The Keeper (21 page)

‘When will he retire?’

‘He should have done it years ago but they can’t get blokes into the Service any more. So they need him. We’re on an annual contract.’

As Maisie rifles through the papers Rika looks at the dates on the logbooks scattered on the desk. She takes up the one marked 1918–1922. She walks quietly away with it.

Shipping, tides, supplies, building materials. Tucked in between the pages are messages sent by pigeon post. There are dozens of them written on thin strips of paper.

Some birds did get through, after all.

Maisie glances round for her. She is triumphant. ‘Here it is! Have a look!’ and she hands the message to Rika.

Rika reads it and passes it back. ‘A genuine dove of peace,’ she says. ‘Isn’t that extraordinary? It should be in a museum.’

‘Yes, I suppose it should,’ says Maisie, putting it to one side. ‘Let me get a cloth and wipe these books. They are full of mould. You can’t imagine what the sea air does to everything in this place! It was much drier on The Hill.’

As she walks to the kitchen Rika turns to the logbook in her hand, searching. Hannes had told her when his mother died.

6
^th
August 1921.

When he was eight.

She has thought about it many times, trying to imagine.

She flips through the entries:
August 1918. August 1920. August 1921.

Every day is reported.

–
Weather inclement.

–
Strong south-easterly. Supply boat unable to sail.

–
Gale force winds.

No messages from shore: the wind was too high. A week ahead. Still no messages. Two weeks.

–
Strong offshore winds. Supply boat still cannot sail.

–
Still no supply boat. Weather inclement. Strong winds.

–
Weather deteriorating. Very high tides.

Entry:

3
^rd
August 1921:

Cape Coloured foreman’s child drowned. Six yrs old.

Accidentally washed off rocks, spring tide. Buried on island.

No name.

There was nothing else for two weeks – as if time had been suspended.

17
^th
August 1921.

This entry is written in a different hand and signed by Cecil Beukes.

Senior Keeper on compassionate leave. His wife passed away on 6th August. Weather clear. Light westerly winds.

A list of supplies. A reminder for a new filter for the light.

Rika places the logbook on the table. Maisie returns with a cloth, spits and scrubs at a spot of mildew.

Cecil comes in, followed by an old dog, wheezing and arthritic.

‘Cecil,’ says Maisie peremptorily, to warn him that she is in charge of the conversation. ‘These books are full of mildew. I told you we must clean them up.’

Cecil shakes Rika’s hand. ‘Hello, Sister, what brings you here?’

‘Just a friendly call.’ Rika is suddenly embarrassed. She has stepped out of her professional role. The authority of her starched white uniform has gone. She feels like an intruder – prying. ‘Mrs Beukes and I got talking about Mr Harker and the lighthouse,’ she says, flushing. ‘She was telling me something of the history of the island and about the telegram that came at the end of the First World War.’

‘That’s a famous story,’ Cecil says. ‘It was in all the newspapers. It’s the only time anyone had ever heard of us!’ He laughs, almost proudly. ‘The island has a marvellous history. But how much of it is true or just a lot of old wives’ tales, you never know. Lighthouses always collect their stories. Ghosts, buried treasure, sea monsters! Those old blokes in the Service in the old days were real crusty characters!’

‘Like you!’ Maisie wags her head at him and rolls her eyes.

They all laugh.

‘And then on the islands there are always the lighthouse staff and the guano workers,’ says Cecil. ‘Some of those guano headmen are rough customers too, I can tell you. They make the keepers look tame. Keepers and guano workers never mix.’

‘Why is that?’ asks Rika.

‘Territory. Even though they depend on each other in an emergency. We belonged to different departments – so it’s oil and water. The guano men have always fought among themselves as well, especially when contract workers come in. People have been killed.’

‘What happens if someone dies on the island? Do they bury them there – without a doctor’s certificate?’

‘Not nowadays, I’m sure,’ says Cecil. ‘But in the old days it was so isolated and tugs were so irregular they didn’t have a choice. Unless they were buried at sea. Still, there are quite a few graves on the island. Very old ones – marooned sailors, bodies from wrecks. Also children – keepers’ kids, workers’ kids.’

‘Not an easy place to bring up children, I can tell you,’ Maisie joins in. ‘Especially if someone gets sick. It was worrying when our kids were young. We had a few tense moments.’

‘Karel Harker banned children from the island except for the lighthouse staff. Workers had to keep their families on shore,’ says Cecil. ‘He made a deal with the guano bosses. It was after a child drowned. Now I remember. A little kid washed off the rocks.’

