The Keeper (19 page)

‘Clearly you do.’

‘My lighthouse cannot be neglected. It would know.’ He laughs, almost sheepish, wanting her to think that he is joking.

‘I believe you.’

‘Anyway, the Chief Engineer had a drink with me after one of the sessions and he offered me a coastal inspectorate. It would have meant moving to town, leaving Aletta for weeks on end.’

–
You had left her anyway
. But Rika does not say it.

‘The funny thing is – my first reaction was, I never want to leave the island. It’s home. I think I was non-committal even though, in a way, it was a feather in my cap. He suddenly asked me how my wife was managing. I told him she had her hobby – she was a dancer. It kept her busy and fit. “And who does she dance with?” he said. I thought he was being funny but he wasn’t. I said she danced by herself and he looked at me and he said, “If your wife’s unhappy you’d better think very carefully about staying.” Then he said, “Harker, you’re my senior man. Don’t let your wife ruin your career. Wives often do, you know. Especially in this business. You have to make a choice.” ’

‘And did you?’

‘It was she who made the choice.’

‘What choice?’ says Rika.

‘Len.’

Rika is silent. Then she says, ‘Did she go off with him?’

‘So it seemed.’

‘Seemed?’

‘It was her decision.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I was supposed to meet her and Maisie and Cecil at the harbour after the conference. I was tied up with another meeting and they were to bring the luggage down from the hotel together. Maisie and Cecil waited for her but she didn’t come. We couldn’t miss the boat and the weather was closing in. We simply had to get back to the island. So Cecil and Maisie came to the harbour by themselves. Aletta phoned the Port Captain and asked to speak to me but I hadn’t arrived yet so she spoke to Maisie instead. She said she wasn’t coming back with us. I had no idea where to find her. She wrote later. The letter came with the next boat. She said she was going to be a cabaret dancer and that I should write to her at poste restante.’

Maisie and Cecil were waiting at the harbour in the Port Captain’s Office. The luggage was stacked around them: Maisie’s boxes, her suitcases, a pocket of oranges, another of Grahamstown squash. ‘Mind the eggs, Cecil. Cecil!’ – fluttering at him anxiously with her hands. ‘The eggs, Cecil!’

Cecil almost dislodged the boxes from the perilous stack with the epaulette of his uniform. ‘Sorry, lovey.’

They looked at each other glumly. ‘Oh God,’ said Maisie. ‘What am I going to say?’

Hannes arrived. ‘Hello, Aunty Maisie!’ He was cheerful, smart, flush with a rare bonhomie from having seen his colleagues and his friends. ‘My! Are we going to sink the tug?’ And he scanned the luggage and laughed. ‘Where’s Aletta?’

‘Hannes.’ Maisie’s face was sweating. Cecil stood grave, turning his hat in his hands. ‘She didn’t come shopping with me for the curtains, she said there was some old lady she needed to see. She was so cagey about it, I didn’t pry. You know Aletta, Hannes – she’s very touchy. I didn’t want to argue with her.’

‘Old lady?’

Maisie nodded.

‘Aletta’s never asked to visit an old lady in her life! What are you hiding from me?’

‘Nothing,’ said Maisie. ‘Only she was very odd at tea. She wouldn’t eat anything. And there were such lovely scones and cream and things …’ She trailed off.

‘Aletta never eats,’ said Hannes abruptly. He glanced around. ‘Where’s her luggage?’

‘She left yours at the hotel with our stuff. But when I went there early this afternoon, hers was gone.’ Maisie dabbed at her cheeks with a tissue. ‘Then
she phoned the Port Captain about half an hour ago and asked for you. I spoke to her instead.’ She faltered. ‘She said, “Aunty Maisie, I am not coming back with you. Please tell Hannes. Tell him I will be all right.” ’

‘God Almighty!’ Hannes picked up his hat and started for the door, wrenching it open, then turned back ashen-faced. ‘I’m going to find her.’

Maisie and Cecil gazed at him silently.

–
Never leave the light.

As the Port Captain hurried into the room, he almost collided with him. ‘Ready, folks?’ he said.

Hannes stood quite still, pulling himself straight.

He put his cap on his head, dragged the peak square, looked at Cecil and said quietly, ‘I’ll kill him first.’

