The Light Between Oceans

by M. L. Stedman

  though to overcome distance or deafness. Still, Isabel remained mute.

  “Perhaps we could—” Gwen’s sentence was cut off by her sister.

  “Let her go!” Hannah shouted, unable to address Isabel by name. “You’ve done enough,” she went on more quietly, in a voice edged with bitterness.

  “How can you be so cruel?” Isabel burst out. “You can see the state she’s in! You don’t know the first thing about her—about what she needs, how to look after her! Have some common sense, if you can’t have any kindness to her!”

  “Let go of my daughter! Now!” demanded Hannah, shaking. She was desperate to get out of the shop, to break the magnetic hold. She pulled the child away and held her around the waist, as she resisted and screamed, “Mamma! I want Mamma! Let me go!”

  “It’s all right, darling,” she said. “I know you’re upset, but we can’t stay,” and she went on, trying to soothe the child with words while keeping a strong enough grip on her to stop her wriggling out of her arms and running away.

  Gwen glanced at Isabel, and shook her head in despair. Then she turned to her niece. “Shh, shh, love. Don’t cry,” and she dabbed at her face with a delicate lace handkerchief. “Come home and we’ll find you a toffee. Tabatha Tabby will be missing you. Come on, darling.” The words of reassurance, from Hannah and from Gwen, continued in a gentle stream as the trio made their way out. At the door, Gwen turned again to behold Isabel, and the desperation in her eyes.

  For a moment, no one stirred. Isabel stared into thin air, not daring to move her limbs so as not to lose the feel of her daughter. Her mother eyed the shop assistants, defying them to comment. Finally, the boy who had been unraveling the linen picked up the bolt and started to re-roll it.

  Larry Mouchemore took that as the cue to say to the old woman he had been serving, “And it was just the two yards you wanted? Of the lace?”

  “Ye-yes, just the two yards,” she replied, as normally as she could, though she tried to pay him with a hair comb rather than the coins she had meant to extract from her handbag.

  “Come on, dear,” said Violet softly. Then louder, “I don’t think I want the same wool this time. I’ll look at the pattern again and then decide.”

  Fanny Darnley, gossiping to a woman beside her on the pavement, froze as the two women came out, only her eyes daring to follow them down the street.

  Knuckey walks along the isthmus of Point Partageuse, listening to the waves launch themselves at the shore on both sides. He comes here to clear his head, in the evenings after tea. He’s dried the dishes his wife washed. He still misses the days when there were kids around to do it with them, and they’d make a game of it. Mostly grown up, now. He smiles at a memory of little Billy, forever three years old.

  Between his finger and thumb he is turning a shell, cool and rounded like a coin. Families. God knows what he’d be without his family. Most natural thing in the world, it was, for a woman to want a baby. His Irene would have done anything to get Billy back. Anything. When it comes to their kids, parents are all just instinct and hope. And fear. Rules and laws fly straight out the window.

  The law’s the law, but people are people. He thinks back to the day that started the whole sorry business: the Anzac Day when he was up in Perth for his aunt’s funeral. He could have gone after the lot of them, the mob, Garstone included. All the men who used Frank Roennfeldt to take the pain away, just for a moment. But that would have made things worse. You can’t confront a whole town with its shame. Sometimes, forgetting is the only way back to normality.

  His thoughts returned to his prisoner. That Tom Sherbourne was a puzzle. Closed as a Queensland nut. No way of knowing what was inside the smooth, hard shell, and no weak spot to put pressure on. Bloody Spragg was desperate for a go at him. He’d stalled him as long as he could, but he’d have to let him come and question Sherbourne soon. Down in Albany, or in Perth, who knew what they’d make of him. Sherbourne was his own worst enemy, the way he was carrying on.

  At least he’d managed to keep Spragg away from Isabel. “You know we can’t compel a wife to talk, so stay away from her. If you put pressure on her, she could clam up for good. Is that what you want?” he’d asked the sergeant. “You leave her to me.”

  Christ, all this was too much. A quiet life in a quiet town, that’s what he’d signed up for. And now he was supposed to make sense of all this. A bastard of a case, this was. A real bastard. His job was to be fair, and thorough. And to hand it over to Albany when the time came. He threw the shell into the water. Didn’t even make a splash, drowned by the roar of the waves.

  Sergeant Spragg, still sweating from the long journey from Albany, flicked a piece of fluff from his sleeve. Slowly, he turned back to the papers in front of him. “Thomas Edward Sherbourne. Date of birth, 28 September 1893.”

