The Lightkeeper's Daughter Read online

  Squid has put on a dress that bares her shoulders and arms, and most of her legs. She announces herself with a shout, then comes over the grass like a nymph from a mist. Her feet, without shoes, seem to walk on only the tips of the stems, and her dress floats all around her like rippling steam.

  It seems impossible that she was once seven years old, coming home all covered in burrs. Somehow, inside her, is the child who played at soldiers with skunk cabbage heads for grenades, who crawled into otter dens to see what was there, and stood on her head like a barnacle. How had they made her this way? How, on a rock in the middle of nowhere, had they taught her to be a lady?

  Her arms swing wide, her head tosses and sways. But ten yards away she starts to run, and there’s the girl again. She skips over the grass, laughing with delight. She sees the plates and says, “Oh, boy. Puke for lunch. I haven’t had puke in years.”

  “Och,” says Murray.

  She folds herself onto the grass. She takes two slices of toast.

  “Tat won’t eat,” says Murray.

  “No wonder.” Squid holds her palm under her mouth, catching the globs of sockeye and relish that ooze from the sides of the bread. “You haven’t cut her toast into fingers.”

  “Oh, that’s ridiculous,” says Hannah. “A child that age.”

  But Murray says, “So that’s the trick, is it?” And he lifts his hip from the grass to take out his knife. He opens the blade and patiently slices the toast into strips.

  At last the child eats, finger after finger. And Murray methodically cuts up the carrots and cuts up the peppers. Tatiana hums to herself, rocking on the grass.

  The ravens come, one then two, and half a dozen. They flutter down on wings that whistle, then stand nearby, black and shiny, waiting there like butlers. They cock their heads and utter warbly croaks through open beaks, and Hannah tosses toast toward them.

  “They don’t often come as close as this anymore,” says Murray. He turns his head away, covering his mouth with a hand, picking at his big teeth with a fingernail.

  “Alastair would have them feeding from his hand,” says Hannah. And then she stops, seeing the look on her daughter’s face.

  Murray doesn’t notice; he’s staring at the sea. “I think the whale’s out there,” he says.

  They all turn to look, out past the tower, off to the south. They watch and wait, and then a spout appears, a little jet of fog. And a black shape rises from the water, bulges up and sinks again.

  The sun is not as bright as it was an hour ago. High, hazy clouds are moving in from the west. The sea is a brilliant blue, rolling with a gentle swell. And the whale’s nearly a mile offshore, huffing breaths over that flat, heaving plain. They see his back, and once his flukes. He’s swimming toward the island.

  Even Tatiana stands to watch him. A hand on Murray’s shoulder, she stretches up to see.

  “We should row out there,” says Murray.

  “Yes,” says Squid. She straightens out her gold-tanned legs.

  “Wait,” says Hannah. “We’ve got the food. The dishes.” She’s still nervous at the thought of being too close to whales in a small and aging boat. She wishes that Murray would go, and Tatiana, that Squid would stay to talk things out, to finish what they’ve started. But already the dishes are being gathered and Squid is on her feet.

  Tatiana seems to have sensed adventure, and her sweet little face is bright with pleasure.

  The boat has sat so long at the edge of the forest that it’s filled with old, dead leaves and pinkish crab shells brought there by the otters. Murray tips it onto its side and hammers on the bottom to knock away debris. He drags it down to the water and they climb into their favorite places, Squid—with Tat—in front, Hannah in the little seat that faces Murray.

  Even now his arm muscles ripple and bulge as he rows, his calves swell with the motion. He pulls on the oars with a steady, thumping rhythm, driving the boat across the lagoon, out through the gap and past the mooring buoy. The blades of the oars make whirlpools in the water, a trail of them like footprints.

  Through the glass at her feet, Hannah sees a forest of kelp drop to a blue darkness. An orange jellyfish rolls by, tendrils stirred by the oars. Years ago, Murray would have stopped here. “The jellyfish,” he would have said. “A mindless simpleton with no sense of direction. He hardly knows up from down.”

