The Light Keeper (ARC)

by Cole Moreton

  ‘Do you remember the monkeys at the zoo?’ he asked her one bedtime. ‘They were gibbons, I think – a yellow one and a black one and they had a little baby. They were swinging around and bouncing off the branches and Mummy said they were us – the two of us swinging, with you in her arms – do you remember that?’ He was talking and talking, sitting on the edge of the mat-tress. He had stopped stroking her hair as he thought of it, but his hand was on her forehead, just there. Warm. ‘You used to say the same thing all the time after that. “Mummy, Daddy, Baby!” Do you remember?’

  She said nothing. She felt a bounce in her chest.

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  ‘You’re tired. I’ve gone on too long. Mummy loved you, Sarah, she still does. Never forget.’

  He left a warm space in the bedclothes, and she thrust her legs into it.

  ‘Goodnight, my angel.’

  ‘Night, Daddy.’

  That was all. It took her ages and ages to get to sleep.

  She loved Saturdays when his sermon had been written, her homework done and there were no weddings, so they could go for long walks in the forest with the curate’s dog, that smelly, disobedient hound called Tutu. Then to the pictures. Her father grinned stupidly and squeezed her hand and ate popcorn (and let his eyelids close sometimes, she saw him) through Toy Story and others that blurred into primary colours over time, until she became a teenager and toons were no longer really her thing at all.

  ‘Do you like this?’ he asked once in the dark, their faces reflecting the action as some prince or other flashed his sword at a dragon.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Well, thank goodness for that.’

  They got up, laughing, shuffled past a lot of grumbly people with awkward knees, and went for pizza. ‘Next time,’ said Sarah firmly, ‘I will choose the film.’

  She chose badly. A tale of pirates and romance, with not much blood, no swearing and only a bit of kissing, so that was okay, but all she could think of in the lovey-dovey bits was a boy from her class called Stevo, who flicked pellets of chewed paper into her hair with his ruler and would look dead cool with a cutlass in his hand. She burned up in the dark like a Ready-Brek kid, glowing with embarrassment at sitting there thinking and feeling those things while her dad was there, shoulder to shoulder.

  Luckily, he had fallen asleep in his seat.

  He will want to talk later, she thought, but she did not mind. They talked a lot, more than other girls and dads. They liked a natter, when there was time between the church and meetings,

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  swimming and drama group, piano lessons, tennis and laying on the floor listening to soppy songs. Oh, and reading, she did tons of that: increasingly grown-up things like the Edna O’Brien novel a woman in the congregation called Suzy put her way. The words in the books were like a code – they had structure and meaning deep within them but Sarah could not quite grasp the whole, only catch fragments. Vivid, intense, adult fragments that thrilled and frightened her. She could not ask her father about it; that would be embarrassing. And he would try to make it lead on to talking about her mother, which she would not do. Under no circum-stances. That was a given. There were things Sarah and her father did not talk about, for fear of spoiling what they had. Boys, for one. And two and three. But also, mainly, Mum.

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  Twenty

  ‘Do you love me?’

  His hair against her face made her want to sneeze.

  ‘Tutu! Stop it!’ The dog was tugging her away to play among the forest leaves with no idea what his monochromatic eyes had just missed: her first ever real kiss. With tongues.

  ‘Of course I do,’ she said, rubbing her nose with a mitten. Sarah had known this boy James in junior Sunday school, when they were very young, then waved him off at the airport when he left with his family for India. They had spent a fortnight together every year since. Strong, bright and funny, James told stories about the missionary life and teachers who thought they were still living in the Raj. He was smart and sensitive, the things she thought she wanted. And he made fun of the Lord with jokes, which was way cool.

  ‘The nun says to Mary, “Why do you always look so solemn in your statues?” So Mary says to the nun, “Between you and me, I wanted a girl . . .”’

  Back at the rectory, her father was saying to James’s parents, ‘They’re good for each other. As friends, I mean. Obviously. They’re good friends. Oh, I don’t know, doesn’t it scare you how fast they are growing up?’

  The parents sat over cold tea and uneaten crumpets confessing that yes, it was alarming and it did make them feel old. They were all praying together, Robert and Tom and Judy, holding hands and asking the Lord for strength and wisdom, when Sarah and James were under the forest canopy kissing, trying to work out where to put their noses.

  ‘I am in love.’

  The first time James wrote those words to her was on tissue-thin blue airmail paper, sent from India seven days after the kiss. She

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  wrote back, ‘Thank you for what you said, but I am afraid to say that I think a proper relationship requires more than a fortnight a year of proper contact in which to flourish.’ She felt very grown up, writing that, and it was only half serious, but it was also true. Sarah wanted a boyfriend whose hand she could actually hold. Lovely as he was, James would not do. They traded letters once a month, but by the time he returned to England a year later they were like brother and sister again, mooching around dusty muse-ums and playing long games of chess.

  ‘I am in love.’

  The second time James wrote those words, he did not mean with her. They came after a complicated, lingering description of an unnamed school friend, which was confusing to her for rea-sons she could not immediately identify.

