The Light Between Oceans (15 page)

An hour later, in a clean nightgown, her hair tied back in a plait, Isabel lay in bed. As Tom stroked her face, she eventually surrendered to exhaustion and the morphine tablets. Back in the kitchen, he finished cleaning up, and put the soiled linen into the laundry trough to soak. As darkness fell, he sat at the table and lit the lamp. He said a prayer over the little body. The vastness, the tiny body, eternity and the clock that accused the time of passing: it all made even less sense here than it had in Egypt or France. He had seen so many deaths. But there was something about the quietness of this one: as though, in the absence of the gunfire and the shouting, he were observing it un-obscured for the first time. The men he had accompanied to the border of life would be mourned by a mother, but on the battlefield, the loved ones were far away and beyond imagining. To see a child torn away from his mother at the very moment of birth – torn away from the only woman in the world Tom cared about – was a more dreadful kind of pain. He glanced again at the shadows cast by the baby, and beside it, the cake covered with the cloth, like a shrouded twin.

‘Not yet, Tom. I’ll tell them when I’m ready,’ Isabel had insisted the following day, as she lay in bed.

‘But your mum and dad – they’ll want to know. They’re expecting you home on the next boat. They’re expecting their first grandchild.’

Isabel had looked at him, helpless. ‘Exactly! They’re expecting their first grandchild, and I’ve lost him.’

‘They’ll be worried for you, Izz.’

‘Then why upset them? Please, Tom. It’s our business.
My
business. We don’t have to tell the whole world about it. Let them have their dream a bit longer. I’ll send a letter when the boat comes again in June.’

‘But that’s weeks away!’

‘Tom, I just can’t.’ A tear dropped on her nightgown. ‘At least they’ll have a few more happy weeks …’

So, he had given in to her wish, and let the logbook stay silent.

But that was different – it was a personal matter. The arrival of the dinghy left no such leeway. Now, he began by recording the steamer he had seen that morning, the
Manchester Queen
bound for Cape Town. Then he noted the calm conditions, the temperature, and put down his pen. Tomorrow. He would tell the whole story of the boat’s arrival tomorrow, once he had sent the signal. He paused for a moment to consider whether to leave a space so that he could come back and fill it in, or whether it was best simply to imply that the boat had arrived later than it had. He left a space. He would signal in the morning and say that they had been too preoccupied with the baby to make contact sooner. The log would tell the truth, but a bit late. Just one day. He caught sight of his reflection in the glass over the ‘Notice under the Lighthouses Act 1911’ which hung on the wall, and for a moment did not recognise the face he saw there.

‘I’m not exactly an expert in this department,’ Tom said to Isabel on the afternoon of the baby’s arrival.

‘And you never will be if you stand around like that. I just need you to hold her while I check the bottle’s warm enough. Come on. She won’t bite,’ she said, smiling. ‘Not for now, at any rate.’

The child was barely the length of Tom’s forearm, but he took her as though he were handling an octopus.

‘Just stay still a minute,’ said Isabel, arranging his arms. ‘All right. Keep them like that. And now …’ she made a final adjustment, ‘she’s all yours for the next two minutes.’ She went through to the kitchen.

It was the first time Tom had ever been alone with a baby. He stayed as if standing to attention, terrified of failing inspection. The child started to wriggle, kicking her feet and arms in a manoeuvre which flummoxed him.

‘Steady on! Be fair on a bloke, now,’ he implored as he tried to get a better grip.

‘Remember to keep her head supported,’ Isabel called. Immediately he slipped a hand up to the baby’s scalp, registering its smallness in the palm of his hand. She squirmed again, so he rocked her gently. ‘Come on, be a sport. Play fair with your Uncle Tom.’

As she blinked at him, and looked right into his eyes, Tom was suddenly aware of an almost physical ache. She was giving him a glimpse of a world he would now surely never know.

Isabel returned with the bottle. ‘Here.’ She put it into Tom’s hand and guided it to the baby’s mouth, demonstrating how to tap gently at her lips until she latched on. Tom was absorbed by how the process performed itself. The very fact that the baby required nothing of him stirred a sense of reverence for something far beyond his comprehension.

When Tom went back to the light, Isabel busied herself around the kitchen, preparing dinner while the child slept on. As soon as she heard a cry, she hurried to the nursery, and lifted her from the cot. The baby was fractious, and again nuzzled into Isabel’s breast, starting to suck at the thin cotton of her blouse.

‘Oh, my darling, are you still hungry? Old Doc Griffiths’ manual says to be careful not to give you too much. But maybe just a drop …’ She warmed a little more milk and offered the bottle to the baby. But this time the child turned her head away from the teat and
cried
as she pawed instead at the inviting, warm nipple that touched her cheek through the cloth.

‘Come on, here you are, here’s the bottle, sweet thing,’ Isabel cooed, but the baby became more distressed, kicking her arms and legs and turning in to Isabel’s chest.

Isabel remembered the fresh agony of the arrival of the milk, making her breasts heavy and sore with no baby to suckle – it had seemed a particularly cruel mechanism of nature. Now, this infant was seeking desperately for her milk, or perhaps just for comfort, now that immediate starvation had been staved off. She paused for a long moment, her thoughts swirling with the crying and the longing and the loss. ‘Oh, little sweetheart,’ she murmured, and slowly unbuttoned her blouse. Seconds later, the child had latched on fast, sucking contentedly, though only a few drops of milk came.

They had been like that for a good while when Tom entered the kitchen. ‘How’s the—’ He stopped in mid sentence, arrested at the sight.

Isabel looked up at him, her face a mixture of innocence and guilt. ‘It was the only way I could get her to settle.’

