The Keeper
The smell of tobacco followed Doug up the stone stairs in a rich acrid cloud. Step, step, step, each riser hewn from some ancient granite block, now all of them worn in a gentle curve by the passage of so many footsteps across so many years. Step, step, step, Doug reviewed his list as he tramped upwards. All the electrics were off downstairs, no taps left running, keys hung up. Step, step, step, and here he was in the Watch Room. The room was panelled with white painted wood, three narrow windows, two looking out to seaward, the third to the cliffs and the sloping pastures of Kent beyond. He could see a few sheep huddled together in the drizzle. Sodden white dots on green. He banged his pipe out in the little saucer that said “I love Sheep” and left his paperwork on the table.
His
comfy chair was already covered with towels on top of some plastic sheeting
from the stores. He’d left the airmail envelope unopened on the little table
next to the chair together with a glass of whisky. The return address said San
Diego. He’d written a few words on the back of it and signed it ‘All the Best,
Dad’ but he wasn’t going to look inside. He just couldn’t deal with it right
now, someone else would have to.
He
savoured a mouthful of whisky for a moment before taking one more towel and
draping it over his thinning hair, then sat back in the chair. He paused to
consider how silly he looked, like a child under sheet pretending to be a
ghost. “Get a grip” he said and sent a fat-knuckled hand groping to the table. The
pistol was an old one, a previous keeper’s service weapon from the war perhaps,
but he’d taken it up to the Gallery earlier and fired off a test shot.
He
took a deep breath and shut his eyes. The barrel felt cold and alien in his
mouth and then there was a crash from the cupboard next to him.
With
a sigh that would have won an award for “best long-suffering sigh” he took off
the towel, carefully placed the pistol on the side table and stood up. He
pulled open the cupboard door expecting to see that the shelf with the torches
and spare batteries had collapsed. It had not. A “ShitOhChristJesusWhat?”
combination spat from his mouth and he jumped away from the cupboard door,
hands up reflexively to protect himself.
A
small Japanese schoolgirl stood there. Bobbed dark hair framed her oval face.
She was wearing a blue blazer, dark pleated skirt, knee-high white socks, black
shoes. Water dripped from her skirt and her blazer cuffs and the ends of her
hair, disappearing before it hit the stone floor.
He
was as far away from her as the small circular room would allow, breathing hard
through his open mouth. She was, maybe fourteen, and gazed at him steadily.
“Christ,
not again.” he said.
He
hurried down the stairs to the off-duty room and started scanning along the
rows of bookshelves. Finding what he needed he returned. Outside a gust of wind
smacked rain like a handful of gravel against the south window.
“Hello.
You gave me a fright love! Do you know where you are? My name is Doug. What’s
your name?”
He
didn’t expect a reply, and wasn’t surprised when she just stared through him.
“Ok
just let me…” He paged through the battered ring-binder.
”Right,
here we are.”
He
haltingly read out the incantation. He grabbed the whisky glass from the table,
grimacing as his old knees cracked when he bent in front of her. Dipping a thick finger in the whisky he
smeared the required symbol on the flagstones.
After
a few seconds he reached out to take her arm. His hand went through her blazer,
closing on itself in mid-air.
“Bloody
hell !”
He
towelled dry the symbol and re-drew it, then read the words out again. This
time there was a shimmer around her, a subtle shift into focus. He reached out
and this time felt wet fabric.
“Come
on love, it’s okay.” The girl stepped from the cupboard easily enough and stood
in the middle of the room.
He
gingerly reached past her to get his sou’wester then then took the towel from
the chair and put it around her shoulders. He guided her upstairs into the Lamp
Room and then out onto the Gallery. The sky was grey, full of dark scudding
clouds, the wind about Force 6. Below them, through the railings, the sea was
as busy as the sky, waves queuing up to batter the rocks at the base of the
lighthouse, foam and spray exploding mid-air.
He
could see her mouth moving, forming words he couldn’t hear. “It’s okay” he had
to shout above the wind “You don’t need to worry.” The girl stood there, seeing
him for the first time. He turned her to face into the glass of the Lamp Room.
