Lighthouse Bay (8 page)

Mr. Harrow shakes his head. “I must say, Mrs. Winterbourne, that the Captain and I are in dispute. It seems to me there must be a hurricane nearby. He argues that it’s too late in the year for a hurricane but . . .” He drops his voice low. “Captain Whiteaway does not like bad weather.”

Tingles of hot ice lace her skin. “So then why does he persist in the journey? Should we not come to port until we are certain it isn’t a hurricane?”

“He deals with his dislike of bad weather by insisting it isn’t happening.” Mr. Harrow snaps his mouth shut at the end of this sentence, an outward sign that he believes he has spoken too much, and too contrary to the Captain. “Don’t concern yourself. We are all good men, and we will be safe.”

“The Captain drinks too much,” she says plainly.

He replies in a near-perfect impersonation of the Captain’s voice. “‘It’s how I unravel the knots in my stomach.’”

“The amount I’ve seen him consume at dinner would indicate a large volume of knots.”

Mr. Harrow tries a smile. “As I said, don’t worry. Let the men aboard mind the weather, and you mind your own affairs below deck.” Then voices from the other end of the corridor have him backing out quickly, with no word of farewell.

Isabella ventures into the saloon and stops to look at the map spread out on the Captain’s desk. Captain Francis Whiteaway has traversed the globe, from north to south and east to west, for twenty years. So far as she knows, he has always drunk heavily, he has negotiated much bad weather, and he has always returned to England safe and whole. If he says it is too late in the year for a hurricane, then perhaps he is right. Mr. Harrow is, after all, a scant few years older than Isabella herself. She eyes the half-empty
whiskey decanter. How many times has she seen it filled, then emptied again? Her fingers trace the east coast of Australia, pale pink against a turquoise sea. They are here, somewhere. But there are no storm clouds on this map, and the sea is as flat and still as the lid of a tomb.

I
sabella thinks herself alone. It is after breakfast, and the weather is making her sick. The sea lifts them and dumps them, over and over. She is confined below deck but can’t bear another long day in her cabin, and needs to avoid Meggy and Arthur, so she takes the walk down to the dark end of the ship. She carries her fountain pen and her list. She hopes to find somewhere quiet and away from the eyes of others to add up the worth of her jewelry, and budget how much she will need for her voyage to New York, food, coaches . . . There seems so much to organize and at night the swirl of thoughts keeps her awake. Pinning them to the page will help. It will also give her something to take her mind off the weather.

All the crew are on deck, managing the sails. She goes down to the cargo hold and sits on a stack of tiles covered with a rope net. The light is dim, but she smooths out her list on her lap and starts to jot down notes.

The ship shudders and shakes. She takes a deep breath and keeps going.

Her senses prickle. She is suddenly aware that she’s not alone. She looks up, her hand instinctively covering the page on which she writes.

“Writing a love letter, Mrs. Winterbourne?” says Captain Whiteaway.

Isabella quickly folds the list. “No, I’m not. I’m making a list.”

“Of what?”

“Private thoughts,” she replies. “Nothing to concern yourself with.” She peers at him in the gloom. He is drunk already. “Why are you not on deck with the others?”

“I came to see if the cargo had moved. We hit quite a bump back there.”

“I felt it.” She wants to ask why he came himself, rather than sending a crewman, but the answer would be that he was drunk, or lazy, or afraid of the bad weather and pretending it wasn’t happening. He is here because he is incompetent, and no man will ever admit that about himself.

His eyes haven’t left the piece of paper in her hand. “What secrets are you hiding in there, Isabella?” he says.

“No secrets.”

He holds out his hand and makes a “give it to me” gesture.

“It’s private.”

He looms over her, a six-foot slab of meaty man with hot brandied breath, and now the horrible memories are awakening again in her mind. Her mouth moves to protest, but only a little popping noise comes out.

The flash of remembrance: the conservatory at her mother-in-law’s house. Early in the morning before anyone was awake. Her heart still shredded with grief, her breasts still swollen with milk. And Percy Winterbourne, Arthur’s younger brother, forcing himself on her.

Frost on the grass outside, the sour smell of ashes in the fireplace. His hand clamped over her mouth, the taste of his skin, her frantic breath searing her nostrils. “A little of this?” he had said, roughly squeezing her tender nipples through her gown. Pain and shame in equal measure. Her struggles had made him angry, rougher. Then the maid had come in and he’d leaped away
from her, smoothed over his waistcoat and pretended nothing had happened.

