by Cole Morton
That’s weird, he’s turned it all round. I’m supposed to say that to you, thinks the Keeper. What can he say in response? ‘Er . . . the sandals?’
‘I like bare feet. They was broken anyway. Bugger off, will ya?’ The little man laughs, wheezily, until a cough comes up. ‘I’m bird watching.’
Without binoculars or a camera? Sure. No problem. Really. But if he does go over, right here, outside the lighthouse, there will be trouble. Better to say something. What did the Guardian say? ‘If we can just talk to people, let them know someone cares, it breaks the spell.’ Okay, so say anything. Hang on. Classic England shirt. Number six. Who is that? Bobby Moore. West Ham United. ‘You a Hammer?’
‘Very good, Columbo. I know what you are. Chelsea. You’ll like my name then. Frank. Fat Frank.’
‘Right.’
‘After the player, Frank Lampard? You know? They called him Fat Frank when he was a lad, when he had puppy fat. It was a joke, really. He was never fat. I was enormous, me. Ma-hoosive. Ha ha ha! Then I lost it all. Misery diet, best diet there is. Ha-ha ha ha!’
‘Not my team.’
‘Let me guess then. Three guesses. How much?’
‘What?’
‘Let’s have a bet. How much? My life?’
Is he serious?
‘You win, I won’t do it,’ says skinny little Fat Frank. ‘I win, you watch.’
This is getting out of hand. The lighthouse keeper sits down on the wall. He has no choice, his legs have gone. This is bizarre, surreal, dangerous. Still, Frank is talking; that must be good.
‘United?’
The wind has dropped, it is very still, or they could not hear each other.
‘No, hang on. Too obvious. You sound like London, that’s all. That would make you a Man U fan, wouldn’t it? Ha-ha-ha! Not Spurs, you’re not one of them. A Gooner wouldn’t live up here. QPR?’
Rí grew up not far from that ground in Notting Hill, the hungry child of artists, caught between suburbia and bohemia – she was Maria then. But that was her, not him. ‘East . . .’
‘Ah. Gotcha. Orient. Leyton Orient. Poor sod. So, deal’s a deal, you watch me.’ Frank shifts his bony hips and pulls up his legs as if to start a roll. He’s going to do it . . .
‘Mervyn Day. Billy Jennings. Tommy Taylor,’ says the lighthouse keeper quickly for something to say, reciting the names of men who wore the white and red of the Orient when he was a boy. Former West Ham players, all of them. ‘My grandad’s fault. He played for them, so he said. I don’t know. Never seen the evidence. He took me to my first game.’
‘Bleedin’ curse. Still, you gotta stick with it,’ says Frank lightly, as if they are in the pub together after a heavy defeat. ‘I like the Orient.’
‘Come and talk about it. Over here.’
Astonishingly, Frank stands up. He steps away from the edge, to a slightly safer place. This is going well. It’s going to be all right.
‘Tell you what,’ says Frank, ‘it don’t half make you feel alive, thinking you’re gonna die.’
‘We’re all going to do that. Not today though, eh?’
‘I’m wrong in me head,’ says Frank without prompting, looking up at the sky. ‘I get things wrong. I know, I sound all right now. It comes and goes, but it’s getting worse. My daughter, Sophie, she ain’t told her boy. Billy. I love that little monster. Love him. He’s a bit tiny, poor bastard, but he can play. I wanted to tell him what was wrong with me, but she says he’ll be scared. Won’t let me do it. We had a row, now she won’t let me see him at all. I’m scared shitless, mate.’ He taps his head and rubs it, as if trying to fix something in there. ‘I don’t wanna forget his name. Don’t wanna see him and not know him.’
‘I’m sorry—’
‘So I thought, you know what? Go quietly. Just do it. Spare them both seeing that. Spare myself. Get out the way. Somewhere nice. It’s nice here, ain’t it? Beautiful.’
‘Yes,’ says the Keeper with some effort, reaching for the other man’s small, cold arm. ‘Billy needs you, Frank. Keep trying. Go home.’
‘Yeah.’
And so it ought to end, with Frank walking away from the edge, but it doesn’t.
