by Emma Stonex
Hey!
Footsteps ran up the staircase.
Patpatpatpatpat.
When he got up to the lantern, it was only a bird. A shearwater, wings on glass. It had found its way in through an open window. He let it fly about for a bit, hurting itself. Then he opened the door to the gallery and went back downstairs.
Darkness fell after four. The moon was so huge he could see its craters. A full moon: a bad omen. There was a connection between those cosmic things – the moon, the tides, the winds – that amounted to an equation, the closest man could witness to the signature of God. Arthur could not believe that a human had been there; a human foot with blisters and bunions and toenails in need of cutting had felt the moon’s surface beneath and it was real. Before science they believed that stars were holes in the floor of heaven.
The wind stirred. A keeper he had worked with on the Longships used to say the stays out here wouldn’t be as bad if you knew you could rely on your relief. If you could get ashore when you were meant to, that’d make it better. You could look forward to it without it getting moved at the last minute and messing around with you.
Arthur had invited the weather. The storm he’d inscribed in the log, writing it every day, summoning it into being by sheer force of will.
Later, when they found the journal, they would say that he had lost his mind. He was frail, unable, defective; he’d be better off abandoning the service. Better off at home with a wife who didn’t love him and every time he looked at her, he would see the face of their dead child and of the man she had betrayed him for.
Arthur had prided himself on his thirty years’ service. When he’d been given Principal Keeper, his noblest award, he’d pledged to wear the regimentals every day. Clean-shaven, shoes shined, it was a matter of dignity, his long-service stripes. People said, ‘It can’t do you any good, Arthur, doing that job, it can’t do you any good after Tommy; you should be with Helen, that’s where you should be, at home, with her,’ but the light was the only place he had left. Being here had saved his soul, but his head was gone away now, he knew, as if he’d left the house with it still hanging on the key hook.
Do you remember walking over the fallow field? I held your hand, soft and damp. We watched the swallows dive and soar. Sunset light. I loved you.
His reflection in the mirror was alarming. The pouches under his eyes had grown hard. His expression was not his own. His beard had grown full without him noticing and the noises in his head grew louder by the hour.
Outside, in the dark, he drew the sea towards him.
The wind blew a warning, up, up; from the bottom boulder rising a black and twisted thing, waiting always, ready now.
51
Arthur woke cleanly, like a swimmer breaking the surface. The wind was deafening. Around and everywhere the sea thrashed, sucking and slapping the granite, sending up whorls of spray. With the shutters closed the air inside was fetid and stifling, deathly cold, stinging the nostrils. His head felt clear, his thoughts transparent.
Boxing Day. Bill wasn’t going anywhere.
Arthur heard it again. He moved out of bed and went downstairs, down around the sweating inner wall, down into the weather, down into the sea.
His wife never understood why he continued to abide the water – but he saw no point in hating the place where their son had gone. For her, the sea had killed Tommy, his body brought back and burned, the ashes kept in a box. Arthur didn’t think a boy should be kept in a box, a five-year-old who in life had never been still for a minute. Instead he was here, in the ocean, where he would wash from north to south, from east to west. He would shimmer in the morning sun and dance circles in the twilight.
Helen said, how can you stand it, I don’t know how you can bloody stand it, and he never knew how to reply. To reply that this was where Tommy was, that he felt him here, would have hurt her. So, he said nothing. And she turned in bed, and Arthur thought of the neighbour lights he would see on middle watch, their reassuring company, reminding him that another man had his eyes open somewhere not far away.
If he’d said: When I’m there, our son’s not alone. He waits for me when I’m ashore, with you; he wants me back, his daddy. If he’d said that, she would have hit him, because Tommy was hers more than his. She didn’t know how Tommy’s death cry haunted him. It would never leave him. It was crusted in the stars and molten in the water; the dancing fire at dusk and the instant at dawn when he pinched the wick to black.
Arthur put a hand on the banister. When he took it away it left a misty print, shrinking and vanishing.
