Lighthouse Bay

by Kimberley Freeman

  “This is Mary Harrow, our new nanny. Mary, this is Ernest Fullbright, my husband.”

  Ernest Fullbright prods little Xavier. “Go on, lad, greet your new nanny.”

  Xavier, who has been shrunk against his father’s side, takes one look at Isabella and begins to cry. Isabella, sensing the importance of a good first meeting, kneels in front of him and takes his hand gently. “There, child.”

  Xavier is so shocked by this direct contact that he stops crying, and fixes her in his gaze. His eyes are very dark. Isabella can see fear in those deep pools. She doesn’t try to cheer him out of it. Instead, she respects it. “My name is Mary and I shall be very good to you,” she says.

  Katarina reaches forward and removes her hand from Xavier’s. “No hugging and so on.”

  Xavier is looking at his own hand, turning it in front of his face as though seeing it for the first time.

  “She stopped him crying, at least,” Ernest mutters into his mustache.

  “That is what nannies do,” Katarina says. “That is what we pay Mary for.”

  Isabella remains crouched in front of Xavier, holding his gaze. “How old is he?” she asks.

  “He will be three in July.”

  July? Isabella’s heart picks up a rhythm. “Which date?” she asks, thinking, What shall I do if it’s the eighteenth?

  Katarina says, “The eighteenth.”

  Isabella holds her face very still, but Xavier sees the change in her eyes and he begins to blink rapidly as though he might cry again. The eighteenth of July. Xavier was born on the same day as Daniel. Standing in front of Isabella is a model of what her child might have been. Not the dark hair and eyes, perhaps, but the plump fists and sturdy legs, the liquid gaze and poreless skin. He is Daniel’s living twin and she is frozen a moment, but the child looks frightened, so she takes a piece of apple from the table and hands it to him. Distracted, he relaxes again.

  “He’s a difficult child,” Katarina says. “He refuses to talk, though it’s clear he understands what is said around him.”

  “Don’t spoil him,” Ernest adds. “Make sure he learns his letters and numbers.”

  “And he’s not to suck his thumb.”

  Isabella climbs to her feet and beckons Xavier. “Shall we go to the nursery, Xavier?”

  Xavier rises to follow her. She closes the door at the end of the hallway and immediately offers Xavier her hand again. He takes it quickly and willingly—his fingers are soft and slightly sticky—and she knows that he feels what she is feeling: somehow, they were meant to find each other.

  Isabella wakes, blinking in the dark. Voices, shouting. She lies very still in her narrow bed, listening. Outside, it is windy and trees are shushing against the night sky, casting moonlit shadows through the lacy curtain. She cannot hear what they are saying, but she can tell it is Katarina and Ernest. Katarina is shrieking, Ernest is booming. Back and forth the accusations go. Isabella rises, and pads past Xavier’s bed. He is breathing softly and steadily, untroubled by the voices. She opens the nursery door and listens in the hallway, catches a few words, none of them harmless: drunkard, whore, liar, bastard. Then comes a deafening bang, and the whole house shakes, as one of them storms out and slams the door with murderous brutality. Isabella withdraws quickly into the nursery, closing her own door, but it is too late. Xavier stirs, begins to whimper.

  “Sh, sh,” Isabella says, kneeling next to his bed and stroking his brow. She picks up his little hand and puts it near his lips. Sure enough, he finds his thumb and begins to suck hard. The whimpering stops; sleep returns. She stays by his side a few minutes, making sure he is settled. Then she returns to the hallway.

  Now she can hear sobbing. It is Katarina, sobbing as though her ribs might break. Isabella approaches the door at the end of the hallway and tries it. It is locked. She knows this is none of her business, but she remembers sobbing like that herself and nobody ever coming. She knocks softly on the door.

  The sobbing stops. Isabella hears light footsteps, then the door opens. Katarina stands in front of her, face tear-stained in the lamplight. “What is it?” she asks, and Isabella can see she is desolate and trapped. Isabella knows exactly how it feels.

  “Let me make you tea, ma’am,” Isabella says.

