Lighthouse Bay

by Kimberley Freeman

  But of course she is locked in this section of the house. Isabella brings her lantern and holds it up to the keyhole. Katarina has left the key in the lock on the other side. All she needs is a sheet of paper . . . one of Xavier’s drawings does the trick. She slides it under the door, then with the long end of a paintbrush pushes the key out of the keyhole. It lands with a soft clunk on the paper and she pulls it under to her side, then unlocks the door. Quietly, she takes her damp load through the kitchen and down the back stairs to the laundry.

  She lights the copper and waits for it to fill with water. Through the floorboards she can see the first flush of dawn. Birds sing, but these are the harsh-voiced birds of Australia. Not robins and blackbirds. One, which Katarina calls a kookaburra, makes a noise that sounds exactly like maniacal laughter. Isabella is so busy listening to birds and the flow of water that she doesn’t hear Cook come up behind her.

  “Mary?”

  Isabella turns with a guilty jump. “Oh, Cook. I’m sorry. Did I wake you?”

  “No, I always get up at this time. But you don’t. And you’ve never heated the copper before.” Cook surveyed the heap of laundry. “Your sheets?”

  Isabella knows she must protect her secret. “I . . . I soiled them.”

  Cook glances away, embarrassed, and mutters, “Well, I expect it can happen to anyone.” She reaches down and gingerly pulls up the corner of the sheet. As she does, Xavier’s sodden pajamas plop down on to the dirt floor. Both women look at the pajamas, then look at each other. Isabella holds her breath.

  “This is wrong,” Cook says. “You mustn’t get so close to the child.”

  “It was only the once,” Isabella says. “He had a bad dream.”

  “If Mrs. Fullbright finds out, she’ll send you away and you won’t see the child at all.”

  “Please don’t tell her.”

  Cook presses her lips together tightly, and they form an upside-down horseshoe.

  “Please,” Isabella says again, quickly throwing the pajamas, her own nightgown and the sheets into the copper. “No harm is done. Xavier gets no affection from his parents and I—”

  “Don’t think to judge them. Have you never been in service before?”

  Slowly, Isabella shakes her head.

  Cook narrows her eyes. “I might have guessed it, I suppose. So, where are you from?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m in service now and I want to do the right thing and earn money. And I want to do what’s best for Xavier.”

  “His mother and father decide what’s best for him. All you have to do is follow instructions. Mrs. Fullbright doesn’t want the likes of us holding her child, and she sure as sure doesn’t want you sleeping in the same bed as him. I won’t tell her, not this time. But make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

  “Of course. Of course.”

  Cook softens, touches Isabella’s sleeve. “Mary, don’t get so close to the child. Not just for his sake, but for your own. Nannies don’t last long in this household. Eventually they get the blame for Xavier not speaking and the Fullbrights let them go. If you do need the money, keep your head down and don’t give them an extra reason to get rid of you. Don’t let him in your bed. No good will come of it.”

  Isabella nods, but she isn’t persuaded. She intends to do exactly as she has done. She wasn’t secretive enough, that is all. If it happens again, she will know better. They won’t stop her sleeping with her boy.

  Isabella waits, crouched behind the sofa, smiling too hard. She hears footsteps, soft and uncertain. Xavier is looking for her. He draws closer, she holds her breath . . .

  “Boo!” she says, springing out from behind the sofa.

  He jumps, then cackles loudly, banging the wooden spoon on the saucepan lid that he carries around during hide-and-go-seek. It is his way of saying, “I found you,” without words. Laughing and clattering, he runs away, his feet thundering on the wooden floorboards. She runs after him, laughing too.

  The door to Katarina’s bedroom opens.

  “Mary!” she says sharply.

  Isabella turns, immediately quiet. Xavier hesitates in the kitchen, looking back towards her with big, frightened eyes.

  Katarina gestures towards the child. “Why must he make that noise? Take the saucepan lid from him.”

  “It’s how he lets me know he’s found me.”

  Katarina’s face works: Isabella thinks she sees anger, shame, perhaps a fleeting trace of sadness. Then she composes herself and says, “He should use words.”

