The Light Keeper

by Cole Morton

  ‘Maybe the poets are right. Maybe love is the only answer.’

  And that was it. That was all. There was silence as she took off her glasses, picked up the slip of paper and stepped down – then a quick bubbling up of ahs and murmurs of approval. They liked her style. She was flying home to America after this, back to her interior design company. Back to a tiny apartment in Forest Hills that none of her clients would ever see. She had chosen Chana as a new name for herself and then later for her company, after hearing a song that said ‘grace finds beauty in everything’. It was not one of those written by Jack’s father. She had not listened to his music willingly for a very long time. Not since the day Jack was made.

  Twenty-six

  ‘Where are you, love?’

  The voice calling her suggested the streets of London, a city she had never seen. She was too young to hear the way America had bled into his voice, his vowels had changed and his drawl had lengthened to be more familiar to the kids who bought his records, to seduce boys and girls just like her. But those others were not there, in the room. Only she had been chosen. She was the one in the Frank Sinatra Suite of a grand hotel in Las Vegas on that enchanted early morning, the dawn of his fortieth birthday, holding a glass of Jack Daniels and Coke and looking out of the tall, wide panoramic window on to the Strip. Five o’clock. The sun was already up behind the Nevada mountains, soaking the sky with a rosy glow. The lights of the Strip were softening, getting gentler on her brain, which she knew must be fried but did not feel it. She felt sharp, alive, quick. Bright, funny. Clever, sexy.

  ‘Darling?’

  She went to his call, naked under the kimono he had given her the first time, a fortnight ago, in another city far away. He had seen her in the crowd of young women waiting after the show and sent his bodyguard to find her, to bring her to him in the long black limousine, for oysters and champagne. It was so romantic. They would be together for ever now. Somehow he had known she was there for him. He was her first lover and she was now all his. He did not ask her name. There was no need, he said. Their spirits had met. He was so spiritual. She was glad to be somebody else now, someone grown up and exciting. He wore a red cotton thread on his wrist. He was deep. Love had won, against the odds.

  ‘Ah, there you are, you look divine, I could eat you . . .’

  She was fourteen years old.

  Twenty-seven

  Fourteen years and nine months later, almost to the day, a skinny kid in black jeans, a black T-shirt and a black jacket, with his dyed black hair all-a-mess in the wind coming off the Hudson, made his way down a street in Greenwich Village. Jack the spider-boy saw gargoyles high on the apartment blocks, leering across the rooftops. There were palm trees on the terraces way up there, waving like fans at a concert. His father had the penthouse in a magnificent building from the thirties, like something from The Great Gatsby.

  ‘Hey, watch it, son,’ said the doorman as they collided. Jack stepped back from him and was questioned: ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Okay, sure. Thanks.’ A new boarding school was teaching him to be polite. ‘Excuse me, sir. I would like to see my father.’

  The doorman was wide and solid, in his fifties, with a purple bulb of a nose and rheumy eyes from the street wind. He looked kind, in a gruff sort of way. Probably had kids, even grand­children. He would understand, Jack knew it.

  ‘Your father?’

  ‘Yes, sir. He lives here.’

  ‘Got a name, or what?’

  The doorman stood between Jack and the door, an old mahogany affair with plate glass and impressively shiny brass fittings. Inside, he could see a polished panel of buttons, one for each apartment, a grille for the intercom. What should Jack say?

  ‘Paterson. Colin Paterson.’

  The doorman frowned at a name he had not been expecting to hear. The real name of the famous man who lived in the penthouse. Everyone else called him by his stage name, unless they knew him well. The doorman took out a burgundy handkerchief that matched his uniform and wiped saliva from his mouth. He ought to tell this young buck to get out of the way, stop making a nuisance of himself, but there was a chance he might be telling the truth, in which case the client would make trouble. Big trouble. On the other hand, the kid was clearly desperate. He was tapping his leg in time, rolling his fingers in a rhythm, like he was up to something bad.

  ‘You got proof?’