  Tom offered no response to the statement. The cicadas clicked shrilly from the forest, as though they were the sound of the heat itself.

  “Quite the war hero, too. Military Cross and Bar. I’ve read your citations: captured a German machine-gun nest single-handed. Carried four of your men to safety under sniper fire. And the rest.” Spragg let a moment pass. “You must have killed a lot of people in your time.”

  Tom remained silent.

  “I said”—Spragg leaned toward him over the table—“you must have killed a lot of people in your time.”

  Tom’s breathing remained steady. He looked straight ahead, his face expressionless.

  Spragg thumped the table. “When I ask you a question you’ll bloody well answer it, understand me?”

  “When you ask me a question, I will,” said Tom quietly.

  “Why did you kill Frank Roennfeldt? That’s a question.”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  “Was it because he was German? Still had the accent, by all accounts.”

  “He didn’t have an accent when I came across him. He was dead.”

  “You’d killed plenty of his sort before. One more would have made no difference, would it?”

  Tom let out a long breath, and folded his arms.

  “That’s a question too, Sherbourne.”

  “What’s all this about? I’ve told you I’m responsible for keeping Lucy. I’ve told you the man was dead when the boat washed up. I buried him, and that’s my responsibility too. What more do you want?”

  “Oh, he’s so brave, so honest, copping it sweet like that, prepared to go to jail,” Spragg mimicked in a singsong. “Well it doesn’t wash with me, mate, you understand? It’s a bit too much like you’re trying to get away with murder.”

  Tom’s stillness riled him even more, and he went on, “I’ve seen your type before. And I’ve had enough of bloody war heroes. Came back here and expected to be worshipped for the rest of your lives. Looking down on anyone who didn’t have a uniform. Well the war’s long over. God knows we saw plenty of you get back and go right off the rails. The way you survived over there isn’t the way to survive in a civilized country and you won’t get away with it.”

  “This has got bugger all to do with the war.”

  “Someone’s got to take a stand for common decency, and I’m the one who’s going to do it here.”

  “And what about common sense, Sergeant? For Christ’s sake, think about it! I could have denied everything. I could have said that Frank Roennfeldt wasn’t even in the boat, and you’d have been none the wiser. I told the truth because I wanted his wife to know what had happened, and because he deserved a decent burial.”

  “Or maybe you told half the truth because you wanted to ease your conscience and get let off with a slap on the wrist.”

  “I’m asking you what makes sense.”

  The sergeant eyed him coldly. “Seven men, it says you killed in your little machine-gun escapade. That looks to me like the work of a violent man. Of a ruthless killer. Your heroics might just be the death of you,” he said, gathering up his notes. “It’s hard to be a hero when you’re swinging from a rope.” H
e closed the file and called to Harry Garstone to take the prisoner back to the cells.

  CHAPTER 31

  Since the incident at Mouchemore’s, Hannah hardly sets foot outside the house, and Grace has regressed, becoming more withdrawn, despite her mother’s best efforts.

  “I want to go home. I want my mamma,” the girl whimpers.

  “I am your mummy, Grace, darling. I know it must be confusing for you.” She puts a finger under the little girl’s chin. “I’ve loved you since the day you were born. I waited so long for you to come home. One day you’ll understand, I promise.”

  “I want my dadda!” the child rejoins, smacking the finger away.

  “Daddy can’t be with us. But he loved you very much. So very much.” And she pictures Frank, his baby in his arms. The child looks at Hannah with bewilderment, sometimes anger, and eventually resignation.

  Walking home from a visit to her dressmaker the following week, Gwen ran over and over the situation. She worried what would become of her niece: it was a sin for a child to suffer that much, surely. She couldn’t stand idly by any longer.

  As she passed the edge of the park where it fringed into bush, her eye was drawn to a woman sitting on a bench, staring into the distance. She noticed first the pretty shade of her green dress. Then she realized it was Isabel Sherbourne. She hurried past, but there was no risk of Isabel seeing her: she was in a trance. The following day, and the next, Gwen saw her in the same place, in the same dazed state.

  Who could say if the idea had already come to her before the to-do over Grace tearing all the pages out of her storybook? Hannah had scolded her, then stood in tears as she tried to gather up the pages of the first book Frank had ever bought for his daughter—Grimms’ fairy tales in German, elaborately illustrated with watercolor plates. “What have you done to Daddy’s book? Oh, darling, how could you?” The girl responded by scrambling under her bed and curling into a ball, out of reach.

  “There’s so little left that’s Frank…” Hannah sobbed again as she looked at the ruined pages in her hands.

