The Light Keeper

by Cole Morton

  ‘Who says I dream of anything?’

  ‘Come on. We all do. What is that thing of which you dream?’ he declaimed like a ham Shakespearean. ‘What manner of dream is this?’

  ‘What are you on?’ She felt a tingle of warmth on her neck again and regretted the question quickly. He was clean now, as far as she knew. Not using anything. Promises had been made. Jack shifted his weight up on to his elbow, and she wondered if he was offended. It was so hard to tell. What did he expect of her? Relax, she told herself; but he never seemed to do that and the knot in her stomach would not loosen when he was around. ‘What about you? What do you dream of?’

  ‘Oh, that’s easy,’ he said, and he eased back down, his arm still under her head. ‘Peace, justice, freedom and equality! Don’t think I’m shallow or anything – although of course you know by now that I am – but I do believe there are things wrong – really wrong – and I want to change them.’

  When he spoke like this, there seemed to be a much bigger audience in his head. She already knew better than to say so.

  ‘So this dream I have, it’s like Live Aid, you know? There’s this vast crowd and they’re all singing along to my song. Hands in the air, living it, loving it. It’s about love and hope and pride and dignity, and anything seems possible because we all have those things in us. We’re all human, we all have such enormous potential.’ She let him talk. ‘You think it’s corny, don’t you? Cheesy, you’d say. My dad says music can change the world, because it can change people.’

  Jack had not mentioned his father before. She was intrigued.

  ‘Is he a musician?’

  ‘They changed the world that day.’

  ‘Live Aid? Seriously? What band? Why have you not told me about him before?’

  ‘Things are different when I tell people.’

  ‘What is the matter?’

  ‘They were there, in Philadelphia. Low on the bill. They really believed all this stuff and lived it too: no big deals, they shared their money, shared a house, singing about things that mattered. Then Live Aid happened. He rocked. I mean, really rocked. All those people in the stadium. Like in my dream. Only I don’t screw it up like he did. I use that energy to make things better. He let it get to his heart, thought they were loving him. Not themselves. He went solo after that. Got blasted. The usual. Can we change the subject?’

  The clouds shifted. She felt herself closing up. He would tell her more, in time. She was afraid of something, but what? It would not come to the surface. Jack leaned forward and nuzzled her face, lifting her chin with his cheek, and he kissed her. Then he said: ‘“It is easier to love and be loved by lots of people badly than by one person properly.” That’s what he says. I hope to do better.’

  The wind picked up and the air was gritty. Something got in her eye and she said, without thinking: ‘Do you want children?’

  ‘Now? Oh yeah. Definitely. Let’s get started.’ But he saw that she was serious. ‘I don’t think about it. I suppose I just assume I will, yeah. You?’

  ‘I always thought so. I have this feeling, though . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said, rubbing her eye as the wind faded. She wanted to go home. ‘Another time.’

  Twenty-four

  The sun was shining and Jack was smiling, but he wouldn’t say why. They walked across the wobbly bridge under a wide blue sky and all the way along the South Bank from the Tate Modern to Gabriel’s Wharf and beyond, chatting about this and that and nothing and everything, laughing and teasing each other as they had done for many months now; and becoming aware, as they walked, of the warmth on their skin, the slow rhythm of the water beside them and the promise there was in everything. Jack was smiling because he knew that he had done the right thing. They paused for a while to look at the books under the bridge by the National Film Theatre, trying to pick out the most inappropriate purchase they could find for each other. She chose a book called The Art of Silence for a man who would never stop tapping his fingers, which irritated her, but she tossed it aside because she was in love and it did not matter – the relentless tapping, never stopping – because he did not realize he was doing it, until she told him to please just give it a rest for a moment and let her think while she was marking school books or watching The West Wing. It was easier to understand the accents now she and Jack lived together and she heard an American talking all the time. He said the same thing in reverse about Doctor Who: ‘Why do all the aliens in the universe sound like they come from London or Cardiff?’

