The Light Keeper

by Cole Morton

  ‘Oh Mum, your timing is terrible.’

  But she opens the envelope carefully and finds another, old and worn and lilac, with her name on. The sight of her mother’s writing causes a flutter of panic. The paper inside is thin and fragile, and as she reads it, the paper trembles.

  Forty-nine

  Dearest Sarah, my love,

  All mothers are proud. One day you will know that for yourself. Every one of us believes that our child is the most beautiful there has ever been. That does not mean that it is not true. When I first saw you, nearly three years ago now, my heart leapt. You were perfect. I was so thankful for you, and I have been thankful every day since. You can be moody, of course; I expected that from my little girl! You have the gift of a charming nature, though, my darling. You can make anyone do anything when you choose to smile. When you are playing, all I want to do is sit and watch you, for ever.

  [The ink is smudged on the lilac paper. The writing is shaky.]

  When you read this, you will know that was not possible. I am sorry, my angel – more sorry than I can say here – that I will not be with you as you grow. At least, not in this body that I occupy now. It hurts, Sarah, this body, but the pain is nothing compared to the pain I feel now as I think about my little one getting bigger without me.

  I am afraid, my precious. I am afraid to die, although I know I am going to a place without pain. There will be no more crying. I will hold the hand of my Lord. Is it so wrong to say that I would rather hold the hand of my child?

  I am not afraid for you. I know you are strong and clever and resourceful, and you will look life in the eye and rise to every challenge. I have faith in you, my Sarah. Wherever you are, whatever you do, I will be watching over you, praying for you. Delighting in you. I know that your father will give you all that he can, all that he has. Be patient with him, he loves you as passionately as I do. You were born from the love we shared: you came out of the bright burning love that was between us from the moment we met, and that will not die even though I must, apparently. Take care of my man for me, please. Woman to the woman you will be. He will need you. I am with you both.

  As you grow, Sarah, you will be challenged by the world. You will make mistakes and feel like a failure. You will feel sad and lonely. Have faith, my darling. Never give up. Trust in the Lord, but trust in yourself. You are enough. You have all that you need inside you. Remember that, above all. Your life is a miracle to me, a gift more precious than I can say. May it be the same to you. You are my daughter and always will be, Sarah Hallelujah Jones, beautiful and proud and strong.

  Love, for ever,

  Mummy xxx

  Fifty

  They pass at the foot of the stairs, as Gabe leaps down to see about the banging and Sarah flees upwards to escape it.

  ‘Don’t let him in,’ she says fiercely, urgently, waving the pregnancy test. ‘Let me do this.’

  Gabe gestures to the Keeper’s Cabin. ‘Take the key here, lock it. Do what you need to do.’ And he’s away down through the kitchen, through the reception to the frosted door that Jack is pounding with his fist as he yells and bellows to be let in.

  ‘Calm down,’ Gabe yells through the door. ‘You’re not getting in here until—’

  But Jack is smashing something hefty and grey against the glass, a cornerstone from the garden wall, flaking the toughened glass on the other side. It might not hold – can it hold? Now he’s jumping up against the door with his shoulder. Right. Deep breath.

  Gabe grabs the door handle tightly. One, two and open . . . and he times it right. Jack falls through the door that is not there any more, and flies past Gabe and lands hard on the floor and rolls over and pulls himself up against the wall, snarling, ‘You bastard.’ He’s in the house now, prowling and roaring and calling her name and opening rooms, tearing open the doors, turning over desks, ripping off covers, pulling over wardrobes.

  ‘Sarah!’

  Gabe tries to restrain him and gets the back of a hand across his face, cutting his brow, filling his eye with blood. Jack is wild, searching, screaming for her.

  ‘Sarah!’

  Gabe blocks the doorway to the tower and Jack comes at him with a broken chair, stabbing with the splintered wood, lashing out at his head and missing. Gabe grabs Jack’s waist, swings him down to the floor and pins him there, but pain rips into his hand and he sees bite marks. Jack is through the door, up the stairs, into the tower kitchen, turning over the table with a heave, clattering the pans, smashing the dirty crockery.

