The Light Between Oceans (23 page)

Septimus was the seventh and last child of a Bermondsey ironmonger who had waited only three days after the baby’s birth before departing this world under the hooves of a runaway carthorse. His mother had done her best to keep the family together, but after a few years, as consumption burrowed away at her, she knew she had to secure her children’s future. She dispatched as many of them as she could to relatives around and about London, where they could be free help to the people who took them in. But her lastborn was too young to be anything but a drain on scarce resources, and one of his mother’s last acts was to secure passage to Western Australia for him, alone.

As he put it decades later, that sort of experience either gives you a taste for death, or a thirst for life, and he reckoned death would come calling soon enough anyway. So when he was gathered up by a round, sunburnt woman from the Seafarer’s Mission, and sent to a ‘good home’ in the South West, he went without complaint or question: who would have listened to either? He started a new life in Kojonup, a town well east of Partageuse, with Walt and Sarah Flindell, a couple who eked out a living as sandalwood pullers. They were a good sort of people, but shrewd enough to know that being so light, sandalwood could be loaded and manoeuvred even by a child, so they agreed to take the little boy in. As for Septimus, after his time on the ship, having a floor that stayed still and people who didn’t begrudge you your daily bread was paradise.

So Septimus got to know this new country to which he had been shipped like a parcel without an address, and grew to love Walt and Sarah and their practical ways. The little hut on their patch of cleared land had neither glass in the windows nor running water, but, in the early days, somehow there always seemed to be enough of what was needed.

When eventually the precious sandalwood, sometimes worth more than gold, was virtually wiped out by over-harvesting, Walt and Septimus turned instead to work on the new timber mills that were
opening
up around Partageuse. The building of new lighthouses along the coast meant that shipping cargo along that route changed from a sheer gamble to an acceptable commercial risk, and new railways and jetties allowed the forests to be chopped up and shipped out to anywhere in the world, right from their doorstep.

Septimus worked like a devil and said his prayers, and cadged reading and writing lessons from the Pastor’s wife on Saturdays. He never spent a halfpenny he didn’t have to, and never missed an opportunity to make one. The thing about Septimus was, he seemed to see opportunities where other people couldn’t. Though he grew to no more than five foot seven in his boots, he carried himself like a much bigger man, and always dressed as respectably as funds allowed. At times this meant he looked almost dapper, and at the very least it meant clean clothes for church on Sunday, even if he’d had to wash them at midnight to get the sawdust out of them after an all-day shift.

All of this stood him in good stead when, in 1892, a newly made baronet from Birmingham was passing through the colony in search of somewhere exotic to invest a little capital. Septimus seized the chance to make a start in business, and convinced the baronet to put up the money for a small land deal. Septimus smartly trebled the investment, and by careful risk and shrewd re-investment of his cut, soon set himself up in business in his own right. By the time the colony joined the newly formed nation of Australia in 1901, he was one of the richest timber men for miles around.

Times had been prosperous. Septimus had married Ellen, a debutante from Perth. Hannah and Gwen were born, and their home, Bermondsey, became a watchword for style and success in the South West. Then, at one of her famous picnics in the bush, served on a dazzle of linen and silver, his cherished wife was bitten just above the ankle of her pale kid boot by a dugite, and died within the hour.

Life, thought Septimus, when his daughters had returned to the cottage the day the mysterious letter arrived: you could never trust the bastard. What it gives with one hand, it takes away with the other. Finally reconciled with Hannah when her baby was born, then the husband and child disa-bloody-ppear into nowhere, leaving his daughter a wreck. Now some troublemaker was stirring things up again. Well, you just had to count your blessings and be thankful things weren’t worse.

Sergeant Knuckey sat at his desk, tapping his pencil on his blotter, watching the tiny lead trails. Poor bloody woman. Who could blame her for wanting the baby to be alive? His Irene still cried sometimes about young Billy, and it had been twenty years since he’d drowned as a tot. They’d had five more kids since then, but it was never far away, the sadness.

Really, though, there wasn’t a snowflake’s chance in hell that the baby was still alive. All the same, he took a fresh sheet of paper and started on a report of the incident. The Roennfeldt woman deserved the formalities, at least.

CHAPTER 17

‘
YOUR HUSBAND IS
at peace in God’s hands
.’ Hannah Roennfeldt runs over the phrase again and again on the day of the mysterious letter. Grace is alive, but Frank is dead. She wants to be able to believe the one and not the other. Frank. Franz. She recalls the gentle man whose life was turned upside down so many times along the curious path which somehow led him to her.

