I am the Sea

by Matt Stanley

“A body – look.”

  “I told you to look for cockles and mussels, not for cadavers.”

  “But… Should we not reclaim the body and signal the shore station?”

  “Look at it.” He grimaced. “It’s been in the sea a while. Who knows where it came from? A fishing boat. A wreck further out to sea. A suicide on shore. There’s no saving him now.”

  “Could he be… Could he be the keeper who was washed from the rock before you came to Ripsaw?”

  “How would I know that? I never saw the man.”

  “But are we to just leave him here?”

  “The sea is full of men, Poet. He’s not the first on this rock. He won’t be the last. Here – help me.”

  He strode towards the corpse and began pushing at it with his boot, his mouth twisted in disgust.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  “The dignified thing.”

  Grunting, he rolled the body towards the edge of the reef.

  “You’re just going to throw it in the sea?”

  “That’s where it came from!”

  I took a few steps towards the body. “But…”

  With a final tremendous shove, Mr Adamson sent the tangle of lifeless limbs rolling into the sea. I watched it sink, a pale spirit that seemed to wave as it was swallowed into blackness.

  ‘And are you happy now?” said Mr Adamson. “We have wasted time on this nonsense when I could have been catching fish for supper. No more games. Fill your bucket.”

  But I could not concentrate on my task. The reef now seemed a place of horrors to me. What else might I discover hidden amid its rotten fissures? A sailor’s finger? Waterlogged bird corpses? Some gelatinous monstrosity from the deep? We could not feed ourselves from this pestilential outcrop.

  I didn’t hear him when Mr Adamson first attempted to call me, perhaps due to the noise of the waves breaking further along the reef. Indeed, it may have been his second or third attempt to rouse me.

  I saw his urgently pointing finger. I turned to look in that direction but too late. The wave announced itself behind me with a great explosion of spray, breaking over the reef and rushing towards me at quite the height of my knees.

  I braced and willed myself heavier as the inundation raced at my legs. The fugitive thought occurred that if a timber was hidden somewhere in that flow, it would snap my bones like twigs and I would be carried off into the deep.

  Instead, I merely crouched impotently and the water struck my legs as it strikes the lighthouse, rising up my thighs and attempting to push me over. I dropped the bucket lest it overbalance me as I felt the immense weight of the wave tugging at me. It seemed to go on forever before diminishing, leaving me soaked and shaking.

  “Where… Where did it come from?” I suppose I was asking myself.

  “You’re lucky!” said Mr Adamson, splashing to my side. “If you hadn’t turned when you did, it would have swept you off.”

  I was dumbfounded.

  “Always keep your wits on the rock, Poet. A wave may come at any moment from any direction.”

  “I am soaked through.”

  ‘I see that. And the copper bucket will come out of your wages. Come, let’s go back inside. The tide is rowdy today. Besides, I have a crab and a fish.”

  * * *

  It is only now as I note this incident in my journal that I question why he didn’t tell me before descending to the rock that an unexpected wave may come. It is true that he warned me of its arrival, but it wasn’t only the waves interfering. He called out in a subdued voice I almost didn’t hear. If Principal Bartholomew had been watching from the balcony or a window, my death would have looked entirely credible and Mr Adamson even something of a would-be saviour.

  I am wearing dry clothes and have calmed myself a little thanks to a minim of morphia. I know I must be sparing with it, but the if experiences of this afternoon don’t warrant a small dose, then surely nothing does.

  I have finally been able to find time to spend in the library, where I currently write – perhaps the most unusual room in the lighthouse. It is clearly designed to be a home from home, with its carpet, its dark furniture, bookshelves, a panelled wooden dado, and stucco decoration in the dome. There are watercolours and a marble-topped table. A classical geometric frieze is painted around the base of the dome and there is even a wooden-framed bed, presumably for guests.

