The Lightkeeper's Wife - By Karen Viggers Page 0,43

instructed. Sandwiches with jam for Mum, and small slices of apple, peeled, so the skin won’t catch in her throat. While I chop up potatoes and pumpkin and carrots and put them in a container to soak, she sips tea on the couch with Jess curled up on the floor beside her. We’ll have an early roast dinner and I’ll carve up the leftover meat so she’ll have some decent food for the next few days. After that, I’ll head off and catch the late ferry back to Kettering. I should still get back in time for the seminar at the antdiv, unless the ferry’s running late. Hopefully, Mum will manage to look after herself until Jacinta and Alex visit on the weekend—in the rubbish bin is nothing but empty tins of baked beans and tomatoes; there hasn’t been much cooking going on in this kitchen since Mum arrived.

By the time I prepare the meat and gouge holes in it for small slivers of garlic, Mum is snoring. It’s hard to believe our short conversation has worn her out. I slip the leg of lamb into the oven and scoop my sandwich from the bench. Jess barely looks up as I lace my boots and creep out the door.

Clouds are brewing over the mountains and mist scuds over East Cloudy Head. I walk fast along the sand, following the track up through the campground to the beginning of the trail to East Cloudy Head. The logbook is smudged with lead pencil and there are few recent entries. The number of bushwalkers drops off once the weather deteriorates.

Before I start uphill, I take off a layer of fleece and bury it in my backpack. Then I hit the track. It heads up through a recently burned landscape, hammered by a scrub fire about a year ago. Already, the fire-hardy species are rebounding—thick strappy Lomandra, tiny banksias and the needles of new casuarinas pushing up through the sandy soil. New leafy growth climbs the charred skeletons of stunted eucalypts. All this renewal around me while my mind hovers on thoughts of Mum’s death. What will come after? I wonder. Is there potential for new things to sprout in my life? Or will I be like some of these dwarfed gum trees that have been burned by flames too hot, making regeneration impossible?

I puff up the slope, pausing to draw breath as the track steepens. The mountains to the north are now shrouded in cloud. It’ll be a fog-drip afternoon up there. Out across the bay, whitecaps ride between the heads. I’m high enough to see the crags of a false headland below. Perspective clarifies as you climb. From down on the beach, not everything is as it seems.

I press on, ascending through fields of burned banksias and hakeas with their seed heads split wide. The track rises to a ridgeline and then climbs over a saddle and finally arrives at the hummock of East Cloudy Head. In a sweaty hour and a half, I’m on top, picking my way around the rocky summit, seeking sheltered vantage points where the stripping wind isn’t so strong.

To the east are crumbling sea cliffs and caves; sculptured crags with the sea clawing at their feet. Offshore, the Friars are green islands with skirts of white. There’s a seal colony on one of those islands, but it’s not visible from here. The sea spreads south, marked by white ridges of travelling swell. The horizon merges with the mist.

Soon the wind begins to sharpen and I pull layers back on—fleece, a windproof coat, a beanie, gloves. I need time up here. Time to breathe and settle, time to locate somewhere within myself a steadiness that will help me through the coming weeks of my mother’s decline.

I find a nook and sit down. To the west are the recesses of Cloudy Bay and Cloudy Lagoon. I follow the land along, riding the lines of the cliffs, and there it is, far distant—Cape Bruny, a grey smudge protruding from the sea. I linger there, testing the edges of memory.

At first, the lighthouse is invisible. Minutes roll past with the waves and the shifting sky. Then a shaft of light escapes the clouds and illuminates the tower—a solid white pillar jutting from the land. It’s a beacon of safety rising from the ocean of life.

I stay hunched in the icy wind, staring towards the lighthouse until the cold squeezes me in its grip. Then I go down to tend the roast.