by Peg Kingman
“Shall I take you there?” offered Mrs Darling, after their first greeting. “Of course not; you know the way as well as I. But bide a moment, hinney, for an over-cloak, and cover your bonnet. And the bairn? No, take her to him, to be sure!”
Constantia set off northward up the spine of the island, with the wind buffeting her back, and the canvas over-cloak billowing like a spinnaker. The rabbits on the close-cropped green machair scattered at her approach, and the birds rose up before her, taking to this air—this steady wind—without laborious graceless flapping or beating or hopping, but effortlessly, merely by opening their wings to the wind; by embracing it. Gulls, terns, ducks, pigeons, guillemots, eiders—all rose from the earth before her in swarms, in clouds, in their heavenly hosts, mewing and crying. The low green grass and the rocks were all spattered white and grey; the reason for the over-cloak. Birds hung motionless in the sky, facing the wind, balancing there. At a mere hitch of their feather-mail shoulders, they slewed down sideways and crossways; at a shrug they rose, they descended. At will, they dove, they plummeted; from time to time they beat laboriously upwind or crabbed up crosswise, like sailboats beating up into the wind. They cast themselves upon the air in perfect faith, certain of being borne up by it as a skiff is borne up by water; they lay upon the wind as easily as they sat upon their nests—in their thousands on this small rock alone.
It was not far to the north end of little Coquet Isle, to the place where two clefts in the rock run inland: a pair of deep narrow gorges; grykes. His derrick marked the spot: sturdy poles, tackle, and a winch, set up inside one of the grykes, for heavy lifting.
He was here, down in the cleft of the rock below her, out of the wind. She saw his shining head, his brown hair tied at the nape of his neck, uncut since she had last cut it for him, six months since. Hugh’s back was to her; he did not see her approach, nor could he hear her footfalls for the wind rushing above his head; nor did her shadow fall across him. Sunshine lay across his rolled-up shirtsleeves; illuminated the pale hairs springing from his forearms. He was murmuring to himself as he toiled there in that moist cleft of the earth—wielding hammer, file, chisel, brush. A few words came to her on the air: very private words, as from love-damp sheets: “Come on, come on up my darling . . .” How rare, how precious, to see him all alone (or so he thought) all unconscious of another; he was only himself, at his most engrossed. Constantia stood mute and still, watching him for some moments. She could not say how long. How could he not feel her here? But he did not; and did not; and still did not.
Until a rock gave way—a bird shrieked—a pebble rolled—suddenly he awakened from his working dream, his lover’s dream and, looking up, saw her. Saw them both.
O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock,
in the secret places of the stairs,
let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice;
for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely.
O my dove.
The square stone tower from which the Coquet Isle light shone out over the sea was medieval, a vestige of the monastery which had stood here since before the time of the Danish hermit Saint Henry; but the light itself was quite new, fitted out only four years before by the Trinity House engineers. In the lantern atop the newly whitewashed tower was a set of stationary argand lamps fitted with large reflectors. These lamps burned expensive sperm oil—gallons and gallons of it—which arrived in barrels on Trinity House barges according to schedule, to be stored in a vaulted chamber beneath the stone tower. It was the duty of the keeper—Mr Darling—to light the lamps each evening at sunset, and to ensure that they continued to burn all night, and every night. The sperm oil was not always perfectly pure; the wicks did not always draw evenly; and even these excellent new argand lamps had their quirks, and required some nocturnal vigilance. Immediately after sunrise he was to extinguish them, trim their wicks, polish the greasy smut from their chimneys and reflectors, and leave all in spotless readiness for the next lighting. He was to repair the damage when flying birds crashed through the glass of the lantern. When passing vessels got into trouble, he was if possible to aid them; to rescue men, rigging, cargoes. And he was required to submit frequent reports to his masters at Trinity House as to the rate at which official supplies were consumed; this was a matter of constant interest to them. The keeper was allowed discretion to light the lamps before sunset or leave them burning after sunrise if a storm made the day very dark, but this was not to happen often, and the masters kept a close watch on expenses. Trinity House provided a dwelling for the keeper and his family; their painters painted it; their slaters kept a roof on it. Trinity House paid his salary of 40 pounds annually, and furnished an allowance of coal for his household; drinking water if the rains failed or if high ocean waves washed into the holding tanks; and a new suit of clothes for himself (though not for the members of his family) each January.
