“You have enough now. You have more than enough. Will you go soon?”
Isabella can see that he wants the answer to be no as much as he wants it to be yes.
“I have put so much work into these,” she says, indicating the untidy mess of jewels and silver wire around her. “I will see it through until the end.”
“You could take them to America with you.”
“Berenice is relying on me.”
Matthew nods once, hides his smile, then leaves her be. She reads the telegram again, then dreams a little. She could take this money and buy more gems. Collect more shells, maybe work in gold instead of silver for a while. She would love to try to make a pendant: the chain would take days, but how beautiful it would be. Imagine the things she could make, the prices she could charge. Her name—or rather, Mary Harrow’s name—would be known across the world. She could spend her life making jewels, and employing other women to make them with her. She could have a house like Lady McAuliffe’s, society teas, beautiful gowns. Isabella lets herself flow down this river of fantasy for a while. She is well used to living inside her imagination, for all that it frightens her half to death sometimes.
Then she adds something new to the fantasy: Matthew is there. Matthew is her husband, and every night they curl up next to each other and sleep that way for the whole night. He doesn’t go to work while she sleeps. His body remains next to hers.
Isabella finds she is smiling, then tells herself that these imaginings take up far too much of her energy, and gets back to work.
Matthew has had a cold day out on the deck, buffeted by the sea while he sealed a window that had been letting in rain and draughts. He feels a desire to drink brandy at three o’clock. Just one glass, and he keeps none in the lighthouse. He feels guilty about leaving Isabella to go to town to drink at the Exchange, but she gives no sign of being jealous of his time away from her. She is in the galley kitchen, stirring a pot of pork-and-barley soup.
“Will you be back to eat?” she asks.
“Of course. I will be back at dusk to tend the light.”
“Good, for I should hate to have gone to this much trouble for nothing.”
He smiles at her and touches her hair. She finds cooking difficult and time-consuming, but can spend hours of every day immersed in her jewelry-making. “It won’t be for nothing, my love. I am sure it will be the best soup I’ve ever tasted.” This is a lie. The meals she cooks are universally bland.
She kisses his cheek, and he goes down the hill, the wind whistling in his ears but the imprint of her lips still warm on his skin. The fireplace at the Exchange, which spends more than three hundred and fifty days a year cold and unused, burns brightly. He is greeted at the bar, and then at his seat, where folks pass him and ask him about shipping and the weather, when what they really want to know is if there have been any juicy telegrams that he might divulge.
He never divulges. Yes, he knows the whole town’s business. No, he is not in a mood to share it. Sometimes he believes himself to have the perfect temperament for a telegraph officer: he has never found anything remotely enjoyable about knowing other people’s secrets. If anything, he feels mildly embarrassed to be the first person to know if somebody has become a grandmother, or has lost a fortune, or has unwelcome relatives determined to visit. He has long cultivated the ability to forget all of these things quickly.
Matthew settles at a table under the window where another patron has left a newspaper. He flicks through it idly, only noticing halfway through that it is a week old.
But then, something catches his eye. In among the advertisements, local news and gossip, he sees the small headline, “Missing Woman Sought by Husband’s Family.” His ears ring faintly as he reads: Mrs. Georgiana Winterbourne, mother of late jeweler Arthur Winterbourne of Maystowe in Somerset, seeks news of her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Isabella Winterbourne, presumed to be living in a coastal area between Townsville and Brisbane. She is five feet and seven inches in height, of a slender build, with fair hair and blue eyes. She is twenty-three years of age, and may be living under an alias. A reward is offered for information leading to her discovery. And then an address for Percy Winterbourne in Maryborough, a large town inland to the north.
They are looking for her. Certainly, they haven’t a picture to run with the notice, nor even a particularly specific description—Matthew presumes that this is because, as Isabella so often said, they have never cared much about her—but they are looking for her nonetheless. Leaving his brandy half-finished, he goes to the bar and tries to appear calm as he asks Eunice Hand if she has this week’s paper. She smiles sweetly and rummages under her counter to find it for him.
