The Lightkeeper's Daughter (13 page)

“Go slowly,” Hannah tells Murray. She sends the boat off with a push and climbs up after Squid, who waits at the top with her hands on her hips.

“This really bugs me,” says Squid.

“What?”

“The way Dad’s taking over.”

“Now, don’t blame your father. It’s Tatiana who wanted to stay.”

“But he didn’t make her get out.”

“Neither did you.”

Squid pouts—the child again. “If Dad had told her to, she would have. She does anything for Dad.”

“Yes, she loves him,” says Hannah.

“If she stayed on the island, Dad would spoil her rotten.”

“Hardly!” says Hannah. “He would put her to work. He’d have her pulling weeds and . . . What do you mean, ‘if she stayed’? Are you thinking of staying?”

“No,” says Squid, with utter scorn. “I’d go nuts if I had to live here again.”

“Then why worry about it?”

“Well, look,” says Squid.

Hannah turns back. Murray is rowing slowly along. The water is so calm in the channel, so dazzled by sun, that the clouds are reflected on the surface. It makes it look as though Murray is rowing through the sky, driving the boat toward an ethereal land that floats in the clouds. Tatiana has moved to the stern, trailing her hands in the water. She looks like a very young Alastair.

“She won’t want to leave,” says Squid.

Let her stay then.
Again the thought comes, and again Hannah pushes it from her mind. Squid’s not the only one who’d go nuts if she had to live on the island forever.

“I think I’ll go have a sleep,” says Squid.

“I thought you’d help me with the weathers,” Hannah says.

“You don’t need any help.”

“But I’d like it. You spend all your time in the little house. What do you do in there?”

“Nothing,” says Squid.

“Then come and help me. Please? I want to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“About you. About Tat.”

They’re both amazed by the way the barometer is falling. They compare their readings to the ones Murray recorded three hours before in his small, precise writing. It’s plummeting, and the wind is backing into the south.

“It’s going to blow,” says Hannah.

Squid shrugs. “But not for long.”

They settle down at the bench, the radio on. Green Island is just starting; they’ve got only moments to wait.

Hannah says, “What happened to Erik?”

“Who?” asks Squid.

“Erik,” she says. “Erik with a
k
.”

Squid frowns. “Huh?”

Hannah picks up the handset. She whispers across it. “Tatiana’s father.”

“Ohhhh!” says Squid, wide-eyed. “Well, he died, Mom.”

It’s Hannah’s turn for the weathers. She reads out the data, chats for a moment, and replaces the receiver. Then, remembering the last time, she turns off the volume on the ALAN circuit.

“Yeah, he died,” says Squid.

“What happened?”

Squid sighs. She picks up the pencil and draws quick little circles on the top of the desk. “I don’t know really. I’m just sure that he’s dead. I think I saw it in the paper.”

“Really?”

“Look, Mom.” It’s clear to Hannah from the sound of her voice that this will be the last word on the subject. “That was long ago, okay? And it’s over now.”

But Hannah can’t leave it alone. She would like to, but can’t. Again, she sees him, the Viking in his swan-necked boat, his tent with the fluttering flags. She gets up from her chair and hangs the clipboard on its nail. She says, “What was his last name, Squid?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Johnson. Jensen. I don’t know.” She jabs at the desk with the pencil. “What difference does it make?”

“Well,” says Hannah. She stands behind Squid, looking down at the top of her head. “One day, and one day soon, Tatiana’s going to ask you about him. And what will you say then? ‘Oh, I don’t remember his name’? ‘Oh, he looked like a Viking’? Is that what you’ll tell her?”

“What else
can
I tell her?” snaps Squid. “I did something incredibly stupid one night, and a million times I’ve wished I hadn’t done it.”

“Don’t wish that,” says Hannah, softly. Her hands close on the back of the chair, not daring to touch her daughter. “Imagine if I wished that
you’d
never been born.”

“Oh, you don’t understand. You don’t know what happened that night.”

“Then tell me,” says Hannah.

“I
should
.” Squid looks up, over her shoulder. “I should tell you what really went on.”

There’s a fire in her eyes, but Hannah feels only a coldness inside. It’s welling up, spreading through her stomach to her spine. Let it go, she tells herself; you don’t want to know what
really went on
. Her hands start to tremble. The coldness reaches her fingers.

“Do you want me to?” asks Squid. Her smile is quick, unpleasant. “I will if you want.”

“I don’t know,” says Hannah. All her breath goes out of her. “No. I think you’d better not.”

Squid smiles. She
smirks,
with an ugly satisfaction. “I knew you wouldn’t,” she says. Then she leans forward and comes to her feet, slipping out past the chair. “Can we go now?”

“Yes,” says Hannah, sighing. But even now she can’t leave it alone. “Just tell me,” she says. “Did he hurt you? Tell me that much.”

