The Lightkeeper's Wife (43 page)
Yes, Jack, I am coming . . .
‘It’s a guy called Leon. Says he’s calling from Cloudy Bay.’ Nick passes the phone to me as I dash up onto the deck. ‘Thanks, mate,’ he says. ‘We’ll be off now. Hope everything’s all right.’
I curl my fingers around the receiver and Nick ceases to exist. I barely see him as he slips down the driveway and tucks Emma into his car.
‘Hello?’ I’m hardly breathing as I wait to hear Leon’s voice.
‘Tom.’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m really sorry, mate . . . but she’s gone.’ He sounds exhausted, bereft.
‘Gone?’
‘Yes. It was just a little while ago. On the beach.’
‘On the beach?’ I feel like an echo, distant, hollow. ‘How did you get her out there?’
‘I carried her. I promised I’d take her out. She wanted that. Said she didn’t want to be trapped under a roof. That she wanted to be beneath the sky.’
‘She told you that?’
‘Yes. She mentioned it a week ago. When we were talking.’
I sit down on the hard wood of the deck. Jess presses against me, her body warm against my arm. ‘Where is she now?’
‘In bed. I tucked her in . . . to keep her warm. I know it’s strange but I didn’t want her to get cold . . .’ His voice drifts off, and the silence stretches. I can’t comprehend that my mother is dead. I was going to see her this morning. I was going to sit with her and hold her hand. But I’m too late. ‘What do we do now?’ Leon asks. ‘Who do we call?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll find out. Then I’ll come down. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
‘I’ll stay with her till you get here.’
He hangs up and I begin dialling. First Jan, then Gary. Jan is distraught, weeping, hysterical. She’s too late, she says. And I say yes, it’s too late for everything. Gary is more rational. He says he was expecting something like this; Mum looked so terrible the other day. I ask him to find out what to do about Mum’s body. I trip over the words.
The body
. It’s such a term of separation. The body disconnected from life, separated from contact, from affection. I feel nauseous.
I call Jacinta. She and Alex are on their way to pick up Jan when I tell her about Mum, Jacinta is silent on the end of the phone. It’s as if she has been frozen. I stammer out broken condolences and hang up.
Around me, the day resumes its shape, thick with ludicrous sunshine and wavering shadows. I glance down at the road—the Commodore is long gone. It’s hard to believe Emma and Nick were ever here. It’s all so incongruous: my mother’s death, Emma drunk on my doorstep last night, Nick sleeping in my house. I rest my chin on my knees, hugging my legs tight. Everything looks so normal. The trees, the quivering leaves, the sky, the puffy clouds. How can it be this way? How can everything go on like this when my mother has died?
I stand and walk slowly down the hill with Jess at my heels. We slot ourselves into the car and drive.
On the ferry, I leave Jess in the car and wander to the bow, leaning against the cold metal railing. Beneath my feet, the deck throbs. The light is shimmering on the water. I breathe with the rhythm of the engines, trying to empty myself, to be one with everything, to be non-existent. Wind pours over the bow as the ferry swings around the headland south of Kettering and angles across the channel.
Closer to Bruny, the wind increases and chops the water to small waves, spray hitting my face. In weather like this I should be cold, but instead I am numb. I grip the railing with hard fists, trying to feel some sort of emotion, to feel pain, or grief, or sadness. Anything.
When finally I release the railing and return to the car, my body is rigid, and then I’m gripped by a deep chill that leaves me shaking as if I’ll never stop. I can hardly steady my hands to fit the key in the ignition.
Jess stares at me sadly. Usually she’d jump on the front seat for a pat, but today she sits miserably on the floor. She sniffs the hand I extend towards her and cautiously licks my fingers.
Her tongue is soft and warm and my hands are icy. I tuck them beneath my armpits and gaze through the windscreen. Vapour fog creeps quickly around its edges as I breathe.
North Bruny passes in a blur and I can hardly recall disembarking from the ferry. The sky above the Neck is brooding; no patches of blue or breakthrough shafts of light. It seems appropriate.
I swing around the bends and curves of South Bruny, skipping from gravel to brief breaks of tar and back to gravel, through Alonnah—the school, the playground, the post office—and on to Lunawanna, past the mudflats, thick with mustering gulls. I turn east towards Cloudy Bay, past the store, and then the road sweeps out of town, passing cottages with thin streamers of smoke coiling from their chimneys and washing hung beneath their eaves. When at last I arrive at Cloudy Bay, I pull over in the Whalebone Point carpark and clamber out, unable as yet to tackle that final stretch down the beach to the door of the cabin where my mother’s body lies.
I walk to the edge of the carpark and gaze south where the grey sea travels in between the heads. Those long arms of headland reach to embrace the bay, but fail to curb the magnetism of the ocean. Closer in, the waves are tinged with red. I’ve only ever seen this phenomenon here: the colour of blood in the waves. It flies up in the spume as the swell rears and collapses on itself. Today, it seems as if I’m watching the essence of my mother slipping away. I stumble west on the trail from the point, stopping eventually to lower myself onto a damp bench seat. I sit with my head in my hands, the heels of my palms pressing into my eyes creating spirals of colour.
Time withers. The sea roars, my heart beats—two separate rhythms. Eventually tears come, another rhythm rising from somewhere deep in my chest, the choke of contorted sobs, a welling emptiness. I lose myself in the sludge of it, thought dissolving.
Then a wet nose presses against my hands. A lick. A quick swipe across my fingers. I release my fists.
Jess is watching me with steady eyes. She doesn’t shy from my grief. My hands sag to her head and knead the softness of her ears, feeling her warmth beneath my fingers.
Slowly, we walk back to the car together.
