Montauk

by Nicola Harrison

  We sat for a while and listened. Too often I felt a need to fill silence with some nervous banter, but I found myself letting go.

  “What draws you to the world of writing?”

  “Oh gosh, I’m not a real writer. I just like to remember the details of everyday life. If I don’t write things down I forget them, they lose significance somehow, but once they are on paper they are preserved; they’ll be remembered.”

  “I don’t trust myself to remember the things I want to remember either,” he said.

  I had frantically written down every detail I could remember of Charlie’s life when he died, terrified that I’d forget things he’d said and done. I even wrote down all the bad things, the things I wished I’d said, the fights I wished I hadn’t started, the times I’d chosen to do something other than spend time with him, the look of disappointment on his face when I stole a bag of candy from his room, the one and only time I pushed him off his bike and the look of shock on his face when I did so and the silent treatment after that stung the most. But I had ripped up those pages, wanting to preserve only the good.

  “The tricky thing about the mind is its ability to hold on to the times you want to forget,” I said.

  “A lot of soldiers came back from the war perfectly intact, you know, all four limbs attached,” he said, “but it’s their mind that kills them in the end; they can’t get the horrors they saw out of their heads.” He took a sip of wine. “It’s a hard thing. Anyway, how did we get on to such somber talk?”

  I laughed. “No idea.”

  He looked at me and smiled. “Maybe I could take you up to the top of the light later, if there’s time.”

  I felt a jolt of excitement run through me. “I promise I won’t tell anyone it was after hours.”

  But we didn’t move. After a while the orange and pink sunset lit up the horizon and then everything around us turned a brilliant deep blue, that final transformation as day turns into night. It only lasted a few minutes and then everything deepened, turning hazy grey; the horizon began to disappear, the ocean merging with the sky. I knew I should have left already, but I couldn’t bring myself to end the evening. Within minutes darkness enveloped us, the grass looked black beneath our feet, the only light came from the moon and the stars in the clear Montauk sky.

  “We should have packed up before it got dark,” I said.

  “I should have brought a lamp,” Thomas said, starting to put everything back up into the basket. “But we’ll manage.”

  When we walked up toward the house it was pitch black and I realized how long we’d been sitting out there, enjoying the summer evening. The light towering above us was sending a beam nineteen miles out into the ocean, but not even a glimmer of that was lighting our path. He placed his hand gently upon my shoulder, leading the way for only a moment, along the wall of the lighthouse; then he walked a few steps ahead. My eyes fixed on the glowing white of his shirt, and if my hands had been free I might have reached out and grabbed the shirt, letting it lead me back to the house. If someone had seen me then, walking in the darkness, alone with a man who wasn’t my husband, whether it was in innocence or not, it would have been a scandal, a black mark on my reputation and on Harry’s, but in that moment I really didn’t care.

  We kept walking and all of a sudden there was a thud and the sound of plates crashing into pieces as the picnic basket spilled open. Thomas’s white shirt was gone from my line of vision, and when my eyes followed the sound I saw Thomas lying in a dirt ditch about six feet deep, surrounded by shards of white porcelain.

  “Jesus Christ,” he moaned. “Damn it.”

  I dropped to the ground and saw that he’d fallen into a trench of some sort that was half-dug near the outer wall of the lighthouse.

  “Damn it, damn it,” he said. “God damn Milton. We weren’t going to start the foundation check until after the weekend.”

  “Are you hurt?” I asked.

  He stopped cursing and glared at me. “No, sweet girl, I’m not hurt; I’m just making a hell of a fuss about nothing.”

  I grimaced. “Fair point. What hurts?”

  Pulling himself up to standing, he was still deep in the ground, only his shoulders and head at grass level. “My ribs, oh hell, it hurts to talk, and my ankle, God, I hope it’s not broken, but it’s surely sprained.”

  “Should I go and get help?”

  “No,” he said firmly. “If you get injured out here, you get replaced.” He put his hands on either side of the ditch and tried to heave himself up, but it caused him more pain and he wrapped his arms around his rib cage.

