I am the Sea

by Matt Stanley

  I gripped the ring with one hand and held myself almost fully against the lantern. Without looking down, I swiped clumsily with the broom, not even looking to see if the snow was coming off. The beam of light swept slowly past me and illuminated flocculent air: a million floating pieces caught startled in a dark solution. And at each pass of the lens, Mr Adamson became a darkened statue watching me.

  Perhaps one third of the lower lantern was clogged with snow. I cleared the first section and looked for the next hand ring. Though less than two feet distant, it seemed two yards. I would have to release my hold on one and reach for the next, momentarily unsupported.

  The night gaped. All was air and gravity. I removed my hand from the ring, barely uncurling chilled fingers, and reached slowly in front of myself –away from the glass, towards the drop! – to grasp the other ring. I shuffled my feet, dislodging snow.

  Inside the lantern, Mr Adamson watched.

  The cold had now quite soaked through my clothes and into my bones. I felt heavy. Weary. The bristles squeaked at the panes. My knees were locked rigid at a half-bend. It would have been so easy to just drop the broom, let go release the ring and fall. The air would embrace me. The snow’s soft down would cushion me and permit me no harm.

  I looked through the misted glass and saw the dark figure of Mr Adamson. But there was now a second, smaller figure standing behind him. All was indistinct. I didn’t have a free hand to wipe the glass.

  The smaller figure seemed to raise an arm as if to strike. There was some instrument in his hand. A hammer? A knife?

  I banged on the pane with the broom handle.

  “Mister Adamson! Behind you!”

  I slipped. My fingers were too numb to hold on to the ring. I saw the parapet rushing towards my face…

  “Meakes! Meakes! What are you doing?”

  Mr Adamson was leaning half out of the lantern and tugging at my arm. Cold metal was hard against my cheek. I tasted copper. I realised with a nauseating rush that I was lying on the parapet, one leg swinging into nothingness.

  “Come closer to the door! Meakes! Can you hear me?”

  “What… What happened?”

  “You fell. Here – take my hand. Drop the broom. Drop it!”

  I heard it clatter on the balcony. I crawled along the parapet towards him, the mesh biting into my knees. Snow flecked my eyes.

  “Careful… That’s right, Meakes… Almost there.”

  He gave a tremendous tug and I was dragged into the lantern. I heard but did not see the door close.

  “What’s wrong with you, Meakes? You can’t be jumping around on the parapet like that.”

  “I thought I saw…”

  “Saw what, lad? You’re quite chilled to the bone. And it looks like you’ve bitten your tongue. You need to get yourself down to the kitchen and drink a good hot cup of tea with plenty of sugar. Can you walk?”

  “I think so.”

  “Well. Off with you. Your watch starts in three hours.”

  Thus, I sit in the library having drunk my two mugs of hot tea. My tongue stings doubly for having bitten it in my fall and having burned it with the tea. I have changed my clothes and heat is returning to my body.

  I am struck by the fact of Mr Adamson saving my life. He could have left me to freeze to death on the parapet, or waited for me to roll into the sea. I have seen almost no sign of kindness from him in all my time at Ripsaw and yet he pulled me into warmth and light from darkness.

  In a matter of thirty minutes, I will reclaim the bottle message from the provision store and take it with me to my watch. There, I will have the time and privacy to read its contents.

  * * *

  I put more coal in the light-room stove – an essential task since the windows were to remain open for ventilation – and I waited a further thirty minutes before taking the bottle out of my greatcoat pocket. Only after that period could I feel more certain that the others were engaged in whatever they were doing.

  The cork was difficult to extract, having been cut off in the middle. I ended up pushing it into the bottle before inserting my index finger to pull out the curled sheet. It would have been easier to simply break the glass, but I wanted to avoid noise. Besides, I felt sure that Principal Bartholomew would find even the smallest shard and ask questions.