The essence of his duty was to make sure that his light shone without fail during the hours of darkness. To mariners, an intermittent or unreliable light was worse than no light at all. Upon pain of dismissal, he was not to leave the island unless some competent deputy remained to tend the light. In practice, he often did leave the island for several consecutive days and nights, relying always upon his exceedingly competent wife.
The island was—had long been—the property of the Dukes of Northumberland, who generally let out the right to quarry its stone and minerals. Coquet Isle limestone was prized because it was strong, sound, and nearly white; easy to work when first quarried, but becoming both whiter and harder after exposure to weather. The battlements of Syon House outside of London are built of Coquet Isle stone. In 1820, the then-duke had granted a thirty-year lease to a Mr George Stevenson, master mason, quarrymaster, stone-broker. Upon Stevenson’s death in 1840, his son in the same trade had inherited the lease’s remaining term, along with other valuable quarry properties from Edinburgh to Newcastle. This son—Hugh Stevenson by name—had taken up the Chartist cause; had been so bold as to stand for the Edinburgh seat against Mr Macaulay in the 1841 election; but had fallen afoul of the law—and had in 1842 disappeared. It was supposed that he, like so many other Chartists, had fled to France.
And so he had, for several years.
But by midsummer in 1845, he had quietly returned to Coquet Isle with his new bride. This was a deep secret, as the warrant for Mr Stevenson’s arrest was still in effect. Only the lightkeeper and his family knew; and made room for them (unbeknownst to the masters of Trinity House) in the lodging newly built for some hypothetical assistant lightkeeper, not yet appointed.
Briefly, very briefly, was Livia bashful with this new stranger, her father. Quickly she became enamoured of him, even coquettish; quite as enamoured as he was, of her. Encouraged by him, she would babble: Da da da da da da da! She kindled when she saw him; craned to watch him as he moved about the room; and it was while bounced upon his knee that she first laughed, a merry chuckle. When she laughed, the most beguiling dimples appeared in her plump cheeks, to match the one in her chin. Dimples in her cheeks! Constantia marveled that she had not known this about her daughter until now.
As Hugh and Constantia had been unable to communicate during their long separation, except by the four pigeons Constantia had taken with her, they had a great deal to tell each other. All day they talked as they worked side by side, and in bed at night, they still talked. Oh, that bed! The plain bedstead was of stout oak; the featherbeds piled upon it were lofty. The sheets were linen. The pillows and the coverlet were filled with eider-down. There was a north-facing window, and from the bed, stars could be seen wheeling about their hub in the northern sky. This lodging (new-built for some future assistant lightkeeper, in the ruins of the fifteenth-century chapel, and at some distance from the Darlings’ house) had thick stone walls; the Stevensons knew they could not be overheard.
“It may yet be nothing,” murmured Hugh one night in the darkness of their little bedroom. Rain rattled against the wi
ndowpanes; Livia, asleep in an open trunk at the foot of their bed, stirred, sighed, and slept on. “It may prove to be devoid of any interest or importance to anyone; only a fool’s errand, a child’s delusion, a great waste of my time and, what’s worse, of yours.”
“On the other hand,” said Constantia, “it may prove of immense value and significance! Matchless, peerless, incomparable! Unimagined, and unimaginable, until now!”
“It had better be—as it kept me from your side at a time when I ought not to have been separated from you.”
“What choice had we? We were compelled to separate.”
“All you suffered, and alone . . .”
“I was not alone; I was surrounded by friends, the kindest friends anyone ever had.”
“If I had known!”
