The Light Between Oceans(53)

CHAPTER 20



‘I NEVER KNEW he’d tried to get in touch.’ Tom was sitting beside Isabel on the verandah. He was turning over and over an ancient, battered envelope, addressed to him ‘c/o 13th Battalion, AIF’. On every available inch of space were scrawled forwarding addresses and instructions, culminating in an authoritative command in blue pencil to ‘return to sender’ – to Edward Sherbourne, Esquire, Tom’s father. The letter had arrived in a small packet three days earlier, when the June boat brought news of his death.

The letter from Church, Hattersley & Parfitt, Solicitors, observed the formalities and provided only the facts. Throat cancer, 18 January 1929. It had taken them some months to track Tom down. His brother Cecil was the exclusive beneficiary, save for the bequest to Tom of a locket of his mother’s, enclosed in the letter which had pursued Tom across the world.

He had opened the packet after he had lit up that evening, sitting in the lantern room, numb at first as he read the stern, spiky handwriting.

‘Merrivale’

Sydney

16th October 1915

Dear Thomas,

I am writing because I know that you have enlisted. I am not much of a one for words. But with you so far away now, and with the possibility that harm may come to you before we have an opportunity to meet again, it seems writing is the only way.

There are many things I cannot explain to you without denigrating your mother, and I have no wish to do any more harm than has already been done. Some things, therefore, will be left unsaid. I am at fault in one respect, and it is this I wish to remedy now. I enclose a locket which your mother asked me to let you have, when she left. It has her likeness in it. At the time, I felt it was better for you not to be reminded of her, and I therefore did not pass it on. It was not an easy decision to make, to determine that your life would be better without her influence.

Now that she is dead, I feel it right to fulfil her request, if rather late.

I have tried to raise you as a good Christian. I have tried to ensure you had the best available education. I hope I have instilled in you a sense of right and wrong: no amount of worldly success or pleasure can redeem the loss of your immortal soul.

I am proud of the sacrifice you have made by enlisting. You have grown into a responsible young man, and after the war, I would be pleased to find you a position in the business. Cecil has the makings of a fine manager, and I expect will run the factory successfully after my retirement. But I am sure a suitable place can be found for you.

It pained me that I had to hear of your embarkation through others. I would have welcomed the opportunity to see you in uniform, to see you off, but I gather that since tracing your mother and learning she had passed away, you wish to have nothing further to do with me. Therefore, I leave it up to you. If you choose to reply to this letter, I shall be most pleased. You are, after all, my son, and until you too are a father, you will not fully understand all it means to say that.

If, however, you do not wish to respond, I shall respect your choice, and shall not trouble you again. I shall nonetheless pray for your safety in battle, and your return to these shores, victorious.

Your affectionate father,

Edward Sherbourne

It seemed a lifetime since Tom had spoken to this man. How it must have cost him, to write such a letter. That his father had made an attempt to contact him after their bitter separation was not just a surprise but a shock. Nothing seemed certain any more. Tom wondered whether his father’s coldness had protected a wound all along. For the first time he glimpsed something beyond the stony exterior and, just for an instant, he could imagine a man of high principle, hurt by a woman he loved, but unable to show it.

Tom had sought out his mother for a particular reason. As he had stood at the boarding-house door, shoes polished, fingernails cut, he had rehearsed the words one last time. ‘I’m sorry I got you into trouble.’ At the time he felt as shaky as the child who had waited thirteen years to say the words. He thought he might be sick. ‘All I said was that I’d seen a motor car. That there had been a motor car at the house. I didn’t know—’

It was only years later that he had understood the full magnitude of his tale-telling. She had been declared an unfit mother, and banished from his life. But his pilgrimage to seek forgiveness was too late, and he would never now hear his mother absolve him from the guilt of betrayal, innocent though it had been. Words had a way of getting into all sorts of places they weren’t meant to. Best keep things to yourself in life, he’d learnt.

He looked at the picture of his mother in the locket. Perhaps each of his parents had loved him, however brokenly. He felt a sudden surge of anger at his father’s almost casual assumption of the right to separate him from his mother: so sincere, yet so destructive.

It was only when a droplet sent the ink running in miniature rivers that Tom noticed he was crying. ‘Until you too are a father, you will not fully understand …’

Beside him now on the verandah, Isabel was saying, ‘Even though you hadn’t seen him for years, he was still your dad. You only ever get one of them. It’s bound to affect you, sweetheart.’

Tom wondered if Isabel caught the irony of her own words.

‘Come on, Luce, come and have some cocoa,’ she called without pausing.

The little girl ran up and grasped the beaker with both hands. She wiped her mouth with her forearm instead of her grubby hand, then handed back the cup. ‘Ta-ta!’ she called out cheerily. ‘I riding to Pataterz now to see Grandma and Grandpa,’ and ran back to her hobbyhorse.