  No, Jack hadn’t thought of that and it made him panic. When he panicked, he came over as cocky. ‘What do you want, a DNA test?’ Damn his smart mouth.

  The doorman threw up a hand. ‘Funny, kid. On your way.’

  ‘Oh, come on! I am sorry, sir. Really. I mean no offence, believe me. Will you please just buzz him and tell him I am here?’

  ‘Yeah. You kidding me? Because some kid on the street says he wants a present from Daddy? Get outa here.’

  ‘I’m telling you the truth. Please!’

  Just then a lady in a long white coat stepped out of a long white Lincoln, letting her little white poodle dog run under the awning first, on one of those leads that extend like a wire. The doorman gave Jack a hard stare before standing to attention and opening the door to the dog. ‘Thank you, George,’ said the lady almost imperceptibly.

  If this had been a movie, now would have been the moment for Jack to dart around her, through the open door and buzz his father on the intercom. He did indeed try that, then tripped over the dog. The poodle howled, the lead snagged Jack’s foot and he fell hard at the feet of the doorman, who kicked his legs. ‘Get up!’

  The fine lady disappeared, cooing in alarm, with her pet skittering after her into the darkness. The door clicked shut. The doorman was gone now too, having hurried inside to placate her ladyship. The sidewalk was empty, but Jack felt as if he was being watched. Not from within, so from where? From above? He took a step beyond the awning and looked up to where he guessed his elusive father was at home, but it was impossible to see from this angle. There was nobody in the cars along the kerb, unless they were behind the blacked-out windows of a luxury SUV. Maybe. Then he saw the man on the other side of the street. Jack saw him over the tops of yellow cabs and limousines, between trucks and buses, standing on the sidewalk over there, hands in his jeans pockets, hood up, wearing wraparound shades. He was slender like a shadow and on his toes, ready to dance. Jack knew him at once.

  ‘Dad!’ Jack shouted and ran, ducking past parked cars, twisting over the tarmac, risking the wrath of cops and drivers, defying death.

  ‘Dad!’

  Breathless and desperate, he made it to the other side. The slender shadow man took off the sunglasses and pulled down the hood. Dark hair spilled out. It was not a man at all. Pity and apology were in her smile, then she shouted over the noise of the traffic.

  ‘I really am not your father!’

  Twenty-eight

  Every Easter after they were married Jack and Sarah went down to the coast, to stay in an old farmhouse on the Downs, within walking distance of the Seven Sisters. It was cosy when the fire was on, but this was a tight, dark house built for a farmer long ago. It was cheap. They couldn’t afford much. After a few days, it always started to get to both of them.

  ‘I am going mad,’ she called out, after hearing the door. She had been reading, legs stretched out to catch the last heat from the morning’s log.

  ‘Going?’

  ‘This place is driving me crazy.’

  Jack flicked on the kettle in the kitchen and picked up a leaflet from the worktop.

  ‘The Long Man? Like the guy in the West Country but with no balls. You read this?’ The leaflet showed the outline of a person on a hillside, holding two long sticks. A figure drawn in chalk on the green and brown land, like a huge prehistoric crime scene. ‘Says here he may be a symbol of—’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘The f-word,’ he said, wandering through to
her.

  ‘I have read it, actually. I wonder how he manages, without the necessary.’

  ‘Science. Or magic. We should go.’

  Sarah let her book drop into her lap. ‘Why?’

  ‘He’s a symbol. And we’re trying for a baby.’

  ‘For God’s sake.’

  Jack was smiling as he pressed on, half teasing, but she couldn’t see it. ‘A change of scenery. You brought the leaflet home. You must be interested.’

  ‘Whatever,’ snapped Sarah. ‘I have got to get out of here.’

