Lighthouses

by Trost, Cameron

  She fumbled around the cottage trying light switches and listening for dial tones on the land line, but all in vain. However, just as Ellyn decided she didn’t have to stay in the cottage any longer, that she could grab her things and make a dash for the car whenever she pleased, she heard a sound outside. It was out of place in this day and age but timely all the same considering the research she’d just been conducting.

  Horses…

  Horses and the unmistakable sound of wooden wheels on the gravel road leading to the cottage.

  ‘No,’ she breathed in a whisper, the whole time thinking of Old Dary. ‘This isn’t happening.’

  With the sound growing louder, Ellyn went to the window and peeled the curtains back to see outside. But it was so dark, the only illumination provided by each revolution of the lighthouse lamp. She stared down the road leading to town and searched the darkness, her heart beginning to race as the sound drew nearer. Then, within the briefest flash of lightning, she saw it, a team of rain-drenched horses, steam spraying from their nostrils with every effort as they hauled a rattling carriage toward the cottage. Stifling a scream, she backed away from the window, her eyes never leaving the window for a moment.

  Her very breath caught in her throat as she watched and listened. Listened to the wheels roll to a stop outside. Watched as the lighthouse illuminated the garden in a slow cadence, and saw the lone figure standing by the coach; a man in a wide-brimmed hat and heavy coat, features masked behind the misty breaths of the unsettled horses. Her hands trembled, knuckles white as she grasped the curtains, the dark figure was drawing closer with every pulse of light. Then… footsteps on the verandah.

  He was here.

  With another clap of thunder, Ellyn found the strength to scream just as the front door was flung open, and the storm rushed in with the night.

  ‘Ellyn!’ A voice cried. Then… familiar. ‘Babe, it’s me. David.’ He stepped forward, the firelight revealing his face.

  ‘David?’ Relief came in a wave, but not without a sense of confusion.

  ‘Take it easy,’ he reassured her, stepping inside. He turned to wave someone off before closing the door against the weather. ‘The miner’s strike ended this morning, so I caught a late flight out.’ He shook the rain off his hat. Wet dark hair was fixed to his brow over weary hazel eyes and day-old stubble beaded with rain water. He slipped out of his raincoat, revealing a slightly crushed bunch of flowers.

  ‘Happy birthday,’ he added with a sheepish smile. ‘I didn’t think I would make it.’ He shrugged. ‘But here I am.’

  ‘Yeah, here you are.’ Ellyn shook her head, still bewildered. She took the flowers, their scent like perfume. She suddenly felt the tension drain away. ‘The horse and carriage… I thought…’

  Tom shrugged just as the lights came back on. ‘I couldn’t get a cab but this guy in town with the horses was brave enough to bring me up for a pretty penny.’ He frowned. ‘What’s up? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.’

  She wrapped her arms around him and held him close, remembering the carriage of tourists she saw in town. ‘You scared the life out of me,’ she said.

  She hung his hat and coat on the coat stand by the door and led him to the fire.

  ‘Relax. I’ll make you a coffee.’

  She filled the kettle and found a vase in the cupboard for the flowers. Waiting for the water to boil, she was mesmerised by the pulse of light against the blind slats in the window.

  ‘That was one brave driver to bring those horses out on a night like this.’

  ‘Brave or crazy,’ David added from the next room.

  She smiled. ‘And that open carriage. Couldn’t have been much fun in all this rain.’

  The light flashed against the window.

  ‘Open? It wasn’t open,’ he said. ‘It was an old stage coach. Must have been a replica. Had the Cobb and Co. name painted on the doors.’

  Her smile morphed to a frown.

  ‘Strange fellow,’ David said. ‘Didn’t talk much.’

  Ellyn grasped the kitchen bench, feeling weak in the legs. She had to force the next words out.

  ‘Did he say his name?’

  Another pulse of light caught her attention as she waited.

  David chuckled. ‘I asked, but he just said Dary. Call me Old Dary, he told me.’