“I am glad you did not. It would have changed nothing. Nothing. You could not have saved our son. Very often, I was glad that you were spared—”
“That I was spared what you had to bear. But if it should turn out that while you have been off producing this Incomparable Treasure—our Livia—and I, meanwhile, have only been trespassing upon the Darlings’ hospitality these long months, and neglecting my duty to you, so as to devote myself to extracting what may prove to be nothing more than a vast quantity of—of useless rubble!”
“Well—and if so?”
On another night (this one still and cold, under the last full moon of the year), Hugh, awakened by the dazzle of moonlight splashed across his face, turned over and found Constantia awake too, silent tears glistening on her cheeks. He sought her hand curled against her chest in the warm envelope of their bed, and drew it to his lips. “Was he christened?” he whispered, presently.
“No. No, he never was.”
“What name had you given him, though, in your mind?”
She shook her head, and smiled sadly. “I have never yet brought myself to say his name,” she said. “Even now, when he is beyond all harm. Absurd of me . . .” And so it was. But it was very strong, this instinct to protect the helpless newborn. A baby’s name must never be spoken aloud until it has been taken to church and placed under divine protection by christening. “A friend—a piper—played a traditional lament for him when he was buried,” she said. “A lament composed for the infant son of some highland chief, I was told.”
“‘Maol Donn.’ Was it ‘Maol Donn’? Like this?” Quietly, Hugh voiced the long plaintive first phrase of that old lament.
“It might have been that—but those bagpipe tunes all sound very much alike to me,” confessed Constantia.
“‘Maol Donn’ means ‘God’s monk, the tonsured one—the bald one.’ That’s how superstitious old wives refer to an unchristened baby boy, so as to confound the malevolent spirits who would steal him away if they could: ‘the bald little monk.’”
After some time, she whispered, “David Alan Stevenson.”
“Davey,” breathed Hugh. “Our bald wee monk.”
“Yes, he was quite bald,” said Constantia.
The Darlings and the Cobbs all kept pigeons, not only for eggs and meat, but because pigeons—unlike hens—could be trusted to carry messages. (How comical, the idea of hens—bustling, silly, maternal, foolish, waddling stout hens—carrying messages! Hens, flying! Hens, finding their way, anywhere!) The old monastery dovecot housed Mrs Darling’s flock; these pigeons were at liberty to come and go as they pleased; to rustle in and out the little doors in its cupola; to take to the open sky in any weather, of their own free will. They always came in to roost each night just about the time the lamps were lit. Here they chose their mates, built their nests, and raised their squabs. They fed upon grain and washed in water which providentially appeared (provided by Mrs Darling). They built their sketchy nests from straw and twigs they found (set out here and there by Mrs Darling). Sometimes their eggs or their squabs vanished into thin air (taken by Mrs Darling, for reasons inscrutable to pigeons).
But in other, smaller pens were confined other pigeons, pigeons denied the liberty of the sky, because they had been hatched not here, but in the dovecots of other Darlings and Cobbs elsewhere. Those birds longed to return to their native places; if let loose, they could not help but make the attempt. Consequently they could be relied upon to deliver messages promptly to, from, and between those offshore islands rarely served by Her Majesty’s mails. When paying visits to one another, the Cobbs and the Darlings generally ferried along a crate of fresh birds to be left, thus replenishing each other’s stock for the carrying of future messages. The canny Rothschilds could not have been better organised. The pigeons that Constantia had taken to Edinburgh were of course Coquet Isle–born birds; Mrs Darling’s birds.
This homing impulse of pigeons was, like many other truths, only generally true; only somewhat true. It could not be strictly true—or how could pigeons have spread over the whole world? If it were strictly true, they should all, all be in their ancestral place still, the place of their original progenitors.
It had been suggested to the doctor at Amble (a man unfortunately hostile to Chartism, and Chartists) that he distribute pigeons of his own raising to his patients in the district, so that he might be sent for quickly and easily when needed. Somehow this excellent idea had not caught on.
Columba livia is the Linnaean name of these birds, these blue rock pigeons. Livia means “blue.”
