The Light Between Oceans: A Novel

by M. L. Stedman

  “Someone who knew Grace was alive, of course!” said Hannah. She did not see the look that flashed between her father and sister.

  “Hannah, dear, it’s been a very long time,” said Septimus.

  “I know that!”

  “He’s just saying,” Gwen said, “well, that it’s odd not to have heard something sooner, and then to get this out of the blue.”

  “But it’s something!” said Hannah.

  “Oh, Hanny,” said Gwen, shaking her head.

  Later that day, Sergeant Knuckey, the senior policeman in Point Partageuse, sat awkwardly on a squat grandmother-chair, balancing a dainty teacup on his broad knee as he tried to take notes.

  “And you didn’t see anyone unusual around the house, Miss Potts?” he asked Gwen.

  “No one.” She put the milk jug back on the occasional table. “No one comes to call, usually,” she said.

  He jotted something down.

  “Well?”

  Knuckey realized Septimus was addressing a question to him. He examined the letter again. Neat handwriting. Plain paper. Not posted. From a local? Lord knew there were still people about the place who’d take comfort in watching a Hun-lover suffer. “Not much to go on, I’m afraid.” He listened patiently to Hannah’s protests that surely it must contain clues. He noticed that the father and sister looked a bit awkward, like when a mad aunt starts up about Jesus at the dinner table.

  As Septimus showed him to the door, the sergeant replaced his hat and said quietly, “A cruel piece of mischief-making, looks like. I reckon it’s about time to bury the hatchet against Fritz. All a filthy business, but there’s no need for pranks like this. I’d keep it under your hat, the note. Don’t want to encourage copycats.” He shook hands with Septimus and made his way up the long, gum-lined drive.

  Back in his study, Septimus put a hand on Hannah’s shoulder. “Come on, girlie, chin up. Mustn’t let this get the better of you.”

  “But I don’t understand, Dad. She must be alive! Why would someone bother to write a note lying about something like that, completely out of the blue?”

  “I tell you what, sweetheart, what’s say I double the reward? I’ll make it two thousand guineas. If anyone really knows anything, we’ll soon find out.” As Septimus poured his daughter another cup of tea, he was, for once, not pleased that he was unlikely to be parted with his money.

  Although the figure of Septimus Potts loomed large in business round Partageuse way, there weren’t many who could say they knew him well. He was fiercely protective of his family, but his chief opponent was, and always had been, Fate. Septimus was five years old when, in 1869, he disembarked at Fremantle from the Queen of Cairo. Around his neck he wore the little wooden sign his mother had placed there as she kissed him a distraught farewell on the dock in London. It read: “I am a good Christian boy. Please take care of me.”

  Septimus was the seventh and last child of a Bermondsey ironmonger who waited only three days after the baby’s birth before departing this world under the hooves of a runaway carthorse. His mother had done her best to keep the family together, but after a few years, as consumption burrowed away at her, she knew she had to secure her children’s future. She dispatched as many of them as she could to relatives around and about London, where they could be free help to the people who took them in. But her lastborn was too young to be anything but a drain on scarce resources, and one of his mother’s last acts was to secure passage to Western Australia for him, alone.

  As he put it decades later, that sort of experience either gives you a taste for death, or a thirst for life, and he reckoned death would come calling soon enough anyway. So when he was gathered up by a round, sunburned woman from the Seafarer’s Mission, and sent to a “good home” in the South West, he went without complaint or question: who would have listened to either? He started a new life in Kojonup, a town well east of Partageuse, with Walt and Sarah Flindell, a couple who eked out a living as sandalwood pullers. They were a good sort of people, but shrewd enough to know that being so light, sandalwood could be loaded and maneuvered even by a child, so they agreed to take the little boy in. As for Septimus, after his time on the ship, having a floor that stayed still and people who didn’t begrudge you your daily bread was paradise.

  So Septimus got to know this new country to which he had been shipped like a parcel without an address, and grew to love Walt and Sarah and their practical ways. The little hut on their patch of cleared land had neither glass in the windows nor running water, but, in the early days, somehow there always seemed to be enough of what was needed.