“No, Mom,” says Squid. “He didn’t mean to hurt me.
Now
can we go?”

Below the bridge, seagulls sit on a darkening sea, nervously bobbing their heads. The wind is warm but the day much cooler, the sunshine turned to shade. Squid hugs herself in her summery dress. Her arms look chilled and goose-bumped.

Yellow leaves scatter from the alders, drifting down across the path. Hannah’s surprised to see so many, surprised
not
to see Murray sweeping them up. Just a year ago his leaf collecting was a full-time job.

She strays to the edge of the path and, boldly, straight onto the grass.

“Mom!” says Squid.

“Oh, it’s all right,” says Hannah. “Your father won’t know.”

Squid comes along with her, close to the edge of the cliff. The rocks here are scraped to a whiteness where Murray has whacked them with the lawn mower blades. Squid walks on the outside, nearer the brink, but she keeps looking back, as though she’s expecting Murray to pop up from nowhere.

“It’s not like you to worry,” says Hannah.

“Huh?”

“About something like grass.”

“Oh, I wasn’t thinking of
that,
” says Squid. “It’s just weird, not having Tatiana around every minute.”

“Sorry,” says Hannah. “I should have realized.”

“Why? You never thought about that with Alastair and me. We were always alone.”

Hannah’s not sure if she’s meant to feel ashamed, but she doesn’t think so. As far as Squid is concerned, whatever was said in the tower will already be forgotten.

“Your father was right about that, at least,” says Hannah. “It was one of the best things about the island. As long as you had a bit of common sense you were safe. You weren’t about to wander into traffic, or get lured into crime.”

“Lured into crime,” Squid echoes, though without her usual scorn. “You must have got that from Dad.”

“I guess I did.” Hannah laughs. They pass the concrete steps and the patch of trampled lawn. The route Hannah has chosen takes them in a curve nearly to the forest.

“I have to watch Tat every second,” says Squid.

“Maybe Australia will be different.”

“Why? We’re not going to be in the
outback,
Mom. We’ll be right in the city, in the hugest city there.”

“Poor Tat,” says Hannah, surprised to find how much she means it. And once more she thinks of Squid staying on the island, though she won’t mention
that
again. Squid’s anger still stings her. But then, for the first time, she thinks of Tatiana staying behind, of Squid going off and little Tat remaining. The child could spend a year on the island. Maybe the three years until Murray turns sixty-five. He would have his family back and Squid would have her really neat guy. But what about her? Hannah thinks of the winters then, of the storms and the rain, the darkness and cold. And she knows she can’t face it. Even the thought is a horror.

“Lured into crime,” says Squid again. “I’d kill myself if that happened to Tat.”

They circle round by the edge of the trees and meet the boardwalk. But Squid will go no farther. “I really don’t want to walk back to the beach,” she says. “I’m cold, and I want to get inside.”

“Okay,” says Hannah. “Whatever you think is best.”

chapter thirteen

SQUID OPENS THE FLOOR BOARDS AND TOUCHES the books. She takes one from the back of the row, the last—or next to last—of all the ones he filled.

She carries it to the seat in the window, looking out over the forest. At one time it was his sanctuary, and he would sit with a handful of bread crumbs, tempting the sparrows first to the sill and then into the room. In one of the books she has seen little bird footprints covering the pages.

August 27
. Sometimes I wish I was more like Squid. Things
are so easy for her. She wants to go look for shells. She wants to
search for feathers. For pretty stones and bits of moss. And
then she spends hours and hours gluing them together, sanding
the shells, wetting the stones with her tongue to see how the colors shine. For her the days go by one after the other, and she
has no thought for tomorrow.

There are things I want to tell her, but she doesn’t like talk
ing about stuff she has to think about.

August 28
. Humpbacks. Two of them, the second time
they’ve been here this year. I took the kayak out and played the
flute for them. I think they have some understanding that I’m
trying to communicate. But it’s a tough road ahead.

August 29
. I went to Dad and told him again that I’d like to
study the whales. He couldn’t see at first that it means I’ll have
to go somewhere to do it. And then he took me for a walk. He
said that since I was leaving he had something he wanted to
show me. We went to the toolshed and he picked up a rake handle. Not the rake but just the handle. Then he took me down
the boardwalk and into the forest.

We talked on the way and he asked when I wanted to go. I
said, “Well, as soon as I can.” He laughed. “Tomorrow?” he
said. I said, “I guess when I finish the high school courses.”

We went up through the forest, right to the top of the island,
to a tree where the eagles have an aerie. He said, “Alastair, this
is where I want to be buried.”

