Lighthouse Bay (7 page)

“Whatever is wrong, Arthur?” she says. Forcing her hands to be still, she takes a match and lights the oil lantern above her head, closing the latch softly.

For a few moments, he can’t form words. He splutters and spits, then finally says, “I will not tolerate you showing such attentions to another man.”

She maintains her feigned puzzlement, but feels the sting of Meggy’s betrayal. “And nor should you tolerate it, and nor should you ever need to tolerate it,” she says evenly.

“Don’t play the innocent with me!” he shouts, and she imagines that everyone below deck, all the way down the corridor to the crew’s quarters, hears it. The ship may be one hundred and sixty feet long, but everything is close to everything else below deck. Arthur, sensing he is embarrassing himself, drops his voice. “Meggy saw you with Harrow.”

“Mr. Harrow was comforting me,” she says. “There was nothing in his touch beyond ordinary human compassion.”

“Comforting you over what?” He says this with bafflement, truly believing she has no need for comfort.

What boiling hatred she feels for him then, for his blindness and his complete absence of compassion. “Mr. Harrow’s wife died. I thought he might understand how I feel about Daniel’s death.”

“How you feel, Isabella, is not something to broadcast about to strange men on a—”

“To a fellow human, who has also suffered a great loss,” she says, her words riding over his even though she knows it is the habit of hers he despises the most.
Isabella, you ought to listen more and speak far less.

Arthur splutters a little more, pacing in the small space, his shoes clacking on the wood. The smells of rain and rime are strong, and she thinks about the sea out there restlessly churning; and the restless churning is in her guts too.

Finally, he says, “The child’s death hasn’t made you special, Isabella. You are still merely the woman you always were. You
deserve no special treatment, you are not above the rules of proper society.” His eyes flick to her wrist. “At least you have taken off that tatty ribbon.”

She bristles, but doesn’t bite.

He squares his shoulders, twitches his nostrils. “You are to stay below deck until we reach Sydney.”

“What? No!”

“Stay here in the saloon or in our bedroom. Keep Meggy company. I don’t care what you do. But stay away from the crew. Guard your modesty. And don’t go about seeking comfort for old wounds that have long healed, just to draw attention to yourself.”

“I haven’t healed!” she cries. But he has already turned and disappeared up the fore hatch. She wants to carve her embroidery scissors into his forehead; perhaps write Daniel’s name there, to put back into his mind the baby that he lost, that
they
lost. Isabella feels she shall go mad. Every nerve in every tooth is tingling with frustration. The rage builds inside her, under her ribs, around her heart. She wants to break something or someone. Right now, it’s Arthur, but if Meggy came down the hatch she would enjoy tearing her face off too. Where does this violence come from? She was once a gentle woman. How gentle her hands were, when she held the light, sweet limbs of her son.

Confined below deck. The trapped air and the smells from the cargo hold, not to mention the crew’s quarters. She’ll be sick. But Arthur won’t care if she grows sick. Why does he want her at all, if she is such a disappointment and an irritation? How can he bear to be married to her any more than she can bear to be married to him?

Isabella realizes she is crushing her embroidery ring hard between her hands, and the needle has pierced her palm. She gently removes it, and a perfectly round drop of blood forms. She finds
herself transfixed by it, by the delicate patterns of lines on her palm. She presses just beside the tiny puncture and the ball turns to a drop, and runs down her wrist.

Escapes.

She is a long way from home. If she were to disappear while in Australia, how would he ever find her? She could find a passage to America, where Victoria lives. And now the plan crystallizes even more clearly. Her sister’s last letter told her she is expecting a baby. Isabella could take Daniel’s bracelet to her and, loath to give it up though she would be, his spirit could live again in her sister’s child. In that moment, seized by the sudden searing rightness of her idea, she wants nothing more than this.

Isabella feels light for the first time in years.

I
sabella sits on her bed. The door to the cabin is shut and held fast by a trunk full of clothes. She has a fountain pen and a scrap of paper, and on it she makes a list of the jewelry laid out in front of her.

