by Matt Stanley
“You were a sailor, then? Before you became a keeper?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“I meant no offence. It’s only… I’ve read that many sailors become lighthouse-men.”
“Some do. Some don’t. What was your profession before coming here?”
“My father was a printer and my uncle a physician.”
“I didn’t ask about your family.”
“I… I suppose I have been looking for a trade. Those two fields of endeavour have interested me much.”
“And that’s why you have decided to sit in a lighthouse listening to the wind and waves unto distraction.”
“I am young. I still have time to think about my future. But may I ask you why you chose the life of a keeper?”
‘No. You ask too much, Poet. If you want to live in a tower, you’ll do well to remember that listening is better than speaking. There’s already enough chatter from the reef and the birds around the lantern. If you were seeking silence for your poetry, you’ve come to the wrong place.”
“Mister Adamson, I must insist… I don’t know why you—”
He stood. “I’m going up to raise the wicks.”
I know I shouldn’t allow him to antagonise me so. It only encourages him when I react to his barbs. Mr Fowler taught me as much. When people seek to provoke and torment, it’s because they cannot tolerate their own darkness and hope to manifest it in others. Mr Adamson is angry and wishes to see me angry. He is oppressed by Principal Bartholomew and in turn intends to exert his power over me. I understand this. It is why I am not angry.
The bell stopped.
It was only then I realised I had become accustomed to its ceaseless ringing and to the revolving mechanism’s moan.
“Mister Adamson?”
The lens was no longer turning. The beam was fixed on only four points of the horizon.
“Mister Adamson?” I was standing now.
“I know, I know. I have ears, too,” he said, descending from the lantern.
“What has happened?”
“I don’t know. But the lens must keep on turning.”
“Can you fix it?”
“Perhaps the chain… But here. You must crank it by hand.”
He took a right-angled rod with a wooden sleeve for a handle and fitted it to the mechanism.
“Now look here. You see this dial? It shows you the correct velocity to turn the lever. Not too fast, not too slow. Keep your circles regular and I’ll try to find the problem. You needn’t go very quickly, but it may be stiff.”
I beheld the crank. Old terrors coursed through me.
“Well, what are you waiting for? There are sailors out there on the sea!”
My hands would not rise to the handle. They hung heavy by my sides.
“Poet!”
“Yes. Yes.”
I gripped the handle with both hands. A tide of nausea rose within. I pushed the crank away from me. The mechanism was stiff but began to turn smoothly.
“That’s right, lad. Don’t stop. Lives depend upon it.”
I closed my eyes and turned the crank. I tried to think only of the sailors on the horizon looking for our light. Mr Adamson would soon find the fault and we would take our seats once more.
He was on his knees peering into the clockwork with a lantern.
“Can you see the problem?” I said.
“I have no idea. This has never happened before.”
“Call the principal with the air-whistle. He will know.”
“And wake him with our incompetence hours before his watch? Keep turning!”
I turned the crank. There was no pain as yet, but it would come. It would come if we could not find the problem.
“I am going to the lantern,” said Mr Adamson. “Perhaps there’s some obstruction there.”
He went aloft. I watched his shadow moving through the metal mesh and saw the lens revolving at my stroke. My shoulders were starting to ache. This provoked recollections of greater pain, bone-deep pain. Exhaustion.
I waited in the dread expectation of the bucket emptied over my back. Cold water. Shirt stiff and abrading my skin. Or the strap’s whip-crack lash.
These did not come. But neither did Mr Adamson. Would I really be forced to crank for three more hours? Could I?
“Mister Adamson?”
“What?”
“Can you see the problem?”
He began to descend. “Stop mithering me! I can’t think with you bleating all the time.”
“Is there not a latch? I recall the principal saying something about a latch.”
“So you’re an expert now, are you? A few hours in the house and you’re lecturing me on latches? You’re young and healthy, aren’t you? A bit of toil is good for a man.”
“Where are you going?”
“To the balcony. I need to urinate [he did not use this word]. Keep going. You’re a champion.”
I looked at the clock. Ten minutes later, he had not returned. Twenty. He clearly had no intention of repairing the revolving mechanism. He was waiting for Principal Bartholomew to come and solve the problem.
“Mister Adamson?”
Of course, I could have stopped at any moment and blown the whistle to call the principal. The lens would have stilled for mere seconds – not long enough to wreck a ship. But enough time to condemn me in his eyes. A keeper on watch was responsible for just two things: the light burning and the lens moving. No excuse but death or catastrophe would be accepted.
“Mister Adamson?”
It was not the pain of turning. That pain had not yet started. I invited Mr Fowler into my mind and solicited his advice. Recall a different place, he would have said. Leave the physical realm and pass time in tranquillity of spirit.
My mind is a library. I tried to recall the book I’d been reading earlier.
