Lighthousekeeping Read Free

Atlantic Ocean…
    The Atlantic is a dangerous and unpredictable ocean. It is the second largest ocean in the world, extending in an S shapefrom the Arctic to the Antarctic regions, bounded by North and South America in the West, and Europe and Africa in the East.
    The North Atlantic is divided from the South Atlantic by the equatorial counter-current. At the Grand Bank off Newfoundland, heavy fogs form where the warm Gulf Stream meets the cold Labrador Current. In the North Western Ocean, icebergs are a threat from May to December.
    Dangerous. Unpredictable. Threat.
    The world according to Miss Pinch.
    But, on the coasts and outcrops of this treacherous ocean, a string of lights was built over 300 years.
    Look at this one. Made of granite, as hard and unchanging as the sea is fluid and volatile. The sea moves constantly, the lighthouse, never. There is no sway, no rocking, none of the motion of ships and ocean.
    Pew was staring out of the rain-battered glass; a silent taciturn clamp of a man.
    Some days later, as we were eating breakfast in Railings Row – me, toast without butter, Miss Pinch, kippers and tea – Miss Pinch told me to wash and dress quickly and be ready with all my things.
    ‘Am I going home?’
    ‘Of course not – you have no home.’
    ‘But I’m not staying here?’
    ‘No. My house is not suitable for children.’
    You had to respect Miss Pinch – she never lied.
    ‘Then what is going to happen to me?’
    ‘Mr Pew has put in a proposal. He will apprentice you to lighthousekeeping.’
    ‘What will I have to do?’
    ‘I have no idea.’
    ‘If I don’t like it, can I come back?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Can I take DogJim?’
    ‘Yes.’
    She hated saying yes. She was of those people for whom yes is always an admission of guilt or failure. No was power.
    A few hours later, I was standing on the windblown jetty, waiting for Pew to collect me in his patched and tarred mackerel boat. I had never been inside the lighthouse before, and I had only seen Pew when he stumped up the path to collect his supplies. The town didn’t have much to do with the lighthouse any more. Salts was no longer a seaman’s port, with ships and sailors docking for fire and food and company. Salts had become a hollow town, its life scraped out. It had its rituals and its customs and its past, but nothing left in it was alive. Years ago, Charles Darwin had called itFossil-Town, but for different reasons. Fossil it was, salted and preserved by the sea that had destroyed it too.
    Pew came near in his boat. His shapeless hat was pulled over his face. His mouth was a slot of teeth. His hands were bare and purple. Nothing else could be seen. He was the rough shape of human.
    DogJim growled. Pew grabbed him by the scruff and threw him into the boat, then he motioned for me to throw in my bag and follow.
    The little outboard motor bounced us over the green waves. Behind me, smaller and smaller, was my tipped-up house that had flung us out, my mother and I, perhaps because we were never wanted there. I couldn’t go back. There was only forward, northwards into the sea. To the lighthouse.
    Pew and I climbed slowly up the spiral stairs to our quarters below the Light. Nothing about the lighthouse had been changed since the day it was built. There were candleholders in every room, and the Bibles put there by Josiah Dark. I was given a tiny room with a tiny window, and a bed the size of a drawer. As I was not much longer than my socks, this didn’t matter. DogJim would have to sleep where he could.
    Above me was the kitchen where Pew cookedsausages on an open cast-iron stove. Above the kitchen was the light itself, a great glass eye with a Cyclops stare.
    Our business was light, but we lived in darkness. The light had to be kept going, but there was no need to illuminate the rest. Darkness came with everything. It was standard. My clothes were trimmed with dark. When I put on a sou’wester, the brim left a dark shadow over my face. When I