In the Far Pashmina Mountains

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  ‘At the expense of the lives on board?’ Arnold said in disdain. ‘Men like that stop others from going to rescue the drowning so they can watch them die and steal their possessions. Gillveray said they once started a fire to confuse ships into thinking it was our lighthouse, hoping some boat would end up on the rocks.’

  ‘Well, he’s told you wrong,’ Danny said hotly. ‘It’s God decides who lives and dies, and He causes the storms that wreck the ships, not the wreckers or any fires. Who are we to interfere? We’re doing nothing wrong saving the cargo where we can. This place is full of bits of metal and wood off old ships.’

  ‘That’s different,’ Arnold snapped. ‘That’s flotsam picked up on the shore.’

  ‘Well, we pick up stuff before it reaches shore. What’s the difference?’

  Alice had never seen her father so angry or Danny so insolent. Her heart hammered painfully; this was the worst argument she could remember.

  ‘You can’t be both,’ Arnold said, his voice trembling.

  ‘Both what?’

  ‘A lighthouse-keeper and a wrecker.’

  The men glared at each other. Alice held her breath. Effie stood up and moved between them.

  ‘Please, Daniel,’ Effie urged, ‘don’t leave the lighthouse. We need you, son. This is where you belong. One day you’ll be first keeper like your father – a man who folk respect.’

  Daniel looked at his mother. Alice could see the tension in his face; the indecision. He relaxed his fists. ‘I’ll stay – for now.’

  Alice jumped up and threw her arms around her brother, squeezing him tight.

  Arnold nodded but his voice was still angry. ‘I’ll take the next watch; you’ll take the last.’ Then he retreated up the ladder.

  Alice was unsure what woke her. Pink dawn light already glowed at the low window in the chamber that she shared with her parents. She could hear her father’s gentle snoring and see the shapes of her parents under the bedcovers. His watch was over; Danny must be up top now. Perhaps it was her brother’s moving around upstairs that had disturbed her. How awful the shouting had been, with poor Danny being accused of being a thief and a drunk. Her father was wrong to be so angry; Danny was just helping his friends.

  Unable to sleep, she slipped out of her camp bed and padded softly up the ladder into the lamp-room. The place smelt smoky; the candles in the lamp were guttering. Danny was slumped in the corner, asleep.

  Shocked, Alice rushed over and shook him. ‘Danny, wake up! Da will kill you.’

  Danny opened bloodshot eyes. ‘Leave me alone.’ His breath smelt sour the way it did when he came home after drinking at the inn. There was an empty bottle on the floor.

  ‘You have to get up,’ Alice pleaded. ‘The candles are spilling wax – they need a trim.’

  ‘In a minute,’ he slurred, and closed his eyes.

  ‘Now, Danny!’ Alice said, shaking him again.

  This time her brother rallied, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms and shaking himself awake. He stood, stretching and yawning.

  ‘Get yourself back to bed,’ he ordered. ‘It’s nearly time to put out the candles anyway.’

  ‘Only if you promise to stay awake. You will, won’t you?’ Alice asked, hesitating.

  ‘Aye, of course I will. Just closed my eyes – I wasn’t asleep.’

  Alice knew he had been but said nothing. As she put her feet on the ladder he said, ‘You won’t tell Da though, will you?’

  She shook her head. ‘You’d better get rid of the bottle though.’

  Danny gave a sheepish grin and nodded. Alice experienced a strange twisting inside. She felt special that Danny and she now shared a secret, yet her adoration of him had diminished a fraction. Sam would never have drunk liquor and fallen asleep on duty; Da had drummed into them that sleeping on the job was the biggest crime a keeper could commit. Men had lost their livelihoods and gone to prison for doing so; no one should ever risk the light going out.

  She watched Danny pick up the bottle and open one of the casement windows to hurl it out. A sudden gust of air whipped the latch out of his hand. As he struggled to pull it closed again, one of the candles flared in the draught and toppled. Alice gasped as pools of whale oil from the melted candles instantly went alight.

  ‘Danny!’ she squealed.

  He turned and gaped, unable to believe his eyes. The whole lamp was ablaze, the glass cracking in the heat. He picked up a bucket of sand and hurled it wildly. He flapped at the flames with the logbook.

