The Light Between Oceans (37 page)

The day after the child’s return, Hannah’s house is still decorated with crêpe-paper streamers. A new doll, its dainty porcelain face glowing in the afternoon light, sits abandoned on a chair in the corner, eyes wide in silent appeal. The clock on the mantelpiece ticks stolidly, and a music box stretches out ‘Rock-a-bye Baby’ with a macabre, threatening air. It is drowned out by the cries coming from the back yard.

On the grass, the child is screaming, her face puce with fear and fury, the skin on her cheeks stretched tight and her tiny teeth
exposed
like keys on a miniature piano. She is trying to escape Hannah, who is picking her up each time she wrestles free and screams again.

‘Grace, darling. Shh, shh, Grace. Come on, please.’

The child yells hopelessly again, ‘I want my mamma. I want Dadda. Go ’way! I don’t like you!’

There had been a great to-do when the police had reunited the mother with her child. Photographs had been taken, and thanks and praise lavished on the officers and on God in equal measure. Again, the tongues of the town were busy spreading news, tickling the air with tales of the dreamy look on the face of the child, the joyful smile of the mother. ‘The poor tot – she was so sleepy by the time she was delivered to her mum. Looked like an angel. You can only thank the good Lord that she was got out of the clutches of that dreadful man!’ said Fanny Darnley, who had made it her business to extract the details from Constable Garstone’s mother. Grace had been not drowsy, however, but on the fringes of consciousness, dosed with a strong sleeping draught by Dr Sumpton when it was clear that she was hysterical at being parted from Isabel.

Now, Hannah was locked in a stand-off with her terrified daughter. She had kept her so close to her heart all these years that it had never occurred to her that the child might not have done the same. When Septimus Potts came into the garden, he would have been hard pressed to say which of the two figures he saw was more distressed.

‘Grace, I’m not going to hurt you, my darling. Come to Mummy,’ Hannah was pleading.

‘I’m not Grace! I’m Lucy!’ cried the child. ‘I want to go home! Where’s Mamma? You’re not my mummy!’

Wounded more by each outburst, Hannah could only murmur, ‘I’ve loved you so long. So long …’

Septimus remembered his own helplessness as Gwen, at about
the
same age, had continued to demand her mother, as though he were hiding his late wife somewhere about the house. It still got him in the guts.

Hannah caught sight of her father. His expression betrayed his assessment of the situation, and humiliation washed through her.

‘She just needs some time to get used to you. Be patient, Hanny,’ he said. The girl had found a safe nook behind the old lemon tree and the Cape gooseberry, where she stayed poised, ready to dart off.

‘She’s got no idea who I am, Dad. No idea. Of course. She won’t come near me,’ Hannah wept.

‘She’ll come round,’ said Septimus. ‘She’ll either get tired and fall asleep there, or get hungry and come out. Either way, it’s just a question of waiting.’

‘I know, I know she has to get used to me again.’

Septimus put an arm around her shoulder. ‘There’s no “again” about it. You’re a whole new person for her.’

‘
You
try. Please, see if you can get her to come out … She ran away from Gwen, too.’

‘She’s seen enough new faces for one day, I’d say. She doesn’t need my ugly mug on top of everything else. Just give her a bit of peace and quiet.’

‘What did I do wrong, to deserve all this, Dad?’

‘None of this is your fault. She’s your daughter, and she’s right where she belongs. Just give it time, girlie. Give it time.’ He stroked her hair. ‘And I’ll see to it that that Sherbourne fellow gets what’s coming to him. That’s a promise.’

As he made his way back through the house, he found Gwen, standing in the shadows of the passageway, watching her sister. She shook her head and whispered, ‘Oh, Dad, it’s just awful watching the poor little creature. It’s enough to break your heart, all her crying.’ She gave a deep sigh. ‘Perhaps she’ll get used to things,’ she said with a shrug, though her eyes said otherwise.

In the country around Partageuse, every life-form has its defences. The ones you need to worry about least are the fast-movers, who survive by disappearing: the racehorse goanna, the parrots they call ‘twenty-eights’, the brush-tailed possum. They’re off at the slightest glint of trouble: retreat, evasion, camouflage – those are their survival tricks. Others are deadly only if you’re the one in their sights. The tiger snake, the shark, the trapdoor spider: they’ll use their means of attack to defend themselves against humans if threatened.

The ones to fear most stay still, unnoticed, their defences undetected until you trigger them by accident. They make no distinctions. Eat the pretty heart-leaf poison bush, say, and your heart will stop. Such things are only trying to protect themselves. But Lord help you if you get too close. Only when Isabel Sherbourne was threatened were her defences awakened.

Vernon Knuckey sat rapping his fingers on his desk as Isabel waited in the next room to be questioned. Partageuse was a fairly quiet place for a policeman. The odd assault or a bit of drunk and disorderly was the most the average week would dish up. The sergeant could have moved to Perth for promotion, and the chance to witness darker crimes – uglier scars on lives that meant less to him. But he had seen enough strife in the war to last him a lifetime. Petty thieving and fines for sly grog would do him. Kenneth Spragg, on the other hand, was itching to move to the big smoke. He’d go to town on this one if he got half a chance. Literally – he’d be treating it as his ticket up the ladder to Perth. He neither knew nor cared about anyone in Partageuse, thought Knuckey: Bill and Violet, for example, and the boys they had lost. He thought of all the years he’d seen little Isabel, with a beautiful voice and a face to match, singing in the church
choir
at Christmas. Then his thoughts swung to old Potts, devoted to those girls of his since his wife died, and crushed by Hannah’s choice of husband. As for poor Hannah herself … Nothing to write home about on the looks front, but a real brain box, and a very decent sort. Always thought she had a screw loose believing her child would show up after all these years, but just look how things had turned out.

