by Emma Stonex
‘You never said what your problem is,’ he says.
‘With what?’
‘This.’ He picks his teeth. ‘The sea.’
‘Just don’t like it, do I.’
‘Why?’
‘Who cares why? You’d never say to a pilot, if you like flying planes then you’ll love the sky, and ask him to jump out the cockpit straight into it.’
‘There’s always a reason, though, ain’t there.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It’s dogs, for me,’ says Vince. ‘One of the fosters had this feral bastard Rottweiler – one day it came at me, just like that, nothing I did. Got hold of my arm and started shaking it like a piece of meat – and it was a piece of meat, my arm, to that dog. Guess what its name was? Petal. Fucking Petal, for a dog like that. Since then I can’t be doing with dogs. Just expect it to go at me if I see one.’
‘I’ve got my thing about the sea and it’s got its thing about me.’
‘I don’t think the sea feels much about anyone.’
But that’s just it. The indifference. The old man used to look at me in the flat in Dorset, when we visited that cousin of his. He never blinked. He’d come into my room when everyone else was asleep and take off his belt and sit there, on the end of my bed, his wrists pale in the moonlight, unsure what to do with it next, or with me. The sea glared at me from the walls. It didn’t help me then and it won’t help me now.
‘I’m sick of it,’ I tell him. ‘Sick to my stomach.’
‘You mean seasick.’
‘No.’
Although I get that too. Coming out here, I fucking hate that crossing. Even if it’s fair it doesn’t agree with me, bouncing around like a jack-in-the-box. If I never had to do it again, I’d be glad. I dread the way back as soon as I’m ashore and when I’m ashore I dread coming off. That means life should be best for me when I’m home or on the tower, only it’s not. Life’s no good for me anywhere. Except with her.
‘Why ain’t you doing another job?’ Vince asks. I hear him chew the sweating cheese. A slurp of tea.
‘Jesus. What’s this, the fucking Gestapo?’
‘No need to go at me. Just like that fucking dog, ain’t you.’
‘We’ve got the house. It’s not a bad set-up. Don’t know what else I’d do.’
‘You could train again.’
‘Easy for you,’ I say. ‘You haven’t got children, a wife, having to get food on the table. All that shit, over and over, twenty-three quid a week and then what?’
‘PK, for you.’
‘I’m not Arthur.’
‘You could be.’
The biscuit’s turned to carpet in my mouth. ‘I’m not like him.’
Often, I’m tempted to say it. What I’ve done to Arthur. What I’m still doing. Just to hear how it sounds. I could tell Vince. But the moment’s gone.
‘Man, I love being back,’ he says. ‘These lighthouses. More beauty in them than I’ve seen. That’s what I’m in it for. Getting that promotion. Soon I’ll get to Assistant, like you, then a cottage to call my own. PK one day. Having my life on the lights.’
‘Doesn’t take much, then.’
‘Lightkeeping’s a skill, in my opinion.’
‘What skill? All we do is light a fire and watch it go then put it out again. There’s all the cleaning but a monkey could do that if it was trained long enough. Check in on the R/T. Cook a bit. What else is there?’
‘Aw, it’s more than that,’ says Vince. ‘I’ve said to you before I’m used to life in a cage, and there’re people who can hack it and people who can’t. And it’s seen as bad to be OK with the cage. You know? As if the whole point of everything is to be on the outside. But if you’re content when you’re banged up, whether it’s in Wandsworth or out on a lighthouse, where you’re not behind bars but you’re still trapped in every other sense of it, that’s enough to see you through. We had boys in the nick who were like lions in there. They’d be fighting and smashing stuff or killing themselves all cos of this thought they had about being free. Tell you what, Bill: I felt free the entire time I was in there. Never once did I feel like I wasn’t. It’s more than that, ain’t it? That’s all I’m saying. If you don’t like being on a tower, it’s not cos it’s the tower that’s wrong.’
