The Lightkeeper's Daughter Read online

  His feet came from his boots with a long, sucking squelch, and his woolen socks—sodden with water— drooped from his toes. A puddle spread around him. “I need a towel,” he said. “Hannah, can you fetch me a towel?”

  Alastair squinted through the window. “Is the light still on?” he asked.

  “Och, I didn’t look up,” said Murray.

  But it was. Spray flew white as snow through the beacon’s twirling arms.

  At eleven o’clock, Squid was in the kitchen with Alastair. The room was kept dark so that they could see through the big, south-facing window. A gust shook the house; the bell rang on the porch—a sharp, tingling peal. And Squid saw a flare sputter up into the rain and the wind, a thin line of red like an exclamation mark etched on the black of the pane.

  Alastair went right to the window. He pressed his hands on the glass and leaned against it. He held his glasses in his hands, blinking his wet, gloomy eyes. “I wish I could see,” he said. “Oh, I wish I could see.”

  “Dad!” shouted Squid. “Mom!” They came together into the kitchen. Rain slammed at the window, warping the glass, for an instant turning it white.

  “Stand back from there!” said Murray. “That window’s next to go.”

  Water went coursing down the glass, and another flare rose from the storm, swimming up through the ripples as the window shivered and crackled.

  “Good lord,” said Murray. “There really is someone out there.”

  Again, to Squid, it looked like an exclamation mark. And she saw a terrible sadness in the faintness of it, the futility. A scream for help without a sound.

  Murray switched on the radio, the VHF. He unclipped the microphone from the little chrome holder. The cord twisted in coils round his wrist. From the speaker came a voice, a man’s voice that was surprisingly calm, though strange from the fear at the edge of it. He was saying, over and over, as steady as a machine, “Mayday, mayday, mayday.”

  “Let go of the key,” said Murray, softly. “I can’t answer you, man, as long as you’re holding the key.”

  Again the bell rang as they all faced the window, as the glass bulged toward them. The radio was over the sink, fixed under the cupboards. And the voice filled the room with its urgency.

  “Mayday, mayday, mayday!”

  “Let go of the key,” said Murray again.

  At last the man did. And instantly another voice answered. It was deep and soothing, a God-like sound. “The vessel calling mayday,” it said. “This is Prince Rupert Coast Guard radio.”

  There was a strength in that voice. It brought a calmness and a sense of trust, and Squid closed her eyes for a moment and let out a small sigh. That voice commanded a tranquility from the man on the boat, and asked, “What is the nature of your emergency?”

  The boat, a troller named Cape Caution, was taking on water faster than the pumps could get it out. The boards that covered the cockpit had been torn away in the storm, and now the waves—rolling up from the stern—tumbled over the transom, pouring hundreds of gallons into the hull.

  Murray replaced the microphone in its clip. He spoke straight at the window, as though his voice could carry clear across the sea. “Turn around, man. Go into the waves.” Hannah, close beside him, held on to his arm.

  Then the God-like voice asked, “What is your position?”

  The boat was just a few miles from Lizzie Island. It was making for the shelter of its sand and trees, heading for the beacon. Just a few miles to go, but right to leeward, chased by waves that hammered it down, that climbed aboard to sink it.

  There were three people on board, the fisherman said. Himself, and two of his sons.

  “Do you have a lifeboat?” asked the Coast Guard.

  “No, sir,” said the fisherman.

  “Do you have survival suits?” There was no answer. Again the Coast Guard asked, “Do you have survival suits?”

  And the man answered, “One. We only have one.”

  “Oh, God,” said Hannah. She leaned her head on Murray’s shoulder. “Oh, Murray, the poor man.”

  What would he do? wondered Squid. What would anyone do? She saw the father tearing open the bag, hauling from it this big orange thing like a man without flesh. He throws it down on the deck. “Put it on!” he commands. But who does he look at? Which of his sons does he save? Do they fight to see who gets it, this one little chance to survive? Does son battle with son? Son against father? Or do they all stare at this thing lying on the deck and shout at one another, “You put it on!” Would the horror be greater, or less, if you were the one in the suit?