  When eventually the precious sandalwood, sometimes worth more than gold, was virtually wiped out by over-harvesting, Walt and Septimus turned instead to work on the new timber mills that were opening up around Partageuse. The building of new lighthouses along the coast meant that shipping cargo along that route changed from a sheer gamble to an acceptable commercial risk, and new railways and jetties allowed the forests to be chopped up and shipped out to anywhere in the world, right from their doorstep.

  Septimus worked like a devil and said his prayers, and cadged reading and writing lessons from the Pastor’s wife on Saturdays. He never spent a halfpenny he didn’t have to, and never missed an opportunity to make one. The thing about Septimus was, he seemed to see opportunities where other people couldn’t. Though he grew to no more than five foot seven in his boots, he carried himself like a much bigger man, and always dressed as respectably as funds allowed. At times this meant he looked almost dapper, and at the very least it meant clean clothes for church on Sunday, even if he’d had to wash them at midnight to get the sawdust out of them after an all-day shift.

  All of this stood him in good stead when, in 1892, a newly made baronet from Birmingham was passing through the colony in search of somewhere exotic to invest a little capital. Septimus seized the chance to make a start in business, and convinced the baronet to put up the money for a small land deal. Septimus smartly trebled the investment, and by careful risk and shrewd re-investment of his cut, soon set himself up in business in his own right. By the time the colony joined the newly formed nation of Australia in 1901, he was one of the richest timber men for miles around.

  Times had been prosperous. Septimus had married Ellen, a debutante from Perth. Hannah and Gwen were born, and their home, Bermondsey, became a watchword for style and success in the South West. Then, at one of her famous picnics in the bush, served on a dazzle of linen and silver, his cherished wife was bitten just above the ankle of her pale kid boot by a dugite, and died within the hour.

  Life, thought Septimus, when his daughters had returned to the cottage the day the mysterious letter arrived: you could never trust the bastard. What it gives with one hand, it takes away with the other. Finally reconciled with Hannah when her baby was born, then the husband and child disa-bloody-ppear into nowhere, leaving his daughter a wreck. Now some troublemaker was stirring things up again. Well, you just had to count your blessings and be thankful things weren’t worse.

  Sergeant Knuckey sat at his desk, tapping his pencil on his blotter, watching the tiny lead trails. Poor bloody woman. Who could blame her for wanting the baby to be alive? His Irene still cried sometimes about young Billy, and it had been twenty years since he’d drowned as a tot. They’d had five more kids since then, but it was never far away, the sadness.

  Really, though, there wasn’t a snowflake’s chance in hell that the baby was still alive. All the same, he took a fresh sheet of paper and started on a report of the incident. The Roennfeldt woman deserved the formalities, at least.

  CHAPTER 17

  Your husband is at peace in God’s hands.” Hannah Roennfeldt runs over the phrase again and again on the day of the mysterious letter. Grace is alive, but Frank is dead. She wants to be able to believe the one and not the other. Frank. Franz. She recalls the gentle man whose life was turned upside down so many times along the curious path which somehow led him to her.

  The first r
everse saw him ripped from his life of privilege in Vienna as a boy of sixteen, as his father’s gambling debts drove them all the way to relatives in Kalgoorlie, a place so remote from Austria that even the most ardent creditor would give up the chase. From luxury to austerity, the son taking on the trade of baker in the shop run by his uncle and aunt, who since their arrival years before had changed from Fritz and Mitzie into Clive and Millie. It was important to blend in, they said. His mother understood this, but his father, with the pride and stubbornness that had triggered his financial ruin, resisted adaptation, and within the year had thrown himself under a train bound for Perth, leaving Frank as head of the household.

  Months later, war brought internment as an enemy alien—first on Rottnest Island, then over East—for this boy who was now not simply uprooted and bereaved, but despised, for things done far away and beyond his control.

  And never once had he complained, thought Hannah. Frank’s ready, open smile was undiminished by the time she met him in Partageuse in 1922, when he came to work in the bakery.