Nothing survived. Nothing was permanent. All was lost in the depths.
The entrance door, when he reached it, was as cold as his rocks. There was hardly an instant between feeling the marks and knowing their origin. Fingernails on the locking bar. Trying to get out or trying to get in.
52
The storm worsened. White lather spumed on top of mounting waves. The wind dashed and bawled. Thunder ground across the flashing vault.
Arthur climbed the stairs to the lantern. The walls dripped condensation. He expected to find it, too, on his own skin, as if there were no space between his body and the building that contained it, but when he touched his cheek it was dry and warm.
Vince’s watch ended. His began. He loaded the charges and the detonator tore into the cyclone, shouting a warning that was split by the wind. Waves toppled, crests broke, spindrift flew from the chaotic surface. Bolts of light cracked the churning dark, the sea black, the heavens black, the ocean heaping and foaming. His tower trembled against the onslaught, foam exploding from her base to her lamp.
Arthur closed his eyes and imagined falling forward. The thought of drowning did not frighten him.
A dart of lightning shot into the sea.
For an instant, the waves illuminated. Arthur thought he saw the boat. He couldn’t be sure until there was another clap and there it was: a flailing vessel.
Tiny. Wooden. A torn sail.
He heaved open the door to the gallery, blown back by wind and rain, and threw himself against the rail. It was a simple craft, a rowing boat, lifted and smashed on the swell.
‘Stay clear!’
His words were snatched by the gale. A burst of radiance and the boat reappeared. The oarsman came into sight and what he’d believed before he now knew.
Down the stairs, gripping the rail, his feet unable to keep up with his need to meet that sailor face to face. But before he had a chance to reach it, three floors down he heard the entrance door bang.
Patpatpatpatpat.
Coming towards him, up, up, childish laughter.
Hey!
Arthur turned on his heel. He lost the footsteps somewhere past the living room and it was only later, much later, that he went back down to look and saw the marks left there, not shoes but a bare sole, a little violin and five dots for toes.
53
By Friday the wind was dead, the rain soft now but constant.
Bill radioed the mainland.
‘Can you get someone out?’ His lips were scabrous, the skin around his fingernails torn. Sixty-one days on the tower.
‘Not possible, Bill, it’s heavy back here.’
Arthur stood behind him, observing from the doorway.
Bill turned. A gloss of sweat shone on his brow, in spite of the cold.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s do it tomorrow.’
‘Right you are, Bill, we’ll get someone out for you in the morning.’
Arthur thought, he thinks I’ve got it in me to hurt him.
He would have every reason, he knew, to hurt Bill. But then he thought of the rowing boat. The small head piloting it and the hand lifted in hello.
I see you.
Arthur wasn’t made of that and never had been. He could make a fist but not use it, however much he might like to.
Bill paused in the transmission. One day. One night. One more.
‘OK,’ he said, and there was another be
at, a longer one, during which he hung his head and closed his eyes. The line pipped. ‘Over and out.’
54
‘Arthur, wake up. Wake up.’
He opened his eyes. The bedroom was a wormhole in outer space, soft blue interior, scattered with stars. Bill stood next to his bunk. Even in the gloom, because of the gloom, he saw his mate’s worried face, the sockets deep and the glint of his irises.
‘Wake up,’ said Bill again.
‘What is it?’
Bill’s voice was hoarse. Hardly a whisper.
‘Something’s happened.’
‘What?’
‘He’s gone.’
‘Bill.’
‘Vince. He’s gone. Just now. He’s gone.’
Arthur peered at those ink-bright eyes.
‘Bill,’ he said, ‘you’re dreaming.’
‘I’m not.’
‘You’re not making sense.’
‘Are you?’
‘Bill—’
‘Are you awake?’
‘Sit down. You’re walking in your sleep.’
‘He’s dead,’ said Bill. ‘Vince. He’s gone. Just now.’
