From beside the desk she brought out two small glasses and a whisky bottle. Michael didn’t move a muscle. This was dangerous. The air between them shrunk to one pulse. He ought to leave, but he couldn’t. She was sad, and his heart went out to her. He suddenly understood this phrase. His heart strained in his chest to comfort her. She was sniffing and wiping her eyes on the back of her hands.
He had no choice. ‘Here, use this.’ He gave her his handkerchief, and was lost.
She smiled gratefully and blew her nose.
‘That’s better,’ he said bracingly and picked up the flower she had laid on the desk. A Welsh poppy, bright as sunshine.
‘I was picking these today. They’re so delicate, it’s slow work,’ he said. ‘We have to wrap them twice before we can send them.’
She passed him a glass and raised her own. ‘Let’s drink a toast. To Christopher, my brother. And to all his brave companions.’
Michael swallowed. His throat ignited, he choked. ‘Christ, this isn’t whisky. What’s in it?’
Felicity’s eyes blurred with tears, but she giggled. ‘Of course, you’re not from around here, are you? This is Cornwall. You’re drinking our own moonshine. Get the recipe right and it can light up the Lizard Peninsula and all the way to Lamorna. Christopher made it the Christmas before he left. I’ve got six bottles at home.’
‘It’s like paint stripper,’ Michael spluttered. ‘You’re obviously immune. Christ, is there a tap here? I think some water might help.’ He already loved how her eyes danced when she laughed. ‘I’ve got to tell you, most girls I know would be out for the count on a teaspoon of that stuff.’
She raised her glass again, mischief in her eyes, ‘I know it’s strong, but we’re all brought up on it around here, you know.’
Michael wondered if she was going to knock back another glass. If she did, there was no way he would be matching her, but to his relief, she stopped.
‘I thought it was clotted cream and tin and pixies that raised you all in Cornwall?’ he said.
‘Oh, all that and a bit of magic,’ she countered. ‘By the way, we haven’t been introduced. I’m Felicity. Felicity Delaware. I’m so glad you came by again, thank you.’ She began putting the glasses in a bowl to wash them, stowing the bottle on a shelf. ‘I should get home now. I just came to drop some books off.’
‘Did you read at the church?’ he asked.
She nodded, rubbed her hands across her face. ‘Yes, I read Milton. A bit of “Lycidas” because it would have been what Mum would have chosen.’
‘ “We were nursed upon the self-same hill”. I love that poem,’ said Michael. ‘What else?’
‘You know it?’ Felicity’s eyebrow’s arched in surprise. ‘Do you know this one?’ she gave him a book, folded open on a page.
‘I read a lot of poetry during the war. My mother used to send me pages out of books, I kept them on me all the time. It was—’ Michael stopped, and began to read the page Felicity had given him.
‘What’s this?’ He read for a moment then shook his head. ‘No, I don’t know this, what is it?’
‘It’s Wystan Auden. You know, W.H. Auden? He’s American, I think, I don’t know.’ She looked at the poem again and sighed. ‘It was hard to choose anything. Something that could sum up Christopher. I don’t know if I did him justice.’ Her voice tailed off, she took the glasses into the little room at the back and turned on the tap.
Michael finished reading the poem, his throat ached with sadness for her, for everyone fractured by the war.
‘The stars are not wanted now.’ He followed her to the sink and filled his glass with water. The tiny space between them was electric. He would done anything, even drink another glass of the paint stripper to spend more time with her, but he had a better idea.
‘Don’t go yet. Let’s walk up the hill and watch the sun go down,’ he said.
She looked at him, doubt clouding her gaze. ‘I don’t know, I shouldn’t. I—’
Maybe the moonshine was powering him, but Michael found he was acting out of character. He took the key from the hook on the wall and held it up, turning in between his fingers. ‘Come on, it’ll do you good. Lock the shop and we’ll go.’
Outside they walked side by side up the narrow path that would take them to the hill. Michael had the sense that he was watching himself from far away as he held out his hand. She took it. Her skin was cool, her hand light in his, skin calloused on her knuckles, and two rings slid on her middle finger. Her fingertips were stained purple and green. Presumably there was a good reason for this.