  ‘You’re making it worse!’ Alice cried.

  Danny dropped the book as it went alight. The fire took hold of the tinder-dry floorboards.

  ‘Get out!’ Danny yelled, scrambling for the hatch and almost toppling Alice off the ladder.

  ‘Da!’ Alice screamed, as they tumbled together into the room below.

  Her parents were roused by the commotion. They had hardly had time to leap from their bed when the room filled with choking smoke.

  ‘Go below!’ Arnold ordered. ‘All of you.’ He started up the ladder, attempting to close off the hatch, but the heat beat him back.

  Effie wailed. ‘The Lord save us!’

  They retreated below to the kitchen. ‘Take Alice outside,’ Arnold ordered his wife. ‘Danny, wake Sam and bring up the water flagons.’

  The last Alice saw as her mother bundled her downstairs was her father flinging pails of water at the ladder and the hatch above in an attempt to stem the fire.

  But it raged through the old building like a hurricane, devouring its timber floors and stairs, its ancient cupboards and furniture, scorching the brick in its race downwards. At the foot of the lighthouse, Alice screamed for her father and brothers to escape too. They came just as the storeroom exploded in a conflagration of oil and tallow and coal.

  Arnold dragged his stunned wife and daughter by the hands as far away upwind from the burning tower as they could go.

  By the time Gillveray spotted the fire and sent a boat to rescue them, the lighthouse was a reeking, smoky wreck and their island home was no more.

  CHAPTER 4

  Northumberland, 1820

  George Gillveray took pity on the distraught lighthouse-keeper and his traumatised family – he liked and respected Arnold Brown – and housed them in an attic wing of Black Harbour House, his rambling semi-fortress with battlements and a gun-court from where he fired an ancient cannon to warn ships in the fog.

  ‘We’ll build another lighthouse,’ he declared, ‘bigger and better with the newest lamp and lenses that money can buy.’

  George set about negotiations with Trinity House, who commissioned the lights around England’s coastline, for a modern light on Black Harbour Island. He invited the Scottish engineer Robert Stevenson to visit and give advice on the latest innovations and took it upon himself to lead the project.

  ‘We’ll have a temporary ship’s light at sea while the lighthouse is being built,’ George said with enthusiasm, trying to rally Arnold out of his depression.

  But Arnold’s spirit had been broken by the loss of his home, his books and his work tending the light. He had lived by the rhythm of the seasons and the days; he’d been king of his isolated domain. Now he spent his time standing on the gun-court gazing gloomily out to sea at the blackened skeleton of his former haven. Worse still, all his brooding led to the suspicion that Danny had deliberately started the fire.

  ‘You wanted it gone, didn’t you?’ he accused his eldest son. ‘You and your wreckers! You put your own family’s life at risk for greed.’

  ‘That’s a lie!’ Danny was outraged.

  ‘Then how did it start?’ Arnold challenged.

  ‘I told you, a gust of wind blew the candle over.’

  ‘How did that happen?’

  ‘It just did.’ Danny reddened.

  ‘You have guilt written all over your face!’

  ‘I didn’t start the fire—’

  ‘It was me,’ Alice intervened. She couldn’t bear the bitte
r arguments; they had lost everything they possessed but this tearing apart of the family was far worse.

  The men stopped to stare at her.

  ‘I opened the window. I couldn’t sleep and went upstairs to keep Danny company. It was an accident. I didn’t realise how strong the wind was – the latch flew out my hand.’

  Arnold looked at his daughter in disbelief. ‘You’re just saying that to save your brother.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Then why did you open it?’

  Alice hesitated. She couldn’t mention the liquor bottle or blame it on the smoky atmosphere for either would condemn her brother as negligent.

  ‘There was a bird tapping – it looked injured. I wanted to let it in.’

  Her father’s face crumpled. ‘You foolish child.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Da.’

  Danny shot her a look of gratitude. But Arnold’s expression was so bleak as he stalked from the room that her heart turned leaden.

