Lighthousekeeping (7 page)

I had woken early to cook the bacon. While it was sizzling, I took Pew his mug of Full Strength Samson, singing to him as I went,
Will your anchor hold in the storms of life?

‘Pew! Pew!’

But he was already up and away, and he had taken DogJim with him.

I looked for him all over the lighthouse, and then I saw that the mackerel boat had gone, and the sea chest. He must have been polishing the brass first thing, because the
Brasso
and the cloths were still out, and the place gleamed, and smelled of hard work.

I ran upstairs to the light, where we kept our telescope, to identify the ships that didn’t radio in. I thought I might see Pew in his boat, far out at sea. There was nobody there. The sea was empty.

It was 7 o’clock in the morning and at noon they were coming for the light. Best to leave it now, as I had always known it, and fasten it in memory, where it couldn’t be destroyed. Why would I want to see them dismantling the equipment and roping off our quarters? I started to pack my own things, though there were not many, and then, in the kitchen, I saw the tin box.

I knew that Pew had left it for me, because he had put a silver coin on the top. He couldn’t see to read or write, but he knew things by their shapes. My shape was a silver coin.

Pew had kept loose tea and loose tobacco in this chest. The tea and tobacco were still there, in paper bags, and underneath the bags were bundles of notes, Pew’s life savings, it seemed. Underneath those were older coins, sovereigns and guineas and silver sixpences, and green threepenny bits. As well as the money, there was an old-fashioned spyglass that folded into a leather case, and a number of leather-bound books.

I took them out. Two first editions: Charles Darwin,
On the Origin of Species,
1859, and
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde,
1886. The other books were the notebooks and letters that had belonged to Babel Dark.

One set of neat bound leather books was written in tiny handwriting and illustrated with ink drawings of flowers and fossils – Dark’s diary of his life in Salts.
Wrapped in paper was a scuffed leather folder, with BD embossed in one corner. I undid the brown ribbon, and an untidy pile of papers scattered over my feet. The writing was big and uncertain. There were drawings of himself, always with the eyes scored out, and there were watercolours on cartridge paper of a beautiful woman, always half-turned.

I wanted to read everything, but there was no time left for me here.

Well then, this past would have to be dragged into the future, because the present had buckled under me, like a badly made chair.

The wind-once-a-week clock was still ticking, but I had to go now.

I unfolded a map of Bristol that had belonged to Josiah Dark in 1828. It was rum-stained where he had used it as a mat. On the waterfront was an inn called Ends Meet.

Perhaps Pew had gone there.

Was there ever such a place? The Bible story is simple; God destroyed the wicked world and only Noah and his family were saved. After forty days and forty nights the ark came to rest on Mount Ararat, and as the flood waters began to subside, it stayed there.

Imagine it; evidence of an impossible moment. Marooned like a memory point above time. The thing couldn’t have happened, but it did – look, there’s the ship, absurd, grandiloquent, part miracle, part madness.

It’s better if I think of my life like that – part miracle, part madness. It’s better if I accept that I can’t control any of the things that matter. My life is a trail of shipwrecks and set-sails. There are no arrivals, no destinations; there are only sandbanks and shipwreck; then another boat, another tide.

What story?

The story of what happened next.

That depends.

On what?

On how I tell it.

We’re here, there, not here, not there, swirling like specks of dust, claiming for ourselves the rights of the universe. Being important, being nothing, being caught in lives of our own making that we never wanted. Breaking out, trying again, wondering why the past comes with us, wondering how to talk about the past at all.

There’s a booth in Grand Central Station where you can go and record your life. You talk. It tapes. It’s the modern-day confessional – no priest, just your voice in the silence. What you were, digitally saved for the future.

Forty minutes is yours.

So what would you say in those forty minutes – what would be your death-bed decisions? What of your life will sink under the waves, and what will be like the lighthouse, calling you home?

We’re told not to privilege one story above another. All the stories must be told. Well, maybe that’s true, maybe all stories are worth hearing, but not all stories are worth telling.

When I look back across the span of water I call my life, I can see me there in the lighthouse with Pew, or in The Rock and Pit, or on a cliff edge finding fossils that turned out to be other lives. My life. His life. Pew. Babel Dark. All of us bound together, tidal, moon-drawn, past, present and future in the break of a wave.

There I am, edging along the rim of growing up, then the wind came and blew me away, and it was too late to shout for Pew, because he had been blown away too. I would have to grow up on my own.

And I did, and the stories I want to tell you will light up part of my life, and leave the rest in darkness. You don’t need to know everything. There is no everything. The stories themselves make the meaning.

The continuous narrative of existence is a lie. There is no continuous narrative, there are lit-up moments, and the rest is dark.

When you look closely, the twenty-four hour day is framed into a moment; the still-life of the jerky
amphetamine world. That woman – a pietà. Those men, rough angels with an unknown message. The children holding hands, spanning time. And in every still-life, there is a story, the story that tells you everything you need to know.

There it is; the light across the water. Your story. Mine. His. It has to be seen to be believed. And it has to be heard. In the endless babble of narrative, in spite of the daily noise, the story waits to be heard.

