When we got to Elisabeth’s house, Kristine took the baby from me and I stayed seated in the carriage. “Kristine.”
She turned to me, the baby held against her chest, her face not visible. I reached out and touched the baby’s back lightly with my fingers, then folded my hands on my lap. “Tell them that she will probably be hungry.” It seemed like the baby had nursed all night but it had been hours since then, or had it? How much time had passed? I remembered how small and warm she was against me, how good she smelled, though I could not compare it to anything at that moment. I remembered how strong her mouth was when she latched onto my breast, how her suckling sent shoots of pain through my chest and abdomen. I remembered how tired and sore I was and then, sitting in the back of the carriage alone, I felt so small. Kristine came back to the coach and gave the driver an address. The baby was gone. Rather, the baby was home and soon we would be gone.
* * *
Kristine gave the hackney driver instructions to take us to the wharf. A lighthouse keeper, Mr. Marsden, met us there and we got into his boat. I didn’t ask questions. I was so tired. My breasts ached and I could feel the heat of milk gathering in them. Pain throbbed in me, from my hard breasts to the space the baby had left in me to the raw pain between my legs. I felt ravaged, sore and so very, very tired. In the boat, I dropped my head into my hands, elbows propped on my knees, and tried to hold steady, to shut out all else. When we arrived on the island, Mr. Marsden took my bags, and Kristine and I followed him up a narrow stone path to the lighthouse. With each step, pain bloomed in a different part of my body. I walked stiffly, cautiously, as though I’d been injured. Partway up the path, I stopped. Kristine stood beside me, waiting, while Mr. Marsden carried on.
“Where are we going?” My voice was nearly a whisper. I had been silent, simply following before then.
Kristine licked her lips and cleared her throat. “Here.”
“Where?”
“To this lighthouse. You can rest here.”
“Rest?”
“Mr. Marsden has two children. He’s been recently widowed. He’s able to care for them now and will allow you time to rest. When you’ve recovered, you can help with the children and the household. He’s agreed to begin paying you a little now, regardless of when you’re able to start work.”
Mr. Marsden had walked on ahead of us. I put my hands against my breasts to try to stem the ache, but it didn’t work. I clutched my waist and bent forward.
“They’re hurting?”
I didn’t answer, straightened myself, winced as I did.
“Mother says boiled cabbage leaves help – right on the skin – and that you can express some of the milk with your hands to relieve the pressure.”
“You’ve talked to your mother?”
“No. Well, yes, but she doesn’t know it’s you. She told me that Mr. Marsden needed help. His wife has passed away. She was distant family, another cousin of ours, thrice-removed or some such thing. We were talking, I mentioned a friend, not you by name.”
“Is this supposed to reassure me?”
“Marie! I found a home for your baby and now a safe place for you to stay, a job.”
I should’ve been thankful, of course. I kept wondering how this had happened. The baby was no longer mine, and I was being brought back to Jutland, taken further north and left on an island in a cold sea with strangers who were meant to be family. And yet, yes, I should’ve been thankful. I knew this.
“I know, Kristine.” I reached for her arm, squeezed her elbow, then brought my hand back to my own waist. “Thank you.” I looked up at the lighthouse, a column of granite topped by a lantern, its red paint chipped and fading, the sky a flat, leaden grey behind it, and promised myself that I would find a way to leave again.
Fourteen
The constant throb of waves hitting the island was only masked when the wind built enough that it moaned and howled around the building, blocking out every other sound. The house was one storey, attached to the lighthouse by a wide, curved corridor. There, in a room on the far end of the house, the wind banging into it, I was supposed to rest. Mr. Marsden’s wife had died of pneumonia four months earlier and he had two children, a boy and a girl, ages six and eight, who watched me whenever I emerged, silent in their own grief.
I feigned rest for three days and then decided it was time to get to work. I woke early, padded my undergarments and wrapped fabric around my abdomen in an attempt to stem the discomfort, then went to the kitchen. Mr. Marsden was sitting at the table with his hands wrapped around a mug. I cleared my throat and he faced me with a faint smile, then averted his eyes. I saw a line of tension stitch his brow. I spoke first. “Good morning.”
He looked toward the table, said, “Morning,” then stood up. “Coffee?”
I said yes, though I’d rarely drunk it before, and moved toward the stove before he did. Once I’d poured myself a cup, I remained standing. “I am ready to begin work.” I hadn’t yet sat at the table with him when the children weren’t there.
Mr. Marsden nodded and looked away, as though down the hall, then said, “Please, have a seat.” When I did, he took a moment before speaking. “You sure, then?”
I wasn’t sure. Wasn’t sure what I was doing there, on an island in northern Jutland, less sure that I would be capable of caring for two motherless children and a man who seemed unmoored. “Yes.”
“You’ve run a household before?”
“Of course.” I believed myself for a moment, yet I hadn’t.
“How should we go about this?” Mr. Marsden rubbed at his jaw and I could hear the faint rasp of stubble. He hadn’t shaved yet that morning.