The first reverse saw him ripped from his life of privilege in Vienna as a boy of sixteen, as his father’s gambling debts drove them all the way to relatives in Kalgoorlie, a place so remote from Austria that even the most ardent creditor would give up the chase. From luxury to austerity, the son taking on the trade of baker in the shop run by his uncle and aunt, who since their arrival years before had changed from Fritz and Mitzie into Clive and Millie. It was important to blend in, they said. His mother understood this, but his father, with the pride and stubbornness that had triggered his financial ruin, resisted adaptation, and within the year had thrown himself under a train bound for Perth, leaving Frank as head of the household.

Months later, war brought internment as an enemy alien – first on Rottnest Island, then over East – for this boy who was now not simply uprooted and bereaved, but despised, for things done far away and beyond his control.

And never once had he complained, thought Hannah. Frank’s ready, open smile was undiminished by the time she met him in Partageuse in 1922, when he came to work in the bakery.

She remembered the first time she had seen him, on the main street. The spring morning was sunny but October still brought a nip with it. He had smiled at her, and proffered a shawl she recognised as her own.

‘You left it in the bookshop, just now,’ he said.

‘Thank you. That’s very kind.’

‘It is a beautiful shawl, with such embroidery. My mother used to have one like it. Chinese silk is very costly: it would be a pity to lose it.’ He gave a respectful nod, and turned to go.

‘I haven’t seen you here before,’ said Hannah. Nor had she heard his charming accent.

‘I have just started at the baker’s. I am Frank Roennfeldt. Pleased to meet you, ma’am.’

‘Well, welcome to Partageuse, Mr Roennfeldt. I hope you’ll like it here. I’m Hannah Potts.’ She rearranged her parcels, trying to pull the shawl over her shoulders.

‘Please, allow me,’ he said, draping it around her in one fluid movement. ‘I wish you an excellent day.’ Again, he flashed an open smile. The sun caught the blue of his eyes and made his fair hair shine.

As she crossed the street to her waiting sulky, she noticed a woman nearby give her a piercing look and spit on the pavement. Hannah was shocked, but said nothing.

A few weeks later, she visited Maisie McPhee’s little bookshop once again. As she entered, she saw Frank standing at the counter, under attack from a matron who was waving her stick to make her point. ‘The very idea, Maisie McPhee!’ the woman was declaring. ‘The very notion that you could sell books that support the Boche. I lost a son and a grandson to those animals, and I don’t expect to see you sending them money like a Red Cross parcel.’

As Maisie stood speechless, Frank said, ‘I am sorry if I caused any offence, ma’am. It is not Miss McPhee’s fault.’ He smiled and held the open book towards her. ‘You see? It is only poetry.’

‘Only poetry, my foot!’ the woman snapped, thumping her stick on the ground. ‘Not a decent word ever came out of their mouths! I’d heard we had a Hun in town, but I didn’t think you’d be bold enough to rub it in our faces like this! And as for you, Maisie!’ She faced the counter. ‘Your father must be turning in his blessed grave.’

‘Please, I am very sorry,’ said Frank. ‘Miss McPhee, please keep the book. I did not mean to offend anyone.’ He put a ten-shilling note on the counter and walked out, brushing past Hannah without noticing her. The woman stormed out after him, clacking her way down the street in the opposite direction.

Maisie and Hannah looked at one another for a moment, before the shopkeeper assembled a bright smile and said, ‘Got your list there, Miss Potts?’

As Maisie ran her eye down the page, Hannah’s attention wandered to the abandoned book. She was curious how the dainty volume bound in forest-green leather could have caused such offence. Opening it, the gothic print on the flyleaf caught her eye: ‘
Das Stunden Buch – Rainer Maria Rilke
.’ She had learned German at school along with her French, and had heard of Rilke.

‘And,’ she said, taking out two pound notes, ‘do you mind if I take this book too?’ When Maisie looked at her in surprise, Hannah said, ‘It’s about time we all put the past behind us, don’t you think?’

The shopkeeper wrapped it in brown paper and tied it with string. ‘Well, to be honest, it saves me trying to send it back to Germany. No one else’ll buy it.’

At the baker’s a few moments later, Hannah put the little parcel on the counter. ‘I wonder if you could give this to Mr Roennfeldt please. He left it behind at the bookshop.’

‘He’s out the back. I’ll give him a cooee.’

‘Oh, there’s no need. Thanks very much,’ she said, and left the shop before he had a chance to say anything else.

A few days later, Frank called on her to thank her in person for her kindness, and her life began a new path, which at first seemed like the most fortunate she could have dreamed of.