The rain glittered as it fell, falling through the grill of the heli-pad above
them, caught every eight seconds in the sweep of the lamp.
“Good
luck sweetheart, you’ll be fine” he said and gave her an awkward pat on the
shoulder. It took three more rotations of the light and she was gone. He
stooped to pick up the towel before it blew away then went back inside.
“Ok,
that’s done.” He shrugged out of his wet gear and hung it on the heating pipes.
He sat in the chair again and picked up the towel, when the clock chimed the
hour. “Bloody hell.” A sudden wave of emotion caught him by surprise and he
bent forward head in hands. Tears came, and an anguished moan escaped him. He
sobbed for a few minutes, then sat up and took a deep breath, wiping his wet
face on his jumper sleeve.
Above
him in the Lamp Room the massive glass lenses made their rumbling, clockwork
rotations, comforting in their permanence. His face felt swollen, eyes
sore. He pushed his hands in his pockets
and looked out the window again. Visibility was down to less than a couple of
miles, he could see a container ship gamely battering its way through the swell
towards the Atlantic; he could make out rust-red containers and the grey/white
of the bridge. There would be someone looking at him while he was looking at them.
“Hello” he said “I see you.”
Then
he crossed to the small table and picked up the envelope, holding it with one
finger poised to tear open the flap and then put it down again.
He
buried his hands in his pockets and furrowed his brow, bent forward over it as
if it was some part of a 5,000 piece puzzle. They’d not spoken in eight years,
not since his mum had passed. Jamie had not been at the funeral, had said he
just couldn’t bear it.
“No.
Absolutely no point. None” he said out loud to nobody and turned away. His
stomach rumbled and he left the room, the step step step of his tread fading as
he descended to the kitchen.
That
night in bed he woke up. He thought it might be the system alarm, installed by
the higher ups when he started crewing the station alone, but the lights still
glowed green in the darkness. The ever-circling lamp above briefly lit up the
bedroom window; enough to see the shape blocking it. He flicked the bedside
light on and looked past Marie’s smiling face in her silver frame that had been
a wedding present.
A
man was hanging by the window. The blue nylon rope round his neck disappeared a
few inches above his head; he wasn’t attached to anything, and yet he hung
there, slowly twisting. The man was fair-haired and pale faced, his eyes were
shut and his neck was swollen where the rope was biting into it. His legs
disappeared into the stone recess of the window. Doug looked at him bleary eyed,
then fell back and exhaled. “You’re going to have to wait mate.” He did a
comedy roll of his eyes for Marie then switched the light off.
He
expected to lie awake as usual, obsessing for example over a sequence of outbursts
which Marie had triggered. Jamie wasn’t drinking anymore (he told you that did
he?) he was holding down a steady job (we’ll see won’t we?) he had a girlfriend
(more fool her). But instead his unsleeping mind took him back unbidden to the
first phantom they’d found.
Ten
years ago was it? Winter-time in 1978 or ‘79 maybe. It was Ray who had
discovered her in the stores late one afternoon and after he had in his own words
“screamed like a girl” he had gone and found Doug. Standing in the narrow
passage between shelves of spare electrical bits and various tools was a woman
of about thirty. She was wearing a summer dress, her bare legs disappearing
into the floor up to her ankles as if the cement had set around them. The dress
itself rippled in a non-existent breeze and was torn open and bloody around her
midriff. Tattered material hung down wet and black from the wound. She stood
there placidly, swaying slightly but giving no sign of awareness. Dimly behind
her was the stone of the lighthouse wall; she was transparent.
“I
was on leave in Haiti years ago” said Ray “We went to some weird place out in
the boondocks to try and score some shit. Saw a black fella who was a bit like
this. Zombie they said.” he waved his hand in front of the woman’s unseeing
eyes. “Couldn’t do this though.” and he wafted his hand through her torso. A
spray of red droplets were frozen in time a few inches in front of her.
Doug
nodded. He too had seen his share of things that he wouldn’t care to speak
about in mixed company.
