The Lightkeeper's Wife

by Karen Viggers

  Gary comes back carrying a tray with two cups of tea and some slices of cake on a plate. He looks ludicrous tiptoeing over the grass concentrating on not spilling the tea. I don’t mind a bit of tea in my saucer.

  ‘Here.’ He passes me a cup. ‘Judy said we could have some chocolate cake. It’s delicious.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  He sits down beside me. ‘How are things?’ he asks.

  ‘Same as usual. How about you?’

  ‘Sick of work. It’s boring being in front of a computer all the time. But it’s good money.’

  ‘And you’re good at it,’ I say.

  Gary works in IT for the state government in Hobart. Judy keeps telling everyone what a good reputation he has. She says he’s indispensable. She really means that his income is indispensable. All her renovations and redecorating would be impossible without it.

  ‘Are you hooked up to Foxtel yet?’ he asks. Gary hangs out for the weekends so he can watch the sport.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I don’t watch much sport.’

  He looks bored. ‘No. You’re always off looking for birds or some goddamned thing.’ He snorts. ‘I’ve got a nutter for a brother.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Thank God you’ve got Jess. At least she’s normal. You didn’t let her crap on the lawn, did you?’

  ‘No, I picked it up.’

  ‘Dogs always want to take a dump on this lawn. Judy wants me to get one of those scare guns they use in vineyards. The ones that fire off every few minutes.’ Gary snorts again. ‘Reckon I’ll get a shotgun instead.’

  I try to smile.

  ‘When are you going to see Mum again?’ he asks.

  ‘Wednesday.’

  ‘Mind if I come?’

  ‘Sure. Why not? She’ll be pleased to see you.’

  ‘I’ll take a flex day. I’ve got plenty of time owing. What time are you leaving?’

  ‘We can take the eleven o’clock ferry. So you don’t have to rush.’

  Gary picks up a second piece of chocolate cake. ‘How’s Mum going?’ he asks.

  I shrug.

  ‘What about Jan? Has she visited Mum yet?’

  ‘Not as far as I know.’

  ‘If she had, you’d know about it. She’s on the phone all the time. Bloody Jan. Too much pride.’ He shakes his head. ‘You heard from her?’

  ‘Once or twice.’

  ‘Isn’t she chewing your ear off? She won’t leave me alone.’

  ‘She’s been ringing a bit.’

  ‘If Mum dies before Jan sees her, we won’t hear the end of it. What about Jacinta? Have you spoken to her? Last I heard she and Alex were planning some fool expedition to the lighthouse. Jan was going off her brain.’

  ‘I don’t think they’ve taken her yet. Mum hasn’t mentioned it.’

  ‘Maybe they’ll take her next weekend then. Stupid idea.’

  ‘Why?’ It seemed to me that taking Mum to visit the lighthouse might be a good thing. Perhaps I should have thought of it.

  ‘Don’t you know what went on down there?’ Gary says.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Before your time. Before you were born.’ He leans back and laughs. ‘You were probably the result of it all. The cure for the disease.’

  I don’t know what he’s talking about.

  ‘You’d better ask Jan,’ Gary says. ‘She knows the story best.’

  ‘What story?’

  ‘Of how Mum and Dad nearly blew apart. Around the time Mum broke her leg. Auntie Rose had to come and take care of us while Mum was in hospital.’

  This is all news to me. ‘Why didn’t anyone tell me?’ I ask.

  ‘Because you’re younger. And because you’re different.’ Gary stuffs down the rest of his cake and stares out over the garden while he chews and swallows. ‘Ask Jan,’ he says. ‘She’ll tell you.’

  After Gary’s, I find a long lonely beach to walk on. I stay out till dark to be away from the house. I’m afraid Emma might ring and I don’t feel up to her excuses.

  Sure enough, the light is flashing on the answering machine when I get home. I press the playback button and sit down when I hear Emma’s voice.

  ‘Tom, I’m really sorry about this morning. Nick shouldn’t have come barging in like that. Will you ring me when you get in? . . . Please?’

