by Cole Morton
‘Don’t hurt him!’
Jack twists away, scrambles up and throws something behind him: the pole. It bounces off the policeman’s shoulder and trips a second officer coming up to help. The falling officer kicks out for balance, knocking over the paraffin heater. A spray of flame flashes out just for a moment, but it catches the heap of silk and feathers, the broken tip of an angel’s wing. The officer tries to stamp it out but the fire grows fast around his boot and spreads to a cushion on the floor that becomes a ball of fire. ‘Get out!’ he shouts to his colleague, who backs off down the stairwell. Now the pile of slats is burning too, and setting fire to the new wall panels. None of the wood has yet been treated, it is all going up like matchsticks. Windows crack. The downdraught from the helicopter outside creates a vortex in the room again, sucking feathers, scraps of silk and smoke upwards in spirals. Jack is dragged through the burning room and down the stairs by the huge officer, who has him in an arm lock, growling as Jack struggles: ‘Stop it, you ungrateful little bastard.’ Out on the balcony, there is no escape for Sarah and Gabe. The lantern room has become a ring of fire behind them, pumping out choking black smoke with the flames, blocking their way to the stairs.
‘What do we do?’
‘What can we do?’ says Gabe weakly, pulling himself fully to his feet. The heat is intense. They can’t move around the balcony. Above them is the vast sky. Ahead of them is the glittering sea. Below them is the void, the long way down. A four-hundred-foot drop. Their only chance is to jump and somehow hit the narrow strip of chalk and gravel that wraps around the bottom of the building thirty feet below, but it’s barely more than eight feet wide from the tower to the edge. It looks much narrower from up here, impossibly so. Even if they land on the ledge and survive, the momentum of their bodies could carry them over anyway. But there is no other way and their backs are burning.
‘We have to risk it,’ says Gabe, one leg over the railing. ‘Quick, I can’t hold on.’
‘Too far,’ she says, but there is no choice and she is over too now, backside on the railing, her arms hooked into it, head swimming. ‘This is mad. Hold my hand.’
‘Will that help?’
‘For your sake. On my count of three . . .’
‘Sarah, I just want to say—’
‘One, two . . .’
So they jump. Gabe and Sarah – the lighthouse keeper and the stranger, the lost and the found, and the found and the lost – holding hands, leaping into the void. Sometimes you just have to jump. And for a moment they are suspended between sea, land and sky like creatures of the air . . .
Fifty-two
The Chief reacts first. Sarah hits the narrow strip of land at the foot of the tower and folds into the ground, but she bounces and rolls in the dust to the lip of the ledge, right on the edge of the void. The police officers shout, but the veteran Guardian is the one who acts, hauling himself forward, heaving that cannonball belly, ignoring the twist of pain in his back and the sharp, shooting agony in his knees. He scrambles out along the ledge, skidding on the gravel but planting his boots and somehow grabbing a handful of Sarah’s shirt and yanking her with all his might. She ends up on her back between his legs, dazed and moaning, and he tells her not to move, for fear they will both go over.
They don’t. Still got it, he thinks, gulping for air. Still got it!
‘That was stupid,’ says the coastguard, who comes more carefully with ropes anchored to the ground and moves them both back, slowly, to safety. ‘And brave too.’
‘I know,’ says the Chief, but he’s thinking that Sarah is the brave one. They had to jump – what other choice was there? But still . . . So later he finds himself going to Waitrose to buy a bouquet of white and yellow flowers, roses and other things he doesn’t know the names of, to take to Sarah in her hospital ward, just to check she’s okay.
‘Thank you,’ she says softly, surprised and pleased, allowing him to kiss her on the cheek. ‘There is something I wanted to tell you.’ But in her fuzzy state, still full of morphine, she can’t for the moment remember what it is.
For seven days, she rests: at first in the hospital, then in the lighthouse. It’s handy for the follow-up appointments. There’s no money for a proper bed and breakfast, and anyway the big sky, the horizon and the company help her feel calm. Jack is in custody. But Sarah has to go back; the neighbour is sick of looking after the cat.
‘Wait a moment,’ she says, pausing for breath about a third of the way up the narrow, winding stairs to the lantern room, nursing her broken heel in a cast. Gabe is going up ahead of her because he is weaker and his healing will take longer. They are close together, her hand on his elbow and her breath on his neck; but in these days of sitting and talking and walking – or hobbling – just a little on the hills and taking the air and laughing sometimes and crying, they have come no closer than this, physically. Neither is ready. One day, perhaps. They go on to the top and each takes a moment to be steady and look around the partially burnt-out room.
