by Cole Moreton
The Light Keeper
Cole Moreton
First published in Great Britain in 2019
Marylebone House
36 Causton Street
London SW1P 4ST
www.marylebonehousebooks.co.uk
Copyright © Cole Moreton 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978–1–910674–57–4
eBook ISBN 978–1–910674–58–1
Typeset by Manila Typesetting Company First printed in Great Britain by Subsequently digitally printed in Great Britain
eBook by Manila Typesetting Company
Produced on paper from sustainable forests
One
You don’t jump, you just keep walking. One step then another. The edge of the cliff is close now, she can feel the drop but dares not look down. Her eyes fix on a shimmering, far out to sea. Fingers of light reaching down through the clouds to stir the waters, like a scene from one of the stories her father used to tell when she was still a girl and still believed in miracles. She stares at the dazzling light until her eyes go funny, but even when she closes them it is still there, burning. She feels sick, dizzy. Her feet will not move, they will not walk. Her legs shake. Her arms ache, wide open like wings to fly or to plead for mercy. The wind comes from behind, lifting her arms as if to carry her away . . .
Two
‘Sarah?’ He calls but he knows. Even as Jack turns the key and pushes the door with his shoulder, he knows. The worry that was there all morning and on the street and in his head is louder now as he runs up the stairs, turns another key and falls into the flat. Where’s the cat? She’s always here at this time, but not now. Sarah’s coat isn’t on the peg, her bag isn’t on the bench.
‘Sarah?’
Her laptop is still on the table in the kitchen, the little green sleep-light pulsing.
‘You home?’
There’s no sign of movement through the half-open bedroom door, no sound from the bathroom. No cat. Only the traffic, like waves breaking. The sleep-light pulsing. Jack runs his finger over the touch pad and the screen wakes with an image: the sky, the sea, the sun on the water. He knows the place immediately. She told him about it the day they first met, in the park. She was golden. Her skin shone under a white summer dress. He didn’t know what to say. Jack had to force himself to look away from her body and into her face, into eyes that were laughing at his voice.
‘You sound like the movies. I like it,’ she said, and he felt so weird and far from himself that he could only grin back at her. Sarah took him to the palace to see the guards. She took him home with her like a lost hound and Jack was found. And in the weeks that followed they went everywhere a boy from New Jersey could possibly want to go in England, including this place, the one she loved the most. The South Downs, landscape of her childhood, where the hills lined up to face the sea. The sky was so vast and the water so wide, they could see the earth curve on the horizon. They walked on chalk and grass and looked out across the English Channel and she said wait – wait, wait, here it comes – then he saw, in front of them, the sudden, shocking drop. The land just
fell away. Five hundred feet, she said. Five seconds to the rocks. He counted, moving closer. Five, four, three, two, one. He leaned right over to see and she got scared. ‘Come back! You idiot! You always go too far.’
She was furious with him when he jumped back and laughed, and she walked away from the edge fast, right away and hid behind her camera and would not speak to him for a while. But it was already on her camera, the picture he sees now on her laptop screen. The sky, the sea, the sun on the water, as if she was hanging in the air somehow when she took it, suspended in mid-air – and he knows, really knows, where she has gone and what is wrong and what she might do. He shouts for her, knowing she is a hun-dred miles away. A roar; not a name but a sound.
‘Sarah! Say-raah!’
And Jack is away down the stairs, past the bike, fast outside and into the car, stamping down on the gas, making the engine howl, yanking the handbrake up and off hard so that the slow, rusty old wreck moves off into the stream of cars without a signal. Let them blare. Let them swear. Let them all get out of the way. He’s coming for her.
‘Wait, Sarah, wait! Hold on!’
Three
And the gull that has been hovering in the air in front of the woman – only a swoop away, but out over the edge in the void – turns as if it cannot bear to watch what happens next. The wind lifts its wings and the seabird slides, riding the rise and fall of the cliffs, away to the west. First a long, slow glide down into a dip, then the land swells again into another half-cut hill. This one has an old granite tower at the summit, a lighthouse whose light was put out a long time ago. It used to be safe, but time has passed and chalk has fallen away and now the ground is almost gone from under the feet of the tower, which stands hard by the side of a very long, white drop.
This is a lonely place in winter, but on spring days like this there is no more beautiful place in the world. The ripped clouds reveal a deep blue sky, the sunlight spills over everything, glittering on the sea or flashing on the bright face of the cliff, and the air is alive with brilliant energy. You are gorgeous, thinks a man who wishes he could do justice to the glory of it all, as he stands at the base of his tower. There’s a low flint wall that was built to enclose the lighthouse garden, but bits of it have gone skittering and scatter-ing out into space and down into the sea far below at some point, and where he’s standing the chalk, grass and gravel just disappear. The man is scared of the edge and there’s nothing irrational in that. Most of the time he keeps away, but today there is a task to perform.