  Ellyn felt her blood turn cold, just as the next pulse of light revealed the silhouette of a man beyond the window, heavy coat and wide-brimmed hat unmistakable. She opened her mouth, just as the kettle screamed on the stove.

  THE LAST KEEPER

  Linda Brucesmith

  ‘I won’t do it,’ said the Cape Byron lighthouse, and switched itself off.

  Hushhhhhhhhhhhhhh… said the light keeper’s cottage, as the setting summer sun silhouetted Mt Warning to the west, and pinked the Pacific to the east.

  At the fine line separating sea and sky, currents hunted for the beam which had caressed them for eighty-eight years — since 1901. Finding only dark, they smoothed themselves into swells ready to tantrum. When they reached Australia’s easternmost tip — the rise on which the lighthouse stood tapered into a salt-dusted promontory — waves threw themselves against the cliffs. The rocks split and shushed the kerumphing waters. They sent cranky, foam-laced breakers to dump on beaches to the south. They channelled grumbling, rolling combers and the white sands they carried into the bay, to the north.

  When the lighthouse’s questing, silver finger disappeared from the sky it was as if a passing giant had thrown a quilt over everything. The evening’s twinkle and song were damped quiet. Above the coverlet was a thickened dusk…

  All around the cape, rootling rock wallabies sensed the change, and stood suddenly erect. The foliage of just-nibbled, fuzzy spur flowers released the scent of geraniums. Wild goats turned the soft shells of their ears this way and that, listening for something.

  At Watego’s — the affluent enclave which the lighthouse overlooked, and the headland cupped like an amphitheatre — millionaires gazed out, over their aperitifs and verandahs, to the sea. A tanned man and a soft-haired woman were patterning the sands of the little cove with sticks; their tracings dipped and mixed and curled. As the beam slipped from above, the tracers stopped what they were doing.

  The woman pushed her hair from her forehead, squinted up at the lantern room inside the tower’s glass and surrounding balcony. She waited for the lens to turn again, anticipated the customary, thirty-second rotation. When the sparkle of the polished, prismatic glass pieces didn’t come, when the upper housing remained still and dark, she said, ‘Joel, what would make it switch off like that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  Along the shore and toward the town, scuba divers had completed their afternoon’s communion with the bay’s turtles and wobbegongs, peeled their wetsuits to their waists, and stood with salt slow-drying on their skin. A four-wheel drive hauled their boat from the water. In twos and threes, they followed the trailer as it bumped across the beach.

  A diver stopped, scanned the sky.

  ‘Huh,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ said his companion.

  ‘There’s no beam.’

  The second diver looked up. ‘There’s always a beam.’

  ‘I don’t see it.’

  They waited.

  There was no beam.

  Still further along the oceanfront, diners at a restaurant were eating prawns, barramundi, and oysters. A man sitting behind a plate piled with calamari hailed a waitress. He waved over the deck, the car park, and the beach beyond. Braided leather bracelets clumped at his wrist as he gestured at the place where the light should be.

  ‘What’s wrong with the lighthouse?’ he asked.

  ‘Is there something wrong with it?’ The waitress tilted her head.

  The man tsked. ‘It’s not working. It should be on.’

  People turned to where he had been pointing.

  ‘It looks like a snuffed candle,’ someone said.


  On the footpath between the cars outside and the sand beyond, men in loose shirts and women in floral singlets had convened in a drumming circle. They made anxious faces at one another as they hugged their djun-djuns and ngomas. They wondered at the dull sky, waited for the bright to return, and worried at something in the circle leader’s expression...

  Master drummer Hunter smoothed the brushy moustache which ran from beneath his nose to his jawline. He removed his cap, dropped it onto his skin of his djembe. He patted the black fabric of the crown, stroked the insignia of the North Coast Steam Navigation Company embroidered above the stubby leather peak with his thumb. He contemplated the misfortunes of the cap’s previous owner, reflected on the status the cap conferred.

  The fine-worked anchor-and-chain tattoo inked into his forearm itched.

  Beyond the beach, sullen swells hisssssssssssed against the broken pylons of Old Byron Jetty.