‘This may not be so bad,’ he says, running a hand along a blackened sill. The windows are cracked or missing, but the metal frames remain. ‘The structure is still good, somehow.’ The wind calls them both out to the balcony, where the South Downs and the Channel encircle them. The day is wide and bright. ‘I can put it all back together.’
‘I know how that feels,’ says Sarah.
‘You do. Are you ready?’
‘I think so. Whatever comes next.’
They turn to look west and miss what is happening to the east, where the long slope rises again towards Beachy Head. The Chief is climbing the hillside, as fast as he can manage, with a police officer on either side. They look up ahead to the cliff edge, where a slight young woman sits in silhouette with her legs hanging over. That’s dangerous, but the person beside her is the one they have come for, come to arrest, dressed in red with her long white hair streaming in the wind. She’s a Guardian. Her name is Magda and she’s there to help.
Sarah and Gabe look west beyond the Gap to those Seven lovely Sisters, each waiting for a bonny boy to come home in a sailing ship. Seven hills looking out to sea, each with a blank white face, shining in the sun. It’s a beautiful day, with powder clouds thrown across a wide, pure, deep blue sky and just a breath of wind to move them.
‘Perfect weather to fly,’ she says.
‘Shall we?’
They move back inside, lift down an angel’s head from where it hangs on a new hook under the ceiling, and take hold of the frame to ease those wide, fragile wings out of the door on to the balcony, taking care not to snag the feathers or the silk. They have assembled it together, carefully, from the pieces of a second angel stored in Rí’s room on the next floor down, out of reach of the fire.
‘To you,’ says Sarah, shifting her balance.
‘To me,’ says Gabe, shuffling along the balcony, and they both smile at a shared joke. They lift the angel together and put their arms out straight above their heads to hold the wings. Sarah has to stand on tiptoes. Gabriel is thinking of his love, his angel-maker. No response will come, he knows that now, but still he says to Rí under his breath: ‘Thank you.’ She will always be there as the sun rises and as it fades and as the seasons turn. Always and for ever, but not in the same way now. For everything there is a season, in every ending a beginning.
‘After three,’ he says, his arm aching. ‘I’m counting this time. Don’t go early again. One, two, three . . .’
They let the angel go with a push, both afraid that it will fall to the ground, but it doesn’t. Not today. There is warmth enough. This featherlight creature catches the gentle wind and is lifted above them for a moment, sliding this way and that like a giant cloud-white gull with tissue-thin wings that ripple as it flies. The sky breathes and blows under those wings and now it soars away from them towards the sea.
‘Will I see you again?’
; ‘Nah. Shouldn’t think so.’
‘Gabe, I know where you live.’
‘Come and stay then. Any time. Both of you.’
The hope-white angel with the wide embracing wings and happy wide golden eyes flies fast as they watch, towards the drop and the rocks, heading out over the waves to soar above the fishing boats, the tankers and the liners, way out to where the sky meets the sea. And as it goes away from them, it passes over a twist of flower stalks tied by green twine to a wooden post at the edge of the cliff. Caught up among them is a fragment of white plastic that looks like a pen but is not a pen. It has been there for a while. Just about still visible, in a little window on the side, is the trace of a thin blue line.
Author’s note
The places described in the story do exist and are well worth a visit, but Birling Gap is now run by the National Trust. The awful pub has closed, and there is a café with cakes instead. The lighthouse at Belle Tout is portrayed here as semi-derelict, as it used to be, before it was moved safely back from the edge. The current owners, David and Barbara Shaw, have renovated the place beautifully. Go there for bed and breakfast; it is very comfortable and the views are stunning.
As for the people, nobody in the story is based on a living person. Any resemblance is a coincidence. There are volunteers who patrol the cliff edge in real life, but the Beachy Head chaplains are not the Guardians. The chaplains are skilled, dedicated, courageous people who save lives every day and deserve your support and your prayers, if you are the praying kind.
Thank you to Rachel Moreton, Elizabeth Sheinkman and Alison Barr for believing in and helping to nurture The Light Keeper.
Finally, if any of this has brought up issues and you need to talk to someone, the Samaritans are ready to listen on 116 123. Please call them. It is always better to talk. Thanks for reading. Do get in touch and let me know what you think, via