A month of hope and wonder, after all.
The Twins, the Fishman, and the Lighthouse-Keeper’s Son
Long ago – before the lighthouse was automated, before it was lit each night and unlit each morning by a computer, far away – there were three families that lived in the buildings at its base. Three lighthouse-keepers who greased the hinges, set the weights going, polished the brass and cleaned the lenses that the light shone through. The Brights, the Hallidays and the Coyles.
Jim Coyle was the fourth Coyle to wind the weight back to the top of the lighthouse stairs nine times a night. He had strong arms because of this and strong legs from climbing that winding staircase. He was the fourth James Coyle to have kept it, and he would also be the last.
His old childhood home is part of a hostel, now. The bedroom that Jim grew up in has four beds in it and a chest of drawers. But it also has his initials carved into the paintwork, near the door: J. C. 1947 – put there in the moments after he’d asked the elder Bundy twin to be his wife and she had said yes. Yes, I’d like that. Blushing like a rose, not quite believing that someone might think they could love her forever, or even love her at all.
For Jim had always watched them. Throughout his childhood, he’d eyed them – these twins from Wind Rising who did not look alike. The eldest was slightly heavy, larger in the lower half, with hair the colour of old hay. The younger twin taller, with hair that streamed when she ran.
No doubt the younger one was deemed the prettiest. But not by Jim – not by Jim, who liked the slow and practical tasks of the day, the care he took in helping his father whose eyesight was going when Jim was still young. No, he didn’t love the fast twin; speed is not the friend of a man whose eyesight was never good. He didn’t love the flashing, slender mouse of a girl who could duck under wire in a heartbeat; he loved the twin who made her way over stiles very gingerly, using both hands. He liked how she could rest the washing basket on her hip and almost balance it there. A comely, humble, self-conscious girl who liked stories and sewed very neatly, and who noticed such things as the wind direction or the many shades of the sea. I am like her, he decided. We are of the same kind.
Do you know any stories? I love stories. Sometimes she would pass him in the lane. No, he didn’t know stories but he vowed he would find some for Abigail, in time. Instead, he offered her an ox-eye daisy. Later, he gave her a periwinkle shell – pink, unbroken – that he’d been keeping for weeks.
He hoped, from the start – Jim Coyle.
But then, there was a death. The younger twin disappeared. The islanders searched their outbuildings, their fishing boats and even the pig shelters in Tavey’s fields but by evening they were walking the coast with lanterns in their hands and fear in their bellies. Thomasina! Echoing from cliffs.
Jack, their brother, found her. And she was buried in the churchyard with a clutch of ragwort laid on the coffin, for Abigail always said that her sister had loved yellow – the colour of newness and the sun.
The colour of the sun. Knowing this, young Jim picked stalks of it and looked for Abigail. She had her mourning places – the church, or the sheep fields, or in the dunes at Store where the sand was warm to touch. He would find her, nestle next to her.
I don’t want her to be dead. I don’t want her to be dead.
She sobbed. Or sometimes he found her when she was exhausted from her sobbing, so that she spoke very quietly, blinking reddened eyes. She told Jim of Thomasina’s double-jointed thumbs, of how she could whistle between her front teeth. And they began to meet more often – Jim and Abigail. He’d listen, and feel so sorry for her. He’d want to hold her hand.
One day, she brought a book. On a cloudy afternoon, she appeared with a hefty leather-bound book with gold stitching and an attic smell, and Abigail creaked it open in the grass. It was my mother’s, she told him. Look …
Jim looked. He saw the pictures, he read the tales.
I used to believe in all of them. In the Fishman – see his face? But how can they be true? When Thomasina’s dead? She crumpled. Stroked the fourteenth page.
Jim even came to love how she blew her nose – with strength, gusto and musicality, which she followed with a hanky’s genteel dab.
Jim thought about Abigail all the time. He thought of her as he swept the lighthouse stairs, or as he guided his father’s unsure hands towards his knife and fork. He was thinking about Abigail as he reached inside the foghorn to remove litter and last autumn’s leaves, and as he retrieved his arm from the foghorn’s depths he thought, I want to make her happier. How can I make her happier?