‘Len left the island on the tug that brought us back that night,’ Hannes says. ‘And he seemed to know she’d gone.’ It is difficult for him to speak. A sort of ignominy which he hates to own. Rika listens without comment. ‘When I went to find Aletta on my first shore leave – it was two months later – I had no idea where to start looking. The only link was Len. I phoned Head Office for his number. They said he’d left the Service. They had no forwarding address. I left money for her at the poste restante. Every time the tug came I sent another cheque. They were never cashed. I simply had to wait for her to contact me – but she hasn’t. She has disappeared.’

‘Like your brother Fred?’

‘Like anyone who has ever been important to me.’

‘I think it’s time to find them.’

‘If they had wanted to be found, they’d have come to me.’

‘And perhaps if you’d wanted them to come you’d have found a way to tell them. It works both ways.’

‘Len took her,’ Hannes says emphatically. ‘People always go away to other people.’

‘Did you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You left her first.’

He stares at her, angry now. ‘For who?’

‘For what!’ Rika says, rising. ‘It’s late, Mr Harker. And I’m on duty.’

She goes quietly through the door and across the darkened ward.

The motorboat nosed towards the jetty. It was a calm night. Behind them, the tug, a quarter of a mile out to sea, rested peacefully on the swell, its strings of lights reflected in the dark water. The wind that had met them at the harbour bar as they started out had abated. There were lanterns on the jetty. Riefaart was there and Misklip and a few of the permanent workers.

The convicts had gone. It was as if they too had fled from Witbooi’s laugh.

Len stood in his uniform with his luggage at his feet. His fishing gear was lying on the jetty. Hannes, as the motorboat approached, saw the point of his lighted cigarette.

He wished he had the shark hook in his hand. He could have gutted Len as Misklip had gutted the boy. Only deeper. With more precision and less fear.

Cecil stood beside him, saying nothing. Maisie sat hunched in the motorboat, shielding her face from the bow-spray, the pocket of squash on her lap. The boat slowed and swung round. Riefaart reached down to catch the rope and secure it. The light swept the island, illuminating the little group heaving boxes and cases. Maisie was handed up the steps, Cecil steadying her.

Hannes did not look at Len standing on the jetty above him.

Cecil said, ‘Everything all right here, Hendricks?’

Len replied, ‘I have left a written report and the logbook is complete. They are in the watch room.’

As Hannes reached the top of the steps Len picked up his kitbag and slung it into the boat. Riefaart caught it and stowed it in the bow. Misklip, in the shadows, took up the rods and handed them down.

‘Deal with this,’ Hannes said to Cecil, gesturing at the luggage.

‘Steady, Hannes,’ Cecil said quietly.

Hannes turned to Len, led him a few paces off. ‘Aletta stayed behind. Can you tell me why?’

‘So I see,’ said Len. He did not look directly at Hannes. ‘Funny, I thought she would.’

‘Do you know where she might be?’

‘She’s not
my
wife,’ Len retorted, putting up his hands and backing away, feeling the upsurge of rage in the other man. ‘It’s not my business.’

‘Make bloody sure it never is.’

‘Are you threatening me?’

‘Hannes …’ Cecil’s steady, warning voice.

In the act of reaching for Len, Hannes suddenly subsided, turned away. ‘You’re not worth knocking down,’ he said.

Len slipped past him, hurried down to the boat, his swagger gone. He climbed in quickly. But as he pushed off into the channel, secure in the distance between him and the man standing on the jetty, he shouted, ‘Perhaps you should have learnt to dance, Harker. I’m thinking of taking lessons myself. Maybe, now, Letts will teach me.’

And he surged the outboard into life.

Aletta stood with her suitcase at a bus stop in the middle of town. She had gone into a telephone booth and rifled the pages of the directory.

She had no idea who to call.

There was no one she
could
call. Except people in a lighthouse.

She looked up the telephone number of the YWCA, wondering as she stood there, her suitcase jammed in the doorway of the booth, if they would consider her young enough, if she would have to state her beliefs, if they would ask her questions.

She put the phone down before anyone answered it.

She would not tolerate questions.

She crossed the road at the lights and walked down towards the harbour entrance. She remembered vaguely an old hotel, a place where sailors picked up girls. Well, if what Len thought of her was anything to go by, it was good enough for her.

She found it in Jetty Street.