  The silence draws out. Isabella won’t speak of Xavier’s perceived deficiencies in front of him. His thumb has gone to his mouth.

  “Get that thumb out of your mouth,” Katarina shouts at him. “And both of you go outside. I have a headache. I have no desire to hear such noisy nonsense.”

  Isabella bristles. How heartless must this woman be to speak to a small child so sharply? But she also bristles for herself: told off in such a fashion. If Katarina knew who she was, how rich her husband’s family was . . .

  But they are not her family. She doesn’t want them to be her family. And alone in the world, she has nothing.

  “Come, Xavier,” she says to the little boy. “Let’s play hide-and-go-seek in the garden instead.”

  They walk quietly down the back stairs and, for a little while, play prudently. But Xavier loves hide-and-go-seek, and is soon squealing with laughter and happily banging his saucepan lid. The sun is shining from somewhere very high. The seasons are all backwards: it is May, but autumn is here. The sky seems cooler and the leaves on the birch at the bottom of the garden are turning brown. There is a smell of sea salt and wood smoke on the air, and Xavier’s laughter seems to ring all the way to heaven. They hide, they seek, they chase, they catch. Grass stains on their knees, faces flushed.

  Then Isabella counts to ten, her face hidden in her hands down at the back fence. She turns—Xavier has disappeared. She looks at the last hiding space, but he’s not there. She tries the other trees and bushes, but he’s not there.

  She leaves the sunny garden for the laundry: not there. But she sees that one of the floorboards is missing on the far side of the laundry. She approaches and finds the board right next to it is broken and loose. It can be pushed aside, leaving just enough room for a little boy to squeeze through and round to the side of the house. Isabella squeezes too, barely making it through, and finds herself in a part of the garden she has never seen before. Behind the laundry, down the side of the house, Xavier is squatting and playing with something on the ground. The grass on this small strip of garden is patchy, covered in weeds. A high fence cuts it off from the front garden. It is a non-place, and yet Xavier has found something very interesting.

  “What have you got there?” she says, kneeling next to him.

  He holds up two cigar butts, one in each hand.

  Isabella quickly but gently brushes them out of his hands. They fall to the ground, and she sees that there are dozens of them, right under a window. She goes through the downstairs floor plan in her head, and realizes they are outside the forbidden room. There will be trouble if she is found here. She pulls Xavier to his feet. “No, Xavier, those things are very dirty. Must not touch.”

  He holds his hands out, the signal that he wants her to wash his hands. She quickly but quietly leads him back to the laundry, pushes an empty barrel against the broken board so he can’t make his way through again, and takes him to the tub to soap up his hands. As she tends to him, she considers what she has just seen. A collection of cigar butts just outside the window, as though they have been thrown there by somebody inside. Is this Katarina’s terrible secret? That she enjoys smoking cigars? It isn’t a sin, but Isabella can imagine if Arthur had discovered she had such a habit: he would have given her the cruelest edge of his tongue. So, perhaps she can understand the secrecy.

  She dries Xavier’s hands briskly and looks down. His little face is turned up to hers, shining with happiness. She smiles and the words are on her li
ps before she has the wisdom to recall them. “My little boy,” she says. He throws himself at her, wrapping his arms around her legs and burying his face in her skirt. He is hers, just as she is his. They belong to each other.

  Isabella tries not to think about Matthew during the day, but at night she sometimes lifts the corner of her restraint and lets thoughts of him in. It has been so long since she has seen him that he has almost become a fictional character in her world: the dark-eyed, musk-scented man who rescued her, who holds her at arm’s-length for her own good. She is almost surprised, when she sees him at the greengrocer’s one morning, to find that he is real.

  Xavier’s hand is warm in hers as she approaches him, thoughts of buying potatoes for supper forgotten. “Matthew?”

  He glances up and sees her, smiles almost as though he cannot help it. “Mary,” he says carefully. “And this is little Master Fullbright.”

  “Xavier,” she says, a protective hand on the child’s shoulder. “Xavier, meet Mr. Seaward, the lighthouse keeper.”

