The Lightkeeper's Wife - By Karen Viggers Page 0,75

have a dog at home. Jess. She’s not used to being left.’

‘Bring her along, then. A dog is good. I like dogs.’ Emma laughs. ‘I thought you were going to say you had a girlfriend.’

‘No girlfriend.’

The confession sounds lonely. A bit desperate. I wish I hadn’t said anything. And Emma is looking at me strangely, as if she’s wondering about something. Perhaps I should tell her upfront that I’m a social misfit, that I’m not sure where I belong.

She reaches out and a plucks a head of grass from the lawn, starts picking out the seeds one by one. ‘You miss the smells when you’re down south,’ she says. ‘Don’t you think? Like the smell of grass. And the smell of moisture. All you smell is penguin shit and station food.’ She waves the stem of grass and throws it away, and then she rubs her hand along my knee. ‘Don’t you remember that about coming back? The smell of land? The clouds? The smell of dogs and grass and trees?’ She pushes me playfully. ‘Go on. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.’

‘No. I remember. Smells. And confusion. Traffic. The craziness of everything. Everyone in such a hurry.’

She gazes off across the yard into grey distance. ‘Down there you forget how to rush. It’s a shame we relearn it so quickly when we come back. I think it’s nice to take life slowly. To stop and appreciate things: landscapes, horizons. That’s what’s so addictive about going south. The joy you get from contemplation. Getting away from the hustle and bustle. The way we live life back here becomes so . . . irrelevant.’ She leans back and stares up at the clouds. ‘That’s why it’s so hard to settle down. Who wants to live the way everyone else does? They don’t know what they’re missing out on.’

‘It is possible to live simply here if you want to,’ I say.

She shakes her head. ‘No, it’s not. Look at you. You feel compelled to go to work this morning. Down there, you’d find a way to delay it.’

‘Not if there were things to be done.’

‘Maybe not. But you’d be doing real things. And you’d have time to stop and look at the sky, or to watch a snow petrel flying over. And you’d value that.’

She’s right. Down south you can be fulfilled just by the way the light slants over the ice, or how it glows on an iceberg. You get hooked on distance.

Still, I want to tell her there are ways to find joy right here in Hobart. Simple things, like lingering over breakfast while watching the rosellas on my feeder. Or the sight of the morning light over the channel, the bright flash of orange that comes with the autumn smoke haze. I’ve learned how to find moments of happiness in normal life. It’s a matter of rearranging your thoughts so you don’t buy into the rush. It’s not Antarctic euphoria, but a kind of peace is possible.

Now, though, Emma’s face has folded into itself. She’s focused on memories and she wouldn’t hear me if I tried to explain. Even if she did, she wouldn’t understand. She’s still trapped in the southern whirl and the conviction that nothing can ever equal it. It takes years to adjust, not weeks or months. And yet, given the opportunity to go south with Emma, I’d do it to myself again. Just to share the place with her. To feel that wild sensation of freedom, of escape. The exhilaration of light. I suppose in a way she’s right. I fill the void by finding pleasure in the winging of a cormorant over water, but it doesn’t approach the thrill of watching snow petrels wheeling against a steely sky.

‘I’d better head off,’ I say, standing awkwardly. The ground feels unsteady beneath my feet.

Emma smiles up at me. ‘Bring some wine,’ she says. ‘Bring two bottles. I’ll be waiting for you.’

18

Jess is sitting by the side gate when I get home from work. She doesn’t smile and she doesn’t stand up. Her eyes are forlorn and my rising guilt is dense. I open the gate and she skulks out and cringes round my legs. She thinks she’s done something wrong.

I sit on the path and she crawls onto my lap, curling up in a tight ball. When I pull on her ears, the sigh that shudders through her is almost human. She feels betrayed; this is the first time I’ve left her overnight without coming home. I’d