Some details had struck me concerning Faraday’s design for lighthouse ventilators. The problem: air and spray entering the cowl atop the cupola and blowing out the lamp. His solution: a number of inverted copper funnels joined by pins inside the upper chimney. Hot exhaust gas would rise inside and through the funnel cones towards the open air, but descending gusts would be deflected on the outer surface of the funnels into the lantern as a whole, not affecting the fragile flame. This would also help to regulate the temperature and control condensation inside the lantern…
The crank. The interminable circles. I tried not to think. My arms were becoming heavier with each turn.
‘What is going on here? What is all the shouting? Where is Keeper Adamson?”
I turned to see the principal rising through the hatch into the light-room.
“Sir. The mechanism is broken. We are having to crank it by hand. Mister Adamson is on the balcony.”
“Why is he on the balcony, Meakes?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Do not stop turning. I will look for the problem.”
He looked inside the gear wheels and seemed to reached inside. The handle jumped in my hands and the lens began to revolve of its own accord. The bell started ringing.
“Oh! It is working, sir.”
“Of course it is. Somebody had set the brake latch.”
“The latch? But I asked him about the latch.”
The principal opened the lee-side balcony door and called out into the night. “Mister Adamson! Come inside!”
“Oh. Mister Bartholomew,” said Mr Adamson, appearing from the night. “Is it time for your shift already?”
“It is not. Can you explain why the brake latch was set and why Mister Meakes is shaking with exertion at the crank?”
“No, sir.”
“You did not set the latch yourself? Mister Meakes has not been advised of its existence.”
“I can only think it was an accident, sir. Perhaps one of us brushed it without noticing.”
Not one of us believed that to be true. It had been Mr Adamson in the lantern when the mechanism had stopped.
&nb
sp; The principal glared at Mr Adamson. He could prove nothing. “You know that initiations of this kind are prohibited by regulation.”
“Yes, sir.” I’m sure I saw a smirk.
“Well. You may finish your watch early, Mister Meakes. Eat something and rest well.”
I walked to the hatch. Mr Adamson followed.
“Not you, Mister Adamson,” said the principal. “You will share the watch with me.”
“A second watch—?”
“Or I can write a report to the Commission about the events of tonight. You may choose.”
Mr Adamson stared hard at me. I could not think how any of it had been my fault and yet he seemed angrier than ever at my presence in the lighthouse.
EIGHT
Sunday. The days have passed seemingly without name or number. Everything about the day is the same, except that we must wear our uniforms all day and raise the lighthouse flag at noon. Officially, the public may visit the lighthouses on Sundays to observe our work, but Ripsaw is too distant and hazardous for such casual visits. Principal Bartholomew has told me that an American gentleman came last year to investigate how a first-order house is run. Two years before that, a writer of poor-quality fiction was resident for a week in order to prepare a book, but spent the whole time painting watercolours.
Breakfast was a somewhat fractious affair, with Mr Adamson angrily banging the pots and plates while barely exchanging a word with either me or the principal. I heard him muttering to himself earlier this morning that it is absurd to wear the uniform when nobody can see it but we three.
I am inclined to agree. How would the Commission know if we obeyed the rule or not? Perhaps if one of us was on the balcony or in the lantern they might glimpse us through the telescope from the shore station. But could they discern a brass button or an epaulette from that distance? Could they tell a uniform jacket from a regular jacket? Or one man from another?
And even if they were able to identify a lack of uniform, what could they do? Apply to the Commission for an official letter of censure and hold that letter for as many weeks as were necessary for the weather to be propitious enough for the cutter to come out? Then send a vessel and crew out onto the waves where a squall may rush upon them and overturn the boat, or smash it on the reef, or wash a man overboard to his death… All for an infraction so petty as to not wear a uniform one Sunday on a rock twenty miles out to sea?
Additionally, I feel ill at ease about holding the service in the library. Perhaps it is foolish of me, but I have come to consider the library as my place in the lighthouse – the place where I can go for peace and solitude. The idea of sharing it with the others feels awkward.
Not only that, but sharing it with something else. With the Church’s presence, which otherwise has no dominion here. This is a place of knowledge. True, there is a Bible on the shelf, but so, too, are Milton and Shakespeare, whose truths are no less eloquent and whose poetry is often more so. I like to read the Bible on occasion, but not as something more than literature.
“It’s all a pantomime,” said Mr Adamson as we took our seats in the library.
Principal Bartholomew deigned not to hear. “Mister Meakes – since this is your first Sunday with us at Ripsaw, I will explain. I usually read the prayer and then I invite others to read from the Bible.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well.”
I cannot remember the whole of the prayer that he read. It was very long and written especially for lighthouse-men by a noted clergyman of Edinburgh or London. I remember only that, as he read it, my mind wandered to the subject of religion in general, and that I spent more time seeking the hidden motives of he who had written it.
