The Keeper (22 page)

–
Never cross the line.

The well is where the myth begins, depending on whether one is a worker or a keeper: there is a woman crying, ‘
Help me, God
’, looking for a child.

Which child?

Men have worked here side by side for decades, knowing nothing of each other’s lives, living with their lies. How simply – by a word exchanged – they could have been expunged. Instead, the men have made their separate myths and fears: the forlorn and fretting ghost, the tower, the shark hook, a vengeful
August tide, the ring of death, the shadow of the black-winged petrel sweeping in from polar seas.

Die bose
. That unmentionable dread.

Misklip stops and turns to Hannes. He is standing with his hat respectfully in his hand. Misklip, too, has removed his woollen cap, gesturing. ‘
Die kind se graf
,’ he says.

Ons blinkoog seuntjie

Oorlede Augustus 3, 1921

Misklip looks at it silently, then he says, ‘When we were working, digging guano, we used to see the lady. She took the little boy with her. The child was frightened of the sea.
Sy ma’t hom altyd op loop gejaag.
She told him that a big shark was waiting for him if he went near the water. But your mother taught him not to be afraid. Maybe she said the shark wasn’t true.’ His voice catches in his throat. ‘But we believed it,’ he says. ‘
So groot soos ’n
chokka boat!’ Misklip laughs, his eyes sliding out, scanning the sea. ‘We used to ask what he was making with the shells. At first he wouldn’t say. Then I think he got proud of it. “We are making a lighthouse.
Met skulpies
.”’

Hannes stands poised, looking all about him, the years suspended.

–
Oh, Hansie, that is beautiful
. His red-domed shell. His precious final offering.

He had gone – and she had turned to this small brown child for comfort.

–
Suffer the little children to come unto Me.

If he had stayed behind she would not have sought a substitute.

–
Never cross the line.

No, never – unless prepared to see it through without regret. Right to the end.

‘The people were all drunk one day,’ Misklip continues. ‘They were quarrelling. Even the
seuntjie’s
pa. Even me. Then when the
boytjie
was missing we looked for him and we thought maybe he has gone to the
oumies
.’ Misklip turns and turns his old woollen cap, spider-fingers gathering the folds. ‘We don’t know if he did. No one saw. But he went to the beach alone. Maybe he was looking for shells or maybe he was afraid to come home.
Sy pa was so kwaadkat dronk.
’

Hannes looks away.

‘Then your father came with a sjambok shouting, “You people are drunk and it’s the Lord’s Day.” ’ Misklip touches the headstone of the grave, pulls a strand of wild spinach aside so he can see the inscription more clearly. Then he straightens up. ‘
So het die kind gesterf.’

They both stand silent. Far off a penguin brays, setting off a cacophony of calls.

‘I was there when the headman took the shark hook and brought him from the water.’ Misklip puts his hand to his eyes and squeezes his temples between thumb and third finger. ‘
Dis aaklige gebeurtenisse, kaptein
.’

Hannes looks at the date on the grave: 3
^rd
August 1921. His mother had died three days later.

–
People do not take their lives when there is hope …

It was not coincidence.

‘The last person to visit this grave,’ says Misklip, ‘was
kleinmies
Aletta.’

‘She once told me,’ replies Hannes. ‘But I took no notice – I knew nothing of this grave. Did you tell her the story that you’ve just told me?’

‘
Nooit, kaptein
. It is not a story that we ever tell. Nor is it a thing that we forget.’

‘So she doesn’t know.’

‘She doesn’t know.’ He glances back down at the grave. ‘She had asked me to find shells for her, just as your mother asked the
seuntjie
long ago. She was kind to me. She sometimes gave me a cigarette. She never told anyone about the shells or about
ou Kat
.’

‘
Ou Kat
?’

The spout lip trembles. ‘
Ek’t ’n dierbare ou kat gehad, kaptein.
Even if he was forbidden. I found him when he was very small. There by the harbour. I couldn’t leave him to the rats, could I? But he’s been dead a long time now. He was better than a person,’ Misklip says. ‘He would never let me down.’

‘She did not tell me.’

‘It was our secret.’ Misklip smiles with a hint of pride. ‘She knows what is important to a person – even if she doesn’t say.’