  Xavier is shy or frightened or both, and hides his face in Isabella’s skirts. Isabella rubs his back softly. “There, darling, don’t be afraid.”

  “Hello, Xavier. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” says Matthew, crouching to be at the little boy’s level.

  Xavier risks a glance, responds to Matthew’s warm smile with a shudder and buries his face again. Matthew stands, chuckling. “Children never much like me on first sight.”

  “You are rather tall and foreboding,” Isabella says, then regrets it. Will he take it as an insult? She changes the subject quickly. “You haven’t yet heard back from my sister, Mr. Seaward?”

  His forehead crumples in concern. “No. No telegram. I hope that she has sent you a letter and it is taking time to get here. I will alert you the minute I know.”

  “Yes, a letter will take time to come, I expect. It has only been six weeks.”

  He nods. “Yes. It feels longer since . . .” He doesn’t finish his sentence and she knows why. It feels longer since I last saw you sounds romantic, not pragmatic. And Matthew Seaward, she knows, is a pragmatic man. Isabella can tell he is thinking about saying something more, but his eyes go to Xavier and he remains silent. The silence lingers. She doesn’t want him to go, but she knows he will.

  “I must get on,” he says.

  “It was lovely to see you.” She wants more. She wants him to invite her for tea. Invite her to stand on the deck of the lonely lighthouse at dusk and watch the night roll over the sky, with her hand in his. But where do these errant thoughts come from?

  “Farewell, Master Fullbright,” Matthew says, and Xavier risks a slight nod.

  Then Matthew is gone. She squeezes Xavier’s hand. “Come, little one,” she says. “Cook needs a few things for supper.”

  Matthew paces.

  On the stairs. Around the deck. Through the cottage. Finally he comes to a stop in the telegraph office, his long blunt fingers making delicate patterns on the desk. Night has fallen, the light is working, he has a little spare time.

  Isabella hasn’t heard from her sister. Matthew knew this, but seeing her disappointment has woken an itch in his belly. Isabella is still stuck here in Lighthouse Bay, and she calls the Fullbright child “darling” as if he were her own.

  That’s the point that troubles him the most. She looked so happy with Xavier. She looked like a mother, proud of her child. But Xavier isn’t her child; Xavier belongs to the Fullbrights, who are as volatile as they are wealthy. Matthew should have realized that taking care of another woman’s child was no fit task for Isabella, who had lost her own. He should never have recommended the position to her. Isabella needs her sister; she needs a reason to get away.

  He has kept the address, of course. This time, he sends the telegram from himself, a single line asking whether or not Mrs. Victoria King is still at the address. He also sends it because he cannot be sure the original message made it. Every telegrapher relies on the next in the chain.

  He pushes back his chair and walks up the steep spiral staircase, to stand alone on the deck awhile. The sea has been his only companion for twenty years; this view for the last six. But tonight her ceaseless movement cannot comfort him. Seeing Isabella is no good for him, no good for him at all. Her wild sweetness gets between his skin and his bones. It makes him feel bruised from the inside.

  In the distance, the light picks up the ghostly shape of a ship at full sail. Fewer and fewer ships now come to Australia under sail. Lumbering steam ships beetle along the horizon more often now. He feels the passing of one time into another; the passing of elegant might into ugly practicality. He thinks about Clovis McCarthy, descending the lighthouse stairs for the last time. One day that will be Matthew, too old to manage the light anymore, a relic from the past. And what then? What loneliness and emptiness lie beyond that date?

  Now he is getting sentimental. He gathers himself, goes back down the stairs and busies himself with his usual night duties. As he does every night. And it is after three more nights like this that the return telegram comes to him: No longer at this abode. No forwarding address given.

