by Matt Stanley
“Lord! Lord! Lord deliver me from this lowly hell!”
I am ashamed to admit that I paused. Something in me did not want to let him in, this malign child. This shadow. I could have attended to my business with the oil canteen and let the sea take him to its twenty-fathom embrace. Nobody would have known.
“Lord! Lord! Lord save me from this howling sea!”
I searched myself for Mr Fowler’s counsel: the gentle voice that so often confirmed what I should do. But there was nothing. Only the clamour of the waves and wind.
I unbolted the door below. I unbolted the door at the side. I waited for a pause in the ecstatic bursts of water and pulled open the door a fraction. But what I saw was not the dripping boy hunched freezing there before me.
Instead, there was a seaman’s chest bobbing irregularly in the foaming spume as if something heavy was at one end of it. The sea lifted and dropped it, washed over it, subsumed it, but it resurfaced again with a garland strand of bladderwrack about it. Mr Fowler?
“Lord! Lord! Lord deliver me from this lowly hell!”
The sky darkened and I realised I was staring into the colossal face of a suspended wave about to break directly upon me, its phlegmy trough ribbed taut, its shoulders hunched, its crest crowned with flinging fingers. The weight of it would surely crush me.
I crashed the door closed and rammed the bolts home with shaking hands. I was still bending over when the billow crashed against the pediment and shot through the fine gaps around the door. I felt myself inside a drum as the boom stunned and made the entire floor shiver.
I backed away from the door, wading through water, and closed the second door against the vestibule. Against the invading sea. I took my oil canteen and ascended to the light and warmth.
In the kitchen, where Mr Adamson was still insensible, I looked out of the window. The seaman’s chest was still there, rocking and tottering in the surf. The herring gulls swooped and circled madly, their shrieking call a sob, a scream, a manic laugh – a sound I have lived with and woken up to many times. And graves have yawn’d, and yielded up their dead.
“What’s that?”
Mr Adamson, standing now. Bloodshot, dribbling, one side of his face red where he’d been resting on the table. He was looking out of the weather-side window, pointing.
“A bark,” I said. “It’s a bark.”
“It’s too close. It’s going to strike the reef. Can’t they see us?”
“The telescope,” I said, and rushed up to the light-room.
TWENTY-ONE
The fore and mainmast sails were close-reefed but all the other spars were bare. The vessel lay broadside to the waves, which were attempting to subsume her while driving her closer to the reef. There was a lot of activity on deck.
Mr Adamson arrived in the light-room and took up another telescope. “As I thought. She must’ve lost her rudder. At the wind’s mercy. She’ll be wrecked for sure.”
I moved my scope in the direction of the wind and saw the reef’s boiling cauldron. All was curiously silent through the magnifying lenses: the breaking waves, the straining cables, the wildly gesticulating mariners. Is this the view our Creator has as He observes our little wars, our games of progress, our passing aeons and eye-blink civilizations – all dumb-show drollery? Though this bark cannot be lost, yet it shall be tempest-tost.
“What can we do?” I said.
“Do, lad? We can only watch and hope the wind takes her past or through the reef.”
We watched as breakers overwhelmed the gunwales and as the twisting ship exposed her canvas to the wind. The sailors had begun to throw things overboard to lighten her draught: barrels, chests, chain. Her foresail ripped free of its cords and flapped maniacally.
“I wonder if that’s whisky in the barrels?” said Mr Adamson.
“Men may die and you are thinking about drink.”
“Men will die. Men will live. There’s nothing I can do to change it. Why don’t you pray if you think it’ll help anyone?”
I closed my eyes but could not will a prayer. There was only the reef and the wind and the ventilator echoing inside my head.
“Ah, they’re climbing the rigging,” said Mr Adamson.
“Will they unfurl more canvas?”
“No, Poet. They know they’re going down. They want to get above the waves.”
Men were scuttling up the ropes and embracing masts or spars. If the ship went aground, they might survive, clinging like limpets, until the storm abated and someone could rescue them.
“We might have to take them in,” said Mr Adamson.
