Andrew Thomas had chosen the profession of lighthouse keeper because he had a broken heart and craved silence and solitude. Split Point Light was six bone-wracking days by bullock dray from the nearest town, Colac. The lighthouse was on the Australian coast, known as the Shipwreck Coast, and was crucial to navigation. Andrew Thomas was twenty years old. He had lived with his large, brawling family on their farm near Colac. His life had always been full of quarrels, toddlers, burnt milk and good food, loud laughter and chores; and, until three weeks ago, the cherished company of his best mate, Tommy Hughes. The Hughes family were the nearest neighbours, and he and Tommy had been best mates since they were seven, riding together on the plough horse Erik the Red to school in the town. Andrew had thought that he and Tommy would be best mates forever. Tommy was always reading, and had said they were like Achilles and Patroclus, like Alexander the Great and Hephaistion. Andrew had been saving money from any available job to move to Anglesea, further down the coast. Tommy would buy a boat. They would never be apart.
But then Andrew had heard him, Tommy, wooing the cow-like blonde daughter of the Blackwoods. She had giggled and said that she loved the letters he had sent. Love letters. And he had laughed in reply.
And Andrew had packed up and caught the bullock cart going to supply the lighthouse, which left Colac every month, without saying a word.
The work of the lighthouse was simple. The lighthouse keeper, Mr Thompson, preferred to spend the night with his family, so Andrew gladly took the evening shift. All he had to do was watch the operation of the light with its revolutionary Fresnel lens, ensure that the lamp was ever burning, and watch the sea. Ships swept across it. He looked out over his own kingdom, bleak and dangerous, and wept for his lost love.
Mrs Thompson gave him a supper basket every night, and he could brew tea, even lie down on a cot at the top of the 124 steps up to the lamp chamber. She was mildly concerned that he only nibbled at her good food. But the relief lighthouse keeper was not her main problem. In the small cottage at the foot of the lighthouse, Mrs Thompson had three children under the age of five and was presently expecting, about to pack everyone up and move to Colac to be confined. She was dreading that six day trip and hoping desperately that all that bumping would not cause a premature labour.
Mrs Thompson’s problem was also Andrew Thomas’ problem. The cottage was crammed with children, screaming and crying, and he could not sleep in the tiny room with two of the small sons. Lack of sleep was slowly driving him insane.
So when the bullock dray came in and Tommy Hughes climbed down and began to unload the stores, he did not say a word. He stood as stiff as a pike, as his traitorous friend chatted to Mr Thompson, smiled at Mrs Thompson, and picked up the smaller of the two irritating tots who made Andrew’s nights miserable.
Then, pretending not to see Andrew, Tommy Hughes carried a roll of canvas to the side of the cottage, erected a tent while talking to the children all the while, and ignored him.
‘How long are you staying?’ asked the child. Tommy ruffled the child’s probably louse-ridden hair.
‘Until I have to go away again,’ he told the boy. ‘Until I’ve done what I came to do.’
‘What?’ demanded the child.
‘Found out,’ Tommy had replied ‘the answer to a mystery. And done some fishing. Now, your mother is calling you. Off you go, I shall be in later.’
The child obeyed him, as children always had. Dogs, too. The black-and-white lighthouse dog Bounce was slobbering all over him, fawning at his treacherous feet. Bounce barely tolerated Andrew’s presence.
‘Why are you here?’ hissed Andrew. Tommy looked him straight in the eyes, pushing back his crumpled felt bush hat.
‘I want to know why you left me,’ he said. ‘You ran away. It’s taken me weeks and a bruising six day ride in that bullock dray to find you.’
‘You need not have put yourself to such trouble,’ stated Andrew, through numb lips.
‘We’re best mates,’ protested Tommy.
‘Were,’ said Andrew, ‘before you betrayed me. Us. Everything,’ he said, and went into the lighthouse, and shut and barred the door.
The night passed, as nights pass. It was long and cold. The autumn gales were due. The lens was safe behind thick glass, and the length of the lighthouse would not even sway until much stronger winds came. The light warned off the ships from the dreadful coast, loaded with knives. Matthew Flinders had said that he had never seen such a fearsome coastline. Andrew tried to sleep, and remembered lying next to Tommy under canvas in such weather, snuggling close to keep warm, laughing as long hair strayed across faces, kissing in the darkness, and the rising winds.
