The Lamplighters

by Emma Stonex

  Our boy was looking forward to his first holiday with a father he hardly got to spend time with. By that point Tommy was getting interested in Arthur’s job, the fact his daddy came and went and took a boat to get back to the lighthouse; the stories he’d return with about storms and smugglers that I assumed were for the most part made up, but maybe they weren’t. Tommy missed him when he was away. Arthur never wrote to me but he wrote sometimes to Tommy, but those letters were only picked up in fair weather when there was a boatman who felt like it. He used to tell Tommy that when the Maiden light came on after sunset that was his way of saying goodnight. When Arthur was off on the tower, we’d talk about what he was doing, and I invented as much for myself as for Tommy. Children have a wonderful way of seeing the world. He used to say his daddy was the sun after the sun had gone to bed, and all these years later, I still think that’s the best description I’ve heard.

  He drowned. It was a beautiful morning, the summer of the Queen’s Coronation. I thought I’d have a bath after breakfast. The bath was claw-footed, and very deep, and I’d been soaking in it long enough for the water to cool when I heard Arthur shouting from downstairs. When I came out, he was standing by the door with his hands by his sides, but the palms were facing up to the ceiling. He had absolutely no colour in his face. It took me a few seconds to register he was wet all over.

  ‘Where’s Tommy?’

  But Arthur just kept looking at me, and it was like throwing a bucket of water at a stupid person to wake them up, only they don’t wake up.

  ‘I lost him,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘Where?’ For a second we could have been talking about the car keys.

  ‘The sea,’ he said.

  ‘Where in the sea?’

  ‘The sea,’ he said.

  Tommy couldn’t swim. Not without his floats. That’s what I was searching for when I went out and scanned that horrible water; I was looking for the red and yellow floats that Tommy wore around his little arms. I knew I’d be able to spot them. But I didn’t expect to see them sitting there in the porch, unused, with the waterproofs we’d brought down and hadn’t yet needed.

  Gone. No, Arthur hadn’t said gone. Lost.

  I had the irrational thought that it could still be fine; Tommy would come up the beach any moment, the current having delivered him to shore. But since when did the sea do anything like that for me?

  I don’t know what happened after that. At some point we must have called for help because the people arrived and the ambulance, and it was me they wrapped in a blanket even though I wasn’t cold.

  It was two days before his body washed up. Tiny, blue, his skin mottled, in the green bathing trunks he’d chosen at the supermarket four days before. Arthur said he would go to identify him, but I had to see for myself. He didn’t look dead, just sleeping. When I kissed his head it felt quite normal, a bit cool, that’s all. It struck me that his soul had left his body and the two weren’t holding hands any more. The body was a body and the soul had gone. Some say that’s a comfort, but it wasn’t for me. I worried the body would be lonely without the soul, no light inside it, nothing to keep it warm. I didn’t want Tommy buried because of this loneliness. It possessed me. I couldn’t get rid of the idea he was cold and alone in the morgue, in his casket, finally in the ground. I know to this day that if we’d buried him, I’d still be having sleepless nights that his bones were lonely in the earth. We had him cremated. I didn’t want anything left.

  They’d gone paddling. Not deep, Arthur said, that’s why he didn’t take the floats. Tommy was up to his tummy button in the water, that’s what Arthur kept saying, and I wished he wouldn’t because it only made me think about Tommy as a baby, the point that had tied him to me, all those months when I’d kept him safe and twenty bloody minutes I was in that bath. Arthur had left him to get his camera. Only a few paces away, up in the porch. Always a curious boy, Tommy must have stepped further out, a step or two, and gone under. The currents were notorious. He stumbled, floundered and then he drowned. That’s how I have it in my head. As a quick, painless thing. By the time Arthur came back with his camera, it was too late.

  Blame was a beast I had to shake off. If I let it get the better of me, I’d have killed Arthur without a second thought. I’d have smothered him in his sleep. But he didn’t need me to tell him it had been his fault. I don’t know how a person ever gets over that because the sadness is bad enough without the guilt, and I know he felt guilty and that was the root of it. Why he couldn’t look at me or touch me; why he wanted the lighthouse instead.

