The Keeper (3 page)

Hannes says, ‘Four years ago, something happened on the island. It was August 1957, when a gang of convicts and their warders were sent to dig the guano. So, at the time, there were always the permanent guano workers as well as the convicts. And there were often fights.’

He pauses.

Rika waits, knowing he is already elsewhere, climbing the stairs to the lantern room where there is always silence except for the rhythm of the great beam. It has a sound and a tempo of its own, heard only by one as attentive and alert as he.

It was the day that Witbooi laughed.

A convict. A no one. A man without a name.

Only – he was not a man. He was just a boy. No more than eighteen. A boy who had laughed out of turn when Misklip, the guano workers’ cook, came into the dining shed drunk, carrying the great barbed shark hook that belonged to Riefaart the headman, a massive rusted talisman handed down over generations on the island. No one was to touch it but the headman. It was a superstition that had never been challenged without inviting retribution. Everybody knew that.

‘
Wat gat oom met daai aaklike hoek vang
?’ said one of the warders, eyeing Misklip suspiciously.

‘
Die spook
!’ hissed Misklip, heaving it up on to his shoulder.

‘You people are spooked by everything,’ said the warder. ‘They told me before I came here. Don’t run around after dark. Don’t talk to the people at the
light. Don’t go near the well.’ He cracked his knuckles. ‘They say the lighthouse can also spook you if you go too close …’

Behind them, in the shadows, the boy had laughed – too old to be credulous, too young to see the puckered fear in Misklip’s face and keep silent. Misklip, always so affable – he with his banjo or his squashbox – turned on him.
‘Wat lag jy, kaffertjie?’

‘As ek kaffertjie is, is oom ’n hotnot.’

Riefaart, the guano headman, heard the roar. He ran towards the shed and thrust the door aside with his shoulder. He took Misklip by the scruff of the neck and, lifting him, dashed the shark hook from his hand so that it clanged against the corrugated-iron wall. He flung Misklip aside and went to the boy, slit like a fish by a gutting knife. The warders ran to lift him. Riefaart turned to Misklip. ‘
Waar’t jy die drank gekry, Misklip
?’

‘Ek’t nie gedrink nie.’

‘Jy lieg
!’ He handled him from the room, slapping him about the head, dragging him down the path. ‘
Jy fokken lieg.’
He tossed him into the storeroom behind his house and slammed the door, locking it. He turned and looked towards the lighthouse. He put the key in his pocket and ran.

August. Always August. When boats are lost, when men die. When the dead walk the island.

The waves were so high against the reefs, the thunder of their breaking so continuous, Hannes felt as though he was submerged in the tumult, unable to breathe. Only the light was steady. A great beating heart in the stormy night. He believed that it would keep on flashing even if the sea closed over it.

His torch beam lurched on before him. The gannets were restless at his unexpected presence. All around him the nesting birds shifted in complaint. He walked carefully along the tram track, keeping it beside his foot to guide him. He did not wish to stumble into a penguin burrow and twist an ankle. To his right he could see the low mound of the coping round the well. The wind, sucked into its cavern, made a subterranean echo, far away below the rock, like a voice. Not the cry of a bird, not the bray of a penguin. Not even the voice of a man. It was a keen lament, an ancient voice, counter to the wilderness of wave.

He hurried on.

Beyond the path to the jetty the white walls of the workers’ cottages emerged from the gloom. He could hear voices in snatches. Riefaart, who had hurried ahead while Hannes collected the first-aid bag from the house, was there with the two warders. Where had Misklip got the drink when drink was banned from the island? From a warder? From a hand on the guano boat when it came to load? Distilled from pumpkin or potatoes by himself? Who knows! He was blind drunk and raging.