  The process had something of ritual to it. I did not want to rush. If this message had come from the lighthouse as I expected, its contents must surely have some significance. I unrolled the paper on the table and saw a mass of fine writing that quite filled the sheet. There were no paragraphs. I have read in Bottle Messages: Their History and Some Remarkable Accounts that this is a common feature of such texts. Space is limited and often so is time. A message must be scribbled in haste and tossed to the waves as a ship goes down or as the tide awaits.

  Nothing was common about the contents of this bottle, however. I copy the text verbatim:

  Dear James

  You live in a lighthouse, but you are already dangerously close to the reef that could send you to the depths. Why are you sleeping in the library? You know it is a perilous environment. I wonder – have you seen Jimmy? Seclusion is beneficial, but remember to diminish excitement, reduce increased sensibility and allay irritability. Avoid feats of imagination or creation. Limit yourself to only the most repetitive and predictable tasks. Are you reading, James? You know you shouldn’t be reading. I advise you to have your hair shorn if you are experiencing any overheating of the cerebrum. I must also warn you about your fellow keeper Mr Adamson. You have discerned that he has a secret. It is this: he is a criminal. When last on shore, he drunkenly killed a man but fled before anyone could identify or restrain him. He is a fugitive at Ripsaw. The deceased keeper, Mr Spencer, discovered this secret and confronted Mr Adamson with it, whereupon the latter filled the water-store stove with coke. He knew that Mr Spencer always closed the hatch. You are in danger, James. There are many ways to die in a rockbound lighthouse – many ways for a body to simply vanish and appear an accident. You are also a danger to yourself. Take care. Remember what you have learned. Take care, James.

  My hand shook as I read and re-read the letter. It shook with outrage that somebody was playing with my sensibility. It is shaking now. Who had thrown this note into the sea? And when?

  Whoever did so clearly knew more about me than I have told to anyone. Somebody must have spoken to Mr Fowler before his unfortunate death… or has seen notes about his work. My first thought on reading the message: Mr Adamson. He must have gone into the commissioner’s room while the man was up on the balcony and read through whatever notes he had on me. But Mr Adamson is himself incriminated in the letter! And just today he has saved my life!

  Principal Bartholomew? Is it possible that he saw some notes made by the commissioner? Perhaps he wanted to tell me the facts about Mr Adamson but was afraid to do so verbally lest he be overheard. But the idea of his putting such information into a bottle and tossing it into the sea was quite ludicrous. The chances of me seeing it or being able to recover it are infinitesimal. He could just have easily written it on a slip of paper and handed it to me!

  My brain is quite hot thinking about it. Could the commissioner himself have sent me this message? If he had seen something ominous in the atmosphere of the lighthouse… If he had learned the true facts of Mr Adamson’s crimes… If he had learned something of Mr Fowler’s methods and wished to advise me… He fears for my safety. He comes up to the light-room to confide in me, but he knows my nemesis is always waiting, listening. He thus goes out to the balcony, waiting for me to come out. But when I stay inside, he knows he cannot face the dangerous Mr Adamson in the light-room and so writes his warnings in a bottle message that he flings to the foggy night. It is just as well, because he is soon thrown from the balcony himself.

  I am feverishly surmising stories. My mind is racing.

  What fantastical combination of chance conspired that I alone would be the one to receive this message intended for me
? That the bottle would not break. That the bottle would not drift to the Isles of Scilly or to the Faroes, to Dublin or New York, there to be found by a complete stranger for whom the note would have no significance. That the waves would nudge it gently to my very feet at the precise moment when I was standing at the door – delivered to this solitary column amid a wilderness where bodies disappear and cannonballs float.

  This was not only a message from a man. It was a message from a colluding world. The winds, the waters, gravity and time had together intrigued to put this paper in my hands.

  I knew I must hide it. Again, I thought of all the places I could conceal it and all the places it could be found. I had an idea: there is a japanned metal locker in the provision store. It contains a mass of hard-tack to be eaten if all else is consumed. Nobody eats it. There is a lining of old newspaper under the biscuits and I could secrete my note beneath it with almost total security that nobody would think to look there.