  She remembered the first time she had seen him, on the main street. The spring morning was sunny but October still brought a nip with it. He had smiled at her, and proffered a shawl she recognized as her own.

  “You left it in the bookshop, just now,” he said.

  “Thank you. That’s very kind.”

  “It is a beautiful shawl, with such embroidery. My mother used to have one like it. Chinese silk is very costly: it would be a pity to lose it.” He gave a respectful nod, and turned to go.

  “I haven’t seen you here before,” said Hannah. Nor had she heard his charming accent.

  “I have just started at the baker’s. I am Frank Roennfeldt. Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”

  “Well, welcome to Partageuse, Mr. Roennfeldt. I hope you’ll like it here. I’m Hannah Potts.” She rearranged her parcels, trying to pull the shawl over her shoulders.

  “Please, allow me,” he had said, draping it around her in one fluid movement. “I wish you an excellent day.” Again, he flashed an open smile. The sun caught the blue of his eyes and made his fair hair shine.

  As she crossed the street to her waiting sulky, she noticed a woman nearby give her a piercing look and spit on the pavement. Hannah was shocked, but said nothing.

  A few weeks later, she visited Maisie McPhee’s little bookshop once again. As she entered, she saw Frank standing at the counter, under attack from a matron who was waving her stick to make her point. “The very idea, Maisie McPhee!” the woman was declaring. “The very notion that you could sell books that support the Boche. I lost a son and a grandson to those animals, and I don’t expect to see you, sending them money like a Red Cross parcel.”

  As Maisie stood speechless, Frank said, “I am sorry if I caused any offense, ma’am. It is not Miss McPhee’s fault.” He smiled and held the open book toward her. “You see? It is only poetry.”

  “Only poetry, my foot!” the woman snapped, thumping her stick on the ground. “Not a decent word ever came out of their mouths! I’d heard we had a Hun in town, but I didn’t think you’d be bold enough to rub it in our faces like this! And as for you, Maisie!” She faced the counter. “Your father must be turning in his blessed grave.”

  “Please, I am very sorry,” said Frank. “Miss McPhee, please keep the book. I did not mean to offend anyone.” He put a ten-shilling note on the counter and walked out, brushing past Hannah without noticing her. The woman stormed out after him, clacking her way down the street in the opposite direction.

  Maisie and Hannah looked at one another for a moment, before the shopkeeper assembled a bright smile and said, “Got your list there, Miss Potts?”

  As Maisie ran her eye down the page, Hannah’s attention wandered to the abandoned book. She was curious how the dainty volume bound in forest-green leather could have caused such offense. Opening it, the Gothic print on the flyleaf caught her eye: “Das Stunden Buch—Rainer Maria Rilke.” She had learned German at school along with her French, and had heard of Rilke.

  “And,” she said, taking out two pound notes, “do you mind if I take this book too?” When Maisie looked at her in surprise, Hannah said, “It’s about time we all put the past behind us, don’t you think?”

  The shopkeeper wrapped it in brown paper and tied it with string. “Well, to be honest, it saves me trying to send it back to Germany. No one else’ll buy it.”

  At the baker’s a few moments later, Hannah put the little parcel on the counter. “I wonder if you could give this to Mr. Roennfeldt please. He left it behind at the bookshop.”

  “He’s out the back. I’ll give him a cooee.”

  “Oh, there’s no need. Thanks very much,” she said, and left the shop before he had a chance to say anything else.

  A few days later, Frank called on her to thank her in person for her kindness, and her life began a new path, which at first seemed like the most fortunate she could have dreamed of.

  Septimus Potts’s delight at the inkling that his daughter had found a local man to step out with turned to dismay when he learned he was the baker. But he remembered his own humble beginnings, and was determined not to hold the man’s trade against him. When, however, he found out he was German, or practically German, his dismay became disgust. The spats with Hannah that had started soon after the courtship began made each of them, stubborn in heart and head, more entrenched in their position.

  Within two months, things had come to a head. Septimus Potts paced the drawing room, trying to take in the news. “Are you out of your mind, girl?”

  “It’s what I want, Dad.”