  “Wait,” I said, getting down on my knees and attempting to hook my arms under his arms, to hoist him up, but it was no good. The feel of his strong arms and shoulders under his thin shirt made me realize there was no way I could help him out of there. He shook himself free of me.

  “I can do it,” he said. “Stand back; we don’t want you falling in here as well.” But a second attempt failed; the combination of his inability to put weight on his foot and the painful bruised or broken ribs left him stuck.

  “Wait, before you do any more damage, what if I could find something for you to stand on so you don’t have to pull yourself up so much?”

  “There’s a ladder in the shed over there by the outhouse,” he said, pointing to a vague black outline about one hundred feet from the house. “Keys are hanging up just inside the front door of the house.”

  “Okay,” I said, determined and focused. “Stay right there. I mean, just, don’t move.”

  He tried to laugh, then bent over holding his ribs again. “I’m not going anywhere, darlin’.”

  I grabbed a few of the biggest pieces of broken porcelain and dropped them in the picnic basket, threw in the empty wine jug and glasses and walked briskly up to the house.

  “I’ll be right back,” I called over my shoulder.

  The keys were lined up neatly and labeled on hooks just where he had said they’d be. I took down the one that said “work shed,” noting the “outhouse” key next to it and hoping I could wait until I got back to the Manor before I had need of it. I’d read in a tourist’s guide in the Manor lounge that they’d only electrified the keepers’ dwellings earlier that year, so it seemed that this remote lighthouse was one of the last places to get up to date with modern amenities.

  Thomas pointed toward the shed as I walked back down the hill. “That way,” he said. “Watch your step; the ground’s uneven over there.” I took small steps with my hands outstretched in front of me, scared that I’d be the next one to fall. I unlocked the first shed and stared inside the pitch-blackness waiting for my eyes to adjust. Finally, I could make out the shape of a medium-sized wooden ladder and I wrestled it out of the shed onto the lawn. Then I pulled a rake from a collection of shovels and hoes, thinking it might work as a temporary walking stick; then, stopping every few minutes to wipe the sweat from my brow, I dragged them back to where Thomas was. I lowered the ladder down to him.

  First he tried to hop up the rungs so he wouldn’t put pressure on his ankle, but this seemed to cause excruciating pain in his ribs, so he tried a different approach, climbing very slowly, hooking his arms over the top rung, then pulling himself up. I wanted to help, but I didn’t know how, so I just held the ladder steady and gradually he made his way to the top, climbed out and held his leg.

  “It’s not broken,” he said, sitting up. I carefully helped him up to standing. He seemed to be in a lot of pain but trying not to show it; then he attempted to put weight on his right foot but couldn’t.

  “I’m not going to be able to walk on it for days. God damn. Once Milton gets word of this he’ll be writing to the board for my position and they’ll send me back to some remote location like Redcliffe. Unbelievable.”

  “Then don’t tell him,” I said.

  “I can’t work like this,” he said. “I can’t even walk, let alone climb up the tower.”

  “Can’t someone help you?” I said. “How
long will it take to heal, a couple of weeks?”

  “At least.”

  “I’m sure someone can help you out.”

  “They can’t; everyone’s got their own business; this is a round-the-clock job.”

  “I could help you.”

  He let out a snort and shook his head.

  “I could,” I said, more determined. I steered him to the side of the lighthouse, where he could lean his weight on the wall, then went back to get the rake. “Here,” I said, handing it to him upside down, “a walking stick.” He was holding his right foot off the ground, so I placed the rake in his right hand and arranged myself on the left side of him, swinging his arm over my shoulder and wrapping mine around his waist.

  “I can manage,” he said, switching the makeshift walking stick to his other arm and using the wall instead to steady himself.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, positioning myself back at his side and taking the first cautious step. “I’m here, so let me help you; put your weight on me.”

