Lighthouse Bay

by Kimberley Freeman

  She glances up at Matthew’s face. The darkness in the room is dissolving. She sees the softness in his eyes. He moves to the side of the bed and kneels next to it. He takes her hand: her fingers in his, his other hand encircled around her wrist. “Isabella, I am so sorry for your loss. What name did your child go by?”

  “Daniel. His name was Daniel.”

  “I am so sorry you lost Daniel. That is a great sorrow for anyone to bear, but especially a mother. Your heart must be heavier than the ocean.”

  A fist of grief pushes its way up Isabella’s throat. Nobody has ever said this to her before. She has been told that Daniel is smiling at her from heaven, that she will have another child to replace him, that if she works very hard the sun will shine again, that if she doesn’t get over her sadness she will lose friends and vex her family. But nobody, in almost three years, has simply said, “I am so sorry you lost Daniel.” Most of the time, other people won’t even use his name, though she doesn’t know why. As though one mustn’t say the name of a dead child because it will make matters worse. Fifteen days alive is hardly alive at all. Better to lose him before he became a real human being, with a name and a personality. She knows they think it. She knows they think she is nursing her loss self-indulgently or refusing to get better.

  Matthew doesn’t think that.

  He stands and moves away, and she feels the warm after-impression of his touch on her skin. He comes to rest at the window again, looking out over the sea. The waves roll and crash, but today the sound is soothing. Faraway chaos, while she is safe and still. It occurs to her for the first time since the wreck that she is back on solid ground.

  “I need to bathe, Matthew,” she says.

  He nods. “Of course.” He shows her where the bath is, and fetches her a pale yellow gown and a pair of brown shoes; she can see immediately that the latter will be too small. When she is clean and dressed, he is nowhere to be seen. She cautiously surveys his cottage. The main room, the tiny bedroom, and another room full of wires and metal objects and reels and other unrecognizable equipment.

  “The lighthouse is also the telegraph station,” he explains, making her jump.

  “I didn’t know you were there,” she says.

  “I was upstairs, extinguishing the light. My shift is finished now.”

  “Do you operate the telegraph? Or does somebody else work here?”

  “No, only me. Lighthouse Bay doesn’t have a post office. I receive and send telegrams for the town here.”

  “Lighthouse Bay? Is that where I am?”

  “You are.”

  “Am I near Sydney?”

  He shakes his head. “No, but a little farther south there’s a port that might be able to take you there. Certainly, if you want to go to New York, you have to get yourself to Sydney first,” he says in a practical tone.

  “It will cost money for a trip to America,” she says, thinking of her jewelry, lying at the bottom of the ocean. “I have nothing of value I can sell.” Trying to sell the mace would be like setting a dazzling beacon for the Winterbournes to locate her.

  “Mrs. Fullbright was lately expecting a new nanny for her child, a little boy named Xavier. I took the telegram to her just a week ago: the young woman engaged for the position decided not to come. There is honest work there for you, I’m sure, if you’re willing to ask for it.”

  Mrs. Fullbright again. Matthew was determined she should go to town, and now, after a night of sleep has restored her senses, she understands that he is right. She cannot wait here at the lighthouse for things to change on their own. She must make a move even if it means working as a servant to a woman who probably isn’t as wealthy as she is. There, in the chest, is an object of such immense value that it could buy Mrs. Fullbright several times over. Gold. Gems. Then she thinks of Daniel’s bracelet on its modest black ribbon, buried in the bottom of the chest, and she is seized with the sudden knowledge that everything bad happened after she took it off.

  The argument with Arthur that saw her confined below deck, unable to say her prayer to the sea.

  The unrelenting stormy weather.

  The shipwreck. The struggle to survive. The injuries.

  The bad luck wouldn’t stop until she had that bracelet back on her wrist. “I need you to help me open the chest,” she says, her voice shaking.

  “Do you not have a key?”

  “No.” She is already on her way to the main room, where the chest is still by the door.

  He frowns as he crouches next to her, in front of the chest. “Is this . . . ?”

