Wildlight Read online

  He checked his watch. Early still. On a clear morning he’d be pulling pots in the dark, the first hint of dawn the eastern horizon purpling to a bruise. Before the sun tipped above the ocean, the promise of light would amplify the sky—a curtain turned blood orange, the Mewstone toy-like against its breadth. Tom might look up to the island to see a solitary light—a figure at work inside the weather station, or pacing to the weather screen. Below the main house stood the grand old lighthouse, regal in contrast to the automated light.

  Tom relived the morning’s stilted radio conversation. Every cray boat within range would have pricked their ears at a posh female voice. In the galley, Frank had stuck out his bum and pouted. Maatsuyker returning to standby. She made a change to the usual carry-on.

  Tom-Tom has a sweetheart, Frank had smirked. There’d been no getting out of explaining Stephanie West to Frank and how they’d met. So that’s why you packed a set of good clothes this trip, his brother said knowingly. You couldn’t slip anything past him. A looker, is she?

  Tom had done his best to sound casual. She’s all right. He couldn’t ignore Habib’s grin. What? He’d felt himself colour, folded his arms. I don’t even know her.

  Have a shower, Tom-Tom. Get yourself spruced up. Can’t go calling on your chickadee stinking of fish bait and seaweed.

  They’d had a full month of fishing down here on their own, trying to stay under the radar. The grand sum of radio traffic had been the occasional yacht beating its way around South West Cape to Port Davey, a lonesome helmsman relaying his boat’s coordinates to Tasmar Radio, or requesting updates on the weather. Now that the fishing season was officially underway, the volley of chatter between the cray boats seemed as boisterous as the furries sprawled across Seal Rock.

  You mind what you say, Frank warned when Tom left the boat to come ashore. How easy it would be for Stephanie to let slip some innocent remark over the VHF, to confirm what half the fleet would already suspect: they’d been fishing illegally for weeks. There was no way Tom could think to caution her without implicating himself. He scuffed his boot across the track. Nineteen years old: he couldn’t play the minor any more; he was every bit as liable as Frank. It would do their mother in to know the half of it.

  A large iron wheel—the whim—sat rusted in the bush. It came from a time when horsepower meant just that. The light keeper’s nag would have paced an endless circle whenever the supply ship called, turning the whim that drove the winch that wound the cable that inched the laden trolley up and down the slope. Worthless now; the horse retired when diesel power took over.

  The track from the Gulch emerged at the northern extent of the road. Wet grass clippings coated Tom’s boots. He crossed to an old shed and peered in through clouded glass at a large diesel engine and capstan. Even diesel proved a short-lived reign, a blink when you considered the human history of this place. Haulage way, trolleys and whim—the whole shebang shut down and engines left to seize and rust when helicopters superseded boats to resupply Tasmanian lights.

  Tom recalled an old black and white photo of women seated in an open trolley being winched up the haulage way, scarves knotted beneath their chins, heavy skirts and pants, their shoes wedged against the backboard as casual as you please. Those lighthouse women entrusted their lives to the workings of the whim, the weight of their faith balanced on a single steel cable that held the trolley taut. One failure, one breakage—snap!—they’d all have toppled down. Tom’s stomach turned at the prospect of mechanical failure, the thought of Perlita Lee pushing into heavy weather, her engine whining under strain.

  Twice on the boat and once at home in Hobart Tom had had the same strange dream, had woken with bursting lungs from the sensation of swallowing the ocean. Sleep apnoea, his mother called it. Bad dreams, cold sweats, Lee used to suffer the exact same thing. Lee, she called his father, like the mention of a family friend.

  It seemed to Tom that his enslavement to his brother Frank played out as a lesson he was yet to comprehend. Tom knew only what he didn’t want, that the prospect of fishing all the days of his life—his only compensation a wallet full of cash and getting trashed the nights they were in port—was a form of living death. It wasn’t the money that held him, not the way it had Frank by the throat. Tom felt rudderless. He had no wheel or sail or course to follow; he had no fucking clue. He wished someone as solid as Bluey MacIntyre would turn to him and say, See there, son, that track along there? That’s the way you’re meant to go.