My first landing on the Maiden was the worst. I’d heard stories about the Maiden Rock: she’ll rough you up, keep your eye on the ball or you’re fish food, mate. The Occasional I was set to replace was already overdue by a fortnight and his wife was sick; under other circumstances they wouldn’t have sent a relief with the weather as it was, waves toppling and rain bucketing, but Trident made the decision, so we did it.
I spent most of the crossing hunched over the side, the smell of the boatman’s cigar mingling with salt spray and the sting of bile. I thought of the brick at the bottom of the swimming pool and how I’d be thrashing, deaf and blind, while I drowned.
We had a slugging sea, yanking us up and thumping us down, whumping and wheezing, the prow scarcely making headway against the wind. The sight of the tower on the open water fascinated me in a morbid, avid way, like how other large manmade structures do, giant pylons or cooling chimneys or the massive beached hull of a steel container ship.
There wasn’t a lot of prep. You just arrived and let the men in the boat and on the set-off do the rest. I grasped the mechanics of it, had been told to consider myself the same as the supply cartons being lifted off, just to hang there and trust I’d be carried. You’ve got to trust the people on either end of the rope. But the problem that day wasn’t the men or the winch; it was the sea, because the sea couldn’t make up its mind what it was doing. I made a mess of the harness, a flimsy loop that went under my armpits, and the bit I held on to chafed between my palms.
I was hauled up in the air, sick as a dog, inched higher until the tower came close at last. I tried not to look too long at the spitting sea beneath my feet and what a distance seemed to have opened up there.
Suddenly there was a drop, the sea plunging thirty feet and sweeping the boat too far from the tower. The air filled with hollers and a blind sense of urgency. I squeezed my eyes shut. I didn’t care at that point what became of me. For a time, I swung on the harness at the mercy of the elements, the waves skimming my shoes then pitching back down. There were bellows from the boat,
‘Bring him in, bring him in!’ Then,
‘Bring him back, are you trying to kill him?’
Rain bit my face, the wind battering and ripping through my clothes. I opened my eyes and saw a man leaning over the set-off, Arthur Black, my Principal Keeper, his hand within reach. I lunged, but the sea beat me to it, slamming me into the concrete with such force it would be minutes before I could breathe properly again. ‘Well done, lad,’ said my PK, ‘you’re all right there.’ I grabbed the dog steps, freezing slippery cold, and began my ascent to the hot dim mouth of the entrance.
Arthur made me tea and fed me fags till I’d warmed up.
Poor Bill. Pathetic Bill. I could see him thinking it. Bill who never came in easy, without vomit down his front and terror in his soul. Bill whose hand was never the one that stretched for a lesser man’s, but only the one that received: never the stone from which PKs were carved. Drowning at the surface and he never reached the brick.
Sometimes, after I’ve done one of my seashells, even if I’m happy with it, I’ll drop it into the ocean from the bedroom window. The wind carries it off and I like the idea of that shell being returned to the sea. All that travelling over millions of years, all that effort, rolling in the grind of the prehistoric wash, only to be spat up on a distant shore and have a man like me scratch his imaginings into its body, defile its shape for his own satisfaction, then when he’s done he puts it right back where it started.
13
VINCE
Lonely Type
Two days on the tower
Tuesday morning. Three weeks till Christmas. A light won’t take days off or give you hol
idays; it wants you all the time. The others’ll soon start thinking what their families are doing and feeling pissed off they’re stuck here while at home the fir trees are going up and the mince pies getting eaten. That’s the done thing, so I’ve heard. I don’t think I’ve ever celebrated Christmas right. In the clink we had a sloppy dinner and paper hats, but as for the so-called magic of it, I don’t know what that means.
This time of year, you can’t extinguish your light till gone eight. But when the sun makes it through, I set to dismantling the burners, replacing them with clean ones in readiness for the night. Then I hang the curtains round the lenses. Unlikely once you get into December that the sun ramps up proper enough to start a fire but it’s second nature, and anyway it keeps them clean. It feels like you’re getting the light dressed for the day and then at night you take its clothes off again. I’d never tell the others that.
