The Light Between Oceans(36)
The unease Isabel had tried to hide from Tom vanished at the sight of Lucy in Violet’s arms, when her parents came to greet them at the jetty. Her mother wept and smiled and laughed all at the same time. ‘At last!’ She shook her head in awe, inspecting every inch of the child, touching her face, her hair, her little hand. ‘My blessed granddaughter. Fancy waiting nearly two years to lay eyes on you! And isn’t she just the image of my old Auntie Clem?’
Isabel had spent months preparing Lucy for exposure to people. ‘In Partageuse, Luce, there are lots and lots of people. And they’ll all like you. It might be a bit strange at first, but there’s no need to be scared.’ At bedtimes, she had told the girl stories of the town, and the people who lived in it.
Lucy responded with great curiosity to the endless supply of humans that now surrounded her. Isabel felt a twinge as she accepted the warm congratulations of townspeople on her pretty daughter. Even old Mrs Mewett tickled the little girl under the chin when she saw her in the haberdasher’s as she was buying a hair net. ‘Ah, little ones,’ she said wistfully. ‘Such blessings,’ leaving Isabel to wonder whether she was hearing things.
Almost as soon as they arrived, Violet packed the whole family off to Gutcher’s photographic studio. In front of a canvas backdrop painted with ferns and Greek columns, Lucy had been photographed with Tom and Isabel; with Bill and Violet; and on her own, perched on a grand wicker chair. Copies were ordered to take back to Janus, to send to cousins far afield, to have framed for the mantelpiece and the piano. ‘Three generations of Graysmark women,’ beamed Violet when she saw herself, with Lucy on her knee, sitting beside Isabel.
Lucy had grandparents who doted on her. God doesn’t make mistakes, thought Isabel. He had sent the little girl to the right place.
‘Oh, Bill,’ Violet had said to her husband the evening the family arrived. ‘Thank goodness. Thank goodness …’
Violet had last seen her daughter three years before, still grieving at her second miscarriage, on the couple’s first shore leave. Then, Isabel had sat with her head on her mother’s lap, weeping.
‘It’s just nature’s way,’ Violet had said. ‘You have to take a breath, and get up again. Children will come along, if that’s what God wants for you: just be patient. And pray. The praying’s the most important thing.’
She did not tell Isabel the whole truth of it, though. She did not say how often she had seen a child carried to term over the draining, withering summer or the whip-sharp winter, only to be lost to scarlet fever or diphtheria, their clothes folded away neatly until they might fit the next one down. Nor did she touch on the awkwardness of replying to a casual enquiry as to the number of children one had. A successful delivery was merely the first step of a long, treacherous journey. In this house, which had fallen silent years ago, Violet knew that only too well.
Reliable, dutiful Violet Graysmark, respectable wife of a respectable husband. She kept the moths out of the cupboards, the weeds out of the flowerbeds. She deadheaded the roses to persuade them into blooming even in August. Her lemon curd always sold out first at the church fête, and it was her fruitcake recipe which had been chosen for the local CWA booklet. True, she thanked God every night for her many blessings. But some afternoons, as the sunset turned the garden from green to a dull dun while she peeled potatoes over the sink, there just wasn’t enough room in her heart to hold all the sadness. As Isabel had cried during that previous visit, Violet had wanted to wail with her, to tear her hair and tell her she knew the grief of losing the firstborn: how nothing – no person, no money, no thing that this earth could offer – could ever make up for that, and that the pain would never, never go away. She wanted to tell her how it made you mad, made you bargain with God about what offering you could sacrifice to get your child back.
When Isabel had been safely asleep and Bill was dozing beside the last of the fire, Violet went to her wardrobe and fetched down the old biscuit tin. She fished around inside it, moving aside the few pennies, a small mirror, a watch, a wallet, until she came to the envelope frayed at the edges now from years of opening. She sat on the bed, and by the yellow light of the lamp, set to reading the clumsy script, though she knew the words by heart.
Dear Mrs Graysmark,
I hope you will forgive me writing to you: you don’t know me. My name is Betsy Parmenter and I live in Kent.
Two weeks ago I was visiting my son Fred, who was sent back from the front on account of bad shrapnel wounds. He was in the 1st Southern General hospital in Stourbridge, and I have a sister who lives nearby, so I was able to visit him every day.
Well I am writing because one afternoon they brought in a wounded Australian soldier who I understand was your son Hugh. He was in a bad way, on account as you will know of being blinded and lost an arm. He could still manage some words though, and spoke very fondly of his family and his home in Australia. He was a very brave lad. I saw him each day, and at one stage there was high hopes that he would recover, but then it seems he developed blood poisoning, and he went downhill.
I just wanted you to know that I brought him flowers (the early tulips were just blooming and they’re such lovely things) and some cigarettes. I think my Fred and him got along well. He even ate some fruitcake I brought in one day which was very pleasing to see and it seemed to give him pleasure. I was there the morning when he went downhill, and we all three said the Lord’s Prayer and we sang Abide With Me. The doctors eased his pain as best they could, and I think he did not suffer too much at the end. There was a vicar came and blessed him.