And when she told Arthur later, he had called her a liar.

“Leave me be!” Isabella shrieks, frightened and, bafflingly, ashamed.

Captain Whiteaway stands back. His conscience has been pricked awake; Isabella is pale and trembling. He drops his hand. Saves face by saying, “I’m not interested in your women’s nonsense anyway. But if I find out you and Harrow are writing love letters to each other, I’ll fire him and put you out at the next port. Arthur is my good friend.”

“It’s not a love letter,” she manages. “It is a list. Just a list.” But her words may as well have not been spoken. He is stroking his hand over his beard, turning away.

And after all it isn’t “just a list.” It is a plan, it is a ticket out of misery, it is a first step in escaping her husband.

I
t is three in the morning, the deepest hour of sleep. Isabella hears knocking and shouting, but it takes a few moments for her to realize this knocking and this shouting is meant for her. Arthur’s voice. “Isabella, wake up!”

She opens her eyes. Everything is moving. She sits up, trying to steady herself. The ship is moaning. It pitches, then it yaws. Howling wind outside. Fear kicks her heart. “What is happening?”

“Get dressed. Francis is taking us into sheltered water. He’s going to try to beach us.”

“Beach—”

“Just get dressed, woman!” he roars. “I’ll be back for you in two minutes.” Then he is gone, slamming out of the cabin. She hears his voice outside in the saloon, Meggy’s voice. She hears
them go up the ladder while she is still lacing up her dress with shaking hands.

The sea has teeth. Isabella always knew it: she never became too enamored of the sea’s beauty to see its cruelty. The sea has teeth and they are snapping at the ship. Arthur should never have confined her below deck. She was keeping them safe with her morning prayer, showing her respect, reminding the sea that she never once took her safety for granted. Isabella is cold at the center. This can’t be happening. This ship has been at sea for decades: why would this happen now, while she is on board? It is too unfair. Isabella bends to fasten her shoes. The ship lurches, stands for a moment as if on its beam ends, then slams back onto the water. Everything around her falls down; she falls down. The hatch above the saloon bangs closed. She picks herself up and runs out of her cabin and up the ladder, pushes on the hatch and finds the way blocked. She thunders with her fists on the wood. Around her feet are shards of broken crockery.

“Help!” she shouts. “Help! There is something blocking the fore hatch.”

But how could they hear her over the thundering sea?

“Arthur!” she screams. “Arthur!”

“Isabella!” His voice is muffled through the wood. “Bring the mace. A beam has snapped and is blocking the hatch. We are removing it now. Be ready and bring the mace.”

She returns to the cabin and yanks the chest from its hiding position. She hefts it unsteadily. The key to the chest is in Arthur’s pocket, so she can’t open it and remove her precious prize. But she hauls it to the bottom of the ladder and waits. She tells herself not to panic. They are beaching the ship. They will stand on land. The wind and the rain will not be so
frightening on the land. Again, the ship pitches violently. All the windows on the leeward side suddenly shatter, and the sea pours in. Isabella yelps. The lantern light has extinguished. Dark cold water swirls around her feet, pulling off her shoes, and her heart slams in her chest.

“Help me! Help me!” she screams. The sounds above her are terrifying. The snap of wood and the twang of ropes stretched past breaking point. Every time the ship pitches, more water foams in, but they are not sinking.

Not yet.

“Push on the hatch, Isabella!” Arthur calls.

Isabella pushes, the sinews in her arms straining. On the other side, the grind of wood on wood, then the hatch shoots up.

Arthur’s hands are there. “The mace!” he says. Isabella understands that, for the first time in their relationship, they are fixed on a common goal: save this wooden chest from being swallowed by the sea.

She hefts it up the ladder, bumping the walnut chest on every step. Pushes it towards Arthur, who pulls it through the hatch, then offers her his left hand. She is on deck now, and it is chaos. Foaming sea, sails in ribbons, ropes knotted chaotically by the wind, the sky screaming in the rigging.

“What’s happening?” she asks.

“Francis is bringing us to the beach. But he needs to get the ship before the wind.”

Isabella looks around. Rain fills her eyes. The sea surrounds them. “I see no land.”

“Over there.” Arthur gestures widely. “Somewhere.” He stands with an ankle on either side of the walnut chest.

Then a man screams. “Breakers! Breakers!”

