The Keeper (17 page)

The presence in the room. The sudden other when she danced.

–
It’s the woman who is waiting for her children.

–
What woman?

–
Some keeper’s wife who went mad watching for her kids.

But Aletta knew instinctively that it was not the waiting that had sent Louisa Harker mad. It was something else. Some nothingness that would not be redressed. A distance that could not be traversed.

The lighthouse was beautiful, the handiwork exact, the small red dome so aptly chosen.

It had been put away before it was finished.

Had Louisa Harker stowed it in the cupboard in the tower in the way that Aletta – defeated – had withdrawn her things, removing herself, saying through her action what she could not say in words?

A great weariness. A closing-down.

–
You never speak of her.

No – nor had she spoken of herself. All she had done was leave this lighthouse behind. This small iconic relic of her vigilance, her skill and her attention.

It was the last vestige of herself. Her worth.

Aletta touched the dome with her finger, caressing it gently.

It was the only thing she, Aletta, had to give as well – this small imperfectly completed section on the west side of the tower. Her recognition of the other, her fingertips reaching out. A shared love. A shared grief.

She wrapped the tower gently and took it to the lighthouse. She climbed the stairs to the landing. She opened the cupboard, pulled the empty box from the floor, upended it and stood on it, lifting the model carefully to the shelf above. She made a space for it and slid it backwards to the wall. She tucked the shawl about it with the softest touch.

Then she leaned her head against the side of the cupboard and wept.

‘We left the island for the annual Lighthouse Conference in town soon after that,’ Hannes says. ‘Len stayed behind in charge. We were to be away only three days. When we came back, Maisie and Cecil would return with us. The tug that dropped us off would take Len away. Everything would be back to normal.’

Rika has brought him a cup of tea. It is raining quietly. The sound of water in the gutters of the wide red hospital roof is soothing: spring has come. Rika fetches a rug. He does not open it but rests it on his knee as if it were a shawl, touching it lightly with his long fingertips.

‘She only took a small suitcase, nothing else,’ he says. ‘All her things were on the island. All of them. But she took her dancing dresses. When I got back and opened the cupboard it was empty. Just the hangers on the rail. I can’t forget that. It was as if the most essential part of her was gone.’

‘When do you think she decided to leave?’

‘I don’t know. I was completely distracted from routine. We’d all been so preoccupied with the business of the stabbed convict and waiting for news to know if he’d died because, then, what was going to happen to Misklip?’ He trails off. ‘But the day we left she seemed composed. Not like Aletta at all – getting irritable and fussing about luggage and emptying the fridge and that sort of thing. She was actually very sweet, very quiet, very calm. She even asked me to take her to lunch when we got to port as if it was a date, a first night out together.’

He does not mention again the thing that is foremost in his mind.

That he had seen Aletta leave the lighthouse in the dark the night the convict, Witbooi, had nearly died. She had been to the lantern room where she had never been allowed.

And why?

Because Len Hendricks was there.

Dawn broke. Misklip was standing near the jetty when Aletta came down with her suitcase and her coat. He hovered anxiously, watching for others, watching for Hannes Harker. He darted forward, took her case from her, almost wresting it from her hands.

As he reached the jetty he put it down, fumbled, looked about again and then, pushing a very small parcel and a scrap of paper into her hands, he said, ‘
Mies Letta
.’ He had never called her that before.

She looked at him sharply.

‘
Ek’s jammer ek is so lastig, mies Letta
.’ He hesitated, glanced around, said in a lower voice, ‘
Kuier seblief vir my ma
.’

‘Your mother?’

‘
Seblief, mies Letta. Sê vir haar ek’s orraait.
Go and see her and tell her I am very sorry. She must pray for me. Every day –
hoor
?’ Briefly, he caught her eye, there and away – the salt brine from the sea wind. Or was it tears? ‘If the boy dies …’ The spout of lip bubbled and he wiped his nose with the sleeve of his old jersey. ‘
Sê net ek’s jammer
.’

‘He is all right, Misklip,’ Aletta said quietly. ‘The doctor said he will live. He’s getting better.’

‘He’s still in the hospital, so how can we know?
Die dood sluip rond soos ’n jakkals innie nag
…’

Death slinks about like a jackal in the night.

Aletta glanced at the scrap of paper. An address was written on it in an uneven hand. She put it in her handbag with the parcel. ‘I will go,’ she said.