  I went directly to the store after my watch and put the note inside the locker. Nobody saw me. But I encountered Mr Adamson coming down the stairs from the kitchen as I went up. I had to stand to one side for him pass.

  “What are you doing, Meakes?”

  “I was checking the oil store. If the temperature falls any further, we will have to cover the cisterns with blankets.”

  “You’re becoming quite at home here, aren’t you?”

  “I like to be diligent. Is it still snowing?”

  “Aye. Without pause. Well… I must relieve myself.”

  He continued towards the privy and I went to the library. I moved one of the heavy wooden chairs beside the stove and tried to read for a while by lamplight. I could not concentrate.

  Instead, I stood at the window and watched snow caught in the circling beam. How wondrous a sight it is. How rare in nature. Precipitously descending rain prevents one from appreciating its countless drops. The proximity of crystals does not allow one to conceive the innumerability of sand. But the quantity of flakes in snow impresses multiplicity on the viewer with its stately fall. More flakes than every soul that ever lived upon this earth. More flakes than every word in every book ever written. In this relentless torrent could be every letter, from the cuneiform of old Assyria, through Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Latin – all pristinely formed and graceful in flight but descending to annihilation in black asperity… In Eleon, Hyla and Ocalea, and Peteona and the stately streets of Medeon, Copæ, Thisbe full of doves. And Noah begat Shem, Ham and Japheth and Cush begat Nimrod and Mizraim begat Ludim and Anamin and Lehabim and Naphtuhim. Amygdaloid and anthracite, clinkstone and belemnite, galena, mica and colite. Obsidian, porphyry, pozzuolana and pyrite, schist and silex.

  It was still snowing at half past four in the morning when I went to the kitchen to cut off my hair with the scissors.

  FIFTEEN

  Sunday. I woke to a film of ice on the inside of my windows. The snow had stopped and the sea was still. I went down to breakfast in my uniform and found Principal Bartholomew on his knees firing the stove. He turned and looked up at me.

  “What happened to you, Mister Meakes?”

  “Sir?”

  “Your hair. I have just finished cleaning it out of the sink and from the floor. You look like a prisoner.”

  “Yes, sir. I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Well, you might try reading a book if you can’t sleep. A keeper should appear neat and trustworthy in his uniform – not like a condemned man.”

  “I apologize, sir. I suppose I started trimming and cut more than I intended. It was only later when I saw myself in a mirror…”

  “Very well. But I will have to write a report. Whatever our circumstances here, the regulations must be followed.”

  Our circumstances.

  “Do you think the boat will come out, today, sir?”

  “Only the Commission knows when it will come. In the meantime, we continue according to our duty. Will you go down to the provision store and fetch ingredients for breakfast?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  I descended, passing through colder and colder zones until I could see my breath as vapour. I put eggs and bacon in a hessian bag and slung it over my shoulder to ascend. The hard-tack locker appeared exactly the same, but I needed to reassure myself.

  The bottle message was there exactly as I had left it. I pushed it further back under the neat piles of ship’s biscuit and closed the locker.

  Raised voices from the above paused my thoughts and I ascended with the bag.

  Mr Adamson was standing in the kitchen doorway. He was not wearing his uniform.

  “So write your darned report!” he said. “What consequences will there be?”

  “That will be for the Commission to decide,” said Principal Bartholomew.

  “They’ve already decided to take me to shore. They can’t prosecute a man for not wearing his uniform. I won’t hang for it.”

  “It is your duty. I am wearing my uniform. Mister Meakes is wearing his. Are you better than us? Or just prouder and more arrogant?”

  Mr Adamson turned to look at me. His gaze was one of pity and derision. “You look like a plucked chicken with your hair,” he said.

  “I will prepare breakfast,” said the principal. “You will change into your uniform, Mister Adamson, and then we will meet in the library for the service.”

  “I will not change,” said Mr Adamson. “Nor will I be attending any service. I’m finished with all of that nonsense. I am tired of it. Let them take me when they will. Until then, I’ll live unmolested like a man.”