  ‘She’s here! That’s her scarf. Where is she? Sarah!’

  ‘She’s safe. Calm down, for God’s sake, just let me talk . . .’

  But there’s no talking to be done, no space left for words in Jack’s bushfire mind, and he’s getting closer. She can hear him coming, hear the crash and bang and the shouts. Is the door locked? Yes, it won’t give. It’s thick and strong. Sarah is fit to bursting, but what the hell is she supposed to pee in? There’s a wash basin without a plug, a wide-mouthed bottle as a tooth mug, with gunk in the bottom. A razor with hairs in the blade. Books, lined up tightly on the shelf. Broken spines, frayed pages. Can’t pee in those. The bed’s unmade, the shape of Gabe’s head in the pillow. Another book on the floor: Tommy Cooper. Unexpected, reminds her of a clip she saw once, he was funny. But a pint glass, there is a pint glass with an inch of vodka in it – she sniffs, no, it’s water – that will do. Ridiculous bloody situation. Bottle or glass? Glass, bottle? Glass. Sarah pulls her jeans down to her ankles, puts her back up against the wall and slides down into a crouching position. If that door opens, she will die. The thought makes her shudder. She holds the pint glass between her legs to catch the first urine of the day, and feels a warm splash on her hand. The glass warms too, as it fills. Such relief. Then the sound of a miss. Overflow. Never mind, it is done. That will stink, but he can clean the carpet later, if they get out of this. The pregnancy test is like a pen with a little window on the side where the result will show. She dips one end into the wee and starts to count, under her breath, backwards from thirty. ‘Twenty-nine, twenty-eight . . .’

  How blue is a blue line? She does not dare to straighten up or pull her jeans up. How clear does it have to be? There won’t be one anyway. Never is. Something smashes in the kitchen, a mug perhaps. The shouts get louder.

  ‘Fifteen, fourteen . . .’

  The door of the cabin booms under the weight of Jack’s hand, then again. It is solid in the frame, locked hard. The keepers must have put good locks on when they were all going mad with each other. Concentrate.

  ‘Ten, nine . . .’

  Jack has gone, it sounds like. Upstairs. Sarah is still crouching over the glass, her jeans still down, her elbows on her haunches.

  ‘Five, four . . .’

  I can cope, she thinks. I can do this. I’m strong. I am not barren. I am not this or that or anything else they say. I am enough, I am myself. The daughter of my mother and my father. Sarah Hallelujah Jones, beautiful and proud and strong. I can do this. Please God. Half blinded by tears now, she blinks them back to look down at the test pen in her hand and sees the result, which is in this moment truly a matter of life or death.

  Fifty-one

  ‘Upstairs,’ says Gabe, to stop Jack hammering on the cabin door. ‘She’s up there, right at the top. Go to her.’

  Jack isn’t sure, but a mighty crash comes from above, like someone falling over, smashing things. He leaps the first three steps, skittering upwards through the tight turn, imagining himself going to Sarah’s rescue. A low beam catches his head with a glan­cing blow. Jack staggers into Maria’s artroom, and feathers cling to his face, pricking his eyes. He feels his way out and up the last few stairs to the big, circular lantern room, with its views of the Downs and the sea wrapping around him, only to find a wing in his way, a white billowing thing blocking the room. Jack curses, feeling trapped and tricked, and p
ushes through it looking for her. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘She isn’t here, I lied. Calm down, she’s on the Downs,’ says Gabe, coming up behind and trying to put his arms around Jack to pin him down, but Jack spins away, tripping over the long boat hook with the spike on the end and scooping it up as he falls.

  So now he is on his back, jabbing away with it. ‘Get off me!’

