Lighthouse Bay

by Kimberley Freeman

  She spits, then returns her mouth to the site and sucks some more, then spits again. She doesn’t know what happens next, so she keeps sucking and spitting until he taps her head lightly and says, “Stop now.”

  “Can you walk?”

  “It isn’t far. Damn it. I have a snakebite kit back in the lighthouse. Why didn’t I think to bring it?”

  “Because you didn’t know we’d be rushing off through the woods.” She hangs her head, her cheeks flushing. “It’s my fault.”

  He grasps her wrist with cold fingers. “None of this is your fault.”

  Her eyes fill with tears. “Are you going to die?”

  He shakes his head. “I refuse to die.” He smiles, but his face is tight. “But I will likely be ill.”

  “Can you still walk?”

  His glance slides sideways. “No. I didn’t see what kind of snake it was. There are a number of snakes in these parts, and some are more venomous than others, but I need to stay still. You’ll need to go to Tewantin alone and find help. Carbolic acid. I need to poke it into the wound.”

  The thought of leaving him here, alone and injured, overwhelms her. The next thought, of missing the steamer, or of not having him on it with her, is even worse.

  “I’ll go,” she says. “Carbolic acid.”

  “Ask at the Royal Mail Hotel. Ask anyone. It doesn’t need to be a doctor. Most places in these parts will have a snakebite kit.”

  She climbs to her feet. “I’ll be back soon, my love,” she says, and runs.

  At least it is shadier along the river. She runs a little, walks a little, alternating. Her heart is back in the gully with Matthew, but her mind remains clear and focused. Around the bend a little, she hears voices. Two men, dressed in their shirtsleeves, sit in a shallow fishing boat.

  “Hey there! Hey there!” she shouts, waving to them. She puts on a last desperate burst of speed and runs down to the river’s edge. “Hey there!” she calls again, and this time they turn to see her. “I need your help! My friend has been bitten by a snake!”

  The man at the oars doesn’t hesitate to bring the prow of the boat around and row it towards her.

  “Thank you,” she says, as they draw closer. She sees that they are both Chinese, probably down from the gold fields. “Can you take me to town? I need to get a snakebite kit. Please!”

  “No need,” says the first man, who is fumbling away his fishing rod. “We help. You show us the way to your friend.” He holds out a hand and she takes it firmly, and steps into the boat.

  “This way,” she says, indicating down the river. “It’s not far.”

  They talk to each other in their foreign, twanging music and she keeps a steady lookout for the tree she pulled the vines from. Minutes later, she spots it. “There!” she calls, and the men row her to the bank.

  While they pull their boat up onto the earth, Isabella trudges as quickly as she can up the bank to Matthew. His eyes are closed, but he opens them when he hears her.

  “Isabella? So quick?”

  “I found help,” she gasps, then the Chinese men come into view. One has a small, cloth bag over his shoulder, the other is carrying a soup pot.

  “Carbolic acid?” Matthew says to them, his eyes pleading.

  The taller man shakes his head and pats his bag, and says a Chinese word.

  Matthew struggles to sit. “No, no. I need carbolic acid. I need—”

  The second man puts a hand on Matthew’s shoulder. “This is ancient Chinese remedy. We bring it with us to Australia. You trust us now.”

  Isabella looks from Matthew to the men and doubt creeps into her heart. Has she done the wrong thing? It is too late now. They are here. They are starting a fire and hanging their soup pot over it, boiling water and adding dried herbs while Matthew lies with his head in her lap and his eyes closed.

  “Where you going?” the taller man says, indicating the trunk.

  “We need to catch the steamer tonight. Will he be well enough to travel?”

  “No.”

  “We have to travel. We have to leave today.”

  “Then, yes. But keep him still and quiet. He will be sick a few days.”

  The other man, who is stirring the pot, chimes in. “We take you to Tewantin. No more walking. Still and quiet.”

  Isabella nods. Still and quiet. The smell of the herbs boiling is pungent and musky. Matthew is very pale. She strokes his hair.

  Finally, the medicine is poured into a cup, allowed to cool a little, then offered to Matthew to drink. He sits up, and sips it slowly.