Isabella has only a moment to turn her head and see the white
foaming breakers before the sickening grind of the ship on the rocks vibrates up through her ribs and heart.

“Abandon ship! Abandon ship!” This is the Captain, standing at the wheel, surrounded by shredded sails and wooden debris. “Every man for himself!”

All Isabella’s joints turn to water. Arthur is already hefting the chest towards a lifeboat. She scrambles after him amid chaos and noise and salt water and rain. He fumbles with ropes and she helps. People are crawling into lifeboats on the starboard side. She searches faces, looking for Meggy or Mr. Harrow, when a huge wave turns the ship suddenly forty-five degrees and it slams onto the reef again. With a huge plume of foam, the wood disintegrates. Where there were men and movement, now there is only gushing sea. Her heart is too big for her body.

“Quickly, Arthur!” she shouts. She looks around for the Captain, for Meggy, for anyone. Perhaps there are people still taking the last lifeboat off the prow.

Arthur lowers their lifeboat and by some miracle they are now both in it and bobbing on the shallow water over the reef. Arthur takes one oar and Isabella the other and they push themselves into deep water, the walnut chest between them. The waves want to keep carrying them back towards the ship, which Isabella can now see has broken in half. She thinks about her jewelry back on board, but cannot feel sorry for its loss. If she lives, she will think herself lucky. If Daniel’s coral bracelet survives too, she will think herself rich beyond measure.

Then Arthur half-stands to get his oar against a rock and push away. A wave catches their little boat and he tips into the water.

“Arthur!” Isabella screams. His oar is still sticking out of the water, so she grasps it. He holds the other end tightly, swallowing water and struggling.

“Pull, you useless woman, pull!” he screams.

“I
am
pulling!”

But then the water is over his face and, pull as she might, she cannot bring him closer. Suddenly, the force is reversed, and she realizes he is pulling her. If he is going to drown, he will take her with him. But before she can register this properly and drop the oar, it flips up. Light. Arthur is gone.

Isabella feels her own lightness, her own lack of substance. Her death is just over there, an arm’s-length away. A swelling wave beneath her lifts the lifeboat, and pushes it away from the ship. She surfs down it, shouting with fear, unable to hear herself over the storm.

But now she can see land, and she starts to row.

In spite of the mad currents.

In spite of the rocks.

Because in the chest is the last memory of her son.

She rows. Through the black water. Through the storm. Through the pelting icy needles of rain. For Daniel.

I
sabella focuses on one task at a time, because to think of anything beyond the immediate present is to feel searing terror. She must seek shelter, but beyond the vast empty beach is a dark tangle of spiny trees that are black and nightmarish in the dark. The sight of them makes her stomach turn to water. Instead, she drags the lifeboat up the beach to a rocky shelf protruding from the white sand. Once, twice, she heaves. On the third attempt, her arms burning, she manages to flip the boat over. One side becomes wedged against the rock and she crawls underneath it for shelter, tucking the walnut box with the mace in it against her body.

The rain hammers on the bottom of the boat. She curls into a ball. A gap between boat, rock and sand, only a foot at its highest point, keeps her from being in perfect airless dark. The sea roars and crashes. She waits for the others to come. Her body shivers uncontrollably: cold from the rain and sea, colder from the fear and shock. Nobody comes. Her eyes are fixed on the water. No other boats. No brave swimmers. Nobody.

Arthur doesn’t come. Nor Meggy. Nor Captain Whiteaway. Nor Mr. Harrow.

The black night lightens to gray after an hour or so. Dawn is
not far away. Where are they? They are taking a long time to get from the wreck to the shore.

Under the boat, she waits.

The rain and wind ease a little, but it is still too stormy to leave her shelter. She remains on her side in the sand, eyes fixed on the sea, while weak daylight struggles through the clouds. And still nobody comes.

A
round the middle of the day, the rain stops. Isabella crawls out from under the boat to stretch her legs, and finds they can barely support her weight. She sits on the sand. She cries. The tears blur her vision as she surveys the world around her. Will anyone know she is here? Will there be a rescue ship? Isabella doesn’t know how such things work. But she fears that there will be no rescue ship. She sits on a vast beach, looking out at a bay shaped like a cauldron. Out there somewhere, in the storm-tossed water, is her husband. He is dead. They are all dead. A chill spreads through her veins. She struggles to her feet and forces her legs to work. She paces the sand, muttering, “They are all dead,” over and over, to see if the thought will sink in and become more ordinary.