  “Marrying a Hun!” He glanced at Ellen’s photo in its ornate silver frame on the mantelpiece. “Your mother would never forgive me, for a start! I promised her I’d bring you up properly…”

  “And you have, Dad, you have.”

  “Well something went up the spout if you’re talking about hitching up with a German bloody baker.”

  “He’s Austrian.”

  “What difference does that make? Do I have to take you down to the Repat Home, and show you the boys still gibbering like idiots because of the gas? Me of all people—I paid for the bloody hospital!”

  “You know full well Frank wasn’t even in the war—he was interned. He’s never hurt a soul.”

  “Hannah, show some sense. You’re a decent-looking girl. There’s plenty of fellows hereabouts—hell, in Perth or Sydney or even Melbourne—would be honored to have you as a wife.”

  “Honored to have your money, you mean.”

  “So we’re back on that now, are we? You’re too good for my money, are you, my lass?”

  “It’s not that, Dad…”

  “I worked like a dog to get where I am. I’m not ashamed of what I am or where I came from. But you—you’ve got a chance of something better.”

  “I just want a chance to live my own life.”

  “Look, if you want to do charity work you can go and live out with the natives on the mission. Or work in the orphanage. You don’t have to bloody marry it, your charity career.”

  His daughter’s face was red, her heart racing at this last slight—not only at the outrage of it, but somewhere beneath that, at the unformed fear that it might be true. What if she had only said yes to Frank to spite the suitors who chased her money? Or if she was just wanting to make up to him for all he had suffered? Then she thought of how his smile made her feel, and that way he lifted his chin to consider things she asked him, and felt reassured.

  “He’s a decent man, Dad. Give him a chance.”

  “Hannah.” Septimus put a hand on her shoulder. “You know you mean the world to me.” He stroked her head. “You wouldn’t let your mother brush your hair, as a little ’un, did you know that? You’d say, ‘Pa! I want Pa to do it!’ And I would. You’d sit on my knee by the fire in the evening, and I’d brush your hair while the crumpets toasted on the flames. We’d make sure Mum didn’t see where the butter had dripped on your dress. An
d your hair would shine like a Persian princess.

  “Just wait. Just a while,” her father pleaded.

  If all he needed was time to get used to the idea, time to feel differently about it… Hannah was about to concede, when he continued, “You’ll see things my way, see you’re making a bad mistake”—he took one of the deep, puffed-out breaths she associated with his business decisions—“and you’ll thank your lucky stars I talked you out of it.”

  She pulled away. “I won’t be partronized. You can’t stop me from marrying Frank.”

  “Can’t save you from it, you mean.”

  “I’m old enough to marry without your consent and I will if I want.”

  “You may not give a damn what this will mean for me, but have a care for your sister. You know how folks round here will take this.”

  “Folks round here are xenophobic hypocrites!”

  “Oh, that university education was worth every penny. So now you can put your father down with your fancy words.” He looked her straight in the eye. “I never thought I’d hear myself say this, my girl, but if you marry that man it will be without my blessing. And without my money.”

  With the composure that had first drawn Septimus to her mother, Hannah stood straight and very still. “If that’s how you want it to be, Dad, that’s how it will be.”

  Following a small wedding, which Septimus refused to attend, the couple lived in Frank’s rickety clapboard house at the edge of the town. Life was frugal, there was no doubt. Hannah gave piano lessons and taught some of the timber workers to read and write. One or two took a nasty pleasure in the thought that they employed, if just for an hour a week, the daughter of the man who employed them. But by and large, people respected Hannah’s kindness and straightforward courtesy.

  She was happy. She had found a husband who seemed to understand her completely, who could discuss philosophy and classical mythology, whose smile dispersed worry and made hardship easy to bear.

  As the years passed, a measure of tolerance was afforded to the baker whose accent never entirely disappeared. Some, like Billy Wishart’s wife, or Joe Rafferty and his mother, still made a performance of crossing the street when they saw him, but mostly, things settled down. By 1925, Hannah and Frank decided that life was certain enough, money secure enough, to bring a baby into the world, and in February 1926 their daughter was born.