  Matthew closes his eyes and rubs the bridge of his nose. Isabella’s sister has moved. That is why she hasn’t responded. She doesn’t know Isabella needs her. Matthew feels Isabella’s helplessness in the world. What will she do if she can’t get to her sister’s? Go back to the family-in-law she despises? Stay at the Fullbrights’ until they throw her out for getting too close to Xavier? She is as fragile as a bird. These things might break her. The vision of her, collapsing at the door that first night he met her, comes to mind. And while he knows that her collapse was due to the hardship of her journey on foot, he can’t help but see it as a signifier of her nature: she can only go so far, and then she will simply stop, crumple, disintegrate.

  Matthew sighs, opens his eyes. He has at his disposal a telegraph machine. Whatever he can do, he will do to track down Isabella’s sister.

  The sky burns blue above Isabella and Xavier as they walk hand in hand along the beach collecting shells. It is only recently that Isabella can set foot on the sand without cold dread creeping through her: the memories of her long trek are still shadowy nightmares in her mind. But it helps that Xavier loves the beach and the sand, and so before the heat of the afternoon sets in she helps him pull on his hat and shoes and bag, and off they go.

  Xavier particularly loves the slender dark pink shells. Isabella is always looking out for perfect white ones. Together they walk on the hard sand near the shore line, occasionally disappearing up to their ankles as the waves wash around them. The big blue-green rollers lift and curl, white horses on their backs, then crash and echo against each other. The sun is warm but not harsh. Xavier finds a long stick of driftwood and shows it to Isabella. Its end is worn down to a point, like a pencil.

  “That is a wonderful stick,” she says. “Good lad.”

  Xavier pushes the end into the sand, then turns around slowly, drawing a circle around him. Isabella claps, then goes up the beach for seaweed to arrange at the top of the circle for hair. Xavier watches as she makes eyes from shells, then finally a big grin from a collection of moss green pipis. Xavier finishes it off by drawing two uneven ears.

  The sea roars on. A seagull flaps past overhead, crying loudly.

  They smile at each other in the sunshine. Isabella remembers Daniel’s face, and tries to imagine what he might have looked like, had she been smiling at him now rather than at Xavier. But his baby features were not yet distinct enough, and she finds herself imagining that he would simply look like Xavier. That somehow Xavier and Daniel, having shared a birthday, were the same person. Dimly, she is aware that this is not rational, but in her heart she feels it is good sense. There is a rightness about her and Xavier being together, alone on the beach in the sunshine, while the world and all its petty mundaneness ticks along on the other side of the pandanuses and wattle trees.

  Then Xavier points at the drawing and says, a
s clearly as the seagull’s cry, “It’s a smiling face.”

  At first Isabella cannot believe what she has heard. Xavier, nearly three, has never spoken. Never. Not “Mama” nor “Dada” nor “supper” nor “play with me.” And here, now, he has said a complete sentence. She is so shocked that at first she doesn’t answer, then suddenly realizes she must answer or risk discouraging him from ever speaking again.

  “Yes,” she says. “He must be happy.” Then for good measure she adds, “As happy as I am when I’m with you.”

  “He must be happy,” Xavier echoes, then his thumb goes back in his mouth.

  “Are you happy, Xavier?” she asks.

  He nods silently; then, as if nothing astonishing has happened, he continues up the beach looking for more pink shells.

  Isabella gathers herself. She knows she should take him home and tell Katarina, but she relishes being the only woman to have heard the child’s sweet voice. She is special to Xavier: this surely proves it. He didn’t speak to his mother, he spoke to Isabella.

  She knows, then, that she will not tell Katarina. Let her spend enough time with her son that she finds out herself.

  Isabella hides a smile: perhaps Xavier won’t talk to anyone but her. The bright sun shines just for her.

  “Xavier, wait for me, my love,” she calls after him, as a wave runs onto the beach, washing away their sand picture.

  Sixteen

  Isabella is on the floor, on her stomach, pretending to be a worm. Xavier giggles madly, as sweet as a little chiming bell. He is supposed to be the bird but cannot stop laughing long enough to play his part. From here, Isabella can see the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle under her bed and knows that it won’t be long until Cook or Katarina or perhaps even Ernest tells her she spends too much time playing and not enough time cleaning up. But when she is with Xavier, tidy doesn’t count. Just the present counts, and holding on to it for as long as possible.