by Emma Stonex
I look back on meeting that old keeper in the pub and it feels like I was getting sent a message. I wasn’t a lost cause. The world hadn’t given up on me yet.
Soon, I’ll have to tell Michelle. It’s been long enough now. Have to be honest about myself, cos what’s the point in carrying on and making this life for us and asking her to marry me, if we can’t do any of that cos I’ve got this big bloody lie sitting between us? Not the stuff I did before – she knows about that. I’m talking about the last time.
Trouble is, it’s not the sort of thing you drop in on a first date, or even a third, then after a while it gets too hard to bring up. With me being away so much, it means when I come back it’s like we start all over again. Back to the beginning, the holding hands, the wondering, the wanting. I’m not going to ruin that.
The more I like her the harder it is, and I don’t want to like her too much, but you can’t help these things.
Lies are easy to make. You just say nothing. Do nothing. Let the other person decide what’s real. I wouldn’t want to know if I were her. Every day I try to forget.
When I close my eyes, I can still see it, as clear as if it happened last night. Blood and fur, a child’s high scream: and my friend in my arms, grown cold.
My whole life I’ve looked over my shoulder to see who’s coming. I still look behind me, even out here on the sea where there’s nobody but us.
I live with the knowledge I’ve got enemies. Bad people who do bad things and they want to do bad things to me. I get afraid of going to sleep sometimes because of the nightmares I have. That they’ll find me here, on this rock. You thought you had it in you to get out from under but you’re wrong, son. You’ll never be more than you are.
I’m never going back. Not to prison. Not to my old life.
That’s why I brought it off with me. Hid it in the wall cranny under the sink where the others won’t find it. It’s safe there. You’d have to know where to look.
At some point I fall asleep, cos next thing I know Bill’s shoving me awake in the thick, groggy dark and telling me to get upstairs cos the light’s not going to watch itself and if he doesn’t get some bloody kip soon he might do something he’ll regret.
IV
1992
14
HELEN
A mile further on, past two padlocked gates, she saw them at last: four single-storey keepers’ cottages nestled on the peninsula, painted green and white, with factory-black chimneys and slate roofs. The Maiden Rock cottages were as close to the lighthouse as it was possible to be, but still so far away, and this had always struck Helen as sad, unrequited, a hopeful heart reaching out to indifference.
It could be yesterday; Admiral could still be theirs. The biggest of them, purpose-built and utilitarian, a cross between a school boarding house and a P&O ferry. Inside it had corridors like a hospital and small box rooms, whose hard, antiseptic edges no quantity of personal belongings could soften. In winter a chill crept through the cracks in the windows, which were fastened with iron latches that made her palms smell of coins. Above the oven and shower Trident House issued laminated reminders that the property was not theirs: USE EXTRACTOR FAN and CAUTION: HOT WATER. A notice in the hall read IN CASE OF EMERGENCY DIAL 999. At the front, beyond the barren windswept veranda with its concrete picnic table, garage doors advised DANGER – DO NOT USE IN HIGH WINDS. And always, always, the monotony of it – that was what had done her in. Day in, day out, the weeks, the months, the years, with only the sea for company.
Jenny and Bill had lived in Masters. Today there was a red hatchback parked on the tarmac with a ‘Baby on Board’ sticker in the rear. Helen supposed it was a unique getaway for people, a glimpse into a lost world, and the Maiden Rock’s infamy ensured a one-off attraction. That was why the cottages had been converted so quickly after automation, a money-spinner for Trident House. She could see the advert now:
Experience what life was like for the Maiden Rock Missing!
The third cottage, Pursers, had been Betty and Frank’s. Frank had been First Assistant on the tower, having been in the job longer – when Arthur was ashore, he’d be made Keeper-in-Charge. Frank had been off duty at the time of the vanishing. Helen always thought it must have felt to him as if he’d turned up five minutes late for a flight that wound up crashing into a mountain.
