The Lightkeeper's Wife - By Karen Viggers Page 0,113

his physical self and it brought touch back into their relationship. Touch and intimacy. She also ensured they holidayed away at the farm, where Jack fished and walked and laughed with Max and Faye.

Jack started to put in more effort too. Instead of hiding in a book or escaping early to bed each evening, he stayed in the living area with the family. He talked books with Jan and spent more time with Gary: fishing, walking, teaching him carpentry in the shed. Then, when the children were in bed, Mary and Jack played canasta, five hundred, Scrabble. They reminisced on good times, unearthing their favourite memories. It was all so laborious and forced at first, but the new habits gained momentum.

Then Tom came along. The gift and the inspiration. The precious one who made them whole again. Mary didn’t tell Jack she was pregnant until they’d begun to heal, and when she gave him the news, he wept. Jack liked babies. If he hadn’t been so crushed by Hobart life, he’d have been more involved when Jan and Gary were small. Even so, he’d done as much as he could, cradling them to sleep, walking them in the pram, bringing them in to be fed. When Tom arrived, he took extra care with him. If Tom cried at night, Jack was there, taking the baby in his arms and walking up and down the corridor. Or he would sit on the couch stroking Tom’s feathery little head with a hand already twisted with arthritis.

Jack could not be remade. Yet he did mellow, and she loved him for what he had been and also for what he was—a man of commitment. He was never particularly close to the children as they grew up, being too awkward and inscrutable for that. And he never completely recovered from the air and distance of the cape. But he and Mary were at ease together. And there was satisfaction in the achievement of a long marriage. By staying together, they had accomplished something valuable and intangible—an unspoken trust and solidarity that came from the knowledge they’d survived hardship and had not been destroyed.

There was cause for celebration in that.

27

Saturday night is Emma’s party, and I don’t think my acceptance was a particularly good idea. I haven’t been to a party in years. I’m useless at small talk. And I don’t want to see Nick again. If Emma gets a chance to line us up side by side in a social setting, I know which man will be found wanting. I’ll be the gangly awkward one who can’t even paste a friendly smile on his face.

I don’t know why I’m going to this party anyway. I should be down at Bruny with Mum. She looked dreadful when I visited with Gary on Wednesday, weak and vague. That cough is killing her. Gary said Dad was the same.

I pull on jeans, a green shirt and a grey fleece top. It’s not even worth looking in the mirror—all I will see is my inadequacy. I grab my keys from the bench before I can convince myself not to go.

Jess is waiting at the front door. I’m not sure if I should take her: I don’t want to leave her in the car for three or four hours, but then again, if I have to check on my dog perhaps it’ll give me an excuse to leave. I open the door and follow Jess to the car. She’s joyous to be going out and I wish I could share a fraction of her excitement. All I feel is dread.

Outside Emma’s house, I sit in the car with the radio on, waiting for eight o’clock. When the ABC news fanfare starts, I stay in the car a few minutes longer to hear out the news and get the weather forecast. Then I get out and shut the car door. I stand awhile in the street. The house is lit like a birthday with fairy lights strung up specially for the party. I jingle the keys in my pocket, open the gate and plod up the steps to the front door to ring the doorbell. There are footsteps and a shadow moving inside and the door finally swings open. It’s Nick.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ he says, his face expressionless. ‘Emma must have asked everyone she knows.’

Now Emma appears behind him and grabs his arm to pull him out of the way. ‘Isn’t that the idea?’ She smiles up at Nick and then