‘I’ll get him.’
‘I saw.’
‘I’ll get him. I’ll show you.’
‘I couldn’t,’ said Bill. ‘I tried.’
‘Wait.’
‘We were outside. It came from nowhere.’
‘Sit down, Bill.’
‘It came from nowhere.’
‘Sit down.’
‘Vince was shouting. I couldn’t—’
‘I’ll get him.’
‘I tried. But the sea.’
‘It can’t—’
‘He’s gone. The sea. He’s gone.’
Arthur heard the soothing wind and the gentle surge of the water. He could not hear music from a cassette player, or smell cigarette smoke.
His feet met the floor; he pulled on his trousers and sweater. He knew it was too late, but that was the thing: what happened on his tower was his cross to bear.
Behind him, in the pit of the bedroom, Bill lifted an object from the cupboard. There was a sliver of time in which Arthur turned his head and realized what that was, and a series of thoughts ran through his mind, one after the other. He thought of his father leading him up the grass-knotted hill, the soft ferns against his bare legs, the warble and shuffle of the gulls in the rafters. He thought of the sea glowing yellow at sunrise, of nebulous clouds tinged with pink. He thought of the first lighthouse he had been stationed on at Start Point, and the keepers there, older than him, with their throaty laughs and sour-smelling pipes, climbing the iron staircase and grinding their fags out with the hard pads of their thumbs. He thought of Helen on their wedding day, of kissing her; her telling him they were going to have a baby and the joy he’d felt when she had. He thought of Tommy, always his, the light that never lowered. He thought of the thousands of times he had put a candle on the sea and the many sailors who’d steered their ships by it. He thought how sorry he was for what happened to them, his wife, his friend, now and in the past, and for never being able to make it up to her.
He thought what a shame it was for it to end this way, in loss and confusion, because he had made mistakes and he wasn’t the man he’d been. Arthur had liked loneliness, but in the end, loneliness hadn’t liked him; it had done things to him that took parts of him away and it wasn’t enough to be on this island, after all. There was an instant in which he realized what object Bill had picked up, what Bill intended to do with it, before he opened the door and the bar of sedimentary rock collided with the back of his head.
55
Bill hadn’t meant for Vince to drown. But once Vince had drowned, the rest seemed straightforward.
Jenny always told him that he never stood up for himself. His father had said the same. Bill would have liked to stand up to his father. He’d have liked to put his hands around the old bastard’s throat – his hands or his belt, the old bastard’s belt – and squeeze.
He lifted the PK’s body from the bedroom and dragged it downstairs. It was heavy; he had to switch to hauling him over his shoulder and carrying him that way, like a soldier in the trenches, saving another man’s life.
He had never seen Arthur’s feet. The nails were cut short, the toes smattered with hair. Poor fool hadn’t had time to put his socks on.
In the hall at home, above the shrine of his mother, there’d been a ship’s clock with Carpe Diem stamped across the top. Bill thought of her smile, her admiring eyes.
Helen’s smile. Helen’s eyes.
He reached the kitchen. Threw his burden to the table. Blood smeared across the laminate top, trickling from a now indistinguishable place – the smash in the PK’s nose, his split eye and temple, but those injuries were lost amid the mess of blood and bone. Bill saw he had done more than was necessary, but he’d had to make sure.
Adrenaline made him strong. His heart beat wildly; his breath was ragged, stimulated, the oxygen fresh. His hands before him were stained the colour of iodine. It impressed him how effectively his mind was working, how sharp were his thoughts. In the morning, the relief boat would come. Bill would explain. No one could blame him for these tragedies, and no one could hold him accountable for what he did later, once Jenny had calmed, once it was deemed acceptable to go after a dead man’s wife.
How could his marriage be expected to survive? How could he be expected to return unchanged? There would be no expectations. For the first time: none.
