The Light Between Oceans (48 page)

Harry Garstone hammered on the Graysmarks’ door. Bill answered, after peering through the glass to see who it could be at this hour.

‘Mr Graysmark,’ the constable said, and gave a peremptory nod.

‘Evening, Harry. What brings you here?’

‘Official business.’

‘I see,’ said Bill, braced for more grim news.

‘I’m looking for the Roennfeldt girl.’

‘
Hannah?
’

‘No, her daughter. Grace.’

It took Bill a moment to realise he meant Lucy, and he gave the policeman a questioning look.

‘Have you got her here?’ Garstone asked.

‘Of course I haven’t got her. Why on earth …?’

‘Well, she’s not with Hannah Roennfeldt. She’s gone missing.’

‘Hannah lost her?’

‘Or she was taken. Is your daughter at home?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sure?’ he asked, just faintly disappointed.

‘Of course I’m sure.’

‘Been here all day, has she?’

‘Not all day, no. What are you on about? Where’s Lucy?’

By now Violet was standing behind Bill. ‘Whatever’s the matter?’

‘I need to see your daughter, Mrs Graysmark,’ said Garstone. ‘Could you get her, please?’

Reluctantly, Violet went to Isabel’s room, but it was empty. She hurried out to the back, where she found her sitting on the swinging seat, staring into space.

‘Isabel! It’s Harry Garstone!’

‘What does he want?’

‘I think you’d better come and see him,’ Violet said, and something in her tone made Isabel follow her mother through the house to the front door.

‘Evening, Mrs Sherbourne. I’m here about Grace Roennfeldt,’ Garstone began.

‘What about her?’ asked Isabel.

‘When did you last see her?’

‘She hasn’t been near her since she came back,’ her mother protested, before correcting herself. ‘Well, she did … come across her, by accident, at Mouchemore’s, but that’s the only time—’

‘That right, Mrs Sherbourne?’

Isabel didn’t speak, so her father said, ‘Of course it’s right. What do you think she—’

‘No, Dad. Actually, I did see her.’

Both parents turned, mouths open in confusion.

‘At the park, three days ago. Gwen Potts brought her to see me.’ Isabel considered whether to say more. ‘I didn’t go looking for her – Gwen brought her to me, I swear. Where’s Lucy?’

‘Gone. Disappeared.’

‘When?’

‘I thought you might be able to tell me that,’ said the policeman. ‘Mr Graysmark, do you mind if I have a look around? Just to be sure.’

Bill was about to protest, but the new information from Isabel worried him. ‘There’s nothing to hide in this house. Look where you like.’

The policeman, who still remembered getting the cane from Bill Graysmark for cheating on a maths test, made a show of opening wardrobes and peering under beds, though he did so with a trace of nerves, as though it wasn’t impossible that the headmaster might still give him six of the best. Finally, he returned to the hallway. ‘Thank you. If you see her, make sure you let us know.’

‘Let you know!’ Isabel was outraged. ‘Haven’t you started a search? Why aren’t you out looking for her?’

‘That’s not your concern, Mrs Sherbourne.’

As soon as Garstone had gone, Isabel turned to her father. ‘Dad, we’ve got to find her! Where on earth could she be? I’ve got to go and—’

‘Hold your horses, Izz. Let me see if I can get some sense out of Vernon Knuckey. I’ll telephone the station, and see what’s going on.’

CHAPTER 33

FROM HER EARLIEST
days, the child from Janus Rock has experienced the extremes of human life as the norm. Who knows what visceral memories of her first trip to the island, and the scene that caused it, linger in her body? Even if that has been erased completely, her days at the lighthouse, in a world inhabited by only three people, have seeped into her very being. Her bond with the couple who raised her is fierce and beyond questioning. She cannot name the sensation of losing them as grief. She has no word for longing or despair.

But she aches for Mamma and Dadda, pines for them and spends her days thinking of them, even now she has been onshore for many weeks. She must have done something very naughty to make Mamma cry so much. As for the woman with the dark hair and the dark eyes who says she is her real mother … lying is wrong. So why does this sad lady insist on telling such a big lie, and to everyone? Why do the grown-ups let her?

She knows Mamma is here in Partageuse. She knows the bad men took Dadda away, but doesn’t know where. She has heard the word ‘police’ many times, but has only the vaguest notion of what they are. She has overheard many conversations. People in the street, muttering, ‘What a to-do, what a dreadful situation.’ Hannah saying she will never see Mamma again.