  Tom had been only a few days old when his father died, he had no sense of him at all. All Tom saw and felt, all he smelled and tasted when he squeezed his eyes shut, was Southern Ocean and salt-cracked lips and shreds of torn weed. His days rolling and pitching across its belly, his nightmares drowning in it. Little-boy fear, Frank’s smirks said.

  Those lighthouse women, sassy as seagulls. Tom envied their strength. It took rigid faith, or trust, or maybe it was bald-faced arrogance, to lean back in a wooden trolley and relish the view while being winched, near vertical in places, up four hundred metres of precipitous slope.

  8

  Tom looked taller. He’d brushed his hair. He waited at the flyscreen door, hands in pockets, trying not to appear as he did: tense and awkward. They’d spoken on the radio but all Steph could manage was a flaky, ‘Hi there’. She chose to overlook his home-knitted jumper, the neatly pressed jeans. The girls from school would have carved him into pieces with their laughter.

  ‘Mum wants to meet you. She’s having a shower right now. We could take a look around.’

  Tom followed her through each room of the house. Steph had to slow and wait. At each stop he gazed around, turned his eyes to the ceilings, soaked in the surrounds. ‘This must have been top-notch in its day. A haven from the elements.’

  Top-notch. No one said that. Steph tried to see it through his eyes. Fix up the cracks, ditch the carpet, new kitchen, appliances, laundry, bathroom, heat the place fifteen degrees—maybe. She’d tidied her room, made her bed, Blu-Tacked her illustrations to the wall. Tom studied the details of the lighthouse. ‘You do these?’ Gran was the only person who took an interest in her art.

  ‘For a model I’m going to make.’

  He studied each drawing in turn. ‘They’re good. Really good.’

  He wasn’t the kind to say things to be nice. An expression glanced through Steph’s thoughts that reminded her of things not right about her school: the snobby girls who looked down on her, who whispered slurs behind her back. Free ride, they called Steph’s tenure at the school that relied on a scholarship now that her father wasn’t working. Those girls would know, the moment Tom uttered a word, would broadcast with looks amongst themselves, that Tom wasn’t from a private school, that even if he was rich he wouldn’t be the right kind of rich, that in his home-knitted jumper and carefully ironed jeans, Tom Forrest, gorgeous as he was, was most definitely and categorically not the kind that counted. Not long-term. Flotsam they’d call him to be kind; Scum, behind her back. Even the imagined voices of their disparagement, all these miles from home, held the power to subdue.

  They walked around the outside of the house and stopped at the picket fence that overlooked the bay. The ocean shimmered in the sun. Steph saw the long band of cirrus cloud sailing in from the horizon. Soon the sunlight would be gone. A sea eagle glided overhead, criss-crossed high above them. ‘Look at that,’ Tom said. ‘How good is this place?’

  Steph nodded as you do before you’ve fully thought about the truth of things. ‘You think?’

  ‘All this?’ He held his arms out to the view. ‘I’d swap you.’

  Steph avoided taking him past the bathroom—she could do without his first impression of her mother being one of a woman over forty parading naked before the window.

  They angled up the grass behind the house. She showed him to the weather office and went through what she did each day. New Harbour. Mt Counsel. Louisa Bay. The Ironbounds. Tom knew all the landmarks along the coast that Steph used to measur
e visibility, the heights of cloud. They sat on the grass behind the office, sheltered in the sun.

  ‘How did you learn about all this? The weather. Clouds.’

  Steph confessed. ‘I only know enough to get by. It’s getting easier. You start to see a pattern.’ She handed him binoculars and pointed to Moderate and Heavy Rocks, used to gauge the ocean swell.

  ‘They look minuscule from up here.’ He pointed across the bay. ‘We’ll be somewhere over there tonight. New Harbour, probably. You might be able to see our light.’ Then he nudged her. ‘We’ll definitely see yours.’

  A Dad joke but still it made her laugh. ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘Over there? Cliffs, coves, beaches. You never see anyone. Creeks the colour of black tea.’ He stopped. ‘Maybe we can get you over there.’

  ‘Serious?’

  ‘I could check with Frank.’

  Steph closed her eyes to the cry of birds, the dips in light, the rush of cold when clouds skidded across the sun.

  ‘You like doing the weather?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ she said, realising in that moment that she did. ‘Other than getting up in the dark. Dad insists on setting his alarm, just in case.’

  ‘Mum’s the same.’

