The Light Between Oceans(18)

‘The first eight refract the light: they bend it so that instead of heading up to the moon or down to the ocean floor where it’s no good to anybody, it goes straight out to sea: they make it sort of turn a corner. The rings above and below the metal bar – see? Fourteen of them – they get thicker the further away from the centre they are: they reflect the light back down, so all the light is being concentrated into one beam, not just going off in all directions.’

‘So none of the light gets away without earning its keep,’ said Isabel.

‘You could say that. And here’s the light itself,’ he said, gesturing to the small apparatus on the metal stand in the very centre of the space, covered in a mesh casing.

‘It doesn’t look much.’

‘It isn’t, now. But that mesh cover is an incandescent mantle, and it makes the vaporised oil burn bright as a star, once it’s magnified. I’ll show you tonight.’

‘Our own star! Like the world’s been made just for us! With the sunshine and the ocean. We have each other all to ourselves.’

‘I reckon the Lights think they’ve got me all to themselves,’ said Tom.

‘No nosy neighbours or boring relatives.’ She nibbled at his ear. ‘Just you and me …’

‘And the animals. There’s no snakes on Janus, luckily. Some islands down this way are nothing but. There’s one or two spiders’ll give you a nip though, so keep your eyes peeled. There are …’ Tom was having difficulty finishing his point about the local fauna, as Isabel kept kissing him, nipping his ears, reaching her hands back into his pockets in a way that made it an effort to think, let alone speak coherently. ‘It’s a serious …’ he struggled on, ‘point I’m trying to make here, Izz. You need to watch out for—’ and he let out a moan as her fingers found their target.

‘Me …’ she giggled. ‘I’m the deadliest thing on this island!’

‘Not here, Izz. Not in the middle of the lantern. Let’s …’ he took a deep breath, ‘let’s go downstairs.’

Isabel laughed. ‘Yes, here!’

‘It’s government property.’

‘What – are you going to have to record it in the logbook?’

Tom gave an awkward cough. ‘Technically … These things are pretty delicate, and they cost more money than you or I’ll ever see in a lifetime. I don’t want to be the one who has to make up an excuse about how anything got broken. Come on, let’s go downstairs.’

‘And what if I won’t?’ she teased.

‘Well, I suppose I’ll just have to—’ he hoisted her onto one hip, ‘make you, sweetheart,’ he said, and carried her down the hundreds of narrow stairs.



‘Oh, it’s heaven here!’ Isabel declared the next day as she looked out at the flat, turquoise ocean. Despite Tom’s grim warnings about the weather, the wind had declared a greeting truce and the sun was again gloriously warm.

He had brought her to the lagoon, a broad pool of placid ultramarine no more than six feet deep, in which they were now swimming.

‘Just as well you like it. It’s three years till we get shore leave.’

She put her arms around him. ‘I’m where I want to be and with the man I want to be with. Nothing else matters.’

Tom swirled her gently in a circle as he spoke. ‘Sometimes fish find their way in here through the gaps in the rocks. You can scoop them up with a net, or even just with your hands.’

‘What’s this pool called?’

‘Hasn’t got a name.’

‘Everything deserves a name, don’t you think?’

‘Well, you can give it one then.’

Isabel thought for a moment. ‘I hereby christen this “Paradise Pool”,’ she said, and splashed a handful of water onto a rock. ‘This will be my swimming spot.’

‘You’re usually pretty safe here. But keep your eyes open, just in case.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Isabel as she paddled, only half listening.

‘The sharks can’t usually make it through the rocks, unless there’s a really high tide or a storm or something, so you’re probably safe on that count …’

‘Probably?’

‘But you need to be careful about other things. Sea urchins, say. Watch out when you’re walking on submerged rocks, or the spines can snap off in your foot and get infected. And stingrays bury themselves in the sand near the edge of the water – if you tread on the barb in their tail you’re in trouble. If it flicks up and gets you near the heart, well …’ He noticed that Isabel had gone silent.

‘You all right, Izz?’

‘It feels different somehow, when you just reel it all off like that – when we’re this far from help.’

Tom took her in his arms and pulled her up to the shore. ‘I’ll look after you, sweetheart. Don’t you worry,’ he said with a smile. He kissed her shoulders, and laid her head back on the sand, to kiss her mouth.



In Isabel’s wardrobe, beside the piles of thick winter woollens, hang a few floral dresses – easy to wash, hard to hurt as she goes about her new work of feeding the chickens or milking the goats; picking the vegetables or cleaning the kitchen. When she hikes around the island with Tom she wears an old pair of his trousers, rolled up more than a foot and cinched with a cracked leather belt, over one of his collarless shirts. She likes to feel the ground under her feet, and goes without shoes whenever she can, but on the cliffs she endures plimsolls to protect her soles from the granite. She explores the boundaries of her new world.