He did not close his eyes.
When he came down the 124 steps the next morning, Tommy was sitting outside the door. He looked rosy and pleased at the rising of the sun.
‘God, Andy, you look like sheeted ghost, what’s the matter?’
‘My friend betrayed me,’ Andrew told him, ducking under his embrace. ‘My heart is broken.’
‘Stay and speak with me,’ pleaded Andrew. ‘Even a phantom must do that!’
‘But I am not dead yet,’ Andrew said, and went into the house to pick at Mrs Thompson’s scrambled eggs, wash fastidiously, and lie down in the noisy room with the bickering children.
Tommy went fishing, and took the Thompson sons with him. The silence echoed. And Andrew fell asleep as though he had fallen down a well.
Mrs Thomson woke him with praise of Andrew, that admirable person having occupied the children for a whole day and brought in some very good fish. She had cooked some for him, a delicacy, fresh fish broiled in sea water, and he picked at it. It tasted very good, and he cleared his plate.
When he went to the lighthouse door, he found Tommy sitting beside it.
‘Hail, heartbroken ghost,’ said Tommy. ‘Stay and tell me of your misfortune.’
‘No, I have nothing to do with you,’ said Andrew, and went in, sealing the door as previously.
This night he watched the sea. It told him no tales. He could see the light in the parlour of the lighthouse keeper’s cottage, and hear the singing. Tommy was so convivial. What was he doing here? Why wasn’t he with whatever her name was; Helen, perhaps? No, it was a flower name, Rose or Lily. Lily, that was it. His Tommy hand in hand with Lily. Why had he come to hurt Andrew more? If only he wasn’t so very Tommy, with his guileless blue eyes and his curly golden hair and his red mouth, so apt for kissing...
He dragged his gaze away from the cottage and watched the sea. That was his duty.
When he opened the door in the morning, Tommy was sitting there. This time he said, ‘I never broke my oath, Andy. I said we’d be best mates forever.’
‘You are forsworn,’ said Andrew, and walked past him, although the out-flung hand slid across his thigh and made him shiver. Mrs Thompson again offered him breakfast, which he ate, and again her visitor took the children out for a nice walk along the beach, escorted by that dratted dog, and allowed her to get on with her baking in peace. A peace in which Andrew slept like the dead.
He woke to the scent of new bread, accepted a piece with newly-churned butter and plum jam, took his supper basket and went to the lighthouse door. Tommy waited for him.
‘What was it that made you run away?’ he asked. ‘Talk to me, my Andy! I never stopped loving you!’
‘Ah, but you did,’ Andrew told him, and stalked into the lighthouse.
Just as he was closing the door, he heard Tommy say, ‘I shall sit here until you come and get me,’ and the door clicked shut.
That night the autumn gales rose. They blew like Judgement, like the end of the world. Andrew watched the ships’ lights waver and shift as the wind caught them. He strained through the roaring for the sound of crash and sliver as they grounded on those cruel black rocks.
Then he remembered Tommy, sitting at the foot of the lighthouse. “I shall sit here until you come and get me”, surely he hadn’t actually meant that? A vicious, heart-breaking monster as he was? A cruel man who.... played with dogs and tots, went fishing to supply a household, took the children away who were ruining his spurned lover’s rest, who had endured that unpleasant bullock dray journey in order to... in order to do what? Sit at the foot of a lighthouse and ask for explanations?
It struck Andrew Thomas that he might have been a touch precipitate in his judgements of events. And meanwhile anyone sitting at the foot of that lighthouse was going to freeze or drown, or both, before long.
He started down the 124 steps sedately, but soon he was leaping two steps at a time, and then three. He hauled open the outer door and a partially frozen human fell into his arms.
Fear gave him unnatural strength. He bore Tommy bodily up the steps and into the lamp chamber, where the warmth would defrost him swiftly, and he might recover if he had not been out in the sleet for too long.
Andrew knew how long he had been there. Since dusk. That was four hours. Quite long enough to die of the cold.