Bill wiped the PK’s hands and then his own. He cased his own fingers in gloves then lifted the clock from the wall and set it ahead, to eight forty-five, the time of the son’s demise. Helen had told him that on the settee at Masters, when she’d turned up one day, asking for Jenny. Jenny had been out, so Bill had made tea and listened while she talked and cried. She told him everything, right down to the detail. Eight forty-five in the morning. In the end, to kiss her was the only kind thing.
Arthur was leaving his signature. It was as close to an admission as they’d get.
Bill put the batteries back the wrong way round. He pressed Arthur’s fingertips to the places he had touched. Then he climbed two floors to the living room, where he changed the clock there, switched the points and took it back down for the same.
Now he stood over Arthur’s body, thinking what to do with it. It was hard to believe this was the man who’d made Bill feel so small. The master PK: felled like a tree.
Wiping the table relaxed him. Bill cleaned its top, its sides, its underside, the chair and the marks on the floor. He didn’t hurry; he took his time. He rinsed the blood down the sink and then he cleaned the sink, and then he balled the cloth into a fist and threw it out the window into the sea. Next he lifted two plates from the dresser, stepping over the PK in order to do so, and two sets of cutlery from the drawer. Again, he knelt to brush Arthur’s hands over these items before setting them all on the table, with two cups, salt and pepper, and a nearly done tube of mustard.
The jar of sausages was a conceit. Arthur told him once that sausages had been Tommy’s favourite. Bill didn’t need to incorporate the detail, but he did because it made him feel diligent. Attentive. All the things a good lighthouse keeper should be.
With the kitchen stage set, he made tea in the PK’s mug and took it up to the living room, where he sat in the PK’s chair and thought about the PK’s wife.
Helen deserved happiness. She would be happy after this. Bill vowed to spend the rest of his days chasing down her happiness, and when he found it, he’d nail it to the bed where they made love every night and he’d never let her go.
How deep would Vince be now? How far down? Bill had the faint concern the SAK’s body would wash up, but it didn’t really matter if it did. He had his story. They’d have no reason to disbelieve it. Arthur had lost his senses, killed his Supernumerary and meant to kill Bill too. There had been no other way but for Bill to defend himself.
He was sorry, he’d tell
them, for the old-timer, he was; he’d liked Arthur, and it had been a shock, what he’d turned into and what he’d become.
56
Vincent Bourne ought to have died many times before he did. He ought to have died when he was born, due to the umbilical cord getting wrapped around his neck and the midwife who delivered him not noticing until he was blue. When he was four and living with the Richardsons, he’d walked out into the road in front of a car and the car had swerved at the last minute. At fifteen he’d fallen off a twenty-foot wall, breaking his arm.
All these episodes in his life adding up to the eventual payback: his number called on this particular date at that particular time.
He’d been smoking on the set-off when it caught him. Not a boat with Eddie Evans or a mechanic with an alias. None of the things he had convinced himself of.
The air was crisp. The sea pitched on, rinsing the boulders and rocks. Today, the world felt good.
He allowed himself to believe it was over. That, perhaps, there was no one out to get him. Nothing to be afraid of. The future lay ahead. Michelle wouldn’t care what he’d done; she knew him; she wasn’t going anywhere. Relief and lightness touched his soul. Happiness, he supposed.
Bill came down, looking carsick. Vince offered a fag, but the Assistant said no.
‘I should give up,’ Bill said.
Vince lifted an eyebrow. ‘That’ll be the day.’
What happened was simple – insultingly simple for a moment that took a man’s life. Vince flicked the butt and it landed on the set-off instead of in the water. He went to the edge to scuff it in, when very quickly the sea foamed up, as sudden as boiling milk in a pan. The tower seemed to sink, momentarily, like a dunked biscuit; then it came up again and the sea fell away. Vince fell with it, smacking his elbow, then his head. He thought, shit, and tried to hold on but there was nothing to hold on to. His head was leaking blood, making it difficult to see or concentrate. The water sucked him down over the concrete, and when the concrete was lost there were only the waves.