They
spent an hour, fascinated and appalled by what they had found. The figure stood
as if projected on the air itself, as the both of them waved their hands through
it, blew smoke at it and tried to communicate. The woman stared emptily back at
them unperturbed by their increasingly confident & comedic actions. Ray
bounced a ball through her and back at him.
Nothing
had any effect and eventually they shut the door and went upstairs to have a
stiffener from the drinks cabinet. Ray took up his usual place on what they
called the comfy sofa; a slightly sagging green fabric two seater; he lounged
sideways feet up, glass in hand.
“She’ll
be gone in the morning.” he announced as Doug put his own feet up sitting
across in the room’s other chair which creaked backwards on its springs.
Very
Ray that was. Always very positive, convinced that things would turn out well
if you just had the right attitude. Doug thought that being positive was just
tempting fate. Low expectations meant you weren’t often disappointed.
Both
men were unsurprisingly animated by events; lighthouse-keeping was all about
routine and procedures, unusual events like washed up contraband, an injured albatross
or a ghostly presence in a store room were topics of interest that could be
spun out for days.
“Gallery
checks then?” Doug said.
“I
hear your gentle reminder oh Captain my Captain” said Ray and went upstairs
with the binoculars to sweep the sea and write the log.
It
was a Wednesday so Doug was cooking chili and then they settled down within a
fug of cigarette smoke to watch University Challenge, Call My Bluff and the
News. Wednesday’s post-news game was Cribbage. Then Doug who was off watch went
to bed while Ray who was on lates put on the radio and read his book.
It
wasn’t gone in the morning. They sat in the kitchen to discuss what to do.
“We
should radio it in” Doug started.
“Sure.
So Control can think we’ve lost our minds?”
Ray
had spent his career on minesweepers and had a low opinion of anyone he
considered to be of senior rank. In the bed Doug hovered between sleeping and
waking, he missed his friend. The dead man twisted quietly in some other
dimension.
“They
might not.” Doug had said “We can both see her. Maybe they…”
“Maybe
nothing. They have files at Trinity House full of stories like this. Lonely
lighthouse keepers going quietly mad. The empty sky, the ceaseless wind? No
mate. you’re a pillock if you report this.”
“Pillock
?”
“Yes.
I stand by that.” said Ray straight-faced.
“Your
mean words hurt me.”
Ray
shrugged “I says it how I sees it.”
“What
about William?” Doug asked.
“What
William?”
“William.
Bill ? Bill Windsor? We replaced him and Len? Or is senility beckoning to you?”
“Mad
King Billy?” said Ray.
“Alright.
If you must.”
“What’s
he going to know?”
“He
told me if anything ‘happened’ I should call him.” said Doug.
The
sea is a lonely place. On land you’re never more than a few hundred miles from at
least some point of human habitation. On the sea it can be ten times that. Doug
had once crewed tankers. On a frozen night in the South Atlantic he had been
walking back from the prow on a boat longer than a football field. The night
was quiet, the sea dead calm, the wide prow thumping gently as it ploughed its
way forwards. The bridge of the tanker loomed white and high above him two
hundred foot away. He came to a sudden stop, his frozen breath clouding around
his face, his seaboots set on the metal gangway as he noticed three hunched
figures, perched on top of it. The creatures had their backs to him. They were
sat close together tearing at something between them. Doug held his breath in
the darkness, thinking they must be birds, surely they were birds but knowing
they weren’t. There came a clang from near the bridge as someone opened a door
spraying a light out onto the superstructure. Doug looked at the light, then
back to the creatures just in time to see a blacker than black shape disappear
into the night sky. The ship’s cat was missing the next day, but then that
didn’t mean anything so he never mentioned what he thought he’d seen. But this
was different, they had a body…
Ray
demurred. “Billy was a drunk. He told me he could see dead men under the sea.
And why are you saying ‘happened’ like that? See this is what I mean –
Lighthouse men going quietly mad.”
“Have
you got a better idea?” asked Doug
“Yellow
Pages? Call a Medium?”