  #

  ‘Yeah, yeah. I’m onto it,’ said Samuel, as the phone started to ring. He left his supper in the light keeper’s cottage, gathered up the silver ring — its loop as big as an orange — and its collection of keys. He closed the front door behind him, glanced at the rising moon, and broke into a run up the lighthouse road. He took the steep stairs to the tower platform two at a time, sprinted across the bitumen, leaped up the three stairs under the arched entrance. Breathing hard, he slapped the whitewashed wall. The surface was smooth and cold.

  ‘What the hell?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve shut myself down.’

  As always, Samuel heard the words between his ears. This time, as a stubborn resolution. ‘That’s ridiculous,’ he said. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘I’m not being ridiculous.’

  ‘We need the light up and running!’

  ‘I won’t do it.’

  Samuel steeled himself, turned the key in the lock. The gleaming dusk fell softly against the red cedar’s frosted glass panels, etched with depictions of a waratah and a lion rampant above ornately rendered script. Olim periculum nunc salus. Once perilous now safe. The door swung open. Salt air settled on the lobby’s black and white chequered floor tiles.

  ‘Of course, you’ll do it,’ Samuel said.

  He began a hurried climb of the spiral staircase curling between the tower’s tapered, cement-rendered walls. Earlier that afternoon, his ascending feet had tap-tapped on the slate treads; the sound had bounced cleanly, to and fro, inside the sea-scented space. Now, his boots tick-ticked. Dull and flat. He tapped at a step with his sole; the noise disappeared without flowering. He bent and pressed a hand to the stone. It was fever-warm. The surrounding air was musty.

  ‘’Round and ’round. Making stupid pretties for passing tourists.’

  ‘That’s what you do,’ said Samuel, pausing on the first of the three platforms. ‘Nothing stupid about it.’

  ‘This piece of land is high enough. I don’t need to be this tall. Never needed to be this tall. It’s all pointless.’

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ said Samuel, and continued up. ‘You said you wouldn’t do this. You told me you’d keep on.’

  ‘All those passing trawlers and cruisers and carriers. All lit. Every night. With no acknowledgement at all. It’s too one-sided. When was the last time a proper-sized vessel visited the bay? Stopped in for a look-see?’

  ‘What rubbish,’ Samuel said. Beyond the lantern room’s enclosing glass, the Pacific darkened. The lights of Byron township brightened like fireflies. ‘This isn’t about ships stopping in for tea and conversation.’ He tinkered quickly with electrics, studied the backup diesel alternator. ‘They need to see you. That’s all.’ He inspected the central tungsten-halogen lamp, then turned his attention to the surrounding lens sitting motionless in its mercury float bath. ‘Stop this.’

  Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh… the air in the tower shifted. It rearranged itself around the spiral staircase, keened as it passed between the steps. Samuel glanced at the vents set at intervals on the walls. All closed.

  ‘Where are the trawlers and the fishing boats that used to run in and out of here every day?’ the lighthouse went on. ‘What happened to the steam packets? Used to be two a week, passing as close as a wink. Those and the Tallow Beach miners and the whalers — nasty business — but still, nice and busy.’ There was a pause. ‘This was a port. I was recognised. Keepers were important.’

  ‘Times change,’ said Samuel. ‘I don’t need to be important.’ Everything appeared to be in perfect working order. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘Switched myself off. Just as I said.’

  Samuel took a deep breath, held it, exhaled. ‘What do you want?’

  A warmth brushed his cheek. Soft as a feather.

  ‘I can’t relate to those stand-offish ships out there.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘They’re out there.’

  ‘Of course, they’re out there.’

  ‘And they’re the reason we’re here.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I think they should be in here.’

  Samuel blinked. ‘You’d like me to divert a tanker, just so you can have a bit of a look? And in the meantime, you’re off on a coffee break?’

  A pause. ‘I don’t like sarcasm.’ Another pause. ‘You know that.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  They considered one another, kept their sadnesses to themselves. Outside, a sou’ easterly was ruffling the headland’s grasses.

