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It's not that Charles Lightoller doesn't enjoy being home. In fact, he quite enjoys getting to see his wife and kids again.
It's just that, when he's home, he finds himself looking for things that aren't there.
Sylvia Lightoller is a loud and at times unobservant woman, but she's not an idiot, and near midnight on May 3rd, 1914, she whispers into the dark of their bedroom, "How many times do you check the doors every night?"
The answer is three times, but Charles answers, "Twice." Sylvia laughs, and he knows she knows he's lying, and he knows she doesn't care. They've been married too long to have any illusions about knowing everything about each other. Charles doesn't know what Sylvia has to do to take care of the house in his absence, and Sylvia doesn't know what happens to Charles at sea.
It is, of course, about the sea; everything in Charles's life comes back to the sea, usually sooner rather than later.
"Still locked?" Sylvia asks, and he can hear her smile even without being able to see it.
"Yes," Charles says, and this time he's telling the truth. He locks the doors around 9 PM, then checks them at 9:45, 10:30, and 11:15, and every single time, without fail, they are still locked.
The doors are locked when they're supposed to be, and the lights don't turn off without being turned off, and there's no breeze unless the windows are open, and that's why Charles feels unsafe at home.
By all accounts, he is safer with both feet on land. He's supposed to be steadier without the waves making the very ground he walks on rock back and forth. The rocking is comforting, though, a constant reminder that he, like so many of his friends, belongs to the sea.
He's lost more friends to the sea than he can count. Countless people- his parents, friends, Sylvia, even a couple of his kids- have commented on the fact that even after everything, he keeps returning to the ocean. He laughs along with them, because he doesn't know how to explain that that's why he has to go back. The only way he can see any of them again is on the water.
Not here. Here, everything works the way it should, and it's unsettling, because it forces him to acknowledge that it's the things he sees at sea that are supposed to seem unsettling. The ghosts.
So to speak. Charles doesn't call them ghosts, because he hasn't yet internalized the fact that they're dead.
William Murdoch died two years ago; Charles knows that, he knows it. But he talked to William two weeks ago, when the bathroom lights flicked on and off without him touching the switch. He talked at the mirror, but he was talking to William, and he caught a flash of movement, a glimpse of a smile. When he turned around, there was no one there, and he knew better, but sometimes what he knows doesn't mean a thing.
So yes, he enjoys being home, and he loves his wife and kids, and he always wants to be back on the water as soon as he steps onto land. The land is not his domain, so long as his friends, his William, don't reside there. Come smooth sailing or disaster, the sea doesn't feel unsafe, as long as he knows that when at last he's dragged underwater, he'll have someone there to catch him.