The Light Between Oceans(67)

She caught sight of his movement and stretched out her arms. ‘Dadda, wait! Pick me up!’ she urged again, her tone betraying her sense that something was wrong.

‘Now, if you please,’ urged Spragg, taking Tom’s elbow.

As Tom walked away, every step more awful, Lucy pursued him, arms still outstretched. ‘Dadda, wait for Lulu,’ she begged, wounded and confused. When she tripped and fell face down on the gravel, letting out a scream, Tom could not go on, and spun around, breaking free of the policeman’s grip.

‘Lulu!’ He scooped her up and kissed her scratched chin. ‘Lucy, Lucy, Lucy, Lucy,’ he murmured, his lips brushing her cheek. ‘You’re all right, little one. You’ll be all right.’

Vernon Knuckey looked at the ground and cleared his throat.

Tom said, ‘Sweetheart, I have to go away now. I hope—’ He stopped. He looked into her eyes and he stroked her hair, finally kissing her. ‘Goodbye, littlie.’

The child showed no sign of letting go, so Knuckey turned to Isabel. ‘Mrs Sherbourne?’

Isabel prised her from Tom. ‘Come on now, sweet thing. You’re all right. Mamma’s got you,’ she said, though the girl continued to call, ‘Dadda, I want to go with you, Dadda!’

‘Happy now, Tom? This is what you wanted, isn’t it?’ Tears ran down Isabel’s face and on to Lucy’s cheek.

For a moment, Tom stood paralysed by the sight of the two of them, the pain etched on their faces – the two he had promised Bill Graysmark he would protect and care for. Eventually, he managed to say, ‘Christ, Izz – I’m sorry.’

Kenneth Spragg had lost patience, and grabbed him by the arm again, shoving him along to the car. As Tom ducked into the back of the vehicle, Lucy began to howl. ‘Dadda, don’t go! Please, Dadda! Please!’ Her face was crumpled and red and tears ran into her open mouth, as Isabel tried in vain to console her. ‘Mamma, stop the men! They naughty, Mamma! They being nasty to Dadda!’

‘I know, darling, I know.’ She put her lips to Lucy’s hair and murmured, ‘Sometimes men do very bad things, sweetie. Very bad things.’ As she said the words, she knew there was worse to come.

Ralph watched the scene from the deck of the boat. When he got home to Hilda, he looked at her: really looked at her for perhaps the first time in twenty years.

‘What’s that for?’ asked his wife, disconcerted by the attention.

‘Just – oh, just for nothing,’ he said, and drew her into a long hug.



In his office, Vernon Knuckey addressed Kenneth Spragg. ‘I’m telling you again, Sergeant. You’re not taking him to Albany this afternoon. He’ll be transferred in good time, when I’ve had a chance to ask a few more questions.’

‘He’ll end up as our prisoner. Lighthouses are Commonwealth, remember, so we do this the right way.’

‘I know the rules as well as you.’ Every policeman this side of Perth knew how Kenneth Spragg loved to throw his weight around. Still had a chip on his shoulder about not enlisting, and tried to make up for it by carrying on like a sergeant bloody major. ‘He’ll be sent to Albany in due course.’

‘I want a crack at Sherbourne – I’ll soon get to the bottom of things. I’m here now. I’ll take him with me.’

‘If you want him that badly you can bloody well come back. I run this station.’

‘Telephone Perth.’

‘What?’

‘Let me telephone Perth. If I hear it from District Command, I’ll leave him here. Otherwise he’s in the motor car and off to Albany.’

It had taken Isabel so long to persuade the distraught child to get into the second motor car that Tom was already in a cell by the time they arrived at the police station.

In the waiting area, Lucy sat on Isabel’s knee, fractious and exhausted by the long journey and the strange goings-on. She kept touching Isabel’s face – patting and prodding it to get a response. ‘Where’s Dadda? I want to see him.’ Isabel was pale, her forehead set in an absent frown. Time and again, her thoughts would drift off, her attention focussed on a notch in the wood of the counter, or the call of a distant magpie. Then, Lucy’s fingers, prodding with another question, would bring her back to the sickening knowledge of where she was.

An old man who had come to pay a fine for letting his cattle stray onto the highway stood at the counter, waiting for his receipt. He whiled away the time by trying to tempt Lucy into a game of peek-a-boo.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

‘Lucy,’ she said shyly.

‘That’s what you think,’ muttered Harry Garstone with a sardonic smile, as his pen scratched across the receipt form.

At that moment, Dr Sumpton arrived from his surgery, puffing, bag in hand. He nodded perfunctorily at Isabel, but avoided eye contact. She blushed scarlet, recalling his last examination of her, and its devastating conclusion.

‘Through here, sir,’ said Garstone, ushering him into a room at the back. The constable returned to Isabel. ‘The child has to be examined by the medico. If you’d just give her to me.’

‘Examined? What for? There’s nothing wrong with her!’

‘You don’t get a say in this, Mrs Sherbourne.’

‘I’m her—’ Isabel stopped herself before the word came out. ‘She doesn’t need a doctor. Please. Show some common decency!’