The Light Between Oceans(6)
For a long time, people wore the bewildered expression of players in a game where the rules had suddenly been changed. They tried hard to take comfort from the fact that the boys hadn’t died in vain: they had been part of a magnificent struggle for right. And there were moments where they could believe that and swallow down the angry, desperate screech that wanted to scrape its way out of their gullets like out of a mother bird.
After the war, people tried to make allowances for the men who’d come back a bit too fond of a drink or a stoush, or the ones who couldn’t hold down a job for more than a few days. Business in the town settled down after a fashion. Kelly still had the grocer’s. The butcher was still old Len Bradshaw, though Young Len was itching to take over: you could tell by the way he took up just a bit too much of his dad’s space at the counter when he leaned past him to pick up a chop or a pig’s cheek. Mrs Inkpen (who never seemed to have a Christian name, though her sister called her Popsy in private) took over the farrier’s when her husband Mack didn’t make it back from Gallipoli. She had a face as hard as the iron the lads used to nail onto the horses’ hooves, and a heart to match. Great hulks of men she had working for her, and it was all ‘Yes, Mrs Inkpen. No, Mrs Inkpen. Three bags full, Mrs Inkpen,’ even though any of them could have picked her up with barely more than a finger.
People knew who to give credit to, and who to ask for money up front; who to believe when they brought goods back and asked for a refund. Mouchemore’s draper’s and haberdasher’s did best around Christmas and Easter, though the run up to winter brought them a swift trade in knitting wool. Did a profitable line in ladies’ unmentionables, too. Larry Mouchemore used to pat his pointed moustache as he corrected mispronunciations of his name (‘It’s like “move”, not like “mouse”,’), and watched with fear and bile as Mrs Thurkle got it into her head to open a furrier’s next door. A fur shop? In Point Partageuse? If you please! He smiled benignly when it closed within six months, buying up the remaining stock ‘as an act of neighbourly charity’ and selling it at a tidy profit to the captain of a steamer bound for Canada, who said they were mad for that sort of thing there.
So by 1920, Partageuse had that mixture of tentative pride and hard-bitten experience that marked any West Australian town. In the middle of the handkerchief of grass near the main street stood the fresh granite obelisk listing the men and boys, some scarcely sixteen, who would not be coming back to plough the fields or fell the trees, would not be finishing their lessons, though many in the town held their breath, waiting for them anyway. Gradually, lives wove together once again into a practical sort of fabric in which every thread crossed and re-crossed the others through school and work and marriage, embroidering connections invisible to those not from the town.
And Janus Rock, linked only by the store boat four times a year, dangled off the edge of the cloth like a loose button that might easily plummet to Antarctica.
The long, thin jetty at Point Partageuse was made from the same jarrah that rattled along it in rail carriages to be hauled onto ships. The wide bay above which the town had grown up was clear turquoise, and on the day Tom’s boat docked it gleamed like polished glass.
Men beetled away, loading and unloading, heaving and wrestling cargo with the occasional shout or whistle. On shore, the bustle continued, as people went about with a purposeful air, on foot or by horse and buggy.
The exception to this display of efficiency was a young woman feeding bread to a flock of seagulls. She was laughing as she threw each crust in a different direction and watched the birds squabble and screech, eager for a prize. A gull in full flight caught a morsel in one gulp and still dived for the next one, sending the girl into new peals of laughter.
It seemed years since Tom had heard a laugh that wasn’t tinged with a roughness, a bitterness. It was a sunny winter’s afternoon, and there was nowhere he had to go right that minute; nothing he had to do. He would be shipped out to Janus in a couple of days, once he had met the people he needed to meet and signed the forms he needed to sign. But for now, there were no logbooks to write up, no prisms to buff, no tanks to refuel. And here was someone just having a bit of fun. It suddenly felt like solid proof that the war was really over. He sat on a bench near the jetty, letting the sun caress his face, watching the girl lark about, the curls of her dark hair swirling like a net cast on the wind. He followed her delicate fingers as they made silhouettes against the blue. Only gradually did he notice she was pretty. And more gradually still that she was probably beautiful.
‘What are you smiling at?’ the girl called, catching Tom off guard.
‘Sorry.’ He felt his face redden.
‘Never be sorry for smiling!’ she exclaimed, in a voice that somehow had a sad edge. Then her expression brightened. ‘You’re not from Partageuse.’
‘Nope.’
‘I am. Lived here all my life. Want some bread?’
‘Thanks, but I’m not hungry.’
‘Not for you, silly! To feed the seagulls.’
She offered him a crust in her outstretched hand. A year before, perhaps even a day before, Tom would have declined and walked away. But suddenly, the warmth and the freedom and the smile, and something he couldn’t quite name, made him accept the offering.
‘Bet I can get more to come to me than you can,’ she said.
‘Righto, you’re on!’ said Tom.