1 ruby and diamond bracelet

1 gold pendant with sapphires

1 gold pendant with pearls

1 platinum pendant with pearls and amethysts

1 pair diamond and peridot earrings

1 pair French opal and gold earrings

1 Hungarian emerald brooch

1 enamel pansy brooch with diamond

1 ruby and pearl platinum brooch

1 moonstone and diamond ring

1 sapphire ring

This is everything valuable she owns. Shoes and dresses cannot be sold so easily, but this jewelry can. Each of these items was a present from her husband or his family, but she wears none of this
jewelry. When pressed, on a special occasion, she allows herself to be guided by Arthur on what will glitter most beautifully under candlelight, but for the most part the jewelry stays in its silk box, a hidden reminder that she is owned by the Winterbourne family, for every one of these pieces is a Winterbourne original. She has been owned by the Winterbournes since they bought out her father’s business at what Arthur’s mother always called “a vastly inflated cost.”

Every one of these pieces belongs to her too. There can be no accusation of theft. She is almost certain.

Once she has finished the list, Isabella packs the jewelry away in the bottom of her trunk, then folds the list and slides it under her pillow. She lies down with her hands behind her head and closes her eyes. There is no window in the cabin, so even though it is daylight outside the room is gray. The ship rolls on.

Over and over in her mind she turns the delicious thought that if she sells her jewelry in Sydney, she will easily have enough for a passage to New York to meet her sister. And not on a wretched sailing vessel like this one; on a nice, big, stable steamer. Her fantasy grows more detailed by the moment, and the more detailed it grows the more she convinces herself that it is meant to be, pre-ordained somehow. She is merely fulfilling her destiny. The Winterbournes think her unstable and mad, and perhaps she is. If so, then why shouldn’t she run away? Both her father and Arthur’s are dead, and they had arranged the union. Foolishly. What remains of her husband’s family doesn’t want her: she would be freeing him to marry another woman, perhaps one who can give him another child. Her womb refuses to quicken again. She believes it still longs for Daniel, as she does. Perhaps his new wife might even enjoy his weekly visits to her body. Though she can’t imagine that. She remembers being fifteen or sixteen and wondering about the
secrets of lovemaking, and thinking it all sounded very thrilling. Either she was mistaken or Arthur is very bad at it.

The weather has been growing worse. Perhaps she is feeling it is worse because she has been shut in her cabin for two days now. She could sit in the saloon where there are salt-splashed windows, but that would mean sitting with Meggy and Arthur. The seas are very stormy and the rain is unrelenting. She has glimpsed Mr. Harrow and the Captain in the corridor, both soaked to the bone even with the protection of their moleskins, their shoes squelching, and she fights the superstitious fear that the bad weather has come because she has stopped making her daily pact with the sea.

The Captain in particular looks haunted. She can’t imagine why; he has surely been through bad weather before. She wishes she could ask Mr. Harrow what is going on, but she dare not in case Arthur sees. She could ask Arthur, but that would mean talking to him.

Isabella sometimes tries to remember a time when she didn’t hate Arthur, and perhaps there was a brief moment, when she was expecting Daniel. For a few months, he softened. He was pleased that she had a child on the way so soon. Pleased in the way that somebody might be pleased with a dog who has fetched his slippers, perhaps, but pleased nonetheless. He’d brought the enamel pansy brooch home from work one day, on a whim, to give her. She’d even worn it for a while, so relieved was she that his sternness seemed to be dissipating. Hopeful, even, that being wedded to him for life might not be the misery she anticipated.

Yes, she liked him for a little while. He still seemed remote and terse, but she thought she saw in him the makings of a good father: one who might dote upon the baby with her. When Daniel was born, he didn’t live up to that fond dream.

The first time Arthur saw Daniel, Isabella was in bed, dozing.
It was late afternoon and Daniel was sleeping peacefully, three days old, his tiny fists lying soft around his ears, his little mouth puckered up and sucking on an imaginary breast. Arthur came in with a thump and a clatter at the door, and said to her, “Why are you in bed at four o’clock?”

She startled awake, but Daniel slept on. “I’m sorry, Arthur,” she said. “I am so very tired. The little one wakes all through the night.”