“Thank you,” he murmurs, returning to his table, where he flicks rapidly through the paper, page by page, his heart growing more relaxed as he doesn’t see it. One notice. Once. By now a memory, kindling for fire.
But then he sees it again. Percy Winterbourne is running it every week. How many weeks has he run the notice? In how many papers? All of them between Townsville and Brisbane? Isabella says they are rich and they are ruthless.
He stands, downs his brandy in one gulp and folds the paper under his arm. He raises a hand in farewell to Eunice and anyone else who calls out to him, and hurries up the cold hill to the lighthouse.
Isabella is no longer in the kitchen. He rattles up the stairs to find her sorting through her materials on the floor. She looks up and says, “I think I have lost a clasp I made.”
He hands her the paper, folded back to the notice. It is only two inches high, one narrow column’s width. But she sees it and her pupils shrink to pinpoints.
“I will be gone in a month,” she says.
“You should go now. Today.” The thought makes his heart shriek with resistance.
“He won’t find me. Not yet. This could be a description of anyone. Can you imagine? Any fair-haired woman who moves to a new town along miles and miles of coastland. He knows that. He is desperate and he is afraid that he’ll never find me. With so many ports along this coast, he knows I could be anywhere in the world.”
“What if Katherine Fullbright sees it? Or Abel Barrett? He must surely have suspicions about you.”
“Abel Barrett won’t say anything,” she says, and she sounds very sure. “Katarina doesn’t read well, and certainly not the notices in the paper.”
“What if he decides to run a picture next time?”
“The only photograph of me is my wedding photograph, which sits on the mantelpiece in the house I shared with Arthur in England. He is hardly going to send for it and wait months for its arrival.” She is less confident now, rationalizing his fears away as if to convince herself.
“You could be gone by the end of the week,” he says. “On your way to America, to your sister.”
“I am honor-bound to take these pieces to Berenice’s friends,” she says. “And besides, I have to travel to Brisbane again to get my money.” She doesn’t meet his eye and, not for the first time, suspicion stirs inside him.
“Matthew, my love,” she continues, “even if Abel Barrett or any other person in town sends Percy a telegram, what will they say? That I was here, but then I stole something and was forced to leave town. Nobody knows I’m here. I am invisible.”
He listens to her, and allows himself to be convinced for now. “We will be careful,” he says. “And you will go the moment you have your money.”
She is shaking her head. “After the ball. I have put so much work in now. I will be gone in little more than a month. You mustn’t worry. We will be careful, as you say. I will be careful.” She reads the notice again, and he sees a spark of fear in her eyes that makes him steely with protective instinct. Yes, even if Percy Winterbourne turned up at the lighthouse door asking if Matthew had seen her, he would do everything in his power to keep her hidden: lie, fight, send him on a wild goose chase to the other side of the country.
Deep down, he knows he has conceded because he wants these last few wee
ks with her. It is not like him to ignore the most practical solution, but he is in love and cannot be blamed. He hopes he won’t come to regret it.
Isabella wonders on which date Xavier will return. She dares not go into town to ask anyone, or even to hide by the mango tree outside the Exchange to wait for Abel Barrett. He said two or three months, and that was two months ago, so it must be soon. She often stands on the upper deck of the lighthouse and gazes at the beach to see if Xavier is there with Cook. Please, not another nanny. But he is never there. It matters little, in any case. She keeps telling herself she is obliged now to sell the jewelry she has made, just as soon as she returns to Brisbane. The truth is, though, she won’t leave until Xavier is back and she can decide what she will do; or, indeed, how she will do it.
She is up on the deck one sparkling morning, her knees under her chin and her feet bare in the sunshine, when Matthew seeks her out.
“A package just arrived for you.” He is frowning.
“What’s wrong?”
“It is addressed to Mary Harrow, care of the light station. You ought not to have given your address, Isabella.”
