The Last Lighthouse Keeper

by Alan Titchmarsh

  He looked at her absently. “Thanks. I…I’m sorry.” He walked to the door, turned back hesitantly, then left her.

  ♦

  “I’m sorry you’ve had to come in again so soon, sir. And under such circumstances.” It was the same detective sergeant who had taken his statement after the fire.

  “Yes.” Will sat on the hard wooden chair, slumped forward with his elbows on his knees. He could not remember feeling so low since Ellie had died. He seemed to be tumbling into a deep pit of despair, free-falling into misery. Ernie. Friendly, understanding, generous Ernie. The nearest Will had come to having a father. Only yesterday the old man seemed to have come to terms with his new life; now the tourists wouldn’t hear his patter. His hand shook and he held on to the edge of the table to steady it.

  “Are you able to answer a few questions, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can we start by finding out how you came to be there when the accident happened?”

  “I was in the boatyard – the Crooked Angel – talking to Gryler, the owner. He said his lad had been out during the afternoon in his boat, and that he hadn’t come back. I was concerned. Decided to go up the cliff path and see if I could spot him.”

  “Why did you feel a need to do that?”

  “Don’t know. Just did. I suppose it’s what comes of watching boats all the time from the lighthouse. You get used to things not being quite right. Develop a sort of sixth sense. Can’t really explain it any more than that.”

  “Did you know the lad?”

  “Not really. I’d met him a couple of times but I wouldn’t say I knew him.”

  “How did you know he was in trouble?”

  “I didn’t know, I just surmised.”

  “I see.”

  The detective sergeant made occasional jottings on an A4 notepad.

  “Did you go on your own – on the cliff path, I mean?”

  “No. I went with Mr Utterly. He has the boat next to mine in the yard.”

  “Yes. I’ve already spoken to him. He called the lifeboat out.”

  “Yes. I went to the lighthouse.”

  “Why was that, sir?”

  “Again, I don’t really know. Sixth sense.”

  “And what did you see?”

  Will filled in the sergeant on the events he had watched with horror earlier that afternoon, of Christopher Applebee clinging to his boat, of Ernie’s attempted rescue and of the wave that washed him overboard. He did not mention his own attempt to rescue his friend. The sergeant listened intently as Will told of the Sennen lifeboat’s arrival, its combing the sea for the bodies, and the discovery only of Christopher Applebee.

  “Popular man, Ernie Hallybone. Sad loss.”

  “Yes.”

  The detective sergeant got up from the desk and walked to the window, where the rain was running down the panes.

  “Any idea why the lad was out there?”

  “None at all. Unless he was after a few lobsters.”

  The sergeant turned round. “Or something else.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Lobsters might gain him a few bob but I don’t think he’d have gone out in this weather for a few bob, do you?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Seen any sign at your boatyard of booze?”

  The sergeant’s direct questioning threw Will off-balance. “Booze?”

  “Yes. You know – whisky, gin, vodka. Remy Martin.”

  He regained his equilibrium. “No. Not at all. None.”

  “Not in a shed? Or being offloaded from boats? In boxes? They probably wouldn’t say Famous Grouse on the side. Bit obvious, that. But if they’d said Golden Wonder you’d have noticed if they’d looked suspiciously heavy?”

  Will was taken aback by the note of irritation in the policeman’s voice. “Yes. There’s been nothing. It’s very quiet down there.” Then the implication of the question hit home. “You don’t think…”

  “What, sir?”

  “You don’t think I had anything to do with this, do you?”

  “At the moment, sir, I’m keeping an open mind.”

  Suddenly Will felt the weight of the world upon his shoulders. The sergeant read his reaction and offered a placatory smile. “Using my sixth sense, sir, you’re not high on my list of suspects, but I have to ask the questions. I also have to try to get to the bottom of this.”

  Will tried to smile back, but found it impossible.

  When he had given precise details and times, the sergeant was seemingly satisfied, and brought the interview to a close. “I think that’s all I need to know for the present, sir. You can go now.”