  “Stolen? No. Not . . . not really stolen.” A creeping fear. Now Matthew’s kindness will run out, the last few grains of sand through an hourglass.

  A moment of uncertainty. Then he nods. “I said I would ask no further questions and I will keep to my word.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Come,” he says. “I keep the small axe up on the deck.”

  He hefts the chest and starts up the stairs. Isabella hesitates on the first step, gazing up at the nautilus swirl of the staircase. But Matthew is clattering ahead of her, and she makes her way up and up, past long dangling chains, through a hatch and up into the top of the lighthouse. An immense lamp, surrounded by a box of prismatic lenses, golden and glass concentric circles, takes up most of the space. There is an oily smell, not unpleasant. Matthew opens a small door and fresh morning air pours in. Then she is stepping out onto a round deck, high above the world, with a view for miles and miles to the distant dark horizon. The deck is peppered with dead moths and beetles, and one dead seagull. Matthew scoops it over the edge with his toe and drops the chest to the metal floor with a clang.

  He opens a wooden box, full of tools, and pulls out a small axe.

  “I will try to do this without doing too much damage to the chest,” he says.

  “I don’t care. I will be ridding myself of the chest and most of its contents as soon as I can. It is a burden I wish never to see again.” Her heart is beating fast, so fast it makes her head feel light.

  Matthew raises the axe, takes aim and then brings it down on the first lock. Wood splinters, the lock clatters to the ground. Then another, and another blow. Five in all, one for each of the wretched locks. Then he stands, moves back and makes a show of turning away. “I’m better off not knowing what is in there,” he says.

  Isabella can’t breathe, she is so grateful. She quickly flips open the lid. High sunlight dazzles off the gold and gems. Her hands are already moving underneath it, lifting the velvet, finding the ribbon.

  She withdraws it and lets the lid fall closed. Her thumbs move over the coral beads on the bracelet, and a strange calm settles on her nerves, untangles the knots in her brain. All is simple: she will work for Mrs. Fullbright for as long as it takes to earn her passage to America. With Daniel’s bracelet around her wrist, she can endure anything.

  “You can turn around now,” she says.

  He turns. She holds out her wrist. “Will you help me tie this on?”

  “Of course.” He gently and quickly ties the ribbon around her wrist.

  “This is the last memory I have of Daniel,” she says softly, and her voice is nearly carried away on the wind and the sunshine. She looks at the chest. “And I should get this far away from me. Somewhere nobody can ever find it.” Her eyes go to the sea. That’s where it belongs: at the bottom of the ocean.

  Matthew follows her gaze. “I can row it out a little way and drop it in the water.”

  “Is it deep?”

  “I’ll take it out as far as I can, while the ocean is still relatively calm.”

  She nods. “Do it.”

  They take the chest back inside, wrap it in Isabella’s torn, bloodstained dress, and then Matthew leaves to take it out to sea, away from her. She clatters back up the stairs and out on the deck to watch her last link to the Winterbournes severed forever.

  Matthew tells himself over and over that he won’t look. He won’t look. He doesn’t need to kno
w what is in the chest. And yet . . . here she is, asking him to dump it at sea. She is tired, confused, crushed by a grief that has clearly bent her mind. What if she regrets it? What if she regrets sending the contents of this chest to the bottom of the ocean? He remembers the time Clara charged him with burning a letter from her mother before she had read it. He did as she asked, only to be berated tearfully later.

  So he must look. He must be the rational brain that she cannot be. If he looks, and it is a collection of old books, or clothes, or bottles, or clocks or . . . anything worthless and random, then he will dispose of it. But if it is something that signifies, something that she may later wish she had kept, then he will preserve it for her secretly.

  The door to the lighthouse closes behind him. He rounds the corner of the cottage and finds the tin cabinet that keeps his woodpile dry. In the shadow of the cabinet, he unwraps the chest and, quickly so he can’t change his mind, flips it open.

