The Light Between Oceans(46)

‘You know full well Frank wasn’t even in the war – he was interned. He’s never hurt a soul.’

‘Hannah, show some sense. You’re a decent-looking girl. There’s plenty of fellows hereabouts – hell, in Perth or Sydney or even Melbourne – would be honoured to have you as a wife.’

‘Honoured to have your money, you mean.’

‘So we’re back on that now, are we? You’re too good for my money, are you, my lass?’

‘It’s not that, Dad …’

‘I worked like a dog to get where I am. I’m not ashamed of what I am or where I came from. But you – you’ve got a chance of something better.’

‘I just want a chance to live my own life.’

‘Look, if you want to do charity work you can go and live out with the natives on the mission. Or work in the orphanage. You don’t have to bloody marry it, your charity career.’

His daughter’s face was red, her heart racing at this last slight – not only at the outrage of it, but somewhere beneath that, at the unformed fear that it might be true. What if she had only said yes to Frank to spite the suitors who chased her money? Or if she was just wanting to make up to him for all he had suffered? Then she thought of how his smile made her feel, and that way he lifted his chin to consider things she asked him, and felt reassured.

‘He’s a decent man, Dad. Give him a chance.’

‘Hannah.’ Septimus put a hand on her shoulder. ‘You know you mean the world to me.’ He stroked her head. ‘You wouldn’t let your mother brush your hair, as a little ’un, did you know that? You’d say, “Pa! I want Pa to do it!” And I would. You’d sit on my knee by the fire in the evening, and I’d brush your hair while the crumpets toasted on the flames. We’d make sure Mum didn’t see where the butter had dripped on your dress. And your hair would shine like a Persian princess.

‘Just wait. Just a while,’ her father pleaded.

If all he needed was time to get used to the idea, time to feel differently about it … Hannah was about to concede, when he continued, ‘You’ll see things my way – see you’re making a bad mistake –’ he took one of the deep, puffed-out breaths she associated with his business decisions, ‘and you’ll thank your lucky stars I talked you out of it.’

She pulled away. ‘I won’t be patronised. You can’t stop me from marrying Frank.’

‘Can’t save you from it, you mean.’

‘I’m old enough to marry without your consent and I will if I want.’

‘You may not give a damn what this will mean for me, but have a care for your sister. You know how folks round here will take this.’

‘Folks round here are xenophobic hypocrites!’

‘Oh, that university education was worth every penny. So now you can put your father down with your fancy words.’ He looked her straight in the eye. ‘I never thought I’d hear myself say this, my girl, but if you marry that man it will be without my blessing. And without my money.’

With the composure that had first drawn Septimus to her mother, Hannah stood straight and very still. ‘If that’s how you want it to be, Dad, that’s how it will be.’



Following a small wedding, which Septimus refused to attend, the couple lived in Frank’s rickety clapboard house at the edge of the town. Life was frugal, there was no doubt. Hannah gave piano lessons and taught some of the timber workers to read and write. One or two took a nasty pleasure in the thought that they employed, if just for an hour a week, the daughter of the man who employed them. But by and large, people respected Hannah’s kindness and straightforward courtesy.

She was happy. She had found a husband who seemed to understand her completely, who could discuss philosophy and classical mythology, whose smile dispersed worry and made hardship easy to bear.

As the years passed, a measure of tolerance was afforded to the baker whose accent never entirely disappeared. Some, like Billy Wishart’s wife, or Joe Rafferty and his mother, still made a performance of crossing the street when they saw him, but mostly, things settled down. By 1925, Hannah and Frank decided that life was certain enough, money secure enough, to bring a baby into the world, and in February 1926 their daughter was born.

Hannah recalled Frank’s lilting tenor voice, as he rocked the cradle. ‘Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf. Dein Vater hüt’ die Schaf. Die Mutter schüttelt’s B?umelein, da f?llt herab ein Tr?umelein. Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf.’

In that little room lit by a paraffin lamp, with a back that was aching, on a chair that needed mending, he had told her, ‘I cannot imagine a more fortunate existence.’ The glow in his face was not from the lamp but from the tiny creature in the cot, whose breathing made that tell-tale change in rhythm as she finally surrendered to sleep.



That March, the altar had been decorated with vases of daisies and stephanotis from Frank and Hannah’s garden, and the sweet scent floated all the way across the empty pews to the back of the church. Hannah wore pale blue with a matching low-brimmed felt hat, and Frank his wedding suit, which still fitted, four years on. His cousin Bettina and her husband Wilf had come from Kalgoorlie to be godparents, and smiled indulgently at the tiny infant in Hannah’s arms.

Reverend Norkells stood beside the font, fumbling slightly as he pulled one of the brightly coloured tassels to turn to the correct page of the baptism rite. The clumsiness may have been connected to the whiff of alcohol on his breath. ‘Hath this child already been baptised or no?’ he began.