  Will thanked him, for the second time in a week, and wondered if this was to become a regular occurrence. Until this week he’d only ever been in a police station once to report his grandmother’s lost Jack Russell, and now here he was every few days.

  He rose to go, and the sergeant coughed. “Er, sir?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’d be grateful if you could keep our conversation to yourself for now.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.”

  “Especially as far as Mr Gryler is concerned.”

  The rain had petered out to a light drizzle, and the wind was no more than a gusty breeze in the dark, wet night. He glanced at his watch. Just after ten. Where had the day gone? The agonizing, dreadful day. He unlocked the door of Ernie’s van, slid on to the driver’s seat and slammed the door. Ernie’s peaked cap, its white top fresh-laundered for his new job, lay on the passenger seat. He picked it up and looked at the marks around the inside of the headband where years of sweat had stained the leather. He studied the badge and its legend, TRINITAS IN UNITATE. Three in one. He couldn’t bring himself to smile, but he hoped in his heart that Ernie had gone somewhere where the Trinity House motto would be appropriate.

  ♦

  Amy sat up in case he came. Ten o’clock, then eleven, then midnight. She hoped he would want to be with her to share his sorrow. At twelve thirty she slid into bed, keeping one small lamp on just in case, and listening to music on the stereo to keep her awake, until finally came the song that touched her soul.

  “You may wish that he would tell you all the feelings in his head, and say that life’s worth living when you’re there.”

  Tears ran down her cheeks and soaked into the pillow.

  “But deep inside your heart you know, when lying in your bed, he can never ever know how much you care.”

  Nineteen

  Blacknore

  He thought he had reached a point in life where sadness could no longer affect him as it once had. He had been so deeply sad for so long, had become so used to battling through it. But Ernie’s death was so unfair. It was not just the sorrow of losing a friend and father figure, it was the injustice. First Ernie had lost his job. Then he’d been given another that he hated. But he had solthered on, determined to make a go of it, seizing the opportunity to forge a future for himself. He had a wife who loved him and to whom he was devoted. He should have been heading for a retirement in which he could have enjoyed his beloved Cornwall. Instead, life had been snatched from him.

  Will had taken himself back to Boy Jack on the night of Ernie’s death; had felt that old black cloak of despair rising up to envelop him once more. Half of him wanted to go to Amy, but the other half was gritting its teeth and battening down the hatches with a vengeance. What was the point in risking yet another attachment? Better to be in control of his own destiny than risk handing it over.

  He lay inside the boat, wrapped in his sleeping bag, cold and stiff, the cat curled into him for warmth. He hardly slept, listening to the wind.

  The morning dawned, not unusually after a storm, with a sly calm, weak sunshine slanting in through the wheelhouse port-holes. He stirred from shallow sleep and lay still, the events of the previous day replaying in his mind.

  Spike lay still, purring in the curve of his body. Will raised his head and looked out at the yard and the sea beyond. He saw,
with the bitter taste of irony, a perfect May morning. The first day of May. May’s first day alone.

  ♦

  Amy woke to find the bedside light still on. She switched it off and looked up at the skylight and the pale blue sky. She wondered why it was blue when it should be grey; the deep, dark, threatening Paine’s grey of a watercolour palette.

  She lay still and thought of him, hoping he would call in. She knew she could not seek him out, that she must wait. She gazed up at the deepening blue of the morning and realized for the first time just how much she loved him.

  ♦

  It was nine o’clock before Will could drag himself out of his cocoon and brave the day. He walked up on deck and shivered in the cool, clear morning air, drawing the sleeping-bag about his shoulders. Spike looked up at him; then tumbled down the ladder and ran away along the jetty. Will was about to head back inside when he saw a figure walking along the hard standing towards his boat. Hovis raised his hand and walked up to Boy Jack. He climbed the ladder. “Need anything?”

  “No. Not really.”

  Hovis cleared his throat. “I’m going to make myself unpopular.”

  “Mmm?” Will was looking out to sea, his eyes unfocused.

