The Lightkeeper's Wife - By Karen Viggers Page 0,145

best.’

We clink mugs and stare across the vast landscape of light and sea, wind and cloud. ‘This is her home,’ I say. ‘She’s still here.’

‘She’d be pleased with me,’ Leon says, after a while. ‘I’m making a change, and she’d like that. I’ve applied for a job with National Parks in the Hartz Mountains, and they say there’s a good chance I’ll get it. I’ve been here a long time, looking after my folks. But my old man hasn’t been too well lately. He’s bedridden and going downhill. His liver’s shot. Too much grog. Mum’s taking care of him now.’

He looks to me for approval and I nod. ‘You’ll like the Hartz Mountains,’ I say. ‘It’s beautiful there.’

‘I’ll miss Bruny. But I’ll be back to visit Mum.’ He lapses to silence and we fix on grey distance where the lighthouse might be visible on a clearer day.

‘I’m glad you were with her when she died,’ I say. ‘I want to thank you for that—the company and friendship you gave her. I wish I could show you how much I appreciate it.’

He glances at me. ‘Come and visit if I get this job in the Hartz Mountains. I’d like to keep in touch with someone from your family.’ He smiles. ‘And I don’t think I have much in common with your brother or sister.’

We laugh, and there’s a sense of camaraderie between us, an almost-brotherliness.

For a long while we sit, paying private tribute to Mum. When the cold starts to seep in, we pack and wander back down the hill.

38

Jan decides we should scatter Mum’s ashes at Cape Bruny—a surprising suggestion given her aversion to the place. Maybe Mum’s death has softened her, smoothed her jagged resentful edges. Gary and I quickly agree to the proposal. It will be good for all of us to get some closure.

I suggest we invite Leon along, given his presence at Mum’s death. But Jan says she doesn’t like the idea of including a stranger. I insist that Leon was Mum’s friend, not a stranger, but Jan won’t budge, and Gary thinks it’d be an intrusion too.

We make the journey to Cape Bruny in Gary’s new car complete with spoiler and shiny mag wheels. He isn’t keen to take his pride and joy on the corrugated Bruny roads, but Jan refuses to go in my old car and there’s really no other option. I leave Jess at home, whimpering at the gate, and I join my brother and sister in the car. It amazes me siblings can be so dissimilar and feel so disconnected.

The trip is long and quiet. Jan sits rigidly in the passenger seat beside Gary while I relax in the back, savouring the space and the lack of conversation. Even Gary doesn’t seem tempted to break the silence. He’s probably afraid of sparking Jan off, or setting her going on some tirade about how the past weeks would have been handled differently if she’d had her way.

At the light station, Gary swings his car into the carpark and switches off the engine. It’s an average early winter’s day, overcast and windy. I feel right at home. We ascend the hill in single file: Jan in the lead, me deferentially just behind, and Gary labouring at the back, undertaking the most exercise he’s attempted in years. He hobbles up the hill like a lame old bear, puffing and grunting. I wonder if he remembers the buoyant way he bounded up here when he was young.

By the time we reach the lighthouse, he has dropped back a good fifty metres. Jan and I shelter on the leeside of the tower out of the wind and wait for him.

It’s been a long time since I was here—ten years, maybe twelve—and it’s good to feel the wind raking over the heath. The tower is pretty much the same, despite a few chips of peeling paint, a few salt stains, a bit of rust on the lock. Back when I was a kid, they were always slapping whitewash on the walls, always cleaning the windows, polishing the brass fittings inside.

Gary arrives, panting. ‘Some climb,’ he gasps. ‘I think I need to join a gym.’

‘Not a bad idea,’ Jan says. ‘You might live longer.’

Gary’s face is flushed an unhealthy red and his chest heaves. ‘So what do you reckon? Where should we unleash the ashes?’

Jan squints across the hill. ‘How about over there, near the new tower.’

Gary shakes his head. ‘No, Mum wouldn’t want that. She always said