She takes the package from him and turns it over. The sender is Berenice McAuliffe. “Berenice will not give me away,” she says, not feeling certain. What has Berenice sent her? Its size tells her it must be more than an invitation, which might have just as easily come by telegram and certainly wouldn’t require wrapping in brown paper and string. She climbs to her feet and pushes past him inside, taking the ladder down to the main deck, where her work is cleared away until the afternoon. Here she sits on the floor, her customary position, and unpicks the knots in the string. She folds away the paper and finds inside a deep pink gown. As she unfolds it, a card drops out.
My dear Mary, you are invited, of course, to my annual spring ball to be held at seven in the evening on September the fifteenth, at the Bellevue Hotel ballroom on George Street. I insist that you bring your gentleman friend. I have enclosed a dress (one of mine that Adelaide has altered for you), which you may wear if you have nothing else.
Mary, I have taken an apartment with two rooms for you and your friend at the Bellevue Hotel, which is the finest hotel in Brisbane. If you would be so kind as to be my guest, I will ensure tea is brought to your private dining room at four in the afternoon the day before the ball, where more than a dozen lady friends of mine are keen to view your jewelry.
With much warm sincerity,
Berenice
“So, you are going away again?” Matthew asks lightly, although Isabella knows he feels no particular lightness at the thought.
“We are going away,” she says. She shows him the invitation.
Matthew is already shaking his head. “No, no. I cannot leave the light.”
“Nonsense. Even lighthouse keepers are due holidays, surely? Can’t somebody come and watch the light for a few nights?”
“No. Well, yes. If I apply to the government they will send a locum, but we have only two weeks and . . . Isabella, this is too dangerous. I am not fit for company. Less so are we fit for company as a couple.”
“Nobody knows you in Brisbane,” she says, trying to keep the heat out of her voice.
“But we are not married. We oughtn’t travel together as though—”
“Berenice has taken rooms, not a single room or a bed to share. We will have separate berths on the steamer. People do woo each other, Matthew. They have a courtship and an engagement, and they are allowed to see each other during those times. Please try to remember this is the twentieth century. Women will have the vote soon, and then nobody will dare to judge a woman for traveling with whomever she wishes. Besides”—here she drops her voice low—“Matthew, we are living here without the blessing of marriage anyway. You know that. Why should you be afraid to be accused of something you are?”
She has gone too far, and Matthew colors from the roots of his hair down into his beard. Shame and anger. He turns away, mutters something gruffly, then heads down the ladder and slams the door to the telegraph office. Her heart beats hard, and she takes a deep breath and tells herself to be calm. It matters little if Matthew will not travel with her. She will survive. She will get on.
But there is part of her that so longs for his company, for him to dance with her as though they are in love and together, to show him off to Berenice, who would love his calm practicality and would surely appreciate his manly loveliness.
No, it is a silly fantasy. Matthew won’t come. She stands up and shakes out the dress, holds it against her and admires the silk and expensive lace. But the thought of wearing it to Berenice’s ball is hollow. She wants to look beautiful for Matthew, not for strangers.
She unfastens her dress and slips out of it, then pulls on the ball gown and laces it firmly. She unties her hair and lets it hang loosely around her shoulders, then turns once, trying to see her reflection in the glass cabinet. She catches a glimpse of her waist, the contrast of her white skin against the deep color of the fabric. Then she heads downstairs to show Matthew.
The door to the telegraph office is open, and he is not there. Curious, she moves to the bedroom door. He stands over the chest of old clothes he keeps at the end of the bed, his back turned to her.
“Matthew?”
He turns, sees her, and smiles. “You look beautiful.”
She can see now that he is holding a jacket in his hands. “What’s that?” she says.
“This is the jacket I was married in.”
Her skin feels cool and hot at the same time. “You’re married?”
“I was married. Many years ago. My wife died when she was only twenty. Her name was—”
Isabella quickly presses her fingers against his lips. “Don’t. Not now. I will hear about her in time, but please don’t give me a name just yet, lest I grow to resent it.” She knew, of course, that he must have loved once. A man does not get to his age without loving; but the sting of jealousy she feels surprises her.