  “You’re going to go and shower in Gryler’s new, if makeshift, facility and then you’re coming on to Florence Nightingale for breakfast.”

  “No, really, I’d rather be – ”

  “I know what you’d rather be, but that’s not on.”

  Will kept looking at the sea.

  “It’s not your fault, you know.”

  Will spoke quietly. “It was my boat.”

  “It was his choice. He chose to go after that lad. You can’t blame yourself.”

  “But I do.” He looked at Hovis for the first time, and the despair in his eyes was plain. “Everything I touch turns to dust.”

  “You mustn’t do this.” Hovis used none of the bluff brightness that normally characterized his conversation. Instead he spoke calmly, firmly. “You mustn’t be so hard on yourself.”

  “But it’s my fault.”

  “No. It is not your fault.” He laid his hand gently on Will’s shoulder. “It is a most dreadful thing to happen, but you have to get over this. Do you hear?”

  Will looked at him, pleadingly.

  “Come on.” Hovis eased the sleeping-bag from Will’s shoulders and stowed it in the wheelhouse, before ushering him down the ladder and propelling him towards the newly positioned shower block beyond Gryler’s office. He walked back to Florence Nightingale for a towel and flopped it over the top of the cubicle door as the steam rose and the hot water did its best to wash away the troubles of the previous day.

  Will returned to Florence Nightingale as though in a trance, the towel over his shoulder. The smell of bacon and eggs went unnoticed as he sat down at the table.

  Hovis pushed the plate in front of him, along with a large mug of black coffee. He sat down with his own plate at the other side of the table and began to eat, noticing that his fellow diner was letting his breakfast go cold. He tapped his knife on the side of Will’s plate. The ringing sound brought him to earth. “Sorry?” He looked at Hovis as though he had missed part of the conversation.

  “Eat.”

  “I don’t think I – ”

  “Eat!”

  Hovis tucked in himself and watched as Will began to toy with a scrap of bacon and then his egg. He ate reluctantly at first, then more avidly – he hadn’t eaten a meal for almost twenty-four hours. He cleared his plate before Hovis had finished.

  “Better?”

  “Thanks.” He tried to smile but his face still had a distracted, hunted look. He made to leave.

  “Where are you going?” Hovis asked.

  “Just back.”

  “Wait for a bit. Don’t go yet. More coffee?” Hovis offered the pot.

  “No, thanks.”

  He put it back on the stove. “Can I say something?”

  “Mmm?”

  “Don’t go there.”

  Will looked at him. “Where?”

  “Where you’ve been before.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t go into yourself. Not now. It’s not worth it. A waste of time.”

  “How do you know?” Will was surprised and a touch irritated by Hovis’s plain-speaking.

  “Because I’ve been there.” He began to clear the table. “Just try and see ahead, not backwards. That’s all.”

  “It’s just that I thought – ”

  “You thought that at last things were going right for you. You had a glimpse of something special. Something real. Then suddenly you’re back where you started.” Hovis was filling the sink with water and looking out of the port-hole.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I see things. Things that people don’t think I see. You see boats coming and going, I see people. People’s faces. People’s hearts.” He turned to face Will, a cup in one hand and a dripping cloth in the other. “Sometimes their souls.”

  The two men looked at one another for a few moments before Hovis spoke again, very softly. “Some things in your life you have no control over. It is quite pointless worrying over them. They are the way they are, and they will be the way they will be. Call it fate. Then there are the other things, the things that are yours to decide. And one of the strangest and saddest things in life is that some people cannot differentiate between the two. They spend all their time punishing themselves for things that have happened and which they can’t change, and while they’re busy doing that they fail to see life’s opportunities.” He smiled. “Don’t miss out.”

  “On what?”

  “Oh. I think you know.”

  ♦

  The talk in the Salutation at lunchtime was of nothing but the previous day’s events. Alf Penrose dispensed his pints with quiet circumspection and listened as the fishermen and other locals chewed the fat. Ted Whistler, perched on a stool at the end of the bar, stared blackly into his glass.