‘I saw it in the logbook,’ Rika says.

‘I’d forgotten all about it.’

Cecil sits and has a cup of tea. Rika can see the hand of the clock on the mantelpiece edging on towards midday. She will have to go. How can she mention Aletta again before Cecil has left? She senses – as Maisie seems to sense as well – that it is not a conversation in which Cecil should be included. It would be an intrusion on rank and on discretion. He would be bewildered if he thought she knew a single private thing about Hannes Harker’s life: men do not let their buddies down, and women might betray them.

But he sits and sits, taking three cups of tea before he says, almost admonishing, ‘You ladies can gossip all morning if you want. I have work to do.’ And he goes away.

‘I must collect my daughters soon,’ says Rika. Before Maisie, with her usual kindliness and tact, can ask about her daughters – their names and ages, their likes and hobbies – Rika says, ‘Will you tell Mr Harker where you think you saw his wife, Mrs Beukes? I know it’s important. She has never asked for a divorce. That’s why I don’t believe she wants one. I think she’s waiting for him.’

‘Not that Aletta!’ Maisie shakes her head. ‘She could have found him any time if she’d wanted to.’

‘Hannes has always thought she went off with that Len Hendricks,’ Rika says.

‘We did too for a time,’ Maisie says. ‘Especially as he left the Service almost as soon as he came off the island.’

‘Really? Why do you think he did that?’

‘We’re a family, us lighthouse keepers,’ Maisie replies. ‘We don’t mess with each other’s wives. That Len was a bad egg.’

‘I don’t believe she let him mess with her,’ says Rika.

‘How do you know?’ Maisie frowns, a flicker of defensiveness.
You do not know that Aletta as I do.

Rika almost smiles. It might seem a foolish response – but she says it anyway, because she believes it. ‘Hannes is about to leave the light. He’s automating it. And when he has, there will be no reason any more for his wife to stay away.’

Maisie looks mystified.

‘Because
he
made the choice, not her,’ Rika says. ‘And he chose the lighthouse.’

She knows that this is true: she has held his hand in hers and heard him speak of it – its character, its power and its grace. She has felt its challenge for herself.

‘The lighthouse?’ Maisie gives a disbelieving laugh. ‘Never!’

‘Yes, the lighthouse,’ Rika says, standing tall, her authority regained. ‘Tell him where she is, Mrs Beukes. Then he can decide what he wants. It’s the right thing to do.’

It is the right thing to do.

And if Maisie has agreed to follow up her lead, find Aletta and tell Hannes Harker where she is – because it is the right thing to do, as Sister Rika says – there is a private and quite different right for Rika too.

To withdraw.

She turns back along the way she has come. There is a lightness in her arms as she drives. It is not exhaustion, though she is exhausted. It is a strange release of tension, a task complete. And if, for her, there is a sense of sadness and of loss, she enfolds it rather than retreating from it.

Hannes has given her his story, knowing she will honour it.

She is its keeper.

It has been a mutual recognition: that rare transcendent trust. A commitment separate from the self.

In turn, this tale – its place, its imagined personalities – has become integral to the fabric of her life. Not its future individual course but simply to who she is, what she may become. Her discretion and her grace. As she drives the coast road home – alert to the lifting sky, the sweep of sea, blue now under a noonday sun, the small yellow daisies at the side of the road, the white wax-petalled baby blooms of spring thrusting through the grass – she is freed from the apprehension that so often dogs her through her wards. The small frustrations, humdrum and prosaic, the daily tragedies that punctuate her profession.

She has new interpretations now.

There is a heart to some encounters that transcends our understanding.

Her encounter with Hannes Harker has been one of these.

That heart – that core – has been revealed through this quiet man, lost in his lighthouse, and the story he has given her so simply, without parade.

This also is love. Constrained within its moment though it is.

It is a cool wet morning when Hannes leaves the hospital.

Rika does not help him change into his uniform. She allows a junior nurse to pack his bag and bring his jacket from the cupboard. She knows she cannot speak. She may not risk her professional poise as she goes about her tasks, giving each patient her time, her attention and her presence.

Already, the staff have stripped his sheets. Two nurses are chatting as they make the bed afresh, folding the blanket back with practised hands – a swift duet. One wipes the cubicle, the other checks the drawer. He has been replaced. A new chart is clipped to the end of the bed, awaiting an identity.

Rika has telephoned Cecil Beukes. He will be here within the hour to collect Hannes.

–
Where will he be waiting?

–
Come up to the ward.

