The Keeper (14 page)

She went through to the bedroom and brushed her hair. It hung limp. Limp – always limp from the salt and the sea air and the briny water. She pulled it back into a ponytail. She selected a lipstick and carefully painted her mouth. She inspected her teeth. She combed her lashes, spitting on the little brush and rubbing it into the cake of black, snapping the compact closed when she had done. She pulled her turquoise angora cardigan from the cupboard and put it on, sneezing. She wiped her nose and went in search of a cigarette.

Len.

The boy with a face like a young dog, a slightly canine smile – those eye teeth? Those prominent eyes, a tinge of yellow in their depths. He was muscular, eager – and predatory.

He had smelled good. She remembered that.

Glancing from the kitchen window Aletta saw him walking up the path with Hannes, carrying his suitcase, his jacket slung on his arm. Stocky, with those ball-nudging thighs, he walked with the roll of a sailor. Hannes loped beside him – rangier, so much taller, grey. He had Len’s fishing rods over his shoulder.

They seemed a different generation.

Behind, Misklip followed with a wheelbarrow. She could not see what was in it. She went back to the lounge and stood looking out at the sea.

She lit another cigarette.

She heard the footsteps cross the linoleum in the kitchen, waited for the lift and flap as the wind blew in under the opening door.

‘Hello, Aletta,’ said Len, coming towards her, putting out his hand.

He was just the same. Only thicker. Somehow coarser. His dark hair was clipped into a crew cut. He wore a gold chain at the neck of his open shirt. Hannes would not approve of his arriving on the island in his civvies.

‘Len.’

‘I brought you a cake,’ he said. ‘I got it just as I was leaving.’ He laughed – slightly high, slightly tense. ‘It has
Happy Birthday
on it but I hope you won’t mind. It was big so I took it. No one had come to collect it so it was going cheap.’

‘Thank you,’ she said.

Misklip was standing on the back porch with the wheelbarrow. Aletta slipped past Len and Hannes and went to him, bustling a little, without her usual grace.

Misklip smiled, touched his forelock. ‘
Mevrou.’

There was a box of groceries in the barrow and a sack of oranges and a large cardboard carton. The lid had slipped. Inside, squatting stiffly, impervious to jolting, a cake, iced in pink with
Happy Birthday
written in yellow, scattered with chocolate vermicelli. Misklip eyed it inquisitively.

Aletta took it from him and put it on the kitchen table. He followed her movements, resting his gaze on the great confection in its box. Then he turned and unloaded the rest of the contents of the barrow, tipping his forelock again before he went away.

Aletta made tea and carried the pot and milk jug through to the trolley in the lounge. She swept the net from the cups and let it fall on a chair. She went back to the kitchen to collect the cake. It was as light and dry as cardboard.

Len was standing by the window with Hannes. Hannes had his hands behind his back, rocking slightly. Grey beard, pale distant eyes.

She knew that stance. He had removed himself.

‘So, where
are
the best fishing spots, Mr Harker?’

Hannes did not invite familiarity.

‘Depends on what you want to catch.’

‘I know Mr Beukes got a lot of record fish from here.’

‘Yes. He’s a good fisherman,’

‘I want a crack at a big blue.’

‘You’ll need a boat.’ Hannes did not offer the motorboat.

‘Hope there’ll be a chance.’ Len reached into the pocket of his jacket, pulled out a monogrammed cigarette case. He offered it to Hannes.

‘I don’t smoke.’

He turned to Aletta. ‘Not now,’ she said and busied herself with the tea.

She cut the cake. The slices came out neat, dry and layered in white, pink and pale green. ‘Thank you for this.’ She gestured with the knife.

‘I remember you like cake. You can have the cherry in the middle,’ said Len – a faint insinuating smile.

She jerked the trolley closer so that the cups rattled perilously.

‘Caught any sharks lately?’ Len said, turning back to Hannes.

‘No.’ Hannes was brisk. ‘I have other things to do.’

Len ate his cake, licking the icing off his spoon.

That familiar turn of his mouth, a dog nosing. He looked across at Aletta. She looked back until he dropped his gaze, reached for his cigarettes and clattered his teaspoon on his plate.

She smiled then. A small triumph.

