolent ocean. He dreamed and dreamed again of swallowing the sea. Tom it had spat onto a beach. All the while it had lain in wait for Frank.

He’s spent years questioning why he, Tom—destined to be taken—should be the brother spared. His mother’s answers came straight from books in her Bible; Corinthians, John, the Book of Revelation: she cherrypicked them all. Tom wants someone—anyone—to acknowledge that he was a player in his brother’s death. He’s never again set foot in the ocean. Never swum, never kayaked on the river with Marcie. Just hung back on the old wooden landing, his toes dragging in the water. His brother would be the first to say it:
Too much a coward to let the ocean take another bite at you
.

No one left to call him
Tom-Tom
now.