The Light Between Oceans(25)

‘Mummified seagull. That’s your problem,’ he said, without looking around. ‘Well, one of them. That and a good twenty years’ worth of sand and salt and God knows what. Once I’ve replaced some of the felts it’ll start to sound better.’ He continued to tap the key and turn the spanner as he spoke. ‘I’ve seen all sorts in my time. Dead rats. Sandwiches. A stuffed cat. I could write a book about the things that end up inside a piano, though I couldn’t tell you how they get there. I’m betting the seagull didn’t fly in by itself.’

Isabel was so taken aback that she couldn’t speak. Her mouth was still open when she felt a hand on her shoulder, and turned to find Tom. She flushed deep red.

‘So much for surprises, eh?’ he said, and kissed her cheek.

‘Well … Well, it was …’ Isabel’s voice trailed off.

He slipped a hand around her waist and the two of them stood for a moment, forehead touching forehead, before breaking into laughter.

She sat for the next two hours, watching the tuner as he coaxed a brighter sound, getting the notes to ring out once again, louder than ever before, and he finished with a burst of the Hallelujah Chorus.

‘I’ve done my best, Mrs Sherbourne,’ he said as he packed away his tools. ‘Really needs to come into the workshop, but the trip out and back would do as much harm as good. She’s not perfect, by a long chalk, but she’ll do.’ He pulled the piano stool out. ‘Care to give it a burl?’

Isabel sat at the keyboard, and played the A flat major scale in contrary motion.

‘Well, that’s a sight better than before!’ she said. She broke into the beginnings of a Handel aria and was wandering off into memory when someone cleared his throat. It was Ralph, standing behind Bluey in the doorway.

‘Don’t stop!’ Bluey said, as she turned to greet them.

‘I was so rude. I’m sorry!’ she said, about to get up.

‘Not a bit of it,’ said Ralph. ‘And here. From Hilda,’ he said, producing from behind his back something tied with a red ribbon.

‘Oh! Shall I open it now?’

‘You’d better! If I don’t give her a blow-by-blow report, I’ll never hear the end of it!’

Isabel opened the wrapping and found Bach’s Goldberg Variations.

‘Tom reckons you can play this sort of caper with your eyes shut.’

‘I haven’t played them for years. But – oh, I just love them! Thank you!’ She hugged Ralph and kissed his cheek. ‘And you too, Bluey,’ she said with a kiss that accidentally caught his lips as he turned.

He blushed violently and looked at the ground. ‘I never had much to do with it, I don’t reckon,’ he said, but Tom protested, ‘Don’t believe a word of it. He drove all the way to Albany to fetch him. Took him the whole day yesterday.’

‘In that case, you get an extra kiss,’ she said, and planted another on his other cheek.

‘And you too!’ she said, kissing the piano tuner for good measure.

That night as he checked the mantle, Tom was serenaded by Bach, the orderly notes climbing the stairs of the lighthouse and ringing around the lantern room, flittering between the prisms. Just like the mercury that made the light go around, Isabel was – mysterious. Able to cure and to poison; able to bear the whole weight of the light, but capable of fracturing into a thousand uncatchable particles, running off in all directions, escaping from itself. He went out onto the gallery. As the lights of the Windward Spirit disappeared over the horizon, he said a silent prayer for Isabel, and for their life together. Then he turned to the logbook, and wrote, in the ‘remarks’ column for Wednesday, 13 September 1922, ‘Visit per store boat: Archie Pollock, piano tuner. Prior approval granted.’





PART II





CHAPTER 10

27th April 1926



ISABEL’S LIPS WERE pale and her eyes downcast. She still placed her hand fondly on her stomach sometimes, before its flatness reminded her it was empty. And still, her blouses bore occasional patches from the last of the breast milk that had come in so abundantly in the first days, a feast for an absent guest. Then she would cry again, as though the news were fresh.

She stood with sheets in her hands: chores didn’t stop, just as the light didn’t stop. Having made the bed and folded her nightgown under the pillow, she headed up to the cliff, to sit by the graves a while. She tended the new one with great care, wondering whether the fledgling rosemary would take. She pulled a few weeds from around the two older crosses, now finely crystalled with years of salt, the rosemary growing doggedly despite the gales.

When a baby’s cry came to her on the wind, she looked instinctively to the new grave. Before logic could interfere, there was a moment when her mind told her it had all been a mistake – this last child had not been stillborn early, but was living and breathing.

The illusion dissolved, but the cry did not. Then Tom’s call from the gallery – ‘On the beach! A boat!’ – told her this was not a dream, and she moved as quickly as she could to join him on the way to the dinghy.

The man in it was dead, but Tom fished a screaming bundle out of the bow.

‘Bloody hell!’ he exclaimed. ‘Bloody hell, Izzy. It’s—’