What is so delightful as to come in from wind and rain? To latch a stout door, two planks thick, against the gale and draw the quilted portiere across it; to doff cloak and bonnet; to enter a warm parlour where a coal fire glows? The wind may whistle and moan atop the chimney, but here the stone walls are three feet thick, and a woven grass mat covers the flagged floor where the children play—without shrieks or tears, at this moment. Their industrious thrifty mother sits under the window, recessed in its deep embrasure of stone, to stitch a ticking. The gale may howl under the eaves; rain and sleet may pelt the window panes; but within, all is warmth and homely comfort. The industrious thrifty mother (not elegant, but resourceful, patient and good) pauses in her work to fill a cup for her guest, who is very glad to get it—and the last potato bap, still warm in its serviette.
“Three times today have I smashed my poor thumb with a hammer,” declared Constantia, exhibiting the thumb wrapped in a strip of linen—“thank you, Mrs Darling, so good of you to have saved a bap for me—and I cried tears the third time. I could not help it, for the pain and vexation. Now I am excused from further mayhem, until tomorrow.” She opened her bodice and put Livia to nurse. Livia still liked to touch the pearl pendant while she nursed, although she now wore a neat little necklace of her own, of St Cuthbert’s beads—fossil crinoids—that her father had gathered and strung for her. “But we have very nearly finished crating up my husband’s treasures,” said Constantia. “I cannot express, Mrs Darling, how sorry I shall be to leave your snug island again so soon.”
“Poor Mrs Stevenson!” said Mrs Darling. “Only just fled from dull Edinburgh—and bound next to dreary Paris! I suspect you, hinney, of trying to make me content with my lot. I assure you it is quite unnecessary, for, strange though it may seem, I am content already.”
“And why not? Edinburgh and Paris have their charms, of a kind,” said Constantia, “but for perfect homely comfort and the most complete seclusion, I should always choose just such a cosy lightkeeper’s cottage as this, on just such an island—and with just such good and kind companions, too.”
“Aye, an island is a pleasant private place—until the doctor is wanted. Then, it’s hoist the signal and hope for fair seas. How very sorry I was—very unhospitable indeed!—to send you off as we did. But I should have felt myself quite unfit to attend alone at the birth of twins, in case something went wrong.”
“I am convinced that I should never have been safely delivered without a doctor’s attendance. And my old friend Mrs MacDonald was very good to me.”
“And so, too, were you, to her friend, to whom you went in her time of need.” Setting as
ide needle and thread, Mrs Darling took up a plump paper packet and carefully cut a slit in it with her scissors; then she patted its contents into the ticking she had made. Inevitably, some airy tufts of eider-down escaped, and danced erratically about the parlour, rising or falling upon the air currents. Laughing, her children chased these elusive faeries.
“It looks rather small,” said Constantia of the ticking, which Mrs Darling now held up.
“Just the size for a bairn,” said Mrs Darling. She crimped together its open edges, and commenced to sew it shut. “A bairn called Livia Stevenson.” All the Darlings slept under coverlets filled with eider-down, for, after the fledging season, industrious Mrs Darling would gather the down left in the nests of the Coquet Isle eider ducks; wash and dry it; and sell on any excess not required in her own household.
Eider ducks line their nests with down plucked from their own breasts. What are their sensations upon performing this painful rite? What inner compulsion moves them? Why do other sea birds along this cold wet coast not do the same?
The littlest girl, knocked down in the rough play, toddled crying to her mother, who set aside her work and lifted her onto her lap. “Hush, Gracie, hush, lassie,” she said. This littlest Darling was the namesake of her intrepid aunt, the one who had died (a maid) three years before. “Oh dear; sopping wet again, already. Are those clooties dry yet, Mrs Stevenson? Can you reach them?”
“Nearly dry,” said Constantia, feeling the small-clothes drying on the rack close to the fire beside her. The laundry was a constant chore with babies in the house, and while the washing was arduous enough, the drying was more difficult still, during these stormy winter months.
“Off my lap now, Gracie; here, you may play with this bobbin. Well, Mrs Stevenson, my husband and I have been talking about your husband’s limestones, and we hope they will enjoy the greatest possible success among those savants in Paris.”