As the morning watchman, I’m on breakfast. We’ve got a nice pack of bacon from when I came off, so I fry that up then keep it warm in the Rayburn till the others get up. Normally the smell gets them up and no matter what anyone says there isn’t a better smell on the planet than frying bacon. It’s not bad being chef on the Maiden cos the PK’s nearly as crap as I am, so I don’t feel self-conscious about the meals I put up. On my first island post the keepers there were really stuck-up about the food and sarcastic whenever I set a plate in front of them, which was rude since they never taught me any sodding thing about cookery even when I asked. It’s only a knack you pick up, for me anyway. I don’t even know what half the ingredients are before I get started.
‘Anyone hear the birds?’ I ask, once we’re sitting round tucking in.
‘What birds?’ says Arthur.
‘Last night. Whole load of ’em came flying in at me.’
The PK’s up then, going to check upstairs cos it’s his lantern; even if we’re the ones keeping watch, it’s still his light to look after. He checks on it like it’s his child.
Bill’s got his head low to the plate, which he always does when he eats, right down close to whatever he’s eating, and a fag smoking in the ashtray next to him so he can puff and chew and puff and chew. He looks at Arthur’s empty chair.
‘Why’d you let him talk to you like that?’ he says.
‘Huh?’
‘Like you’re a fucking dimwit.’
I wipe my mouth. ‘You’re the one who calls me that.’
‘Did you see what he did?’
‘What?’
‘Rushing off to see what’s been fucked. What you’ve fucked. Thinks you can’t be trusted with your watch. Thinks the same of me.’
It’s fair game for a couple of keepers to have a moan about whoever’s not in the room – like unscrewing a bottle, a way of letting it out, just to say, ‘Did you notice how annoying it was when he did this; he can be such a stingy prick from time to time, can’t he?’ Not meant unkindly but it just keeps things bubbling away instead of bubbling over.
But Bill’s edgier than normal. Tired. I watch him smoke the last of the Embassy, grind it out then push his plate away. The PK comes back.
‘Didn’t think about cleaning them up?’ he says to me, a bit sharp.
‘You wouldn’t’ve had any grub till lunch if I had. Bill’ll do it, won’t you, Bill?’
‘Fuck off.’
Arthur clears the table with a, ‘Thanks, that was good.’
After breakfast, I get the bucket and shovel and go on up there to the gallery. In fairness I hadn’t realized how many birds there were cos they came in like moths in the early hours, sometime around five, and who’s to say what you’re seeing then or if you’re seeing it straight. What with all the feathers and flapping it could’ve been ten or a hundred. I smoke a cigarette in the harsh cold; dead grey sea and dead grey sky and my hands look dead grey too while I scrape them up. Shearwaters – they’re pests anyhow, says Bill, no great loss, but I don’t agree with that while I’m looking at them all flattened and twisted round on their necks. On the Bishop Rock once, I heard the keepers there found the gallery stuffed full of birds, living, squawking ones. There’d been nowhere to set foot, not a spare inch, it was like Noah’s bloody Ark. It wasn’t till darkness fell and the birds got the full glare of the lantern that they flew off, dozens of them. The lighthouse beam drew them in and dazzled them, or else it frightened them away.
Three days
I thought I’d find it hard coming back to the tower this time, what with things going strong between Michelle and me. But actually, once I’ve done a couple of nights it’s a good thing. I’ve got all the time in the world to think about her, here. What I said to Bill on middle watch was right – I want to make Assistant, it’s all I want, and to get that security cos Trident look after you for life. Then I’ll be able to say to her, all right, how about it? I’ll be a man with prospects for once.
It’s me on lunch then the PK does the washing-up then his usual thing of sitting in his chair with a cup of tea and opening a crossword puzzle. He spares me a fag. Arthur’s a good one for sharing. When I got my station at Alderney the PK there never shared a single thing he had, didn’t see the point in it. He’d sticker his jars and packets with Keep Out and Hands Off: it meant he was fine for butter and tobacco and HP Sauce, but nobody wanted his company. Arthur doesn’t give a lot of thought to possessions, comestible or otherwise. It all passes, he says; it’s stuff, it doesn’t last. The feeling you get when you’re all sitting round having a fine old time, that lasts.