Hurriedly, with trembling fingers, he unlaced and undid his lover’s sopping clothes, which had frozen to his skin in places. He dragged Andy close to the light so that he could melt the icy garments from his body. He wrapped the naked man in his own blankets and took his hands – those gentle hands, which had given him such delight – under his own shirt and jumper, against his own skin. He stuck Andy’s hands under his armpits and pulled his bare feet between his own warm thighs, and embraced him as close as he could under the lighthouse keeper’s blankets and cloak. Tommy murmured, leaning his wet head into Andrew’s neck. Andrew shuddered at the frozen fingers and toes, warming by leaching away his warmth. After a long, long interval, the heat began to equalise.
The pile of blankets heaved. Tommy looked out into his lover’s eyes and sneezed.
‘Nasty weather you keep around these parts,’ he remarked. ‘Now, my love, tell me – what is it? Don’t you love me any more? Is that why you ran from me? If that’s the case, I’ll go away as soon as the sun comes up. But you have to tell me, mate. You have to talk to me.’
‘Lily,’ said Andrew, too tired and relieved to pull out of this tangle of coverings. ‘I heard you talking to Lily. She loves you. I thought... I thought you...’
Andrew, affronted, realised that Tommy was laughing.
‘I had to earn some money,’ he said, punctuating his remarks with kisses. ‘I need to buy a fishing boat, for us, for Anglesea, unless you have changed your mind?’
‘Haven’t you?’ asked Andrew. Tommy aimed a clip at his ear and missed. His hands were still numb. He found a substitute punishment and bit Andrew’s earlobe quite hard. He yelped briefly.
‘No, listen, you idiot. I’ve been writing love letters–’
‘I know,’ said Andrew miserably. Tommy’ s slap connected this time.
‘Listen, will you? I’ve been writing love letters, for money, for all the local lads. You know how I love poetry. Goes over a treat with the bush girls. Just needed my Shakespeare and my Byron and my Keats. Lily’s smarter than most, clever gel, she discerned that the letters didn’t come from poor Tim Coulton. He’s a good fellow, but he’s only ever read a stock report, and she was thanking me for the letters because she actually does like him, even though I wrote his love letters. “Oh thou weed, that look’st so fair, and smell’st so sweet, that the sense aches at thee!”’ he quoted and Andrew blushed red, hiding his face in the cloak.
‘Othello,’ he identified the play. ‘Oh, I am such a fool!’
‘That you are,’ agreed Tommy, cheerfully. ‘And if I haven’t caught consumption from tonight’s events, I now have enough money to take us to Anglesea and buy a boat. If you will come with me?’
‘Do you still want me? I doubted you!’ confessed Andrew in a frenzy of shame.
‘So you did,’ said Tommy. ‘Don’t do it again. Well, what about it?’
‘Yes,’ said Andrew,. ‘Oh, yes, of course. Serve out my month’s notice, then we’ll go?’
‘Suits me,’ said Tommy. ‘That’s a bed over there, isn’t it? Come and lie with me. I missed you like a man misses a leg. I could quite take to being a lighthouse keeper, if the lighthouse has you in it.’
‘Oh, my love,’ said Andrew. ‘How can you forgive me?’
‘We’re best mates,‘ replied Tommy, and grinned. ‘Of course I forgive you.’
THE GREAT OCEAN ROAD OPENED FROM GEELONG TO EASTERN BEACH
18TH OF MARCH 1922
There were jolly festivities at Anglesea today as the Great Ocean Road was opened. The township is now linked by road to Geelong, and thence to Melbourne. Prominent local citizens were honoured for their work. A Mayoral luncheon was held, at which all the notables were recognised for their contributions. The fish course, for instance, was supplied by Mr Thomas Hughes (known to all as Tommy) who, with his partner Mr Andrew Thomas, has conducted a successful fish and chip shop ever since they arrived in 1891. It was their bold actions in their barracouta boat, the Desdemona, that successfully rescued three sailors from the wreck of the SS Mary Halperin. This wreck was notable as there was not only no loss of life, but that Mr Hughes brought in a string of horses, one after another, as he swam the lead mare safely ashore, while Mr Thomas followed with the others. The owners named their Geelong Cup hopeful Desdemona, as a token of their gratitude. Our racing correspondent expects her to do well.