  ‘Captain Kirk killed all the ones who sounded like you.’

  ‘Funny.’

  Then they browsed the books for sale under the bridge, each to their own but always aware of the other, looking up from time to time, at the same time, and smiling; and he actually found a Star Trek annual from 1979 and showed her because they could not afford to actually spend a pound – a quid, he was learning to say – on such a thing, there was a cat to feed.

  ‘Ugh,’ she said and held it up between finger and thumb as if it were a disgusting item that one of the boys in one of her classes had brought into school in his bag by accident or design. A week-old banana or perhaps a dead hamster.

  ‘You touch, you buy,’ growled a grumpy-looking geezer prowling along the line of books. Sarah had seen him before. He was one of those men you find on the South Bank: sixty something, wearing a dark blue cotton Chinese worker’s coat with epaulettes and Mao cap like he used to when he was leading sit-ins and dreaming of revolution, and a soul patch on his chin and a flinty, mean look on his face that ought to disqualify him from conversation with the young women she had seen him haunting in the National Film Theatre café. He sat too close to her once but said nothing and she wondered what he was up to, then realized he was sniffing her, sucking her up into his nostrils like a drug. Sarah moved away then and he didn’t recognize her now. She replaced the book carefully and gave a smile that was meant to dismiss but was accidentally kindly. His delight made her shudder.

  Sarah slid her arm inside Jack’s arm and they began to walk, falling back into step with each other, feeling light and easy and alive. Then there was a guy walking beside them with knitted Rasta hat and a wispy ginger beard and a funny little drum, a hand drum he held under his arm and patted with the flat of his hand. Pat-pat pause, pat-a-pat pause. Pat-pat pause, pat-a-pat pause. He was smiling too but looking ahead. Sarah wondered when he was going to ask for money. Jack didn’t seem to notice. But there was a woman in an open Afghan coat with fur on the cuffs and collar, walking in stride with Jack on his other side, clapping and swaying her body to the same rhythm. Pat-pat pause, pat-a-pat pause. They passed a busker playing an electric guitar, a skinny guy with a tweed jacket and a cocked hat who nodded a greeting and started playing chords in time with the rhythm, which was now being joined by a group of half a dozen friends, who turned and walked in time and clapped their hands too, and snapped their fingers and made a little humming noise. Pat-pat hum, pat-a-pat hum. Pat-pat hum, pat-a-pat hum crash! The drummer playing a full jazz kit on the far side of the promen­ade caught the rhythm in a splashy, thunderous, boozy, drawling kind of way and Sarah was bewildered, she thought she was in a dream; what was going on? Jack didn’t look round, he kept walking, slower though, with his arm tight against hers.

  ‘Are you doing this?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ he laughed. ‘You are!’

  By now there was a crowd of people walking with them: a young mum with a buggy and a toddler girl waving her arms, shaking a yellow rattle; a couple of hipster lads arm in arm, with matching beards and dreamy eyes; a guy in a suit with a briefcase, banging on his back as he showed off some serious hip swivels; an elderly lady with her gentleman friend, rubbing her hands between claps; and a choir. Wait, seriously? A gospel choir?

  Yes. They had it written on their black T-shirts: ‘Gospel Train Leyton, all ages, men and
women welcome.’ Big guys, skinny girls, bigger girls, muscle boys, skipping in time and swaying and singing – and now she knew the tune, even though she could not believe it was being sung to her by a crowd and a choir that was suddenly beside her and around her and filling the pavement, and the people who were not in on this were laughing and clapping and filming and looking astonished – except the ones who thought this kind of thing happened in London every day. She so wanted to tell them that it did not, but what was happening, exactly? Jack was looking so pleased with himself, high-fiving a guy with a razor-cut who did an extravagant bow, held a microphone to his mouth and sang to the whole assembly – with a battery-powered amplifier on his back – the melody and words of a song she absolutely loved about how his girl was amazing. He was nailing it and the guy was singing to her, as if in wonder, with the sound of the whole South Bank banging out the rhythm and she was caught up in it, feeling as if she would burst, feeling like an idiot in front of all these people, thinking she would give Jack what for when they got home, but loving it, loving him, the daft boy. ‘You’re amazing . . .’ They were all singing now, a sound like being lifted on the shoulders of the crowd; it was all for her. They were dancing and swaying and stopping. Then everything stopped.