Gunners, the last, would have gone to Vince. He had wanted that promotion so badly. The reason why he’d never got it was a secret only the lighthouse knew.
As the Maiden glimmered coolly on the horizon, Helen could not shake her suspicion that the tower knew yet more. It knew about her.
Now it returned her gaze in quiet accusation, as if to say: You can’t deny the truth, Helen. You are not the innocent.
She gave him the address and he put out his fag and jerked his head to the boot.
‘Any bags, love?’
‘No. I’m just here for the day. I need you to take me to the station after.’
‘Right you are.’
The sun was dropping, molten peach as it dipped into the horizon. Helen was glad he could not see her properly, in the back of the taxi, drowsy in summer shadow. Mortehaven drivers were Mortehaven born and bred; the story was forever at the forefront of their minds, as they were called upon by tourists to recap the disappearance or identify their part in it: where they had been when they’d heard, the Trident House official they’d carried once from A to B, the friend of their daughter who knew one of the Walker children. She shouldn’t think he would recognize her anyway, not all these years on, but equally expected strangers to greet her as they had in the past, when she was Mrs PK, asking how Arthur was, when he was due ashore, how she was getting on in his absence. In return they would tell her their personal business, their problems, her position as the Principal Keeper’s wife issuing a public service akin to that of a reverend or pub landlord, interested by default in the lives of people she didn’t know.
‘Are you picking up a friend?’ he asked from the front.
‘We’re not stopping,’ she said. ‘Well, we are, but only for a moment. I’m not getting out.’
He turned the radio on. They passed the church with its slender evening spire, and the smugglers’ inn where she and Arthur and Jenny and Bill had gone for supper on a rare occasion both men were ashore. After a bottle of wine Jenny had cried and told her she was lucky she didn’t have children because it was no good looking after them when you were stranded back here on your own; Bill had got it in the neck, then Jenny had been sick in the ladies’ and they’d left. Winding up past the hotel and park and through the climbing terraces. The same address Helen had visited for the last nineteen years, whenever she came back, a rite of passage even if she never went inside. One of these days she would pluck up the courage to get out and walk up to the door.
‘Here,’ she said. ‘Anywhere’s fine.’
A gift at this late hour to be able to glimpse into windows: squares lit gold, life glowing within. ‘What do you want to do?’ he asked. ‘Shall I turn the engine off?’
‘It’s OK. Keep it running.’
The house was the only one in darkness. Perhaps Jenny had gone away or didn’t live here any more. The thought panicked Helen – of being unable to contact her; of never again putting to paper those things she could only ever say to this woman, about their loved ones, their lost ones, the breach between them that twenty years later had calcified to stone.
Jenny had thought she could put her trust in the PK’s wife. Why shouldn’t she? Trust had been the foundation of Helen’s job. It had been her role to give support, to pour drinks and hold hands, to wipe tears when life became too much, because she understood, she did, and she cared. She knew when to stroke an arm, saying, ‘There, my love, it’s not forever, he’ll be back before you know it,’ and think of ways she could make it better, because lonesomeness was a friend of hers and she knew its tricks and wiles.
Instead, Helen had deceived her.
‘All right,’ she t
old the driver. ‘We can go now.’
‘That’s it?’
‘Yes. I’m ready to go home.’
The train was late; the soporific chug of its wheels closed her eyes before Truro. She dreamed, again, that she was following him in a crowd – the back of his head, only when the head turned it wasn’t the right person after all. His eyes came to her in drifts of sleep, looking up from underwater or otherwise in broad daylight, sitting opposite her at the kitchen table, or at the end of her bed, keeping watch over all that she did.
15
HELEN
You’d like to know why I don’t speak to Jenny Walker. Rather, why she doesn’t speak to me. Are you interested in the truth? You say you are, but you’re also very good at making things up. I’ll admit your novels aren’t my sort of thing. I haven’t read any, in fact – although I know the one about the brothers on the barrack ship, Ghost Fleet, that’s right: a friend of mine got quite into that one when it came out.