Some people say that the best stories have no words. They weren’t brought up to Lighthousekeeping. It is true that words drop away, and that the important things are often left unsaid. The important things are learned in faces, in gestures, not in our locked tongues. The true things are too big or too small, or in any case always the wrong size to fit the template called language.

I know that. But I know something else too, because I was brought up to Lighthousekeeping. Turn down the daily noise and at first there is the relief of silence. And then, very quietly, as quiet as light, meaning returns. Words are the part of silence that can be spoken.

Dodging lorries the size of battleships, I found that the waterside tavern Ends Meet had been replaced by something called The Holiday Inn. In Pew’s stories, any
ordinary seaman always asked for a hammock, that being half the price of a bed, but there were no hammocks to be had at The Holiday Inn, so reluctantly I agreed to a single room and a single bed.

When I enquired about Pew, the receptionist told me they had no guest by the name of Mr Pew, but that an unusual man – that was her word, unusual, had arrived with a small dog and asked for a room. She had been unable to accommodate him, a) because the hotel had no facilities for animals, and b) because doubloons were no longer legal tender in the Eurozone.

‘Where did he go?’ I asked, eager and excited.

She did not know, but I felt sure he would come back for me one day.

I decided to follow Miss Pinch’s advice and get a job. I would keep Pew’s money until he needed it.

The next morning, scrubbed and dressed, I stood in front of the mirror in my room and wondered whether or not to wear my oilskin coat. It was yellow and oversized. And while I had never thought about it at all in the lighthouse, somehow The Holiday Inn was making me self-conscious. Bristol was supposed to be a sea-faring town, according to Pew, but yesterday I had been the only person in the shopping mall wearing a yellow oilskin.

I put on an extra jersey instead.

At the library, I presented myself, eager and willing, but the librarian told me that I had no experience and no degree.

‘Can’t I just put the books on the shelf for you?’

‘That is not what we do.’

I looked round. The shelves were full of books.

‘Well, it’s what someone has to do. I’ll do it for you.’

‘There are no employment opportunities available at the present time.’

‘I don’t want an employment opportunity’ (I remembered what Miss Pinch said about not being too ambitious for a Female). ‘I just want a job.’

‘I am afraid that won’t be possible. But you may join the library if books interest you.’

‘Yes, they do very much, thank you, I will.’

‘Here is the form. We’ll need a permanent address, utility bill, and a signed photo.’

‘What, like a film star?’

‘Someone who has known you for two years must sign the photo.’

‘I suppose Miss Pinch might do it…’ (I was beginning to wonder if this librarian was related to Miss Pinch.)

‘Where do you live?’

‘The Holiday Inn.’

‘That is not a permanent address.’

‘No, I’ve only just arrived here from Scotland.’

‘Were you a member of the library there?’

‘There was no library. We had a van came round once every three months but it only stocked Mills & Boon, True Crime, Ornithology, Second World War, Local History, which we all knew anyway because there’s not that much of it, and tinned fruit. It was a bit of a grocer’s too.’

‘Have you proof of your address in Scotland?’

‘Everyone knows it. It’s the lighthouse at Cape Wrath. Straight up the coast and you can’t miss it.’

‘Your family are lighthousekeepers, are they?’

‘No, my mother’s dead, I never had a father, and Pew brought me up in the lighthouse.’

‘Then, Mr Pew perhaps – he could write a letter on your behalf.’

‘He’s blind and I don’t know where he is.’

‘Take this form and return it in person to me when you have completed it.’

‘Can’t I join now?’

‘No.’

‘Can I have a job just on Saturdays?’

‘No.’

‘Well, I’ll just come in every day and read the books then.’

And that is what I did.

The Holiday Inn was delighted to let me keep my small windowless room in return for a night-shift serving chips and peas to guests too tired to sleep. When I finished work at 5 o’clock in the morning, I slept until 11 am, and then went straight to the Public Library Reading Room.

My difficulty was that as I was not able to borrow books, I never got to the end of a story before another person took the book out on loan. I was so worried about this that I began to buy myself shiny silver notebooks with laminated covers, like astronaut gear. I copied the stories out as fast as I could, but all I had so far were endless beginnings.

I had been reading
Death in Venice,
and the library was closing, so with the utmost reluctance I gave it back at the desk, and told them I would be in on the stroke of nine, first thing in the morning.

I was so tormented that someone might borrow the book before me that in the early hours of the morning I stopped serving chips and peas to the desperate, tore off my apron, and ran to the library steps like a pilgrim seeking a miracle at a shrine.

I was not the only person there.

An old drunk was crouched in a corner with a light-up model of the Eiffel Tower wired to a battery. He told me he had been happy in Paris, but he couldn’t remember if it was Texas or France.

‘We’ve all been happy once, haven’t we? But why aren’t we happy now? Can you tell me that?’

I couldn’t.

‘Y’see him there?’ he said, waving vodkerishly at a swaying figure on the street. ‘He goes everywhere with a dog’s jacket, he does. He’s just waiting for the right dog.’

‘I’ve got a dog. His name’s DogJim. He lives up in Scotland in a lighthouse.’ (That had been true for most of his life though it wasn’t true now.)