  Gryler had been carted off to the police station the night before and had not, as yet, returned. Speculation grew until, at half past twelve, the door swung open and he bowled in, his face like thunder.

  “Usual?” Alf Penrose enquired.

  “Usual,” he growled.

  The bar, exuding a low rumble before Gryler’s appearance, was hushed as Alf pulled the pump. The beer gushed into the glass and the slooshing sound echoed in the silence.

  Gryler looked around. “You needn’t look so surprised.” The customers studied their feet. “They didn’t keep me in.”

  Alf broke the ice. “What happened then?”

  “Asked me about the lad and his boat.”

  “Oh, aye? So what do they think?”

  “The lad was out pulling up his lobster pots. Outboard packed in and he hadn’t taken any oars. Storm blew up and he got thrown out. Drownded.”

  “Didn’t he have any flares?” asked one of the three fishermen at the end of the bar.

  “No. Daft sod. No flares. No oars. Shouldn’t have been out in that weather.” Gryler took a sip of his beer. “Bloody lighthouse-keeper, neither. Bloody waste.”

  Ted Whistler pushed his stool noisily away from the bar, crossed the room and walked out.

  “Taken it hard, has he?” asked Gryler, eyes on the disappearing figure.

  “Must have done. Hasn’t said a word. Hasn’t even finished his pint.” Alf gestured towards the half-full glass on the bar. “What happens now?”

  “Dunno. Nothing, I suppose,” said Gryler, taking another pull on his pint. “Misadventure, they’ll call it. Misadbloodyventure.”

  One of the fishermen shot a look at Alf Penrose and Gryler caught his eye. “I’m telling you, it were nothing to do with me. I didn’t even service the engine – he did it himself. I might have been his boss but I weren’t his keeper. ‘Ad a life of his own, you know.” He registered the suspicion on the faces of those still at the bar. “Ah, bugger it. I’ve got wo
rk to do. On me own now, too.” He slammed his glass down on the bar and stormed out, all eyes on him as he went.

  ♦

  Amy had not expected him so soon. She had steeled herself for a wait of a few days. Instead she looked up from her painting and saw him in the middle of the afternoon. She got up from her easel and walked over to where he stood. “Hi.”

  He put his arms around her, and kissed the top of her head. “I’m sorry. About yesterday.”

  She eased away from him and put her finger up to his lips. “Don’t. No need.”

  “But there is – ”

  “Sssh…no.” They stood, their arms around each other, gently swaying from side to side.

  “I just felt so…”

  “I didn’t expect you. I knew you’d want to be on your own. It’s OK, really it is.”

  “I just…”

  “Just hold me, will you?”

  He bent his head into her shoulder and sighed a long, deep sigh.

  The door opened. “Anybody at home?”

  The two sprang apart as Jerry MacDermott and his wife burst into the gallery.

  “Oh. Sorry, squire. Didn’t see you there. Didn’t realize you were…”

  Amy spoke first. “It’s fine. Can I help you?”

  “Well, me and the missus – don’t want to interrupt or anything, but we’ve just come to look for something for the ‘ouse. Sorry to ‘ear what ‘appened, though.” He spoke to Will. “Sorry about the old man. Terrible thing, the sea. Very sad. Knew ‘im well, did you?”

  “Yes. I used to work with him.”

  “What would you like to see?” Amy tried to change the subject.

  “You ‘ad a couple of sculptures. They were ‘ere…” He gestured to the middle of the floor. “Sold, are they?”

  “Er…no. I just put them in the back room.”

  “Could you get them out again? I’d like Trudie to see them. She didn’t notice them last time.”

  The blonde, clad in a bright pink sweatshirt, white leggings and stilettos, had been simpering on Jerry’s arm. “Jerry says they’re awfully sexy.” She giggled.

  Amy stood transfixed by the suntanned vision in pink and white. She looked like a slice of Neapolitan ice cream.

  “Yes. I’ll get them out.” She turned to Will. “Can you give me a hand?”