The Light Between Oceans(62)
‘Dadda! But you killed it!’
‘Lucy, that’s dangerous! Did it bite you?’
‘No. It likes me. And look,’ she says, opening the wide pocket at the front of her smock, proudly displaying another scorpion. ‘I got one for you.’
‘Don’t move!’ he says, feigning calm and returning her to the ground. He lowers the twig into the pocket until the scorpion locks onto it, then slowly raises it and flings it onto the dirt, stamping on it.
He inspected her arms and legs for signs of bites or stings. ‘Are you sure it didn’t sting you? Does it hurt anywhere?’
She shook her head. ‘I did an aventure!’
‘You certainly did an adventure all right.’
‘Have a close look,’ said Bluey. ‘You can’t always see the puncture marks. But she doesn’t look drowsy. That’s a good sign. Tell you the truth, I was more worried she was at the bottom of one of those soaks.’
‘Ever the optimist,’ muttered Tom. ‘Lucy, darl, we don’t have scorpions on Janus. They’re dangerous. You mustn’t ever touch them.’ He hugged her. ‘Where on earth have you been?’
‘I did play with Tabatha. You said to.’ Tom felt a stab as he recalled his instruction earlier that morning to go outside with the cat. ‘Come on, sweetie. We’ve got to get you back to Mamma.’ His mouth seemed newly aware of the significance of the word, as the previous night’s events came back to him.
Isabel rushed from the verandah to meet them at the edge of the garden. She grabbed Lucy and sobbed with relief.
‘Thank God,’ said Bill, standing beside Violet. He put his arms around her. ‘Thank the blessed Lord. And thanks to you too, Bluey,’ he said. ‘You’ve saved our lives.’
All thoughts of Hannah Roennfeldt were swept from Isabel’s mind that afternoon, and Tom knew he couldn’t raise the subject again. But he was haunted by her face. The figure who had existed in the abstract was now a living woman, suffering every minute because of what he had done. Every aspect of her – the gaunt cheeks, the harrowed eyes, the chewed fingernails – were vivid in his conscience. Hardest to bear was the respect she had shown him: the trust.
Time and again, Tom wondered at the hidden recesses of Isabel’s mind – the spaces where she managed to bury the turmoil his own mind couldn’t escape.
When Ralph and Bluey cast off from Janus the following day, having delivered the family back to the light, the younger man said, ‘Cripes, things seemed a bit frosty between them, don’t you reckon?’
‘Piece of free advice, Blue – never try and work out what’s going on in someone else’s marriage.’
‘Yeah, I know, but, well, you’d think they’d be relieved that nothing happened to Lucy yesterday. Isabel was acting like it was Tom’s fault she’d wandered off.’
‘Keep out of it, boy. Time you brewed us up some tea.’
CHAPTER 23
IT WAS ONE of the mysteries of the Great Southern District, the riddle of what happened to baby Grace Roennfeldt and her father. Some people said it just proved you still couldn’t trust a Hun: he was a spy and had finally been called back to Germany after the war. Made no difference that he was Austrian. Others, familiar with the oceans, didn’t bat an eyelid at his disappearance: ‘Well, what was he thinking, setting off into these waters? Must have had kangaroos in his top paddock. Wouldn’t have lasted five minutes.’ There was a general sense that somehow it was God expressing disapproval for Hannah’s choice of spouse. Forgiveness is all very well, but look at the sorts of things his lot had done …
Old Man Potts’s reward took on mythic status. Over the years, it lured people from the Goldfields, from up north, from Adelaide even, who saw a chance to make their fortune by coming up with a piece of splintered driftwood and a theory. In the early months, Hannah listened keenly to every tale that was spun of a sighting, every memory of a baby’s cry heard from the shore on the fateful night.
With time, even her eager heart could not fail to see the holes in the stories. When she would suggest that a baby’s dress which had been ‘discovered’ on the shore did not match the one Grace had been wearing, the reward prospector would urge her, ‘Think! You’re overcome with grief. How could you be expected to remember what the poor child was dressed in?’ Or, ‘You know you’d sleep more easily if you just accepted the evidence, Mrs Roennfeldt.’ Then they would make some sour remark as they were ushered from the parlour by Gwen, who thanked them for their trouble and gave them a few shillings for the journey home.
That January, the stephanotis was in bloom again, the same voluptuous scent heavy in the air, but it was an ever more gaunt Hannah Roennfeldt who continued her ritual journey – though less often now – to the police station, the beach, the church. ‘Completely off her rocker,’ Constable Garstone muttered as she wandered out. Even Reverend Norkells urged her to spend less time in the stony darkness of the church and to ‘look for Christ in the life around her’.
Two nights after the lighthouse celebrations, as Hannah lay awake, she heard the groan of the hinges on the letterbox. She looked at the clock, whose eerie numerals signalled three a.m. A possum, perhaps? She crept out of bed and peered from the corner of the curtain, but saw nothing. The moon had hardly risen: no light anywhere save for the faint glow of the stars which dusted the sky. Again, she heard the iron clang of the box, this time caught by the breeze.