  I look at the phone but can’t bring myself to pick it up. Instead, I thaw lamb chops to cook for a late dinner. Then I cut up a few vegies to go alongside. Jess is satisfied with her usual bowl of kibble. I’m rummaging around in the fridge looking for broccoli when the phone rings. I let it ring a couple of times, but I have to answer it. It could be Jacinta with news about Mum. But it’s Emma. Her words tumble out in a rush.

  ‘Why did you run out?’ she asks, then blusters in again before I can reply. ‘Actually, I don’t blame you. Nick can be very intimidating. He likes to think he owns me. We’ve had a bit to do with each other since I got back—you know what it’s like.’

  There it is. The admission.

  ‘I’d just like you to know that he doesn’t own me,’ she says, talking through my silence. ‘I can do what I like.’

  I don’t know what to say.

  ‘Pick me up tomorrow after work,’ she says. ‘I’ll wait for you out the front of the antdiv. Five o’clock.’

  ‘All right,’ I say. Stupidly.

  ‘Good. I’ll be waiting for you.’

  Later, when I’ve retired to bed, I hear a noise on the porch. It’s probably a possum looking for a morsel of apple. But Jess tenses and leaps up from her rug, so I slip into the lounge room to check it out. A torchlight is flashing through the window and when I open the door Laura is there, ghostly in the dim light. Her face is a mask of white, a dark streak on one cheek.

  ‘Sorry to wake you.’ Her voice is a whisper, barely audible above the wind in the trees.

  ‘I was awake.’

  ‘Mouse has cut himself and I need to get him to hospital. But I can’t drive while he’s in such a state.’ She rubs a hand across her cheek and looks down at her fingers, wiping them absently on her jumper. I realise the dark smudge is blood.

  ‘What about an ambulance?’

  ‘It’ll take twenty minutes to get here. And I don’t want anyone manhandling him in the house. I want him to be able to come back home without fear.’

  For a moment I hesitate, wavering indecisively. But who else can help her? ‘All right. I’ll get my keys.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  When I return she’s already running down the hill and across the road, legs flashing beneath the street light. I walk quickly to the car and Jess slips through the door and onto the floor on the passenger side before I can stop her. There’s no time to take her back. I roll the car down the driveway.

  Shouting and banging noises are coming from inside Laura’s house. I wait in the car for a few minutes, unsure. Then I go to the front door, which is open. Laura is in the hallway holding onto the wrists of a large dark-haired man. He’s clearly resisting her and his movements are strong and wild. He’s very upset.

  ‘Mouse,’ she says, not in the wispy fragile voice I’ve heard before, but loudly. ‘Mouse. You stop that right now. Put your hands down and listen to me.’

  The man sees me in the doorway and drops to the floor like a frightened animal. He cowers against the wall, his hands covering his face. There’s blood running down his forearm.

  ‘Please go back to the car.’ Laura’s face is tight. ‘He’s not used to strangers.’

  I go back into the cold night and open the back door on one side of the car. Then I turn on the headlights and the interior light. If this man is afraid, he might not want to climb into a darkened car. It might be less intimidating if he can see where Laura wants him to go.

  Five minutes pass and exhaustion threatens to swamp me. I couldn’t sleep in my own bed, but here in the cramped discomfort of the car, sleep rises unbidden and tries to claim me. Finally, I see the shadows of Laura and Mouse ou
tside the house. I can hear Laura coaxing him. She tells him he’ll be all right if he gets in the car. That he’ll be safe. She’s taking him to get his arm fixed. To stop the blood.

  Then they’re both sitting in the back seat. Laura pulls the door shut and locks it. I drive as smoothly as possible along the road and around the bends and twists of the cove towards the highway. In the rear-view mirror, I can see Laura’s brother crouched beside the door moaning while she strokes his head, humming to soothe him. Streetlights intermittently flash on her face, but her features are blank and featureless. I see no fear in her. No self-pity.

  By the time we reach Hobart, she has her brother’s head hugged to her chest and her eyes are closed. Small whimpers come from his lips. There’s blood on both their faces. She keeps his eyes covered as we stop at traffic lights. When we pull up outside the emergency department, Laura speaks quietly from the back. ‘Could you please go in and get some help? I don’t think I can do this bit alone.’

