The Lightkeeper's Wife - By Karen Viggers Page 0,1

smile split his lips. ‘But you won’t, Mary. You’ve had things your way for so long. Now this is for me. It’s something I need.’

He limped to the sliding doors and then glanced back. In spite of her fear, she was moved: in his look was embedded everything that had not been done, everything that had not been said.

This was it, then. The end of it.

‘Goodbye, Mary.’

She listened to the uneven scrape of his feet moving down the hall.

‘Don’t make me do this,’ she called.

But she heard the front door close with a bang, and she knew that he had gone.

PART I

Origins

1

For three days, the letter stayed on the table untouched. Every time Mary looked at it her heart thrashed like a wild bird in a cage. She bent her life around it, trying to avoid the kitchen, eating in the lounge room with a plate perched awkwardly on her lap, drinking tea hurriedly at the sink, and taking the phone out of the room whenever anyone rang. It was ridiculous and she knew it, but the handwriting on the front of the envelope made her nervous. God knows why she couldn’t dispose of the thing; she ought to toss it in the bin or burn it in the fireplace, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it.

She lived with a heightened sense of panic, sleeping fitfully. What if the letter bearer returned? She had to act. But what to do? The letter was a burden—the past and the future rolled into one. She became grumpy and irritable. This ought to be a time of peace, with Jack gone and her own health declining. But the letter was projecting her back into life. It insisted she take control.

On the third night, she found a feasible idea among her restless thoughts, and the next morning she shuffled into the study and riffled through a pile of papers on the desk, seeking the brochure someone had given her months ago. She’d been keeping it, waiting. The letter was the catalyst. It was time to go back. Her hand had been forced and she must address the past before she could decide what to do.

She found the brochure beneath an old electricity bill and called the number printed on it; then she opened the phone book on the kitchen bench and made another call. Afterwards, she pulled out a suitcase, folding into it neat stacks of underwear, poloneck sweaters, jumpers, woollen trousers, a coat, a thick scarf and a hat.

When her clothes were packed she went to fetch the letter. Her hand hovered over it and a wry smile twisted her face: she was behaving as if the letter might explode. And in a sense she supposed this was true. It had erupted into her life and could well blow apart what time she had left. Finally she picked it up, feeling the smooth texture of the paper with her thumb as she carried it to the bedroom and slipped it into a side pocket of the suitcase. Then she turned to the bookshelf and grasped an old photo album which she placed in the case on top of the clothes. Now she was ready.

In the quiet of the room, she gazed at the dark shadows that angled across the bed and lingered in the corners. She had lived here, in this old Hobart house, for twenty-five years, sharing her husband’s retirement and decline—the terrible process of watching someone you love retreating from life.

Twenty-five years: a large portion of their lives together. Much had happened—ageing, a grandchild. Even so, she’d never really thought of Hobart as home. For her, it would always be Bruny Island. The light reflecting on the shifting water. The hollow voice of the wind. The lighthouse. The wide southern stretch of Cloudy Bay . . . It was right she should go there now, to the place she first met Jack, where she first came alive. And more than that; she owed it to Jack. On Bruny, she would remember him more clearly. Somehow, there she would reunite with him, relive the good times—those early days when the foundation of their love was shaped and their commitment was sealed.

She also owed it to herself to return. Time was running out, and there were old emotional wounds she needed to attend to before she died—matters neglected amid the soothing monotony of daily life. She needed to find peace and inner calm. To settle into self-acceptance. To grant herself release