The Light Between Oceans (45 page)

CHAPTER 31

SINCE THE INCIDENT
at Mouchemore’s, Hannah hardly sets foot outside the house, and Grace has regressed, becoming more withdrawn, despite her mother’s best efforts.

‘I want to go home. I want my mamma,’ the girl whimpers.

‘I
am
your mummy, Grace, darling. I know it must be confusing for you.’ She puts a finger under the little girl’s chin. ‘I’ve loved you since the day you were born. I waited so long for you to come home. One day you’ll understand, I promise.’

‘I want my dadda!’ the child rejoins, smacking the finger away.

‘Daddy can’t be with us. But he loved you very much. So very much.’ And she pictures Frank, his baby in his arms. The child looks at Hannah with bewilderment, sometimes anger, and eventually resignation.

Walking home from a visit to her dressmaker the following week, Gwen ran over and over the situation. She worried what would become of her niece: it was a sin for a child to suffer that much, surely. She couldn’t stand idly by any longer.

As she passed the edge of the park where it fringed into bush, her eye was drawn to a woman sitting on a bench, staring into the distance. She noticed first the pretty shade of her green dress. Then
she
realised it was Isabel Sherbourne. She hurried past, but there was no risk of Isabel seeing her: she was in a trance. The following day, and the next, Gwen saw her in the same place, in the same dazed state.

Who could say if the idea had already come to her before the to-do over Grace tearing all the pages out of her storybook? Hannah had scolded her, then stood in tears as she tried to gather up the pages of the first book Frank had ever bought for his daughter – Grimms’ fairy tales in German, elaborately illustrated with water-colour plates. ‘What have you done to Daddy’s book? Oh, darling, how could you?’ The girl responded by scrambling under her bed and curling into a ball, out of reach.

‘There’s so little left that’s Frank … ’ Hannah sobbed again as she looked at the ruined pages in her hands.

‘I know, Hanny. I know. But Grace doesn’t. She didn’t do it on purpose.’ She put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Tell you what, you go and have a lie down while I take her out.’

‘She needs to get used to being in her own home.’

‘We’ll just go to Dad’s. He’ll love it, and the fresh air will do her good.’

‘Really, no. I don’t want—’

‘Come on, Hanny. You really could do with a rest.’

Hannah sighed. ‘All right. But just straight there and back.’

As they started down the street, Gwen handed her niece a toffee. ‘You’d like a lolly, wouldn’t you, Lucy?’

‘Yes,’ the child replied, then cocked her head to one side as she noticed the name.

‘Now you be a good girl, and we’ll go and visit Granddad.’

The girl’s eyes flickered at the mention of the man with the big horses and big trees. She wandered along, sucking the toffee. She did not smile, but neither did she scream or howl, Gwen noted.

Strictly speaking, there was no need to pass the park. They
could
have got to Septimus’s house more quickly by taking the route by the cemetery and the Methodist chapel.

‘Are you tired, Lucy? Why don’t we have a bit of a breather? It’s a long way to Granddad’s, and you’re only a little mite …’ The girl merely continued to open and close her thumb and fingers like pincers, experimenting with the stickiness of the toffee residue. Out of the corner of her eye, Gwen saw Isabel on the bench. ‘You run ahead now, that’s a good girl. You run to the bench and I’ll follow.’ The child did not run, but ambled, dragging her rag doll along the ground. Gwen kept her distance and watched.

Isabel blinked. ‘Lucy? Sweetheart!’ she exclaimed, and gathered her into her arms before it occurred to her to see how she’d got there.

‘Mamma!’ cried the child, gripping her tightly.

Isabel turned and at a distance saw Gwen, who gave a nod, as if to say ‘Go on.’

Whatever the woman was doing or why, Isabel did not care. She wept as she hugged the girl and then held her at arms’ length to see her better. Somehow, despite everything, perhaps Lucy could still be hers. A warmth spread through her at the idea.

‘Oh, you’ve got thin, little one! You’re skin and bone. You must be a good girl and eat. For Mamma.’ Gradually she took in the other changes to her daughter: hair parted on the other side; a dress made of fine muslin sprinkled with daisies; new shoes with butterflies on the buckles.

Relief swept over Gwen to see her niece’s response. She was watching a completely different child, suddenly safe with the mother she loved. She left them together for as long as she dared, before approaching. ‘I’d better take her now. I wasn’t sure you’d be here.’

‘But – I don’t understand …’

‘It’s all so dreadful. So hard on everyone.’ She shook her head and sighed. ‘My sister’s a good woman, really she is. She’s been through so much.’ She nodded in the child’s direction. ‘I’ll try to
bring
her again. I can’t promise. Be patient. That’s all I’m saying. Be patient and perhaps …’ She left the sentence hanging. ‘But please, don’t tell anyone. Hannah wouldn’t understand. She’d never forgive me … Come on now, Lucy,’ she said, and held her arms out to the girl.