That’s what I’m saying, without wishing to be rude. Alpha men, fighting, all that testosterone flying about. If you’re looking to tell one of your adventure stories, I doubt you’ll see what happened between Jenny and me as relevant, if I’m honest.
Who knows if it was relevant? Over the years I’ve gone half mad asking myself if it was. If Arthur and the others disappeared because of how things were with us.
First, I’ll tell you that I never expected to marry a lighthouse keeper. I was aware there must be people doing it, but it always sounded marginal to me, a job someone might take if he didn’t fit in with any other part of society and it turns out I was right. It takes a special temperament. All the keepers I’ve known have had that shared thing in common, and that’s to be all right with their own company. Arthur was content with himself. I thought that was very attractive in someone and I still do. You can only get so close to that person because he has something inside him that only he knows about. My grandmother had a saying about that. It was to never show your full hand – you know, to whoever you’re with. Never show your cards, always keep something back. I don’t think Arthur showed his full hand to anyone, not even me. That was just who he was.
I’m not sure I’d describe him as lonely. As I said, he had a contained way about him, but that isn’t the same as loneliness. Being on your own doesn’t mean you’re lonely and the other way around: you can be with lots of people, all chattering and nattering and demanding of your presence, and you can be the loneliest person there is. Certainly, on the lighthouses, Arthur was never lonely. I’m confident about that. That was one of the questions people asked; they’d say, doesn’t he find it lonely out there? But he never did. If anything, I’d say it was here, on land, that he felt lonely.
When you think of it like that, it isn’t any wonder I made a mistake. I’m not justifying it, and Jenny wouldn’t either. But nothing’s ever black and white.
I’m not sure Arthur ever wanted to come home to me. When he came ashore on his relief, I could see as soon as he stepped off the boat that he was already missing the light. Not missing being there – missing her. Land life wasn’t for him.
What we went through, Arthur and me, of course that was part of it. I had a lot of feelings about that, a lot of complicated feelings to come to terms with. I blamed Arthur. He blamed me. We blamed each other, but there just isn’t any point in blame when something like that happens, is there? There just isn’t any point.
I felt so angry after he disappeared. That he’d found this way out for himself. He had no right to do that, just upping and leaving one day without a word. He always said I was strong, and I am strong, but sometimes I think I should never have let him know it.
When Arthur first got his post to the Maiden, I thought we’d be happy. The tower made him happy, so I thought we’d be happy too. Arthur was pleased because for him she was the best of the lights. He’d done spells on the Wolf, the Bishop, the Eddystone, the Longships, all the major sea stations, but the Maiden was the one he coveted: big, old-fashioned, the sort of lighthouse he’d dreamed about when he was a boy. Arthur said a sea tower was ‘a proper lighthouse’ – the proper experience of one. Boys don’t dream about the ones stuck on land, do they? They want boats chucked about on the waves, brigands and buccaneering, camaraderie and starlight.
For a while after Arthur died, I consoled myself by thinking that at least it was the way he’d have wanted to go. He wouldn’t have wanted to die in any other way than on the sea. In a sense it’s fitting, and that actually makes me feel a bit better about it.
The Maiden always had her eye on him. Does that sound silly? Don’t put that in your book, will you. Lighthouses don’t have personalities; they don’t have thoughts and feelings and dangerous ideas, and they don’t bear ill will towards people. Anything like that’s fantasy – and that’s your department, not mine. I’m just giving you the facts.
But I never liked the look of her. Some lights look friendly enough, but she never put me at ease. I never set foot on her and I didn’t like that either, that Arthur stayed somewhere I’d never been. But you can’t land on a tower any day you feel like it; you can’t drop in to say hello. Seeing as Arthur was a private man, this suited him. I think he liked having something away from me. Perhaps all husbands do. They need something that their wives know nothing about.
Oh, be quiet! The dog needs letting out. Will you excuse me for a moment?
