The Light Between Oceans(57)

‘Because they were old and sick.’ He added, ‘It was a long time ago.’

‘Will I die?’

‘Not if I can help it, Lulu.’

But lately, every day with this child seemed a precarious thing. The more she had access to words, the greater her ability to excavate the world around her, carving out the story of who she was. It gnawed away at Tom that her understanding of life and of herself would be founded on a single, enormous lie: a lie he himself had helped craft and refine.



Every surface in the light room gleamed: Tom had always kept it diligently, but now he waged war on every screw, every fitting, until it surrendered a brilliant sheen. These days he smelled permanently of Duraglit. The prisms sparkled and the beam shone, unhindered by a speck of dust. Every cog in the works moved smoothly. The apparatus had never functioned with more precision.

The cottage, on the other hand, had suffered. ‘Couldn’t you just put a bit of putty in that crack?’ Isabel asked, as they sat in the kitchen after lunch.

‘I’ll do it once I’m ready for the inspection.’

‘But you’ve been ready for the inspection for weeks – for months, for that matter. It’s not as if the King’s coming, is it?’

‘I just want it ship-shape, that’s all. I’ve told you, we’re in with a chance for the Point Moore posting. We’d be on land, close to Geraldton. Near people. And we’d be hundreds of miles from Partageuse.’

‘Time was you couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Janus.’

‘Yeah, well, times change.’

‘It’s not time that’s changed, Tom,’ she said. ‘You’re the one who always says that if a lighthouse looks like it’s in a different place, it’s not the lighthouse that’s moved.’

‘Well you work out what has,’ he said as he picked up his spanner and headed off down to the storage sheds, without looking back.

That night, Tom took a bottle of whisky, and went to watch the stars from near the cliff. The breeze played on his face as he traced the constellations, and tasted the burn of the liquid. He turned his attention to the rotation of the beam, and gave a bitter laugh at the thought that the dip of the light meant that the island itself was always left in darkness. A lighthouse is for others; powerless to illuminate the space closest to it.





CHAPTER 21



THE CELEBRATION AT Point Partageuse three months later was big by South West standards. The Superintendent of the Mercantile Marine Office had come all the way from Perth, together with the State Governor. The town worthies were there – the Mayor, the Harbourmaster, the vicar, as well as three of the last five light-keepers. They had gathered to commemorate the day on which Janus was first lit, forty years earlier in January 1890. The occasion brought with it a grant of brief special shore leave for the Sherbourne family.

Tom ran his finger between his neck and the starched collar which imprisoned it. ‘I feel like a Christmas goose!’ he complained to Ralph as the two stood backstage, looking out from behind the curtains. Already sitting in neat rows on the stage were municipal engineers and Harbour and Lights employees who had been associated with Janus over the years. Outside the open windows, the summer’s night was alive with the chirrup of crickets. Isabel and her parents sat on one side of the hall, Bill Graysmark holding Lucy on his knee while she rabbited nursery rhymes.

‘Just keep your mind on the free beer, son,’ Ralph whispered to Tom. ‘Even Jock Johnson can’t blather on too long tonight – that get-up must be killing him.’ He nodded in the direction of the bald, perspiring man bedecked with ermine-collared robe and mayoral chain who was pacing about, preparing to address the gathering in the rickety town hall.

‘I’ll join you in a minute,’ Tom said. ‘Call of nature.’ And he headed out to the toilet behind the hall.

On the way back, he noticed a woman who seemed to be staring at him.

He checked that his flies were buttoned; glanced behind him, in case she was observing someone else. Still she looked at him, and as she got closer, she said, ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’

Tom looked at her again. ‘Sorry, think you’ve got the wrong person.’

‘It was a long time ago now,’ she said, blushing. In that instant something in her expression changed, and he recognised the face of the girl on the boat on his first trip to Point Partageuse. She had aged, and was thin now, with shadows under her eyes. He wondered if she had some sort of illness. He remembered her, in her nightgown, wide-eyed with fear and pinned to the wall by some drunken fool. The memory belonged to a different man, a different lifetime. Once or twice over the years, he’d wondered what had become of her, and of the cove who’d bailed her up. He had never bothered to mention the incident to anyone, Isabel included, and instinct told him it was too late to tell her about it now.

‘I just wanted to say thank you,’ the woman began, but was interrupted by a voice calling from the back door of the hall. ‘We’re about to start. Best be getting in.’

‘Excuse me,’ said Tom. ‘Got to go, I’m afraid. See you afterwards, perhaps.’

As soon as he took up his seat on stage, proceedings got under way. There were speeches, a few anecdotes from some of the older light-keepers; the unveiling of a model of the original structure.