The child clung to Isabel. ‘No, Mamma! Don’t go!’

‘Come on, sweet thing. Be good for Mamma, won’t you? You need to go with this lady now, but I’ll see you again soon, I promise.’

Still the child clung. ‘If you’re good now, we can come again,’ smiled Gwen, pulling her carefully away.

Some remnant of the rational stopped Isabel from acting on the impulse to snatch the child away. No. If she could be patient, the woman had promised to bring her again. Who knew what else might change with time?

It took Gwen a long while to calm her niece. She cuddled her, and carried her, taking every opportunity to distract her with riddles and snatches of nursery rhymes. She wasn’t sure yet how she would make her plan work, but she simply couldn’t bear to see the poor child kept from her mother any longer. Hannah had always had a stubborn streak, and Gwen feared it was blinding her now. She wondered how likely it was that she could keep the meeting from Hannah. Even if she couldn’t, it was worth trying. When Grace had finally quietened down, Gwen asked, ‘Do you know what a secret is, sweetheart?’

‘Yes,’ she mumbled.

‘Good. So we’re going to play a game about secrets, OK?’

The little girl looked up at her, waiting to understand.

‘You love Mamma Isabel, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And I know you want to see her again. But Hannah might be a bit cross, because she’s very sad, so we mustn’t tell her, or Granddad, all right?’

The child’s face tightened.

‘We have to keep this a special secret, and if anyone asks what we did today, you just say we went to Granddad’s. You mustn’t tell about seeing your mamma. Understand, love?’

The girl kept her lips pursed as she nodded gravely, the confusion showing in her eyes.

‘She’s an intelligent child. She knows Isabel Sherbourne isn’t dead – we saw her at Mouchemore’s.’ Hannah sat again in Dr Sumpton’s consulting room, this time without her daughter.

‘I’m telling you, as a professional, that the only cure for your daughter is time, and keeping her away from Mrs Sherbourne.’

‘I just wondered – well, I thought if I could get her to talk to me – about her other life. Out on the island. Would it help?’

He took a puff of his pipe. ‘Think of it like this – if I’d just taken your appendix out, the last thing to be doing would be to open up the wound every five minutes and prod about again to see if it had healed. I know it’s hard, but it’s a case of least said, soonest mended. She’ll get over it.’

But she showed no sign of getting over it, as far as Hannah could see. The child became obsessed with putting her toys in order and making her bed neat. She smacked the kitten for knocking over the dolls’ house, and kept her mouth snapped shut like a miser’s purse, not wanting to let slip any sign of affection to this imposter mother.

Still, Hannah persevered. She told her stories: about forests and the men who worked in them; about school in Perth and the things she’d done there; about Frank, and his life in Kalgoorlie. She would sing her little songs in German, even though the child paid no particular attention. She made clothes for her dolls and puddings for her dinner. The little girl responded by drawing pictures. Always the
same
pictures. Mamma and Dadda and Lulu at the lighthouse, its beam shining right to the edge of the page, driving away the darkness all around.

From the kitchen, Hannah could see Grace sitting on the lounge room floor, talking to her clothes pegs. These days she was more anxious than ever, except when she was around Septimus, so her mother was glad to see her playing quietly. She came a little closer to the door, to listen.

‘Lucy, eat a toffee,’ said a peg.

‘Yum,’ said another peg, as it gobbled the thin air the child delivered with her fingertips.

‘I’ve got a special secret,’ said the first peg. ‘Come with Auntie Gwen. When Hannah is asleep.’

Hannah watched intently, a cold sickness spreading through her.

From the pocket of her pinafore, Grace took a lemon and covered it with a handkerchief. ‘Goodnight Hannah,’ said Auntie Gwen. ‘Now we visiting Mamma in the park.’

‘Pwoi, pwoi.’ Two other pegs pressed against one another with kisses. ‘My darling Lucy. Come on, sweetheart. Off we go to Janus.’ And the pegs trotted along the rug for a bit.

The whistling of the kettle startled the child, and she turned and saw Hannah in the doorway. She threw the pegs down, saying, ‘Bad Lucy!’ and smacked her own hand.

Hannah’s horror at the charade turned to despair at this last admonishment: this was how her daughter saw her. Not as the mother who loved her, but as a tyrant. She tried to stay calm as she considered what to do.

Her hands shook a little as she made some cocoa and brought it in. ‘That was a nice game you were playing, darling,’ she said, battling the tremor in her voice.

The child sat still, neither speaking nor drinking from the beaker in her hand.

‘Do you know any secrets, Grace?’

The girl nodded slowly.