The Light Between Oceans: A Novel

by M.L. Stedman

plimsolls to

A “pineapple,” a “pipsqueak,” a “plum pudding”: all types of shell which might find their way into your trench.

The lice were “chats,” the food was “scran,” and a “Blighty” was a wound that’d

see you shipped back to hospital...

January looks forward to the new year and back to the old year. He sees past and future. And the island looks in the direction of two different oceans, down to the

“I should say, ‘You two are my favorites,’ shouldn’t I? Or what if it’s twins? Or triplets?”

Died three weeks ago. I was just coming in to clear the last of the stuff out.”

“Do you think people remember this life, when they

go?

the storm thundered about the light, deafening Tom to any other sound that night. Deafening him to the cries of Isabel, calling for his help.

But confronted by his grieving wife, he felt useless.

wobbly.

She hated this—the fact that your dirty washing had to be everybody else’s business.

Looking into those eyes was like looking at the face of God. No mask or pretense: the baby’s defenselessness was overwhelming.

To see a child torn away from his mother at the very moment of birth—torn away from the only woman in the world Tom cared about—was a more dreadful kind of pain.

“We need to welcome Lucy, and say a prayer for her poor father.”

What if the mother’s not dead, and he’s got a wife fretting, waiting for them both?”

Bury them. Mark the grave. Salute, and walk away.

a silver rattle, embossed with cherubs and hallmarked.

That side’s the Indian Ocean—nice and calm and warm. Southern Ocean’s on the other side—wild and dangerous as anything. You want to keep away from that fella.”

“You’re falling in love with her, aren’t you?”

“It’s impossible not to.”

“Love’s bigger than rule books, Tom.

“Lo, children and the fruit of the womb: are an heritage and gift that cometh of the Lord…”

Isabel’s breasts responded to the baby’s suckling by producing milk again within weeks, the “relactation” Dr.

At night, Tom began to dream he was drowning,

cochineal!

the fruits of ingenuity traded for the fruits of earth.

On the Offshore Lights you can live any story you want to tell yourself, and no one will say you’re wrong: not the seagulls, not the prisms, not the wind.

So Isabel floats further and further into her world of divine benevolence, where prayers are answered, where babies arrive by the will of God and the working of currents.

did what I did so that people like you and Lucy could forget it ever happened. So that it would never happen again. ‘The war to end all wars,’ remember? It doesn’t belong

Violet had wanted to wail with her, to tear her hair and tell her she knew the grief of losing the firstborn: how nothing—no person,

no money, no thing that this earth could offer—could ever make up for that, and that the pain would never, never go away.

Alfie had died within a day of Hugh, three days after arriving in France. Joining

the same regiment on the same day, the brothers had been proud of their consecutive service numbers.

But if a parent lost a child, there was no special label for their grief.

The baby had healed so many lives: not only hers and Tom’s, but now

the lives of these two people who had been so resigned to loss.

Don’t fret for her. The baby is safe. Loved and well cared for, and always will be. Your husband is at peace in God’s hands. I hope this brings you comfort. Pray for me.

You don’t have to bloody marry it, your charity career.”

“Folks round here are xenophobic hypocrites!”

but if you marry that man it will be without my blessing. And without my money.”

History is that which is agreed upon by mutual consent.

That’s how life goes on—protected

by

the silence that anesthet...

Anzac Day.

But a sliver of uncrossable distance has slipped between them: an invisible, wisp-thin no-man’s-land.

chook

For Isabel, too, he is torn between the desire he feels for her, the love, and the sense that he cannot breathe. The two sensations grate at one another, unresolved.