Janus is enormous, yet she knows every inch of it: Shipwreck Beach, Treacherous Cove, Windy Ridge. To get home, she need only look for the lighthouse, Dadda always says. She knows, for she has heard it said many times, that Partageuse is a very small place.

While Hannah is in the kitchen, and Gwen is out, the little girl goes to her room. She looks about her. Carefully, she buckles on her sandals. In a satchel, she puts a drawing of the lighthouse with Mamma and Dadda and Lulu. She adds the apple the lady gave her this morning; the pegs she uses as dolls.

She closes the back door quietly, and searches the hedge at the back of the garden, until she finds a narrow gap just wide enough to slip through. She has seen Mamma at the park. She will go there. She will find her. They will find Dadda. They will go home.

It is late in the afternoon when she embarks on her mission. The sun is slanting in from the side of the sky, and the shadows of the trees are already stretched like rubber to improbable lengths.

Having scrambled through the hedge, the girl drags her satchel along the ground as she makes her way through low scrub behind the house. The sounds here are so different from Janus. So many birds, calling to one another. As she wanders, the scrub becomes more dense, and the vegetation greener. She isn’t frightened of the skinks she sees skittering now, black and quick and scaly, through the undergrowth. Skinks won’t hurt her, she knows well. But she doesn’t know that, unlike Janus, here not everything black and slithering is a skink. She has never had to make the vital distinction between the lizards that have legs, and those that don’t. She has never seen a snake.

By the time the little girl reaches the park, the light is fading. She runs to the bench, but finds no trace of her mother. Hauling her
satchel
up after her, she sits there, taking in the empty surroundings. From the satchel she pulls out the apple, bruised from the journey, and takes a bite.

At this hour, the kitchens of Partageuse are busy places, filled with testy mothers and hungry children. There is much washing of hands and faces, grubby from a day’s skirmishing in trees or walking back from the beach. Fathers allow themselves a beer from the Coolgardie safe, mothers oversee saucepans boiling potatoes and ovens incubating stews. Families gather, safe and whole, at the end of another day. And darkness seeps into the sky second by second, until the shadows no longer fall but rise from the ground and fill the air completely. Humans withdraw to their homes, and surrender the night to the creatures that own it: the crickets, the owls, the snakes. A world that hasn’t changed for hundreds of thousands of years wakes up, and carries on as if the daylight and the humans and the changes to the landscape have been an illusion. No one walks the streets.

By the time Sergeant Knuckey has arrived at the park, there is only a satchel on the park bench, and an apple core with small teeth marks, though ants have overrun the remains now.

As the night falls, lights begin to twinkle in the gloom. Dots in the darkness, sometimes from a gas lamp in a window; sometimes electric lights, from the newer houses. The main street of Partageuse has electric street lights strung along its length on either side. The stars, too, illuminate the clear air, and the Milky Way rubs a bright smudge across the darkness.

Some of the bright dots amongst the trees sway like fiery fruit: people with lanterns are searching the bush. Not just police, but men from Potts’s timber mills, men from Harbour and Lights. Hannah waits anxiously at home, as she’s been instructed. The Graysmarks
walk
the bush paths, calling the child’s name. Both ‘Lucy’ and ‘Grace’ fill the air, though only one child is lost.

Clutching her drawing, of Mamma and Dadda and the light, the child recalls the story of the Wise Men finding their way to Baby Jesus by a star. She has spotted the light of Janus, out to sea: it’s not far at all – the light never is. Though there’s something not quite right. The flash has a red beam between the white ones. Still she follows it.

Down towards the water she heads, where the swell has picked up for the night and the waves have taken the shore hostage. At the lighthouse, she will find Mamma and Dadda. She makes her way down towards the long, thin isthmus – the ‘Point’ of Point Partageuse, where years before, Isabel taught Tom to lie down when looking into the blow-hole, to avoid being swept away. Every step takes the little girl closer to the light, out in the ocean.

But it’s not Janus’s beam she’s following. Each light has a different character, and the flash of red that punctuates the white in this one tells mariners that they’re nearing the shoals at the mouth of Partageuse Harbour, nearly a hundred miles away from Janus Rock.

The wind picks up. The water churns. The child walks. The darkness abides.