The cabin at the end of the beach.
Leon’s four-wheel drive is parked on the grass, and I pull up alongside. Jess gallops around the lawn, her belly damp and heavy with sand after her run up the beach beside the car. I dig an old towel from the back seat and rub her down.
She bounds onto the deck where Leon is leaning against the wooden railing, his face ashen. I reach to shake his hand and he grips mine hard. He nods at me sympathetically, taking in my red eyes. ‘You made it,’ he says, releasing my hand.
‘Yes. Tough trip.’
‘Pretty tough night too.’ His voice is rough with feeling.
‘I should have been here. I should have stopped work a week ago to look after her.’
Leon shrugs a little uncertainly, as if afraid he might offend me. ‘She talked about that a few times,’ he says. ‘But she really didn’t want anyone. She was quite clear about that.’
‘You don’t think she was lonely?’
‘No,’ he says.
‘Perhaps we should have called a doctor . . .’ I’m riding on a moment of guilt.
He shakes his head. ‘She didn’t want to prolong things.’
I know what Mum wanted, but I need reassurance. I considered discussing death with her, but it was too hard. Now I feel inadequate; it seems Leon managed to achieve what I couldn’t. He sighs deeply and I see tears brimming in his eyes.
‘She was my friend,’ he says.
I pat him on the shoulder. It’s the best I can do.
Jess whines up at me and I glance uneasily at the front door. ‘I suppose I should go in,’ I say. Hesitantly, I step inside. Leon follows.
It’s hot in the lounge room, unbearably so. The wood fire is glowing and the gas heater is on too, pumping out heat. I peel off a couple of layers. ‘It’s hot in here.’
Leon’s face is haggard. ‘She was cold.’
‘Yes, but she’ll turn to soup.’
His lips quiver. ‘I didn’t think of that.’
He slams the flue shut on the wood heater and extinguishes the gas while I open windows. Jess is sitting by the door to Mum’s room, whimpering.
‘She knows,’ Leon says. ‘Dogs know everything.’
I glance into the room and swallow hard. Jess looks up at me. We step slowly inside.
The bedroom is dim. Mum is in the bed by the window, and a flickering candle on the bedside table makes her look not of this world. Her face is waxy and grey, and her eyes stare into nothing. There’s a strange smell permeating the room, slightly rancid. Leon has pulled the blankets high under her chin. I reach forward and touch her cheek with the back of my hand. Jess whines. Mum’s skin is cold and firm, like plastic. Something in my chest tightens. I sit on the bed and run my hand over the covers. Mum is so flat under there. So depleted. So absent. The silence that lingers over her is oppressive; the lack of movement, of breathing. I bend my head and weep while Jess circles restlessly. Mum wasn’t supposed to die without me. I wanted to be here with her. That’s what I promised myself. I let her down.
Then suddenly I need to speak. I meant to do this while she was alive. To thank her for everything—for my childhood, for her love, for being patient with me.
‘Mum,’ I say gently. ‘I’m here . . . It’s me, Tom.’
I shift the covers slightly and touch her arm. It’s cold and wooden and heavy. I fold my hand around hers and lift it. I want to cradle her fingers in mine and warm them. I want to inject back into her all the vibrancy of life that has carried her these past seventy-seven years. Emotion curdles in my throat and for a moment I can’t talk. Then I collect myself.
‘Mum, you came down here to prepare yourself for this, didn’t you? You’ve been sending messages to Dad. Maybe you found him here. I guess I’ll never know. If he’s anywhere, I’m sure he’s with you.
‘You’ve been a tremendous mum, you know. Nobody could have been better. When I came back from Antarctica you had enough of your own strife, with Dad just gone, but you propped me up. I couldn’t have come ashore without you . . . And the way you never expected me to talk about things. That’s a gift. You’ve always accepted me the way I am . . .’
I try to press heat into her freezing fingers. ‘It was wonderful growing up at the lighthouse, Mum. You know how I loved it. Just like you did. I appreciate you giving us that opportunity. You were the rock of our family . . . I don’t know what I’ll do without you . . .
‘But you don’t have to worry, Mum. I’m going to be okay. I’ve been doing better lately. Things haven’t worked out with Emma, but I’m looking forward to things now. Not hiding away. I’m going to be all right. And Jan will be fine too. She’s got Jacinta. And you know Gary’s always good. He’s the solid one among us—in more ways than one . . .’ A sniffy gasp of a laugh escapes me.
‘I only wish I’d asked you more about Dad. That’s the only thing I regret.’ I bow my head and drip tears onto her hand. All those years I could have talked about this, and now it has to come surging out when Mum is gone. ‘I wish I knew more about him,’ I murmur. ‘I think he loved me, I’m sure he did. But he was a tough father, Mum. Not easy to love, not like you. I guess it’s hard being a kid. You don’t have the confidence to make things happen. If I’d been more relaxed, I could have spent more time with Dad like Gary did.’
I falter again and look down at Mum’s fingers. The best memory I have of Dad is when I was eight and he showed me how engines work. Over several afternoons he demonstrated how to pull generators apart and put them back together again. We didn’t talk much, but it was comfortable, just doing things with him. I suppose that was his way of teaching me about life. How to fix things.
He was a strange man, my father. So serious about weird things. I remember when we used to play Monopoly on windy cold days. He was so triumphant whenever he won, hotels on all his properties. That was one of the only times I recall him being truly happy, and also when we went fishing down at the cove. When I was small, he’d be pulling in lots of fish, and all I could catch was beach junk. Once we went fishing off the rocks and I kept snagging my line. He had to set up my tackle over and over, and we didn’t catch a thing. He came home so grumpy he didn’t talk all evening and went straight to bed after dinner.