‘
Ma’s baie, baie oud, mies Letta.
But if she still goes to church she must pray. There’s no church here.
Sê vir haar.
’ He looked at her a moment and he said again. ‘
Mies Letta.
’ A sadness. A knowing. It was as if he had touched her with his hand.

She could not even smile, only signal back her recognition.

He turned away then and went off with his hobble-step, hastily, the knitted cap askew on his head, his hand dashing at his face. He hurried round the side of his house. Aletta, watching, saw the old grey cat detach itself – a crooked shadow – and follow, tail held low.

She picked up her suitcase, went down to the steps and waited for the rowing boat. It had already taken a load of supplies to the tug. It was coming back. Riefaart and Len were in it, Len steering. Turning, she saw Hannes,
in full uniform, standing tall in the doorway of the lighthouse, the gleam of his cap white against the deeper gloom. She gazed at him, framed by the tower. The moment remained with her: a snapshot etched precisely by the sharp early light.

Len took her hand to guide her from the steps into the dipping boat. He glanced at her. ‘Going dancing, Letts?’

She did not reply.

‘Stay on shore and I’ll take you to the Sky Roof.’ A ribald wink.

She turned to beckon Hannes, ignoring Len. Nor did she glance at him as they came alongside the tug and he handed her the rope ladder. She simply said, very softly, ‘Leave Misklip alone, Len.’ Before he could react she added, ‘If you don’t, I’ll make sure you pay.’ Glancing up she caught Hannes’s eye. He had been watching them. She dropped her gaze, a flush at her neck, and climbed quickly, pulling herself over the low gunwale of the tug.

She went below and sat with her back to the metal plates, feeling the throbbing of the engine through her limbs as if it had taken her heartbeat and her breath.

It was a perfect day. No slap of waves, no wind, just the mewing of gulls as if they too were sweeping calmly through the stillness, borne up by an energy other than theirs. The tug wallowed gently, smelling of warm tar and diesel. As they nosed their way out to sea, the wake thick and creamy at the stern, Aletta leaned back, her eyes closed. She could hear Hannes talking to the tug master, the voices of the crew.

Behind, the island slipped away – flat, drab, the barb of the lighthouse dark against a pale sky. So desolate, so remote, as if no human being had ever lived there. Even her house, her room, her furniture, her prosaic daily possessions, her tasks, seemed to drift from memory into the sea as if there was nothing she could do to rescue them.

She did not want to rescue them.

She wanted to let them spin away in the slipstream of the tug, sucked down to nothingness on a running tide.

Only when they neared the port – hours later – did Aletta stir. She came up to stand beside the rail and watch the cityscape and the harbour cranes, like steel giraffes, stately and tall, a slow unhurried minuet above the busy quays.

They took a bus from the harbour entrance up to the lighthouse on The Hill. There they left their luggage and had a hasty tea with the keeper and his wife, declining food. Hannes had promised Aletta as they stepped down on to the quay, ‘Of course I will take you for lunch,
liefie
.’

‘And we’ll have wine.’

He had laughed. ‘And we’ll have wine.’ He crinkled his eyes, touched her nose affectionately with the tip of a finger. ‘Where shall we go?’

‘The Edward Hotel,’ she said. ‘I want to sit among all those pot plants and palms and things and taste everything on the menu from the soup to the cheese. Except not the fish. I will never eat a piece of fish again.’

He laughed. ‘Well then you’ll have to start eating penguin eggs and wild spinach, or you’ll starve.’

She half smiled – a wry little twist of the mouth – and took her lipstick from her bag. She drew a bow of pink, compressed her lips and dabbed the corners with a tissue. ‘There,’ she said.

And so they crossed the grass from the tall white lighthouse on The Hill, walking in the sunlight above the serried row of old terrace houses that climbed the slope. Aletta stopped and looked back at the white hexagonal tower, capped with its bright red dome. It was like a picture from a children’s book. ‘Funny how different this lighthouse is from yours,’ she said.

‘No two are ever alike in any way,’ Hannes said.

‘Why is that? They have the same function?’

‘So do women – and they’re never the same.’ He said it lightly, teasing her.

She did not smile. ‘Is the lighthouse a woman? And a woman just a “function”?’

Hannes brushed the remark aside. ‘Come on, Aletta, we’ll be late and the dining room will close.’

But, to Aletta, it was as if those great double doors that guarded the entrance to the lighthouse tower on the island had finally closed against her.

Irrevocably.