So this tall, slender man with hair whipping into his wearily handsome face stamps the ground beneath him and kneels down carefully, palms against the chalk and grass. This is the man who lives in the lighthouse, who is trying to make it a home even though his stomach turns every time he thinks of the drop. So he lays on the floor and wriggles like a snake with his belly in the dirt and the dust, slowly moving forward, a few inches at a time, arms stretched out ahead of him. His legs are spread, his
back arched, his pelvis is pressed into the earth as they taught him during hostile environment training a long time ago, in another life. His neck hurts as he looks past his arms and hands to a small wooden stake, just beyond the broken wall but before the empty space. He is as flat as he can be in this wind, spreading his weight as widely as possible to keep safe, but shaking anyway. The sweat blurs his vision, or maybe it is not sweat, as he offers a fistful of yellow flowers to the stake and ties them, clumsily – failing and trying again – with a twist of green garden twine. There. They are tied to the wood, tightly, so the wind cannot snatch them, at least for now, and he wriggles back, breathing hard.
‘This would be so much easier with your help,’ he says to nobody but the wind or a wisp of a memory, a face and a scent and a feeling of skin on skin that can never be again. Resting by the wall with his back against the stones and his feet towards France, he thinks of her inky fingers moving quickly over a page, making marks, creating a world out of nothing. The stuff of the sea, the sky, the wind, the waves, the light, was caught in her head as in a refracting glass and spilled out tra
nsformed onto canvas and paper in remarkable drawings and paintings. Her name was Maria but she signed her work Rí, the Irish word for king. A male word. She was stealing the power, because names matter, and she told him how to say it properly.
‘Ree. Sounds like free.’
The name is strange in his mouth now. Love brought him to this place, but she is gone and there is no freedom. He wants to stay but he can hardly bear it. He wants to leave but she is here. His eyes are closed by the rub of grief. A weary man, so dog-damn weary. Lighter, much lighter than he used to be, with a flutter-ing heart. Every meal is a struggle with matches and gas and a turning, churning stomach. It’s easier to light a cigarette and suck down smoke than finish a Fray Bentos pie from the tin. He will become smoke himself one day soon and be glad of it, disappear-ing into the air as she did.
You’re wasting away, she would say, but he smiles at the thought that she might also like the way he looks. He’s back to the man
he once was, running through the streets in war zones, dodging the bullets and the bombs, seeking out the stories that needed telling, living on adrenaline, coffee and cigarettes but knowing it was right to be there. Not the man he became, working from an office, walking the streets of a sick city, sucking it all up as a crime reporter, sitting with people whose sons and daughters, lovers and friends had been hurt or murdered, helping them to cry on camera, all those grieving people. Making money from misery. He could never turn away or turn it off until Rí, as in free. The girl who cut off all her raven hair and shaved her head and whose bright blue eyes could be as calm as a tropical sea one moment, as wild as the waves in a storm the next. Now, thanks to her, he’s a crazy, broke bloke living in an old lighthouse without a light, on the edge of everything.
‘Thanks, love. At least it’s quiet.’ People come up here on good days to see the staggering views and they are surprised to see him moving about in or near the tower, but they keep their distance and they don’t know his name. He likes that. They must wonder at his life, but then so does he. His surfer-long hair is tangled and bleached by the salt and sun. The little blue lucky stone she gave him with the hole right through it is tied on a thin leather around his neck.
‘I’ve got my cheekbones back now,’ he says with a hand up to his sandpaper face. ‘That’s a win, then.’ Somewhere at the bottom of everything is the ghost of a laugh. Be kind to yourself, she used to say. Be mindful. ‘Live it, breathe it, be here, be present,’ he recites. ‘See it. Wake up and be thankful. I know. I know . . .’
He breathes deeply, coughs, then begins again.
‘Come on. Where are you?’
He’s trying to keep a record of his thoughts. Talk it all out, get it all down, as he was told to do by a counsellor he no longer wants to see. He no longer wants to talk to anyone but her, and yes he does know that she is not here. No, he does not care. The dictaphone tucked into a breast pocket, little red light showing, is just a prop really. It makes him feel less awkward about talking.
‘What do I say about today?’
There’s no answer. Of course not.
‘The eighteenth of April. A blustery day. The wind pokes you. “Get up, boy; don’t get comfortable, get on with it.” The wind is a woman. A proper nag . . .’
What a clout he would have got for that. The wind sighs. She sighs all the time up here. All day long and all through the night, whispering or wistful, in agony or ecstasy, gasping and moan-ing, murmuring, sighing. Nuzzling the tower, never letting him forget.