  Indeed, its strangeness in contrast to the stark utility of every other room reveals too obviously its function here at Ripsaw. It is a space to pacify, calm and civilise. Out here on the rock, we are clearly regarded with great suspicion by the Commission. The tower, the oil, the lens, the shore-station and cutter – all represent a colossal investment of time and money. Lives depend on the faithful lighting and extinguishing of the lamp. Can three men – three mortal men with the seeds of weakness, dissipation and destruction in their souls – be trusted with their duty, so alone and distant?

  Hence the library with its books and newspapers and paintings. It represents the promise of home and safety. A placebo for comfort, as Mr Fowler would have said. I wonder why the Commission’s lighthouses do not contain chapels instead of libraries, but each and every Sunday the principal holds a service here. Attendance is compulsory. So it is a chapel of sorts.

  But the motive is rather in the books. Knowledge is a palliative. It distracts the mind from evil and elevates it to morality, rationality, order. If a man is reading improving material, he maintains his dignity and remains on an intellectual plane. Such is the theory.

  The small catalogue (not more than fifty titles) is thus well chosen. Nothing to agitate or disturb. Sundry Walter Scott. Various Charles Dickens. There is a Bible and a Book of Common Prayer. The newspapers include The Penny Illustrated Paper, The Illustrated London News and The Scotsman. There is a dictionary to negotiate the rocky reefs of lexis. As for the books, they are a mixture of predictable and incongruous, the latter no doubt left by visitors and previous keepers. I note the titles on the shelf immediately before me:

  Stevenson’s Account of the Skerryvore Lighthouse

  Some Enquiries into Lighthouse Construction

  Robinson Crusoe

  Gulliver’s Travels

  Pilgrim’s Progress

  Chambers Cyclopaedia of English Literature

  The Edinburgh Encyclopaedia

  The Iliad (trans. Alexander Pope)

  The Principles of Geology

  The Monument to the Great Fire of London: A Visitor’s Guide

  The Works of William Shakespeare

  Paradise Lost

  The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

  Antiquities of Greece and Rome

  Bottle Messages: Their History and Some Remarkable Accounts

  Anderson’s Compendium of Weather Predictors

  The Chronicles of the Stylites

  They are, perhaps, the books one would not choose to read unless trapped inside a lighthouse for the winter season. Under that circumstance, there is much to be recommended and I anticipate reading most of what is offered.

  There is also a book log in which one has to sign out each item, noting the title, the borrower’s name, and the dates taken and returned. This seems to me quite absurd in a virtually hermetic space inhabited by only three men, but I see in it the Commission’s imprimir. To not return a library book may be the first small step in a catastrophic failure of responsibility. (I note, however, that Keeper Spencer apparently left this world with his copy of Brown’s Urn Burial unreturned and possibly unread).

  In addition to the paintings, there is also a detailed etching of the Ripsaw Reef Lighthouse done in cross-section. Every chamber is shown with admirable clarity.

  There is the main door and the water store with its single window and privy. Next is the oil and coal store with its rough industrial perfume and its tinned-copper cisterns circling the room. Above that is the provision store with seventy days’ worth of food and drink, candles and soap stored in japanned lockers.
The kitchen, I am already well acquainted with, and my bedroom above that.

  Thereafter, we enter the terrae incognitae of the principal’s bedroom and above his the sumptuous “boodour” described to me by Mr Anderson: the visiting commissioner’s room. I have seen nothing of these two, both being forbidden to the junior keepers.

  Above the commissioner’s room is the library, and above me the light-room store with its panes in astragals, workbench and tools, so that this ark may repair itself unaided by the shore. Only thereafter does the lighthouse proper begin. Everything before this point is simply height.

  In the light-room, we find the revolving mechanism, the weather instruments and, indeed, the keepers who exist to run it. Then finally the lantern’s glassy crown itself. Ten chambers to support the light. Ten decks of a great barque going nowhere. Day after day, nor breath nor motion; as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean. And we three crew – three mice scuttling round the ballast.

  The book in front of me on the marble table top is a history of the Commission and of lighthouses, too. I have read that the first beacons were built by the Lybians along the lower Egyptian coast and by the Cuthites, whose origins are lost amid the time of myths. Those Cuthite towers were temples devoted to Baal, whose priests knew the secrets of the constellations and engraved them on the great stone phalloi. Towers with names such as Caneph, Proteus, Canobus and Phanes.