  Katarina shakes her head, but Isabella is already on her way to the kitchen. Katarina follows, sinks into a hard chair at the kitchen table and puts her head down to cry some more. Isabella lights the stove and boils the kettle, scoops tea into the pot, fetches milk from the icebox. Finally, she sets the tea tray down in front of Katarina. Steam rises from the cups as she pours.

  Katarina lifts her head. “Thank you, Mary,” she says. “Did the child wake?”

  “He did when the door slammed, but only briefly. He is fast asleep now.”

  “I am so unhappy,” she says.

  “I know,” Isabella replies.

  “How could you know?”

  Isabella doesn’t say that she too has been trapped in a marriage where hate filled her heart instead of love. She doesn’t say that just a few short weeks ago her husband died and she hasn’t cried for him once. She simply says, “I just do.”

  “He is jealous. He thinks I look at other men. He thinks I court their attention and make a fool of him.” Her voice drops low. “Sometimes I wonder if he’ll hurt me. He’ll get the idea in his head that I have taken a lover and he’ll kill me.”

  Isabella stares back at her, remembering the times she had seen Arthur so angry she had wondered if he would raise his fists against her. The anger of men is a frightening thing, indeed. Katarina is sobbing again, and Isabella’s heart stirs. She slides out of her chair and bends to put her arms around Katarina. Katarina clings to her, sobbing all the louder.

  “Hush, now,” Isabella says.

  “I hate him.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “How can I live? How can I go on?”

  “You will. Hush now.” Isabella stands back. “Drink your tea. It will make you feel better.”

  “Nothing will ever change.”

  “Drink your tea.” Isabella sits back down.

  “You are a strange one, Mary,” Katarina says, sniffing back tears and reaching for her tea.

  They sit in silence, drinking their tea, then Katarina says, “He will come back later. He will be drunk, but he is a merry drunk. Keep the nursery door closed so Xavier doesn’t hear.” Then she stands and, without another word, heads to her bedroom.

  Isabella finishes her tea, then empties the pot and cleans the cups. She isn’t tired, so she opens the back door and sits at the top of the stairs. The night smells soft and fresh; the breeze lifts her hair. The lighthouse is alive, and she thinks about Matthew. Is he angry like other men? Would he ever look at a woman as though he wanted to break her bones? Would he be dismissive, or cold or cruel? She cannot imagine it, but perhaps she is a fool. Perhaps women make men wild simply by mattering. Perhaps the way to be with a man is never to matter. Like Percy Winterbourne’s wife: popping sons out with as little complaint as other women bake scones. Isabella drops her head to her knees. No, Matthew is not like other men. She knows it in her bones. She hopes she can see him again one day soon.

  At breakfast the next morning, Xavier is happily eating his toast fingers and tea when Katarina flounces into the kitchen and says, “Mary, Xavier eats breakfast with his parents in the dining room.”

  Isabella notices a coolness about Katarina. Cook is downstairs in the laundry, so she takes the opportunity to say, “Are you feeling better?”

  “Better? I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” She yanks Xavier from his chair, and he is pulled out of the kitchen without protest. “Ensure Xavier is ready for breakfast with his parents every morning in the dining room,” she says over her shoulder. “Family and staff should not mix.”

  Isabella has the distinct feeling she has been put in her place.

  Fourteen

  Matthew recognizes Clovis McCarthy’s horse and carriag
e outside the Exchange Hotel on Shore Road, and guiltily realizes he is late. To meet with Clovis this afternoon, he had to sleep between ten and three. Sleep wouldn’t come under duress. When it finally did, it was too deep and too long. He had woken half an hour late, dressed quickly and hurried down the road to the drinking hole, with only one hopeful glance towards the Fullbright house.

  He opens the painted green and glass door to the Exchange, and is greeted by the smell of wood paneling, beer and cigar smoke. He scans the dim room. Ernest Fullbright stands at the bar with Abel Barrett, the sugar-mill tycoon: those two are as thick as thieves. In the far corner, under the Queen’s portrait, sits a noisy group of five itinerant workers, wearing dirty caps and boots laced with string. Behind the bar, pretty Eunice Hand wipes glasses dry with the cloth attached to her waistband. Eunice has always had a shine for Matthew and she might have made a good wife, but despite her good heart Matthew finds her a little dull-eyed: Clara spoiled him for all other women. By the window, at a dark wooden table with two tall beers waiting, is Clovis.