‘I love it up here.’ She kicked off her shoes as soon as they were on the grass. ‘We came here every day after school when we were little. Christopher used to fly his kite, and we would light fires for the pilchards. I remember watching the boats circling and the water alive with fish. I thought a pilchard was one single huge fish for years.’
They climbed until they were at the highest point.
‘What a place to grow up,’ said Michael. ‘Your childhood memories must be happy.’
The rooftops of Mousehole fell away below them like the little carved wooden toy town Michael was given for Christmas when he was six. It had come in a fine nylon net, slipped out onto the bed when he opened his stocking and the net had glittered, like the sea did now as it shifted with afternoon light. Felicity stared at the horizon, her face lit by the pink haze.
‘In Norfolk, where I come from, the sun hits the sea at a completely different angle, so the light doesn’t do this,’ said Michael.
‘Norfolk?’ said Felicity. ‘That’s so far away, the other side of England. Why are you here?’
They were side by side on a stone wall. A petal winked in her hair. Without thinking, he reached up and removed it. Her scalp was warm under his fingers.
‘Cherry blossom,’ he said.
‘What?’
He held it out on his palm but it fluttered to the ground. ‘I was packing them for the train to Covent Garden. You should smell the van, it’s like a wedding. Or a powder puff.’
She laughed. ‘Oh I’d forgotten about powder puffs. They’re lovely, I’d love one. My mother had a pale blue one. I wonder what happend to it?’
Her shoulder rested against him, she fiddled with a scarf she’d pulled from a pocket.
He caught her hand. ‘Why are your fingers purple and green?’
She curled them, flicking the scarf over both their hands. ‘We’ve got a lot of questions not to answer, haven’t we?’ The tawny stripe in her ring matched her eyes. Somewhere out at sea a ship’s horn blared. A breath of wind played with the scarf in her hands. Michael felt he was stepping off the edge of the hill. He leaned towards her. He could protect her, he wanted to embrace her courage, to kiss her, to let her love him. Nothing had ever seemed so right.
Chapter 6
‘Are you sure that’s my key?’ Kit stared in astonishment at a highly elaborate wrought-iron piece on the table between him and Charles Rivett’s receptionist. ‘It looks like it was last used to lock up Mary Queen of Scots or someone in the Middle Ages.’ He picked it up gingerly, as if it might bite.
The receptionist looked doubtful. ‘It must be. They brought it in this morning, and there is only the one.’
Kit picked it up, turned it over, his fingers running over the elaborate ironwork. He placed it on his palm and noticed that it fitted perfectly between his wrist and his fingertips. Probably that length was some ancient measurement. He remembered that horses were always measured in hands, perhaps it was the same for keys back in the Dark Ages. The cool weight of it was impressive.
‘It must be some lighthouse,’ he muttered to himself.
The receptionist glanced at him again and gave a small sigh she turned into a laugh. He ought to go. The key wouldn’t fit in the pocket of his jeans, so he rolled it up in his newspaper and turned to leave.
‘Ah, the lighthouse keeper,’ Charles Rivett appeared at Kit’s shoulder. Above Kit’s shoulder, in fact
, Kit hadn’t noticed how tall he was the day before. ‘Morning, Marion. Do I have messages?’ Rivett asked the receptionist, who handed him a bundle of letters.
‘I’ve put them all through to Jenny, she was in early,’ said Marion.
He vanished down the corridor, and Kit picked up his key and prepared to leave again.
Marion passed him a piece of paper. ‘Here, Mr Rivett asked me to print out some directions for you, and the postcode. The Lighthouse is at the end of the village, you can’t miss it.’ She paused, catching Kit’s eye and, realising what she’d said, a giggle broke her guard.
‘Rather the point of it,’ Kit grinned. ‘I’d better get used to this, there’s a pun everywhere you look around a lighthouse.’