  “For heaven’s sake,” said Murray. “Someone put it on.”

  The Coast Guard sent a cutter. The voice like God said it would get there in ninety minutes.

  “Too late,” said Murray. “That boat will either be here or be gone.”

  For half an hour the Coast Guard coaxed the troller along. And the McCraes, in the kitchen, listened as the fisherman came toward them. In the background of his radio they heard a motor thrumming, and the whine of the wind in his rigging. They heard the fear come to his voice, leave it again, and return. It washed over him with the regularity of each giant wave.

  “The stabilizers won’t stay in the water,” he said. “I can’t see the deck anymore.”

  Calm and deep, the voice asked, “Are you making progress?”

  “We can see the island. We can see the houses on the island.”

  “Turn around, man,” said Murray.

  “How could he?” said Squid. She still stared at the window, at the blackness. “He’s too close to go back.”

  For a long time, the fisherman didn’t talk. A tree shattered outside. The gust of wind rushed on through the forest with a sound like tearing cloth, howled along the roof, and the bell rang twice as rain thundered on the shingles like cattle hooves. In the kitchen, Squid saw, Murray and Hannah and Alastair were all leaning forward, still facing the window.

  “Cape Caution,” said the Coast Guard, and waited for an answer. “Cape Caution.” Another long silence. “Cape Caution, this is Prince Rupert Coast Guard radio.”

  “They’re gone,” said Murray softly.

  “No,” said Hannah. “They’ve come so close. They have to make it now.”

  “Cape Caution. Cape Caution.”

  Alastair rubbed his hands together. “Oh please, God,” he whispered.

  “Cape Caution. Cape Caution.”

  Murray reached for the radio switch. But his hand gave a jerk as the fisherman’s voice leapt from the speaker. It was so matter-of-fact.

  “The engine’s gone; the water’s over the floor.” Behind him was a crashing sound, a breaking of the timbers. And then the screaming started. One voice, and then three, all of them hollering and screaming. It lasted only an instant, and then it was quiet again.

  There was only a bleating, useless voice asking, “Cape Caution? Cape Caution?”

  The cutter arrived just after midnight. It fired white flares into the storm, a stream of flares that sizzled and popped, making patches out on the ocean. Wreckage came ashore, but never a body. And never a survival suit.

  September 14. I keep wondering. What would I do if that was me on the boat—me and Squid and Dad—and we only had one survival suit? The best thing, really, would be for Dad to put it on. And then he could hold us both and keep us out of the water. Dad could float for a long, long time. But it would never happen that way. Who would it be best to save, I wonder. Squid who’s youngest, or Dad who’s oldest. It would have to be one or the other.

  September 15. What difference does it make if you live to be ninety or only nineteen? Why is it so awful if a baby dies, but not an old, old man? They’ll both be dead for the same length of time. I think there must be a heaven to go to that sort of evens things out. After all, if I was a tortoise I’d live a hundred years, but if I was a mayfly I would be alive for just one day. And then, after millions of years in heaven, I’d be the same age either way. I think I’ve got it figu
red out. But Squid says it’s wrong.

  He came to her with his ideas. He’d made a graph that showed all of time, a trillion billion years in a line across the page. At the left side was the start of the world, and half an inch later he’d made a little mark and labeled it “Today.” Crowded to the right of that were a lot of little marks that made one giant smudge.

  “What’s all that?” she asked.

  “Lifetimes,” said Alastair, and told her about the mayfly and the tortoise. “See?” he said. “If you look at all the time in heaven they’re just the same age in the end.”

  She said, “But would you rather be the tortoise or the fly?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said, breathing through his nose. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

  She pointed at the page. “So what’s the lifetime here for idiots?”

  September 16. I’ve decided to read the Bible. I snuck it up to my room and started reading a little bit every night. Genesis was pretty good, but I can’t figure out where all the people in the valleys came from if God only made Adam and Eve. I’m praying for Mom. I wish she was happier. And I’m praying that my eyes get strong. I guess I should really just scrunch up my glasses. But I don’t have enough faith for that yet.