He presses his lips together, unhappy but compliant.
She touches the sleeve of his jacket. “Will it still fit?” she asks him.
“I presume so. I am not a man of much appetite, so my body has changed little. If you like, I could wear it to the ball.”
Isabella smiles. “Yes, Matthew. I would like that very much.”
He looks at the jacket sadly. “It is a waste to wear it only once, I suppose.” Then he turns his eyes to her again. “I have already contacted the Telegraph Department. We will go away to Brisbane together for Lady McAuliffe’s spring ball. You can’t travel without my protection. Just in case . . .” He trails off, then gathers himself. “Isabella, I don’t know how much longer I have you, and I want this memory to hold on to.”
She falls into his arms, pressing her face into his shoulder, breathing in his familiar scent. “I am so glad, my love.”
They hold each other, both terribly aware that time is running out.
Twenty-four
The clattering horse-drawn tram drops Isabella and Matthew off outside the Bellevue Hotel on George Street. It stands on the edge of rambling gardens, opposite the parliament house, and is constructed of neat brickwork, wide verandahs and iron lace. Isabella clasps Matthew’s hand firmly. She can tell he is overwhelmed but will not admit it. She squeezes his fingers, but he doesn’t squeeze in return; he is still not comfortable with this open display of affection between them. But more than that, he seems to take no joy from their being in a bustling town where so many eyes can see her. The specter of Percy Winterbourne is on his mind. Certainly, it is on hers too, but she must not let it intimidate her. She needs to sell the jewels if she is to get away.
The entrance hall is large and busy, lined with pedestals that bear stone urns. Isabella can see through to the leafy courtyard past the reception desk. To its left, the huge double doors are open to a large dining room, and she wonders if this is where Lady McAuliffe’s spring ball will be held. Staff dressed in white bustle about laying tables w
ith crisp white linen. Isabella and Matthew sign in at the register and leave their luggage to be sent up in the lift, then find their way up the wide staircase to their apartment.
Matthew visibly relaxes when the door has closed behind them and they are alone. He removes his hat and holds it at his chest with crossed arms. “And your friend, Lady McAuliffe, has paid for all this?” he asks.
“She is very generous. Also, very rich,” Isabella says, pulling off her gloves and laying them on the dining table. The furniture is made of darkly stained cedar. Two high-backed grandmother chairs sit on either side of the door to the verandah. A chaise lounge is pushed against a wall decorated with flocked wallpaper. Isabella opens the door to the first room to see a canopied bed and a cedar dresser with wing mirrors. She goes into the room and pulls the heavy curtains open to inspect the view across the treetops. This kind of luxury is familiar to her; she remembers it in her bones.
Matthew stands at the door. “We have a room each,” he says. “I have discovered mine.”
She comes to him, slides her arms around his middle. “Nothing will keep me from sleeping by your side all night, my love,” she says.
He smiles diffidently and drops his voice low. “I am not used to so many people around. There may be guests just in the next room.”
“They neither know us, nor care about what we do,” she says to soothe him. “Come with me.”
She takes him out onto the verandah, where two cane rocking chairs take in the view of the wide, sluggish river. Matthew runs his fingers over the ornamental ironwork while Isabella sits and rocks. “Is it not splendid?” she breathes.
“Rather too splendid for me.”
A knock at the door makes him jump, and Isabella laughs lightly, touching his hand. “My dear, you worry too much. That will no doubt be Berenice.” She returns inside and opens the heavy wooden door, and it is indeed Berenice, dressed in a silk tea gown. She encloses Isabella in a warm hug, then releases her and stands back to consider Matthew, who hangs back shyly. He is not used to society, and certainly not used to the kind of lavish comfort surrounding him now. He looks out of place: Isabella notices for the first time that his beard needs trimming. She feels a pang for him so sharp and so deep that it almost takes her breath away.
Lighthouse Bay Page 27