  “Then you will not eat breakfast.”

  “I can make my own breakfast.”

  “No. If you wish to consume the Commission’s provisions, you must adhere to the Commission’s regulations. Those regulations state that on a Sunday—”

  “Then I will pay the Commission for my bacon if they begrudge me tuppence worth. I have coins in my pocket. Wait…”

  “You are being ridiculous.”

  “I am being ridiculous? Look at you both wearing your stiff uniforms on the inside of a frigid column twenty miles offshore. Nobody can see you! Nobody knows!”

  “No sin is invisible.”

  “Sin? What sin? I want to eat my bacon dressed like a man. Where is the dignity in these rules imposed from afar?”

  The principal took a ring of keys from his pocket and selected one.

  “Don’t do this…” said Mr Adamson.

  “Mister Meakes,” said the principal. “Take this key. I want you to go down to the provision store and lock the remaining bacon and eggs in the large strongbox by the south window. Mister Adamson will have no access to them until he agrees to obey the Commission’s regulations.”

  “Don’t do it, Meakes.”

  I did not want to put myself in the middle. Besides, I agreed with Principal Bartholomew. We were wearing our uniforms and continuing to do our duty. Why should Mr Adamson escape? I turned to descend.

  “You will regret this, lad. Do you hear me? Meakes!”

  I had wondered about the large strongbox in the storeroom. It was the only place in the lighthouse, other than the Commissioner’s door (and now the principal’s), that had a lock. When we had searched together for the missing morphia, neither the principal nor Mr Adamson had mentioned looking in the strongbox, as if both knew the morphia could not be inside.

  The key turned easily. The heavy metal door swung open with a gritty sigh. It contained bottles of alcohol: wine and whisky. These were presumably for important visitors or for celebrations such as Christmas.

  I moved the eggs and bacon into the locker, having to rearrange the bottles to make enough space. However, on returning to the kitchen, I found Mr Adamson seated at the table in full uniform and staring at the principal’s back with an expression of tense loathing.

  The principle turned from his labours at the stove. “It seems Mister Adamson will be joining us for breakfast after all. Might I trouble you to bring more eggs and
bacon, Mister Meakes?”

  I returned to the store without comment.

  * * *

  I write this with the stain of blood upon my hands. I dare hardly narrate the events that have occurred since my last trivial entry, but I do so in the hope that there may be a true record.

  I was in the light-room store sorting cleaning materials. I had become distracted by a tool log near the workbench and was marvelling at the range of instruments available. Drill bow, hand saw, plane, adze, axe, pliers, joiner’s hammer, wooden mallet, marline spikes, iron set square – all were neatly affixed to the circular wall in spring clamps. I was trying the joiner’s hammer for size when Mr Adamson entered the store like a gust of wind.

  He was brandishing the bottle message.

  “What is this, Meakes?”

  “I don’t know… How could I know?”

  “This is calumny, Meakes. This is defamation.”

  “I… I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “You think I’m an idiot, don’t you? You think you can skulk about the lighthouse without anybody realising. You think you know me. Well, here’s something you obviously don’t know: I like ship’s biscuit! I like it with a cup of tea for my supper.”

  “I really… I have no idea what you are holding.”

  “Pathetic, Meakes. Pathetic.” He held the letter up and read from it: “… He is a criminal. When last on shore, he drunkenly killed a man but fled before anyone could identify or restrain him. He is a fugitive at Ripsaw.”

  “I found that letter. It was in a bottle by the rock.”

  A blink. “You found a bottle addressed to you in a bottle by the rock? Can you hear yourself?”

  “I can assure you it is quite true.”

  “I won’t stand for these baseless accusations. I don’t trust you, Meakes. Not after the business with the commissioner. I’m taking this directly to the principal.” He started to fold the letter.

  “No! Give it to me! It is mine. It is addressed to me.”

  “How could it possibly be addressed to you if it was thrown in the sea?”