  “Oh, my. My, my, my,” he mutters. For in the chest is a thing of such beauty and value that he cannot comprehend at first. Its gleaming stem, its ornate head, carved gold. Jewels: red, green, blue. He doesn’t know what the object is, but it is not something worthless and random. And he knows he cannot let her dispose of it. She will regret it. He is certain.

  He pulls a log from the woodpile—about the same length as the chest—then wraps it in the dress. Then closes the chest and hides it carefully among the woodpile. He makes his way down the narrow path to the sheltered side of the rock wall, and down the mossy stairs to the rowboat. He glances up. Isabella is watching from the deck. He waves to her, and she waves back, the black ribbon around her wrist. A moment’s guilt, then he is rowing against the waves. This task would be impossible in the afternoon, when the wind is fresh and the sea wild, but mornings are often calm. He rows as far out as he can before the rip catches him. The sun is on his forearms. He makes a show of hefting the log and plunging it into the water. She will be watching. Will she already be regretting? It matters not. If she changes her mind, he will have it somewhere safe for her.

  Whatever it is.

  Matthew insists she takes the day to rest before heading to Mrs. Fullbright’s. Her wounds are still healing and her feet are still sore. She spends the morning in bed, then when Matthew needs to sleep at noon she sits up on the deck watching the ocean and letting her mind drift. She is apprehensive about approaching Mrs. Fullbright, and still doesn’t know if she will be welcomed. But Matthew seems confident, and she trusts Matthew. She trusts him even though she doesn’t know him. There is something familiar about him, something comforting in his presence that awakes a primitive feeling in her, a long-buried sense of safety. She is loath to leave him, but understands she must. She knows how society works: a young woman cannot stay with a single man in a house with one bed. She needs to do what society dictates if she wants the job with Mrs. Fullbright, if she wants to earn honest money and find her way to her sister.

  The afternoon deepens. It will soon be dusk, and Matthew will be awake, ready to work. She takes a few last breaths up here on the deck, above the world, then returns down the deep spiral staircase and into the cottage.

  Matthew is up, in his trousers and undershirt and braces, lighting his pipe. He turns as she enters the room, smiles with only one corner of his mouth.

  “I suppose I must go,” she says.

  “It’s for the best. You will find your way.”

  She nods and moves to the door to pull on the shoes that are too tight. Matthew has packed for her a small bag: two more dresses, both too large for her. But at least she has clothes. Her heart is beating in her throat, she feels helpless.

  “I am here if you need me, Isabella,” he says, then smiles and corrects himself, “I mean, Mary Harrow.”

  “Thank you,” she says. “For everything.”

  Then the door closes quietly behind her and she stands on the path that will lead her down to the town.

  Despite her stinging feet, she moves with deliberate sure-footedness. The path is sandy, bracketed on both sides by thick, sharp-smelling vegetation. She recognizes the edible berries, but she doesn’t need to pick them. She has eaten three solid meals today, and Mrs. Fullbright will have more for her. The path opens up, and the town comes into view. On the other side of the forest verge that protects them from the ocean winds sit wooden buildings with tin roofs. There are, perhaps, twenty houses. A pub. A large shed that might be to do with the sugar and timber trade Matthew has mentioned. A plain little church with plastered walls.

  From the hill, she looks for the big house at the near end of the main street. Pale pink boards. Two stories high with a large verandah all the way around. It sits on a square of green grass, with tidy garden beds. This is where Mrs. Katherine Fullbright lives with her son, Xavier, and presumably a husband and other hired help. Before Isabella saw the house, she had been half-hoping that Mrs. Fullbright wouldn’t take her in. She could return to the safety of the lighthouse. But now she has seen the lawn and the flowers, she wants to be there. She wants to put her feet in grass. She wants to be in a real house with carpets and curtains. It has been months since she has known such ordinary comforts.

  Isabella walks with purpose down the path and over the grassy shoulder of the dirt road, then through the gate and right up the steps to Mrs. Fullbright’s front door. The windowsills are painted white. There are lace curtains. She likes Mrs. Fullbright already.