  Matthew approaches with a smile. Clovis rises from his seat, stiff in the joints now, having become an old man since Matthew last saw him, just three years ago.

  “Old friend,” Clovis says.

  “I’m late.”

  “I have all the time in the world.” Clovis has been the lighthouse keeper at Cape Franklin for sixteen years. He is on his way south, now, to Brisbane, to retire.

  After a firm handshake, Matthew sits and sips the top off his beer and watches as Clovis props his cane against the wall and lowers himself to his seat.

  “The stairs have finally defeated me, Seaward,” he says.

  “What’s the new man like?”

  “Young. Smart. Has a young family: a plump wife and three little boys. Already talking about replacing the oil with acetylene tanks. I resisted it myself. Always worried the damned things would blow up.”

  “I feel the same. My last shipment, they sent me an acetylene tank instead of kerosene. I have it sitting around the back for them to take, but I think even the delivery service is wary of carrying it.”

  Clovis raises his eyebrows. “There’s worse. His wife knows the code. She’ll be taking the telegraph.”

  Matthew smiles. He knows what Clovis thinks of women. “Is that right?”

  “Shouldn’t give a woman a job like that. They’re too prone to gossip. She’ll know all the town’s business and start interfering. You mark my words.” Clovis shakes his head. “Times are changing too fast for me, Seaward.”

  They drink as the afternoon shadows outside lengthen. One beer. Then another. Clovis offers to buy Matthew a third, but he refuses. In less than an hour, he needs to fire up the light. He knows his limit, and he never exceeds it.

  Matthew has been assiduously avoiding talk of the Aurora because he doesn’t want to speak untruth directly to anyone, especially Clovis. But it is, in the end, unavoidable.

  “I’ve had the police up to talk to me about the lost ship,” Clovis says, starting his third beer. “I shan’t miss working with them. The local constable is a sorry fool. Couldn’t find his own feet, let alone a ship.”

  “You mean the Aurora? So they’ve started a search?”

  “It was full of cargo, some very expensive. And an important nobleman on board. Arthur Winterbourne and his wife.”

  “His wife?” Matthew’s ears ring faintly. “Do you know her name?”

  Clovis shakes his head. “No idea. They’re all dead now, though. Must have had an imbecile for a Captain. Why he didn’t shelter farther north is beyond reckoning. The weather was appalling.”

  “Have they found anything? The police?”

  Clovis shrugs. “More than a hundred miles of coast between my light and yours, Seaward. The constable thinks they’ve found some debris just to the south, but I would have seen her if she was that close. Probably some old junk dropped off the side to lighten her load if she was taking on water.” Clovis drops his voice. “I overheard something I shouldn’t have.”

  “Go on,” Matthew says, wishing he’d had that third drink.

  “On board was a gift from Queen Vic to the Australian parliament.” Clovis indicates the portrait of the Queen. “Priceless.”

  Matthew’s heart rate rises. “What was it?”

  “A ceremonial mace. Can you imagine? Gold and gems, out there somewhere in the sea, being shit upon by fish.”

  Gold and gems. Good Christ, Isabella had handed him a boxful of problems.

  “The family of the jeweler who made it, the Winterbourne fellow, is very keen to have it back.”

  “I would presume so.”

  Clovis keeps talking, speculating, then he’s off on another topic, but Matthew doesn’t quite manage to get his cheer back. The mace wasn’t Isabella’s. It should be given to the police. But how is he to do that without alerting them to her presence? It is clear now that burying the mace was foolish. Illegal.

  “Nearly dusk, my friend,” Clovis says, indicating the long shadows and golden light outside.

  “Time to work,” Matthew replies.

  “I envy you,” Clovis says. “I wish I was young again.”

  But at this moment, Matthew feels very old and tired. He bids his friend farewell and walks home up the hill. He takes a short detour off the track to where he buried the mace, and looks down at his boots. Beneath him, a priceless object, belonging to a noble family, or the Queen, or the parliament, or all three. People far more important than he is. If only he had never looked. If only Isabella had never brought it. Or never come at all.

  But it is too late now. What has happened, has happened. And what comes next will surely come.