  So he lived at home. ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Nineteen. You?’

  ‘Seventeen. At the end of the year.’

  ‘What does your father do?’

  ‘He reads the news on Radio National.’ Steph rested on her elbow. She didn’t want to talk about her parents. ‘You like crayfishing?’

  ‘Has its moments. On a nice day, when it’s calm and sunny. For the most part it’s cold and wet and the wind’s howling. You wouldn’t want to be doing it forever.’

  ‘What will you do? After this.’

  He rose to his feet, brushed grass from his jeans. ‘Million dollar question.’

  Steph took him back to the house. Her mother gushed. ‘Tom. I’m Gretchen.’ It occurred to Steph that Tom was a novelty: they hadn’t had boys in the house since Callam and his friends. She wore low-cut jeans, a wide belt. Her hair was loose. Everything looked shapely on her mother. Tom seemed entranced.

  ‘I’ve put coffee on,’ Mum said. ‘Will you have some, Tom?’

  ‘It smells great.’

  ‘Actually,’ Steph broke in, ‘I was going to show Tom the lighthouse. He only has an hour or two.’

  Tom’s focus remained fixed on her mother. ‘I was speaking to James on the road. He told me you grew up here.’

  ‘You met Dad?’ Tom didn’t answer. Steph may as well have not been in the room.

  ‘When I wasn’t at school in Hobart I spent every second on Maat. My father was posted here close to four years.’

  ‘Was the haulage way in use?’

  ‘It most certainly was.’ Mum’s hands danced through the air. ‘When I think about the supplies, the gear, the drums of fuel winched up that slope.’ She turned to Steph. She was hatching a plan. ‘The three of us could walk to the end of the road and open the old sheds, show Tom how the whim used to work.’ She turned to Tom. ‘Steph hasn’t been there yet.’

  Steph bristled. She’d been to the end of the road. She’d walked the track down to the Gulch.

  ‘I—’ Tom started. ‘I’m not sure how . . . what are we doing?’ He looked to Steph.

  Steph huffed. ‘It’s totally up to you.’

  ‘Maybe next time,’ he said to Mum. Steph breathed.

  ‘You two have fun then,’ Mum said. ‘I’ve shown Steph how to run the mechanism. You remember what to do?’

  Steph knew better than her mother what to do.

  She and Tom walked the road in silence. Cirrus cloud blanked out the sky. Steph couldn’t think of anything to say. The wind felt chill. Tom stopped at the bend in the road to study the lighthouse. ‘It’s squat,’ he said.

  ‘It has four floors.’ She didn’t mean to be abrupt.

  ‘Your parents are young.’

  ‘How old are yours?’

  ‘It’s just Mum. She’d be pushing sixty. She sews and knits for a living. I’ve never seen her in a pair of jeans.’

  ‘At least you’re not expected to wear her cast-offs.’

  ‘Worse,’ he said.

  Steph stopped in the middle of the road. ‘What could possibly be worse?’

  He lowered his head, turned out the collar of his jumper. Steph brushed his skin. Thomas Lee Forrest, read the old-fashioned script of the embroidered label.

  ‘My mother’s speciality. She still thinks I’ll lose my clothes.’ Steph readjusted his collar, conscious of the line of fine hair, her fingers on his neck. ‘She would have added the phone number if there’d been room.’ Steph’s bad mood vanished with her laughter.

  She led the way into the lighthouse and up the spiral steps. They moved out to the balcony. Wind and cloud had turned the ocean dark. They sat on the sheltered side, looking out at the Mewstone. ‘How’d you get out of school for all this time?’

  ‘No such luck,’ Steph said. ‘There’s three boxes of work up there to get through. Weekly sessions on the radio with a tutor. I have to sit HSC exams at the end of the year. Back in Hobart.’

  ‘And after that?’

  ‘Uni. Medicine. If I do okay.’

  ‘Smart and talented.’

  ‘Demented.’

  Steph showed Tom how to fit the large turn-handle and wind the heavy weights. She loosened the small screw to free the flywheel that set the cogs in motion. ‘It’s basically a large-scale grandfather clock.’ The flywheel gathered speed, Steph waited as she’d been shown. She pulled the lever into gear and the pedestal began to turn.