“Why don’t I just begin? I’ll make breakfast. After that, I’ll get the kids settled with some books –” I looked around, knowing I’d seen books somewhere, hoping some were suitable for children. “Then I’ll take stock and make a list of staples that may have run low.” Mr. Marsden nodded along to all this. Perhaps I was on the right track. “Where do you get supplies?”
“Once every month I go to the mainland – this month I made an extra trip to pick you up.”
“Of course.” I felt as though I was being reminded of something.
“And, the children.” It was still so early and they weren’t yet up. “Do they go away to school?”
“Well, no.” Mr. Marsden shifted in his chair. The wood creaked. He looked toward the bottom of his cup. “Their mother was schooling them.”
“Since then?”
“Jeppe is still quite young. Frieda does a lot of reading on her own.”
“That’s good,” I said. “Were you considering school for them at any point?”
“I was hoping that you could school them here.” He had put down his mug, but he picked it up and looked again toward the bottom, as though hoping to find something. “In the short term, at least. I will look into a school on the mainland eventually. I’m not sure it’s necessary yet.” He looked up at me, a twitch in his mouth as though he were challenging me – or perhaps he was nervous. I began to realize what was expected of me. Not only would I be running a household, I would be responsible for raising and educating two children. Days before, I had given up one small infant. Now, two children had been given into my care.
Mr. Marsden got up from the table and came to the sink to wash his cup. Our proximity seemed too close, this sudden domesticity. “My name is Carl.”
“Yes.” I knew that he knew my first and last name. “I’ll call you Mr. Marsden, of course.”
“Yes, of course. And I will call you Miss Jüül.” My name, up until that day, had seemed like something simple – a straightforward part of me. In that moment, it seemed both part of me and something separate – a title, a position.
* * *
The phantom pains of childbirth had subsided within a couple of weeks on the island. My milk dried up and I b
egan to feel myself again, at least physically. There were only two children to care for, a relatively modest house to keep, but there were several things I was not accustomed to doing. It was April when I arrived and, beyond showing me where the garden was and what seeds Mrs. Marsden had saved from the previous season, Mr. Marsden left it up to me to figure out what to do. I’d grown up on a farm, but we had a cook and one girl year-round, two or three in the summer. It was they who planted and cultivated the kitchen garden, ran the kitchen and cooked the food. Laundry had to be scrubbed in a steel basin and hung to dry, whipped by wind yet always slightly damp from sea air. There was no running water, so I carried buckets from the pump and heated water on the wood stove. In our house in Gudum, it had also been the help that brought the water in and heated it for us. Now, I was the help.
Mr. Marsden’s oldest child, Frieda, remembered enough of what her mother had taught her that, between us, we figured things out. Frieda had seemed to delight in my floundering at first, and little Jeppe was oblivious. I told myself she wasn’t malicious and he wasn’t ignorant, they were simply children. By summer, I was used to the amount of work that had to be done. My body was trim and strong. On the days that we could spare an hour or two, the children and I would trace the island’s ragged edge, collecting shells, pebbles, bits of glass worn by the sea. Sometimes we would take the skiff out, never rowing far from shore, the three of us laughing when the boat slapped against the waves and soaked us with spray.
Fifteen
The first months that I was on the island were clear in many ways – the changing quality of light, salt tang of sea air, grasses flattened by wind, then bending in summer heat. The children went barefoot, Frieda herding her little pack of sheep, Jeppe always with a stick in his hand, hacking away at the brush, rocks, anything he could, really. Even things I tried to ignore – the way the hairs on Carl’s forearm lightened over the course of the summer, their glint when they caught light, the sinew of his muscles moving beneath his skin. Don’t look, I told myself, and convinced myself that I had hardly glanced. Then, autumn set in.
How could the disappearing light be a surprise every year? Each morning, I woke to less light until there was none and I felt shocked, slighted by the darkness. It blanketed so many hours of the day, but it was no comfort, as oblivious to me as I was consumed by it. Carl had to maintain the light longer each night, and fog obscured the island often during the day, so he would be up then as well, sounding the foghorn in a series of precisely timed patterns. His skin was still stained by the hours of light in the summer, but I could see how, underneath, that pallor was waiting to emerge. By winter, he would be pale with both exhaustion and lack of light.
“Can I help?” I asked one morning.
“How?”
“If you show me what to do, I can operate the light for a couple of hours at night, allow you more time to sleep.”
“No, no. You need your sleep as well. The children –”
“There’s less for me to do now. The garden is all in, the canning done. Frieda may be able to care for Jeppe for an hour or two in the afternoon while I rest – she can do school work with him. She’s a smart girl.”
“I’ve always done it on my own, as is expected of me to do, with good reason. It’s my job.”
“I’m only suggesting an hour or two.”
Carl didn’t say anything more.
“Will you consider it?” I asked.
“I will.”
He was a quiet man, calm, closed. I had never seen Carl angry. Nor had I seen him particularly happy, frustrated, overjoyed or annoyed. Emotion registered so lightly on his surface that it was barely discernible, if at all. Because I knew how unflappable he was, I asked him about my proposition nearly daily. “Have you considered my suggestion?” I would ask him as we both drank coffee in the near dark.