  ‘This is it, Sarah. His name is Parv.’

  Ah. Then she knew what her father would want her to think, but she was not going to think that, thank you. This was great: James was a secret friend, far away, who knew her like nobody else and had found a love really worth writing about. What a great secret. She was just a little bit jealous, though. Not of Parv, but of the passion.

  ‘I love you too,’ she wrote. ‘I always will.’ She meant it. ‘I will be as loyal and faithful a friend as you have been to me, James.’ Very Jane Austen. She was pleased with that. ‘I do not suppose there is much I can do to help you tell your parents. You are going to tell them, right?’

  Right. Her father called out as she passed the half-open door of his study later that day. ‘Honey . . . I guess you know about James then?’ She was disappointed to lose her secret, and also very worried. She had heard her father preach. Love the sinner, hate the sin, he said. It was against God’s will. ‘It is different when you know somebody,’ he said gently, as though stumbling on a thought for

  the first time. ‘I suppose that is true. When you love them.’

  He pushed his glasses back up his nose and shuffled his papers in the wordless way he had of saying that he needed to be alone to

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  work now, thank you. His sermons changed after that. He began to quote Tutu – the archbishop, not the dog – so often that the phrase became his catchphrase in the church. ‘Love is stronger than hate. Light is stronger than the darkness. Life is stronger than death. Love changes everything.’ Sarah didn’t know whether to tell him the last bit came from The Phantom of the Opera.

  The Reverend Robert Jones said those things so often to his daughter because she would not let him say what he really wanted to say, never ever. He wanted to talk about his wife Jasmine, her mother, but Sarah would not have it. He very much wanted to give her a letter that Jasmine had written for her before she died, but Sarah would not take it. He tried on her eighteenth birth-day, then her nineteenth and her twentieth. He tried again on the morning of her twenty-first birthday, holding out a blank white envelope. Inside, he knew, was a much older letter with her name on it, written in her mother’s flowing hand.

&nb
sp; ‘Please?’

  ‘No. You can’t make me.’

  The eggs were burning in the pan. There was smoke in the kitchen. He pleaded, cajoled, paced the room, circling her, shout-ing, even cursing . . . and finally, when his eyes were blind with tears and his face flushed with exertion and he seemed about to lose his temper in a way that frightened Sarah, he went quiet. ‘Fine. It is your choice.’ He kissed her on the forehead, wetting her hair and thinking, you are so much like your mum.

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  Twenty One

  Sarah stood by the window in the tatty, untidy schoolroom and felt the heat of a radiator on her legs and the warmth of the sun-light on her face, or as much as could get through a pane of glass cloudy with handprints.

  ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’

  They were supposed to be doing Shakespeare but the teacher was off with the flu, suddenly. Sarah was shadowing Mr Alvin for a fortnight, getting her first taste of what school was really like for the people up the front. Or at the side. You should be the guide at the side, her college tutor said, not the sage on a stage. Let the children speak. But Mr Alvin said that wasn’t easy when what they had to say was so often challenging, or just so bloody rude. She had been thinking about that earlier, when the Head found her.

  ‘You can fill in this morning, Miss Jones, can’t you?’

  That was an order, Sarah realized as she watched Mrs Khan stride away down the corridor, ploughing through the crowd with her silent presence, scattering kids to either side. Genghis, they called her in the staffroom; but it was only a joke, born of admir ation, because everybody knew what a tough job she had, hold-ing the school together. The place was in trouble: they were five staff down already and the term was only a fortnight old. Summer term, the year almost done. Teachers were just dropping out, giv-ing up, calling in sick. Too much pressure, not enough time, all the lost weekends and mountains of paperwork, politics and safe-guarding pressure and abuse from kids who didn’t want to learn. They bitched about it in the pub, then some just went miss-ing. They just stopped turning up. Sarah still loved the idea of teaching, with the innocence of a beginner. It was nearly time for her first ever lesson and she heard her chest whistle, felt a tight-ening. Closing her eyes, she concentrated on the warmth entering

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  her body and on her own breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

  ‘Y’all right, Miss? Where’s Calvin?’

  Danny Rose swept past, all swagger and poise, and took a seat at the back, legs spread. Sarah knew where the nickname came from, she had been there. Mr Alvin bent over in class to retrieve a book from the floor and revealed the underpants at the top of his trou-sers. Just a peek, but enough for the class to see they were some-what grey, somewhat the underwear of a man who lived alone.

  ‘Them Calvins, sir?’

  Danny’s disciples had laughed at that. His status was already sealed. Star striker in the football team, he was going to be a pro, no problem. He’d wear Calvin Kleins all the time then. Real ones, not knock-offs from the market that went grey in the wash.