It wasn’t until he was in Blythe churchyard that Kit became aware he was wandering aimlessly, like a tourist. The church loomed, its flint facade acquiring a velvety blur in the soft drizzle that had begun to fall. The grass was newly mown, and beyond it cow parsley billowed under the row of beech trees at the edge of the churchyard. Accustomed to small, intimate churches in Cornwall, where the spire often seemed to rise from sand drifts and tiny earth mounds, the height of the tower was a surprise. Gazing upwards, Kit squinted to prevent his eyes filling with the drizzle, and tried to imagine building something like this. It was time for him to take an interest in towers, he thought. Probably time for him to take an interest in a lot of things he’d never made much time for, but the working day of a lighthouse keeper appealed less than a study of how to build a tower. He wondered if there was a second-hand bookshop in town where he could find a useful guidebook to Norfolk’s towers, both sacred and profane. Wandering between the graves, he had a sudden sense of Felicity enjoying his quest. ‘Lighthouse Fabric’ now had a bricks-and-mortar emblem. There was no question in his mind that his mother had planned this bequest, and even somehow orchestrated its timing, to give him a kick, get him out of the rut of living to work that had become his safety net as he grieved for her.
‘Get out and live’ was a line of hers, liberally scattered among employees, friends and the young interns who came to work for Lighthouse Fabric.
A woman entered the churchyard and walked slowly up the gravel path to a seat close to the smaller west door. She sat down and opened a book, which she used as a plate for her sandwich as she unwrapped it. Her bare legs were pale, open-toed sandals suggesting she’d got dressed expecting sunshine. Kit wondered what she did, where she lived, who her family were. Crooked gravestones marked the path, becoming bigger the nearer they were to the church. Outside the door, tombs like moored boats floated in the grass. Was that woman related to someone buried here? Was it a kinship that brought her in the rain for her lunch hour? She had an umbrella up now, and had spread a navy blue nylon jacket across her bare legs. He tripped over the edge of the path, dropping the lighthouse key, ‘Oh bollocks.’ The expletive shot out of him. Guiltily he glanced at her. She had folded her crisp packet, and now left, without looking at Kit again.
He moved to the porch and sat down against the cool plaster wall. The air was laced with a mushroomy aroma Kit liked. It smelled of the studio, the distempered walls. He’d grown up as much in his mother’s studio as at home. He stared at the vaulted ceiling. A carved angel hung at its apex, painted bright gold like a cornfield, button bright eyes suggesting a recent restoration job. Probably, given the red circles on the cheeks and the rosebud mouth, it had been carried out by a small child with a few felt-tip pens. Kit was curiously peaceful. He hadn’t realised he was going to have to find room in his life for anything extra, but on balance, it still felt like an adventure. His life, though he was reluctant to admit it, was small. He had his work, he had his house and he had his friends, but he didn’t have any surprises back in Cornwall. The lighthouse had come along and flashed its beam on his future prospects. Just in time. It hadn’t seemed real to him, but now, here it was, and he was holding the key. Time to go and claim the lighthouse. That was what he was here for.
Kings Sloley stood on a cliff edge at the most northern point of the rim of Norfolk. It hadn’t always been on the edge, of course, but nature had decided to focus a destructive force on this particular curve of coastline. Threatened by coastal erosion, Kit had read in a guidebook in his bed and breakfast, a village committee funded by the National Lottery worked tirelessly, Canute-like, against the encroaching sea. Quite what they did was unclear from the literature and, as Kit drove, he found himself abandoning his pre-formed plan to keep himself to himself and even before he had arrived was imagining how he could help. He had experience of this battle between man and the ragged defences he erected against the sea. At home in Cornwall, the widows of the village near where he lived knitted and baked for the benefit of the harbour walls, while the sea crashed against them with the lunatic abandon of a violent drunk.
Aware that knowledge is power, but also somewhat self-conscious, as his landlady danced attentively around him with eggs, bacon, toast and darting comments that suggested she had wildly mistaken views about him and thought he was a famous film star looking for a bolthole, Kit had read a lot of local information over breakfast this morning in between fielding a wide-ranging array of questions.
Mrs Black tweaked the curtain in the small dining room a fraction wider, and Kit’s car parked in the driveway loomed. ‘That’s a big car,’ she observed. ‘Do you usually have a driver?’
‘Not often.’ Receiving his plate of eggs, bacon, sausage, tomato and fried bread, Kit marvelled as he always did in this situation, at the lavish spread offered. On holiday anywhere in Britain you really didn’t need to bother about lunch.