She turned along the pavement beside him, entering the vestibule of the old hotel, going into the dimness of the courtyard, a green conservatory. She shifted her handbag on her arm, pulled her shoulders straight, followed Hannes into the lounge. Someone was playing a piano, very softly. The carpet was thick. The potted palms drooped a little in the stuffy interior. She felt as if she had boarded an ocean liner.

They were shown into the dining room by a waiter and seated at a table in a corner. Hannes drew out her chair and placed his cap beneath his own. He took up the menu card and looked at it.

‘Wine?’ he said.

Aletta nodded.

He requested a bottle of white. He ordered the first course on the menu for them both. Tomato soup. He smiled at Aletta and she smiled back mechanically. Then she averted her face. Her eyes followed the pattern of the carpet as they waited in silence for the food.

Yes, she thought – the lighthouse is a woman.

Aletta opened the bag in her lap and snapped it shut again.

A mistress. An opiate. And an obsession. With a function – like her.

How could love, with all its frail wants and fears, compete?

‘I went to the meeting the next morning,’ says Hannes to Rika. ‘The Lighthouse Association. The conference was at the harbour, in their offices. The Port Captain was our host. There was a speaker from Sweden. A chap who was an expert in repairing lenses and improving designs. I loved it, sitting there with all those men who worked alongside me in different lights. We knew each other well – some from the time we were children, even. It’s a family – or perhaps, more like the company of a big ship. Everyone a sailor, everyone knows his work, everyone loves his ship.’ He smiles ruefully. ‘It’s not the same any more. The ships are scuttled, the lights abandoned, the keepers have no work. It’s all mechanical.’

‘Surely some of you are still at lighthouses.’

‘Oh yes, some of us, but it’s like being part of a fleet with an escort of ghost ships.’

Still the rain is falling and a grey and pewter swathe of cloud lies low above the sea.

‘Cecil came into town for the meeting. He and Maisie had been holidaying with their son on a farm, surrounded by grandchildren. Maisie wanted to shop before we all went back to the lighthouse together. She was hoping Aletta would help her choose fabric for new curtains for the keepers’ houses. She thought Aletta would enjoy doing it, a project they could share. She planned to get Aletta to help her make curtains and cushions and bedspreads and things. I gave Aletta enough money to cover it and to buy some clothes for herself. A little treat. Not so much – but a lot more than we could afford.’ He hesitates. ‘I wish she’d asked for more.’

‘Did she go with Maisie?’

‘Dear old Maisie!’ Hannes smiles. ‘You will have noticed – she always tries to keep people jolly, even when she sees they’re drowning. If it hadn’t been for her, I would never have understood.’

‘We’ve got the whole morning and we can take the bus down to town, Aletta,’ Maisie said. ‘And let’s have tea at Garlicks and look at the mannequins and then we can go down Main Street into all the shops. I want to show you Pudney’s. Man, they have some interesting things in there. Very different. I know you will like the tablecloths. Even if we only look.’

Aletta had no way of refusing. She wanted to go to the Building Society and deposit the money Hannes had given her. She knew she could not spend a penny of it then. It was all she had against the needs of the weeks to come.

Until she found a job.

And could she find a job?

She had done no one’s hair for nearly two years – except her own in the guano-stinking salty brine of the island, once every ten days, as if it were a baptism.

Nor did she wish to chat.

And certainly, she did not want to choose material for curtains for her house.

Her house?

Her house did not exist.

Maisie chivvied her gently to set out on their expedition. Aletta hardly heard what Maisie said.

Tinkling tea, a battered silver-plated pot and milk jug on the starched white cloth; the oval sugar dish with the name of the shop. Scones and cream. A small dish of raspberry jam with a silver spoon, and a bowl of whipped cream, sweetened with sugar and vanilla.

‘When I came off the island a few weeks ago,’ said Maisie, ‘I ate like a monster! Really, all those things you never taste. Cake and steak and ice cream. Man, I went with my daughter-in-law to buy carrots and beans and new potatoes at the market and a whole pocket of Grahamstown squash. Have you ever tried those with a poached egg in the middle and Worcestershire sauce?’

Aletta shook her head.

Maisie poured the tea and helped herself to jam as if she was making up for lost time. ‘And fresh bread!’ she exclaimed. ‘You know my kids used to get hold of a loaf when we came on shore and eat out the middle till there was nothing left. And then they used to put butter on the crust and sprinkle brown sugar all over it and eat that too.’ Her cheeks quivered with remembrance and a dab of cream hovered at the side of her lip. She mopped it away with her napkin. ‘You know, living on that island really makes you appreciate what the Lord gives you, Aletta. Otherwise you might just take it for granted.’