  “I know, Hanny. I know. But Grace doesn’t. She didn’t do it on purpose.” She put a hand on her shoulder. “Tell you what, you go and have a lie-down while I take her out.”

  “She needs to get used to being in her own home.”

  “We’ll just go to Dad’s. He’ll love it, and the fresh air will do her good.”

  “Really, no. I don’t want—”

  “Come on, Hanny. You really could do with a rest.”

  Hannah sighed. “All right. But just straight there and back.”

  As they started down the street, Gwen handed her niece a toffee. “You’d like a lolly, wouldn’t you, Lucy?”

  “Yes,” the child replied, then cocked her head to one side as she noticed the name.

  “Now you be a good girl, and we’ll go and visit Granddad.”

  The girl’s eyes flickered at the mention of the man with the big horses and big trees. She wandered along, sucking the toffee. She did not smile, but neither did she scream or howl, Gwen noted.

  Strictly speaking, there was no need to pass the park. They could have got to Septimus’s house more quickly by taking the route by the cemetery and the Methodist chapel.

  “Are you tired, Lucy? Why don’t we have a bit of a breather? It’s a long way to Granddad’s, and you’re only a little mite…” The girl merely continued to open and close her thumb and fingers like pincers, experimenting with the stickiness of the toffee residue. Out of the corner of her eye, Gwen saw Isabel on the bench. “You run ahead now, that’s a good girl. You run to the bench and I’ll follow.” The child did not run, but ambled, dragging her rag doll along the ground. Gwen kept her distance and watched.

  Isabel blinked. “Lucy? Sweetheart!” she exclaimed, and gathered her into her arms before it occurred to her to see how she’d got there.

  “Mamma!” cried the child, gripping her tightly.

  Isabel turned and at a distance saw Gwen, who gave a nod, as if to say “Go on.”

  Whatever the woman was doing or why, Isabel did not care. She wept as she hugged the girl and then held her at arm’s length to see her better. Somehow, despite everything, perhaps Lucy could still be hers. A warmth spread through her at the idea.

  “Oh, you’ve got thin, little one! You’re skin and bone. You must be a good girl and eat. For Mamma.” Gradually she took in the other changes to her daughter: hair parted on the other side; a dress made of fine muslin sprinkled with daisies; new shoes with butterflies on the buckles.

  Relief swept over Gwen to see her niece’s response. She was watching a completely different child, suddenly safe with the mother she loved. She left them together for as long as she dared, before approaching. “I’d better take her now. I wasn’t sure you’d be here.”

  “But—I don’t understand…”

  “It’s all so dreadful. So hard on everyone.” She shook her head and sighed. “My sister’s a good woman, really she is. She’s been through so much.” She nodded in the child’s direction. “I’ll try to bring her again. I can’t promise. Be patient. That’s all I’m saying. Be patient and perhaps…” She left the sentence hanging. “But please, don’t tell anyone. Hannah wouldn’t understand. She’d never forgive me… Come on now, Lucy,” she said, and held her arms out to the girl.

  The child clung to Isabel. “No, Mamma! Don’t go!”

  “Come on, sweet thing. Be good for Mamma, won’t you? You need to go with this lady now, but I’ll see you again soon, I promise.”

  Still the child clung. “If you’re good now, we can come again.” Gwen smiled, pulling her carefully away.

  Some remnant of the rational stopped Isabel from acting on the impulse to snatch the child away. No. If she could be patient, the woman had promised to bring her again. Who knew what else might change with time?

  It took Gwen a long while to calm her niece. She cuddled her, and carried her, taking every opportunity to distract her with riddles and snatches of nursery rhymes. She wasn’t sure yet how she would make her plan work, but she simply couldn’t bear to see the poor child kept from her mother any longer. Hannah had always had a stubborn streak, and Gwen feared it was blinding her now. She wondered how likely it was that she could keep the meeting from Hannah. Even if she couldn’t, it was worth trying. When Grace had finally quietened down, Gwen asked, “Do you know what a secret is, sweetheart?”

  “Yes,” she mumbled.

  “Good. So we’re going to play a game about secrets, OK?”

  The little girl looked up at her, waiting to understand.

  “You love Mamma Isabel, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I know you want to see her again. But Hannah might be a bit cross, because she’s very sad, so we mustn’t tell her, or Granddad, all right?”

  The child’s face tightened.

  “We have to keep this a special secret, and if anyone asks what we did today, you just say we went to Granddad’s. You mustn’t tell about seeing your mamma. Understand, love?”