  But now he keeps rowing. His face takes on a reddish brightness. His cheeks puff out, and he glances over his shoulder to see how far he has to go.

  Hannah stares at the glass. She doesn’t want to look at Almost Nothing Atoll and keeps her head down until she feels the boat lift on a swell, and knows they’ve gone past the tower. She consoles herself with a thought: It won’t be a long trip. They’ve got the weathers to do at half past three.

  From the bow comes Squid’s shout. “She blows!”

  “Where-away?” says Murray, sweat on his forehead.

  How easily they’ve slipped back through the years.

  “Straight ahead, Dad.”

  Murray keeps rowing. The oars thud and creak as the boat rises sluggishly up, then wallows back down.

  “A bit to the left,” says Squid. “Oh! She blows!”

  Tatiana wriggles around, trying to stand up. “Sit still!” says Squid. Then, “Flukes up! She’s sounding.”

  It takes a moment for the noise to come across the water: the slap of a tail; the rush of water. Murray stops rowing. He pulls the oars from the rowlocks and lays them on the seats. It could be half an hour before the whale rises again.

  “Whale,” says Tat, in that odd little voice.

  “Hush.” Squid touches her arm.

  “Whale,” says Tat, insistent.

  And the boat vibrates.

  There’s a sound coming up through the wood and the frames, a creak like door hinges. Then another, as though someone has tossed sand at the planking. Squid drops her hand into the water. Hannah swallows her fear; they’ve done this before, she remembers.

  “I can feel it,” says Squid. “I can feel it!” And again Hannah hears the sound of tossing sand.

  So the whale has found them. Its sonar washes over the boat. Somewhere below this empty sea, a thing fifty feet long is turning toward them.

  The sound loudens and quickens. In their sockets, the oarlocks vibrate. And then, close alongside, the whale comes sliding from the sea. A mound of brownish skin, bumps and warts. It rises up in silence, slow and majestic. The crack of a mouth, the blowholes on a sculptured base. They open, and the breath comes out, warm and fetid, mist rising in a cloud, raining down. The sound is a hollow clap. And the whale arches, higher than their heads, arches as the water pours off, gliding forward and down, its hump of a fin showing before it sinks again under the swells.

  The wave rocks the boat.

  “Holy shit,” says Squid. Hannah sees Murray wince.

  The sound fades. Way off by the island, the whale spouts again. But nobody moves; nobody can.

  Tatiana turns her bright, squinted eyes right toward Hannah. Her grin puffs up her cheeks like a squirrel’s. She claps her hands together, then slams them to her chest. And suddenly she squeals.

  It’s a hooting, mournful sound—a wonderful sound. And it comes back to her through the thin bottom of Murray’s boat, this caroling of bubbles and bells, this magical singing of whales.

  Hannah stares at the glass floor of a boat that’s more than a decade old. An eye: a huge, bulging eye. It’s what she expects to see on the other side, an eye full of the blues and greens of the oceans, a pupil deep as an abyss.

  And now it’s what she wants to see. She wants to see it pass below the boat, fifty feet of it rolling from back to belly, its graceful fins flapping like wings, a trail of bubbles floating up to pop against the glass.

  But she sees only water.

  They sit for a long time. The clouds slowly thicken, paling the sun. Then Murray, without a word, jams the oars into place. The blades sweep around in long, lazy arcs. And he rows t
he boat home with tears on his cheeks.

  There hasn’t been a humpback near the island since the autumn that Alastair died. Murray and Hannah and Squid rowed out to see them; Squid shouted, “She blows!” And the songs of the whales tickled the boat. Alastair wasn’t there; he was off by himself in the kayak.

  There were two whales and they swam close together, so close their flippers must have touched. They came to the surface together, the sound of their breaths making only one clap. For Hannah, the whales made her think of Alastair and Squid, the way they used to be but no longer were.

  The humpbacks stayed much longer than usual. They arrived, that year, in the summer, moved on for a while, and returned. Whenever he saw them, Alastair would take his flute and his notebook and paddle off in the kayak.