  A jab catches Gabe in the ribs and Jack scrambles away through the door of the lantern room out to the balcony that encircles it, calling for her as he goes. The breathtaking morning air floods back towards Gabe in the room, with a swirl that lifts feathers and papers and scraps of material, and whirls them around. As he steps outside on to the narrow balcony, with its curved red iron rail, Jack rams into his stomach with one bony shoulder, winding him, jamming his spine against the metal. There’s a terrible, apoca­lyptic noise, and they both look up to see the police helicopter come low overhead. Very low, huge in the sky, the rotor thundering and the skis reaching down like claws. The downdraught tornado blinds them with grit and gets right into the lantern room, sending the angel spinning, stretching and snapping the cord and pulling the wings and the body, then the head back out through the door with a rush of air, but one of the wings snags on the window frame. The angel is plastered against the glass, arms spread out like the keeper who was left for dead, only this time trapped on the inside. Ripped silk and torn feathers are tumbling, now settling.

  Gabe is groggy, his head somehow jammed against the hard metal rail, forcing him back to look at the ground thirty feet below, and he realizes Jack’s hands are on his throat. He’s not a fighter, he’s never been a fighter, but he has lived with fighters and seen their ways and his hand forms a blade that pushes up inside Jack’s open leather jacket, through his T-shirt and under his ribs, right to where some vital organs ought to be. Jack yelps and falls off him backwards along the narrow balcony, but kicks out. Gabe feels nothing, but he knows some teeth have gone. He tastes blood.

  The police are coming up the long hill towards the tower, a dozen on foot moving like overweight toddlers in their bulky black body armour and a four-by-four patrol car with the blue lights on, and an ambulance too. They look like the vanguard of an invading army, the black-clad shock troops of a modern Roman legion with demonic metallic beasts that have wild, flashing eyes. Behind him and below, creeping up the steeper side of the hill from the lay-by, the Guardians are in their Land Rover. The police, the Guardians, the helicopter swooping in again.

  ‘They’re coming for you, bastard! What have you done with her?’ screams Jack. He is bleeding heavily from his head, blood purpling his hair, a line running down the side of his face like a scar. He’s holding something out to Gabe. What is it? Focus. The pole. The spike, coming at him fast. Catching him in the side of his neck, going in. There is no pain, only the feeling of something hard and strange tugging at his skin from the inside. He’s buckling, fading.

  ‘Stop,’ says a calm, strong voice amid all the noise. Sarah is in the doorway, one foot on the balcony. ‘Stop it, Jack. Put it down. Stop.’ The handle of the pole clatters on the wooden floor, between Gabe’s feet. The sharp end has blood from his neck on it. He’s weak and on the floor now, holding his wound, looking up at Sarah.

  ‘No more, Jack. You have done enough.’

  ‘Aw, honey, are you okay? I’m so glad to see you. What did he do, did he hurt you? Come here, baby . . .’

  But Sarah steps back, away from his advance, shrugging off his embrace.

  ‘What’s the matter, love? Are you hurt?’

  ‘I am fine,’ she says, standing straight and tall, fully out on the balcony now, one hand on the rail, keeping her distance from him. The light from the rising sun sets her skin to glow, sparks fly in her copper hair. ‘Nothing has happened here.’

  ‘I knew I would find you. I knew you were here, Sarah. I haven’t stopped looking for you. I was scared, baby, you made me so scared – how could you do that? I found you. Are you okay?’

  ‘Listen to me, Jack.’ She speaks slowly, clearly. ‘I am fine. I am not scared. I am here by choice. Do you understand?’

  But Jack is talking, not listening. ‘The police are here now, baby, they will take him away; he can’t hurt you any more. You can come with me. We’ll go home, it will be okay. I’ll look after you, everything will be like it was. Only better. Not the same, it will be great. I’m here for you, Saz. I’m here.’

  Jack takes her hand, smearing blood across it from his own. She pulls away.

  ‘I won’t be coming home, Jack. I’m not coming back. I’ve had enough.’

  ‘I know. It has been hard, but listen, it can get better—’

  ‘Jack.’

  Gabe sees that she is holding the letter, close to her chest.

  ‘I’ve had enough of you, Jack.’