Oh, how small.

She said in the silence, ‘You came at short notice. Aren’t you married?’

‘Divorced,’ he replied. ‘With four kids.’

A heartbeat of silence, then Aletta said, ‘Four?’

‘Leonard, Clifford, Raelene and Cheryl.’

Aletta took a sip of tea. It scalded her.

‘They all
pikkies
still. They at school in Kirkwood. That’s where their mom lives now.’

‘She wasn’t lighthouse?’ Hannes said.

‘God, no!’ Len snorted. ‘Spare me lighthouse.’

Aletta was in the old keeper’s cottage dressed in her dancing shoes, her stiff petticoats clasped at the waist by a wide elastic belt. She was sweating. It was hot and close inside. She longed to open a window but on a day like this, even the music – at full volume – would not sweep away the wind’s constant, angry carping, slinging grit against the walls, the bedlam of the birds.

Len came in without knocking. ‘Where’s Hannes?’ he said.

‘Asleep,’ said Aletta, placing a record on the turntable, cranking the handle, flipping the arm across and lowering it to the start.

‘What are you doing?’

‘What does it look like?’ She stood with her hands on her hips.

The music began to play.

‘Can I dance with you?’ said Len, closing the door with his foot.

‘No.’

‘Well, it’s not much use trying to do the cha-cha on your own.’

‘I am not doing it on my own,’ said Aletta. ‘Thank you.’

‘Jeez, Aletta,’ he said. ‘Are you spooked or something? We’ll be hauling you off to the funny farm soon like all the other wives who have lived here. They all go mad in the end. Did you know that?’

‘Aunty Maisie lives here. She isn’t mad.’

‘Silly old bitch.’

Aletta laughed, despite herself. ‘Get out, Len,’ she said, turning her back.

‘You used to be fun, Aletta. Why you got so old?’ He came towards her. ‘You got no one else to dance with – dance with me.’

‘I hate you, Len,’ Aletta said.

‘I know that,’ said Len. ‘But you’ll still dance with me. Because you
want
someone to dance with.’

Aletta stood looking at him, alert and torn, scorning herself. Then she said, ‘I’m not that desperate,’ and she turned back to the gramophone and studiously looked through the records, chose something else and put it on the turntable.

Some old crooner.

‘No, man, Letts – not that!’ Len said.

‘
Don’t
call me Letts!’

‘What about Elvis!’

‘I’m not at a session.’

He swept the arm from the turntable and the needle skidded. He sifted through the pile of singles. ‘Don’t Be Cruel’. He said, ‘Sounds the right one.’

‘Who’s talking?’ Aletta said.

She reached across and took it from him, put it back on the pile and said, ‘Please go.’

After that, she shut the door very firmly but it did not help. She was alert all the time to the possible footfall in the passage. Len, bulky, muscled, leaning against the door frame watching her. That same half-sulky smile. The wheedling. ‘Come on, Letts.’

‘Go away.’

It seemed to be the phrase she used the most.

–
Go away.

To everyone, to everything. Even to Hannes.

She wished – more specifically – she could ask him to
take
her away. Away from here. Back to their old life. Not rescue her. No – Aletta would never admit to wanting rescue. Even now.

Despite what Maisie might have said to Hannes all those years ago.

‘If only I had known,’ Hannes says, leaning on the parapet of the veranda, his hands loosely clasped, Rika standing beside him, looking down into the garden below. ‘Perhaps I could have rescued her.’ He turns and looks at Rika. ‘Now, I can’t even find her.’

‘Rescued her from what?’ Rika says.

‘From Len.’

‘Why Len?’

‘It’s self-evident.’

‘Funny,’ Rika says. ‘I don’t think she needed rescuing from Len.’

‘From what then?’

‘From the lighthouse.’

‘Sorry, Sister.’ A sudden formality and distance. Closing off, pulling himself into his official stance. Hands behind his back. ‘It’s the only life she knew.’

‘Still.’ She inclines her head. ‘Her going seems no different from your brother Fred’s.’

‘Fred hated the lighthouse.’

‘Of course,’ Rika looks across at him. ‘So does she.’

‘She has no reason to.’

‘Are you sure of that?’

‘I love Aletta.’