An idea came to him, at that moment. A handful of leaves, and a view of dark-blue sea.
Abigail! He found her lying down near Tavey, crying and with pig dung on her knees. Abigail, you’ll never guess … And he told her. He told her what he had seen, that morning. He gave her every part of it – the gull’s calling, the whiteness of his skin.
She sat very still, bright-eyed. It was him?
I think so.
He exists? You saw him?
I saw a man, he told her. A bearded man, like the one in your book. And a huge, silvery tail.
* * *
It was simple enough. The idea came so neatly. It opened up inside him as if the Fishman himself had been passing by, and he said tell her that you saw me … What harm could it do?
Over sixty years, since then. A new wind is blowing, now, across the isle, and his wife – the twin with the wide behind – sleeps beside him. She is old now, as he is old. Her breath is snuffled, soft.
So he lied about the Fishman. There was never such a thing. Jim does not believe in such stories, or he does not readily. He likes his cogs, his science and maps. He likes what can be proven but whilst he might like those things very much – hinges, diagrams – he loves this woman by his side. He loves her more than anything – more than water, or the turning light.
That was the best smile he had ever seen – the one that Abigail gave when she heard him tell his tale. Really? The Fishman? And if he exists, then … Maybe … A thousand maybes, after that. As if Jim’s words had watered a near-dead thing, she flourished, unfurled before him and believed in everything. For if there is a Fishman, what could be impossible? Nothing is impossible. Anything could be.
Abigail. With whom Jim shared his first kiss that afternoon, as they walked on the cliffs – timid, awkward. They bumped teeth, smiled, and both apologised.
Guilt? Once, he questioned it. For, after all, he had told a lie. But it was a lie which had stopped her flowing tears. It became a comfort – an offering which she’d taken, grasped, as if he’d offered gold. That lie (that story, a far better word) had given her hope, and trust in the world, and it had meant that the sea was no longer the vast, foreboding, malevolent beast it had been. Magic came back to it. Its waves began to sing again.
And didn’t it lessen her other, adult sorrows? When she’d discovered she couldn’t have children, Abigail had not cried. She’d sat with her hands in her lap and considered it. There’s a reason behind this. I don’t know what – but there is a reason. A decisive nod.
I still love you.
I know. She’d patted his hand. And I still love you. And it’s still a wonderful world …
So no – no guilt. His wife is happy. All he ever wanted – from the first moment when he saw Abigail, squatting in the dust in her holey pinafore, using both hands to turn on a rusted tap – was to bring her happiness. A happy Abigail.
Anyway – time and the human mind are powerful, and they are immeasurable when they go hand in hand. The Fishman feels like the truth, now. So many years have passed. Jim has told the tale so often and so vividly that it has come to feel like he did, in fact, see the Fishman – the bearded face, the silvery tail – off Sye, six decades ago.
Eighteen
Daylight. Windows glint. The lighthouse turns off.
The dog at Wind Rising stretches her back legs. Lichen shines on the eastern sides of walls. Squares of
light edge across the concrete floors of barns.
Loos flush. Backs are stretched.
Alarm clocks click, and burst into life.
Tabitha opens her bedroom window and the salty tang comes in. She inhales. There is a cleaner smell to the morning – cooler – and she supposes there would be; after all, the spring tide cleans out the higher rock pools. It sweeps into caves and hauls out the litter. It carries away the parched weed, the turtle bones, the lost hair-ties and crushed cigarette ends and the dead gull she knows has been lying at Store for weeks. They are gone. Now there is freshness. It makes her smile.
And the wind? She pauses. It is not northerly, now. Overnight, it has changed; the grass flurries in a new direction. The leaves in her vegetable patch are rustling for the first time in weeks. Westerly … she sighs. And isn’t that the island’s favourite wind? The wind that they prefer? Washing lines tend to be west-facing. The rhododendrons at the crossroads curve from west to east.