“Why?”
“What a question, lad! Because they’ll be at the mercy of the sea. Because they’ll be drowning. Would you leave them to die, watching them through your telescope?”
“No. I meant only to say—”
“Are you afraid they’d dirty the lamp with their fingers? That they’d consume too many of our provisions?”
“No. It’s not that.”
“Just think: it’s an opportunity to redeem ourselves. If we save some lives, if we make Ripsaw a sanctuary, the Commission may look kindly on us.”
“You have changed your opinion about the Commission.”
“I’m thinking about myself.”
“Of course.”
He pursed his lips but made no reply. He was thinking of the whisky. I saw his telescope following the barrels. He was calculating if the waves would bring them within reach.
The ship was moving ever closer to the reef, pushed inexorably by the wind and the waves. Crewmen clung to its spars like withered apples to winter branches. How ironic for them to have Ripsaw standing witness to their plight: the great protector, the light of warning, the granite sanctuary… But completely impotent in its rearing height. It mocked their imminent demise.
“Any moment now…” said Mr Adamson.
It was not pity or fear in his voice. Rather anticipation, expectation. I would condemn him for it, but Mr Fowler said that an appetite for horror lurks in every man. We know we should not look. We do not want to look. We look. Is there pleasure in the misfortune of others? Is it gratitude that we’ve escaped a similar fate? Or do we like to see our worst imaginings made real?
The vessel was now at the very lip of the reef, broadside to the ecstatic foaming rocks. The masts swayed. The ship tilted.
“Aye, that’s it. She’s struck.”
For a moment, the bark stayed as she was, leaning queasily. But it was impossible to remain balanced on the reef’s gnarled shelf. The relentless waves were crashing and crashing against her hull, breaching her gunwales. She rocked and juddered. Men fell from their perches to the deck, to the sea. The main mast splintered low down and tried to fall but was entangled in its cables.
“It is horrible. Horrible!” I said.
But still I watched as men tried to lower lifeboats from the twitching ship. One boat succeeded and threw off its lines, but was cast almost instantly against the reef, overturning and disgorging bodies to the surf. Another broke free of the drowning mother and its oars raked desperately for escape, but a jealous billow erupted fully within and sank it at a stroke. Oars floated. Men were mustard seeds bobbing in the torrent.
“And now the vessel,” said Mr Adamson.
The bark shuddered as its timbers stove in and were excoriated. It crumpled on its beam ends, the remaining masts toppling towards the sea, the keel rising. And still the waves crashed and crashed and crashed pitilessly. Flotsam spewed with fractured planks and prostrate mariners. Spray sprang gleefully around the stricken ship.
“What are those men doing?” I said. “There by the foremast.”
“They’re tying themselves to the ship, lad.”
“But why? It’s going under!”
“You don’t know the sailor’s mind, Poet. A sinking ship is more like land than the abyss. But look – another boat is loose.”
Indeed, a third lifeboat had managed to make some distance from the ship, though i
t was being carried into the very boiling centre of the reef. It spun and heaved amid the frenzy, its oars entirely futile. Brine poured over its sides and, like the others, it sank away, leaving men frantically adrift ’midst demented gyrations: clothes soaking, boots filling – swept across serrated rocks that fractured bones and dashed out brains for a terrifying few seconds until contracted lungs could no longer bear the pressure and swallowed sea while screaming.
Meanwhile, we watched dry and warm and safe via the hygienic impassivity of telescopes. I did not differentiate bodies from timbers. All were dead. There was fascination in the ship’s slow destruction, caught between hammer waves and anvil rocks. There was determination and perfectionism in the urge to annihilate completely, or at least reduce the thing to the smallest masticated parts.
“Do you want to go fishing?” said Mr Adamson.
“I beg your pardon?”
“There are men in the water. If they make it to the lighthouse, we should offer them the chance of salvation.”
“But I was nearly drowned when I tried to open the door earlier.”
“That’s why we’ll go fishing. Come, I’ll show you.”