“A
two pronged approach then; you call a Medium, I’ll call William.” said Doug.
“I
don’t want to call anybody. Why can’t we deal with it. Like that time with your
head !” Doug had tripped down the stairs once and gashed his forehead. Ray had
stitched it up rather than trouble the coastguard with an unscheduled callout.
“This
is different.” said Doug
They
made the calls. Ray explained the situation to a lady advertising “Psychic
Mediumship. Contact with departed loved ones” and she was sympathetic. She
spoke about energies. She said that certain souls that had become untethered
from their earthly bodies might seek out a beacon. Something that was
broadcasting energies that could be detected from worlds away. They would be
attracted to it like moths to a flame. She explained that such souls might be
trying to remain in the physical world.
“This
lady has shot herself, it’s pretty clear she doesn’t want to remain in the
physical world.” said Ray.
The
psychic, Carol, waited for Ray’s nervous humour to peter out.
“So
what do we have to do?” he asked
“Here’s
my address, send me five pounds and I’ll send you some instructions.” said Carol
Doug’s
call to William was less pragmatic.
The
phone rang and rang and he wondered if the old man had moved away or passed on.
Then it was picked up.
“Hello
Doug.” an old man’s voice.
“William?
Hello. It’s…how did you know it was me?”
“What?
No the ring is different for everyone. I can tell.”
“Different…?
How do you…? Ok. Never mind. Hello William, it’s Doug from the station. Sorry
to trouble you. Are you well?”
“I’m
busy Doug. Speak up.”
Doug,
a man then just turning 50, wondered how busy a retired man in his seventies
could be.
“It’s
a bit tricky actually William. You know you said I should call if anything
happened..? Well…
“No.”
“…me
& Ray…what?”
“I
don’t remember” said Bill
“Ok,
well you said to call if…”
“Did
I?”
“Yes”
“Alright
– go on.” in the background there was female laughter and the unmistakable
sound of snooker balls clacking.
“..me
& Ray have a situation; there’s a lady. A dead lady…we didn’t kill her!”
Doug raised his eyes to the heavens, “she just… appeared.”
“Ah
– another one.”
“Another?”
“Yeah.
They’re like buses. None for ages then lots at once. They turn up when there’s
trouble.”
“Trouble?”
“Think
so. Something calls to them. Len’s wife ran off with that accountant and he was
fecking furious. We saw a bunch then. Then no more for years until my eldest
had that car accident. It’s trouble or stress or misery, I dunno. Anyway…listen.”
Doug
had listened carefully. William had some advice to give. For several minutes
there was talk of portals and ley lines and cosmic pathways of the dead. Old
books and manuscripts. Knowledge passed down from one keeper to the next.
“How
did all this start William?”
“Don’t
know – it just is.”
“Where
do they go – do they go back to life or death?
“Don’t
know that for sure either. But I saw one of them though, when I was on leave in
Margate.”
“Margate…?”
“Yes
– at the amusements. Young man he was; Me & Len had guided him on a few
years previous. I’d just bought fish n chips and was chatting up this
nice-looking girl…Sandra was it?”
Doug
waited.
“Sally.
No! Sheila!”
“Okay…”
“Anyway,
we was having chips and had just come in cos it was cold and there by the
penny-drop machines was this one. Looked right as rain. Last I saw him he’d
been missing the back of his head.”
“Are
you sure it was the same person?”
“Definitely.
ginger haired, very tall. Same one. He had a girl on his arm and he was winning
on the machine. He seemed pretty happy to me.”
“What
do I need to do William?”
“It’s
complicated.”
“Do
have a manual or something?”
“Send
me a fiver and I’ll send you some instructions”
“A
fiver?”
“For
postage. I’m not made of money.”
Fivers
were put in the post and in next week’s mail drop two packages arrived. One was
wrapped in an old comic (The Dandy, 1972) and contained a thin sheaf of
papers. On the front was written “To Send Them Back” in black
marker.
The
one from Carol was typed and in a brown cardboard folder.
