by Karen Heard
****
It has been forty days since I last saw my father in that rickety boat, not really fit for sea. I look out at the swirling water around our little rock and see no one. I have never been shown the trick to getting out of the lighthouse. If there is a door – and there must be – I do not know where it is.
I remember only once being outside, walking along the razor-sharp rocks. There had been some great event that had pulled Father’s attention away from us and out to sea, and Mother had carried me through some unremembered passageway underground, and up into the open air.
I recall that it was bright out there, the sky impossibly wide above my head.
Father was out of sight somewhere on the other side of the mound. A storm had just died down, and there was that particular relief in the air that comes just after a storm’s temper finally abates. Mother had put me down and was tearing across the rocks towards the sea, her bare feet slapping hard against the sharp stones, like the surf had ordered her to its side.
As I followed, I tripped, and the wet rocks bit into my hand, but she did not heed my cry. I lifted my chin from the ground and remember silently watching as an escape boat sailed slowly past my face. A pale arm hung from the side, obscuring part of the boat’s name: “H-pe.”
“Don’t look,” Mother had shouted back as she ran into the sea, straining to reach the boat’s mooring rope.
She began stumbling and crawling up the crag as she tried to pull the boat quickly up the wet stones, towards one of the larger fissures in the rocks. The soft wood on the bottom of the boat ground and frayed as she wildly dragged it towards the cove.
I did as she asked without question, looking instead at the debris that had washed up on shore. I recognised part of a long metal chain; a roughly hewn spanner; scraps of knotted string; shards of broken crates; twisted knives and splintered forks … the waves spat out the broken skeleton of the ship with the same force I would spit out the bones of a masticated fish.
Further out, the sea was dotted with hundreds of dark prunes floating in a purple-brown juice that spread slowly across the sea. I ran to the edge of the water and caught one, running back from the surf before the waves pulled my legs with them. The sweet pulp of the prune was so ripe that the juice stung my mouth. I looked around for more, but then Father appeared, suddenly grabbing hold of my arm. He snatched the half-eaten prune from my hand and held his palm out under my chin. I spat the rest from my mouth, looking at him sourly as the prune juice dribbled down my chin, but then he pointed out to sea.
“You see the red stain on the water? That was not made by prune juice.”
In the distance, a large ship could be heard screaming as the violent current dragged it, on its side, over the reef of serrated rocks. On the underside of the hull, along its backbone, I could see a jagged tear in the keel. The ship spun in the frenzied current, turning around so that we could see its wind-torn sails and the cracked mast that must have dragged it to its death.
By the time I looked away from the terrible sea, Mother was also standing at my side, holding some of the twisted forks in her hand.
“Where have you been?” Father said.
Mother held up the forks, as if they offered an explanation.
“You were out of sight,” he said. “I thought …”
“I’ll tell you later,” she replied uncertainly. When he would not look away from her, she added, “A body. She shouldn’t see.”
Father nodded, squeezing my hand even tighter, until I began to squirm in his grip.
“I told you. It’s not safe out here. Little ones, especially, should be watched at all times, lest they be taken from your side.”
As they took me back inside, I tried to see where the door was, but Mother pressed me close to her chest as though I might be torn from her if she let go, and then she took me straight upstairs. Down below, I heard a slam.
“That will keep out the ghosts,” Father said a moment later, as he came up the stairs, putting his keys back in his pocket.
When I eventually fell asleep, I dreamed of the lost sailors, their lurid, slimy hands groping along the sides of the tower for a way in. At the time, I was glad to be safe inside whilst the dead were shut outside, but now I feel it is I who is locked away from the living.
Now, as I sit inside my jail cell, the sounds from the lighthouse continue to grow louder with each passing second, until the ticking of the windmill becomes unbearable. In the darkness of the empty tower, it begins to sound like some clockwork monster from a fairy tale.
As I become aware of the lighthouse around me, it starts to feel less a part of me. I start to wonder if the twisting staircase is pulling the walls inwards a little bit each time I look away, squeezing the rooms smaller and tighter. I walk the length and height of the lighthouse now as if it were a prison cell, rather than my home, or as if I were a fly buzzing around a locked room: an unwanted thought inside the lighthouse’s mind that must be suppressed.
I wonder how I could never have been away from this place my whole life. Father tells me it is not safe outside. He tells me the sea could come and swallow me up from the surface of our little island if I were to walk along the inconstant land. It seems that he is right, as the sea has now swallowed up the whole world.
I search the confines of my cell, groping along the walls for openings or missed doors. There is no way out. I did not see how Father left: he had me polishing the light’s glass before the dark set in, so I was occupied when he made his way out to sea. I noticed his absence only when he was already just a small shadow in the middle of the water. He had said that he must leave someday to find out what had happened to the boats, but it is strange that he did not say goodbye, instead he only held up his hand as he noticed me frantically waving at him. It seemed, though, he were telling me to stay rather than saying farewell.
I regularly pull up the basket hanging from the balcony that the fishermen used to load with supplies, but it is still as empty as before. In return for our keeping the lighthouse, the people who used our passage would give us gifts of food, clothing, equipment, and the replacement bulbs in their large wooden crates. Their trawlers would creep towards us warily when the waters seemed calm. I remember a kindly man, who would come regularly, once gave me a book. This was long after Mother had gone, and Father was counting the bulbs at the time. The fisherman slid the volume into the basket among the other gifts.