He poked his rake handle into the ground and pushed down
on the end. It went in easily, four feet or more. “You see,” he
said. “It’s good dirt. It’s loam down there. Now, I don’t want a
stone,” he said. “Not even a cross. And for God’s sake don’t
give me a coffin.” I said, “Dad, why are you telling me this?”
He said he tried to tell Mom, but she didn’t understand. She
wouldn’t go to the place, she said, and walk on his grave. “I
just want someone to know,” he said. “I’ve set down directions, but I wanted someone to see where it is.”

He made me sit down on the ground. It was covered with bead
ruby plants, like water lilies on the land. He said, “Alastair, will
you make me a promise?” I said I would try. “Just wait a few more
years,” he said. “Wait until you’re twenty-one before you go
away. The years will pass like the blink of an eye, and you’ll be old
enough then not to have your head turned by the temptations of the
world.” Then he asked again if I would promise him that.

I did. I had to. In that place, knowing all it meant to him, I
had no choice but to promise.

“Alastair,” he said, “you’re a man of your word and I’ll
take that as gospel.”

I can understand what he wants. If I become the new
keeper he won’t have to leave when he turns sixty-five. He can
stay on the island as long as he wants, or as long as he lives,
and that’s pretty much the same thing.

But now I feel like a man on Alcatraz. Sentenced to life on
the rock.

September 1
. The
Sikorsky
came, bearing technicians. It
brought out the mail and a little box for Dad. He gave me the
box. He said, “It’s a hydrophone, son. If you want to study the
whales, I’ll help as much as I can.”

It’s fantastic! I took it out this evening and I really heard for
the first time the sounds the humpbacks make. In a way it was
disappointing. There were a lot of groans and shouting sounds,
here and there a squeal, but none of the songs that they sing. I
think maybe they might sing at night.

She remembers that morning, the excitement of the helicopter. And then the disappointment. For the first time in her life a present came for Alastair without one for her.

He opened the box and took out the cables and all the pieces, and his face lit up with a joy that she hadn’t seen in months. He clamped on the headphones and grinned like a lunatic.

“What is that?” she asked.

“A hydrophone,” said Alastair. “You can listen underwater.”

She said, “Why don’t you just go and stick your head underneath?”

It was meant to be funny, or mostly funny. But Alastair was angry. He whistled through his nose. “Can’t you at least
pretend
to show interest?” he asked. “This is important to me.”

“Talking to whales?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Okay, Dr. Dolittle.”

“Oh, grow up,” he said.

But she was proud that she’d thought of that name. She taunted him with it for days. And then the fun went out of her game, because Alastair was never there.

September 7
. I think I’m making progress. The sounds, I’ve
decided, aren’t meant to be words. They’re pictures. They’re
whole ideas carried in a few different notes. And I think the
whales are maybe trying to teach me.

September 12
. I heard a song! It was wonderful, so long and
complex. It was an incredible thing. And in the middle of it, I SAW
a picture. I actually saw it. I saw one little verse of the song. An
iceberg, from the bottom up, a mass of fish below it, swimming in a warm yellow light in front of a wonderful curtain of
blue.

I’m camping on Almost Nothing Atoll. I can’t be around
people right now.

The pages are wrinkled from water that’s soaked them and dried. The writing gets wilder, the letters bigger, and it breaks into verse that goes on for page after page.

in a crash of sound
through water rich with sun
i thrust myself up
to the air
to the sky
to another world of quiet and eye-burning bright
to the world of the birds
and i fly

my flippers are wings
albatross wings
and i float in this world of above
then tumbling down
i shatter the water
into millions of bubbles
each a part of the sky

Squid flips through the pages; the verses have no interest for her. She feels a sense that he’s close as she reads through weeks that she barely remembers.

September 20
. Another dreary day. Constant rain for three
weeks now at least. I try to talk to Dad and he brushes me
away. He won’t listen. “Stop whining,” he tells me. CAN’T
SOMEBODY HELP???

September 24
. Raining again. And stormy now too. It’s
frightening to go out in the kayak, but I make myself do it.
Dad’s so stubborn that we go on with the chores, and we’re all
soaking wet before noon. I get sad. Just deeply, terribly sad.

She would look up, and he would be crying. He would be sitting perfectly still, just staring at nothing, and tears would be going down his cheeks in huge, trembling drops. They would fall from his chin and drop onto his shirt. And she would watch him and think: He doesn’t even know it.

“Alastair,” she said. “What’s the matter?”

“Hmm?” he said. “Oh, nothing. Nothing’s the matter.”

“You’re crying.”

He reached up and touched his cheeks. Then he held his fingers up to his glasses, nearly touching the lenses. He squinted through those bottles at the water on his fingers.

“Can’t you tell me?” she said.

“Please, Squid,” he said. “I just want to think.”

September 27
. Four days without a break in the gales. They
come one after the other. I can see why men go mad in places
like this. I keep thinking of the hanged keeper. His poor ghost
trapped on the island. Is that what happens when you die? Will
none of us
EVER
get away?