  She heard him praying at night, his quiet voice going on and on. He asked her strange questions: “How much rain do you think it would take to cover Lizzie Island? How big is a cubit, anyway?” And, slowly, he lapsed into the first of his times of lonely brooding.

  He looked smaller because he was always hunched over. All four of them could be squashed into one little room, but she could look at Alastair and think he was all alone. She would walk with him down the boardwalk, and suddenly he would turn and sprint off through the trees.

  In the days that followed the storm, they replaced battered shingles torn from the roof, then cleared the trees blown down on the boardwalk. Murray worked the chain saw in a cloud of oily smoke as the sawdust flew against his legs. Then he turned off the clattering engine and said, “That’s enough for today,” and Alastair was gone before the sentence was finished.

  “We have to give the lad some time,” said Murray, later, while they sat on the grass as he sharpened the saw. Murray would never put away a tool that was dirty or dull.

  “How much time?” asked Squid.

  Murray shrugged. He sat with the chain saw between his legs, filing at the teeth. “He’s got to sort things out. Things he’s never fathomed.”

  “And what if he can’t?” said Hannah. She’d put on a dress that was printed with flowers. A honeybee buzzed around her, darting in and out toward the gaudy colors on the cloth.

  Squid lay between her parents, on her stomach on the grass.

  “Well, he has to,” said Murray. “It’s as simple as that.” The file rasped across the teeth, three strokes to each one. Squid hated the sound it made.

  “When I was a boy,” said Murray, “there was an explosion in the mine. For two days we didn’t know who was alive and who was dead, and my father was down there all the time.” He wiped his forehead, rubbing at the spot above his nose. “I remember the women, how they waited for news. And I remember the searchers coming up with their faces all black.”

  He tested the sawteeth with his thumb. “There were six men trapped down there. Three came out alive—my father among them—and three were carried out dead. Another fellow—I can’t remember his name—he should have been with them, but he wasn’t. That morning he’d woken up and decided that he wouldn’t go down in the mine that day. And he never went down again.”

  “Who could blame him?” asked Hannah.

  “It’s not the point,” said Murray. “He came to believe that he was down there, that seven men went down to the mine. He believed that the explosion left him trapped and dying. He could see it, you understand; he could see himself buried in rubble, and he could hear himself screaming for help. And this is what he decided.” Murray pulled the file through his fingers and wiped off a silvery sludge. He moved the chain along, and started filing again. “Salvador, that was his name. He was a huge man. He decided that he had begged God not to let him die, to give him another chance if he made himself a better man. And he came to believe that God had answered the prayer, and when he woke up that morning and didn’t go to work it was because time had been set back to keep him from dying.”

  Hannah didn’t speak for a moment, and then she laughed with a nervous giggle. “Good heavens,” she said.

  “Well,” said Murray. “My father said that Salvador was a lazy sod who didn’t go to work two days out of every month at any rate. He said, and I remember this very clearly”—Murray held up the file like a wand—“he said, ‘Och, he wasna the only one beggin’ for mercy then, but time didna go backwards for us.’ ”

  Squid dug her toes in the grass. “Did your dad go back to work?” she asked.

  “For a while,” said Murray. “Don’t do that, Squid; you’ll make holes.”

  She rolled lazily onto her back. “So, what does this have to do with Alastair?”

  “Och, don’t you see?” he said. “What a person thinks of things isn’t worth a tinker’s dam. Surely there’s no fathoming the ways of the world, so why bother trying? It’s living that matters. It’s life that’s important.”

  He put down the file and pushed away the saw. He stood up and said, “I think I’ll tell that story to Alastair. Where has he gone, do you think?”

  “To the beach,” said Squid. “He just sits by the water.”

  Murray started off. “Wait,” said Hannah. “Did Salvador become a better man?”

  “Och, he was a pain in the neck after that. He was nutty as a fruitcake.”

  September 20. Dad came down to the beach and told me a story. I didn’t see much point to it. But I felt sorry for him, the way that he’s worried about me, and I went with him back to the house.