  It was the Cuthites who read the winds and the seasons for their secrets and built the Tower of Babel in the sun’s honour, a sacred fire burning at its apex. For this hubris they were scattered without a common language and fled as colonists across the oceans.

  Thus was wealthy Colchis founded, where King Aeëtes ruled and where his daughter sorceress Medea cast her spells. The Golden Fleece hung there, the Amazons rode, and fire-breathing Khalkotauroi were yoked by Jason. In distant Colchis was Prometheus cliff-chained to have his liver pecked eternally, and from Colchis Pasiphæ ventured to her encounter with Poseidon’s bull.

  Such is our lineage as keepers of the light: apostates of the truth, bearers of sacred and forbidden knowledge, matrices of kings, demigods and heroes. There is a too-mortal, sacrilegious impulse in the construction of these towers to the sky in mockery of both the heavens and the ocean. These vaunting pagan spires, more complex and enduring than any cathedral…

  * * *

  I have just awoken on the library floor with no recollection of what happened and no idea how long I may have lain there. There is a lump on my head where I must have struck the table or the floor.

  Is it possible I took too much morphia? Was it a delayed fainting fit brought on the by my grisly discovery amid the seaweed? Or perhaps there exists in man some cerebral debility brought on by rapid changes in altitude. I have passed two days ascending and descending between the bird-infested upper air and sea level. No doubt, in time, a lighthouse-man may grow accustomed to such regular fluctuations.

  On waking, I noted that the library seemed somewhat more disordered than when I had entered it. I returned my book to the shelf and squared the pile of newspapers which appeared skewed. In doing so, I could not help but notice the sequential dates were interrupted. Three issues were missing. I could not find them no matter where I looked.

  SEVEN

  That evening, I arrived in the light-room ahead of Mr Adamson, who would accompany my watch. I used my time to read the weather instruments and note their measures.

  I was also particularly drawn to the watch log, which is supposed to record any notable occurrences while the lamp is lighted. What stories might it contain? What history of Ripsaw might it tell? Briefly alone in the light-room for the first time, I had the opportunity to look through the pages of this heavy, leather-bound volume.

  Alas, the keeper’s life is evidently as dry and as repetitive as it appears. Principle Bartholomew had made a number of observations regarding out-of-the-ordinary wind or rainfall. Mr Adamson had noted the breaking of a lantern pane by a large, long-necked bird he identified as a swan but which surely could not have been. The creature’s body had been lost to the sea.

  Evidently, weeks pass here with nothing extraordinary to report. Still, I was curious to find some trace of Keeper Spencer, who haunted the balcony just a few days previously, nodding in the wind as the others sat here listening to the ventilator’s breathing and the ringing of the mechanism bell. Had he left something of himself except the watch-cloak he’d bequeathed to me?

  I flicked the pages, looking for a different hand, until I saw a short entry from Mr Spencer:

  At approximately twenty minutes past two o’clock, I went out on to the balcony to peer at the cowl (which was rattling) and I thought I saw a figure standing to my left but at the very edge of my vision. I turned to it but saw nothing. Walking towards that place, I saw again a dark shadow of small stature like a boy, but again at the corner of my eye so I could see no detail. I imagine it must be an effect of the beam, perhaps reflecting from a bird or cloud. It was most curious.

  A note had been added by Principal Bartholomew below the log entry: An effect of the beam. Nothing more. I could find nothing more from Keeper Spencer and was ready to read further back in time when Mr Adamson arrived panting and irritable. He had apparently not noticed me reading the watch log.

  We went to the lantern together, where his only advice was, “So light it.” I did everything as the principal had shown me and Mr Adamson made no comment – the height of praise from him. Indeed, he seemed disappointed that I had done nothing wrong.

  This watch, however, was something I had been dreading since my first encounters with him. Misanthropic as he is, how might he react to four hours trapped in a room with me?