‘You’ll notice a lot of people with fancy cameras, big lenses, you know the sort of thing,’ Mrs Black poured tea into Kit’s cup with a flourish.
‘Really?’
‘Yes, but don’t worry, they’re birdwatchers, twitchers mostly, and they don’t do any harm.’
‘I won’t worry,’ Kit agreed. ‘Do you know Kings Sloley at all, Mrs Black?’
She leaned over him to look at the pamphlet he had been reading, and parked herself for contemplation, her chest level with his eyes. ‘In Your Face’ was a phrase that sprang to mind.
‘Nice those cliffs, aren’t they?’ The heat of her body emanated through her spotty apron and warmed his cheek. Kit fought rising, slightly panicky laughter, and turned it into a cough and a chance to move away.
Mrs Black picked up the teapot and poured another cup for him. ‘The poppies are a real landmark. I should think you could set one of those big weepie films here couldn’t you?’ Her eyebrows arched in anticipation. ‘I saw a film being made up there a while back, but it turned out to be just a promotion for the railway line.’
She began to clear plates. Kit was not about to get any practical instruction from her, he would have to see for himself.
The road snaked east along the coast from Blythe, through the gorse-ridden heathland, and on to cliffs, crumbling and pale as shortbread above the glittering North Sea. The rain had stopped and through the open car window Kit caught the gorse’s spring aroma of coconut, a scent he still associated with the cheap suntan oil of his youth. Sunshine, the sea, and the faint whiff of sex, all here in front of him. His spirit broke through the layer of mild anxiety he had been aware of since arriving, and soared. This was going to be fun. He hadn’t exactly been looking for new challenges, but he had never been one to let them pass him by. He felt renewed. And excited.
In Kings Sloley, he now knew, was a primary school, a pub, a shop and post office. How did the lighthouse fit in the hierarchy of all this chocolate-box stuff? A quiet village would be a good background to this chapter of his life. It might be quite a short chapter. He wasn’t sure of the market value of such things, but the notion of selling the lighthouse and buying a little house in Greece had crossed his mind more than once. Swimming in the Aegean was a compelling alternative if this lighthouse business was all hard work. After all, he didn’t have to keep it. One thing wa
s certain: in a lighthouse, he was going to be visible. He wasn’t quite sure how things worked, but it seemed that if he so much as switched on a light to go to the lavatory, the whole coastline would know about it.
He passed a cluster of cottages, a row of terraced houses and then a farmhouse, thatched, the walls lime-washed soft grey, an apple tree blushing with pink blossom as its boughs curtseyed to the ground. Two stone sheep looked foolish on the gateposts.
‘The sunny side of the street.’ Billie Holiday singing the blues, accompanied by Lester Young’s liquid saxophone poured out of the speakers, and spilled into Kit’s excitement, trumpeting his adventure. It was like something out of a novel. He remembered the paperback he had picked up from the house before he left Cornwall, Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. The book’s title was familiar to him, he’d always assumed it was the reason his mother had named her company ‘Lighthouse Fabric’, feminist solidarity, the Bloomsbury group and all that. It made sense but he’d never read it. He probably wouldn’t now, he’d never been keen on those novels about nothing much, and they didn’t even ever get to the lighthouse, or so someone had told him. The book had presented itself to him, in that he saw it on the bookshelf the night before he left home, so he had brought it with him. He hadn’t notice that it was inscribed until he’d dropped it when unpacking at his B&B.
The words, in black ink on the flyleaf read: ‘I still dream of you, M. 1956’
His phone rang. He pressed the button to put it on speakerphone.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello, is that Kit Delaware?’
‘Yes, speaking.’ His phone showed almost no signal, he moved it to try and hear better.
‘I’m Luisa—’ her voice cut out.
Kit interrupted the silence. ‘Sorry, it’s a bad line, I can hardly hear you.’
‘Oh. Okay. I’ll shout. I’m LUISA. We’re neighbours of yours. Sort of. I was given your number by Charles Rivett’s secretary. She’s a dog-walking friend of mine. Well, she’s not a dog-walker, I mean she’s a friend of mine and we walk our dogs together. Sometimes.’
From a Distance Page 10
