The Light Between Oceans(13)

Tom laughed. ‘I’ll just about manage without a walking stick.’

‘Well I just thought, you don’t have very far to walk on Janus, do you?’

‘Believe me, getting up and down the stairs of the light all day keeps you in trim.’ He was still taking stock of this girl and her uncanny ability to tip him a fraction off balance.

The trees began to thin out the further they walked, and the sounds of the ocean grew louder. ‘I suppose Partageuse seems dead boring, coming from Sydney,’ ventured Isabel.

‘Haven’t spent long enough here to know, really.’

‘I suppose not. But Sydney – I imagine it as huge and busy and wonderful. The big smoke.’

‘It’s pretty small fry compared to London.’

Isabel blushed. ‘Oh, I didn’t know you’d been there. That must be a real city. Maybe I’ll visit it one day.’

‘You’re better off here, I’d say. London’s – well, it was pretty grim whenever I was there on furlough. Grey and gloomy and cold as a corpse. I’d take Partageuse any day.’

‘We’re getting near the prettiest bit. Or I think it’s the prettiest.’ Beyond the trees emerged an isthmus which jutted far out into the ocean. It was a long, bare strip of land a few hundred yards wide and licked by waves on all sides. ‘This is the Point of Point Partageuse,’ said Isabel. ‘My favourite place is down there, on the left, where all the big rocks are.’

They walked on until they were in the centre of the isthmus. ‘Dump the basket and follow me,’ she said, and without warning she whisked off her shoes and took off, running to the black granite boulders which tumbled down into the water.

Tom caught her up as she approached the edge. There was a circle of boulders, inside which the waves sloshed and swirled. Isabel lay flat on the ground and leaned her head over the edge. ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Just listen to the sound the water makes, like it’s in a cave or a cathedral.’

Tom leaned forward to hear.

‘You’ve got to lie down,’ she said.

‘To hear better?’

‘No. So you don’t get washed away. Terrible blow hole, this. If a big wave comes without warning, you’ll be down inside the rocks before you know it.’

Tom lay down beside her, and hung his head into the space, where the waves echoed and bellowed and washed about. ‘Reminds me of Janus.’

‘What’s it like out there? You hear stories, but no one much ever actually goes there except the keeper and the boat. Or a doctor, once, years ago, when a whole ship was quarantined there with typhoid.’

‘It’s like … Well, it’s like nowhere else on earth. It’s its own world.’

‘They say it’s brutal, the weather.’

‘It has its moments.’

Isabel sat up. ‘Do you get lonely?’

‘Too busy to be lonely. There’s always something needs fixing or checking or recording.’

She put her head on one side, half signalling her doubt, but she let it pass. ‘Do you like it?’

‘Yep.’

Now it was Isabel who laughed. ‘You don’t exactly yack a lot, do you?’

Tom stood up. ‘Hungry? Must be time for lunch.’

He took Isabel’s hand and helped her up. Such a petite hand, soft, with the palm covered in a fine layer of gritty sand. So delicate in his.

Isabel served him roast beef sandwiches and ginger beer, followed by fruitcake and crisp apples.

‘So, do you write to all the lightkeepers who go out to Janus?’ asked Tom.

‘All! There aren’t that many,’ said Isabel. ‘You’re the first new one in years.’

Tom hesitated before venturing the next question. ‘What made you write?’

She smiled at him and took a sip of ginger beer before answering. ‘Because you’re fun to feed seagulls with? Because I was bored? Because I’d never sent a letter to a lighthouse before?’ She brushed a strand of hair from her eyes and looked down at the water. ‘Would you rather I hadn’t?’

‘Oh, no, I wasn’t trying to … I mean …’ Tom wiped his hands on his napkin. Always slightly off balance. It was a new sensation for him.



Tom and Isabel were sitting at the end of the jetty at Partageuse. It was almost the last day of 1920, and the breeze played tunes by lapping wavelets against the boat hulls and plucking the ropes on the masts. The harbour lights trailed across the water’s surface, and the sky was swept with stars.

‘But I want to know everything,’ said Isabel, bare feet dangling above the water. ‘You can’t just say, “Nothing else to tell.” She’d extracted the bare details of his private-school education, and his Engineering degree from Sydney University, but was growing more frustrated. ‘I can tell you lots – my gran and how she taught me piano, what I remember about my granddad, even though he died when I was little. I can tell you what it’s like to be the headmaster’s daughter in a place like Partageuse. I can tell you about my brothers, Hugh and Alfie, and how we used to muck around with the dinghy and go off fishing down the river.’ She looked at the water. ‘I still miss those times.’ Curling a lock of hair around her finger, she considered something, then took a breath. ‘It’s like a whole … a whole galaxy waiting for you to find out about. And I want to find out about yours.’