  So they drove, eight miles inland. Fifteen minutes that felt to Sarah like returning from the edge of the world. As the car plunged and turned, the hills acquired trees, the buildings became less rare. They passed sheep on the road, a tractor with orange lights flashing from every angle and men in goggles trimming trees, cottages covered in rambling ivy and high flint walls protecting old manor houses. They had to pull over to give the right of way through one-street villages, and slow down to miss Range Rovers coming out blind from late-afternoon sessions or red-faced pedestrians stumbling out of the gloom of the half-slumber ploughmans-and-pint pub into the blue light and the damp air. Over a hill then, high up with the Weald spread out under the mist, then he was at their shoulder. On his back in a field, although from here it looked as if he was standing up. Cut from the earth, in chalk, as odd as anything that shouldn’t be there, as unearthly as a spaceship on the hillside. No facial features, no clothes, no massive genitalia, just the white outline of a figure, arms bent and fingers pointing away from himself as though dancing to Bollywood music, with a pair of straight white lines, one on either side, that might have been staves or shepherd’s crooks or spears.

  The Long Man was a giant who fell here and was buried at the top of Windover Hill. Or he was a dodman, an ancient surveyor laying out the ley line running through this swooping landscape. Or he was Beowulf with a spear in each hand. He was Woden or Thor, Solomon or Samson, a Roman or Mohammed, a Green Man or a Lone Man, a Lanky Man, holding open the gates of dawn, or heaven, or hell. Everybody had a story, nobody knew the truth. He was best seen from a distance, said the sign at the car park on the edge of the village. They took no notice and walked over the lane, through a gate, along the side of a hedge, then climbed a wider path cut from the tracks of a tractor. The slopes closed in on them as they walked, huffing and puffing as city folk do, until they reached another gate and felt themselves somehow on the inside of a huge green bowl. They could hear the sound of the traffic on the A27 nearly two miles away, and their own laboured breathing, and something else. Strange. The pluck and munch of grass in the mouths of cows, amplified by the curve of the hill. Black and white ones, brown ones, golden ones with shaggy white heads, munching away on a field higher up the slope, staring down at them.

  ‘What do you think? What’s the best way?’ Sarah pushed away the snout of a sudden dog, a greyhound perhaps, a sharp black face pushing into her lap. The owner was approaching them in a long overcoat, stern and mythical, his crown of white hair glowing in the growing dark.

  ‘You wanna walk up there a bit, to the left,’ he said, pointing a stick that had a cleft at the top, like an extra knuckle. ‘See, the fence stops. Go round it, otherwise you’ve got a nasty climb the other way.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Sarah, because his words had been addressed entirely to her. His eyes were taking her in, frankly.

  ‘It’s bricks. You’ll see. Used to be chalk. Lots of bricks now, concrete painted white. In the last war, there, they painted all the bricks green, so the Germans couldn’t see him.’

  ‘Why would they do that?’ She surprised both of them with her question, but had to follow through. ‘Why would the Germans want to bomb a chalk giant?’

  ‘Well, lovely, they wouldn’t,’ he said slowly, as though to a beautiful idiot. ‘But they might like to use him to see where they was.’

  Jack had already gone on, making his way up the rutted, muddy field like a crab on the shingle, taking care not to step in the fat pats of cow dung. One had a hollow in the middle filled up with rain or cow urine and there was a rainbow swirling on the surface. ‘Stay Off The Long Man. Soil Erosion.’ The words had been carved or burned into wood and painted red. ‘Go No Further Than This Sign.’ He did, of course, but kept close to the fence. Away from the feet of the giant. He told himself this was because he wanted to preserve the ancient treasure. It was really because somebody might shout.

  ‘Hey! Wait for me.’

  Jack put out a hand to steady himself, realized he was about to touch barbed wire and placed a finger between the twists, which left him standing there awkwardly, balanced on one leg.

  ‘This is a woman,’ said Sarah, chasing her own breath.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘No, look at her.’ The change of perspective had made the giant’s arms go wavy and squashed the head, but that was not what she meant. ‘Chunky thighs. I thought that when we were back down on the ground, but the hips are the thing. Look at that pelvis.’

  ‘Big calves, like a football player.’