  His side pressed closely against mine, which felt warm and strange to be so close to another man like that, and within minutes we were both perspiring. I concentrated on getting him up the steep hill using only one leg, a rake and me as support. I could tell he didn’t want to put his full weight on me, so it made for slow going. We didn’t speak; we just walked, focused, determined. Finally, we hobbled through the front door and into the living room, where he collapsed into the armchair, beads of sweat dripping from his brow. I set the makeshift walking stick next to his chair, removed my cardigan, then went to the kitchen to fetch us some water and to give him a minute to catch his breath. When I got down there I had to sit and catch my breath, too. I felt so guilty. This was all my fault. I shouldn’t have come, selfishly trying to fill my need for company. I had just felt so lonely, even being around all those people at the Manor, and I had a strange compulsion to trust this man. But now, by imposing myself on him and by staying past nightfall, I had complicated his life. I had to try to fix it.

  Back upstairs I slid a footstool across the room, propped up his injured leg and rolled his trouser leg to his shin. Carefully loosening the laces of his boots, I removed his boot and sock slowly. Even the slightest movement made his whole body tense. Holding his foot and ankle gently in my hands felt so personal. I tried to channel the detachment a doctor would have while delivering a baby, or a surgeon cutting into someone’s flesh for a lifesaving operation or my mother applying cold compress after cold compress to a sick child’s forehead in the nurse’s office when a fever wouldn’t break.

  “Oh, that’s not good,” I said, pressing gently on the outer side of the ankle and the top part of his foot, which was already swelling and had the beginnings of a purple bruise. “There’s been quite a bit of damage here.”

  He peered down at his swollen foot. “I felt a pop when I went down.”

  “You must have torn some ligaments. There’s already a lot of fluid buildup. If you can, try to move it slightly so the fluid doesn’t accumulate.”

  “What, are you a doctor and a writer?”

  “My mother volunteered as a nurse.” I stood up. When I was younger, I’d thought that I could be and do anything, naïvely switching goals and ambitions week by week, day by day—a nurse, scientist, or even a doctor, a professor. As a kid anything seemed possible; in the real world, though, nothing was. Youth gave us an inflated sense of possibility, that you could achieve anything if you really went for it, but it felt as if you’d have to fight your whole life to get there, and most of us just got married and had children.

  “Now what about your ribs?” I didn’t know much about how to heal those. He lifted his shirt and tried to take a look, but even that seemed to hurt and he put his head back against the armchair and took a deep breath. I laid my fingers gently where a large bruise was already taking shape. “How do we know if it’s broken?” I asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Don’t move. I’m going to get ice.”

  “There’s an icebox in the pantry in the back of the kitchen.”

  “I remember.” It had been one full day since I’d taken those rickety wooden stairs down to the basement kitchen and been sternly told to drink water and hold cold steak to my eye, and now here I was, tending to this man’s injuries. If it weren’t so painful for him it would almost be comical.

  I turned on the light in the kitchen and after a few moments the room glowed tentatively. I took two kitchen towels to the icebox and filled them with ice, gathered the corners and looked for something that could secure them. The kitchen, like the rest of the house, was immaculate, nothing left out, as if no one actually lived there. I unbuckled the narrow fabric belt from my dress, tied it around one of the ice packs and took them back upstairs.

  “I think we should move you to the settee,” I said when I got back to the living room. “You can lie down and elevate your ankle.”

  “I’m fine here,” Thomas said.

  “You’re not; you’re going to need to sleep eventually,” I said, helping him up and leading him to the settee on the other side of the room. “You’ll never make it up and down those stairs to your bedroom, at least not tonight.”

  I rearranged the cushions, one for his head and the rest stacked at the other end to raise his ankle. “The bruising is the blood pooling from the damaged ligaments inside, so you need to keep it elevated.” I placed his leg atop the cushions, held the belted ice-filled kitchen towel on his swollen ankle and placed the other on his rib cage and told him to hold it in place. “If we can’t get this swelling down you’ll have to see a doctor.”

  “No need for that, I’ll be all right, just need a few days.”

  “You want to be sure it’s not broken.”

  “It’s not broken,” he said with a sigh of exasperation.