  ‘You’ve got me today,’ said Sarah without thinking and she immediately felt Danny staring at her. His confidence was unset-tling. His eyes seemed to say yeah right, that would be your lucky day. What had she got herself into? But he looked away, sucking air in through his teeth, and Sarah felt relieved as the rest of the class came in like a crowd storming a palace. Now the babble was at its loudest, with shrieks and calls and the clatter of stuff and scraping of chairs, and it went on and on echoing back off the high class-room ceiling and Sarah thought about calling them to order but she knew this class, she had watched Mr Alvin struggle at times. They’d wind her up if she took them on. So she handed out the worksheets for Sonnet 18 instead and discovered a universal truth of teaching English: that nobody wants to read Shakespeare aloud in class except the show-offs. Danny volunteered to go first, stood up, threw a pose and read the first line with controlled aggression, like an actor in an action movie.

  ‘“Shall I. Compare thee. To a summer’s day?”’ His eyes were on her the whole time. Then he shrugged and said, ‘Nah.’

  His people jeered, Sarah smiled. ‘Thank you for that, Danny.’ She’d got her bearings now and wasn’t going to let him rattle her. This is going to be okay, she thought, although the volunteers dried up quickly and she had to pick readers from around the

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  class. A girl called Kiké Ampadu – Sarah checked – stood up, but nothing came out of her mouth; tears looked likely, she was trem-bling, so Sarah invited her to sit down. Another girl was asleep, oblivious to it all.

  ‘That’s okay,’ said Sarah. ‘Let her be.’

  She knew the reason but couldn’t say. Anastasia was the carer for a mother who was very ill, in constant pain and in need of help or company many times through the night, every night. She was struggling – anyone could see that from the poor girl’s ghostly face – and the social workers knew it but nothing was ever done, apparently. Mr Alvin had warned that Nasti – as they all called her – might doze off. There were others like that too in this school. Every school. What could you do but feel for them? So Sarah moved things on and the class quietened after that, as if to let Anastasia rest.

  ‘Kiké, come here, will you?’

  The shy girl in braids stood up, unsure what to do.

  ‘Come and sit with me.’

  So she did and Sarah sat beside her, both of them perched on the front of the desk, facing the class. ‘Do you feel lovely today, Kiké?’

  Some of Danny’s boys made highly inappropriate noises but Sarah waved them down, and Kiké said, under her breath, ‘No, Miss.’

  Sarah smiled, holding her attention but speaking loudly enough for everyone to hear. ‘You are though. You’re lovely, Kiké. Are you as lovely as that summer day out there?’ A few heads turned toward the windows, the sunlight held up ghostly palms. ‘No, you’re much lovelier than that. You don’t blow hot or cold, you’re just right. Some days are so windy they shake the blossoms off the tree, you’ve seen that, right? Some days are way too hot. And summer’s over way too soon, isn’t it?’

  Kiké looked at her blankly.

  ‘Lovelier than a summer’s day. How does that make you feel, Kiké?’

  ‘Special, Miss. I guess.’

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  The low, teasing wolf-whistles came again.

  ‘Well, you are. And that’s what Shakespeare is saying to some-one in this poem. You’re lovely, in a way that lasts for ever. Class, who do you think he’s writing to?’

  ‘His girl!’

  ‘His batty boy!’

  At least they got that this was love. Unfortunately, Sarah then lost them completely. The answers became cat-calls and shrieks and jokes, it all got out of hand and there was a near riot that caused a passing PE teacher to rush into the room and bellow at everyone so Sarah felt as though she had failed, which was true. But she learned lessons of her own that day and didn’t give up. And when Danny and his disciples had gone away and there were only a few stragglers left in the classroom, Kiké came over and said softly, ‘Thanks, Miss.’ She looked happy in a way Sarah had never seen before. That’s it, thought Sarah. That’s why I’m here. But Anastasia was still asleep, face down on the desk, cheek on her pencil case, the last one left. So Sarah went over, squatted down beside her and put a hand on the poor, exhausted girl’s shoulder until she came round, startled and afraid.

  ‘It’s okay. You’re okay,’ Sarah said. And when the pale, skinny girl was more awake, thrusting her stuff back into a bag, mut-tering apologies and rushing to get out of there, Sarah said as kindly as she could, still learning and feeling her way: ‘It’s all right. Anastasia, isn’t it? Don’t worry. Listen, is there anything at all we can do to help?’

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  Twenty Two

  The second miracle of Sarah’s life had an edge as sharp as the first. Granny was lying in a bed in the nursing h
ome under a thin, pale blue blanket. Her hands were all red and gnarled, laid out flat as though she had been smoothing things down, making her bed in the morning. Someone had brushed her hair so silver-yellow strands swirled on the pillow around her head. A mermaid, under-water. Her eyes were closed, her mouth open. This is it, thought Sarah, taking her turn at the end of the bed. Just a matter of time. She was a trainee teacher now, in her early twenties, but this was a study day. Granny shivered and Sarah realized she was waking up. Why did she shiver? The central heating was turned up too high – there was a thick odour, the smell of bladders not attended to, bodies wasting away. Through the window, behind Granny’s head, she saw a chestnut tree, branches jostling like the heads and shoulders of a waiting crowd. The memory of the blinding light returned. Sarah felt exhausted.