  “Drink it all,” the smaller man says. “Then we take you to the wharf.”

  Matthew eyes them both dubiously, then takes a deep breath and drinks the whole thing. They fill his cup again, and he drinks that too. His face twists at the taste.

  “Come on. Up,” the taller man says, hefting her trunk.

  Isabella supports Matthew as he climbs to his feet. She feels his size, his weight. Then he balances himself unsteadily and follows the men down to their boat.

  The river is quiet and smooth, gliding underneath them as the men row. What next, Isabella thinks. What next?

  Percy waits. He hasn’t brought his pocket watch, but he assumes that ten o’clock has come and gone. He sits on a log that has been cut into a stool and harrumphs about the heat and the wait.

  The man who has the carriage prepared glances about irritably. “Not like Seaward to be late.”

  Percy begins to understand that they are not coming. They suspect he is waiting for them, and they are still hiding in the nightmare woodlands. Curse them.

  He turns to the man and says, “How far is Mooloolah?”

  “About forty miles.”

  “Any other way he can get there?”

  “No, sir. Not unless he walks.”

  And would they walk forty miles to catch the ship to Sydney? He suspects they would. By his reckoning, Isabella walked fifty to get here after the shipwreck.

  “He’ll be along shortly, sir, I’m sure.”

  The longer he waits, the farther away they will be. But if he leaves now, he can be there ahead of them either way. He can put out the word for them.

  Percy stands and paces. His eyes sting with tiredness. Finally, he turns to the man. “I’ll take my own coach. Meet them there. Don’t tell Seaward. Don’t tell him anything.”

  “I won’t, sir.”

  Percy holds up a cautionary finger, then turns and runs back towards his waiting coach.

  The driver stops to water his horses some distance south. Percy gets out to stretch his legs, glaring at the dirt road and the flat, yellow-green landscape. He has no food but doesn’t want to risk stopping at a hotel on the way, in case Seaward and Isabella got ahead of him on the carriage.

  “Do you have any food?” he demands of the driver.

  The driver shakes his head.

  “Never mind,” Percy mutters. “I’ll eat when we arrive.”

  “Seeing someone off at the wharf?” the driver asks. He has accompanied Percy on this journey since Brisbane, and is growing increasingly curious about the continual change of locations.

  “I hope to meet somebody there. They’re on their way down by foot.”

  The driver laughs. “From Lighthouse Bay? Unlikely, sir.”

  “Desperate people,” Percy said. “They want to avoid me. Won’t I be a surprise?” He smiles, and the driver recoils almost imperceptibly.

  “Nearest port to Lighthouse Bay is Tewantin, sir. Nobody in their right mind would walk to Mooloolah. The steamer leaves Tewantin for Brisbane tonight.”

  Electricity shoots through Percy’s veins. What an idiot he has been. This country is like a string of coastal towns, connected by ports and telegraph stations, clinging to the damply hot margins of a great desert. Of course they would go to the nearest port. If only he had thought to ask, before now, where that might be.

  “How far is Tewantin, then? Are we nearly there?”

  “Passed the turn-off
an hour ago.”

  Percy kicks the wheel of the coach, screaming with frustration and more than a little pain as the blow jolts back up into his foot. “Right, right. No time to lose. Get us back on the road. Tewantin. The port. As quickly as you can.”

  “Right you are, sir,” the driver says.

  Percy climbs back into the coach, ants in his belly. For the first time, he starts to fear he might lose her.

  The Plover isn’t yet waiting at the wharf, so Isabella and Matthew sit on a carved wooden bench in the shade of an old whitewashed sawmill, with the trunk at their feet. Matthew is unwell, but he grows no worse and Isabella allows herself to believe that he will recover. If only the steamer would come. She has purchased the last two saloon tickets from the office in town, and she turns them over in her hands, again and again, to make the time go faster. She plays a game with herself: if she looks away for two minutes, when she looks up again she will see the steamer in the distance, plying its way upriver. But the game doesn’t work because she cannot stop watching the horizon.