‘Come away!’ It’s the bloody Guardian again, shouting out, doing his best to run. ‘You’re putting yourself in danger. Back off!’
‘He means you,’ says Frank, and he’s right.
‘I told you, I can’t let you do this. Get away from that man.’
Frank looks across like a child who has just got his best mate into trouble in the playground. ‘Listen, cheers, yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You need to leave,’ says the Chief, breathless.
‘I told you. I live here.’
‘Please, for your own sake, just back off. Leave it to us.’ He’s annoyed now. The Chief’s dark glasses have slipped down his nose. ‘This is stressful enough. I told you that. We know what we’re doing. Let us do it.’
‘Whatever you say, sir,’ says the Keeper, letting the last word trail with irony. He wants to get away anyway, get inside his tower and lock the door. Be alone. ‘Take care, Frank. Go home, yeah? Go home.’
‘I will, yeah. Cheers.’
The Keeper turns and jogs away, then runs up the hill, but at the door of the lighthouse a great sadness comes over him. He turns back to see Frank and notices a second Guardian arriving down below. A woman. That’s good, she will understand. Okay, maybe all will be well. Frank will go home. Maybe for once there will be a happy ending.
Sixteen
‘Fudge?’
Frank looks into the white paper bag. ‘Ta.’
‘Shall we sit?’ They both do, riding side-saddle to the slope of the land. The edge is still close. Frank watches the runner at the top of the hill, near the lighthouse.
‘I’m going,’ he says. ‘Better be off.’
‘Of course,’ says the Guardian, a woman whose name Frank didn’t catch. ‘My colleague will go on foot. I have the car, I can take you. Sit, first. Rest. How did you get here?’
‘Taxi.’ Frank rubs a hand on his shorts and arranges himself, cross-legged.
‘Who knows you are here?’
Nobody, says his eyes, searching the horizon. It’s warm enough, the wind has dropped. The fudge is good.
‘More?’
‘Yeah. Why not?’ The dry, dusty, nervous laugh doesn’t feel like his. He’s so tired. ‘Mind if I lie down a bit? While we’re ’ere . . .’
‘Be comfortable.’
So Frank lies on his back, hands out and palms down, like Billy doing a snow angel. Scraps of rain-dark cloud move fast above him, threatening change.
‘You can talk, I am listening.’
So he starts to talk about Billy, the clever little sod, and Sophie, and all that, but his heart ain’t in it. He’s had enough today. ‘My mind wanders.’ The wind picks up and blows sweet nothings in his ear. This place is noisy, for somewhere quiet. The kerfuffle, a couple of birds, the flap of a corner of the fluorescent yellow coat his listener has spread for them to sit upon. The waxy white paper of the empty fudge bag crackles as it is rolled up.
‘Are you afraid? That’s okay. It is a scary world.’
‘Yeah. You got a fag? No, course not. I forget things . . .’
This little world they share is interrupted by the rip of a sports car, going far too fast. Silver convertible, bottom waggling over the bumps on the long road. What are they called, those? He can’t remember.
‘My name is Frank. I know that. I am not fat.’ He can’t be bothered to explain. The words swell in his mouth, crowding out his tongue. ‘I . . . they tell me . . .’
Another long silence.
‘You forget things?’
‘Bit by bit. Getting worse, I know what’s coming. I’ve seen ’em, sitting there dribbling. In the
home. Don’t even know their kids’ names. Don’t even recognize ’em. My old man was like it . . . you know?’
The clouds are bunching up. Plotting in the sky over to the east, above Beachy Head. He should have gone straight there, instead of walking, but it was so beautiful. Such a lovely place. Find a quiet place, he thought. Get it over with.
‘You are a strong man,’ says the Guardian. Frank won’t return the gaze at first, then he has no choice. ‘Protecting Billy, and Sophie. Yes. I see. You are strong, Frank, you were stronger before. Young, fit. A handsome man.’
His mousy face pinches in pleasure. Yeah. He was a player.
‘You are clever, quick. Billy loves you, he looks up to you. Sophie is your daughter, you are her father. Daughters admire strong fathers. You have been a good father and grandfather. Billy will remember you, playing football in the park?’