‘I’m sitting on my coat here, because of these . . . I don’t know what they are. How bad is that? I should know.’ He ruffles the grass and moss and heather or whatever it is at the base of the wall, but pulls away quickly with a tiny black thorn stinging in his thumb. ‘I should know the names of these things. Not the sheep drop-pings; I know them, they look edible. Things are not what they seem here.’ The wind thickens, roughs him up, steals his breath. ‘I am not what I seem either. Not a tourist, not passing through any more, thanks to you. This is my place. Our place. This is our home.’
That is strange to say and stranger to live. This is the brim of England, right down at the bottom, the last place to be before you fall into the sea. ‘So. I spend the nights awake with the wind around me. I sleep-walk through the days. The hours are short-ening. I’d rather be out here with you than back in there, however much there is to do. Look at this view. How do I describe it? You were always better than me at that . . .’
He forces himself to look again, squinting into bright light.
Say what you see.
‘Ah, hello.’
Silence again.
‘Okay, so. Say what you see? The sun coming through again, over there. Picking out that fishing boat. The storm on the horizon, above that freighter. A cloud like a fist. The ship must be massive.’
Tell me the colours.
‘The colours? Okay. Dark on the skyline, almost purple. Coming closer, the sea is a wine-bottle green; then a duller, flatter jungle
green, maybe, with slashes of black from the deep water. Or the fish, or the shadows of the cloud, I don’t know. I should know. The sunlight is silvery today, not glittering but still slippery with traces of the winter; silver draped on the water, rippling with the waves. Papery white at the edges. How could you get that look in a painting? I don’t know. Maybe with a splash of mercury?’
Yeah, mercury.
‘I knew you’d laugh. I love that sound.’ Loved.
‘No. Love.’ He closes his eyes, hearing the shush of the waves far below. Breathing out. Breathing in.
Good. That’s enough for now.
‘That’s enough.’
Four
Jack drives fast through the city, as fast as he can. The traffic is heavy but he overtakes, undertakes, ignoring the horns, refusing to acknowledge the drivers he knows are shouting at him. Down under the river, through the tunnel and out into the last light of day, the dying light that shows up all the smears on the wind-screen, and he’s slipping left and right with the speed cameras popping, and thinking, rambling, letting his thoughts run. ‘Why now? Why can’t you just wait? It might be okay, it might work out . . .’
He doesn’t really believe that any more than she does. They have three more nights to get through, then she will wake up early in the morning and take a test like all the ones she has taken before. Padding downstairs with the pen-shaped thing in the pocket of those tartan pyjamas she got from her dad, the big, baggy ones she wears for comfort. Cuddle Jams. He’ll be outside, by the closed door, listening and waiting.
The first time she took the test was the only time she let him in the room, and he felt so unwelcome, trying to give her space and not react to what he was hearing, smelling, seeing. The sound of her water. The yeasty scent rising, mingling with toilet damp and lemon freshness. Sarah counting down from thirty, under her breath. ‘Twenty-seven, twenty-six . . .’ Jack was ambushed at that moment – as he waited in the shadow of her warmth – by the thought of a life just starting. A whole life of living and lov-ing. A boy or maybe a girl, laughing and smiling, cuddling and tumbling, learning to walk, kicking leaves in the forest, playing football in the park, holding and being held, knowing they were loved. Daddy would always be there.
But there was no life starting at all. No damn blue line. Then came the tears, the shouting. The lashing out. Then the silence.
Such a long silence, longer every time.
But all the silences so far were just leading up to this one that is coming. The last time. The last chance. They have no money left. No more strength. No hope. No expectation at all that it will work. He knows he has lost her and he fears what she will do. Wouldn’t she wait, though, for the result? Wouldn’t she just want to hold out for this one last chance?
‘Come on . . .’
Shadows are filling the car. They’re up to his waist, up to his neck and he’s drowning in them. They’re over his head now. He’s under the surface and the r
ed tail-lamps glowing all around him in the slow-moving motorway traffic are the lights of an undersea procession, the people of the depths all calling for their queen. The indicator clicks and he drifts left, into the deeper darkness of the countryside, following the signs and road numbers and the memory of the numbers. Twenty-one. Two-six-seven. Like Sarah counting down the seconds of the test, to the moment when she knows.
‘Fifteen. Fourteen.’
Faster. Too fast.
The tyres hiss. The car slides. Leaves splatter the glass, branches lash the windscreen. A flash of white and an explosion. ‘Shit!’ The wing mirror has gone. He jerks the wheel one way then the other, wrestling to keep her straight as he brakes, pumping the pedal, and the car slides and shudders and slows to walking pace. And stops. ‘Sweet mother . . .’ Jack flicks on the wipers, and through the muddle of mulch and muddy water sees a churchyard, a stone angel. Not much of a guardian angel right now. This is a dark road, someone will come up fast behind him soon. The key turns, the engine coughs and coughs but then starts again and he is moving, creeping past a pub with lights all aglow.