The Lighthouse Keeper, page 5
We all raised our glasses as Joseph Moore returned with Allan McDonald, who was clearly overjoyed at seeing his shipmates again.
While McDonald took a glass of whisky, Superintendent Muirhead beckoned to Moore to have a seat at the table. ‘Now Joseph,’ he began, but Moore cut him off.
‘I know, Mr Muirhead. I know what you’re going to ask me, and I’m ready to tell what happened on that day, although to tell you the truth, I’ve been dreading it this past week.’
Muirhead poured a little more whisky into his own glass and slid it across the table to the young Lightkeeper. ‘Take your time, laddie….’
‘Well,’ Moore began. ‘As you are aware, the Hesperus came to anchorage on the 26th of last month, and we did not see the Lighthouse Flag flying, so we thought that the Keepers didn’t see us coming. Captain Harvie’ (he glanced furtively at the tender’s Master) ‘sounded the horn several times, but there was no reply, and no one came out to greet us. So the Captain ordered the rocket to be fired – still nothing. It was too rough to make the West Landing, so we tried for the East Landing instead and succeeded in lowering a rowboat and mooring there.’
Moore took a swallow of whisky, grimaced, and continued. ‘I was on the boat, along with Mr Lamont and Mr McCormack, although I was the first to go ashore. I went up, and on coming to the entrance gate, I found it closed. I made for the door leading here to the kitchen and found it also closed. I came into the kitchen and looked at the fireplace, and I saw that there was nothing but cold ashes in the grate. It looked like the fire had not been lit for some days. The kitchen was clean, the dishes had been washed and were on the draining board. Everything seemed normal, except that the clocks had stopped, and one of the chairs was turned over and lying on the floor.’
I looked across at Muirhead. The Superintendent was watching Moore intently, paying close attention to every word.
‘I called out to the men, but there was no answer. I thought they must all have fallen sick and taken to their beds. Yes…’ he paused, remembering, ‘that’s what I thought. I called again and went to each bedroom, but there was no one there, and the beds were neatly made. The whole place… there was no sound but the howling of the wind and the battering of the rain on the windows. I didn’t search anymore, since I knew then that something serious had happened. I ran from the house, back to the East Landing where Archie and Mac were waiting for me.
‘I shouted to them that the place was deserted, and Mac came ashore, and together we returned here. I suppose I should have checked the tower and lightroom first, but…’ He faltered and fell silent.
‘I understand, Joseph,’ said Muirhead quietly. ‘You wanted to report back to your shipmates as quickly as possible…’
For the first time since our arrival on the island, Joseph Moore smiled, but it was a small, sad smile. ‘No sir, that’s not the reason. I… I just didn’t want to be here alone. We searched the house again and then went up to the lightroom. There was no one there, although everything was in order: the lamp was cleaned, and the oil fountains were full. So we returned to the Hesperus and reported to Captain Harvie, who told me that someone had to stay on the island to light the lamp and make sure it kept working. The task fell to me, since I was the only Lightkeeper on the boat, but Mr Campbell and Mr Lamont came with me, and also Mr McDonald, the Buoymaster.
‘We came ashore again and went straight to the lightroom and lit the lamp that night and every night since. The following day, we searched the island from end to end, but we found no sign of the men and no clue to convince us how or why they disappeared. We even checked the bothie out there.’ He jerked his head towards the kitchen window. He was referring to the tiny dry-stone chapel that stood in ruins a few yards from the lighthouse: a relic of the time when Christian monks first came to these islands centuries ago.
‘We went to the East Landing, but nothing appeared touched to show that they were taken from there. The ropes were in all their proper places in the shelter, just as they were left after the relief of the 7th. On the West Landing, it was different. There was an old box halfway up the tramline, for holding the mooring ropes and tackle, and we saw that it had gone. Some of the ropes had got washed out of it: they lay strewn on the rocks near the crane. And the handrail…’
‘Aye, lad,’ said Muirhead. ‘We saw.’