* * *
Leah does not wait for breakfast. She continues to dress and hurries downstairs – pulling on her cardigan, fastening her belt. She ducks outside and crosses the fields so that the sheep rise up, move to a safer place. Once there, they glance back. Their ears switch back and forth.
It is like being a child. This – a summer’s morning, damp grass, the excitement of a low-tide beach that she will be, surely, the first to walk on. How old is Leah? She feels brand-new.
Lock-and-Key. She has not placed her foot down on its sand in nearly four years but she will, now.
Down the wooden stairs. There is the line of wellington boots, upended on their fence-posts, and an expanse of beach as bright as glass. And Lock-and-Key is strewn with weed and driftwood, with shells that look white from a distance but which, when held in the palm, will never be white or not white alone. Leah knows this: she has not held a shell for a long time but she knows they are also pink or pale brown or blue-coloured, or they have ribbing of dark grey, or pearly undersides that are a hundred colours or more. All different – each one. The beach has never looked like this – so many shells, so many plastic bottles and rounded glass and rope.
She inhales, sets out.
This is what she knows: that Tom died. That the worst moment of her small life had been standing on a city street with her mobile phone pressed to her ear and her mother’s voice saying I don’t know how to tell you this. Darling … Leah changed, in that moment. Her physical body – her organs, her blood – changed, and her bones grew heavy and a deep, deep unhappiness soaked through her head like damp so that she thought she’d never laugh, or have a boyfriend, or a job. Or walk on Lock-and-Key again.
But I am here, now … All these shells; she is walking on shells. She lifts fistfuls of wrack, finds green bottle-glass as smooth as a marble. Also, she finds a crab. It is long dead, but immaculate. Leah crouches, lifts it to see its stalked eyes, its tiny mouth like a door, and she thinks it is incredible. It defies her understanding – how something as perfect as this crab exists, how it was made so intricately as to have its hinged legs, its ridged claws, its white underbelly which no human eye has ever seen. It would have made her sad, once. Once this beach would have been strewn with waste and sadness, but not now. Not today. She puts the crab down. She finds the long straps of weed that shine, as if coated. In rock pools there are transparent fish.
How strange that she always thought this beach would make her miss him more, or make Uncle Tom seem even further away. In fact, she feels she could touch him. Or he could touch her; he could be standing beside her and naming the different parts of a crab. He feels all around her – nearer to Leah than he has ever been since he dived off Pigeon four years ago.
Lee-loo, he used to call her. Little Miss Bundy. Niece of mine.
And just as he feels closer, someone else feels far away. The man from Sye is gone. Leah is sure of this – it feels as simple and strong as this stem of weed, or more so. Gone … The sly tide took him. The full moon shone, and so he reached beneath a rock at Sye and found his folded tail …
She will say he was the Fishman, for always. But it doesn’t matter, Leah decides, who he really was. He came – that is what matters. He was the change she’d been craving. He prised the wooden boards down from Tavey’s windows and far more besides.
She stoops.
There is a feather here, on the wetter sand. It is white, as long as her forearm. It is muddied, as she knows Maggie likes them – torn, half-bent; its tip is translucent, so hollow that it makes the tiniest sound as the westerly wind blows past. I will keep it for her. The smallest of gestures, but she will make it. She will give it to Maggie in the days that follow, to add to her glass vase.
* * *
The nurse leaves her house, pulls the door behind her. She hurries to the old pig farm.
Inside, it is spotless. The floor is swept and the fire is set. In the bedroom, the blankets are folded away. He has washed each paintbrush and laid them out on newspaper; the step-ladder leans against the door. The tools are in their box; the candles are lined up. Tins of paint are sealed, and dry.
Sadness, in a rush. Tabitha wants to find him. Where has he gone to? And how? She reasons, momentarily, that he must still be on the island – he must be, for how might he have left it? No boats set sail last night. And someone would have seen him, surely, if he’d tried. But Tabitha has a small, restless feeling inside her that says he is gone. Back into the water. Back to … What?
She has no answers, today. And maybe she does not want them. As she stands in Tavey’s garden, the sadness goes away. The day is perfect. The sun is high. She and Emmeline will plant bulbs later – daffodils and snowdrops in the grass verge near the church which will push up like old friends in the spring.
