The Light Between Oceans(20)

‘MAYBE ALL THE times in my life I could have done without, maybe they were all a test to see if I deserved you, Izz.’

They were stretched on a blanket on the grass, three months after Isabel’s arrival on Janus. The April night was still almost warm, and tinselled with stars. Isabel lay with her eyes closed, resting in the crook of Tom’s arm as he stroked her neck.

‘You’re my other half of the sky,’ he said.

‘I never knew you were a poet!’

‘Oh, I didn’t invent it. I read it somewhere – a Latin poem? A Greek myth? Something like that, anyway.’

‘You and your fancy private-school education!’ she teased.

It was Isabel’s birthday, and Tom had cooked her breakfast and dinner, and watched her untie the bow on the wind-up gramophone which he had conspired with Ralph and Bluey to ship out to make up for the fact that the piano he had proudly shown her when she arrived was unplayable from years of neglect. All day she had listened to Chopin and Brahms, and now the strains of Handel’s Messiah were ringing from the lighthouse, where they had set it up to let it echo in the natural sound chamber.

‘I love the way you do that,’ said Tom, watching Isabel’s index finger coil a lock of her hair into a spring, then release it and start with another.

Suddenly self-conscious, she said, ‘Oh, Ma says it’s a bad habit. I’ve always done it, apparently. I don’t even notice it.’ Tom took a strand of her hair, and wound it around his finger, then let it unfurl like a streamer.

‘Tell me another myth,’ Isabel said.

Tom thought for a moment. ‘You know Janus is where the word January comes from? It’s named after the same god as this island. He’s got two faces, back to back. Pretty ugly fellow.’

‘What’s he god of?’

‘Doorways. Always looking both ways, torn between two ways of seeing things. January looks forward to the new year and back to the old year. He sees past and future. And the island looks in the direction of two different oceans, down to the South Pole and up to the Equator.’

‘Yeah, I’d got that,’ said Isabel. She pinched his nose and laughed. ‘Just teasing. I love it when you tell me things. Tell me more about the stars. Where’s Centaurus again?’

Tom kissed her fingertip and stretched her arm out until he had lined it up with the constellation. ‘There.’

‘Is that your favourite?’

‘You’re my favourite. Better than all the stars put together.’

He moved down to kiss her belly. ‘I should say, “You two are my favourites,” shouldn’t I? Or what if it’s twins? Or triplets?’

Tom’s head rose and fell gently with Isabel’s breath as he lay there.

‘Can you hear anything? Is it talking to you yet?’ she asked.

‘Yep, it’s saying I need to carry its mum to bed before the night gets too cold.’ And he gathered his wife in his arms and carried her easily into the cottage, as the choir in the lighthouse declared, ‘For unto us a Child is born.’



Isabel had been so proud to write to her mother with the news of the expected arrival. ‘Oh, I wish I could – I don’t know, swim ashore or something, just to let them know. Waiting for the boat is killing me!’ She kissed Tom, and asked, ‘Shall we write to your dad? Your brother?’

Tom stood up, and busied himself with the dishes on the draining board. ‘No need,’ was all he said.

His expression, uneasy but not angry, told Isabel not to press the point, and she gently took the tea towel from his hand. ‘I’ll do this lot,’ she said. ‘You’ve got enough to get through.’

Tom touched her shoulder. ‘I’ll get some more done on your chair,’ he said, and attempted a smile as he left the kitchen.

In the shed, he looked at the pieces of the rocking chair he was planning to make for Isabel. He had tried to remember the one on which his own mother had rocked him and told him stories. His body remembered the sensation of being held by her – something lost to him for decades. He wondered if their child would have a memory of Isabel’s touch, decades into the future. Such a mysterious business, motherhood. How brave a woman must be to embark on it, he thought, as he considered the path of his own mother’s life. Yet Isabel seemed utterly single-minded about it. ‘It’s nature, Tom. What’s there to be afraid of?’

When he had finally tracked down his mother, he was twenty-one and just finishing his Engineering degree. Finally, he was in charge of his own life. The address the private detective gave him was a boarding house in Darlinghurst. He had stood outside the door, his gut a whirl of hope and terror, suddenly eight again. He caught the sounds of other desperations seeping out under the doors along the narrow wooden passage – a man’s sobs from the next room and a shout of ‘We can’t go on like this!’ from a woman, accompanied by a baby’s screaming; somewhere further off, the fervent rhythm of a headboard as the woman who lay before it probably earned her keep.

Tom checked the pencilled scrawl on the paper. Yes, the right room number. He scanned his memory again for the lullaby-gentle sound of his mother: ‘Ups-a-daisy, my young Thomas. Shall we put a bandage on that scrape?’

His knock went unanswered, and he tried again. Eventually, he turned the handle tentatively, and the door gave no resistance. The unmistakable scent rushed to meet him, but it was a split second before he recognised it as tainted – with cheap alcohol and cigarettes. In the closed-in gloom he saw an unmade bed and a tatty armchair, in shades of brown. There was a crack in the window, and a single rose in a vase had long ago shrivelled.