  The girl kept her lips pursed as she nodded gravely, the confusion showing in her eyes.

  “She’s an intelligent child. She knows Isabel Sherbourne isn’t dead—we saw her at Mouchemore’s.” Hannah sat again in Dr. Sumpton’s consulting room, this time without her daughter.

  “I’m telling you, as a professional, that the only cure for your daughter is time, and keeping her away from Mrs. Sherbourne.”

  “I just wondered—well, I thought if I could get her to talk to me—about her other life. Out on the island. Would it help?”

  He took a puff of his pipe. “Think of it like this—if I’d just taken your appendix out, the last thing to be doing would be to open up the wound every five minutes and prod about again to see if it had healed. I know it’s hard, but it’s a case of least said, soonest mended. She’ll get over it.”

  But she showed no sign of getting over it, as far as Hannah could see. The child became obsessed wi
th putting her toys in order and making her bed neat. She smacked the kitten for knocking over the dolls’ house, and kept her mouth snapped shut like a miser’s purse, not wanting to let slip any sign of affection to this imposter mother.

  Still, Hannah persevered. She told her stories: about forests and the men who worked in them; about school in Perth and the things she’d done there; about Frank, and his life in Kalgoorlie. She would sing her little songs in German, even though the child paid no particular attention. She made clothes for her dolls and puddings for her dinner. The little girl responded by drawing pictures. Always the same pictures. Mamma and Dadda and Lulu at the lighthouse, its beam shining right to the edge of the page, driving away the darkness all around.

  From the kitchen, Hannah could see Grace sitting on the lounge room floor, talking to her clothes pegs. These days she was more anxious than ever, except when she was around Septimus, so her mother was glad to see her playing quietly. She came a little closer to the door, to listen.

  “Lucy, eat a toffee,” said a peg.

  “Yum,” said another peg, as it gobbled the thin air the child delivered with her fingertips.

  “I’ve got a special secret,” said the first peg. “Come with Auntie Gwen. When Hannah is asleep.”

  Hannah watched intently, a cold sickness spreading through her.

  From the pocket of her pinafore, Grace took a lemon and covered it with a handkerchief. “Goodnight, Hannah,” said Auntie Gwen. “Now we visiting Mamma in the park.”

  “Pwoi, pwoi.” Two other pegs pressed against one another with kisses. “My darling Lucy. Come on, sweetheart. Off we go to Janus.” And the pegs trotted along the rug for a bit.

  The whistling of the kettle startled the child, and she turned and saw Hannah in the doorway. She threw the pegs down, saying, “Bad Lucy!” and smacked her own hand.

  Hannah’s horror at the charade turned to despair at this last admonishment: this was how her daughter saw her. Not as the mother who loved her, but as a tyrant. She tried to stay calm as she considered what to do.

  Her hands shook a little as she made some cocoa and brought it in. “That was a nice game you were playing, darling,” she said, battling the tremor in her voice.

  The child sat still, neither speaking nor drinking from the beaker in her hand.

  “Do you know any secrets, Grace?”

  The girl nodded slowly.

  “I bet they’re lovely secrets.”

  Again, the little chin moved up and down, while the eyes tried to work out what rules to follow.

  “Shall we play a game?”

  The child slid her toe back and forth in an arc on the floor.

  “Let’s play a game where I guess your secret. That way it’s still a secret, because you haven’t told me. And if I guess it, you can have a lolly as a prize.” The child’s face tensed as Hannah smiled awkwardly. “I guess… that you went to visit the lady from Janus. Is that right?”

  The child began to nod, and then stopped. “We saw the man in the big house. His face was pink.”

  “I won’t be cross with you, darling. It’s nice to visit sometimes, isn’t it? Did the lady give you a nice big hug?”

  “Yes,” she said slowly, trying to work out as the word came out whether this was part of the secret or not.

  As Hannah took the washing off the line half an hour later, her stomach was still churning. How could her own sister have done such a thing? The expression on the faces of the customers at Mouchemore’s came back to her, and she had a sense that they could see something she couldn’t—everyone, Gwen included, was laughing behind her back. She left a petticoat dangling by one peg as she headed back into the house and stormed into Gwen’s room.

  “How could you?”

  “What on earth’s wrong?” asked Gwen.

  “As if you don’t know!”

  “What, Hannah?”

  “I know what you did. I know where you took Grace.”

  It was Hannah’s turn to be taken aback as tears sprang to her sister’s eyes and she said, “That poor little girl, Hannah.”

  “What?”

  “The poor thing! Yes, I took her to see Isabel Sherbourne. In the park. And I