Hannes came into the shed where the convict was lying. He gazed down at him appalled. His blood was seeping on to the floor, shreds of his overalls were buried in the wound. He called for boiled water and sent Riefaart hurrying back to Aletta at the house to ask for towels and an old sheet and scissors. He knelt beside the boy and examined his chest, tracing the line where the prong of the hook had gouged from shoulder to solar plexus. Despite the jagged flesh, the blood, the stillness of the boy, it seemed as if the injury was on the surface – but he could not be sure. He had no idea how much blood was gathering inside. With Riefaart’s help he did his best to staunch the flow, binding sheet and towel tightly round the chest. Then he stood, easing his joints, and said, ‘I’ll call for the doctor. Wait here with him. Keep him warm.’

He ran the quarter mile up the track towards the lighthouse, its beam sweeping around and showing him his path. The gleam of eyes all about him as it passed – birds watching from their nests and burrows – while beyond, the white flare of breaking waves, the towering spray against the reef.

Aletta was standing at the door of the house when he came up, the wraith of smoke from her constant cigarette drifting up like a tendril around her head. ‘Those bloody prisoners should stay in the prison where they belong,’ she said brusquely. ‘I don’t know why they are sent here. It’s dangerous for everyone. How do we know he isn’t a murderer?’

‘He might just as easily be a chap who forgot his pass on the way to work and was picked up,’ Hannes said.

‘Bullshit!’ Aletta followed. ‘They don’t give pass-people hard labour.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Well anyway, there’s a fight every time the guano workers come. Where you going?’

‘To call for the doctor.’

‘You can’t expect him to come. Look at the weather.’

‘If he doesn’t come the boy will die – and he’s only a kid,’ Hannes said.

‘Well then, he’ll probably die anyway.’

Hannes knew well enough the panic hidden in the flippant words. He went on, ignoring her.

The tug came five hours later. After he had made the call, Hannes had returned and sat by the boy in the hut. His pulse was very weak. Len Hendricks, the relief keeper, had taken over duty in the light. Riefaart and a handyman were preparing the landing boat. One of the warders was with them holding a lantern. The other sat in the corner of the dining shed guarding the door and drinking tea from a tin mug. The third had gone to the quarters with the other convicts and lit a fire in an old tin brazier. For once, they were silent.

It was after midnight when the doctor landed.

He swung perilously over the edge of the tug into the boat that Riefaart had launched from the jetty to meet it. The oilskins of the men were visible in the blackness and, every twenty seconds, the sweep of the light illuminated them before plunging them back into darkness.

Jumping for the jetty on the swell, the doctor pulled himself on to the rotting boards, steadied himself and retrieved his bag from Riefaart, who passed it up from the boat, transferring it with a practised swing. A warder was waiting with a lantern and led him to the shed where the stabbed youth was lying. He opened the door and stood back for the doctor to pass, then, waiting in the shadow of the eave, he lit a cigarette, cupping it from the wind in his palm.

As the doctor came in, discarding his dripping oilskin at the door, he saw Hannes standing by the bed in the lamplight, bending over the boy, his fingers at the pulse in his neck. Hannes turned, stepped away, relinquishing his place. He said, ‘Doctor? I am the senior lighthouse keeper, Johannes Harker.’

The doctor approached the bed, said briefly, ‘James McLean.’

‘Thank you for coming,’ said Hannes, pulling the blanket back, exposing the worker’s chest.

James McLean gave a low whistle. ‘What did this?’

‘Over there.’ Hannes indicated with his head.

On a table nearby a massive iron hook lay on a flattened guano sack.

‘God Almighty.’

He opened his medical bag. Hannes brought him a bowl of boiled water to wash his hands. He dried them, extracted his instruments from their settings and turned to the patient, working fast. It took over an hour to stabilise him. Hannes stood nearby to assist if he was needed, holding the lamp for him, watching the deft hands, following his thought processes as the doctor moved cautiously, step by step, setting up a simple drip and handing it to Hannes to hold suspended from his upraised arm.

‘Do you have a stretcher?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’ Hannes turned to Riefaart, waiting in the shadows. ‘A stretcher?’ An afterthought: ‘Can we bring you tea?’