  Of course, it’s occurred to me that he wanted to go with Tommy. Be with him again. That everything my husband felt built up and up inside him and then it exploded. I can’t say how he’d have done it and I can’t think of him doing it – not to Bill and Vince, not to himself, I can’t, but I do believe that any person is capable of any act, if the circumstances are right. If the moment is there. If they never show their full hand. The fact is, it isn’t normal for a man to be stuck on a tower lighthouse. Trident won’t admit that they shouldn’t have been making men do that at all, any man, ever, because it isn’t a natural state to be in and it takes its toll in the end.

  I wasn’t ready, when we met, to talk about the clocks. But I can talk about them now. Eight forty-five is the time Tommy died. Both those clocks on the Maiden were stopped at eight forty-five. I didn’t believe it when I heard. I still think there’s a chance it’s not true. One might easily have caught at five or ten minutes on, or behind, in which case it’s nothing but an unlucky coincidence. But people like patterns, don’t they, and it’s a compelling detail. I never forgot it, though. It’s always in my mind.

  What if Arthur was responsible? What if, what if, what if.

  Countless paths not taken. What if I had never met him? What if he had never said hello to me in the queue at Paddington? What if we had never joined the service? What if we had never been on holiday, or the summerhouse had never been built, or the man had decided to work on Mondays and earned more and ended up buying not here but abroad, a little cottage on a Tuscan hillside? What if I’d never taken that bath?

  I sometimes think that if I had the chance to say this to Jenny Walker, explain who I am, she might understand. My slip with Bill. My one mistake. Or else there is no excuse.

  It’s more than Bill, yes, probably it is. I even agreed to Michelle going down to Cornwall to put my side across, but that was a silly idea, and besides, it has to come from me or no one. But I believe that if I can mend things with Jenny, if I can make it right with her, then there’s some good to come of it.

  You see, there are words I should have said, and wish I had. To Arthur, and to Tommy – but there’s no going back to them. It’s too late.

  It’s not too late for the others. There are some lights that can still be lit.

  42

  JENNY

  For a long time after she had finished speaking, they sat next to each other on the bedspread. Hannah was quiet. She held a rigid, unfriendly sort of pose, straight-backed, her hands on her knees. Jenny studied the quilt with implausible keenness: peach florals, it was one of hers from ages ago, softened and pilled by dozens of washes.

  Downstairs, the front door closed, the last of the party guests dispatched. Greg had come up to see where they were; Hannah told him to make her excuses.

  She turned to her mother and said, ‘You’re telling me you tried to . . .?’

  Jenny wiped her nose on her sleeve.

  ‘I don’t know what I was trying to do, love. I never wanted to hurt him. You have to believe me. I only wanted him to . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Be my husband again.’

  Through the open window, a lawn-mower started up next door. An everyday sound, sharper now. The old world before Jenny revealed her secret, and the new.

  ‘That’s the thing about children,’ said Hannah. ‘You think you’re being clever in keeping things from them, but you can’t. Kee
p things. You can’t keep anything.’

  Jenny didn’t take her eyes off the embroidery. She’d lain under it many times with Bill, the children clambering in, those precious mornings.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That I knew,’ said Hannah. ‘Somewhere, I did, deep down. I remember you standing there in the kitchen. Dad was about to go off. You were crying, not talking to him. I could smell bleach. There were those cases for the chocolates; the label on the bottle. I didn’t understand what it meant. I thought I’d made it up. You were my mother. You’d never do that. Then this happens and you’re telling me I was right.’

  Hannah went quiet. Jenny made herself look up.

  ‘Do you remember him?’ she asked. ‘You always said you did.’

  ‘Yes. I remember he used to kiss me goodnight. Every night he was home, when he thought I was asleep. He came in and brushed my cheek with his hand. I remember sitting on his knee for a story, before bed. What he smelled like. Creocote and tobacco. We used to go outside to look for the moon, when the sky was clear, when the sun went down. I thought of his lighthouse like that. Like the moon.’

  Jenny had never felt so ashamed.