Frank’s eyes glisten.
‘Yes,’ says the Guardian, slowly. ‘Football. Good times. Not this other person you will become. Sometimes it is the brave thing.’
‘You telling me to do this?’
‘No. I can’t do that. God sent me because he wants the best for you. God is good. God does not want us to suffer. My mother suffered, Frank. I prayed and prayed and one day her suffering stopped. I will pray for you. I can take you home if you like, Frank. They will be worried. Scared. Angry, maybe.’
‘You’re not bloody joking,’ says Frank, face flushing suddenly at the thought. ‘Sophie will do one. Lock me in or something. Make my life a misery. She’ll say it has started. They’re gonna put me away like him. I can’t take it! I’m not some child. Sitting there, gone. Screw that!’
He contracts suddenly and curls up like an embryo, arms over his head, covering his face. The Guardian leans over and touches his shoulder, making soothing sounds.
‘Hey, Frank. Come on. Okay. You are in control. Your life, you choose. There is no need to suffer. No need to make Billy suffer, seeing you that way.’
Frank goes limp at that. The Guardian gives him space. Frank uncurls, unfolds his body and rises, putting his hand out on the grass, then on the Guardian’s shoulder, until this skinny, trembling man with the pedal-pusher shorts flapping about his bare legs and the England football shirt hanging off his bony frame and the tears drying fast in the wind on his sharp face is standing up, breathing deeply, arms by his side, looking out to sea.
‘This is why I came. It’s for the best,’ he says and takes a step, then another. One more. Filling his lungs with the fresh sea air. ‘Thank you.’
The Guardian’s eyes close. There’s a shuffling sound, a sigh lost in the wind; and when they open again there is a boat with a red sail out in the Channel, nosing through the waves. The hill is a peaceful, glorious place in a wash of sunshine.
The Guardian walks away from the edge, as if Frank was never there.
Seventeen
Now here’s Jack. Standing by the door of the lighthouse, twisting yellow flowers in his hands. ‘Are these yours? They were blowing away.’ The flowers have been shredded, by the wind or by him. Most of the heads have gone. ‘Were they for a friend? I’m sorry.’
‘Go away,’ says the Keeper, exhausted and irritated and desperate to get indoors, but Jack is not going. Sorry for what, exactly? He looks as if he’s been mauled by a beast. This boy – he’s ten years younger, maybe – will keep coming back; the only thing to do is to let him in, let him look around, then get rid of him as quickly as possible.
‘I hear they call you the Keeper. That’s weird.’
‘It’s a lighthouse.’
The guest rooms are mostly in the outhouse, the square block that was built on to the side of the tower as accommodation for the old keepers. It leans into the hill, rising up through three storeys. The first guest room is just inside the door and he opens that first, for Jack to see. A table, a chair, a bed with the mattress on, still wrapped in clear, thick plastic for protection against the damp.
‘There are six of those. They are all like that. She’s not in there.’
Jack must believe it because he doesn’t ask to see the others. They go no further. The Keeper offers Jack the chair, and sits himself on the edge of the bed, feeling the chill of the plastic beneath him. He breathes deeply, pausing in the moment to reflect that he doesn’t have to do this, he need not ask, he could just leave it and tell Jack to go, and return to his world of silence, but today is not working that way. Today, people keep putting themselves in his face. He doesn’t want to care, but here we go.
‘Why are you so sure she’s here?’
‘I’m not.’
‘Right. Wasn’t expecting that, to be honest. From your behaviour.’
‘A feeling? I don’t know where else to look. What am I supposed to do? She’s not at the pub. I checked the hotels in the town, most of them, but there are so many. The police don’t care, they think she’s left me. I can’t raise her father, he’s away. Our friends . . . her friends haven’t heard from her. They want to come down, but that’s humiliating. I don’t want them here. I have to find her, talk to her. Magda – you know her, don’t you? I stayed there last night, she has rung some people.’
‘Did Magda say your wife . . .’
‘Sarah.’
‘Did she say Sarah might be here?’
‘There was something. When she talked about this place. About you.’
‘I see,’ he says, but he doesn’t.