‘Why was she collecting shells?’

Misklip shakes his head. ‘I thought it was to make doilies, like my mother.
Dames is lief vir doilies
.’

Hannes does not contradict him: the idea of Aletta making a doily is absurd, but it is a solemn moment, Misklip squinting down at the little grave with its misshapen letters.

‘
Toe, eendag
, she showed me why she wanted them. She showed me the little lighthouse made of shells. It was the same one your mother made.’ He clucks deep in his throat. ‘We knew about that lighthouse. It was something that could kill, like it killed the child. That was the day,’ and he emphasises with his finger, stabbing it groundwards, ‘that I nearly killed the boy.

‘
Daai rampokker,
Hendricks, took the shark hook when he knew he must not touch it. He respects nothing. No one. He always gave me brandy to keep me quiet. He knew I was watching him. He was diving where the old ships went down. A greedy man, always after money. And then, when he was gone, boats sometimes came at night.
Vreemdelinge. Mense wat jy nie wil raakloop
nie
. Even Riefaart was afraid of them.’ He shakes his head, raises a finger. ‘Even the police who came here said that Hendricks was a gangster. Except, they were gangsters too!’

Hannes says nothing. They are standing in a sacred place.

Then Misklip says, half laughing, ‘
Nou, kaptein – hier slaap ’n haas!
Brandy is my little wife,
weet jy
– I can’t forget her even if I try. That is why it is better that I am here on the island where I cannot get her. Hendricks knew that. And he teased me with her, like a man who is going to steal your wife. It makes you mad.’ Misklip shakes his head, glances sideways, unable to meet Hannes’s eye. ‘I got drunk. It was my fault I nearly killed the boy.’

‘You nearly killed the boy – and
meneer Hendricks
,’ says Hannes sardonically, ‘he stole my wife instead.’

‘
Nee, kaptein,’
says Misklip. ‘Never.
As my naam Dudley Koester is,
I swear it.’ Then he cocks his head, grinning at Hannes’s surprise. ‘
Jy’t nie geweet my naam is Dudley Koester nie, nè? Kleinmies
knew. My mother told her.’ He is silent – then he says, ‘It’s a name I have forgotten years ago,
kaptein. Ek’s nie meer Dudley Koester nie. Ek’s Misklip – soos Kat Kat
is.
Finish en klaar.
’

Then he says, looking fixedly at Hannes. ‘You should find her,
kaptein.
She would not marry any other man. I could see that in her.’ He hesitates, then adds tentatively, ‘
Sy was seker bedonnerd – nes ou Kat
.
Kwaai.
But loyal.’ He makes a gesture as if looking for the words. ‘
Betroubaar
.’

Hannes’s gear is ready to load into the boat. He goes back up the path to the house for the last time. He straightens the table and chairs, checks the fridge again to see that there is nothing in it, turns off the gas flame. He closes the fanlights, wrestling the hasps. The window in the bathroom has solidified into its frame. The stain in the bath is like a tail trailing from the plug. He tightens the water tap of the lavatory because it leaks. He closes the curtains in the bedroom: Maisie’s offering to comfort, made in the bleak weeks after Aletta had gone.

Quietly he leaves the room and walks swiftly through the house.

He goes to the lighthouse then and climbs the stairs. He passes the curved cupboard, bends to peer through the thick glass of the staircase windows: the small cameo of sky beyond, the view of the reef a quarter of a mile out to sea. He pulls himself up the ladder into the lantern room and checks the twin sensors, needing no man to coax them into life. He stands as he has so many times in the shadow of the great lens but now he faces the light almost as his mother had so many years before.

Unable to light it himself.

Ambivalent, remorseful and afraid.

Like her – quite unaccountably – he bows his head and prays.

To no known God: to whatever numinous Force arrests us and before which, if we are truly human, we must stand amazed.

Misklip is waiting on the jetty.

‘I wish you could come back with me,’ Hannes says. ‘You are too old to stay here now.’

‘And where will I go,
kaptein
?’ Misklip replies.

‘Your mother’s people?’

