The Lightkeeper's Wife - By Karen Viggers Page 0,36
the Masons on family outings; they would drive the old truck to the end of the road and then trundle along the sand to the end of the beach. They’d light a campfire under the trees and make tea while she and Jack walked up onto the headland.
The first time she and Jack came here alone was their honeymoon. They’d arrived on an overcast day with brooding skies, having walked from the farm with makeshift packs and panted to the end of the road where the land fell away onto the long flat run of the beach. On the rise overlooking the arc of sand, they’d stopped together, feeling the slow breeze stirring as they inhaled the tang of salt. Mary had been wet with sweat beneath heavy clothes, and was ready to stop, but Jack wanted to walk to the end of the beach. She remembered the joy of this place—she and Jack alone beneath the skies, the glow of light on the water, the late flush of yellow on East Cloudy Head.
At Cloudy Corner, Jack had shouldered through the scrub and she’d followed him into the hushed dark beneath the trees. She’d been keen to sleep on the beach under the spray of stars, but Jack was worried the wind would come up; he thought they’d be more comfortable under the trees. They made camp among the scrub, their bed a piece of canvas on the ground covered by woollen blankets. Then they stripped off and dived and splashed through the freezing waves, chasing each other, stopping to kiss, their skin alive with goosebumps.
Afterwards, they scrubbed themselves dry with a rough towel, prickling with cold, and layered on clothes before wandering along the sand, fossicking for treasures. They picked their way around the base of the headland to a string of rocks where cormorants perched with wings spread wide, trying to dry off in the brisk wind. Further around, they scrunched through mats of pig-face pockmarked by mutton-bird burrows. They found a place to sit on a rock platform above the black sea. Mary sat between Jack’s legs so he could wrap himself around her, and she leaned against him, high on freedom and love.
For dinner, they ate chunks of bread smothered with slabs of melted cheese, and preserved apricots for dessert. She remembered the light of the flames flickering on Jack’s face as he fed sticks into the fire. And the shiver of breeze that flowed up from the beach, rustling the leaves. She could still see Jack squatting by the flames, his legs thin and wiry, his shoulders boxy and broad. His face narrow. His jaw angled, rough with stubble.
After dinner they had walked the beach under the white wash of the moon, stopping to grasp each other in passion, or to lean into each other’s warmth while the air settled bitingly cold around them. That night, they lay together, listening to the sound of the waves breaking on the beach, their bodies enmeshed, warmth rising between them. Intimacy was something they’d dreamed of for years, and yet it was almost overwhelming when reality arrived. All that yearning. So much anticipation. So little experience.
After the farm, there had been the burden of their lives in Hobart; Jack’s retreat into himself and her own misery. The lighthouse gave them a temporary reprieve, but then the wind wore Jack down. Truly, it was a wonder they made it through. If she hadn’t been so patient, so committed, so determined, they could have easily blown away like the marriages of today. But a failed marriage was destitution back then. There were few options for women. A divorce was a public disgrace. And she loved Jack, despite his foibles.
Often she had wished she could teach her children how to prevent a relationship from going into decline. The art of marriage maintenance. But even if she had been able to verbalise all that was in her heart, she couldn’t dictate how they should live their lives. It wasn’t her place to steal from them the bittersweet pain of their own discoveries and mistakes. The resuscitation of a relationship was something you could only learn between the lines of your own history. And grief was not something you could save people from. It was the destiny of everyone. Yet, if she could do those years again, perhaps she would have done them differently.
From the grand plateau of age, she could see where she and Jack had allowed room for slippage. But it