‘Miserably failing to meet expectations,’ he says.
‘Piss off, the spuds weren’t that rough.’
‘Two words. Six letters, five letters.’
‘One of those fuckers; I’m no good at those.’
‘You’ve got to think of it two ways,’ says the PK. ‘There’s the literal clue, the one on the surface, then there’s the clue inside. That one takes some special thinking.’
‘Don’t think I’ve got much special thinking in my brain.’
‘It’s a question of how you look at it.’
‘Give me another.’
‘Brew some magic up, pal.’
‘Just made you a cup,’ I say.
‘That’s the clue, you prat. Five letters.’
‘Bollocks.’
‘That’s eight.’ He smiles. ‘You nearly said it a minute ago. Here, look here.’
Arthur shows me. It goes over my head, truth be told.
‘I can’t see it.’
‘Near the end. Look.’
‘Oh,’ I say as he writes it in.
Bill was wrong about the PK. Arthur’s one of those that wants to help you be better than you are, instead of getting shirty or uptight about your being younger than him or taking over or any of the things I reckon Bill thinks about me. The PK’s patient. He’ll show me how things are done. I admire him, how he feels about the sea; it’s how it should be for a lighthouse keeper. It’s a shame it isn’t like that for everyone.
I don’t know if Bill knows that I know. That Arthur told me once on graveyard watch what happened to him years ago, when he started on the Maiden, before Bill had joined the service, before I was even walking. I lost my tongue when he said it. Didn’t know how to react. I hadn’t been expecting it. Why would I? You don’t expect it.
I just looked at Arthur and thought, that’s the kind of man I want to be. So’s you’d never guess what he’d lived through. You spend your time looking up to the PK, thinking he’ll have the answers, then he isn’t at all what you thought.
Neil Young on the Sony and my bunk curtain drawn. Bill’s downstairs with his drill whistling; it’s somewhere between night and day and I’m glad of the music that takes me to another place. Back in Michelle’s crammed studio on Stratford Road, Neil or John Denver or King Crimson. Wine bottles with candles stuffed into them and wax down the sides; cushions with diamond mirrors sewn on. A cat in the doorway, licking its paws. Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River. Shenandoah. Now that’s got no business
being a word. Ought to be a magic spell or a distant moon. Everything washed in the orange of canned peaches. Lots of my thoughts of Michelle come with their own light. Purple smoke in the bedroom. Bright green when she goes out barefoot to the garden and yells the puss in for tea. What’s the cat’s name? Sykes? No. Staines? Poor bugger. Steptoe? Can’t be.
Michelle’s too good for me. Least I’ve got the brains to know it.
I never would have had the balls to go after her if it weren’t for Trident House signing me up and that only happened by accident. There aren’t a lot of keepers my age at the moment – there’re better wages to be had on the North Sea oil rigs, but it depends what kind of work you like doing and what shape your history’s in. April ’70 I’d been out in the world a couple of weeks when I bumped into this bloke in the pub; he bought me a pint and told me he’d kept lights up on Pladda and Skerryvore back in the day. Like the other times I was waiting to get nicked again. That was what I was used to, so I knew I’d fuck up on purpose once I was done with the outside. But the more this bloke went on about the lights, the more I thought they’d suit me. All he said was, you can’t be the lonely type – you’ve got to think that being on your own is a good thing.
I didn’t bank on Trident letting me in once they found out my record, but a few weeks later I got my letter in the post. They must’ve thought, he’ll do, thick as a brick but he’s keen. Fact is, there’s not a lot to be getting on with on a lighthouse. The simplicity of it’s what does it. Small tasks that absorb your mind. The illumination at night, then cleaning, cooking, checking in with the other lights in the group. Making sure there’s no bad feeling between you and the men you’re with, cos that’s the thing you can’t predict. You have to keep the atmosphere friendly and that to me seems the most important part. Making the best of it with the others, cos if you let that get one over on you it becomes a virus, spreading and multiplying, then by the time you realize, you’re all infected, the rot’s set in and there’s nowhere to go.