  Rather than worry myself unduly, I reminded myself of Mr Fowler’s advice that any man may be understood if allowed time and space and patience. Some men are prickly. Others live within themselves. Some are angry and blame the world. Fear drives a good proportion, and greed many more. This was my opportunity to get to know the man.

  Initially, he sat at the oaken table without speaking to or looking at me. The bell rang constantly. The ventilator gulped and sighed. He was clearly uncomfortable and shifted in his seat. He went out on to the balcony after forty-five minutes and remained there for half an hour. Evidently, conversation is painful for him.

  Nevertheless, when he returned, I decided to be bold.

  “May I ask what happened to Keeper Spencer?”

  “He died.” No expression.

  “Quite. But what manner of accident befell him?”

  “You even speak like a poet.”

  “I assure you, again, Mister Adamson, that I am not a poet.”

  He shifted in his seat. “Why do you want to know about Spencer? It’s no concern of yours.”

  “Is it not? I sleep in his bed. I sit in his seat and I do his work. His death has strongly affected my life. I am here because of him. I could just as easily be at Bishop Rock or Longships.”

  “Well, he died in the privy.” A solemn downward glance. “It was a shameful way to go.”

  “He was ill?”

  “Nothing like that. An accident pure and simple. Spencer was a sensitive one. Like you, I expect. He liked to close the trapdoor to the water store before using the privy. Well, the stove must have had an excess of coal dust in it, or else he used coke instead of coal. Carbonic oxide in that small space… We found him when he missed breakfast next morning. His face was as red as a cherry. Stone dead.”

  “How horrible.”

  “It’s common enough. He knew about the dangers from his training, but he couldn’t defecate [he did not use this word] if he thought people were listening. Imagine dying only for that. For shame.”

  “The poor man.”

  “It was his own fault, Meakes. A rock lighthouse is a hazardous place. Look at your adventure today. A stray billow, a strong gust… A slip, an accident with a knife or broken glass. If you open a vein here, do you think the waves will stop for you? Th
ey will not. A wound that, on land, would not inconvenience a man can here kill him. Remember that.”

  “I will. What kind of man was he? Spencer, I mean?”

  “I told you: sensitive.”

  “But was he a good keeper? Reliable? Trustworthy? Not prone to fancy or caprice?”

  Mr Adamson gave me a hard stare. “He was a normal man. But sensitive.”

  “I don’t know why I ask. I suppose I want a model. You said that the principal is a reliable man.”

  He seemed to hesitate before continuing. “Bartholomew is half mad, though you might not notice it. He has a mania for the weather. Have you wondered where he is all day? He’s in here reading his instruments and playing with that contraption on the balcony that measures wind. Do you know he keeps a jar of leeches in his room? I’ve seen them. But he doesn’t use them for his health. He uses them to predict the weather. Disgusting fat things. And you know what they eat, don’t you, his leeches? It’s not bread and butter. It’s blood. His blood. He’s feeding those slimy things with his own blood so he knows if the wind is about to change direction. He puts them on his skin, cold and slimy.”

  I could not think of anything to say in that moment.

  “He’ll tell you if you ask. He believes he can design a system that will predict a storm. It’s all about patterns with him. If he can collect enough measurements, there will be patterns. He thinks there’s going to be another storm like in 1703 when the Eddystone house was washed away. And he’ll be the one to announce it. Can you imagine? Predicting the weather? Even if he could, do you think anyone would believe him?”

  “Like Cassandra.”

  ‘Eh?”

  “The wife of King Priam. She—”

  “I’m not interested in stories. What I mean to say is: what does it matter? If it rains, it rains. You can’t change it, even if you know it’s coming!”

  “But ships could remain in port if their captains knew—”

  “Nonsense [he did not use this word]. There is always cargo to be conveyed and collected. Commerce doesn’t stop for the weather. Captains are all the same. Drop sail and close-reef. That’s their answer to an impending storm. Stay in port, you say? You don’t know what you’re talking about, Poet!”