Moore shook his head. ‘We couldn’t believe that. It was as if some great hand had reached up from the sea and wrenched it away.’
Up from the sea, or out of the sky, I thought, remembering Mary Ducat’s dream.
‘Even so,’ Moore continued, ‘there was nothing at the West Landing to give us an indication that the men lost their lives there.’
‘What about the log?’ asked Muirhead.
‘The last entry was on the 15th. It was written on the slate but hadn’t been transferred to the logbook.’
I glanced at the slate on the kitchen wall. It was used to record meteorological conditions such as wind direction, barometer and thermometer readings, which were marked in chalk before being copied into the logbook at the end of each day.
‘And the last entry in the logbook?’
‘That was on the 13th.’
Muirhead nodded. ‘The steamer Archtor from Philadelphia passed the Flannans on the 15th, and reported no light visible. So it would seem that whatever happened, it happened on the 14th.’
‘Don’t forget the chair,’ said Moore suddenly.
‘The chair?’
‘The chair was upturned, on the floor.’ Moore indicated the chair in which Archie Lamont was sitting. Lamont shifted uncomfortably.
‘Ah, yes,’ nodded Muirhead. ‘As if someone got up in a hurry. The West Landing can’t be seen from here, is that right?’
‘Yes, sir, not even from the top of the tower.’
‘And you found one of the oilskins still on its peg.’
‘That’s right. The other two were gone.’
‘And you made a complete search of the island, you say.’
Moore nodded. ‘We searched the cliffs and crags and the hollows in them – everywhere we could. We called out to them until we were hoarse. But they were nowhere to be seen.’ Moore closed his eyes, swallowed and lowered his head. ‘They’re not on the island, Mr Muirhead.’
‘That’s right,’ said Archie Lamont. ‘We searched from one end to the other, and more than once: young Joseph here insisted on it.’ He offered Moore a sad smile. ‘If they were still here, trapped somewhere on the island’s edge, we’d have found them…’ Lamont broke off, as if at a loss for further words, and he too bowed his head.
‘I see.’ Muirhead nodded again, absently, clearly lost in thoughts of his own. Presently, he began to speculate aloud, his eyes unfocussed, gazing out through the rain-streaked kitchen window. ‘We know there was a powerful storm that night. James Ducat must have been worried about the landing ropes. Six months ago, the tackle at the West Landing was carried off in a storm and had to be replaced. Ducat would have known that if it happened again, it would make relief all the more difficult. Nobody goes out of a lighthouse in bad weather if they can help it, but Ducat had to be sure that the ropes and tackle were safe.
‘Later in the afternoon, the wind starts to drop, so Ducat and one other man put on their sea boots and coats and make their way to the west side of the island. The third man is left in the lighthouse, according to the rules. Ducat and his companion come to the safety path, which runs at right angles to the stairway, and continue towards the crane where the box for stowing the landing ropes is situated.
‘Suddenly, a wave much bigger than the other ones comes in and sweeps one of them into the sea…’
‘From the crane platform?’ interrupted Lamont in disbelief. ‘Such a wave would have to be a hundred and fifty feet high, at the least! How could that be, if the weather had calmed enough for them to go outside in the first place?’
Superintendent Muirhead knew these islands better than most, and a much greater area besides: after all, it was his job. He fixed Lamont with an intense, grim stare, which he then gave to each of us in turn. ‘A high roller,’ he said.
He was met with blank stares from all of us, except for John Milne, who was the most experienced Lightkeeper there. ‘I know what you’re speaking of, Mr Muirhead: the chasm in the rocks near the West Landing. It’s like a blow hole; when the sea rears up in a storm, a wave pattern is set up – a freakish thing – the water floods in through the inlet and is cast up onto the land, a sudden torrent, tearing up the cliff-face to crash against the platform. Aye… maybe that’s what did it.’
