The Light Between Oceans (36 page)

He struggles to make sense of it – all this love, so bent out of shape, refracted, like light through the lens.

Vernon Knuckey had known Isabel since she was a tot. Her father had taught five of his children. ‘Best thing you can do is take her home,’ he had told Bill gravely. ‘I’ll talk to her tomorrow.’

‘But what about—’

‘Just take her home, Bill. Take the poor girl home.’

‘Isabel. Darling!’ Her mother hugged her as soon as she stepped through the front door. Violet Graysmark was as confused as anyone,
but
when she saw the state of her daughter, did not dare ask questions. ‘Your bed’s made up. Bill – fetch her bag through.’

Isabel drifted in, blank-faced. Violet guided her to an armchair, then hurried to the kitchen and returned with a glass. ‘Warm water and brandy. For your nerves,’ she said. Isabel sipped the drink mechanically, and put the empty glass on the occasional table.

Violet brought a rug and tucked it over her knees, though the room was perfectly warm. Isabel began to stroke the wool, tracing her index finger in straight lines over the tartan. She was so absorbed that she did not seem to hear when her mother asked, ‘Is there anything I can get you, pet? Are you hungry?’

Bill put his head around the door and beckoned Violet out to the kitchen. ‘Has she said anything?’

‘Not a word. I think she’s in shock.’

‘Well that makes two of us. I can’t make head or tail of it. I’m going to the station first thing in the morning to get a straight story. That Hannah Roennfeldt’s been daft as a brush for years now. And as for old man Potts: thinks he can throw his weight around because of his dough.’ He pulled the ends of his waistcoat down over his belly. ‘I’m not going to be pushed around by some lunatic and her father, no matter how much money he’s got.’

That night, Isabel lay in her narrow childhood bed, now foreign, constricting. A light wind pushed at the lace curtains, and outside, the chirrup of the crickets reflected the sparkling stars. On a night like this, only moments ago, it seemed, she had lain sleepless and excited at the prospect of her wedding the following morning. She had thanked God for sending her Tom Sherbourne: for letting him be born, for keeping him safe through the war, for wafting him on some breeze of Fate to her shore, where she was the first person he saw as he landed.

She tried to recall that state of ecstatic anticipation, the sense that life, after all the grief and loss the war had brought, was about to bloom. But the feeling was lost: now it all seemed a mistake, a delusion. Her happiness on Janus was distant, unimaginable. For two years, Tom had been lying with every word and every silence. If she hadn’t noticed that deception, what else had she missed? Why had he never said a word about meeting Hannah Roennfeldt? What was he hiding? In a sickening flash she saw a picture of Tom and Hannah and Lucy, a happy family. The thoughts of betrayal which had assailed her on Janus now came back darker, more insinuating. Perhaps he had other women and other lives. Perhaps he had deserted a wife –
wives –
back east … and children … Fantasy seemed plausible, compelling, as it poured into the gap between her memory of the eve of her wedding and this dreadful, oppressive present. A lighthouse warns of danger – tells people to keep their distance. She had mistaken it for a place of safety.

To have lost her child. To have seen Lucy terrified and distraught at being torn from the only people in the world she really knew: this was already unbearable. But to know it had happened because of her own husband – the man she adored, the man she’d given her life to – was simply impossible to grasp. He’d claimed to care for her, yet he’d done the thing guaranteed to destroy her.

This focussing outward, on Tom, painful as it was, saved her from a more intolerable examination. Slowly, taking shape amongst the shadows in her mind, was an almost solid sensation: an urge to punish; the fury of a wild thing deprived of her young. Tomorrow, the police would question her. By the time the stars had faded in the wakening sky, she had convinced herself: Tom deserved to suffer for what he had done. And he himself had handed her the weapons.

CHAPTER 26

THE POLICE STATION
at Point Partageuse, like many of the town’s buildings, was made from local stone, and timber cut from the surrounding forest. It was an oven in summer and an icebox in winter, which led to irregularities in uniform on days of extreme temperatures. When it rained too heavily, the cells flooded and bits of the ceiling sagged – even fell in once, killing a prisoner. Perth was too stingy to stump up the money to fix the structure properly, so it had a permanently wounded air, more bandaged than repaired.

Septimus Potts was sitting at a table near the front counter, filling in a form with the few details he could recall about his son-in-law. He was able to give Frank’s full name and date of birth – they had featured on the invoice for the memorial stone. But as for place of birth, parents’ names … ‘Look, I think we can safely assume he had parents, young man. Let’s stick to the point here,’ he blustered, putting Constable Garstone onto the back foot with a technique honed over years of business deals. The constable conceded it would do for the writing-up of the initial charge sheet against Tom. The day of the disappearance was easy enough – Anzac Day, 1926; but the date of Frank’s death?

‘You’ll have to ask Mr Sherbourne that,’ Potts was saying sourly, as Bill Graysmark entered the station.

Septimus turned around, and the men glared at one another like two old bulls. ‘I’ll just go and get Sergeant Knuckey,’ spluttered the constable, sending his chair clattering to the ground as he sprang up. He rapped out a machine-gun knock on the sergeant’s door, and returned after a moment to summon Bill, who barged past Potts and into Knuckey’s office.

‘Vernon!’ he launched at the sergeant as soon as the door was closed. ‘I don’t know what’s been going on, but I demand that my granddaughter be returned to her mother, right now. Dragging her off like that! She’s not even four years old, for goodness’ sake.’ He gestured towards the front of the station. ‘What happened to the Roennfeldts was all very sad, but Septimus Potts can’t just snatch away my granddaughter to make up for what he’s lost.’

‘Bill,’ said the sergeant, ‘I realise how hard this must be for you …’

‘Realise, my foot! Whatever this is, it’s got completely out of hand, presumably on the word of a woman who’s been off with the fairies for years.’

‘Have a drop of brandy …’

‘I don’t need a drop of brandy! I need a drop of common sense, if that’s not too much to ask around here. Since when do you put men in gaol on the unsubstantiated claims of – of a mad woman?’

Knuckey sat down at his desk and rolled his pen between his fingertips. ‘If you mean Hannah Roennfeldt, she hasn’t said anything against Tom. Bluey Smart started it all – he’s the one identified the rattle.’ He paused. ‘Isabel hasn’t spoken to us at all so far. Refuses to say a word.’ He examined the pen as it turned, and said, ‘That’s pretty odd, don’t you think, if it’s all just a mistake?’

‘Well, she’s clearly overcome, having her child snatched like that.’

Knuckey looked up. ‘Can you answer me this, then, Bill: why hasn’t Sherbourne denied it?’

‘Because he …’ The words came out before he had registered
the
policeman’s answer, and he doubled back: ‘What do you mean, he hasn’t denied it?’

‘Out on Janus, he told us the baby had washed up in a dinghy with a dead man, and that he’d insisted they should keep her. Assumed the mother had already drowned because of a cardigan they found. Said Isabel wanted to report the whole thing and he stopped her. He blamed her for not producing children for him. Looks like it’s all been a pack of lies since then – a complete charade. We’ve got to investigate, Bill.’ He hesitated, then lowered his voice. ‘Then there’s the question of
how
Frank Roennfeldt died. Who knows what Sherbourne’s got to hide? Who knows what he’s forced Isabel to keep quiet about? It’s a very nasty business.’

The town had not seen such excitement in years. As the editor of the
South Western Times
put it to his colleague in the pub, ‘It’s the next best thing to Jesus Christ himself turning up and shouting us all a beer. We’ve got a mother and baby reunited, a mysterious death, and old Potts of Money giving away his dough like it’s – well, Christmas! Folks can’t get enough of it.’