His idea was ingenious in its simplicity. We ran out the crane jib and attached a line whose “bait” was a bobbing cork lifebelt. Higher up, and level with the aperture in the lighthouse wall, we attached the kitchen hand-bell I have been using in the light-room. The theory: any mariner who could reach the lighthouse would see the line and swim for it, whereupon his violent tuggings would ring the bell and alert us. This way, we didn’t have to risk our own lives at the open door.
True, the occasional gust or enthusiastic wave would ring the bell, but only once and only faintly. A sailor grappling for his life would set the clapper ringing madly. We left all of the trapdoors open so that the pealing bell would carry up to us. We were fishers of men.
And so we put the kettle on for tea. Not only for ourselves, but in anticipation of possible guests. We waited at the kitchen table, sensitive to every sound. The clang of teaspoon in mug. The scrape of sugar bowl on wood. The occasional splutter of the ventilator.
“You can tell the truth now,” said Mr Adamson, leaning back in his chair. He looked quite dreadful after his drinking odyssey: eyes yellow, face red, hair still unwashed.
“What do you mean?”
“It was you, wasn’t it? You killed the commissioner.”
“I will admit no such thing. No death has been proved. Only disappearance.”
“Yes, you’ve been very clever about that. But it wasn’t me and it wasn’t Bartholomew. Who else would it be?”
“It was an accident. I am convinced of that. The other day, I locked myself out on the balcony…” I watched him carefully for any sign of guilt. “And so I know how easy it might be to fall.”
“But easier to knock on the door, especially when there is a man inside the light-room.”
I said nothing. I sipped my tea.
“I’m not trying to incriminate you, Poet. We are in this situation together. They blame me for Bartholomew. They see me as guilty. We are both equally guilty, you and me, in their eyes.”
I could see what he was trying to do, though he was not being very subtle about it. He tried another tack.
“It was a grisly story about Mister Fowler, eh?” he said.
“What do you know about Mister Fowler?”
“Calm yourself, lad. You’re not the only one who likes to nose about the house for secrets. I looked at the commissioner’s notes while he was with you in the light-room.”
“So it was you who took the notes! All of that charade looking for them—”
“Listen, Poet. I read them, yes; I didn’t take them. I have no idea what happened to them after my watch. After your watch.”
“They were private. That was private information.”
“Don’t talk to me about privacy, Meakes. You of all people.”
“What do you mean by that?”
He shook his head and chuckled. “You’re quite incurable.”
A shadow appeared at the doorway behind Mr Adamson: the boy. He drew a finger purposefully across his throat. I blinked to hide my stare.
“Anyway,” said Mr Adamson. “Poor Mister Fowler, all dismembered and put in a seaman’s chest like that. Quite barbaric. But it wasn’t Tibbotson. No. It seems Tibbotson was made a scapegoat.”
“You don’t know Mister Fowler. You don’t know Tibbotson. You only read some notes. Nobody knows the truth of what happened.”
“I’m sure not. At least, not yet. Mister Jackson is a sharp one. He will find the truth.”
“He has your newspapers.”
“Ah, yes. The mysterious newspapers. What will he discover in those illicit newspapers, Meakes?”
“I don’t know. But he is a sharp one as you say.”
“Do you know why those newspapers were under my mattress? Shall I tell you? It’s a dark and scurrilous story! I spilled water on my mattress some weeks ago and, in order to avoid sleeping in the damp, I flipped the thing and put newspapers under it to absorb the moisture. I must have then forgotten to retrieve them. Did you notice that the paper was crinkled?”
I thought. The paper had appeared somewhat crinkled. But it was a shrewd defence from Mr Adamson. Quite credible.
“So why did you choose issues from June alone?” I said.
“Because when I grabbed a handful of them, they were in date order! That’s how Bartholomew liked to keep them. I’m afraid you’re sorely lacking in detective skills.”
“But Mister Jackson took them. He must have thought—”
“Did he? I haven’t looked. Or perhaps he had something else rolled in newspaper. Or perhaps they were his newspapers.”
