The Lightkeeper's Wife - By Karen Viggers Page 0,139

and confidence that Gary manages to muster.

Jacinta somehow holds it together to read from Kahlil Gibran’s book The Prophet. At the podium she stands, tremulous, and reads with a quavering voice, rich with emotion.

This is when I am reminded how grief can be like a tsunami—how it can rise and rise and then swell and collapse over you, rolling and tumbling you beneath its weight while you struggle to resurface. I’m unable to look at Jacinta as she leaves the podium, and I’m glad she has Alex to give her love and courage, because I’m incapable of anything.

The celebrant moves with polished calm and practised compassion to complete proceedings. Gary has put together a computerised slide-show of Mum’s life set to music selected by Jan. It begins after the celebrant’s final sympathetic words.

Mum’s face, young and fresh, topped with a mass of tousled curls.

Her wedding photos, with Dad. My father tall, straight and serious. Mum is radiant.

Then at the lighthouse. Mum’s arms wrapped around Jan and Gary, my siblings squinting in the raw light. Mum is taking it on her face, smiling and unfazed. The tower at the top of the hill behind them.

Mum squatting on the grass with a naked infant me. Chooks pecking beside us. The tails of washing dangling from the clothesline in the background.

Mum beside the lighthouse door with Dad. Their faces closed and unreadable.

Baby Jacinta in Mum’s arms, delight dancing in their eyes.

The sequence of photos continues. It’s beautiful, but it destroys me.

We gather at Jan’s house for tea and recollections. Rain crowds us into the lounge room and the air is thick with voices. After initial awkwardness, the stories begin to flow. This, finally, is the celebration of Mum’s life.

Leon mingles with the group, and I notice him often, chatting with various old ladies who were Mum’s friends. Before he leaves, he comes quietly to my side.

‘Thanks for the wake,’ he says, smiling kindly. ‘I was going to go home straight after the service, but I’m pleased I came.’

I grip his arm. ‘I’m glad you’re here. She would have been touched.’

‘Life on Bruny has changed since she died,’ he says. ‘There’s a new emptiness. I can’t drive past the cabin without choking up.’

I nod.

‘I’ve had an idea,’ he says. ‘I want to do a memorial walk up East Cloudy Head. For her, given that I couldn’t take her there. And I’d like you to come. I’d like to share it with you.’

Emotion threatens to overwhelm me, but I hold it together. ‘That’d be good,’ I say.

We choose a day, and then I watch his bright head disappear among the crowns of grey.

35

After the funeral, I return to work and try to pretend everything’s all right again. A week of compassionate leave, a few pats on the back, and you’re expected to take up where you left off. They say that keeping busy helps with the grief. Yet, again and again I find myself lying with a tool in one hand, staring unseeing into a truck’s undercarriage, or completely distracted by the call of a bird. Often Jess appears in the gloom and licks my face, cleaning away tears I didn’t even know were there.

Emma rings a couple of times. When I play the first message, her voice echoes across the lounge room, asking me how my mother is and if I am okay and could I please ring back. I marvel that her voice fails to move me. I don’t call her back.

The second time she rings, I answer the phone, thinking it might be Jan or Jacinta.

‘Tom,’ she says. ‘I’m so glad I’ve caught you.’

Caught me? She caught me long ago.

‘How’s your mum?’

‘She died.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘She was ill. Heart disease.’

‘Is there anything I can do?’

For a wry moment I consider the many things she could have done, but most of them are too late now. She could have been straighter with me. She could have sent Nick away.

‘No,’ I say. ‘Everything’s done. We had the funeral last week.’

A silence wells between us. From her blanket by the wall, Jess watches me, her eyes shining in the shadows. Outside a cockatoo squawks its way across the sky.

‘I’m really sorry, you know,’ Emma says. ‘About what happened that night with Nick. We were so drunk. And it was all so untimely. I’m embarrassed about it. I didn’t know your mum was sick or it’d never have happened. I wish it hadn’t.’

‘It doesn’t matter now.’

‘Well, yes, it does. I’d like to see you, Tom. Can we