  ‘Women’s rugby player. You men are all so self-obsessed, bet none of you has seen it. How many years has she been here?’

  ‘He. I don’t think anyone knows.’

  ‘She. These cows are sinister. Are they bulls?’

  ‘Definitely. Female bulls,’ he said and put his spare hand – the one not balancing his weight on one finger on the wire – out towards hers as he had done many times that week. Usually, she let it fall. Things were not going so well. They were trying for a baby, yes, but they had been trying for longer than either wanted to think about.

  ‘I love you,’ he said gratefully when she took his hand.

  She ignored him. ‘Looks like the hill is on fire.’ Up ahead, on the curved crest of the bowl, the clouds were racing past so close and so quick they could have been smoke.

  ‘So . . .’ he said.

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Here we are.’

  ‘And?’ The hand that had been cool in his own went back into a pocket of her fleece.

  ‘You know. What about it?’

  ‘Are you saying what I think you are saying?’

  ‘Dunno, it’s—’

  ‘Look at the ground. It is soaking wet, and covered in cow excrement, and there is spiky grass sticking up everywhere, and it is nearly night time and it is cold and wet and you really are a moron.’

  ‘Sorry, I wasn’t—’

  ‘No. You didn’t think, did you? You just dragged me here to a hillside in the rain and made me look at the second biggest fertility symbol in the world and I went along with it. And you thought you would get a shag.’

  ‘You wanted to come, that’s not—’

  ‘Shut up. Leave me alone. Just leave me alone.’

  ‘What the fuck is your problem, Sarah?’

  He knew exactly what the problem was, they’d been over it a hundred times, he’d seen the diagrams, had the patronizing talk from the doctor, been for the tests himself. This wasn’t about that. It was more than that. ‘I was joking, actually. But I just want to make this work – is that really so bad? That I bloody care about you? That I fancy you? I want to make love with my wife!’

  ‘Not here, you idiot.’

  ‘Not bloody anywhere unless you say so, right?’ He was shouting properly now, to hell with whoever could hear him across the fields, in the mist. He’d got his balance back but was ankle deep in mud. ‘I get it, this is a pretty lousy place, I was only fooling. If you weren’t so wrapped up in yourself you’d see that, but come on! You just give the orders, don’t you?’

  Come now, she wrote in texts. It’s time. Sometimes they were funny: Your Assistance Is Urgently Required. Mostly, they were not. The time was right, the temperature was right, she had called in sick, she was waiting. Get home. Get here. Get off your drums or your comp
uter. Get your trousers off. Get inside me, quick. Do the business. Deliver your load. Then she was, like, roll off and make a cup of tea or something, let me put my legs up against the bedroom wall and shake it all down to the right spot. Go on! Sometimes he just couldn’t, there was a deadline or he was knackered from a gig and he just couldn’t face it, and she was, like: ‘Do you not want a baby? Is it just me then, going through all this shit while you mess about with your mates?’ He’d say, ‘You’re interested now, when your little thermometer says so. Time for the production line. I’m not some factory, you know.’ And she would say, ‘That is bloody obvious. If you were a bit more productive we would not be having this problem.’ And he’d have to say: ‘No! It’s you! It’s not me! How dare you?’

  But he knew she didn’t really fancy him any more. His hair was grown out, it got greasy real quick. He was putting on weight, but they both ate for comfort and there were a lot of takeaways coming in to the house. She was getting fat and greasy because of the drugs, he was all Super Supreme and misery. The worst thing was, he had no control over any of this. He was powerless. Without saying anything, she had started avoiding films with any whiff of a child in them, and books, and songs. ‘Baby, now that I’ve found you.’ ‘Don’t you want me, baby?’ They set her off crying. Life was a minefield. ‘Hey babe,’ he would say and she would shout at him. ‘Let’s go and see our friends,’ he would say and she would shout again. ‘How can I spend a day with their brats running round and that woman cooing over them? She is so bloody protective, and she never wanted a kid in the first place – never mind twins. What a shitty idea!’