Men are Janus-faced creatures at the best of times. We dissimulate and lie. We conceal and distort. Often, we don’t understand our own thoughts or emotions. Our utterances, though they may be embroidered with the niceties of politics or gilded with the magic of poetry, are, in the end, as raw and useless as a dog’s baying. They are noises we make in frustration at not knowing how to speak our purest truth. We use words. We choose words. But do they really say what we imagine? A man’s truth is in how he acts towards his fellow man and his consistency of selfhood. Mr Fowler taught me all of this and more.
“Lord, thou art not confined to temples made with man’s hands; the temple most acceptable to thee is the heart of the worshipper,” read the principal.
And I thought: what contradictory logic! This noted clergyman in Edinburgh or London is afraid that lighthouse keepers will lose their faith and slide quickly into sin for want of a nave, a pew or altar, thus reminding us that worship is in the heart. In which case, why should any church or cathedral be constructed at colossal cost? Why should the Church itself exist when all that Christ said is in a book, and the small chamber of the human heart is sufficient to contain it?
“With shame we remember how often we have failed to study thy holy word – how often we have neglected the exercises of holy devotion – how often we have worshipped thee with our lips while our hearts were far from thee,” read the principal.
And I thought: guilt. What a cheap and obvious way to manipulate an isolated man. The suggestion was clear enough: you lighthouse-men have much liberty and time. Occupy yourselves with religious study, the better to stay tranquillised and pliable and dutiful. Work daily to save your mortal soul. Stay sealed inside the jar of holy observance. Avoid fugitive thoughts and fancy. Or risk the inferno through your own lassitude.
“Save us from the temptations and the solitude which might lead us to forget our God,” read the principal.
And I thought of the rhythmic creaks from Mr Adamson’s bunk above me. What are these temptations but the natural impulses of animal man? What fear the Commission must have of its men returning feral from their short duty, reduced to shaggy beasts by a few weeks of distance from the civilized world!
“We pray particularly for those by whose command we are engaged in this arduous work. Bless them in their families,” read the principal.
And I thought: cant! Just like those simonious lords of past times whose masses and atonement were paid for with bloodied silver, the Commission expects its captive keepers to pray for their souls. We, who face the wind and the ocean daily. We, who may be washed from the rock in an instant. We, who keep the light shining to preserve life. We must pray for them?
In all of this charade, they reveal their true opinions of us. We are weak. We are capricious. We are not to be trusted. We must be controlled because we are so distant. Freedom of thought and action must be curtailed at all cost lest we recognize ourselves as men with power. They fear that. They fear…
“Mister Meakes?”
“Yes? Yes, sir.”
“I asked if you would like to read a passage. A verse or two. A psalm, perhaps.”
“Oh. If you wish, sir.”
I read Psalm 107 from memory. It seemed apt:
They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; these see the works of the LORD, and his wonders in the deep. For he commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof. They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths: their soul is melted because of trouble. They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit’s end.
Mr Adamson regarded me with something between admiration and contempt.
The principal nodded. He had found the psalm in his Bible. “Very good, Mister Meakes. But you have omitted the most important part.” And he read:
Then they cry unto the LORD in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses. He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. Then are they glad because they be quiet; so he bringeth them unto their desired haven.
Mr Adamson snorted and tapped his fingers on the marble-top table.
“And you, Mister Adamson? Would you like to read a passage?”
“No.”
“Then perhaps you would like to tell us w
hy you sneer at Mister Meakes’ choice.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Clearly not. Out with it. What is your contribution this Sunday?”
“It’s bad luck to talk of storms while at sea.”
“A childish superstition. We are speaking of faith.”
“It’s a joke, that passage.”
“A joke? It is scripture.”
“Tell that to Winstanley at the Eddystone house. Don’t you think he prayed when the storm howled about his tower? Don’t you think he cried out to the Lord? But what calm did the Lord bringeth on that occasion? Winstanley’s house was wiped from the face of the earth without a trace. Or did praying work only eighteen hundred years ago and in the Holy Land?”
“Nobody may know the will of the Lord, Mister Adamson.”
“Then why bother with Him?”
Principal Bartholomew appeared vexed. “Faith is a choice we make. It is a daily practice. Perhaps Winstanley lacked faith.”
“As the tempest tore his lighthouse piece by piece? I feel sure his faith was pure enough.”
“Well. Enough of your insubordination. The Sunday service is compulsory as laid down in the Commission’s regulations concerning your employment. It is your job.”
“Amen,” muttered Mr Adamson.
“Let us pray silently for a while,” said the principal. “I think we need some tranquillity.”
He closed his eyes and I followed suit.
It remains a curious and novel experience to close my eyes inside the tower. One’s senses compensate. The ever-present birds become louder. The reef whispers and slaps. There is an odd feeling of pressure as if the circle walls are slowly closing in. And something else: some ineffable vibration as when a note lingers silently long after a piano key has been struck. A memory of sound, perpetually resonating.
I have thought that the lighthouse is a conductor, but of what atmospheric or oceanic force I cannot say. There is some potency concentrated here, without colour or sound or smell. Something like gravity, perhaps, that we prove by experiment and equation, but which is too ubiquitous to think of.