  Lights illuminate the hospital entrance into a blinding white. The duty nurse at reception listens to me unmoving and then lifts a telephone. Within minutes four large men have come out to talk to me, their faces serious and attentive. They follow me to the car. There are cries and a scuffle in the back seat. Laura yells out, her voice edged with pain, and there’s an awful growling and howling. I stand back while the men wrestle Laura’s brother out of the car and restrain him. They bundle him quickly through the no-public-access doors, Laura close behind. Then I’m alone outside, blinking in the bright lights.

  I linger on the pavement, waves of shock pulsing through me. Jess crawls from the car like a liquid shadow and shivers at my feet. I had forgotten she was there, huddling on the floor. She must have been terrified—first Mouse and his animal-like cries, then the four men leaping into the car, the shouting, the struggle. I bend and stroke her quivering head, guilt now mingling with my horror. I should have left her at home. But how could I have known?

  The hollow siren of an approaching ambulance startles me. I scoop Jess up and deposit her on the front seat, then start the car. We’ll go home now, slowly, and sit quietly in the dark.

  25

  I always go for a walk early in the morning; it’s fresh and cool and quiet. This morning I particularly want to do normal things for Jess after the horror of that trip to the hospital last night. Like me, Jess is a creature of routine, and she takes comfort from these rituals.

  We never usually meet anyone on our dawn jaunts, so it’s a surprise to both of us when we see Laura wandering along the bush track ahead. She floats through the scrub, her gaze focused somewhere out over the channel. I slow down, hoping to avoid her, but she hears Jess rustling in the grass and she turns.

  ‘Oh, hello.’ She doesn’t smile and her face is drawn. ‘Sorry. I wasn’t expecting to see anyone.’ She waits for me to join her. ‘You walk often?’ she asks.

  ‘Most days.’

  She nods and I follow her onto the beach.

  ‘Is Mouse okay?’ I ask.

  ‘He’ll be all right. It was pretty horrible, though.’ She stops walking and sighs. ‘I didn’t sleep much.’

  I hesitate, unsure whether to push on with my walk or whether I should wait for her. Jess trots along the beach and up into the grass along the shore, sniffing animal trails.

  ‘I didn’t stay at the hospital,’ she says, staring across the water. ‘There wasn’t much point. Once they sedated him, he slept. And they said they wouldn’t let him wake properly for a while. So I caught a taxi home.’ She turned to look at me. ‘I don’t like seeing him like that.’

  ‘No.’ I thrust my hands in my pockets.

  ‘He has paranoid schizophrenia,’ she says. ‘I thought he was taking his medication, but apparently not. After I got home last night I found a pile of pills stashed in one of my pot plants.’

  ‘Will he be home soon?’

  ‘Not for a couple of weeks. They have to wean him off sedation and then stabilise him on medication before he can come home.’ She looks up at me and I notice dark patches under her eyes. ‘Thank you for what you did for us,’ she says.

  ‘That’s all right.’

  She glances at Jess snuffling up on the bank and then she gazes along the beach. ‘Do you mind if I walk with you?’ she asks.

  I’d rather be alone, but what can I say? I shrug. ‘Okay.’

  We wander along the sand, not exactly walking together, but not completely apart. Laura strolls along, distracted. At the end of the beach, she follows me up along the cliff trail. I feel a bit awkward, but I try to pretend she isn’t there. Unperturbed by the addition to our party, Jess trots quietly ahead.

  The bush along the cliff is drier and we see thornbills and scrub wrens. A butcherbird chimes from high in a straggly eucalypt. I keep hoping Laura will turn back, but she comes all the way to the next beach and we walk back together along the road. At my driveway, I bid her farewell, but she stops and looks at me.

  ‘That was nice,’ she says. ‘Can we do it again? Maybe tomorrow?’

  ‘I’m not sure what I’m doing tomorrow,’ I say. What if Emma’s here? Laura could go walking by herself. She doesn’t need to come with me.