  Often she saw him, either wedged in that long narrow boat or sprawled on the rocks of Almost Nothing Atoll. Not once in that time did she try to go after him. But Murray did. And Alastair climbed into the kayak and— pretending not to see—went off chasing the whales.

  But one afternoon he didn’t go after them. Hannah was in the kitchen when he stopped at the big house instead. Murray was putting new putty around the huge front window. Hannah heard them talking.

  “Dad?” said Alastair. “Do you think whales have a language?”

  There was a tap as Murray put his putty knife onto the sill. The porch shook as he crossed it; she imagined that they sat on the steps.

  “Language is very complex,” Murray said. “It implies words, and structure. I’m sure whales communicate, but I doubt you’d call it a language.”

  Alastair said, “I think that it is.”

  “Oh?” said Murray.

  “I’ve heard them. Even without the hydrophone. The kayak, it’s like a sound chamber. I’ve heard them talk to each other.”

  Murray grunted. “You’ve heard them make sounds to each other,” he said.

  “No, it’s more than that.” There was an anguish in Alastair’s voice. “Dad, I’d like to study it.”

  “Good,” said Murray. “We’ll order some books. Just give me some titles and—”

  “Not from books, Dad.” He was frustrated now. “I’d need a spectrograph, hydrophones. A sound editor.”

  “We can get those things.”

  “I’d want to be where the whales are.”

  “Oh,” said Murray. “Oh, I see.”

  “I’ll let you off here,” says Murray. Already he’s nudging the boat up to the base of the concrete steps. “No sense in you walking clear over the island.”

  Squid laughs. “Too hard to row?” she asks.

  “Well, there is that,” he says. “But, och, if you like—”

  “No,” says Hannah. “This is fine.” He’s sweating now, but too proud to say he’s had enough. She reaches out for the step, clutching at seaweed and kelp. Murray pushes with the oars, holding the boat in place, and she clambers out. Without her weight, the boat tips forward.

  “Hey!” says Squid.

  Hannah holds the transom in place. “Come on, Tatiana,” she says. “We’re going to go up the stairs.”

  But Tatiana won’t move. When Squid picks her up by the waist, she clings to the bow, kicking her feet.

  “Stop that!” says Squid. “You’re making a scene.”

  “She’s rocking the boat, right enough,” says Murray. He steadies it with sweeps of the oars as Squid wrestles behind him with Tatiana. “Och, just leave the wee thing; she’s no bother to me.”

  “Fine!” says Squid. “You stay here,” she tells Tat, instantly mad. She clambers past Murray, stepping over the oars. In her hurry she uses his head for a handhold, scrunching it sideways. She doesn’t look back but goes straight up the stairs, glowering at Hannah as she passes.

  “Go slowly,” Hannah tells Murray. She sends the boat off with a push and climbs up after Squid, who waits at the top with her hands on her hips.

  “This really bugs me,” says Squid.

  “What?”

  “The way Dad’s taking over.”

  “Now, don’t blame your father. It’s Tatiana who wanted to stay.”

  “But he didn’t make her get out.”

  “Neither did you.”

  Squid pouts—the child again. “If Dad had told her to, she would have. She does anything for Dad.”

  “Yes, she loves him,” says Hannah.

  “If she stayed on the island, Dad would spoil her rotten.”

  “Hardly!” says Hannah. “He would put her to work. He’d have her pulling weeds and . . . What do you mean, ‘if she stayed’? Are you thinking of staying?”

  “No,” says Squid, with utter scorn. “I’d go nuts if I had to live here again.”

  “Then why worry about it?”

  “Well, look,” says Squid.

  Hannah turns back. Murray is rowing slowly along. The water is so calm in the channel, so dazzled by sun, that the clouds are reflected on the surface. It makes it look as though Murray is rowing through the sky, driving the boat toward an ethereal land that floats in the clouds. Tatiana has moved to the stern, trailing her hands in the water. She looks like a very young Alastair.

  “She won’t want to leave,” says Squid.

  Let her stay then. Again the thought comes, and again Hannah pushes it from her mind. Squid’s not the only one who’d go nuts if she had to live on the island forever.