The book was large, bigger than my schoolbooks or the ledgers that Father keeps. It had a thick binding and much writing and drawings inside. Many of the pictures I recognised from tales my mother had told me. However, one that I was not familiar with made me pause.
The picture showed a lady with long blonde hair at the top of a tall white tower. The turret was smooth, except for the window at the top, which she looked out from. There was no door or other opening, although I did not register that fact on my first viewing, only her long hair: so like my mother’s. It shone from the page like the ink were filled with sunshine. It flowed from the window in a plait, and at the bottom, a man in silly puffed-up britches tried to climb it.
My father, on seeing the book, was delighted at first and thumbed through the pages, recounting some of the tales that I was familiar with. However, when he reached my favourite picture, his thumb gripped the page until it tore. He stared blackly at the image for a long moment before slamming the book shut and fastening it with a piece of old twine, winding and wrapping it round and round and round, again and again and again. He tied the string in three tight overhand knots and took the book out of the room without looking at me. I never did see that book again, and when I asked after it later, he seemed not to remember it at all.
The event made me think about my mother. I remember seeing her that last night, far out to sea, adrift in a small boat. I remember wondering where she had got the boat from and how she had got out of the lighthouse without Father’s key. She, too, had not been outside since the day of the shipwreck.
Th
e night was a calm one, allowing her a good prevailing southwest breeze, but I felt the growing resentment of a northwest crosswind pushing at my hood and knew it would not be long before it lost its temper and overpowered the gentle wind.
As the winds began to fight, Mother stared about herself wildly as she tried to navigate the boat, her frightened eyes lit up by the lighthouse’s glare.
She was shouting something at me, but I could not hear. I came towards the edge of the balcony to catch her words and gripped the railing, bracing myself against the battling winds, but I still could not make them out. I pulled back my hood, exposing my ears to the force of the wind, but still, I could not hear anything but its roar. The inside of my ears began to swell and close over. My hair lashed around my face, trying to bind my eyes.
I called for Father to help her. He came up to the balcony and stood next to me, glaring down at her for some time as she struggled with the skiff before saying to me, in a cold, trembling voice that carried low under the wind, “Child, go down and get another bulb as I feel this one is about to go. We cannot have a bulb blowing right now.”
I looked at him, silently begging him to do more, but what could he do?
“Yes, Father,” I said, fighting the storm to reach the staircase.
Wind-blind, I crashed into the wall, bruising my shoulder against something sharp. Pushing my body hard against the side, I groped my way to the door, my eyes streaming.
I rushed helter-skelter down the three flights of stairs to reach the bulb cupboard. There were many bulbs in the cupboard back then, so I quickly ripped the planks from the top of one of the wooden crates, lifting out the large bulb and carefully wrapping my arms around it. The bulb was heavy and almost too large for my small arms. I gripped it as hard as I could without breaking its glass orb.
As I reached the first set of steps, I realised that I could not hear the engines turning, only the clamour of my own heart frantically beating out each second that I did not return with the bulb. Despite the urgency, I stopped – holding my breath to listen, wondering why the engine also held its breath.
I nudged open the pump room door with my elbow, the bulb growing slippery in my moist palms as I descended the stairway. My heart was punching at my insides to stop wasting time, but as I went down into the damp dim cellar, I saw that the motor was still whirring comfortingly.
I eyed it with suspicion for signs that it had, just now, sprung back to action when it heard me on the stairwell, as when Mother would quickly pick up her chalk and continue with my lesson when Father came through the room, but it did not splutter or hesitate.
I rushed back up the stairway and returned to Father with the new bulb. He was staring out to sea: the empty sea. The light still scrutinised the ocean, but there was no sign of the boat.
Father stood at the top of the stairs, just out of reach of the tempest, staring intensely into the blazing beacon.
“Father,” I said, still wrestling to keep the bulb in my arms. “Where did she go?”
“She made it, girl,” he said, his sigh as heavy as the wind. I noticed that his hands were trembling.
“She is out of sight already?” I asked. “Father, did the motors fail? I thought I heard them stop.”
“No, girl,” he said, his voice higher than usual. “They worked just fine. Your mother is needed on the shore, and we will have to manage without her for a while. But you have brought a new bulb already. Good girl. You see, we’ll do just fine without her.”
“When will she return?” I said. He looked at me with an odd, haunted look on his face, but said nothing.
I did not ask many questions. I do not know why, but his empty look said not to, and I was afraid of the answer he might give if I pressed too hard. Since then, though, he has never looked at the switch on the balcony that turns off the lighthouse beacon unless we needed to turn it off to change the bulbs.
I sometimes go over the events of that night in my mind when the wind is particularly angry and we must stop the windmill. At such times, without the creaking of the blades, the whine of the solar engine seems even louder. In these storms, I sometimes think there was nothing that night. Silence. Emptiness. Just like the engine had stopped for a moment and the light had gone out when Mother needed it most. But if it had turned off, how had it then turned back on, unless Father had turned it on himself? At other times, I wonder if only my reason has failed.