‘No time. Got to get this fellow back.’ The doctor looked up, smiled briefly. ‘Thank you. Could you get a couple more chaps to help me lift him? We must keep him as steady as possible.’

A procession and the swinging hurricane lamps: Hannes, Riefaart, two convict diggers and a warder. The doctor walked alongside, holding the precarious drip.

Hannes went to the end of the jetty. He looked down at the boy. The eyes were closed. Such a still face. Such a stranger among them. He had noticed that evening, as he’d sat by him anxiously watching his face, how tender the
dark skin was at the corners of his eyes. So young and abandoned. A bubble of blood had burst at the edge of his nose, leaving its mark.

The doctor sat in the boat, half cradling the patient. He looked up at Hannes, said briefly, ‘Thank you for your help. You did a good job earlier on. You may have saved his life.’

Hannes nodded. Then he said, ‘I must get back. I cannot leave the light.’

As he walked up the path towards the lighthouse, lit every now and then by the sweep of its beam, he saw the dip and flash of a torch, caught the sudden shadow in the doorway of the tower. There – brief as a moth defined in the flare of a flame – was Aletta, framed within the arch.

Hannes stopped, peering intently through the darkness at the doorway.

But she had gone – into the gloom of the yard. He caught again the pinpoint of light as her torch beam fled before her, the wedge of brightness as she opened the kitchen door.

Why, in God’s name, had Aletta gone to the lighthouse?

He climbed the stairs of the tower doggedly, pulled himself into the light chamber. Len, standing at the window, turned towards him.

‘What was Aletta doing in the lighthouse?’ Hannes said.

‘Aletta?’ Len replied, turning back towards the empty pane. ‘Aletta wasn’t here.’

‘There was this chap on the island called Len,’ Hannes says. ‘A relief keeper while my two-IC was on leave.’ He swirls the dregs round the cup of tea Rika has brought him, watching for the pattern of the leaves as they settle. ‘Can you read a teacup?’ he says absently.

‘I would interpret it the way I want to.’ Rika smiles.

He glances at her sitting in the dim fluorescent glow of the distant porch light. He hesitates, pulling himself back. He changes tack. ‘He was the one behind the fight, even though he had nothing to do with the actual event. I found out later – he used to feed booze to Misklip. Not a lot. Just enough to keep him quiet. Except that night. Misklip got hold of more than usual. It took him from sorry-for-himself to raging. I don’t know why.’ He meditates a moment, then he says. ‘Except, it wasn’t only that. The story starts long, long before. But it starts with Len and, perhaps, it ends with Len.’

He says the name with a sort of quiet detachment – as if there is nothing he can make of it. Nothing he can do but say it.

Len.

‘Is there news of the convict?’ Len Hendricks said to Hannes as he stood by the radio phone the afternoon after the assault, waiting for the call from the lighthouse on the shore. ‘Do you think that Misklip will be arrested?’

The wind had died and the sea, though still heavy, broke more evenly on the rocks.

Hannes did not reply. He was writing notes, making lists of supplies that were needed.

‘I went down to see Misklip just now,’ Len continued. ‘He’s still at Riefaart’s. I think he’s too scared to go back to the quarters in case someone beats him up or the warders clap him in handcuffs.’

‘There’s logic in that,’ Hannes said non-committally.

‘I had a word with the sergeant.’ Len had been tentative. ‘I asked him if someone was going to lay a charge. He said the whole thing might be overlooked – usual prison fights and that sort of thing. Apparently they happen every day.’ He paused. ‘Except, of course, if the
kaffir
dies …’

‘Well I wouldn’t want old Misklip hauled away in chains.’

‘He bloody deserves it.’

‘And what do you deserve, Hendricks?’ Hannes said coolly. He turned back to his task.

Later that day Hannes had gone down to speak to Misklip himself. He seemed shrunk against the corner of the room, his lower lip like a little jug spout, rather moist and tremulous, his old woollen cap crumpled on his head, the smell about him still so strong and boozy, Hannes had recoiled. ‘What have you been drinking, Misklip?’ he said.