  The words, the music, the rhythm, gone.

  The silence broke like a wave upon her.

  She heard a bird cry and a boat blow its horn and saw them all pointing upwards and away towards the Hungerford bridge where there were other people, she did not know them, standing on the footbridge waving back, unrolling white sheets. ‘I,’ said the first one in a big bold blue letter. ‘Think,’ said the next, in red, hand painted with flowers at the corners. ‘You’re Amazing,’ said the third in yellow. And these sheets were massive, they were filling up the line of the bridge, getting to halfway. ‘Will,’ was the next in green. ‘You,’ in purple was followed by red again. ‘Marry Me?’

  ‘Read it,’ he said but she had and she put her fingers up to her face without thinking, as if to hide but there was nowhere to hide. He spoke into her ear, close and personal, just for her. ‘Will you?’

  Shivering, she threw her arms around him and buried her face in his shoulder and heard the applause that began around her like firecrackers at her back and spread out through the crowd, up the steps of the bridge and across the bridge, and the drums rolled and the guitar kerranged and the song began again and she was crying, crying, for what? For happiness. For goodness’ sake. What a daft thing to do. What a daft and great and bloody lovely and wonderful thing to do.

  He could have ruined it. He could have forced her to say something to all these people. Instead he kissed her on the lips, held it there, then stepped away and put his hands together over his head. It was like magic. Jack clapped twice and they melted away, becoming smiles, strangers again, dispersing, each playing their own tunes now, except there was a hum in the air like happiness and Sarah had never been more sure in her life that this man here, this Jack, this daft skinny American boy, was the boy she loved and would always love, for ever and a day.

  She could not have said no, of course. There was no way to decline in front of all those people, even if she had wanted to. Which she did not, she told herself quickly when the thought occurred to her, as he was leading her towards a wine bar. So she never really gave any further consideration to the way he set her up that day. Or the way he controlled the crowd. Or where he got the idea from. She did find something similar on YouTube later and realized that he had copied someone else’s proposal, but it was still a great gesture. So romantic. There was no way to refuse. Anyway, what did it matter? She was in love.

  Twenty-five

  The church was full, Sarah could feel it before she saw them all. Their expectations spilled out through the open doors to summon her in from the blustery day.

  ‘Ready then?’ asked her father.

  Her arm was linked through his. She was weak, fizzy, unsure of herself. Ready though? Yes. Ready for this man. Coming, ready or not. She and Jack, the poor, imperfect dreamer, the wanderer, lover-boy, generous, considerate. Wilful. Stubborn. Gentle. Scatty. Strong. She was ready for anything with him. Side by side. But there were hundreds of people in that church – her father had insisted on inviting the whole congregation – and they had come to see this. To say how lovely, what a lovely dress and how much she looked like her mother.

  She was trying to deal with that thought when her father urged her forward. Sarah took her stride from him. Under the arch they passed, walking slowly, and she began to see them in full, the faces turned towards her, the startled looks. One of the women in the choir put a hand up to her heart as if shot, or as if Sarah had turned up eight months pregnant with a space-hopper stomach. Halfway there now, her father was still keeping the pace, nodding to people. Smile, girl, smile. James was there with Parv; she saw them both laugh and give her the thumbs up. She saw Jack turn; he hadn’t guessed her secret but he could see her coming to him. He could see it now. His eyes widened and he laughed too, his shoulders shaking, his whole face alight. Through the bells and the music she could hear the happy, fantastic sound of him and she knew it was all right. His laughter was the cue for applause that began at the front and rushed to the back. They were applauding her, the bride, the beauty, the woman of the day, beaming and daring in her gown of gorgeous, glorious red.

