The Lighthouse

by Alison Moore

  He had discovered her first name. Sometimes he walked home behind her, mentally composing his diary entry for the evening: Angela was wearing a red jumper and a grey skirt and had her hair in a ponytail. Or, Angela was wearing a white blouse and grey trousers and her hair was shorter.

  Kenny – who had always had girlfriends, sometimes more than one at a time, even in junior school – would have whistled to make her look round, to make her smile or at least notice him. He would have spoken to her, made her laugh. But Futh was not Kenny. He kept her in sight but kept his distance, as if he were a private eye. He was so focused on her, blinkered, that he did not pay attention to where he was going. When Angela disappeared into her house, he stopped and looked around, finding himself on a strange estate, wondering where he was. Keen to get back and update his diary, he turned around and tried to retrace his steps, succeeding only in straying further and wishing he had gone straight home from school.

  In the sixth form, Futh attended an open day in the Faculty of Science and Engineering at the local university. He was in the lecture theatre, gazing at the back of Angela’s neck instead of at the person giving the welcome and introduction, when a movement beside him caught his eye. Turning, he found Kenny sitting down next to him. Kenny, whom Futh had not seen for years, had changed in some ways – he had a chipped front tooth and a stud in his nose; he said that he had pierced it himself. But in other ways he was just the same – he had a bit of a gut, and bike oil on his hands.

  ‘So there you are,’ said Kenny, as if Futh were the one who had gone away. ‘My mum said you’d be here. And she said you’ve got my old compass. Do you know her?’ Futh was confused and then realised that Kenny had seen him staring at Angela. He sensed that he was about to be teased.

  ‘I know her from school,’ said Futh.

  Now Kenny was looking at her too. Angela, as if she had a feeling that she was being observed, turned around and saw Kenny watching her while Futh glanced away.

  The welcome came to an end and everyone left the lecture theatre and gathered in the foyer in little groups. Futh saw Angela leaving her friends and coming over. Standing next to Futh, looking at Kenny, she said, ‘Do I know you?’

  ‘He knows you,’ said Kenny, indicating Futh.

  Angela glanced at Futh and then turned back to Kenny and said, ‘I don’t know him.’

  ‘We go to the same school,’ said Futh.

  ‘Do we?’ said Angela.

  Futh nodded. ‘We’re in the same year.’

  ‘I don’t recognise you,’ she said.

  This wasn’t surprising, thought Futh. Shortly afterwards, Angela wandered away and Futh looked down at his schedule to see what he should do next. Kenny said, ‘You can keep my compass. I got a new one anyway,’ and when Futh looked up again he found that Kenny had drifted off too.

  Kenny did not in the end go to university, and when Futh started his chemistry course that autumn, he discovered that Angela was not there either. He did not see her again until she picked him up at the motorway service station.

  In the car, he reminded her of their encounter at the open day.

  ‘I don’t remember,’ she said.

  ‘Do you remember me from school?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ said Angela.

  ‘We were in the same year.’

  ‘I don’t remember you,’ she said.

  ‘You might remember my dad,’ he said, ‘Mr Futh, the chemistry teacher.’

  But no, she said, shaking her head, she did not remember him either.

  ‘He’s retired now anyway.’

  By now the rain was falling so heavily that Futh could barely see where they were going. Angela, squinting through the windscreen, speeded up the wipers and turned up the blower. She was going a bit too fast for Futh’s liking.

  He asked her, ‘Have you been away for the weekend? Have you come far?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I just drove out to the service station to meet my boyfriend.’ After a moment, she added, ‘It’s in between his house and mine. We meet in the middle. He’s married so we can’t meet at his, and I live with my mother and she doesn’t like me seeing him so we can’t go there.’

  They drove for about a mile without either of them speaking and then Angela pulled over and stopped on the hard shoulder and Futh realised that she was crying. She was doing it rather quietly and he wondered when that had started. He did not know what to do. He said, ‘Are you all right?’