  She stands and begins to pace. Across the rough-hewn boards to the water’s edge. Back to the seat. Touch the sawmill wall. Across to the water’s edge. She counts while she paces. Every hundred paces she stops for a moment to peer downriver. Paces again. A strong wind springs up, rattling the upper branches of the tall gums behind the wharf. Crows and seagulls flap away, startled.

  Matthew watches her—stooped and pale—a slight smile on his lips. “Don’t worry. If the snake didn’t stop us, then nothing can.”

  “I’ll just be happier once we’re on the way.”

  “I know.” He moves to get to his feet, but she hurries over to push him back down.

  “Still and quiet,” she says.

  She moves back to the center of the wharf. Three other people have joined them, all men with tickets for the deck. She feels a little safer with more people around. She turns, looks back up the wharf to the road.

  And freezes.

  In a second, she has her trunk in her hand and she pulls Matthew from his seat and yanks him with her down the wharf.

  “What?” he gasps.

  “Percy,” she replies. They duck in between two wooden buildings. One is the sawmill, abandoned now with its door sagging on its hinges. She cracks open the door and pulls Matthew inside. It is cool and dark, and smells of sawdust and oil. Pigeons roost in the roof beams, up near a series of high, grimy windows.

  “Are you sure?” Matthew asks.

  “I saw him stepping out of a coach up on the road. He didn’t see me. Oh God, how did he find us?” Her heart thuds.

  Matthew shakes his head, moving to stand by the door to guard it. “Deduction, I imagine. The nearest port. It was the most likely place for us to go.”

  “Then why did we come here?” She sinks to her knees, her hands in her hair. “And now, he will wait right there, hoping to see us. And he will see us if we try to board the steamer.”

  Matthew is there a moment later, pulling her to her feet. She remembers that he is ill, and shakes herself out of self-pity.

  “Let us wait and see,” he says. “The steamer doesn’t depart for another two hours.”

  She searches the space with her eyes. Machinery, dusty and perpetually stopped, fills the building. Wheels with belts on them, pumps and ropes and chains. A large platform catches her eye, and she takes Matthew to it—his arm over hers—and sits him down on the bottom stair. She climbs onto the platform, where she can see a beam of daylight through a chink between boards.

  Isabella lowers herself to her knees and presses her left eye against the chink. It affords her a view down to the wharf. She holds her breath. Percy walks past. Then a few moments later he walks back. He is pacing the wharf.

  She comes back to sit with Matthew. “He is certainly waiting for us.”

  “Let me think.”

  She returns to the chink and watches. There he is, in his yellow waistcoat, reappearing and disappearing in a slow rhythm. More passengers begin to crowd onto the wharf. She knows Percy will search every one of their faces, looking for hers. And then . . .

  “What would he do to you?” Matthew asks, as if reading her thoughts. His body flexes forward protectively.

  Isabella rises, and comes to sit with him on the step. “He would hand me over to the police.”

  Matthew nods. “Then why hasn’t he called the police? Why does he not have them here with him?”

  “Because he wants me alone first.” Helpless desperation crosses Matthew’s brow. She drops her head, her cheeks flaming as she remembers the liberties Percy took with her in her own home. “Would I hang for stealing the mace?” she asks. It is the first time she has acknowledged it is stealing. Until now, until this moment of reckoning, she saw it as keeping something that was presumed lost, something nobody expected to see again anyway.

  He doesn’t answer, and she wonders whether he doesn’t know or whether he doesn’t want to say.

  Then, in the distance, they hear the sound of the steamer’s whistle.

  “She’s coming,” Isabella breathes.

  Matthew puts his elbows on his knees and drops his head to his hands. They wait in the quiet mill, as the sound of the steamer draws closer. Isabella returns to her vantage point to watch the steamer dock, watch the passengers leave, watch supplies be lifted off and on. The crowd disperses a little: many of them were waiting to greet friends. The loading of the steamer takes forever, and still Percy strides about, eyes towards the road, waiting for them.