  *

  Her father held the Bible open with the rings in the crook of its pages and asked his daughter to repeat after him a name he had not used for her since she was born. The name his tearful, grateful, stroppy wife had ordered him to write on the birth certificate to mark the arrival of a child she had been told she could never have. Sarah saw him glance down over her shoulder to the front pew, where the mother of the bride should be. She sensed his balance shift, but not the ripple of longing that ran through him. She could not read his thought that he must smile whatever now, because his wife Jasmine – the great fortune of his life, the mother of this astonishing bride – would have wanted him to do that. Sarah saw him look at her with a love that could have stopped the devil. He winked. She winked back and repeated after him, in full, the name she never, ever used:

  ‘Sarah . . . Hallelujah . . . Jones . . .’

  The mother of the groom was there, immaculate in a vintage cream Chanel skirt suit that certainly made the most of her legs, as was remarked upon more than once or twice in the pews around her. She caused the men to prickle with sweat at the collars of their badly fitting wedding shirts. The women wondered at her poise, her elegance, her confidence and apparent youthfulness. Calculations were quietly made as to how old she must be now and how old she must have been back then, in the days when it all happened, you know? Surely you’ve heard? She was friendly enough when spoken to, but mostly kept her silence and an enigmatic smile, under a broad-brimmed black hat that a few people recognized as having been made by Philip Treacy. She was classy, but they were also looking around for the father of the groom. This was a big congregation. Robert thought it was because the church had turned out to support him, but actually the Girl Guiders and the plumber who fixed the vicarage pipes and many of the rest were there because they wanted to see a man in the flesh who was known to them all by a single name. An elder statesman of rock. Snake-hipped, rake-thin, with a wolfish smile and a sexuality that swept ahead of him like a tsunami. And a heart. A conscience. Presidents and prime ministers fell for his charms; Bono was an ally of his. He was said to be a recluse now, prowling through Manhattan in his pension years with his hood up. His voice was gone, his mind too, some said, but those were just rumours. Surely he would come to his son’s wedding?

  Jack had the same vulpine look and restlessness, his eyes always seeking the next thing, his fingers always drumming (even at the altar), although his company made people edgy, rather than beside themselves with excitement. Sometimes he tried just a little too hard to be like the old man. He was very fond of quoting things his father ha
d said, as if they were rules for life: ‘I have two instincts, as a rock star. I want to have fun, and I want to change the world.’ The difference being, of course, that Jack was not a rock star.

  The apology for his father’s absence came by motorcycle courier just before the service, with a gift in a little red box. Two Cartier rings, side by side in velvet. Eighteen carat white gold, with diamonds of course. Far too expensive. Sarah looked at them and tried not to think of all the things she could have bought with the money. A washing machine, for example. And a car. It was going to take her a long time to feel able to wear that ring on the street without fearing muggers, but she would wear it in church today, that would be okay. There was no way to refuse. Jack was happy. His father had blessed them from afar; his mother was pleased to be there, drawing the eye but certainly not competing with the bride. Chana was her name, meaning ‘grace’ in Hebrew, and she embodied that virtue in the way she walked, the way she sat. She was flirting again with the faith she had rejected as a child, which appalled her son. She had a sense of humour about it, though: when the father of the bride asked if she would like to choose any readings as part of the ceremony, she offered him Woody Allen: ‘If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.’ But that was just an opening shot. They were able to agree on another text from the same source, which she read beautifully. First she waited at the lectern for the congregation to settle and become quiet, so that there was a great sense of expectation. They were all wondering about her anyway, more so in the absence of her former lover. Then she spoke the one line slowly and with great care, as if it were Scripture.