  She kept trying to talk but Futh could not understand her because she was crying at the same time. There were no tissues in the car, but there was the towel, although it was a bit damp. He offered it to her and she hesitated briefly before taking it and pressing her face into it and crying harder.

  Futh watched the windscreen – the wipers struggling to keep up with the hammering rain – and eventually she said, ‘I think he’s seeing someone else.’ When Futh said nothing for a moment she added, ‘I don’t mean his wife. I mean, I don’t think I’m the only other one. I’m just waiting for him to turn around one day and say he’s done with me.’

  Futh sat awkwardly beside her. Kenny, he thought, would do the right thing. Kenny would put his arm around her, say something which helped. But what, he thought, did one say? It’s going to be fine. Maybe it’s for the best. You’ll find someone else. But Futh was not Kenny.

  After a minute, Futh looked in his bag and found a packet of mints which he opened and offered to her. She shook her head without really looking. He went back into his bag and found an orange and offered her that. She looked at the orange and then at him and she laughed. ‘Go on then,’ she said.

  Futh peeled the orange and Angela took the half he passed to her and she said, ‘You know, I do remember Mr Futh. He was OK,’ and she put an orange segment in her mouth. ‘A bit boring,’ she added.

  When the orange was all gone, Futh wiped his fingers on the towel and Angela started the car again and they went on their way.

  As they approached a junction, Angela began to indicate and Futh said, ‘It’s the next one.’

  ‘There’s been an accident there,’ said Angela. ‘If we go that way we’ll be stuck in a jam for hours. I’m taking the back roads.’

  They took the back roads, but later, after she had dropped him off and driven away, Futh, sitting alone at his kitchen table, wished that they had taken the other route, longed for the traffic jam in which he would still be sitting with Angela in her small, warm car.

  After a few hours of walking, Futh’s new boots begin to rub. The same thing happened on the trip with his father, who sat down at the end of the first day and said, ‘I’m done in. No more walking,’ and Futh had not complained. Instead, apart from one day spent visiting, they spent the rest of the week killing time until, at the end of each day, Futh’s father went out and Futh went to bed, earlier every evening.

  Futh, sitting down now on a bench, the hot slats griddling the backs of his thighs, reaches into his rucksack for a drink and finds that he has already finished what he brought. At the same time, it occurs to him that he has neglected to put any sun cream on his face, and that he ought to be wearing a hat. He administers some factor fifty, smearing it over the scalp exposed by his thinning hair, his skin already salmon pink and tender. Rubbing the residue into his hands, he sees on his palm the inch-long scar, now thin and pale.

  He got the scar in Cornwall. He was up on the cliffs with his parents. It was the start of the holidays, the summer between primary and secondary school, the summer of the heatwave. They were spending the week in a caravan and someone had told them that the way to stop it turning into an oven was to keep the windows closed and the blinds down. They would come out of the midday sun into the relative cool of the darkened caravan and then there might be lunch and a siesta before Futh could escape again into the blazing day.

  Despite the incredible heat, up on the cliffs there was a breeze and one could burn unexpectedly. They had eaten a picnic. His mother had made sandwiches and he and his fat
her had shared a savoury pasty in a paper bag. His father had opened a bottle of Pomagne but no one else wanted any. There were oranges but only his mother had bothered with one. Afterwards, she lay on her back on the grass and closed her eyes. Her port-wine stain was visible beneath the strap of her bikini top. She smelt of sun cream.

  His father was holding forth on the subject of the lighthouse and eighteenth-century shipwrecks. ‘Of course,’ his father said, ‘there were still shipwrecks after the lighthouse was built.’ He talked about the plundering of the wrecks, and the bodies which were washed ashore and buried, he said, until the early nineteenth century, namelessly in the dunes, in unconsecrated land.

  He talked about flash patterns. ‘The light,’ he said, gazing fixedly at the hazy horizon, ‘flashes every three seconds and can be seen from thirty miles away. In fog, the foghorn is used.’ And Futh, looking at the lighthouse, wondered how this could happen – how there could be this constant warning of danger, the taking of all these precautions, and yet still there was all this wreckage.