  After that, Alice escaped outdoors daily beyond the fortified house and grounds to the fields and hills beyond. George was struck by the lively ten-year-old and her open, enquiring nature; she was an enchanting child. Often he found her taking refuge down at his home farm, helping to tend the animals.

  Alice was in awe of the tall, energetic landowner who reminded her of pictures of the Duke of Wellington – his nose long and his look imperious – but he spoke to her kindly and shared her passion for nature. He gave her a present of a brown-coated sheep with horns and nimble feet.

  ‘It’s from the Highlands in Scotland,’ said George, chuckling at her look of curiosity. ‘I breed them on the estate – up in the hills – and they produce the sweetest milk and mutton. Remind me of the sheep in the Indian mountains.’

  ‘You’ve been to India?’ Alice was round-eyed.

  ‘Worked at the Botanic Garden in Calcutta,’ George said. ‘Fascinating place, India. A botanist’s paradise.’

  ‘I’ve never been further than Black Harbour,’ Alice admitted, ‘but I’ve read about faraway places in Da’s books.’

  ‘You can read then?’

  ‘Aye, but all his books got burnt in the fire. Da’s very sad about that and so am I.’

  ‘Then you and your father must help yourself to the books in my library,’ George declared. ‘Any time you want.’

  Alice beamed. ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘The boys too.’

  Alice giggled. ‘They wouldn’t be so thankful – they hated school.’ Then she clamped a hand over her mouth, remembering the school was Gillveray’s.

  He laughed. ‘Then we’ll not force them into the library.’

  ‘Sir,’ Alice ventured, ‘they might not like books but Mam says they should be earning their keep here. Danny’s good with boats and Sam can mend anything – though he lives for lighthouse-keeping.’

  George touched her shoulder. ‘Of course they must have something to do. And what about you, Alice?’

  ‘I could help with the sheep, sir. And I can grow vegetables.’

  He gave her a considering look. ‘I’ll have a word with Miss Lambert.’

  ‘Is she the shepherd’s wife?’

  ‘No.’ George smiled. ‘She’s the school teacher.’

  Alice’s face fell. She had heard nothing good about school and didn’t want to be cooped up indoors like her brothers had been. But Gillveray looked determined, and Alice soon found herself attending his charity school. Miss Lambert, whose chins wobbled as she spoke, took an interest in the lighthouse girl who thirsted for stories and gazed at the maps on the wall, memorising the names of countries and capitals. Very soon Alice became her keenest pupil, escaping from the tension in the Brown household to the schoolroom.

  As the new lighthouse began to be built, the strained family relationships slowly repaired; Danny got a job ferrying supplies for Gillveray while Arnold and Sam took it in turns to work on the lighthouse ship. Effie helped out in the kitchens.

  ‘I can gut fish better than any,’ she said, rolling up her sleeves to the task. ‘We island lassies followed the herring fleet every season – that’s what brought me to the east coast – and how I met my husband. I was Gaelic-speaking but for a word or two: he taught me to speak the English.’

  ‘A good catch for a herring girl!’ Cook teased.

  ‘Lucky for him, more like,’ Effie declared. ‘Not many lassies would put up with living in a leaky lighthouse on a rock all their married lives.’

  ‘Well, you’ve two strong sons to show for it,’ said Cook, ‘and a beautiful daughter. She’s like Rapunzel with her long reddish-gold hair. That’s your Alice – Rapunzel in her tower!’

  Effie liked Cook and the company of the kitchen women but felt uneasy at the attention Alice attracted. It was unlikely after ten years that the selfish Charlotte Fairchild would return to claim her daughter, yet Effie still lived in dread that she might. Though Alice could try her patience a dozen times a day, Effie loved her as fiercely as her own. The girl lit up the room with her sunny nature and constant singing. The sooner the new lighthouse was built and they could retreat back to the island, the better.

  Alice was fascinated by the building of the new tower. She often skipped down to the harbour to watch the massive blocks of granite, hewn to fit together, being shipped out along with tools, crates of food and barrels of beer for the thirsty workers. The men who came and went were tough and wiry and brought tales about working on slippery rocks thigh deep in water; they would put up with any conditions as long as there was tobacco, ale and playing cards at the end of the day.