The boy stood squarely in the doorway, scandalously bold, miming a slow stabbing action. His eyes were turbid pools of hate.
“A seaman’s chest with a dismembered body inside must be awfully unwieldy. A man would need a cart or wagon to transport it to the river, don’t you think?”
“I remind you that you are talking about my uncle – a man I dearly loved.”
“Who do you think killed him?”
“I could not possibly say.”
“But he kept a house for the insane, no? I expect such men can be dangerous.”
“Nervous complaints.”
“What?”
“Not insane. They had nervous complaints or eccentric characters.”
“An interesting distinction.”
“You don’t know. You are not a man of science.”
I did not look at the boy. I could not look at him.
“And you, Meakes? Are you a man of science?”
The hand-bell rang. We paused.
It had been just a single ring. Possibly a wave. Possibly the wind.
We waited. It rang again. And again and constantly.
“We have a fish on the line!” said Mr Adamson.
The boy vanished from the door. We went down.
TWENTY-TWO
“Ready?”
I nodded.
Mr Adamson opened the main door and a gust of spray immediately lashed our faces. A large wave had just erupted round the column.
“There! Do you see them?”
Four mariners: tiny figures in the roiling crests. One of them was clinging to the lifebelt, his weight straining the cable taut.
“Reel him in!” shouted Mr Adamson over the wind’s din. He readied the boathook.
I set to work with the winch, the hand-bell ringing erratically all the while. We were saving lives, but my thoughts were wayward. Where would they sleep, these strangers? How long would they have to stay with us? Until the weather calmed? All winter? It was possible that some of them were already dead, or would die from their exposure to the sea.
“That’s enough!” called Mr Adamson.
He used the boathook to pull the exhausted fellow closer to the doorway. “Give me some slack!” he called.
I released more
rope and he landed his fish, but evidently the fish would not release his mortal grip on the cork lifebelt.
“Let it go! Unlock your arms! Your mates are still out there drowning!”
They surely could not survive much longer in the convulsing waves, their saturated clothes weighing their limbs and willing them to sink into darkness.
“More rope!” called Mr Adamson. “Reel him in!”
Three more times we repeated the process – spray and billows constantly attempting to enter – until four wet sailors lay inert or writhing half-frozen in the puddled vestibule.
“We must get them upstairs and warm them,” said Mr Adamson. “We’ll need extra blankets from Bartholomew’s room. We’ll need to fire the stoves. Don’t just stand there, lad! Help me to undress them.”
And so began the laborious process of removing clothes that clung determinedly to pale and malodorous bodies. The sailors did almost nothing to help, exhausted as they were. We had to half-hoist, half-carry them one by one up the staircases until we were gasping and perspiring with effort.
None of them showed signs of dying.
* * *
I sit writing in the library and I sense that the equilibrium has changed. It is as if the horizon is skewed, the tower leaning. Four new presences now inhabit this column: two in the keepers’ bedroom and two in the principal’s room. All are swaddled in blankets and have been filled with hot, sugary tea. Rum is kept for these sorts of emergencies, but Mr Adamson has drunk the lighthouse dry. For now, they sleep.
The sea around is littered with debris from the wreck: bales, barrels, boxes. Spars, timbers, bodies. Occasionally, there is a different kind of impact as something solid hits the lighthouse. Nobody knows the vessel has gone down – nobody but us. We are invisible out here in the drifting spray. Only when the ship fails to arrive in port, only when the corpses start to reach the land – only then will the loss be surmised. In time, families will know that their sons or brothers or fathers or husbands were lost on Ripsaw reef. They will try to imagine it. They will recall the etchings and the paintings they may have seen of sculpted waves, dramatic skies and men clinging to beams. But these visions will forever be the matter of their dreams and imaginations. Only two people saw the real work of art. Only Mr Adamson and I will know the truth behind the stories and the guesses in the press, or the faulty recollections of surviving crew. There is something satisfying in being the only one to know as everybody else investigates and builds assumptions. There is peace of mind when no other witnesses exist. One may tell, or one may keep the secret.