The Lightkeeper's Daughter

by Iain Lawrence

  “It’s complicated,” said Murray. Flustered, he waved his hands in circles. “You see, barnacles are what are called hermaphrodites.” He blushed. He swallowed. He scrunched his face. “It’s like a man and a woman living in the same shell; in the same body. So all they have to do is open their doors and let the babies out.”

  “But that isn’t right,” said Hannah.

  “It most certainly is,” he huffed.

  “But it’s not quite true.”

  How many times has she wished she never said that? What did she start on the shore that day? She gets out a bowl and tips the cherries inside it. They tumble from the towel, bouncing into a heap at the bottom. It annoyed her so much that Murray, for the first time, had taught the children a lie.

  “They could do that,” she said. “They could have babies themselves. But they usually don’t.”

  There was a strange expression on Alastair’s face. She had betrayed his father. And it was a new experience for Hannah when Alastair turned to her instead, and asked her—and not Murray—how the barnacles made their babies.

  She didn’t look at Murray. She looked at the barnacles.

  “They act like couples,” she said. “One becomes the man, and its neighbor becomes the woman. The man reaches out with his penis and puts it in the woman’s house. She mixes his sperm with her eggs, and sends them out to the sea.”

  Alastair thought for a moment. “Is that how you and Dad made me and Squid?”

  Even Hannah blushed then. “Well, something like that,” she said.

  Alastair watched her, then nodded briskly as though he understood it all. “Okay,” he said. And they broke into teams for a relay race. The men against the girls.

  She thought it was over. The children, she imagined, went away with a very puzzling image of Murray locked in the big house and her in the small one, stirring eggs and sperm in a mixing bowl. That was all right; they’d had their talk on the birds and the bees, and it should have been the end of it. But the next day the lesson was scallops, and it was Squid who asked, “How do they make their babies?”

  Murray turned at Hannah. He glared accusingly.

  Outside, smoke is rising from the burning barrel, torn to wisps by the wind when it reaches the height of the trees. Hannah pushes the bowl to the back of the counter and lays the towel on top. She starts putting eggs in the fridge, dropping them one at a time into the molded cups on the door. She remembers how furious Murray became.

  “Look what you’ve started,” he said.

  “It’s a fad,” she told him. “It’ll pass.”

  They sat alone in the living room, the children in bed. There were no curtains on the windows, and outside— across the lawn—the trees flashed white as the beam swung around in the tower.

  Murray had a book in his hand. He was picking at the corner of a page. “They’re too young for that sort of thing,” he said. “When I was twice their age I still thought a stork brought babies in a bundle.”

  Hannah laughed. “You were twenty years old before you knew where babies came from?”

  “Och,” he said. “I don’t remember.”

  She tried to picture him at Alastair’s age, but all she saw was a smaller Murray. She saw him walking all alone over the scrub and the dust of the badlands, winding past the hoodoos that she could never quite imagine. A boy in khaki shorts, a lonely boy, watching for storks and peering under cabbage leaves.

  “What are you smiling at?” he asked. “It’s not a laughing matter.”

  “How did you find out?” she said. “Who told you?”

  “The point,” said Murray, his teeth together, “the point, Hannah, is that you shouldn’t have told them what you did.”

  “They have to know,” she said.

  “But not yet. They’re not old enough.”

  “Oh, Murray, they’re nearly grown up,” she said.

  He couldn’t see it himself, but they were far beyond their years. They were adults really, in children’s bodies, and what wonder was that with only adults for models? Only once had they seen a child, when a technician came in late July to work on the radio beacon and brought his son along for the flight, on a gray and overcast day.

  The boy’s name was Todd. He was six, just a year less than Squid. He came out of the helicopter holding his father’s hand.

  “Look at that!” cried Alastair. “There’s a baby on the chopper!”

  The technician was tall and thin, big-headed, dressed in green oilskins with a yellow rain hat. He looked like a daffodil as he swayed and nodded toward them, the boy’s fist in one hand, an enormous case in the other. He bent himself double to talk to his son. “Daddy has to work,” he said. “Why don’t you go play with the kids?”