  Isabella pulls her hair over the cut in her neck so she doesn’t alarm Mrs. Fullbright. Gloves borrowed from the former lighthouse keeper’s wife cover the scabs on her hands. She can do nothing about the sunburn, but she turns her face out of the full lamplight in any case.

  She rings the brass bell and waits.

  At length, the door opens a crack, and a dark-haired, sloe-eyed, full-lipped woman peers out.

  “Hello,” Isabella says. “I am here to see Mrs. Fullbright.”

  The door opens fully. “I am Katarina Fullbright,” says the woman with a slight accent that Isabella cannot place.

  Isabella had thought a maid would answer the door, and is now trying to understand that this impossibly beautiful young woman, with smooth olive skin and slightly flared nostrils, is Mrs. Katherine Fullbright. She had been expecting a middle-aged Katherine, English of course, fussy about manners and laced into a conservative gown, not a crimson-clad Katarina.

  She remembers her purpose, offers Katarina her hand. “I am Mary Harrow. I heard you require a nanny. I am a nanny and in need of employment.”

  Katarina’s perfectly arched eyebrows shoot up. “You are?”

  “I am. Though I have lost my references . . .”

  “Do come in, Mary,” she says, unperturbed, leading Isabella into a sitting room with a high ceiling and wood-paneled walls. A large sofa with a crocheted throw on it sits next to two leather armchairs. Bookshelves and a sideboard cover one wall. Isabella can see through to a small dining room and beyond to a kitchen. The house is clean and smells like lemon-and-oil furniture polish. It is lit only by two fat candles. “Sit down. This is a welcome surprise,” Katarina says.

  “Thank you,” Isabella says, perching on the sofa with her bag between her feet.

  “I had thought I would have to advertise again, wait for months,” Katarina says. “It’s hard to find anybody willing to come so far and Xavier is . . . He is a difficult child. You don’t mind a difficult child?”

  For the first time, Isabella fully realizes that she will have to work for this honest money she wants. Back in Somerset, her days were consumed with needlework, cutting and arranging flowers, organizing high teas, accompanying her husband to town. She has never worked in her life. “Of course I don’t mind,” she says, and she wonders at the distance between what she is saying and what she is feeling. She should have stayed a few more days at the lighthouse. She shouldn’t have decided so rashly to come here. She is not thinking straight, she can’t think straight. The feeling of helplessness is back, a dark sob in her b
rain.

  “Xavier, he is not here now,” Katarina is saying. “He has gone away with Mr. Fullbright for a few days.”

  “Do you want me to come back then?”

  “No need. You are here now. There is nowhere to stay in town except the pub, and that’s not fit for women. Cook has finished for the night, so you have missed dinner. If you are hungry, there is bread and dripping in the kitchen.”

  “I’m not hungry. I . . .” Isabella touches her own forehead. “I am terribly, terribly tired.”

  Katarina smiles. “Ah, a long journey? I see you are sunburned from being on the cart. Down from the gold fields? Is that where your last job was?”

  Isabella nods.

  “Come, Mary, I’ll show you the bathroom and nursery. You will sleep in the same room as Xavier. You have an early night tonight, and tomorrow we will work out details, yes?” Isabella has the impression that Katarina is itching to be away. Perhaps that explains the glorious gown.

  Isabella nods, and Katarina leads her down a carpeted hallway: rooms lead off left and right. At the final set of doorways she stops, indicates right, “Bathroom,” then left, “Nursery. There are sheets in the large chest at the end of the bed. I am going out this evening, you must forgive me.”

  Then she is off in a whirl of red fabric and dark hair. Isabella goes to the bathroom. In the half-light, she can barely see her face in the mirror, but what she does see alarms her. She is, indeed, sunburned: glowing, with blisters on her nose. Her face is hollow, the shadows beneath her eyes dark and long. Her hair is lank and unbrushed. Compared to Katarina’s fresh beauty, Isabella is a hag. She has seen too many horrors and it shows on her face. She looks away. She splashes water on her face and washes her hands, then heads to the nursery.