  They climbed the upper steps and Tom helped reach the hook to unclip the canvas curtains. Light and warmth poured in. Even with the thickening cloud, the lens magnified the sunlight and threw a strip of heat across Steph’s jeans. She climbed in and stood on the turning pedestal. She beckoned Tom. The lens shimmered. The lighthouse hummed. Callam’s voice. Remember this.

  ‘Magic,’ Tom said.

  The light was more than function. It was ingenuity and art that harnessed light then threw it out across the ocean and far into the night. Steph ran her hand across the central spheres of glass. Concentric prisms fitted one against the other, a planet’s shimmering rings orbiting as one. Every lighthouse lens was distinct, the character of the light a language of itself. ‘I’d like to have seen it in action,’ she said.

  ‘You should ask Frank. He’s been fishing down here for years.’

  A gang of green rosellas landed on the outside railing. Steph watched their shapes dance and jitter through the glass. The rosellas squawked as if demanding to know what they were doing. Tom smiled. ‘Busy body lot.’ His eyes were brilliant green, not the green of the ocean but not the green of leaves either. A colour Steph could spend all her time trying to capture in paint or pastel, never quite succeeding.

  They spent the morning talking, laughing. The presence of someone her own generation felt invigorating against a new sting of loneliness when he said he had to go. They walked along the road and rounded the bend to where Steph’s father crouched over the lawnmower, tools spread across the grass. Dad stood up. ‘Tom.’

  ‘Mower giving you grief?’

  ‘The usual coughing and spluttering,’ Dad croaked. ‘He’s a piece of work, old Buster.’

  ‘Buster?’

  ‘His name, I was told, though right now I can think of others.’

  Tom blinked, perhaps trying to make sense of her father’s broken words. ‘Can I take a look?’ he finally said. Tom removed the cover from the lawnmower. ‘Big job, the mowing. You can do without a breakdown.’

  ‘I’m afraid mechanics aren’t my strong suit.’

  ‘Might be flooded,’ Tom said. Steph watched as he undid a spark plug and wiped it clean. ‘Leave it a while and see how it goes.’

  Dad thanked him. ‘How did you like the lighthouse?’

  ‘A lot. I’d only ever seen it from the water.
’

  ‘You’ll have to stop by and have dinner with us some time. Let Gretchen wax lyrical about the old days.’ Dad winked at Steph. It was true that her mother went on, as though everything back then was perfect, but Steph didn’t like it when her father spoke that way.

  ‘I wish I could,’ Tom said. ‘Nights and early mornings we’re shooting pots.’

  ‘Shooting?’

  ‘Setting them, pulling them.’

  ‘Your family one of the local fishing dynasties?’ Dad asked. ‘Saltwater in your veins?’

  ‘Not a drop. My brother Frank got into it when he left school. Boats aren’t my thing. Not working boats.’

  ‘Why fishing then?’ Dad asked. Steph could sense Tom tighten. Dad’s voice softened. ‘Then again, how do any of us find ourselves on unmown roads, doing things we hadn’t planned?’ He closed the mower lid and gave Buster a friendly boot. ‘Isn’t that so, you big rust bucket?’

  *

  Tom stopped ahead of Steph on the way down to the Gulch. He took the VHF radio from his backpack. The aerial was missing. ‘Shit,’ he said, digging for it in the bottom of his pack then winding it back on. He called Perlita Lee which appeared briefly, then disappeared from view, beating back and forth across the waves. ‘Frank’s not happy.’ Steph hurried down the track to keep up with him. ‘They had to pull anchor, couldn’t get hold of me.’

  Waves rolled in as sets, the largest surging over the remains of the concrete landing. An aluminium dinghy rounded the corner, bobbing in the swell. It looked too rough for such a tiny boat. Tom hitched his backpack high up on his shoulders and clipped it tight. ‘Stay there. No point both getting wet.’

  The man in the boat waved. He wore a beanie, his face covered in dark stubble. ‘That’s Habib,’ Tom said. He turned to leave, and then turned back. ‘I wish I could have stayed.’

  ‘Me too.’

  His eyes moved across her face as though he were committing her to memory. ‘Next time?’

  ‘I’ll be here.’

  Tom waited for the set to pass and clambered over slippery rocks. The boat nudged close against the pylon. Tom climbed in and pushed the boat away. ‘Say goodbye to your mother.’ His clothes were drenched.