  His father went on.

  Futh, standing, stretching his legs, wandered away over the bone-dry grass, searching for shade although there was none, hoping for more of a breeze, and wanting just to keep moving. In his hand was his mother’s perfume case, a silver-plated lighthouse, which he had taken out of her handbag. It was an antique, an heirloom acquired from his father’s German grandmother.

  Futh took the glass vial out of its case. He wanted to smell the contents, his mother’s scent, but he was not allowed to remove the stopper.

  He remembered the visit to his widower granddad’s flat in London, during which the lighthouse had been given to Futh’s father. The whole time they were there, his granddad had been toying with it, this little silver novelty, occasionally putting it away in the pocket of his pyjama top only to get it straight out again. He seemed to be dwelling on something. Finally he said, ‘You’ve never met Ernst, my brother, have you?’ He was speaking really to his son.

  ‘No,’ said Futh’s father, ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘He might still be alive, I suppose.’

  ‘He could be.’

  Futh’s granddad held out his hand, this exquisite silver lighthouse lying across his palm. ‘This was my mother’s,’ he said. ‘You need to return it to Ernst.’ He held it out until Futh’s father took it from him, and then, seeming exhausted, Futh’s granddad closed his eyes.

  Outside, in the car, Futh’s father gave the lighthouse to Futh’s mother, who admired the case and the vial inside, approved the scent and put some on her wrists and her throat. The car, not yet out of sight of the house, filled with the smell of violets.

  Futh, up on the cliffs in Cornwall with the silver lighthouse in one hand and the stoppered glass vial in the other, wandered back to his parents. His mother was still lying with her eyes closed, her face turned to the sun. His father was looking out to sea and then Futh heard him say, ‘The foghorn blasts every thirty seconds.’

  ‘Do you know,’ said his mother, ‘how much you bore me?’

  There was a pause and then his father quietly packed away the picnic. Snapping shut the cool-box lid, he stood and looked at his wife. Futh watched the gulls fighting over the remains of their lunch, and then he looked down at his hand and saw the glass vial broken in his palm, the fleshy pad beneath his thumb cut open. The volatile contents of the lighthouse soaked into his wound, stinging, and ran between his fingers, soaking his boots, and the scent of it rose from him like millions of tiny balloons escaping towards the sky.

  For a long time afterwards, he would lift the palm of his hand to his nose, searching for that scent of violets.

  He wakes on the bench with his chin on his chest, his neck aching as he lifts his head and looks around him. He stares for a while at the cloudless sky and then checks his watch and consults the route details and the map. Finally getting to his feet, he presses on towards a village. He is fiercely thirsty.

  The outlying houses are quiet. He pictures couples and families inside eating lunch together or slumbering afterwards while they wait for the heat of the day to subside. He envies them their dinners, their sofas, their cool interiors. He thinks about knocking on a door and asking for a glass of water, imagines being invited to step inside and sit down at a table on which lunch is still out. He chooses a garden gate which has been left ajar. He walks up the path to the door and knocks and waits, but nobody answers.

  Just beyond the houses is a shop, through whose windows he can see refrigerated drinks for sale. But the door is locked and there is no one behind the counter, and the sign on the door, he realises, says ‘CLOSED’.

  Further along, there is a pub, which is open, or at least the door is. He wanders inside. There is nobody in the place – no customers at the tables, no one behind the bar. There are drinks behind the bar – pumps full of cool beer, fridges full of cold bottles, ice buckets with chilled wine bottles in them. He stands there looking at the drinks he wants, calling out, ‘Hello?’ He calls in both English and German, ‘Hello? Hello?’ But nobody hears him, or at least they don’t come. He considers helping himself, leaving some money, but when he gets closer he sees that there is a dog in between himself and the bar, a big dog which Futh had not noticed at first, or perhaps he had, perhaps he just thought it was something else, a rug. The dog opens one eye.