She booked the cheapest room, followed a shabby waiter down a corridor. It smelt of red polish and Brussels sprouts. The fellow unlocked the door, handed her the key and walked away, not expecting a tip.

Nor had she any to give him: she would have to find a job – and fast.

There was a single bed with a shabby striped cover, an ashtray on an occasional
table and a Gideon’s Bible on the pedestal. The curtain had come adrift from the rail and looped down, giving a view of the sewerage pipes of the adjoining building.

Aletta looked about her, dismayed.

She listened, alert to every sound: the traffic in the street, the knocking of the water pipes, a door swinging on its hinges somewhere in a corridor above her head. But something was missing. Something essential. She stood quite still in the silence of the room, panic rising. Then she said aloud, ‘The gannets have stopped shrieking.’

She opened her bag and fumbled for her box of cigarettes. She dropped them and they scattered on the floor. She took one up and lit it. She closed her eyes against the smoke, a sob forming.

For months, years – a lifetime – the gannets had been crying in her head: as relentless as the sea and the pounding of the waves. Now they had gone.

It was not a relief. It was terrifying.

Hannes went straight to the lighthouse. He left his suitcase in the vestibule and climbed the stairs. He scaled the ladder. He pulled himself into the lantern room. He walked around the great flashing lens resting in its mercury bath.

He listened to the heartbeat.

He did not go back to the house that night.

It was only in the morning when Cecil came to find him that he retreated.

‘Go and have a sleep, Hannes,’ Cecil said. ‘It will do you good. I lit the stove for you. Maisie has put some breakfast in the warming oven.’

‘Thank you,’ Hannes said, his voice hoarse as if a silence had come over him and robbed him of it.

He could not eat the breakfast though he tried. Nor could he unpack his case. His pyjamas were in there, needing a wash. The last time he had worn them he had lain beside her in the hotel bed. The last time he had shrugged that shirt off, he had shrugged it off to shower, talking to her from the cubicle about the day’s events, what so-and-so had said about the automation of the lights, whether a lighthouse should be built at such-and-such a place, who was likely for promotion. What the Chief Lighthouse Engineer had told them about the effects of mercury on keepers.

‘I wonder if it was mercury that really killed my father?’ he had said.

‘I think it was the thing that killed your mother,’ she’d replied.

‘You’re not listening, Aletta. I said my father.’

‘I heard you,’ she had said, very quietly. She had been sitting in a chair by the hotel bedroom window with her legs drawn up – just as she had so often sat in the darkened bedroom of their house all those months before, the smoke from her cigarette drifting round her.

Hannes went into the bedroom and looked at the bed. Aletta’s nail file and her varnish stood on the table. The ring from her early-morning coffee cup was still sticky on its surface. He opened the cupboard. Most of her clothes were there – her windcheaters and her jerseys, her trousers and her skirts.

Her lingerie was gone.

And her dancing dresses.

–
Perhaps you should have learnt to dance, Harker. I’m thinking of taking lessons myself. Maybe, now, Letts will teach me.

Nothing could be clearer. She had gone and Len had followed.

–
Oh, Aletta.

Aletta bought a newspaper and methodically set about the task of finding a job. She counted out her money, rationed her cigarettes, forbade herself even the cheapest bottle of wine and avoided the dining room.

The first time she had appeared there she had been accosted.

‘Get lost.’ The venom with which she’d said it left the hearer in no doubt.

After that she often went to a tea room to scan the smalls in the paper, drink a slow cup of coffee and eat a slice of toast. It was all she could afford until she had a job.

She found one in a department store. The cosmetic counter. A well-known brand. The manageress in her prim black costume with a white collar and pencilled eyebrows had looked her over.

She would do: when she was made up and her hair had been styled she would be very striking. She had an extraordinary figure. Beautiful legs. Perhaps a bit provocative – but that didn’t matter. It was all to the good.

‘What is your age, dear?’ the woman asked discreetly.

‘Thirty-seven.’

‘You carry it very well’ – some doubt, the slightest touch of patronage. ‘Do you have children?’ Scrutinising her – her small waist, her firm hips. No, surely not.

‘I am not married,’ Aletta said.

The woman glanced at her left hand. Aletta still wore her wedding ring.

An eyebrow raised.

Aletta bridled. She hated patronage. ‘That?’ She glanced at the ring. ‘It will not be a problem,’ she said with a touch of sarcasm. ‘My husband is in an asylum. He suffers from mercury poisoning. He will not be bothering me. He is not my responsibility.’