  ‘I want a ship. Up close. A big one. Now. With all we’ve done, acknowledgement is the right and proper thing.’

  Samuel rubbed at his forehead with the heel of his hand. ‘We haven’t had a major ship in the bay since the cyclone broke up the New Jetty...’

  Pfffffffffttttttt… irritated air puffed at his face.

  Another silence.

  ‘Hello?’ said Samuel.

  ‘I’m the most powerful lighthouse on the Australian mainland.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve had forty-seven head keepers, first and second assistants.’

  ‘Yes…’

  ‘And you’re the last one.’

  The statement hung in the air, faded away.

  ‘Yes,’ Samuel whispered after a time. ‘I am.’

  ‘That’s something.’

  Samuel said nothing.

  The lighthouse sounded tired. ‘I’m more than a tourist attraction.’

  ‘I’ve never doubted it.’

  ‘Come, now. How many visitors this past year?’

  ‘We need the light,’ countered Samuel.

  ‘There’ll be no light until I see a ship. Up close.’

  #

  In the underwater gardens surrounding Julian Rocks — the ancient, multi-peaked volcanic rock formation at the centre of the bay — port-and-starboard lightfish bumped and flurried. The bioluminescent organs under their eyes flashed a confused red and green, like broken navigation lights. Blue devil fish appeared from inside caves and under overhangs. They emerged into the camouflaging murk, flicked their tail fins, and retreated.

  Sensing something, a manta ray adjusted the arc of her fins, turned upward through the wet. She broke the surface, looked into the dark for the lighthouse beam, and then, not finding it, stilled and drifted with the turning tide toward the cape. Bright yellow pilot fish schooled beneath her. Rivulets trickled across her back.

  Splassssssshhhhhhh… said a nearby swell, as another ray appeared.

  Throughout the night and into early morning, more and more manta rays abandoned their meanderings. Under a neither-this-nor-that sky, the bay blacked with them. Like driftwood, they followed the pulling waters past Watego’s, making a spectacle for the overlooking verandahs. They followed the line of the cape, tracked back along the shore on the far side. By dawn, they had filled the surf below the lighthouse like a cloud. By the time the sun rose into a pallid blue sky, they had gathered in their hundreds.

  Waiting.

  The day warmed.

  On the ligh
thouse road, the divers of the previous day interrupted their climb to consider the manoeuvrings below.

  ‘Amazing,’ said one.

  ‘I hope they’re all right,’ said another.

  ‘They know what they’re doing,’ said the first.

  When they reached the platform, a small crowd had gathered at the lighthouse. As the sun rose, the tower cast a long, thin shadow and the group shaped itself to fit the shade. Samuel stood at the top of the steps in front of the great cedar door, looking down at their anxious faces.

  ‘…a temporary mechanical problem,’ he was saying.

  A drummer wrinkled her nose. Another shook his head and looked at his feet.

  ‘We need the light,’ said Hunter.

  ‘Hear, hear,’ chorused the previous night’s diners.

  ‘That’s right,’ others called.

  Show me a ship, said the lighthouse.

  A ripple ran through the crowd. It was as though someone had called their names individually; they heard the call all at once. They looked into one another’s eyes. The anchor inked on Hunter’s forearm pulled at his skin.

  ‘They won’t hear it from you, Samuel. You wouldn’t think to ask,’ said the lighthouse. ‘So, here it is.’

  Someone whispered, ‘Hear what?’

  ‘Listen,’ said Hunter.

  Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh… said those within earshot.

  ‘I’ve been a terrific landmark for this town. I’ve kicked up property prices in Watego’s and produced thousands of illuminated nights. I’ve lit, because keepers told me I keep passing ships on course. Caring for ships is a noble calling. A fine and important purpose. But minding ships that don’t mind you in return is something else again. I deserve better. Keepers deserve better.’

  ‘But…’ said a voice.

  Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh… said Hunter.

  Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh… said the crowd.

  ‘…I’ve made good money for you all in parking, tea and scone sales, tour tickets, overnighters. All those souvenirs…’

  ‘Yes…’ said someone.

  Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh… said someone else.