Right, here we are. Sorry about that. I spend my life waiting for her to get on with things. I got my first dog right after I lost Arthur because I needed another heartbeat about the place, and I suppose I was used to having a quiet companion, or at least one who wasn’t here for much of the time. Unfortunately, this one’s been on a digging spree, but that’s the way of it, and she’s as entitled to the garden as I am. I never used to bother with planting, but that’s helped me too. It’s about watching what you’ve put in the ground grow and flourish. If you’ve been through an ordeal like ours, you need to see the way life has of coming back again and again, against the odds, against the frost and the dog paws. There’s a certain stubbornness in it that I admire.
Arthur was always fascinated by nature. Right from childhood, he was sensitive, with a full imagination. Like you, in that way – the imagination part. I’m not saying you’re insensitive. I haven’t spent enough time with you to tell one way or the other, and anyway, what business is it of mine? I’d assume you have to be sensitive to be an author, getting inside your characters’ minds and coming up with what makes them tick.
His father kept birds, that’s what started it. The poor man wasn’t well, it was shellshock after the War, an extremely bad case, and the birds soothed him.
Arthur didn’t like to talk about his father. Wouldn’t or couldn’t. Whenever I asked, he’d change the subject, or tell me he didn’t wish to discuss it. There was much my husband didn’t wish to discuss, and I came to learn that’s all well and good until the person you’re with wants to talk. When your wife wants to, she deserves to have a conversation, doesn’t she? Because how else does anything ever get solved?
I do think, sometimes, how we might have avoided everything that happened: those twists and turns of life that evolve from a single decision. If Arthur hadn’t seen the Trident advertisement in the paper, if we hadn’t bought that particular paper on that particular day . . . If I’d never met him, because that was a chance encounter as well, in the queue at Paddington station when I was short of change to buy my ticket. A single to Bath Spa, to visit my parents. Even then, when it was the done thing, I didn’t assume a man would pay for me. I thought about Arthur the whole way there.
We met a week later so I could pay him back. The attraction was a slow burn. It wasn’t one of those lovestruck, thunderbolt situations. Part of me was pleased at imagining my father would disapprove. He was headmaster at an all-boys’ boarding school and he wanted me to marry a doctor or a lawyer, someone with a ‘reputable’ job. He never told me so, but I’d put money on him thinking
lighthouse-keeping was for men with a feminine way about them. I don’t think my father ever read a single line of poetry. Does that explain it better?
Trident offered us a good salary and starting package, housing was thrown in and bills were paid – it all sounded highly agreeable. Arthur thought he’d fit in well and I thought it was the kind of lifestyle that would be a good conversation-starter at parties – that my husband worked on a lighthouse. I didn’t realize then that parties didn’t come too far out of London and they certainly didn’t swim down the Severn Estuary and emerge in the Bristol Channel, around which we spent the best part of those first years.
The routine wasn’t easy on either of us to begin with. As an SAK they send you all over the country and you never know where you’ll be sent to next. Every few weeks you’re at a new light. It’s because Trident want to give you as much experience as they can, so you learn the job fast. But they’re also testing you. They want to know if you’re able to get along with the different personalities, if you’re flexible, if you’re willing and reliable. We used to joke that Arthur was parcelled from here to Kingdom Come – only Kingdom never came, until the Maiden, that was. But yes, it was tiring. I never stayed anywhere long enough to settle, and Arthur was off for long stretches at a time. It was harder than I’d been prepared for. I felt him slipping away from me even then.
Not everyone found the training as hard as we did. Vince, for instance, he was used to being moved around and never staying put; he grew up in foster care and I don’t think he ever had a permanent home. Vince appreciated the spontaneity of it, getting a posting through, then you pack your bags and go where you’re needed. You could be called up north or down south or out on an island somewhere. The Maiden was Vince’s first tower. It’s an extreme post for a novice anyway, but then when you think how it ended . . . Just terrible. A young man with his whole life ahead of him.