Later, she rings her sister. Have you seen him? Just in case.
Emmeline hasn’t. She phones her three children to ask them. Have you seen …?
No … I saw him yesterday.
Not today?
Not today.
No-one has seen him. Rona has not; nor Hester. It is Dee who says, phone Maggie. Surely he’s with Maggie? But also, just before she hangs up, she says Tabitha?
Yes?
You didn’t call earlier, did you? An hour or so ago? Only I had a silent call.
Silent?
Nobody spoke. Thought I heard breathing, but –
Tabitha hadn’t made the call, and doesn’t know who did. But she forgets about it promptly. There are more important things.
* * *
In the harbour, the Morning Star docks. It drifts towards the quayside, and gently knocks against it. All those onboard sway with it.
Nathan is waiting for this boat. He wears clothes that are clean and pressed; his hair is no longer brushing his collar or half-covering his ears. There is something boyish about him – how he is not sure what to do with his hands, how his feet can’t be still.
The gangway chimes, as it is lowered.
One by one, they come: tourists with their backpacks, a man from Say, George, Jonny, a birdwatcher with binoculars knocking against his chest and a guidebook underneath his arm, and as they disembark Nathan steps closer. He pushes up onto his toes and then drops down, trying to see through the railings. He thinks is she on board? Is she? For a moment he thinks she is not.
She is the last to descend. Kitty, in a floor-length skirt and hoop earrings that glint through her hair. She keeps one hand on the railing; she puts one foot in front of the other. Elegant, and slow.
I am not there to see it, but Hester is. Hester looks up from the boot of her car and sees them – how they press their hands together, palm to palm; how they seem to say nothing to each other until Kitty smiles, releases one hand and fingers her husband’s shorter hair. She comments on it; Nathan nods, bashful. They are how new lovers are – wary, wide-eyed.
Hester watches. She sees her younger brother carry Kitty’s bag to the car; she sees Kitty thank him, and consider this man who is careful with the bag as he set
s it down. He opens the passenger door for her, and Kitty smiles, climbs in. They make their way back to High Haven.
* * *
Ed steps into the hallway, heaves his legs out of his boots. Hello? No answer.
Next to the fruit bowl he finds a note which says Hello you – I’m dropping N up at R’s (beachcombing …) but I’ll be back shortly. Love D xx ps S is feeling better.
He puts on the kettle and the television. In the fridge he finds bacon, and looks for the frying pan. He knows nothing of the Fishman’s vanishing – how he has gone like a magic trick, like a dream they all had but have now woken from. But he will, of course. He will.
All of them are looking. They peep into outhouses. They look in the back seats of their cars, just in case. They check that all the boats are accounted for – Sea Fairy, Lady Caroline, Pigeon.
Maggie is pale when they ask her. With me? She flinches. No … Has no-one seen him today? At all?
Chicken sheds, greenhouses, the old wooden hut by the airstrip, the barn at Wind Rising, the church, the paint-smelling rooms of Tavey. They look everywhere. They call out Fishman, over the fields. Milton checks his storeroom. Ian Bundy puts a torch in his back pocket and makes his way down to Tap Hole, and all the other smaller caves – where the only answer to hello? is his own echoed voice.
The Fishman is nowhere. He is gone as a mist goes.
Where could he have gone to? Even Emmeline can’t explain it. A bit of a mystery, she concedes.
It is Nan who finds him, in the end. Nan, who is wearing mismatched socks and a sky-blue dress, and who makes up her own song as she goes. She is running ahead of her sister. She is imagining a whale or an upturned boat or shells you can blow into that make a sound like a hunting horn. Nan trips through the grass, arms in the air.
Then she stops. She wipes her nose on her forearm. Rona?
Rona comes beside her. What?
Look.
Are they clothes? They look like clothes, left on the grass above Sye, but the sisters are too far away to be sure. So they hurry. They make their way down the path, through the gorse.
The Silver Dark Sea Page 32