‘And you love your lighthouse more.’

It was Len who told Aletta about the ghost. One morning, coming off duty from the light, he appeared at the door of the old keeper’s quarters again, walking stealthily down the passage into the gloom from the brightness outside, following the sound of the music. He watched her in silence for a while. Then, in mid-step, Aletta turned and saw him. She gave a little scream.

‘Did you think I was the ghost?’ he said.

‘
Ag
bullshit, Len,’ she said crossly. ‘What ghost?’

He came across the room and helped himself to a cigarette from the open box beside the gramophone. He lit it and blew through his nostrils. ‘Didn’t they tell you when you came here that these quarters are haunted?’

‘Crap, man.’

‘It’s not crap. Why do you think no one lives here?’

‘Because there are newer houses with proper bathrooms and it’s needed for storage.’

‘Whenever I come in here for anything I feel like something walked over my grave.’

Aletta lifted the arm from the gramophone and reached for a cigarette.

‘It’s like someone is watching and they don’t like me being here,’ he said.

‘Not surprising,’ retorted Aletta. ‘The only things that are watching are the bloody mice that run around the place.’

‘It’s the woman who is waiting for her children,’ he said.

‘What woman?’

‘Some keeper’s wife who went mad waiting for her kids.’

Aletta stood poised, her breath short. Then she turned on him. ‘Get out, Len. I’m dancing.’

‘I’ll dance with you.’

‘Get out!’

‘Why you such a bloody bitch, Aletta?’

‘Don’t you swear at me!’ she shouted.

He rolled the cigarette along his lower lip. It drooped at the corner of his mouth. ‘I swear at you because I love you,’ he said ironically.

And then he laughed.

Aletta, leaning against the frame of the open bathroom door, her arms folded, said to Hannes while he was shaving, ‘Len says there’s a ghost in the old keeper’s quarters.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Hannes snorted, nicking his chin. ‘Len’s an arsehole. And there isn’t one stupid person on this island who hasn’t seen a ghost – ask Misklip and all the rest.’

‘Have you ever seen one?’

‘Of course not!’ He took up a towel and rubbed his face. ‘
You
are not stupid,’ he said. ‘Are you? Don’t make me change my mind.’

He turned back to the basin.

‘He says it’s a woman. Some keeper’s wife who went mad.’

‘Rubbish,’ he said evenly. He dropped his shaving mug in the basin and it broke. Nor did he swear. He simply stood and looked at it, his back to her, willing her to go.

‘Is it your mother?’

He turned on her, his arm suddenly raised. He had never lifted a hand to her before. ‘Get out, Aletta.’

She backed, startled. And afraid. She went away, closing the door behind her. She went outside and stood in the lee of the yard wall in a shard of sunlight. She felt immobilised, like one of the gannets that sometimes flew head-long into the armoured glass of the lantern room, blinded by the light, and tumbled – feather, bone and broken beak – on to the shale below.

–
You never speak of her.

–
There is nothing to say.

Nothing to say: about his mother, about anything. Hannes – tense, passionate, commanding, tender, reliable Hannes – suddenly so grim, pinioned by that great machine.

–
You may not come here, Aletta. People fall.

She – so deft, so poised: he knew she would not fall.

Quite simply, he did not want her there.

In other lighthouses – steeper still – she had often skipped up the stairs with a flask of soup for Hannes when he was on duty, sunbathed on the catwalk in the nude at noon, limbered up at the highest rail outside the lantern house, so light, so aerial, a wind could have whipped her away. How often she had spun through the door into the chamber, daring him – always daring him – to leave his task. Laughing and wanton – knowing he would not resist.

Defiantly Aletta returned to her dancing room in the old keeper’s cottage,
leaving Hannes to clean up the fragments of his shaving mug lying in the tepid water of the cast-iron basin. She stood in the empty space, the old machines and generator parts hunched against the walls, the opalescent light sifting in through the deep-buried windows, and wound her gramophone. She slipped on her dancing shoes.

At her most provocative, her most acerbic, a flashing thing – Aletta danced.

‘If you are there and watching me,’ she said aloud, ‘just know I don’t believe in you!’

The staccato of her shoes sent up motes of dust. A pigeon feather drifted in an eddy – and sank unnoticed to the floor.