Lamont nodded. ‘It has the ring of truth to it,’ he said quietly, his eyes lingering on Joseph Moore. I wondered what the young man had been thinking and saying to the others during the long nights of the past week.
Muirhead continued with his speculations – speculations that seemed sound for all that. ‘So, a sudden torrent floods in through the inlet, carrying one man into the sea. The other man – there’s no way of knowing who it was – makes his way as quick as he can back up the island’s shoulder to the lighthouse, shouting through the doorway what has happened. Perhaps the cook has just finished washing the plates and has sat down at the table; he springs to his feet, knocking the chair from under him, and rushes out, without taking his coat.
‘Grabbing a heaving line, the two men make their way back down to the west side, hoping to throw the line to their comrade. But it is all in vain, for another torrent comes pounding in through the inlet, and carries them both to their deaths.’
‘How can you be so sure that that’s what happened?’ asked Moore.
‘I’m not, Joe,’ Muirhead replied. ‘But it seems the most plausible explanation to me. Whatever happened, it happened fast: that’s why you found the chair turned over, why one oilskin was left on its peg. Its owner went out of the lighthouse in his shirtsleeves: no one would do that unless he was in a great hurry. I need to go back down to the West Landing to examine the place properly. Will you come with me, Joe?’
Moore nodded. ‘Aye, Mr Muirhead, if you think it’ll help.’
‘I think it will.’
John Milne gave me a long look before saying, ‘If you’ve no objection, Mr Muirhead, I’ll come too – at least as far as the top of the cliffs, so I can keep an eye on the both of you while you’re down there.’
‘Thank you, John.’
The three men put on their oilskins and went out through the kitchen door, leaving me alone with Captain Harvie, Archie Lamont and Allan McDonald, all of whom looked at me in silence.
4
The Chapel and the Song
The silence continued for several moments, so that I grew increasingly uncomfortable. It was clear that these men entertained the same misgivings about me as John Milne, and I was at a loss to explain what they were. Was it just unfamiliarity, combined with the natural taciturnity of seamen? Or was it something else – perhaps the fact that, as an Occasional, I was not a fully-fledged member of the fraternity of Lightkeepers?
Presently, though, their inherent good nature came to the fore, and they tried to strike up a conversation with me. They asked about my family and my profession of carpenter. I answered their questions readily, and with all the friendliness I could muster, but after some time the conversation stalled, and to save them any further embarrassment I excused myself, saying that I felt like taking a short walk in the open.
‘There isn’t a great deal to see, Alec,’ said Archie Lamont with a brief smile.
‘True enough,’ I agreed, ‘but I might have a look at that bothie nearby.’ In fact, I just wanted to be out of the house for a while.
‘Stay away from the cliffs, Alec,’ said Captain Harvie. ‘The weather’s easing a little, but the sea is still high.’
‘Aye, I will,’ I said and went out through the kitchen door.
The air was heavy with spindrift, and my hair was soon damp again upon my brow. I gathered the collar of my waterproof tight around my neck and walked the short way to the chapel.
To call the poor mound of stone a chapel was to do it a kindness it no longer deserved – if indeed it ever had. And yet, as I stood gazing at its low, corbelled roof with the wind shouting in my ears and the clouds boiling through the sky, I became aware of a strangeness rising in my heart, and with it a fear I had never known existed, so that I could neither name nor understand it.
Suddenly, I no longer wished to look upon that mean little heap, which seemed to contain an emptiness that was more profound and frightening than the mere absence of objects or human inhabitants, but neither did I want to return to the lighthouse just then, and so I walked slowly around the chapel, trying to imagine what life must have been like here, so lonely and hard with nothing but the sea and the sky for company. I imagined some long-forgotten Columban hermit sitting alone in the chapel, whispering to God, his words of devotion carried away by the wind’s mournful groan and the sea’s mocking whisper.
The clouds were etched with the dancing forms of puffins and petrels that swooped and glided through the air, searching for fish upon the surface of the sea. Their cries stirred a wretchedness in my breast, and again the strange fear arose, as if it were a living, breathing lonely thing that had arrived from outside, settling upon me and growing comfortable in my presence.