  Futh leaves, going back out into the street, into the sun, walking on past the houses, and there is a man, he sees now, one man labouring in his garden. Futh stops and asks him for a glass of water. The man, seeing the map in Futh’s hand, asks him in English where he has come from and where he is going. Futh opens out his map and shows him. ‘Well,’ says the man, ‘you’re going in the right direction.’ Futh’s finger continues up and up on one side of the Rhine, and then, crossing the river, it slides back down over the squares of the map, to Hellhaus.

  ‘You’re staying at the hotel?’ asks the man.

  Futh says that he is. ‘It’s all right,’ he adds, ‘although my bedroom wasn’t entirely clean, and the bathroom was a bit poky, and I didn’t get my breakfast.’

  ‘Stay here,’ says the man. He takes off his gardening gloves and disappears into his house, coming out again with a child’s plastic cup half-full of tepid water which he hands to Futh. Futh drinks it and thanks the man, lingers a little longer and then walks on.

  In the middle of the afternoon, the heat begins to give a little. Futh, with his route details in his hand, pauses for a view of the river at its narrowest and deepest point where the currents are strong, looking for the siren, a vast nude cast in bronze. It is only then, when he is standing still, that he notices how much his feet hurt.

  He takes the last mile slowly. Reaching the town and that night’s hotel, he sits down on the doorstep to unlace his dusty boots. As he eases them off his feet, the smell of hot socks escapes like a groan. Underneath the bloodied wool, his heels are tender, his smaller toes too.

  He goes inside, finds the owner and is given the key to his room which is on the ground floor with French windows overlooking a little rose garden. He limps into the bathroom and washes his feet in the sink, dabbing at the sore bits with a sponge. There is an inviting bath but he is too tired. He puts on his pyjamas and gets into bed, not even trying to read, just turning off the light.

  Another thing which he knows always irritated Angela was the look on his face whenever she came home smelling of cigarette smoke. In the early days, he had not objected in the slightest when he thought that Angela had been smoking. He even liked the smell. But by the time they began trying for a baby, he did indeed mind when she came home smelling of cigarettes, when Angela – who claimed not to smoke and who would always mention a stinky staff room or some pub she had been to or a friend who had smoked in her car – tasted of smoke when he kissed her. He wished that she would at least suck mints before coming home to him. He noticed it more towards the end of their marriage. He supposed that she was unhappy and this was her crutch.

>   And their trying for a baby was a source of tension in itself. There were many pregnancies but each time she lost the child. She accused him, in each aftermath, of rushing her into another attempt, however much time had gone by. He reminded her of her age. ‘Time is running out,’ he said to her. She was thirty when they met but forty-four when she became pregnant for the final time, some months before they separated.

  He turns onto one side and then the other, worrying about intruders hiding in the garden, behind the rose bushes, coming in through the French windows while he is asleep. He wonders how fast he could run. He is already regretting not having that bath. He can feel his muscles stiffening.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Stilettos

  Just after noon, on the day after the storm, Ester lets herself into the private apartment. Despite Bernard’s warnings, Ester has left the door unlocked again. Sometimes Bernard discovers the unsecured apartment and gives her a lecture, a reminder. ‘It’s an open invitation,’ he says.

  Inside, Ester finds that she has also left the lights on. This is another bad habit of hers, turning on the light when she enters a room and then forgetting to turn it off when she leaves so that sometimes the whole of Hellhaus is ablaze.

  She has finished her work for the day. The rooms are as clean as they are going to be and she is not expecting any guests this afternoon.

  In the bedroom, she sits down at the dressing table and looks in the mirror. She sees the little creases at the corners of her eyes and mouth where her make-up has gathered; her short-cut, home-bleached hair grown out, the shape gone and inches of dark roots showing. Her gold-effect necklace burrows into her shallow cleavage, and the denim bulge of her stomach rests on her spreading thighs like a warm cat comfortably settled in her lap.