Hannes emerges from the bathroom a different man. His beard is closely clipped, his damp hair is combed flat against his skull, his uniform, though loose, is newly brushed, resplendent with its epaulettes and braid. So different from the man she’d guided to the bathroom on her arm and, standing back from the splattering water of the shower, had helped to wash.

That weary laundered face, with its haunted eyes. The gaunt architecture of the man, like an ancient winter tree without its leaves.

Now he has purpose, authority and stature. He is brisk. He goes to each of the nurses on duty and thanks her – warmly, gravely, with a joke, without. He reads each person with precision. At last he comes to the nurses’ station in the passage at the entrance to the ward.

‘Sister?’ he says.

‘Perhaps you should wait in the visitors’ room, Mr Harker,’ Rika replies, not looking up at him. ‘I will bring you this form to sign as soon as I am done with it.’

He walks away to the end of the passage, goes into the room where visitors smoke and read magazines and wait for whatever they are waiting for, and stands at the window looking out at the parking lot where two nurses chat on the pavement, sharing an off-duty cigarette.

Rika comes. She closes the door. She gives him the form and a pen. He signs his name. She takes it from him and puts it carefully on the table. Then she stands with him beside the window, looking out.

Still the nurses are chatting – laughing at something a passing orderly has said. Rika and Hannes watch fixedly. And in that gaze, intent on the figures of the two unwitting girls, life passes like a pantomime before their eyes.

Rika knows that she will never see him again.

And there is nothing she can say.

She turns to him, takes a hospital envelope from her pocket and slips it into his. He faces her, formal and tall. She puts her hands in the cup of his great upturned palms. Though hers are strong, broad, working hands, they lie slim and small within his own.

She looks up at him.

‘Thank you,’ he says.

Hannes can see the island. He can see the lighthouse. Everything is pewter grey and pearl. The sky, the sea, the distant webs of rain. The headman is waiting in the motorboat. Hannes is cautious as he climbs down from the tug. He can feel the stiffness in his foot. Misklip is waiting on the jetty, ready to unload supplies.

‘
Kaptein
?’ The old voice cracks as Hannes reaches him. ‘
Is jy puik
?’

Hannes shakes his hand, smiles. ‘
Jou ou skelm
,’ he says affectionately. ‘They say you took the boat to find the headman when I fell.
Dit sal ek nooit vergeet nie
.’

The spout lip, the shellfish grin.

‘Please bring my suitcase to the house.’

‘
Watter huis, kaptein
?’

‘My own house, Misklip. Where me and and my wife lived.’

Hannes claps Misklip on the shoulder and starts up the path. He glances at the lighthouse. It stands tall, stark, etched in sunlight.

The walls are in want of paint. The glass needs cleaning. The ironwork is weeping rust. He assesses it with professional detachment.

Fred had said, so long ago, ‘I hate the light. You will hate it too one day.’ But he had been wrong. Hannes would never hate the light. He stands a moment longer, gazing, feeling its weight.

Perhaps it is just a man-made tower after all, powered by a great machine.

Or does it have a heart?

He knows it is a question he will ask himself for the rest of his life.

Then – wryly – he tips his cap to it.

He takes the path to the senior keeper’s house and opens the door.

His and Aletta’s furniture is no longer there. It was removed to storage years ago. But there is a bed, a table and a chair. He stands in the kitchen, which remains unchanged.

–
Do you want me to cook your fish in batter?

–
No. Just plain. Is there a lemon?

–
Finished.

He can hear her voice.

When he has unpacked and made a mug of tea, he fetches the shell model from the lantern room where he had left it. The relief keeper had pushed it into a corner above the workbench. One or two of the shells have fallen off. He finds them, puts them in his pocket and brings the model down to the house. He sets it on the table in the living room. Later he finds a tube of glue and gently sticks the shells back in place. They are not quite straight and he tries again, smiling; he can hear Aletta’s whispered irritation at his clumsiness, imagine what she might have said about her own.

–
I don’t like it when you speak like that.

He laughs at his own priggishness.

There – it is complete.

He turns the model over and, with care, using the smallest awl, he scratches his initials next to his mother’s and Aletta’s on the base of the stand.

H.H. October 1961.

Hannes has not touched the envelope that Rika had given him. He had not trusted himself during the ride to the harbour in Cecil’s car under the torrent of Maisie’s delight at seeing him – ‘Togged up again as you ought to be, looking very handsome and smart!’