‘The people have all gone. There is no more little house. I do not want to live in another place where there is nothing that I know.’ He laughs ruefully. ‘Imagine being drunk and trying to find your way home when every house looks the same?
Daar’s altyd bendes oppie uitkyk
. Here the penguins and gannets
raas
and row but they don’t bother you.
En ou Kat is hier,
even if he’s dead.’

It is Hannes who will be the exile now.

‘I said to
kleinmies
once – a person should not be buried near an animal. But I was wrong. They are God’s creatures too.’

As the small boat pulls away, the headman steering, Misklip stands to attention on the jetty. He salutes, shoulders up, hand stiff, eyes crinkled shut. The small lip sinks slowly from smile to a wistful twist of loss. To arrest himself, Misklip pulls erect, salutes once again, elbow raised, palm quivering at his brow.

The boat runs alongside the hull of the tug. For the last time, Hannes shakes the headman’s hand, pulls himself up the ladder on to the deck of the boat, leans down to take his suitcase and the other parcels handed up to him, stacks them on the deck, tips his brow as well – and turns away.

It is a day as it was when Hannes first brought Aletta to the island. Beside the keel a pod of dolphins, a small protective convoy, slides swiftly through the water. A bull seal surfaces, turns to watch, bristling sleekly in the sunshine. The water is that familiar green – that unfathomable deep, clear jade unruffled by the wind. Behind, the island lies seamed with its crust of waves, its reefs of rock. Just thrusting up above the line of land, the lighthouse stands.

It grows smaller, fainter, less substantial, drifting into the haze.

The feather of the coal-eyed petrel.

Hannes takes the shell lighthouse to the hospital. He rides in the back of Cecil Beukes’ car, Maisie sitting in the front seat and turning to him every now and then as if to check that he is really there.

The shell lighthouse is in a cardboard carton on his lap.

He holds it, feeling its fragility inside. His fingers are firm on the sides of the container, balancing it, protecting it from jolts and bumps. Cecil stops the car beneath the giant figs that edge the parking lot. The wheels pop the fruit.
In silence Hannes leaves the car, closing the door behind him. Neither Cecil nor Maisie speaks.

Hannes goes through the entrance to the hospital, takes two flights of stairs, stands a moment in the vestibule then goes out on to the veranda and walks its red-polished length once again. He reaches the French doors at the entrance to the Men’s Surgical Ward. Beyond, he sees the nurses’ station.

She is not there.

No, she is not there.

For she has seen him walk across the parking lot, the carton in his hands. She stands on the veranda above him, noting the broad reach of his shoulders, the incline of his head, the finely winged cheekbone. She cannot see his eyes but she knows them too – the depth of them, the downturned glance, old sea titan fixing his thoughts on a far horizon, that periwinkle blue, that humorous, that fierce, that sad and changing aspect of his gaze.

She knows them all.

She knows he is coming up to the ward and that whatever is in the box is a gift for her. Before he reaches the veranda she turns and walks away with quick, quiet steps. She goes through the door at the end of it with the sign
Staff Only
written on the fading paintwork in maroon.

It is not escape or the gesture of a coward.

It is the bravest thing that she has ever done.

And Hannes?

He hands the box to the nurse on duty and Cecil drives him through town, back along the coastal road towards the light at the Cape. Hannes leaves him and Maisie at the door of the keeper’s house. He takes their car.

‘I’ll have it back by Monday.’

In his pocket he has Fred’s address. Cecil has been diligent at his request, has tracked and traced all leads through pigeon-racing circles until he found his man.

Hannes drives towards the town and parks near the lighthouse on The Hill where he had served as a young man, as if, in doing so, he is retracing and amending each stage of the journey he has made. Down below he can see the harbour, the cranes bowing and lifting in their stately dance, a ship nosed by a butting tug, heading out of port. He walks across the swathe of grass towards the town. The sea glitters between the buildings, stretching back along the curve of bay, the far horizon. As he goes he feels the rush of passing wings as, at a signal, a flock of pigeons takes to flight together. They lance round and up – the swift sure scoop of wings – catching the sunlight on their breasts.

He could have raised his hands as he had seen his mother do.

–
Godspeed, little ones.

He walks down the steps between the buildings to the main street and pauses, watching the traffic sweeping by. He crosses at the light, searching for the name of the department store on shopfronts, finding it, pulling his jacket straight.