I shook my head and pulled my coat collar tighter about my throat, reluctantly preparing to return to the lighthouse and my companions.
It was then that I became aware of another sound beyond the groan of the wind and the whisper of the sea, a sound that seemed to come from all directions at once and none at all, as if made by the very air itself. Beautiful and mournful it was, rising and falling against the background of groan and whisper, like a pipe played by a lonely player, like a song from the limitless past telling of things long forgotten.
I stood rooted to the spot beside the ancient chapel, listening to the phantom pipe-song that seemed to come at once from the sea and the sky, and it is a measure of my frame of mind that it took so many moments for me to realise its source. A whale, I thought. Yes, a whale, a minke or a pilot, in the ocean somewhere nearby. I relaxed somewhat at the realisation that the sound came from an inhabitant of this world – albeit a part of the world that was mysterious and fathomless to human understanding, and I wondered what the whale was saying: was it calling to its mate, or singing of its loneliness, or perhaps giving voice to thoughts forever incomprehensible to the mind of man?
I let out the breath I had been holding, wiped the sea-spray from my face and gave a quiet laugh. ‘Yes… a whale,’ I said in a low voice that was caught and discarded by the wind.
But then, as I was about to turn back towards the lighthouse, another sound came across the sea, and I stopped and listened, again holding my breath in my lungs like a precious possession.
I strove in vain to recognise the sound. If I describe it as a metallic shimmering, a hard and distant trembling of the air that seemed both to approach and recede at the same time, of something moving through the atmosphere that was not meant to do so, then perhaps I may present the most fleeting impression of what it was like.
For many moments I stood there, transfixed and unable to move as the sound washed over me, making me tremble from more than mere cold, making the very air tremble with its presence. And riding upon the sound, as rain rides upon a storm’s chaotic winds, a whisper came to my ears, as of voices that issued not from the throats of men, but from something that was nevertheless capable of speech.
I still do not know whether they really were voices, or whether my imagination, thrown into uncontrolled and fevered speculation, sought to influence my senses, to build some recognisable framework with which to apprehend what I was hearing.
And as I stood, grimacing with cold and concentration, one hand clutched upon the collar of my waterproof while the spindrift stung my eyes to blindness, I strained to hear what the ‘voices’ were saying. And presently, I did begin to pick out whispered words flung upon the wind from God knows where. And the voices, it seemed to me, were saying, over and over again:
‘Let us be gone. Let… us… be… gone.’
My eyes darted across the horizon, my gaze like a stone skipping upon the water, as I tried to ascertain from which direction the whispering voices came, but it was useless, for they seemed to come from every direction at once, and from none at all. It was as if the world itself were speaking, making a desperate, unfathomable entreaty.
I shuddered again and tried to banish the repeated words from my awareness, to convince myself that they were an illusion born of the strange environment in which I found myself, this wild part of the world where men did not belong. But it was no use, for once within my mind, the words could not be unthought, and I could no longer believe that they were merely part of the moaning wind and the ocean’s hiss.
Looking away from the rolling horizon, my gaze fell upon the entrance to the ruined chapel, an irregular patch of blackness framed by the crazily-piled, ash-grey stones.
‘Let us be gone.’
My breath came quick and shallow, as the voices sighed upon that shimmering metal sound and the wind rose and fell like the waves that besieged the island. I stared at the chapel’s doorway, at the impenetrable darkness within, darker than the sky at midnight, unable to tear my gaze away.
I strained to hear the song of the whale, for in that moment I felt a strange kinship with the creature, felt a desperate need to hear its voice, for it was something known and knowable out there in the wide ocean that surrounded me and which contained so much that was unfathomable.
But the whale had fallen silent.
‘God preserve us,’ I whispered, the words springing unbidden to my lips.
‘Let us be gone.’
THREE