Ray
and Doug pored over them. The two accounts were largely the same. A first step
involved marking an ideogram (or fiddly pattern said Bill) and reading an
incantation (magic spell Bill called it). This brought the spirit into a
tangible form. This was called substantiation (Bill did not have a name for
that). The second step was to move the newly-substantiated spirit on via a
portal. Carol was a little vague here, suggesting that they look for a natural
gateway, perhaps one that caught the sun at first or last light whereas Will
was a lot more specific – “take your ghost up & make the bugger stare at
the light.”
At
6am he woke as usual, checked the alarms – no change, checked the hanging man,
no change and then went into the little bathroom for his normal ablutions.
There was a naked middle-aged lady in the bathtub. Her brown hair was slicked
back, blood dripped from her wrists, painting two rich red stains that
ethereally joined as one to trickle down the plughole.
“Oh
that’s just bloody great.” he said. After a wash and a shave he shut the door
on her. It was a calm day so he stood outside on the rocks to have a pee and a
fag. He rinsed his hands in a rockpool and shook them off looking out towards
the sun appearing wraith-like through wisps of cloud in a blue spring sky. He
drank it all in, trying to fix the feeling in his mind, the smell of the salt
air, the distant bleating of the sheep on the hills behind him, the sound of
waves as they spent themselves on the shore. Then he went back inside and dealt
with the two latest arrivals.
He
recognised the distraction for what it was. Grateful for the fact that the
underlying sick feeling in his stomach was temporarily gone. Grateful for
having something to think about apart from the fact that there was nothing in
between him and his death. No big life events to look forward to, no one who
would miss him. Scrooge-like he imagined his funeral attended by aquaintances
and strangers. And there was nothing wrong with that. He’d made his bed and he
was very much having to lie in it. When he’d been a lad at Sunday School they’d
given him a little book with history of Stoics in it. Post-war it had struck a
chord with the young Douglas Rimmer and he’d carried its no fuss, no drama,
message with him throughout his life.
At
first he and Ray had spent a lot of time discussing the implications of this
new part of their role. Various avenues were explored. They tried phoning
William again (no answer, ever) phoning Carol again (answered but no real help)
and looking in the public library – but it all came to nothing. Neither of them
mentioned asking friends, loved ones, priests etc. Neither Ray nor Doug had any
close friends or confidantes. Their lives had been itinerant up to this point
of joining the service. Ray in the Navy, Doug in the merchant marine. Decades
of isolation in steel boxes traversing the ocean. Both of them had wives and
children whom they rarely saw growing up and saw less of now that they were
adults. They were reliant on each other, a friendship forged by circumstance in
the crucible of the lighthouse.
They’d
found bodies before, the prevailing winds and tides moved objects in the
channel as if in a funnel, and it was rare but not unusual to see something
pale and bloated caught in the rocks. In unspoken agreement they dealt with
such things. They logged it, rescued the parts into plastic sacks provided for
the purpose and then called the coastguard for pickup. They took a quiet pride
in understatement.
By
9am he had moved the two phantoms to wherever they went next and was half way
down the stairs when he had stop with his back to the cold stone wall to catch
his breath. The monster of pain in his chest had awoken. He looked out the
narrow window as he waited it for it to subside. Dark clouds were starting to
build across the grey-green swells. Had Ray really been his only friend? He
felt okay about it. He had Marie onshore and Ray offshore and that had been
fine.
All
good things come to an end. Marie, six years ago from heart disease. Ray, two
years ago from redundancy. Now he just had the work and had let it fill the
gaps where there used to be Marie and Ray. And he still loved it. But
inexorably progress marched onwards. From three people needed to man the
station, to crews of two, to semi-automation and a crew of one and soon enough
now, full automation and no one at all. Meanwhile and just as inexorably his
body started to let him down.
He
went up to the kitchen and boiled the kettle, let it cool slightly then poured
it over the teabag in the mug. He checked his watch and timed three minutes
then removed the teabag. He added some milk from the little jug and then sat himself
at the small table taking a biscuit from the tin shaped like a pig. Ray had got
it from his wife one Christmas and “donated” it to the station when he’d left.