He took a deep breath as he turned the handle of the door and entered. Addressing Isabel, he was efficient, respectful. ‘Isabel – Mrs Sherbourne – I have to ask you some more questions. I know he’s your husband, but this is a very serious matter.’ He took the cap off his pen, and rested it on the paper. A puddle of black leaked from the nib, and he stroked it this way and that, stretching the ink out in lines from its central point.

‘He says you wanted to report the boat’s arrival and he stopped you. Is that right?’

Isabel looked at her hands.

‘Says he resented you for not giving him children, and took things into his own hands.’

The words struck deep within her. In telling the lie, had Tom revealed a truth?

‘Didn’t you try to talk sense into him?’ Knuckey asked.

Truthfully, she said, ‘When Tom Sherbourne thinks he’s doing the right thing, there’s no persuading him otherwise.’

He asked gently, ‘Did he threaten you? Assault you, physically?’

Isabel paused, and the fury of her sleepless night flooded back. She clung to silence like a rock.

Often enough Knuckey had seen the wives and daughters of timber workers bullied into submission with just a look by great hulks of men. ‘You were afraid of him?’

Her lips tightened. No words came out.

Knuckey put his elbows on the desk, and leaned forward.
‘Isabel,
the law recognises that a wife can be powerless at the hands of her husband. Under the Criminal Code, you’re not responsible for anything he made you do or stopped you from doing, so you needn’t worry on that score. You won’t be punished for his crimes. Now, I need to ask you a question, and I want you to think very carefully. Remember, you can’t get into trouble for anything he forced you into.’ He cleared his throat. ‘According to Tom, Frank Roennfeldt was dead when the boat washed up.’ He looked her in the eye. ‘Is that true?’

Isabel was taken aback. She could hear herself saying, ‘Of course it’s true!’ But before her mouth could open, her mind rushed again to Tom’s betrayal. Suddenly overwhelmed – by the loss of Lucy, by anger, by sheer exhaustion, she closed her eyes.

The policeman prompted softly, ‘Is it true, Isabel?’

She fixed her gaze on her wedding ring as she said, ‘I’ve got nothing to say,’ and burst into tears.

Tom drank the tea slowly, watching the swirling steam vanish in the warm air. The afternoon light angled in through the high windows of the sparsely furnished room. As he rubbed the stubble on his chin, it brought back sensations from the days when shaving was impossible, and washing likewise.

‘Want another one?’ asked Knuckey evenly.

‘No. Thanks.’

‘You smoke?’

‘No.’

‘So. A boat washes up at the lighthouse. Out of nowhere.’

‘I told you all this out on Janus.’

‘And you’ll tell me again as many times as I like! So. You find the boat.’

‘Yes.’

‘And it’s got a baby in it.’

‘Yes.’

‘What state’s the baby in?’

‘Healthy. Crying, but healthy.’

Knuckey was writing notes. ‘And there’s a bloke in the boat.’

‘A body.’

‘A man,’ said Knuckey.

Tom looked at him, sizing up the rephrasing.

‘You’re pretty used to being the king of the castle out on Janus, are you?’

Tom considered the irony, which anyone who knew about life on the Lights would have registered, but he didn’t answer. Knuckey went on, ‘Reckon you can get away with things. No one around.’

‘It had nothing to do with getting away with things.’

‘And you decided you might as well keep the baby out there. Isabel had lost yours. No one would ever know. That it?’

‘I told you: I made the decision. Made Isabel go along with it.’

‘Knock your wife around, do you?’

Tom looked at him. ‘Is that what you think?’

‘That why she lost the baby?’

Shock registered on Tom’s face. ‘Did
she
say that?’

Knuckey stayed silent, and Tom took a deep breath. ‘Look, I’ve told you what happened. She tried to talk me out of it. I’m guilty of whatever you say I’m guilty of, so let’s just get this over, and leave my wife out of it.’

‘
Don’t
try to tell me what to do,’ Knuckey snapped. ‘I’m not your batman. I’ll do what
I
decide to do when
I’m
good and ready.’ He pushed his chair out from the desk, and folded his arms. ‘The man in the boat …’

‘What about him?’

‘What state was he in, when you found him?’

‘He was dead.’

‘You sure about that?’

‘I’ve seen enough bodies in my time.’

‘Why should I believe you about this one?’

‘Why should I lie?’

Knuckey paused, and let the question hang in the air, for his prisoner to feel the answer weigh down upon him. Tom shifted in his chair. ‘Exactly,’ said Knuckey. ‘Why should you lie?’

‘My wife’ll tell you he was dead when the boat washed up.’

‘The same wife you admit you forced to lie?’

‘Look, it’s completely different, sheltering a child and—’

‘Killing someone?’ Knuckey cut in.

‘
Ask
her.’

‘I have,’ said Knuckey quietly.

‘Then you know he was dead.’

‘I don’t know anything. She refuses to talk about it.’

Tom felt a hammer blow to his chest. He avoided Knuckey’s eyes. ‘What
has
she said?’

‘That she’s got nothing to say.’

Tom hung his head. ‘Christ all bloody mighty,’ he muttered under his breath, before responding, ‘Well all I can do is repeat what I said. I never saw that man alive.’ He knitted his fingers together. ‘If I can just see her, talk to her …’

‘No chance of that. Besides the fact that it’s not allowed, I get the impression she wouldn’t talk to you if you were the last person on earth.’