“Then you should have a wet nurse as I suggested. You can’t lie around in bed all day like a slattern.”

The idea of somebody else feeding her child was abhorrent to her. She sat up, trying to gather herself: a difficult task as she’d given birth only a few days before and she was sore and seemed to leak from everywhere at once. “Please, Arthur. Just let me mother him the way I choose.”

“Well, if you are determined, and I see you are, ensure that you speak to my mother. She raised two sons and I wager she never once slept in the daytime.”

Isabella would sooner eat poison than ask his mother for advice. The first Mrs. Winterbourne has all the outward appearance of an angel: soft curves, fair curling hair, wide blue eyes and a bovine smile, but beneath that surface she is made of wire and stones. Isabella has never told Arthur how, on the evening of their wedding dinner, Mrs. Winterbourne took her aside and told her she thought Arthur had married beneath him, and she’d best paddle as hard as she could to catch up with the manners and comportment that her sons were born to. She has never told him because she suspects he would probably agree. Every one of his family would agree, especially unctuous Percy and the trembling mouse he calls his wife.

Arthur paced over to the cradle. A late-afternoon sunbeam fell through the shutter and lit the creamy lace sheets, and illuminated
her son’s impossibly soft cheek. “I don’t want him to be soppy,” he said.

“He is only new in the world,” she murmured. “Let him be soft awhile.”

Arthur folded his hands behind his back, as though fearful he would be tempted to pick the child up otherwise. He pushed his lips into a pout as he surveyed his son, much the way she’d seen him consider the cut of a diamond. “He is smaller than I thought he would be.”

“Just under seven pounds,” she said.

And that was it. He turned, hands still folded behind his back, and left the room. She rose and leaned over Daniel’s cradle, stroked the fluff on his warm head, breathed his milky sweetness and vowed that she would love him enough for both his parents.

Isabella opens her eyes. It is too much: the memory of Daniel—warm and breathing, not cold and still—has turned a knife in her heart. How she wishes she could open up the walnut chest and retrieve her black ribbon, and spend the afternoon rolling each link on the coral bracelet between her thumb and forefinger, milking it of the last impression of her baby’s living warmth. But she daren’t. It must stay hidden until Sydney. In Sydney she will get it back and she will somehow get out of this miserable marriage and away from Arthur and his poisonous family. Then this wretched storm would stop, and calm seas and sunshine might be hers once more.

T
wo mornings later, Mr. Harrow seeks her out, clever enough to do it while Arthur is otherwise occupied up in the cargo hold with the Captain and Meggy, sorting out a dispute about marble tiles. As well as bringing the mace to Australia, Arthur is exporting expensive tiles and carpets. The less Isabella knows about business,
the happier she is. But Arthur is quite tense about the deal, and tense too that the crew will steal or damage the goods.

When Mr. Harrow knocks on her cabin door, her heart startles a little. She doesn’t want to endure another of Arthur’s lectures.

“Mr. Harrow?” she says, warily.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Winterbourne. I shall be very quick. Is it the case that you have been confined below deck because of our . . . interaction in the galley the other day?”

Isabella knows a woman of her standing should dismiss him lightly, never drawing attention to the private matters of her husband. But she sees little point in such manners. “Yes. I did explain, but he’s an angry fool.”

“I feel terrible,” he says. “Do you want me to speak to him?”

“No, it will only make matters worse.”

He glances around. “If there’s anything I can do . . . I was touched deeply by your loss.”

“And I yours,” she says, and she means it. A little glimmer starts in her heart, and hope rises. Perhaps the ice is not permanent after all.

“I’m sorry it took me so long to realize what has happened. We’ve been rather run off our feet by the weather.”

Mention of the weather picks at a little thread of unease in her gut. She realizes that last night she dreamed of the gray sea rising up and up, through the boards, through the cabin, engulfing Arthur’s bunk and then sloshing around her blankets, carrying the black ribbon away while she tried to reach for it with hands as slippery as fish fins. Yes, the weather has been on her mind. If only she could get above deck and talk to the sea.

“The weather is normal, though? For this part of the world and this time of year?”