  I sat at the far end of the settee holding the ice in place on his ankle. I remembered from my mother tending to sprains and twists that my brother and I had endured growing up that the first few hours were the most important to reduce swelling.

  I looked around at the sparse and functional decor. The keepers’ dwellings were closed to the public, but he kept his looking like a museum, nothing out of place, not even a book lying open on the wicker coffee table.

  After fifteen minutes or so the ice had melted and was dripping through the towel. Thomas had his eyes closed and I wondered if he might be drifting off to sleep, so I removed the wet towels, took them down to the kitchen and wrung them out; I could fill them again later. Quietly, I walked up the stairs to his bedroom.

  The single bed was made up. The sheets folded over a blanket that had been neatly smoothed out with not a single crease. I peeled back the blanket to take downstairs and tried to leave the rest of the bed as neat as possible. On the desk across the room where the picture of the young boy stared back at me I saw several leather-bound books, one labeled “Inspections,” another labeled “Duties and Schedules” and the same unnamed one that I had noticed the day before. I opened the “Duties and Schedules” book and looked for the day’s date. Each day’s duties were organized under three names, Head Keeper: Thomas Brown, First Assistant: David Milton and Second Assistant: Bill Worthington. I knew that Milton lived in the attached house next door, and Thomas had said the other assistant lived somewhere else, perhaps in town. They worked twelve-hour shifts in rotation to man the light and the foghorn and an additional six hours of maintenance duties every few days. Milton had begun his shift at 6:00 p.m. and would conclude at 6:00 a.m., at which time Thomas was expected to hold a meeting with the three keepers, assign duties for the day and then take over from Milton and begin his twelve-hour shift.

  As I walked toward the door I noticed that hanging on the back was Thomas’s uniform, pressed and pristine, navy like an officers’, buttons polished, the creases in the arms and legs sharp. The formality of the uniform alone commanded attention and respect. I took it from the peg and carried it downstairs.

 
; Thomas’s eyes opened when I placed the blanket over him and he looked a little startled.

  “I checked your schedule; it looks like your shift starts at six,” I said softly. “Please don’t object,” I said when I noticed his surprise. “I’ll sleep upstairs and help you to your station in the morning. Where will you be, manning the light?”

  “No, the foghorn, no need for the light in the day.”

  “Of course,” I said. “I’ll get you situated.”

  “You can’t; if Milton or Worthington sees you I’ll get reported, and word might get out to your folk as well. It won’t go down well.”

  “I’ll stay upstairs. Besides, I have no way of getting home tonight; it’s too dark.” I thought for a minute about how I’d get back in the morning. “I’ll ride the bike back; I’ll leave early in the morning after your meeting.”

  “Elizabeth comes tomorrow; she’ll probably have Patrick’s car,” he said.

  “Good, then I’ll get a ride back to the Manor with Elizabeth. I’ll just explain what happened.”

  He looked out the window to the black sky. “Why are you doing this, Bea?” he asked.

  Only my family back home called me Bea; I felt a wave of familiarity and comfort when he said it. “Doing what?”

  “It’s dangerous ground you’re treading on, you know. I don’t think your husband would like it.”

  “I want to help,” I said, feeling determined at the thought of it, “and I feel responsible for all of this. If I hadn’t come over here, bothering you, in the first place you wouldn’t be in this mess.” I walked to the windows and drew the curtains. “I’ll get more ice.”

  “And a whiskey if you don’t mind.”

  * * *

  Upstairs in the bedroom I stood in front of his single bed. My throat burned with the peaty taste of whiskey I had swigged in the kitchen. I took off my shoes and placed them at the foot of the bed, then sat down on top of the sheets in my dress, now beltless and dirtied with mud at the hemline. After smoothing my hand across the sheets I lay down on the bed. I wouldn’t be able to sleep here, in this strange room, thinking of Thomas downstairs, thinking of my bed standing empty at the Manor. I picked up a pillow and Thomas’s work boots from behind the door and made my way back downstairs.