‘They don’t know your name.’
Jack’s fingers are drumming on the table, tapping like a telegraph, while his eyes skitter over the walls, the door, out into the space beyond the windows.
‘Call for her. Go on, if you don’t believe me, call out. She’s not here.’
‘Sarah?’
That’s really loud. The sound of her name makes the Keeper flinch. He wants to shout for Rí too, get the balance back. He should throw this boy out, but the restlessness, the panic, the fear is familiar. They’ve both been shredded, like the flowers.
‘Sorry about your eye,’ says Jack, noticing a cut and a yellow bruise. ‘I didn’t mean to. Well, I did, I meant to, sure, Jesus. I got you, didn’t I? Didn’t want to. Reflex action. You got my arm . . . yeah, well, anyway. We came here before, she loves it. She could do anything out here. I don’t know her any more. The drugs do things. She’s a danger to herself. We’re trying to have a baby.’
Of course you are, thinks the Keeper.
‘That’s all she ever talks about. We’ve had our last go. I’ve got to find her because I know it won’t work, I know what that will do to her. She’s on her own. I don’t even know if I want a baby with her any more. It screws you up, this thing.’
‘I know,’ says the Keeper, softly.
‘You do?’
The floor needs a damn good sweep in here.
‘Yes. You didn’t hurt me. Not much. I’ve had worse.’
‘Damn. I thought I had a good punch.’
The Keeper looks up quickly enough to see the spark of a smile on Jack’s tired face, before it vanishes. Their eyes meet. ‘You should go home.’ He seems to be saying that a lot today. ‘She might turn up back there.’
‘She’s here. I can feel it.’
‘Not here,’ says the Keeper.
‘I mean, out there. Somewhere. Not far.’
‘I hope . . .’
‘Thank you.’
But all the while he is listening to Jack, a question turns over in his mind. He tries to ignore it but the question won’t go away; it just keeps repeating as Jack goes on about his life in that nasal, fidgety way, like a comedian without any jokes. The story Jack tells is all about Jack, and why would it not be? He’s here, it’s him. Still, it is intensely irritating. What about Sarah?
Slowly, the man they call the Keeper feels himself becoming what he was before he came here: the special corre
spondent, the man in the blue flak jacket seeking tears in the dust. A mildly famous face on the television news. The sympathetic one, the empathetic one who sat for hours with weeping, frightened people who had it far, far worse than Jack, in faraway places first – in bombed-out houses, in refugee camps, in boats smashing against the rocks – with a cameraman and kindness, nothing more. Then back in this country with the mothers and fathers of the disappeared. Milly. Shannon. Young girls, gone. Abducted. Murdered. Crime stories. He doesn’t want to remember. There are too many stories, locked away inside his chest. Too many to bear, as it turned out. They’re calling. He doesn’t want to hear them, doesn’t want to feel it all coming back, hates to find himself listening like this again, biding his time, noting the ticks, the drumming, the tone of all Jack is saying. Waiting for the narrative to be spent, for the moment to arrive – as it always does – when he can put the question that matters, the one that might unlock the story. Whatever that is this time.
Then Jack stops talking. He has nothing more to say, and looks embarrassed, as if he has just woken up from a dream. There is nothing for it now, no choice but for the solitary lighthouse keeper who was once a coaxer of stories from the hurt and the angry, to remember how to do this.
He leans forward a little on the bed, takes a deep breath, looks at Jack until their eyes meet and asks: ‘Tell me about her, will you? What about Sarah?’
Eighteen
She was a miracle child. That is one of the many things Jack does not say. ‘You will not conceive,’ a doctor said regretfully, but Jasmine Jones smiled and told him she was already pregnant, thank you very much. ‘You will not survive,’ said a second doctor, but Jasmine gave birth, noisily, at the height of summer and lived to hear her baby cry. A third doctor warned her, ‘The child will not live long.’ But the child was a month old and unexpectedly healthy when the Reverend Robert Jones paused on the threshold of their tiny house in a suburb of Birmingham, beaming like the sunbeam Jesus had always wanted him for. In his arms was a Moses basket and in the basket was a baby girl.