The Light Between Oceans(28)

‘Izz, love, there’ll be time for all that. You’re what matters most right now. I’ll go and signal. Get a boat sent out.’

‘No!’ Her voice was fierce. ‘No! I don’t want – I don’t want anyone else here. I don’t want anyone else to know. Not yet.’

‘But sweet, you’ve lost so much blood. You’re white as a ghost. We should get a doctor out here to take you back.’

‘The tub, Tom. Please?’

When the water was warm, Tom filled the metal tub, and lowered it to the floor beside Isabel. He handed her a flannel. She dipped it in the water, and gently, gently, with the cloth covering her fingertip, began to stroke the face, smoothing away the watery blood that covered the translucent skin. The baby stayed at his prayers, locked in some secret conversation with God, as she lowered the cloth into the water to rinse it. She squeezed it and began again, watching closely, perhaps hoping that the eyes might flicker, or the minuscule fingers twitch.

‘Izz,’ Tom said softly, touching her hair, ‘you’ve got to listen to me now. I’m going to make you some tea, with a lot of sugar in it, and I need you to drink it for me, all right? And I’m going to get a blanket to put over you. And I’m going to clean things up here a bit. You don’t have to go anywhere, but you have to let me take care of you now. No arguments. I’m going to give you some morphine tablets for the pain, and some iron pills, and you’re going to take them for me.’ His voice was gentle and calm, simply reciting some facts.

Transfixed by ritual, Isabel continued to dab away at the body, the umbilical cord still attached to the afterbirth on the floor. She hardly raised her head as Tom draped a blanket over her shoulders. He came back with a bucket and a cloth, and on his hands and knees, started to sponge up the blood and mess.

Isabel lowered the body into the bath to wash it, taking care not to submerge the face. She dried it with the towel, and wrapped it in a fresh one, still with the placenta, so that it was bound up like a papoose.

‘Tom, will you spread the sheet on the table?’

He moved the cake tin aside and laid out the embroidered sheet, folded in half. Isabel handed him the bundle. ‘Lay him down on it,’ she said, and he rested the little body there.

‘Now we need to look after you,’ said Tom. ‘There’s still hot water. Come and let’s get you clean. Come on, lean on me. Slowly does it now. Slowly, slowly.’ Thick drops of scarlet splashed a trail as he led her from the kitchen into the bathroom, where this time it was he who dabbed her face with a flannel, rinsing it in the basin, and starting again.

An hour later, in a clean nightgown, her hair tied back in a plait, Isabel lay in bed. As Tom stroked her face, she eventually surrendered to exhaustion and the morphine tablets. Back in the kitchen, he finished cleaning up, and put the soiled linen into the laundry trough to soak. As darkness fell, he sat at the table and lit the lamp. He said a prayer over the little body. The vastness, the tiny body, eternity and the clock that accused the time of passing: it all made even less sense here than it had in Egypt or France. He had seen so many deaths. But there was something about the quietness of this one: as though, in the absence of the gunfire and the shouting, he were observing it un-obscured for the first time. The men he had accompanied to the border of life would be mourned by a mother, but on the battlefield, the loved ones were far away and beyond imagining. To see a child torn away from his mother at the very moment of birth – torn away from the only woman in the world Tom cared about – was a more dreadful kind of pain. He glanced again at the shadows cast by the baby, and beside it, the cake covered with the cloth, like a shrouded twin.

‘Not yet, Tom. I’ll tell them when I’m ready,’ Isabel had insisted the following day, as she lay in bed.

‘But your mum and dad – they’ll want to know. They’re expecting you home on the next boat. They’re expecting their first grandchild.’

Isabel had looked at him, helpless. ‘Exactly! They’re expecting their first grandchild, and I’ve lost him.’

‘They’ll be worried for you, Izz.’

‘Then why upset them? Please, Tom. It’s our business. My business. We don’t have to tell the whole world about it. Let them have their dream a bit longer. I’ll send a letter when the boat comes again in June.’

‘But that’s weeks away!’

‘Tom, I just can’t.’ A tear dropped on her nightgown. ‘At least they’ll have a few more happy weeks …’

So, he had given in to her wish, and let the logbook stay silent.

But that was different – it was a personal matter. The arrival of the dinghy left no such leeway. Now, he began by recording the steamer he had seen that morning, the Manchester Queen bound for Cape Town. Then he noted the calm conditions, the temperature, and put down his pen. Tomorrow. He would tell the whole story of the boat’s arrival tomorrow, once he had sent the signal. He paused for a moment to consider whether to leave a space so that he could come back and fill it in, or whether it was best simply to imply that the boat had arrived later than it had. He left a space. He would signal in the morning and say that they had been too preoccupied with the baby to make contact sooner. The log would tell the truth, but a bit late. Just one day. He caught sight of his reflection in the glass over the ‘Notice under the Lighthouses Act 1911’ which hung on the wall, and for a moment did not recognise the face he saw there.