  As the afternoon grows cool and the shadows lengthen, Percy begins to doubt himself. Hours, he has waited. Hours upon hours. He could have been farther along, on the way to Mooloolah. Is that where they are? Or are they still in the bush somewhere? Perhaps they have met their death at the hands of natives or wild dogs. The thought gives him no pleasure. He wants to rip her to pieces with his own hands. A quiet death in the wilderness is not revenge. And he wants the mace back. If it were lost in the bush somewhere, it might be lost forever.

  A pain blazes in his head. He has never felt so uncertain and it makes him angry. Why did Arthur have to die? He continues to pace, clenching and unclenching his fists, looking out for any flash of fair hair that might be Isabella.

  The passengers begin to board just as dusk comes to the wharf. Saloon class first: mostly gentlemen in their well-cut suits, but an occasional wife or daughter in broad-brimmed hat and fitted coat. Isabella paces now, while Matthew sits—still and quiet and very pale—on his step.

  “We are running out of time,” she says.

  “When is the next steamer to Brisbane?”

  “Seven days away.”

  Matthew climbs to his feet.

  “What are you doing?” she asks.

  “I am going to end this.”

  Her stomach turns to water. “Matthew? What do you mean?”

  The whistle blows. A bosun walks up and down the wharf ringing a bell. “All aboard who’s coming aboard!”

  “That’s it,” she says, panic gripping her. “That’s the last call.”

  He walks to the trunk and picks it up. She rattles down the stairs. “What are you doing? You’re not going out there.”

  He hands her the trunk. “No. You are.”

  “What?”

  “Get on the steamer. I’ll try to join you, but don’t wait for me. Go inside and go to your berth and keep yourself and our baby safe.” He swallows hard. “I will distract Percy long enough.”

  Her heart feels like it will burst. “Please, Matthew, no. Don’t put yourself in danger.”

  “I still hope to join you,” he says.

  “But how?”

  He grasps her chin gently, his fingers firm and warm on her face. “No matter what you hear, get on the steamer. Do you understand? No matter what you hear.”

  She is caught in his gaze. Her mouth trembles. She sobs once.

  “Do you understand?” he asks again.

  “Yes,” she says. “Yes, Matthew.�
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  He kisses her softly, then points to the door they came in, and nods once. Then he turns and shuffles to the rear door of the sawmill. He finds it closed and locked, so he picks up a piece of metal from the ground and prizes it open. It gives.

  Matthew turns, and points to her door again. She takes a moment to memorize his face, then turns and goes to the door.

  She pauses at the corner of the building, in the dark alley between the sawmill and the warehouse next door. The gas lamps along the wharf are now lit. Only one or two people hurry towards the gangplank. Percy, in his yellow waistcoat, stands directly in front of it, with his eyes turned to the road.

  Then, she hears her own name called.

  “Isabella! Isabella, come on! The steamer is ready to leave!”

  At first she is puzzled, because it is Matthew calling her. But he is calling her from the road, his back turned away as though she is up there. Momentarily, the thought flashes across her mind that the snake venom has affected his brain, but then she sees Percy galvanize, start running towards the road, and she knows what to do.

  She touches her belly once. “Come, little one.” Then she dashes to the gangplank, brandishing her ticket.

  “Downstairs to the saloon, ma’am,” the bosun says.

  “There will be another man. A tall man with a beard. I have his ticket.” She shows it to him. “He will be here. I know . . .” She trails off, helplessness stopping up her throat.

  “I’ll keep an eye out, ma’am. Make yourself comfortable down there.”

  She cannot stay here and look out for Matthew lest Percy see her. She collects her trunk and makes her way down the stairs, through to the berths. She stores her trunk at one end, then climbs onto the bed and waits, eyes open, hoping for the best, but fearing the very worst.

  Time moves slowly, like molasses. Isabella can hear her heart beating. Flick, flick, flick. It is very quiet in the berth. The noises of the steamer, the voices in the saloon, are all muted by the bedding and the curtains.

  Flick, flick, flick.

  Did he make it? If he’d made it, he would have been here by now.

  Flick, flick, flick.

  Deep inside her, another heartbeat. Matthew’s child. She will raise the child to know all about his father. She will instill all the values Matthew held: constancy, patience, wisdom. Tears brim, but she blinks them back. She has always known she would lose him.