  ‘I’ll look out for you if I’m up,’ she says. ‘Walking’s good for me. I feel a bit better already.’ She stares down at her house where it snuggles behind a string of tree ferns. ‘It’s so quiet without Mouse,’ she says. ‘I suppose I should enjoy the break.’ She smiles at me sadly and I feel the weight of her loneliness.

  ‘I’d better go,’ I say. ‘I have to get ready for work.’

  ‘Thanks again for last night,’ she calls after me.

  When I leave the garage that afternoon, the car is in a rush to get to the antdiv. I try to slow it down, but it takes corners recklessly and drives too fast along the highway towards Kingston, swinging into the carpark.

  As arranged, Emma is waiting on the pavement in front of the building. But there’s a complication: Nick is standing there too. He’s standing too close to her, staking his claim. What did she say about him not owning her? I stop the car at the far end of the carpark, about fifty metres away, and sit, watching them converse. Neither of them has seen me yet and I’m unsure whether to stay or go.

  Nick is leaning in towards Emma as they talk, and even from here, I can see him gazing at her intently. They look accustomed to being in each other’s space. Their body language makes my suspicions harder to deny. I want to think of Emma as my girlfriend, but really, I have no idea what goes on during the day when she’s at work. For all I know, she could go home with Nick at lunchtime. There are many hours in a day during which Emma could explore options other than me. I’ve been a fool to imagine that Emma could be mine. A few dinners and a night away together and I’m gone.

  Finally, I move the car forward. I might be outshone by Nick’s predatory masculinity, but I won’t sit by watching like this. Emma asked me to pick her up. And if she asked me, then she didn’t ask him.

  Nick notices the Subaru before Emma does, and scowls when he sees me behind the wheel. He murmurs something in her ear. She turns and looks at me, her face flushing pink and her body tensing. The intimacy between them is erased as she pulls away, holding him off with her hands. ‘I’m going with Tom,’ I hear her say.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me.’

  Scooping up her backpack, she bounds towards the car, pulls the door open and flings herself inside, closing the door with a thud. Nick bangs the top of the car with the flat of his hand. He bends down to stare in the side window at Emma, his eyes possessive.

  ‘See you for morning coffee,’ he says. ‘The usual. In the café. Nine o’clock.’ He mouths something else, but Emma is already looking away from him. She’s looking at me, it makes my skin tingle.

  ‘Rescued,’ she says with a laugh. ‘He’s persistent, isn’t he?’

  As we drive home, unspoken questions are thick between us. I want Emma to negate Nick. But she keeps her thoughts hu
gged close and prattles on instead about tidying her office and a trip she’s planning up north to visit her family. She’d like to see them again before she goes back south, and now’s the time to do it, before the frenetic pre-expedition rush begins. Her sister has two kids and she’s only seen them once or twice. Perhaps she should take a gift for them, but she doesn’t know what to buy. She doesn’t know much about kids, she says. In fact, she knows more about penguins.

  I tell her we have something in common—I know more about birds than about people too. The look she casts my way is tinged with annoyance. She was only joking, she says. Of course she knows more about people than penguins. She was just speaking figuratively.

  I don’t know what to say after that. All I can think of is Nick, and yet I can’t bring myself to say his name aloud. I can’t make myself ask her what’s going on between them. I’m afraid she’ll admit everything and then ask me to turn around and take her back to the antdiv. I couldn’t bear it. Last night after the hospital, I lay awake in bed thinking of her. Remembering the feel of her skin against mine. Trying to recall the smell of her hair and the curve of her smile. Trying to convince myself that Nick doesn’t exist for her.

  At home, I light the fire and boil the kettle.

  Emma doesn’t give me a chance to pour tea. She descends on me with a look of fierce determination. I wanted to allow room for discussion, but with her hands and eyes on me, it’s impossible to resist, and I submit willingly. This is what I’ve been wanting, after all—Emma’s lips on mine, her body against me, tight with need, her hands gripping me close.

  It’s desperate love-making. All my unasked questions slip away, knocked aside like vases of flowers spilled in our wake. We grasp each other in the kitchen, tumble into the lounge room then make our way slowly to the bedroom, peeling off clothes, sliding shivery beneath the doona, feeding off the combined warmth of our bodies.