  It has been a week and two days, and Isabella doesn’t know when she will be paid. Weekly? Monthly? At the end of her service? How can she trust the Fullbrights? She didn’t even talk to them about how much she would be paid. They are providing her room and board, so her earnings won’t be much, but she needs them. Matthew has an electric telegraph in his cottage: she wants to send a telegram to her sister to say she is coming. She secretly hopes that her sister might convince her husband to send Isabella money, so this long slog of work can end more quickly.

  Though she would miss little Xavier.

  He sits across from her now in the kitchen, helping to sort wool. The child is fiercely bright, for all that he doesn’t speak. She has seen him follow along with her when she reads to him at night, pulling her up with a peremptory point of his index finger if she misses a word or turns the page too soon. He is sorting the yellow three-ply wool scraps from the four-ply without any difficulty, his dark eyes focused sharply in front of him, his thumb jammed firmly between his lips. She keeps her ears pricked for the approach of Katarina, who is determined that he oughtn’t suck his thumb, that the habit is to blame for him not talking.

  “Very well done, Xavier,” she says to him.

  He doesn’t meet her eyes, but she can see the corner of his smile. She suspects Xavier is beginning to like her.

  Footsteps. Isabella quickly but gently removes Xavier’s thumb from his mouth. He seems to understand that they are complicit in this deception, and wipes the saliva from his thumb on his pants.

  “Mary?” Katarina says, pausing in the threshold to the kitchen. “Mr. Fullbright is having a guest for lunch today and has requested Xavier join us without his nanny. You can help Cook here in the kitchen.”

  “I have been here more than a week, Mrs. Fullbright. I see Cook has an afternoon off a week. Might I not also?”

  Katarina blinks at her. “I suppose so. Cook will likely manage alone. It is only one extra guest.”

  “And, Mrs. Fullbright, when might I be paid?”

  “You are very blunt,” Katarina says.

  Isabella isn’t sure if this is a criticism or a compliment, so she says nothing. This is the first time she has ever had to ask for money.

  “We are a little short this week, Mary,” Katarina says. “I can give you two sh
illings now, but Mr. Fullbright will pay you at the end of the month, when his own debtors have paid him.” Katarina glances away, as though talking about money embarrasses her. “In future, you should talk only to him about your wage.”

  The house is soon in an uproar as Cook is instructed to prepare a roast for the guest, a very wealthy friend of Ernest’s named Abel Barrett. Isabella helps her with the vegetables and the Yorkshire pudding batter in between playing with Xavier and his wooden horses in the nursery.

  Ernest seeks her out in the nursery just before midday.

  “You need money?” he says, his mouth turned down disapprovingly.

  She wants to say, “No, you owe me money,” but she knows that will only inflame him. She must pretend to be the supplicant; after all, that is what she is. “Yes, sir. And Mrs. Fullbright says I might take the afternoon off.”

  “Ha. A woman loose about town with money and nothing to keep her occupied is a dangerous prospect. Still, if Katherine has promised it to you . . .” He fishes in his pocket and pulls out a few coins to offer to her.

  “Thank you, sir,” she says, taking them.

  He folds his hands behind his back and leans down to speak to Xavier, who hasn’t looked up from his wooden horses. “Come on, young man. We have a guest.”

  Xavier looks longingly at his horses, then casts a gaze towards Isabella, who smiles at him encouragingly. “Go on, Xavier. I made the pudding batter especially for you. I will see you this evening.”

  Then they are gone, and Isabella goes to the bathroom to wash before going up to the lighthouse. It will be the first time she has seen Matthew since she left. An aeon seems to have passed, although it has been little more than a week, and she doesn’t completely understand why she should be so keen for him to see her washed and groomed. She has never been vain, but Matthew has only ever seen her battered and sunburned. Once in her life, she was considered beautiful.

  To leave the house, she must cross the sitting room. She pauses near the front door and casts a glance back towards the dining room, where Abel Barrett is in deep conversation with Ernest. Abel looks up, catches her eye. She sees him turn to Ernest and knows he is asking about her. She hesitates: should she wait to see if she is summoned to greet him? But then Katarina comes into view, and makes a theatrical shooing-away gesture. Isabella slips out of the house and down the stairs.