  Squid remembers how Murray glowed as he came up the boardwalk with Alastair. She remembers being so glad to see her brother that she laughed and shouted out, “Well, look who’s alive.”

  He came trudging behind Murray, his hair even wilder than usual.

  “We thought you were dead,” cried Squid. “We were scared to go look.”

  Hannah shot her an awful stare that stunned her into silence.

  Alastair stared at them, his face all drawn and ghastly. “I’m sorry if I worried you,” he said. “I felt like being alone.”

  Squid turned from face to face. “Isn’t anyone going to ask him what he’s been doing?”

  “I’m sure if Alastair wants to tell us that, he’ll do so in his own good time,” said Hannah primly. Then Murray clapped his hands and shouted, “Right! Let’s break into teams for a badminton game.”

  They played all afternoon, the men against the girls. Alastair stumbled about, swatting at the air, and they laughed and laughed together.

  Then winter settled in, and it was much like all the winters before. They worked and they played, and Murray lectured on animals, but Alastair was never quite the same. They would catch him sometimes just staring at the sea, watching the waves, standing alone on a rock as the tide rose around him.

  Squid turns through the pages.

  December 3. Mom and Dad look at me in funny ways, watching me all the time. They look at me with that sort of squint they use at birthdays, when a balloon is blown so big it’s just about to pop.

  I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I just want to crawl into a burrow, like an auklet or an otter, and stay there and never come out.

  chapter twelve

  IN MIDAFTERNOON, HANNAH SETS A LUNCH on the lawn. Sockeye salmon, spread in thick swaths on the toast, is nearly the color of raspberries. On half the slices, it’s speckled with relish, tiny chunks of green and yellow mixed the way that Squid would do it, in her childhood. In those days Squid called it puke. “Let’s have puke sandwiches,” she would say, much to Murray’s disgust.

  Hannah stands, looking down, pleased wi
th the colors on Murray’s perfect grass, her bright yellow plates crowded with carrots and green peppers and wedges—like smiles— of red tomato. It’s the sort of thing Alastair would have noticed, and commented on, sometimes pecking a kiss on her cheek. “Looks great, Mom,” he would tell her.

  But Murray, of course, doesn’t notice. He comes with Tatiana toddling along at his heels. He keeps looking back. “There’s a good girl. Och, you’re a wee little walker.” They sit together, and Murray pulls one plate toward him.

  “Where’s Squid?” asks Hannah.

  “She’s coming,” he says. “She told me so—shouting through the door of the small house. She wouldn’t let me in.”

  “Maybe she’s changing.”

  “Let’s hope so,” says Murray, only half to himself. He takes a carrot from the plate and offers it to Tatiana. She shakes her head, pulling away. She does the same with the peppers, the same with the toast. “You have to eat,” he tells her. “You want to grow up big and strong, you have to eat, little Tat.”

  He does funny things with the food, things he hasn’t done since Squid was two years old. He turns the carrots into airplanes, zooming them high, puttering with his lips the sound of propellers. Jets would be too advanced for Murray. “Open the hangar,” he says.

  Tatiana’s eyes follow the carrots, crossing comically as they whiz past her nose. But she doesn’t eat. She only watches the carrots, and gazes at Murray.

  She has taken to him in such a powerful way that Hannah feels frightened. Someone has to be hurt in the end, and if it isn’t Murray it will be this odd little girl, as fragile as a soap bubble. Hannah turns away, feeling lonely there beside them.

  But suddenly, Tatiana laughs. Murray has carrot sticks stuffed in his nostrils, a coil of green pepper coming out from his mouth like a snake’s tongue. He’s holding tomato slices over his eyebrows, and underneath he looks so happy, so young, so much like a boy in his bush of bright hair.

  Hannah almost wishes that Squid would stay on the island, that she would abandon her “really neat guy” and settle on Lizzie again. She wants to ask Murray what he thinks; the words are right in her mouth: Oh, Murray, wouldn’t it be nice if she stayed? But she won’t let them out, and she feels wicked for that. She feels old and bitter, ugly inside.