  ‘When you’re seven,’ said Hannah, ‘it feels like life’s just made up of moments. Pieces of the picture with nothing to connect them. It’s not until later you can join the dots.’

  ‘Now you can,’ said Jenny.

  Hannah shook her head. Outside, in the road, children rode past on bikes. Their shouts reached a crescendo then were lost in the distance.

  ‘When you told me about Dad being unfaithful,’ Hannah admitted, ‘that should have been a shock as well. But it wasn’t, Mum. I already knew. We went to Helen’s that time. You and me in her sitting room. Dad’s seashell was on the shelf, behind the photo frame. It wasn’t like the ones he did for you; it was meant for a lover, not a wife. You could see how she’d tried to hide it, but she hadn’t done it properly. I’d have recognized his anywhere, even on the beach with millions more.’

  The pink stitching had turned to liquid, swimming in Jenny’s vision.

  ‘You squeezed my hand so hard when we walked home,’ said Hannah. ‘Beans on toast for tea. Only you burned the bread; you scraped it off in the sink.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Hannah faced her; her eyes were wet. ‘Why didn’t you say anything to me?’

  ‘How could I?’

  ‘Not then. Later. When you said about his affair.’

  ‘And have you be horrified at me?’

  ‘I’m not horrified.’

  ‘You should be.’

  Jenny saw her daughter in a new way then, as a woman, not her child, not anyone’s child. Concern scored between her brow, like slits in a mince pie. Readiness to understand, which had never come easily to Jenny. To listen and reserve judgement.

  ‘I know how much you loved him,’ said Hannah. ‘And how much he hurt you by doing what he did. It doesn’t make it right, Mum. It wasn’t right; it’ll never be. But . . .’ She felt for the words. ‘I suppose there isn’t any way of ending that. Just “but”. There’s always another way of seeing things, isn’t there? There’s always more to it.’

  ‘What must you think of me?’ said Jenny.

  ‘That you were angry and sad.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m just so sorry, love.’

  ‘Was he?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Jenny. ‘There was a lot I didn’t know about Bill.’

  Hannah passed her a box of Kleenex. Their fingers touched.

  ‘I thought you’d hate me,’ said Jenny.

  ‘I don’t hate you.’

  ‘If I’d known that was the last time I’d see him . . .’

  ‘Don’t.’ Hannah wrapped Jenny’s hand in her own. ‘You were a good wife.’

  She reached over and hugged her. It was the nicest hug of Jenny’s life, warm and tight and strong as tree roots, and nicer than any that Bill had ever given her.

  Motorways made her nervous. She preferred the country roads, only they took twice as long. She’d heard it was safer on the motorway, if you believed the statistics, but she couldn’t see how that could be what with how fast everything happened. All it took was a split-second and that was her through the windscreen. Jenny had nightmares about this arrangement: bonfire of limbs on the hard shoulder; blood on shattered glass. Occasionally she saw herself in the wreckage; other times it was people she knew. Or else it was Bill – the scene of a fatal crash she happened across, only to recognize his face and that’s where he’d been, after all these years, living another life, driving another car, on his way to another home filled with another family, and he looked regretfully up at her as she realized all this, and she held his hand while he died.

  ‘I’ll drive, if you want,’ said Hannah, picking through a bag of jelly babies for the green ones, which she fished out and put in the storage slot under the handbrake.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ said Jenny. ‘They’ll stick and go furry.’

  ‘This is it! Junction six.’

  Jenny indicated out of the slow lane. A lorry’s horn blared.

  ‘What did I do?’

  ‘You’re on the hard shoulder. There’s the slip road. Here. There. God! Mum.’

  Half an hour later, they pulled into the Birmingham Spire of Light Psychic Convention. Crystals and cards, rainbows and angels, a man with a mohawk promising to discover her animal spirit guide: 50p only. Jenny normally hid the trip, lied that she was off to the pools. Now, she didn’t need to pretend – about that or anything else. She had wasted too much time pretending, when she hadn’t needed to pretend at all.