‘But … Well …’ Alarmed, Tom couldn’t even frame his questions.

‘She was desperate. Wouldn’t take the bottle …’

‘But – but she took it earlier, I saw her …’

‘Yes, because she was starving. Probably literally.’

Tom continued to stare, completely out of his depth.

‘It’s the most natural thing in the world, Tom. The best possible thing I could do for her. Don’t look so shocked.’ She reached out a hand to him. ‘Come here, darl. Give me a smile.’

He took her hand, but remained bewildered. And deep within, his uneasiness grew.

That afternoon, Isabel’s eyes were alive with a light Tom had not seen for years. ‘Come and look!’ she exclaimed. ‘Isn’t she a picture?
She
fits just beautifully!’ She gestured to the wickerwork cot, in which the child slept peacefully, her tiny chest rising and falling in a miniature echo of the waves around the island.

‘Snug as a walnut in a shell, isn’t she?’ said Tom.

‘I’d say she’s not three months old yet.’

‘How can you tell?’

‘I looked it up.’ Tom raised an eyebrow. ‘In
Dr Griffiths
. I’ve picked some carrots and some turnips, and I’ve made a stew with the last of the mutton. I want to have a special tea tonight.’

Tom frowned, puzzled.

‘We need to welcome Lucy, and say a prayer for her poor father.’

‘If that’s who he was,’ said Tom. ‘And
Lucy
?’

‘Well she needs a name. Lucy means “light”, so it’s perfect, isn’t it?’

‘Izzy Bella.’ He smiled, then stroked her hair, gently serious. ‘Be careful, sweet. I don’t want to see you upset …’

As Tom lit up for the evening, he still couldn’t drive away the uneasiness, nor could he tell whether it came from the past – reawakened grief – or from foreboding. As he made his way down the narrow, winding stairs, across each of the metal landings, he felt a heaviness in his chest, and a sense of sliding back into a darkness he thought he had escaped.

That night, they sat down to dinner accompanied by the snuffling of the child, the occasional gurgle bringing a smile to Isabel’s lips. ‘I wonder what will become of her?’ she pondered aloud. ‘It’s sad to think she could end up in an orphanage. Like Sarah Porter’s little boy.’

Later they made love for the first time since the stillbirth. Isabel seemed different to Tom: assured, relaxed. She kissed him afterwards and said, ‘Let’s plant a rose garden when spring comes. One that’ll be here years after we’re gone.’

‘I’ll send the signal this morning,’ Tom said just after dawn, as he returned from extinguishing the light. The pearl-shell glow of day stole into the bedroom and caressed the baby’s face. She had woken in the night and Isabel had brought her in to sleep between them. She put her finger to her lips as she nodded towards the sleeping infant, and rose from the bed to lead Tom into the kitchen.

‘Sit down, love, and I’ll make tea,’ she whispered, and marshalled cups, pot and kettle as quietly as she could. As she put the kettle on the stove, she said, ‘Tom, I’ve been thinking.’

‘What about, Izzy?’

‘Lucy. It can’t just be a coincidence that she turned up so soon after …’ The sentence did not need completing. ‘We can’t just ship her off to an orphanage.’ She turned to Tom and took his hands in hers. ‘Sweetheart, I think she should stay with us.’

‘Fair go now, darl! She’s a lovely baby, but she doesn’t belong to us. We can’t
keep
her.’

‘Why not? Think about it. I mean, practically speaking, who’s to know she’s here?’

‘When Ralph and Bluey come in a few weeks,
they’ll
know, for a start.’

‘Yes, but it occurred to me last night that they won’t know she’s not ours. Everyone still thinks I’m expecting. They’ll just be surprised she arrived early.’

Tom watched, his mouth open. ‘But … Izzy, are you in your right mind? Do you realise what you’re suggesting?’

‘I’m suggesting kindness. That’s all. Love for a baby. I’m suggesting, sweetheart,’ she clasped his hands tighter, ‘that we accept this gift that’s been sent to us. How long have we wanted a baby,
prayed
for a baby?’

Turning to the window, Tom put his hands on his head and
started
to laugh, then stretched his arms up in appeal. ‘For heaven’s sakes, Isabel! When I tell them about the fellow in the boat, eventually someone will know who he is. And they’ll work out that there was a baby. Maybe not straight away, but in the long run …’

‘Then I think you shouldn’t tell them.’

‘
Not tell them?
’ His tone was suddenly sober.

She stroked his hair. ‘Don’t tell them, sweetheart. We’ve done nothing wrong except give shelter to a helpless baby. We can give the poor man a decent burial. And the boat, well – just set it adrift again.’

‘Izzy, Izzy! You know I’d do anything for you, darl, but – whoever that man is and whatever he’s done, he deserves to be dealt with properly. And lawfully, for that matter. What if the mother’s not dead, and he’s got a wife fretting, waiting for them both?’

‘What woman would let her baby out of her sight? Face it, Tom: she
must
have drowned.’ She clasped his hand again. ‘I know how much your rules mean to you, and I know that this is technically breaking them. But what are those rules for? They’re to save lives! That’s all I’m saying we should do, sweetheart: save
this
life. She’s here and she needs us and we can help her. Please.’

‘Izzy, I
can’t
. This isn’t up to me. Don’t you understand?’

Her face darkened. ‘How can you be so hard-hearted? All you care about is your rules and your ships and your bloody light.’ These were accusations Tom had heard before, when, wild with grief after her miscarriages, Isabel had let loose her rage against the only person there – the man who continued to do his duty, who comforted her as best he could, but kept his own grieving to himself. Once again, he sensed her close to a dangerous brink, perhaps closer this time than she had ever been.