“Yes, I have,” is all that he said for days until one morning. “We can try it.”
“Pardon?” It was though I had forgotten what we were speaking about beyond our daily back and forth.
“Tonight, I’ll show you how to operate the light. After a few nights of instruction, you may be able to try on your own.” I felt like squealing and clapping like a girl, though I did not. The prospect of being in a tower at night, shining light out to sea, was a signal that there was something more out there. That there was so much beyond what I could see.
* * *
My few hours in the tower each night were a series of small chores – polishing the lenses, keeping the wick trim and neat so the flame wouldn’t smoke and obscure a clean signal, updating the logbook. Carl would crank the mechanism that kept the light turning before he left the tower. I would make note of this, mark the times I trimmed the wick, record anything unusual. Carl had not wanted me to enter anything in the logbook, but I insisted. It was a way to stay awake.
Once he’d allowed me to spend two hours a night in the light tower, it seemed as though he wasn’t able to forbid me anything. I made entries, a few each night, my handwriting delicate and finely looped between the rough block letters of his printing. I realized that this was, perhaps, why he didn’t want me to log my records. If anything amiss were to happen at the lighthouse, the maritime guard would go over the logbook. Each night that winter, they would see the curves of a woman’s handwriting in the book. Even that cursive evidence of me in the tower each night might embarrass Carl. It was a man’s job, after all – one his wife had never done.
Books, Carl had told me, were what kept lighthouse keepers sane. I was reading one night, the words rearranging themselves, sliding off the page in the weak light, when Carl held me by my shoulders, gently shook me. “Inger-Marie,” he said, “Marie, Marie,” until I opened my eyes. I looked at him, confused. Why was his face so close? I started to sit up, reached for my book. I must have fallen asleep; the first time I had done so while on duty. I felt relief that the light was still bright, spinning. As it moved, it illuminated different parts of Carl’s face. He kept his hands on my shoulders. I wanted to sit up straight but I also didn’t want him to let go of me. His hold was warm.
The light traced one half of his face before it fell into shadow, then the other, then darkness again. Neither of us moved except to blink as we went in and out of faint light. Then, he leaned forward. Somehow, I knew he would. Without intimation of anything between us before, I had already seen his face moving toward mine. And I knew I wouldn’t move until he touched me. Then, I would respond and he would pick me up from the chair, place me on the floor beneath him.
There was nothing soft or comfortable in the light tower, nothing that encouraged sleep. I felt the floor, hard and cold under me, knew we didn’t have anywhere else to go. Not his marriage bed. Not the single bed in my narrow room at the end of the house. He put his hand under my head as though to provide a kind of pillow. With the other hand, he swiftly opened his pants as I lifted my skirts, pushed my undergarments aside. One hand remained under my head, the other on one buttock as we rocked together, the wood planks rough against my back, singing as they creaked. We breathed along with them, the tempo quickening, the skin along the knolls of my spine worn raw. It didn’t matter. This wasn’t about comfort but a kind of desperate companionship. Heat and skin and moving together – it may have been some kind of consolation, but it wasn’t about ease.
Sixteen
After that first time in the light tower, I went back to my room and fell asleep quickly, heavily. When I woke, I did not remember what happened for a moment. It wasn’t until I swung my legs off the bed that I felt the sensation between my legs, not quite a pain but a warmth and the kind of tightness I felt when I’d done a lot of walking. Oh, I thought, then I remembered. I reached around and felt the spot on my back where my skin had been scraped by the wood beneath me.
I didn’t see Carl that day. That night, I went to the light tower and he was there, writing in the logbook. I stood and waited. When he lo
oked up, Carl seemed to wince slightly, as though the sight of me caused him some discomfort, and then he smiled, a small, sad smile.
“Good evening,” I said.
“Marie.”
“Yes?”
“That can’t happen again.”
“Of course it can’t.” I believed this – not that it couldn’t happen again but that it shouldn’t. And it didn’t, at least not for the first couple of weeks. I suppose it was naive of both of us to believe that it wouldn’t happen again – the two of us alone with the children, playing family on an island, a man and a woman, both young and healthy. I was amazed that we made it as long as we did. I don’t remember the second time as clearly as the first. The first time that we were together was followed by nothing but the waver of tension between us each day, each trying to forget that night, neither of us wanting to – and then there were all the times that we were together after that, a blanket beneath us to protect our knees, our backs. What we had between us was physical, separate from the day when I cared for Carl’s children and took care of his household. At night, our bodies together were a form of physicality, release.
With the light diminishing each day, I was rarely out in the garden, no longer pulling at the oars as I rowed the skiff around the edges of the island. Aside from the times when I was on my hands and knees, washing the floor or moving against Carl in the light tower, I felt like my body could disappear and, with it, my mind. Now mostly indoors, the children were moody, resistant to what I asked of them; chores, school work and meal preparation were all a struggle. Confined to the small, low-ceilinged rooms during the day, the light tower gave me a feeling of space around me, not expansive but hollow. I couldn’t see much beyond the fallout of the tower’s bulb throwing light on one part of the island, then another and another, before stretching out into water.
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