For a moment she knew she had gone too far. The woman recoiled, began to say, ‘Well perhaps if you come back in a week …’

‘I am good at my job. And I need this one.’

The woman hesitated, scanned her face.

Aletta took out a tissue and dabbed gently at her eyes.

‘Oh, my dear,’ said the woman. ‘I am so sorry. It must be awful to be in your situation.’

‘It’s not catching,’ Aletta sniffed. ‘The mercury poisoning, I mean.’

‘I wonder if we could take a little time …’

‘I am also a trained hairdresser,’ Aletta said. ‘And I was a dancer. I’m good with stage make-up too. I have references.’

Which was a lie.

But Aletta was always more relentless than her opponents: she pushed the advantage home.

She was taken on a month’s trial.

She began the next day.

She left the hotel and found a room at a weekly rate in a boarding house in a side street up the hill. It had a view of the harbour and the sea.

At work, she was a triumph from the start.

‘I searched for her as best I could,’ Hannes says. ‘It was extraordinarily difficult with radio contact only once a day, island to shore. I could hardly talk about my problems to the Port Captain. I decided – knowing Aletta – that she would do what she wanted. If she chose to, she’d contact me. If she didn’t, what use was there in forcing her? I suppose I knew that she had gone with him. Len. That was very clear. Instinct is a funny thing. When you live so much alone as we do on the island, it becomes acute.’

‘And our imaginations, under stress, make demons where demons never were,’ says Rika evenly.

‘I used to stand on the jetty the first few weeks and watch for the tug, hoping every time it came that she’d be in it. And when it didn’t come because of the weather I was frantic, knowing she would take it as a sign.’

‘Just like your mother.’

‘Just like my mother.’

–
Help me, God.

‘What did you do?’

‘I just got on with it. Maisie was a brick, though. She did the housework for me. She mended clothes. She chivvied me. She made me laugh. She was infinitely kind. But Maisie doesn’t like Aletta and Maisie wasn’t there in the middle of the night.’

Nor does he tell Rika of the thoughts he had, sitting through the long graveyard watch in the lighthouse with only the beam and the vast black sea: that panoply of possibilities. Aletta and Len resurrecting their early adolescent explorations.

Adults now – quite without the innocence of youth. Its freshness and innate reserve.

Such imaginings drove him mad.

He wondered if he hated her.

‘So I took to books. I ordered them from shore. History, biography, poetry, engineering. They came with the tug in place of Aletta. I wrote to the people at the museum and asked them to send me copies of everything they had on the history of the island. All those desperate, marooned sailors. The place is literally littered with bones!’

The island with its odd compelling otherness.

He was voracious in his explorations, resurrecting a past to keep his own at bay. There were various sources to be trawled. Journal articles and logbooks, the reports of the Port Captains at the time: Skead and Clift and the Harbour Engineer, Thomas Reeve. This was the saga of a dangerous coast, of the mythic routes to India and the East, the forgotten ports along the way. He loved to read about the cargoes that the ships had brought: ginger, spices, copra, cotton.

Then there were the shipwrecks – the dozens that had gone down in the bay and along its eastern stretches, the hulks lost in drifts of sand or lying barnacled, corroded by the waves. Barques, frigates, schooners, brigs and the East Indiaman loaded with General Clive’s gold that had sunk in 1755. The great romance of names:
Thunderbolt
,
Witch of the Wave
,
Sleuthhound
,
Star of Empire
and the brig, the
Duke of Buccleuch.
And then there were the sturdy little tugs and supply boats that had dared the swells: the
Sir Frederick
, the
Koodoo
, the
St Croix
.

So many sagas: where men had drowned, treasure scuppered on the bed of the ocean, the cold, uncompromising southern seas taking the drift of flotsam to a distant beach. So were legends born, old sea dogs yarning in the Harbour Master’s office over a flask of tea when the wind was high and the shipping was hunkered down in port, safe from the waves hurling themselves at the harbour wall where great sheets of spray flared like gunfire up above the parapet. And all along that coast, another life hidden under the dunes whose streaming hair filtered up into the windswept sky. There, where the sea snails made their tractor-tracks in the sand, the little frill of movement left like lace on the shore, and plovers ran, clockwork-fast, along the ebbing of the tide.