  ‘You’re sure about this?’ said Jenny, knowing it wasn’t Hannah’s sort of thing. Still, she’d said she was keen to come along if it meant she could meet Dan Sharp. They would give him an hour, they’d agreed, till eleven, when Wendy was doing a channel.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hannah. She unclipped her belt and unexpectedly leaned over to kiss her mother on the cheek. ‘I might’ve had my ideas about him – but if the last few weeks have taught me anything, it’s that there’s more than one side to every story.’

  43

  JENNY

  I’ve come every year since Bill went. I was into it before, a bit, but I never travelled up to anything like this; I didn’t have the time and it didn’t matter much to me then. It matters now because it’s something along these lines that’ll get me back in touch with him. They do a good show if you’re not going to get snooty about it. Wendy’s my favourite, Wendy Albertine; her guide puts her in touch with the other side and if she finds someone for you, she’ll call out your name. I keep waiting for it to be me.

  After you first came to visit, I went and had my fortune read. The medium said then I was going to get taken advantage of and I thought, well, I bet I know who that’ll be. But then Julia dropped by and asked to borrow a fiver and later on I saw she’d taken twice that out of my purse, so that could’ve been it. I knew Hannah would roll her eyes at that. Come on, love – it’s not as if you haven’t done worse.

  Each to their own, that’s all I’ll say. Go through what I have and you don’t care what folk think. I identify with the people here. They’ve lost a loved one, like I have, but they also know that person might still be out there for them. I hope in the course of us knowing each other, you’ve opened your mind a bit. Like Hannah said just now in the car, it’s important to be able to change your perspective about things.

  Helen would never be seen dead at a convention like this. Ha, get it? She isn’t interested in what’s extra in life. She takes what’s in front of her. Anyone would think after her son died, she’d need it. Plenty come because of children they’ve lost. They’re the ones that get you. When there’s a child and they come back for Mummy or Daddy, we’re all sobbing by the end of it. I always keep an ear out for Tommy. If Wendy were to tell us one day Tommy was here, I’d put my hand up for him. It makes me sad to think of
this little one on the other side and there’s no one there, no one’s coming.

  If he did come through, no, I wouldn’t tell Helen. I never knew when we were living at the cottages if she took against me because of my three. Because she only had one, didn’t she, and he drowned. I felt bad for her, I’d be heartless if I didn’t, but she might’ve done herself a favour if she’d confided in me. Maybe she just didn’t think of me like that, as a friend she could talk to. I never asked either, which was awkward, but what was I meant to do? It might be making her feel bad when she doesn’t want to think about it.

  Helen never forgave Arthur. I know that much. I can’t say if I would or I wouldn’t, with Bill, if he’d been responsible for that. But it always annoyed me how Bill thought of their marriage as perfect. He’d say how good it was that the Blacks didn’t have to live in each other’s pockets all the time, you know, do everything together and know each other’s business like a man and wife do. When we moved to Masters, I asked Helen how she coped with so many years of Arthur being off, and she told me it was in their natures; they liked being together, but they also liked being on their own, and it was really like two lives happening next to each other rather than one joined together. I thought it was all to do with Tommy. Didn’t our husbands get enough independence on the tower? They had all the time in the world to themselves on there.

  Anyway, it turned out Helen did need someone, because she went after Bill. I’m not saying there aren’t shades of grey in it, what with the boy and what that did to her. I can’t think about it, to be honest; I can’t get my head around losing a child.

  But I still don’t understand why Bill did it. The man who’d married me, who I thought loved me for all the reasons I’m me and not her. Helen wasn’t one of us. She wasn’t a Trident wife in the traditional sense. Whether it was up at St Bees or down at Bull Point, we were cut from the same cloth – wives and homemakers, recipe books on the shelves, Victoria sponge baking and tea on the table at six. We mucked in together. We never went behind each other’s backs and we didn’t have tea with each other’s husbands. Frank’s wife Betty was more up my street, a good honest Bolton girl, no airs and graces, and her boys and my girls often played together. I saw Helen was jealous of that. I’m not proud of it, but I admit I enjoyed it – that she was jealous. There was a lot she had that I didn’t, and this was one thing I’d won at.