  Kids! How she bristled at the sound of that. “Kids are goats,” Murray had told her, years before, and she had never used the word again.

  “Go play with the kids,” the technician said. And Squid looked up at him.

  “Actually,” she said, “we wanted to watch you work on the transmitter.” And Alastair asked, “Have you got an oscilloscope in there?”

  Hannah intervened. “Todd is your guest,” she said. “Show him around the station. Maybe he’d like to see the tower.”

  “Now there’s an idea,” the technician said. He grinned at his boy. “Would you like to see a lighthouse, Todd?”

  “I’ll show him how I dangle from the top,” said Squid.

  Hannah grimaced. “Oh, no you won’t.”

  The three of them went off, poor Todd glancing back. He looked like an explorer being led away by cannibals, and she didn’t see them for nearly four hours, until the helicopter was due to leave. Then only Alastair and Todd came out from the forest, covered with burrs, coated with mud from their feet to their knees, from their hands to their elbows. Their faces were smeared with black.

  “Where’s Squid?” asked Hannah.

  “She’s coming,” said Alastair.

  “We went digging in the mizzens,” said Todd. “I found a bit of bone that’s a thousand years old!” He held it up, a tiny shard. “It’s part of a skeleton, see?”

  Squid came a hundred yards behind them, muttering to herself, slashing at the grass with a crooked stick. She didn’t realize she’d caught up to the others until she was right among them. Then she looked up, startled. She flung the stick away and, crossing her arms, sat down on the lawn.

  It was time for Todd to go. He went with his father, babbling all the way. “There’s mizzens all over the island,” he said.

  “Middens!” shouted Squid. “They’re middens, you stupid nut.”

  Hannah laughs now. She wonders what stories the technicians took away to tell to their city wives in their city houses. Did they tell them about children who chattered like adults? About Murray and his strange, rumpled ways, his set of ideas that he ranted about? “Have you had any burglaries?” he would always ask. “Any muggings this morning?” He was obsessed with crime in the city, though “the city” was only little Prince Rupert, with fewer than twelve thousand people. And what did they say, those technicians, about Hannah herself? Did they think she was odd? She liked long, heavy dresses, and scarves that blew in the wind like the pennants of ships. On a breezy day a sound went with her, a thrumming of cloth, a tramping of Murray-sized boots.

  She’s standing by the fridge, the door open and all the eggs in their cups, when Murray comes back to the kitchen with his shoes in his hand.

  “Tatiana’s only three,” she tells him.

  “What?” asks Murray.

  “There’s nothing wrong with Tat. We’re not used to normal children.”

  He looks at her blankly, no idea what she’s been thinking. Then he shakes his head, stoops, and puts his shoes on the floor. “Och,” he says, straightening. “I remember when my brother was three, and he wasn’t much like Tat. No Einstein there, but he was far beyond her.”

  Hannah closes the fridge. A year ago the handle fell off, and Murray crafted another from the
crook of a yew. It fits her hand nicely with its curves and its bends. It feels warm in her palm, oiled by her skin.

  “Tatiana can’t hold a candle to her mother,” says Murray. “She’s a strange one, and no wonder, with the father what he was.”

  “You never met him,” she says.

  “And a good thing for him.”

  She worries now when Murray’s angry. It’s not healthy, she thinks, his blood so full of steak and pork. It was a mistake to start along this path. “Yes, you’re right,” she tells him. “You’re quite right, Murray.”

  “My brother could outshine Tatiana when he was half her age. I remember clearly when he came.”

  “Oh?” she says. “Was it by cabbage or by stork?”

  He looks puzzled. Then the redness in his cheeks brightens.

  “Och, you’re a funny lady,” he says.

  chapter six

  June 14. Today I turned twelve. No presents from anyone. I nearly cried. Then there was dinner and no cake. We just ate like a normal day, then Mom got up and left, and Squid went after her. And I sat with Dad for a while. Then he said, “Och, I nearly forgot.” And he reached in his pocket and took out a key. He said, “This is for you. Happy birthday, son.”