  “I think I’ll go have a sleep,” says Squid.

  “I thought you’d help me with the weathers,” Hannah says.

  “You don’t need any help.”

  “But I’d like it. You spend all your time in the little house. What do you do in there?”

  “Nothing,” says Squid.

  “Then come and help me. Please? I want to talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  “About you. About Tat.”

  They’re both amazed by the way the barometer is falling. They compare their readings to the ones Murray recorded three hours before in his small, precise writing. It’s plummeting, and the wind is backing into the south.

  “It’s going to blow,” says Hannah.

  Squid shrugs. “But not for long.”

  They settle down at the bench, the radio on. Green Island is just starting; they’ve got only moments to wait.

  Hannah says, “What happened to Erik?”

  “Who?” asks Squid.

  “Erik,” she says. “Erik with a k.”

  Squid frowns. “Huh?”

  Hannah picks up the handset. She whispers across it. “Tatiana’s father.”

  “Ohhhh!” says Squid, wide-eyed. “Well, he died, Mom.”

  It’s Hannah’s turn for the weathers. She reads out the data, chats for a moment, and replaces the receiver. Then, remembering the last time, she turns off the volume on the ALAN circuit.

  “Yeah, he died,” says Squid.

  “What happened?”

  Squid sighs. She picks up the pencil and draws quick little circles on the top of the desk. “I don’t know really. I’m just sure that he’s dead. I think I saw it in the paper.”

  “Really?”

  “Look, Mom.” It’s clear to Hannah from the sound of her voice that this will be the last word on the subject. “That was long ago, okay? And it’s over now.”

  But Hannah can’t leave it alone. She would like to, but can’t. Again, she sees him, the Viking in his swan-necked boat, his tent with the fluttering flags. She gets up from her chair and hangs the clipboard on its nail. She says, “What was his last name, Squid?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “Johnson. Jensen. I don’t know.” She jabs at the desk with the pencil. “What difference does it make?”

  “Well,” says Hannah. She stands behind Squid, looking down at the top of her head. “One day, and one day soon, Tatiana’s going to ask you about him. And what will you say then? ‘Oh, I don’t remember his name’? ‘Oh, he looked like a Viking’? Is that what you’ll tell her
?”

  “What else can I tell her?” snaps Squid. “I did something incredibly stupid one night, and a million times I’ve wished I hadn’t done it.”

  “Don’t wish that,” says Hannah, softly. Her hands close on the back of the chair, not daring to touch her daughter. “Imagine if I wished that you’d never been born.”

  “Oh, you don’t understand. You don’t know what happened that night.”

  “Then tell me,” says Hannah.

  “I should.” Squid looks up, over her shoulder. “I should tell you what really went on.”

  There’s a fire in her eyes, but Hannah feels only a coldness inside. It’s welling up, spreading through her stomach to her spine. Let it go, she tells herself; you don’t want to know what really went on. Her hands start to tremble. The coldness reaches her fingers.

  “Do you want me to?” asks Squid. Her smile is quick, unpleasant. “I will if you want.”

  “I don’t know,” says Hannah. All her breath goes out of her. “No. I think you’d better not.”

  Squid smiles. She smirks, with an ugly satisfaction. “I knew you wouldn’t,” she says. Then she leans forward and comes to her feet, slipping out past the chair. “Can we go now?”

  “Yes,” says Hannah, sighing. But even now she can’t leave it alone. “Just tell me,” she says. “Did he hurt you? Tell me that much.”

  “No, Mom,” says Squid. “He didn’t mean to hurt me. Now can we go?”

  Below the bridge, seagulls sit on a darkening sea, nervously bobbing their heads. The wind is warm but the day much cooler, the sunshine turned to shade. Squid hugs herself in her summery dress. Her arms look chilled and goose-bumped.

  Yellow leaves scatter from the alders, drifting down across the path. Hannah’s surprised to see so many, surprised not to see Murray sweeping them up. Just a year ago his leaf collecting was a full-time job.

  She strays to the edge of the path and, boldly, straight onto the grass.

  “Mom!” says Squid.