He and June had retired down to Eastbourne. Doug wondered what he did down
there. Christmas cards talked of allotments and grand-children. Was that it? It
sounded ordinary.
The
pig used make an oink oink sound when you pulled back its head to get to the
biscuits but thankfully the batteries had run down. Dunking his digestive
he watched the waves crashing onto the rocks across the bay. A chunk of
his biscuit fell into the mug and splashed tea across the table and he cursed
softly. He got up to get a cloth and stopped stock still.
The
dark skinned, teenaged boy standing in the passageway out to the stairs didn't
flinch. He reminded Doug of the kids in Lagos who used to hang around the
docks running errands to earn a few coppers. With pin-sized pupils he stood
there sweating through his t-shirt. Doug could see the track marks on his arms
from across the room. At least this kid probably had an excuse; Jamie had bugger
all to drive him to get into what he got into. Marie was the one to give him
excuses.
He
shook his head to drive those thoughts away. Marie was a cascade of blonde
hair, a cheeky smile; Petite, her eyes gazing up at him when he held her in his
arms. He tried not to let her be replaced with the drawn, pain-filled woman in
the hospital bed; sunken mouth half open, the life leaking out of her. They’d
been to Italy on their honeymoon; the hotel was so bad that they couldn’t stop
laughing about it. He could see her in the sun that streamed through the dirty
bedroom window, cotton dress floating round her. He remembered feeling
overwhelmed, so full of love for her that he was breathless. Thirty years on he
got breathless climbing the stairs and eventually he had gone to the doctors
and they had done some tests and told him why.
Anyway,
he shook his head to drive those thoughts away…He stood looking at the boy for
a minute taking a few sips from his tea and reflecting that even now he rarely got
to drink a whole one.
Whenever
he’d been home on leave they used to read Winnie the Pooh to Jamie; the boy looking
too small in his big bed. Years later after Jamie had gone away he used to go
up to his empty room and read it anyway; hoping that somehow he’d hear and know
that his dad loved him very much.
After
Marie’s funeral in the empty house he’d tramped desolately from room to room
and ended up in Jamie’s old bedroom. Posters for bands Doug had never heard of
adorned the walls still. On a shelf next to a plastic matador was The House at
Pooh Corner. He had picked it up and read a chapter out loud. Hoping for what? His
words fell dead in the room, there was nothing there.
As
if completing a chore he went through the ritual and lead the lad up to the light.
That done he checked the station again. The Lamp Room door leading up to the
helipad, closed but not barred. A note pinned to it saying they should radio
for medical support but that it was not an emergency. On his comfy chair, he
took one last look around and breathed in deeply; hoping, holding the image of
this place, he thought of Marie and of Ray and of Jamie; happy thoughts.
The
shot echoed round the stone walls of the circular room and then there was only
the wind and waves.
In
his dream Doug was on the bridge of a container ship. To his right were the Helmsman
and the Officer of the Watch. He had binoculars fixed to his eyes and through
the mist and rain he could see the lighthouse, his lighthouse. He could make
out his own self, a pale, rather sad face was in the window. It held up a small
square of paper to show him.
Sasmita
Dara, opened the door of her small home-office that her dad had let her set up
in the upper floor of her family’s combined house and workshop in Mumbai. A
place clean and ordered compared to the ever present dust and noise from the
press machines spitting out whatever parts her dad had contracted to supply
this week. She jumped as she spotted a body lying on the floor next to her
desk. The monitor screens lit it in a deathly pale hue. A man in a white shirt
with gold epaulettes, a head wound gaped and dripped black blood into nowhere.
She read the words and made the sign then got her dad to help her walk it down
to the furnace room. Positioning it in front of the door her dad levered it
open to bathe the man in its orange glow.
Doug
came to in his chair, the room was in darkness. He felt cosseted in a warm
cloud, relaxed and at peace, as if he had just been lifted from a warm bath and
wrapped in a fluffy towel. A smile played across his face, unlike any
expression that had made its home there in some years. He reached for the
envelope.