  ‘Where do the men live?’ she asked George Gillveray. ‘And how do they get the right bits of stone to fit together and will the sea not knock over the stones if there’s no lime to bind them? How do they stick to the rock in the first place?’

  Delighted at her interest, George took Alice to his lookout tower, high above the gun-court, and let her look through his telescope.

  ‘See how they are hammering in iron bolts? That’s how they fix the foundations to the rock. That wooden tower next to it is a temporary barracks where they live.’

  Alice gazed at the men working away with pickaxes and chisels like an army of ants, the fire from a makeshift forge belching out smoke. She saw how the sea spray soaked them but they carried on regardless. Pulleys and cranes swung to and fro, lifting the giant slabs of cut stone from the bobbing supply ship while the men lowered them in place like precious jewels.

  George showed her the plans for the new lighthouse laid out on his desk.

  ‘See how each circle of stone slots on top of the one below? The stones are all numbered and checked on the drawings. They fit together like a giant puzzle.’

  ‘Will there really be seven storeys below the lamp-room?’ Alice gasped, tracing her finger over the diagram. ‘We only had four in the old one.’

  ‘This tower will be nearly twice as tall, Alice,’ George said eagerly, ‘and seen for many more miles around. Besides, with your growing family, there will be need for more rooms. Your brothers may choose to marry and bring wives to live there who will want more comfort than you had in the old one. Your mother told me how the sea sometimes came through the walls and you had to take shelter in the top two rooms. Well, there’ll be no need for that in the new building. Solid as a rock it will be, I promise.’

  Despite Gillveray’s optimism, there were frequent setbacks to the lighthouse building. Once the autumn gales came, the men were taken off the island and employed in the quarry yard until the following spring when the work could start again. Arnold and Sam left the lighthouse ship for the winter months too and made do with keeping a fire alight on a derelict tower built to alert against French invasion during the recent Napoleonic wars but now obsolete. That first winter, a ferocious storm tore away the barracks and swept the forge out to sea. As soon as the weather allowed, Gillveray and his engineers went out to inspect.

  ‘Not as bad as we thought,’ he reported to Alice. ‘The stone f
oundations have held and the barracks can be rebuilt. It’s only put us back about a month or two.’

  Alice often watched the progress of the building that following summer from the lookout tower, George allowing her to come and go as she pleased and view it through the telescope. She made friends with Molly, the dairyman’s daughter, who went to the same school but much preferred being outdoors with Alice, playing hide-and-seek around the farm or collecting shells along the shore and pretending they were treasure. Fair-haired Alice and dark-haired Molly became inseparable companions, giggling over secrets and staying in each other’s homes. Alice took her once to the lookout tower to show her the lighthouse but Molly was scared of the old house and George’s booming laugh ringing through the corridors and never came again.

  ‘Your Danny’s a handsome lad,’ pronounced Molly, a year older and wiser about the world than Alice. ‘Thomasina Johnson has got her eye on him.’

  ‘The plump lass whose mam runs the post office?’ Alice asked.

  Molly nodded. ‘Saw them walking out together on market day – arm in arm!’

  ‘Never!’ Alice was disbelieving.

  ‘They were.’

  Alice didn’t like the thought of Danny spending time with a girl. She wanted their family to stay as it was forever, even though her eldest brother rarely spent time at home since they had come to the mainland.

  ‘He doesn’t have time for girls.’ Alice was dismissive. ‘Danny likes being with his friends, drinking and playing cards when he’s not working hard.’

  ‘Well, I know what I saw.’ Molly was adamant. ‘Mark my words; Thomasina will have a ring on her finger by this time next year. She always gets what she wants. Ever since her dad died, her mam can’t say no to her – and neither will your Danny.’

  Molly was right about Danny courting Thomasina but wrong about the speed of their courtship. Three years after the old lighthouse was burnt down, the new one was ready to move into, but it was the same five Browns who returned to live there. On a blustery September day in 1823, a boatload of local dignitaries and the Browns went out to the island to inspect it for the first time. An excited George Gillveray dispensed free rum, ale and roasted meat to the labourers and gave a speech praising their immense courage and hard work. The chief engineer led the men in three cheers for Gillveray and his persistence in getting a modern lighthouse built.