‘Is he a Scottie dog, is he?’

‘No, but he lives in Scotland.’

‘Then he should be a Scottie dog – that’s another thing that’s wrong with life. Everything in life is wrong.’

‘That’s what Miss Pinch says. She says life is a torment descending into nightfall.’

‘Is she a single lady?’

‘Oh yes. Since she was born.’

‘What’s her corner?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Where does she sit at night? I sit here. Where does she sit?’

‘A place called Salts, in Scotland. She lives on Railing Row.’

‘I might try and get up there for the summer.’

‘That’s the best time. In the warm.’

‘What wouldn’t you give to be warm? That’s why I have this light-up model y’know. It warms my hands. D’y’want to warm your hands? What’s a young girl like you out here for anyhow?’

‘I’m waiting for the library to open.’

‘You what?’

‘There’s a book I want to borrow – oh, it’s a long story.’

(But a very short book.)

When the double doors opened, I presented myself at the desk, and asked for the book, only to discover that the librarian herself had taken it home the previous night, and this morning she had called in sick.

‘Can you tell me what’s the matter with her? How sick? Sick like tummy upset or a bad cold, or is it compassionate leave for a year?’

Her colleague regretted that she couldn’t say – actually she couldn’t care less – just went back to alphabetising a row of Sea Stories.

My stomach lurching, I left the library, and wandered about like a thing possessed. Then I found the book in a bookshop, but after I had read just one more page, the assistant came over and told me I had to buy it or leave it.

I had promised myself that I would not buy anything, except the food I needed, until I discovered the whereabouts of Pew. So I said to the assistant, ‘I can’t afford to buy it and I can’t bear to leave it. But I love it.’

She was unmoved. We live in a world of buy it or leave it. Love does not signify.

Two days later, I was walking through the town, when I saw the librarian in Starbucks. She was sitting in the window reading
Death in Venice.
Imagine how I felt…I stood outside the window, watching her, and she kept glancing out with a faraway look, seeing only the Lido, with her nose against the heavy, plague-scented air.

A man with a dog must have thought I was a beggar, because he suddenly gave me a quid, and I went in and bought an espresso, and sat really close to her, just behind her, so that I could read the page. She must have thought I was a bit strange – I understand that because some people are a bit strange – I’ve met them in the hotel – but suddenly she snapped the book shut, like breaking a promise, and walked out.

I followed her.

She went to the hairdresser’s, Woolworth’s, the
chiropractic clinic, the pet shop, the video store, and finally back home. I lurked around until she settled down with a dish of microwave rigatoni pomadori, and
Death in Venice.

It was agony.

At last she fell asleep, and the book slipped from her hand onto the floor.

There it was, inches away. If only I could lift up the window and drag it towards me. The book was half-closed where it lay on the blue carpet. I tried to coax it with magnetic powers. I said, ‘Come on, this way!’

The book didn’t move. I tried lifting the window, but it was locked. I felt like Lancelot outside the Chapel of the Grail – but I’ve never finished that story either.

Days passed. I kept an eye on her until she got better. I did more than that; I pushed aspirins through the letterbox. I would have donated to the blood bank if it had been a help, but she got better, with or without me, and the day came when I followed her back to the library.

She took the book inside, checked it, and went to deal with a customer. I grabbed the book from the white plastic wheelie cart they use to trolley the books back to the shelves. Just as I was heading for the Reading Room, an assistant with a moustache – she was
a woman but she had a moustache, which is usually a bad sign – this assistant pulled the book from my hands, and said it was reserved for a customer.

‘I’m a customer,’ I said

‘Name?’ she said, as though it were a crime.

‘I’m not on your list.’

‘Then you will have to wait until the book is returned again,’ she said, with evident satisfaction, and that’s the thing about some librarians – they love telling you a book is out of print, borrowed, lost, or not even written yet.

I have a list of titles that I leave at the desk, because they are bound to be written some day, and it’s best to be ahead of the queue.

That evening I followed the librarian home, because I had got used to following her home, and habit is hard to break. She went in, as usual, and when she came back out to sit in the garden, she was carrying her Own Copy of
Death In Venice.
All I had to do was to wait for the phone to ring, which it did, and then I ran across the front lawn, and grabbed the book.

Suddenly I heard her screaming into the phone, ‘There’s an intruder – yes, it’s the same one – get the police!’

I rushed to help her, but she wouldn’t stop screaming,
so I searched all over the house, and I couldn’t find anybody, which is what I told the police when they arrived. They took no notice, just arrested me, because she said I was the intruder – when all I had wanted was to borrow her book.

After that, things got tougher, because the police discovered that as I had no mother or father, I didn’t officially exist. I asked them to telephone Miss Pinch, but she claimed never to have heard of such a person as myself.

The police had me interviewed by a nice man who turned out to be a psychiatrist for Young Offenders, although I hadn’t offended anyone except for the librarian and Miss Pinch. I explained about
Death in Venice,
and the problems I had had joining the library, and the psychiatrist nodded and suggested I come in once a week for observation, like I was a new planet.