  ‘Saz! You’re just saying that. The test didn’t work. I get it. That’s okay. I know it’s hard, but we will be okay. I will make it okay, Saz. I will. Somehow—’

  ‘Thank you. For everything. I’ve made a decision.’

  Jack realizes what she is saying. ‘You’re not serious?’ He laughs, nervously, hoping she will laugh too and ruffle his hair and put the kettle on.

  ‘You keep complaining you have lost me, Jack. It turns out you’re right.’

  ‘Why? Come on, Saz, why now?’

  ‘I can make it. Whatever happens.’

  ‘You’re being strange, you’re frightening me. This is the drugs, right? The hormones?’ She says nothing. ‘Oh, come on. Just like that? You think you can just click your fucking fingers after all this time and I walk away? You’re mad.’

  ‘It is what you want.’ Those sea-green eyes look at him and Jack flinches, visibly, unable to deny that which is true, deep down. Deeper than he knew until this moment. ‘Go,’ she says. ‘I’m giving you the chance. You have no more obligation.’

  ‘What if there is a child?’

  ‘There is no child.’

  ‘You’ve done the test?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Oh no, thinks Gabe in his wounded weakness. No, Sarah.

  ‘Go, Jack,’ she says. ‘You don’t believe in a child.’

  ‘I do! I don’t know how, but I do believe it can happen. Liar!’

  ‘I have the test here,’ she says, holding up a clenched fist.

  ‘Show me. Show me!’

  He makes a lunge but Sarah is too quick. She steps back and calls out to Gabe, who now has blood all over his shirt. It is comfortingly warm, in this wind. He could sleep.

  ‘Gabe! Stay awake! The ambulance is coming.’ There’s a commotion down below, inside the tower. ‘Stay with us.’

  ‘You too,’ says Gabe, breathless.

  ‘Is it fucking his?’ The hatred and violence in Jack’s voice shocks her, but Sarah is not going to do his bidding any more.

  ‘How could it be his? Now listen to me. I’m talking. You are in trouble. Whatever you have told the police, they will see it’s not true. And there is something else you need to know before they come. I have done the test, yes. Here it is, in my hand. I thought it would give me the answer, Jack, but I already knew what to do, before I looked.’

  ‘Don’t do it, Sarah. Don’t go. I’ll take care of you. I will—’

  ‘You idiot. You have no idea, either of you,’ she says, looking from Jack to where Gabe is slumped against the balcony rail, trying to stand. ‘I was never going to jump off this cliff. You said I was. Both of you. Your fears. Your words. You put that all on me. You decided what was going to happen, just like people always do. Have you even thought about it, seriously? There is no jumping. You walk, one step then another. But not now. I came here to get away from you, Jack, to remember myself. Not to end my life. To get the strength to start again. I thought I would stay with you if the test was positive, for the sake of the child, but that would be
wrong. The test does not decide. I decide. I’ll tell them what you did to me. We are through. You are not going to hurt me any more.’

  I am in control, she tells herself, not quite believing it. Feeling fizzy, faint. I am in control. I can choose. Beautiful and proud and strong. ‘Go,’ she says. There are policemen coming up the stairs. ‘Jack, tell them what this is.’

  He’s making odd noises, holding his hands to his face to cover his tears, smearing his eyes and cheeks with blood. Gabe’s blood and his own. Jack’s on his knees, but then he leaps forward towards her, grabbing her arm hard and wrenching her wrist, trying for the pregnancy test pen but sending it clattering on to the balcony and over the edge, lost. Jack tries to pull her back into the room with him and comes through the doorway first, but the police have seen the fight and in the same moment a twenty-stone officer comes up and out of the stairwell like a diving flanker and slams hard sideways into Jack, knocking him away from the door on to the floor so he has to let go of Sarah. Her Jack, brittle Jack, tiny Jack, scratchy, vicious Jack, the Jack she loves and has loved. The boy in the park, the boy with the dreams, the boy with the broken heart and the wicked hands.