  He slid it across the table and I picked it up. I thought it was a pretty crummy present, just a key to the house. Then Dad laughed. He said, “Don’t look so glum. It’s the key to the small house, not this one, you gowk. We’re giving you the small house, Alastair.”

  We went next door and I opened the door. And Squid was there, and Mom, and they were holding a great big cake with all the candles burning. And Squid said, “Look at him! The stupid guy’s crying!”

  I’m writing in my own house now. MY OWN HOUSE! I can’t believe it. Dad says I should name it. He says lots of houses have names. He said, “How about Shangri-La? There’s a nice little name. How about The Wee But and Ben? Or Glenard. ‘The end of the glen,’ in the Gaelic.”

  I said, “Sure. Thanks, Dad.”

  I’m going to call it Gomorrah!

  “Gomorrah?” said Hannah. “Oh no, not that!” She was shocked, Squid remembers; she stood with her hand in her mouth staring up at the sign that Alastair made.

  “Don’t you know,” asked Hannah, “what Gomorrah was?”

  “I do,” said Alastair. He was disappointed, a little bit angry. “Gomorrah was the place where the patriarchs went when they needed more room. The best and the wisest people went to Gomorrah to live.”

  Squid laughed. “What an egotist!” she said.

  And Alastair whirled on her. “You’re going to live here too,” he said. He whistled through his nose. “Next year you’ll be here. We’ll both be here when you turn twelve.”

  “But not Gomorrah,” said Hannah. “It was a wicked place, Alastair. A wicked, wicked place, and God destroyed it in the end. Oh, Murray, please tell him.”

  “Och,” said Murray. He never got involved in arguments. “Don’t you like Shangri-La?” he said.

  “No, I don’t,” said Alastair. He looked like a mouse cornered by cats. His big glasses shone in the sun. “I’m going to call it Gomorrah!”

  “I love it when he says that,” said Squid.

  Hannah flapped her hands. “Murray!” she said.

  “Och,” he said again. “What’s the harm in letting the boy call the house what he wants? Surely you don’t expect God to come down in a fury over a thing like a name.”

  “Well, thank goodness my father can’t see it. He would turn in his grave.”

  Squid was fascinated. No one had ever argued about anything remotely religious. She had been brought up with only one lesson—to believe in whatever she thought was right.

  “I wash my hands of it,” said Murray. He walked away—backward. “The name means something to Alastair and something else to you. But to me it means nothing at all. I can’t imagine that one city is any more wicked than another.”

  He turned then, and started to run. Hannah glared after him. She said, “Alastair, I can’t tell you what to call the house. But will you please think about what I said?”

  “Okay. You want to come in?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m sorry, but not today.”

  Only Squid was left to go inside. And she remembers now, with the diary in her hands, how Alastair had made the house all ready for his visitors. There were four glasses on the coffee table, a jug of purple juice dripping water on its outside. He’d cut up carrots and arranged them in an awful, fussy way, with wedges of tomato and sticks of celery and cheese. He’d made chains out of paper, and hung them from the corners of the room, and he went to the middle and self-consciously pulled on a string.

  Confetti fell down, a shower of papery bits. They dropped in a lump onto his head and his shoulders, and trickled down to a heap at his feet.

  “Welcome to Gomorrah,” he said.

  June 16. The big housewarming was a washout.

  June 17. I’m going to build a room in the attic. You’ll get there up a spiral staircase right through the living room, up two floors to big skylights. If you stand at the bottom it will look like you’re climbing up to the sky. I’ll put in glass walls and gather some birds that can fly around at the top. I think I can catch them under cardboard boxes baited with oatmeal. And that way I can pick out the ones I want and the others won’t get hurt. No birds will be harmed! I swear to that.

  She never knew what he’d done with the boxes. She found him burning them, ripping them into shreds, ramming the pieces down in the barrel. The flames gouted up, orange and swirling, and he cringed from the heat as he worked. Ashes soared round and around, billowing up as high as the tower, leaping from the barrel in crinkles of red, turning to gray and to black as they rose.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “What does it look like?” he said. “I’m burning this stuff. This junk.”