At the end of the month, after thirty-four days, came sunshine. It broke through the clouds on the last Sunday morning, as the four of them, all in a row, went across the lawn with tablespoons, digging up the old and flattened dandelions that Murray waged his war against.

It made a patch of light on the grass, and it caught them in their boots and their rain gear as though in a spotlight. Then, one by one, they bent themselves straight and looked up at the break in the clouds. And Squid did a dance. She did a scarecrow dance, twirling herself over the lawn, stumble-dancing past Murray and Hannah, past Alastair, and back down the row again. She laughed and she sang, and she danced in her bright, plastic suit. Then Hannah danced too, and they spun around holding hands. And even Murray joined in, hopping up on one foot, as awkward as a whirligig man.

But Alastair wouldn’t dance. He goggled at her through his rain-speckled glasses and stood like a post on the lawn. And Squid teased him for that. She called him names: Mr. Stick-in-the-mud; Alice-the-maid. “Dance, Dr. Dolittle!” she said. And he smiled.

It was the smallest, saddest smile she’d ever seen. His face cracked with it, like a window hit with a stone. It was hardly a smile at all.

But it was there.

The next day was a bit brighter, and the one after that even more so. Then the sky was bigger and bluer than ever before. And all of them but Alastair forgot that it had rained for more than a month.

Alastair was like the droplets on the lawn. He vanished with the sun.

“I think he’s changed,” said Squid. “He’s just not the same anymore.”

She ate breakfast at the big house; it was too lonely at Gomorrah.

“Does he talk about it?” asked Hannah.

“He doesn’t talk,” she said.

Hannah buttered Murray’s toast as he worked his way through his oatmeal. “What can we do?” she asked.

“The best thing?” said Squid. “Send him to town. When the boat comes, let him go into town for a week.”

Murray glanced up. “And I suppose you’d go with him?”

“Well, he can’t go alone.” She grinned.

“And he can’t go at all,” said Murray. “All his life I’ve taught him to face up to his problems. You take trouble head-on, not with your back to it.” He asked for jam with his toast. “Yet here, all of a sudden, at the first sign of a problem—”

“The first sign!” said Hannah. “Oh, Murray. Look around you!”

“At what?” he asked, bewildered.

“He’s miserable here.”

Squid turned to her mother. “You know what it is?” she said. “Dad’s frightened that Alastair won’t come home.”

Murray’s eyes blazed. “Is that so?” he said. “Well, I’ll have you know he’s given me his word. He won’t be leaving until he turns twenty-one.”

Hannah’s hand stopped in midair, a smear of jam like blood on the blade of her knife. “When did he say that?” she asked.

“Not long ago.”

“Why?”

“Why not!” snapped Murray.

Hannah backed down; she wouldn’t argue with Murray. She put the jam on his bread and—it might have been to herself—said, “I didn’t know that’s how he thought.”

“Och, it’s a paradise here, if you’ll only open your eyes to see it.” Murray took the toast. It was cold and hard, and it crunched as he bit it. “The boy’s got more than enough to keep himself busy as long as he lives.”

Squid left the table with her breakfast half finished. She went down to the beach and launched the glass-bottomed boat. She rowed through the lagoon, out to the channel with the sun blinding back from the glass. The bow was aimed for Almost Nothing Atoll, and her arms, like machines, pumped the oars around and around.

Water burbled up behind her and rippled down the sides. When the boat skittered sideways she brought it straight with the oars. Then she slid them inside when she was close to the island, and the boat slewed around with its stern to the shore. A huge cloud of birds rose from the trees; they circled around her, ravens and gulls.

It was the sun in his glasses; that was all she saw at first. He stood absolutely still, peering down at her between the cedar boughs. His arms were spread across them, and he looked as wild and wary as an otter, ready to flee—to slither away—if she came any nearer.

Squid stood up in the boat. Her feet straddled the pane of glass; her hands were on her hips. “You told Dad you were staying until you’re twenty-one,” she said.

He didn’t move. He came no closer.

“Alastair,” she said. “You tell me if it’s true.”

The boughs shook as he lowered his arms. They swept in from the sides, closing around him.

“Are you going to be like this until you’re twenty-one?” She shouted at the trees. “You’ll be a crazy old loon by then. They’ll have to take you off in a straitjacket.”

There was no answer.

“Alastair,” she said. “Alastair!”

She plopped herself down on the seat. She fitted the oars into the rowlocks. And Alastair came out from the trees.

He came slowly; he stumbled on a root. He wore gray sweatpants without any shirt, and his stomach was round and white. He stepped down from rock to rock—he was barefoot, she saw—and sat by the edge of the water. He said, “Did you come out here just to ask me that?”

“Yes,” she said. “I thought you had plans. You were going off to college. You were going to
do
something.”

He paddled a foot in the water. He looked up at her, then down. “Dad needs me here,” he said.