She had left a coconut cake for Rika at the nurses’ station. She had wasted time trying to find her. One of the staff had said Sister du Pre had taken a patient down to theatre. She would be some time. Would Mrs Beukes like to leave a message?

Maisie had turned away disappointed, handing over the cake with instructions for its care. She had made another cake for Hannes. Now it sits on the kitchen counter in its tin. When Misklip had brought his suitcase to the house, Hannes had opened the tin, taken out his pocket knife and cut it in half. Misklip had borne his share away with a small jig of pleasure. Hannes had seen him through the window, leaning on the wall of the yard, eating it slowly as if each crumb were precious.

It is only when he goes up into the lantern room that night that Hannes takes the envelope from his pocket. He sits on the workbench, lit every twenty seconds by the turning of the great beam, and opens it.

Hannes,

You once spoke of taking risks. You said to me that ships are safe in harbour but that is not what they are built for. I said – true, but if they put to sea
they need a pilot. I may be wrong but I know you have the courage to take the risk. I know that you can navigate – and there are three things I wish to say:

Your brother, Fred, races pigeons. Cecil Beukes has seen his name in this connection. You might also find him by contacting his old regiment.

A worker’s child was drowned on 3
^rd
August 1921, three days before your mother died. I found the record in a logbook Mrs Beukes showed me. There is a grave on the island. I think there is a link. I have no way to prove it – but people do not take their lives when there is hope, only when remorse is overwhelming. You must accept it’s not your fault she died.

Find your wife, Aletta. I believe that she is waiting for you. The rival is not Len Hendricks but the light.

I wish you love always.

Rika

For days Hannes works in the lighthouse, setting the machinery in place, converting, disconnecting, putting to rest the worn old equipment. Then he fixes the two sensors he has brought in a window facing the sea. They will illuminate automatically as the light fades to dusk.

They are the new eyes, the new brain. Insignificantly small and prosaic – still, they need no keeper to tend and trim them. There is no grandeur in their engineering, no rollers, cogs and gleaming brass-work. That great lens turning, balanced on its raft of mercury, is powered by another source.

The mighty chain within the spine has slipped its ratchets. It has rusted into silence. The heart has stopped.

And Hannes no longer hears his mother’s voice.

The keepers down the generations have withdrawn; his father’s ringing step is silent on the stairs.

He packs the crates he has brought up to the landing. He puts in them everything no longer relevant to an unmanned light: the logbooks and charts, the maps and files, the small barometer his father used to tap, always saying, ‘Barometer’s falling’ – even if it wasn’t. ‘We’re in for dirty weather.’

He gathers what is left of his own equipment. Perhaps, after all, he’ll have a home one day and the little boat he had resurrected could be put to sea.

–
We’ll sail to some secret pirate cove, some hidden inlet …

Some place where he could love her, shouting down the waves.

Eden on the first day.

For days he works, a physician with a patient, facing the inevitable end. There is a point where sentiment dissolves, memory retreats. An efficiency
that leaves no room for error. The chaos in his soul will have its resolution at its appointed time. But now he has a job to do.

On a day of thundering gloom his task it done. The sensors are secure – they shine out brightly, synchronised and sure. At night the beam glides round. It reaches sixteen miles out to sea.

It is Sunday. On Monday afternoon the tug will come to take him away. The light will be abandoned. Only once in six weeks a technician will arrive to check the settings and equipment. The guano headman will telephone the shore each day at 4.00 and report on the light. If there is a need, someone will come. In a helicopter or a boat.

–
Never cross the line.

But the line has disappeared. There is nothing to divide.

There are no lighthouse keepers on the island any more. Only visiting technicians.

There is a world of difference between the two.

Hannes goes down to the guano huts and searches for Misklip. He is sitting on the step of his house with his mouth organ in his hand. He leaps to his feet.

‘Misklip,’ Hannes says, ‘tomorrow I am going. I will not be back. There is something I want you to do for me.’

‘
Kaptein
?’

‘I would like you to show me the grave of the child who was drowned.’

Misklip squints up at Hannes, his spout lip dipping – a little quiver of fear.

‘There is nothing that can hurt you, Misklip.’ And he puts his hand in reassurance on Misklip’s shoulder

They go in the still morning. The gannets are far out to sea. The penguins are fishing. The rabbits flit away as they pass. Misklip leads Hannes across the slope. They walk with care. There are pools of rainwater on the flatter rocks.

They pass the well. Hannes stops. He says, ‘This is where my mother died.’

Misklip nods. It is something he has always known; he can see – recalling – the woman and the boy stooping, bending, wandering along the shore in search of shells.