Len rarely bothered them at mealtimes. He used the Beukes’ spare room and seemed to live on baked beans and bully beef. Occasionally he brought them a fish. His offerings – reluctantly accepted – were surprisingly rare, despite all the time he was spending off duty out in a boat.

Not the keepers’ motorboat – the smaller boat without a name. He had, it seemed, some arrangement with the guano workers. Aletta had seen Misklip washing it out after one of Len’s fishing trips, swabbing the interior.

‘You can use our boat.’ Hannes had relented at last. ‘It’s not a great idea to get too involved with the guano workers.’

‘No sweat,’ said Len. ‘They like the fish.’

‘Sets a precedent.’

Len had shrugged. ‘If you say so.’

Len Hendricks was down on the rocks with his rod.

Aletta could see him from the window of the house. Standing in her gown and slippers, a cup of tepid coffee in her hand, her early-morning cigarette already drifting smoke into her hair, she watched his silhouette against a lazy sea. He stood for a long time as if he was deciding on a point from which to fish and then he laid his rod down and went behind a rock.

Having a pee, Aletta thought.

He was not having a pee. He emerged at the other side and there – so still she had not noticed him – was Misklip. They stood talking and Misklip was pointing along the rocks.

Then Len opened his fishing bag and extracted something from it. It was too far away for her to see what he handed to Misklip. Misklip glanced around and then he touched his woollen cap and shuffled off, hoop-legged, bobbing rabbit-like against the shore. Len retrieved his rod, walked down on to a spit of rock and cast his line, not looking back.

On impulse, Aletta discarded her gown on the floor, pulled on her trousers and a jersey and thrust her feet into her tackies. She fetched a jacket from a
peg in the hall, scooped up her shell-collecting bag and went outside.

She needed to know what Len and Misklip were up to.

She hurried towards the jetty and the workers’ houses.

Misklip was cooking a large pot full of mealie meal over a fire outside the guano shed.

‘Why are you cooking so much?’ Aletta asked, coming upon him suddenly so that he started.

‘The people will be here tomorrow,
mevrou,
’ he said. ‘All the
skelms
and the
tsotsis
from the jail in North End. They send them here,’ he cast a ribald eye up into the sky and down again, fixing his gaze on her, ‘
vir ’n vakansie
!’ A confidential hiss and cackle. ‘And three policemen!’ He held up the three last fingers, counting them off.

Aletta could smell the drink. Brandy? Fortified wine?

‘
Dis ’n vakansie oord dié
!’ A holiday resort! ‘And the police that come with them, they sit there and play cards at night.
En hulle drink brandewyn! Elke aand
!’

He clapped his hand across his mouth, widening his eyes. He cocked his head, licked his lips, swayed slightly in his too-big boots, his cap awry. ‘If there wasn’t so many sharks in the sea just out there,’ and he pointed, jabbing his finger, ‘those
skelms
would try to swim for it while those police are busy with their brandy!
Maar phhhst
?’ And he struck his palm past his mouth. ‘
Die haaie sal hulle opvreet soos ’n borreltjie bokkems.
’ They’d be eaten like sardines. ‘Did you hear about the shark that swallowed the boat?
Hy’s nog daar!
Riefaart has seen him! He’s a hundred years old and bigger than a chokka boat!’

Aletta laughed.

‘’S’true!’ he said, peering at her sideways. He picked up his ladle and continued to stir.

Aletta handed him a cigarette. He took it gingerly, bent down to take a glowing twig from the fire. ‘Misklip,’ Aletta said, ‘you must be careful of Mr Hendricks, do you see?’

Misklip recoiled, catching his arm on the edge of the pot and singeing it. He held it against himself, the tears starting to his eyes.

‘Sharks don’t just live in the sea,
hoor jy
?’ She raised a finger.

She went away then, walking deliberately along the shore path at the margin of the gannetry towards the spot where she had seen Len fishing. Beyond, circled by a low neap tide, girded to the east by a treacherous channel, was the hulk of a tug long stranded on a reef. She had always hated this spot – the stink of rotting seaweed, the sudden dashing of the water in the gullies, the scarecrow tug: a wartime casualty, its grim carapace hunched above the waves.