  It was too hot to stay anywhere close. She wandered away. And down at the edge of the forest, where the alders she’d cut in the spring were already the height of her knees, she found the feathers and the corpses. She knew minks had got the birds; minks always chewed off the heads. And the poor birds lay huddled, headless, half-covered with their wings. There were four of them, in nearly a line, their bodies clotted with blood.

  June 18. A disaster. God forgive me for what I’ve done.

  June 19. Started work on the spiral staircase. I’ll put paper birds at the top. I can make them out of origami, shiny birds, and the convection currents will make them fly. Dad could do this job in a couple of days. It looks like I’ll be done in a week.

  He was back at the burning barrel, feeding it bits of splintered wood, pieces of old packing crates. “Oh, hi,” he said as she stepped through the little white gate in the fence that Murray had made.

  He tossed another piece of wood into the fire. It was cracked down the middle, bristling with twisted nails.

  “I’m useless,” he said. “Do you know that?” There was ash on his glasses, and he pulled his sleeve down over his fingers to wipe at the spots on the lenses. “I can’t even drive in a nail. I can’t even make a dumb staircase.”

  “Why would you want to?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “I can see it. I know what I want it to be. But when I start to do the work it all falls apart. I wanted a loft up there, a turret like a castle. I tore everything down and made shelves instead.” He laughed. “They’re junk.”

  “Ask Dad to help you.”

  “No,” he said. “Dad can’t go in there. I don’t want him to see what a crummy job I’m doing. What would he say?”

  “He’d say, ‘Let me help you.’ ”

  “No. He’d say, ‘Och, let me do it.’ But Gomorrah’s my house, Squid. It’s mine. And if he gets started he’ll make it into something else.”

  They went to the small house, and Alastair giggled as he showed her the shelves. They tilted and sagged; there were gaps, and the paint wasn’t right. He’d put a rope around
them to hold the bottom in place. “I’d tear them out,” he said. “But I cracked the plaster. There’s a gouge in the wall as big as my fist.”

  Upstairs, he’d cut this hole where she’s sitting now, where he hid the diaries long ago.

  “I thought I’d start at the top and go down,” he said. “And then I realized: I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.”

  “You can’t be good at everything,” she said.

  But he was. He was a genius at most things. And when he saw he couldn’t hammer a nail, he just stopped; and he never hammered another one. It was the same with water-color painting. When his first picture wasn’t perfect, he gave it up. Alastair was good at everything because he only did the things that he was good at.

  Squid puts the book down and takes up another. Suddenly she’s in the spring of his fourteenth year, and he has less than seven months to live. She can see him, gangly and pale, going hunched through the rain, in a darkness of noon, in their world of gray.

  April 22. A southeaster. A snorter, Dad would call it. For three days now there’s been nothing but wind and rain. I’m so sick of this place. I feel like I’ve come from a shipwreck, and I’m just waiting here for someone to come and rescue me. The natives are getting restless and I . . .

  Squid laughs. It was a phrase that Alastair picked up from a radio program, a slogan they used often. Murray would get mad over a job poorly done, or Hannah would shout at a door left open, and they would look at each other—Alastair and Squid—and, grinning, say, “The natives are getting restless.”

  . . . and I keep remembering the Odd Fellow.

  She stares at the name. She touches it on the page, imagining that her fingers can sense the thickness of the ink.

  It was Alastair who saw the Odd Fellow’s flare.

  For him, with the rain on his glasses, it was nothing more than a spot of red, a blur, and he came racing into Gomorrah to get her. The wind shrieked through the door as he tore it open. “A flare!” he shouted.

  She went outside; he dragged her out. She saw the black shapes of flailing trees; she saw a wooden seagull, a whirligig bird, lift from its perch and cartwheel past the flower bed. She heard the bell ring on the porch of the big house as its clapper swung in the wind. Alastair held her shoulders and aimed her toward the sea. And a moment later, through the sideways-falling rain, she watched a line of red fizzle through the storm.