Читать книгу Light - Margaret Elphinstone - Страница 13

CHAPTER 7

AS THE TIDE EBBED THE CREGGYNS SLOWLY GREW. WHEN IT was as calm as this, at high tide there were only empty circles rippling outwards to show that the Creggyns were there at all. Once Creggyn Doo had revealed all its shining shelves of seaweed, you knew that Finn’s yawl could come alongside the landing rock at Gob y Vaatey. It was too soon yet. The seaweed on the Creggyns rose and fell gently with the waves, gleaming like the hair of an underwater giant. Maybe the golden weed was the thick curls of the sea king who stirred his cauldron at the bottom of the sea and made the storms rise, but he wasn’t cooking anything down there today. Maybe his storm-pot was empty. Today the sea was rippling silver so that when you half-shut your eyes you saw all the sparkles at once like stars falling.

A brig was becalmed south of the Creggyns. Mally was fairly sure it was a brig, though it seemed to have an extra mast. Mally could recognise nearly all the ships that passed. The others knew them all, except for Mam, who was the only one who couldn’t read these things without thinking about it. But other sorts of reading Mam did best of all. Like words. Mam could read words much more than Lucy, but Lucy could read ships like no one else ever born.

This was a good sitting place if the wind was at all easterly. Today there was hardly any breeze, just the warm smells of the island. Mally had done the jobs Mam had given her this morning. She always had to wash and put away the porridge dishes after breakfast because she didn’t work in the lighthouse yet. But when she was eight she would take her turn doing the light and not have to help with the dishes every single day. That would be better than the way it was now.

She could see the horizon all the way round, which meant that this was a very good day. Sky and sea didn’t meet everywhere because of the far lands. The far lands, when you could see them, were always on the horizon, even though Billy said they weren’t all the same distance away. Mally would never have wondered about that if Billy hadn’t mentioned it, but now it was lodged in her mind as another of those inexplicable things, shadowy shapes on the edge of what she knew for certain.

Today the far lands had come very close, more like real earth than blue clouds, which is what they looked like most often. The Gaffer had come from the far lands when he was young. He came from Scotland, which was north. That was so long ago that Da and Aunt Lucy hadn’t yet been born. Today you could see as much of the Island as was ever possible. The Island with a big ‘I’ was the Isle of Man. Ellan Bride had a small ‘i’ because it was little. Last year Mally had been herself in Finn’s boat, and actually stood on the Island. It was as firm underfoot as Ellan Bride. She’d told Mam that, and Mam said the phrase she wanted was terra firma.

Ellan Bride was terra firma, and occasionally the Island was terra firma too. The far lands were just names, and with the names came stories. There were stories from each place, but more stories from India, because India was the mother of all stories, and in the other countries the stories were fine, but just not quite like the India ones. But India was as far from here as any place could be, and never even so much as a very faint line on the horizon which might be a passing cloud, and no one was likely to get that far, unless they were grown up. For grown-ups all things were possible, though often they didn’t seem to bother.

Mally was sitting in a sheltered crevice between two angled rocks. At eye level, about six inches away, there was a little clump of pink sedums growing out of a crack in the rock. This was nearly the highest place on the island, but not as high as the light tower. The tower had been built high enough for the light to shine out to sea on all sides, because that was what it was for. The light was the reason for everything. In the dark or in the fog the light must never go out. That was their job – hers and Breesha’s and Billy’s and Lucy’s and Mam’s. All the ships that sailed the seas were safe, because when it was dark or foggy the light would never, ever, go out.

At the top of the tower, Lucy opened the window to let out the heat and the smell of oil. She and Breesha paused on the platform to look at the becalmed ship.

‘… that’s how you’re knowing it’s a snow, not a brig,’ Lucy was saying. ‘See, there’s another mast next to the mainmast.’

‘Maybe she’s come from the West Indies,’ said Breesha, enjoying the sound of the name. ‘Bringing sugar and rum and tobacco to Liverpool or Whitehaven.’

‘Maybe.’

‘If we had the telescope we could see her name.’

‘Dratted boy. He must have taken it straight after breakfast.’

‘He always wants to look at things,’ explained Breesha.

Aunt Lucy replied, astonishingly, ‘The telescope doesn’t belong to the light. The Gaffer bought it in Douglas. That would make it Billy’s.’

‘But you said before it had to go with the light!’

‘Things change,’ said Lucy.

Breesha opened her mouth to speak, but Aunt Lucy had turned her back. There is something, thought Breesha. She felt a pang of fear. No one had spoken, but something had happened, and Lucy and Mam knew what it was. Billy didn’t know. Mally might have heard something, as she slept in the bedroom. Mally did sometimes hear Mam and Lucy talk when they thought she was asleep. Mally wasn’t quite as young and stupid as they thought. At least, not always. Anyway, whatever it was, Aunt Lucy would know what to do. Breesha watched Lucy trim the burnt ends off the four wicks in the lowest tier of lamps, and draw them out so they were just the right length. This was a job that had to be done just right: Breesha wasn’t allowed to trim the wicks yet.

‘There you are. You can be making a start on those.’

Breesha always did the lowest row of lamps, and Lucy did the top two tiers. No one else could work as fast as Aunt Lucy. Breesha took a handful of tow and started cleaning her south-facing reflector. Now it was nearly summer the black film over it wasn’t nearly so thick. Last night the lamps had burned for barely eight hours; in winter it was sometimes sixteen. But the summer oil was worse to clean off because it was much stickier than the winter oil. The whale oil they had now was quite good. Last winter’s oil had been horrible. Sometimes they’d found bits of skin and blubber floating in it. They’d creamed off the worst bits when they opened the barrels, because usually that kind of stuff was floating on the top. When they’d first opened those barrels they’d smelt like rotting fish. The oil they were using now just smelt as if a hot animal had been sleeping in the lantern.

At last the reflector was as clean as Breesha could make it. She fetched one of the linen rags from the basket and some chalk white, and started polishing. In summer she always started with the south reflector because as the morning went on the sun got so fierce. In winter she saved south until last. Because each of the numerous mirrors inside the reflector was at a different angle to the sun, each one was a different colour. Breesha could make the colours change by moving her head around and squinting at them. She had to do that anyway to make sure there wasn’t a single smear, but if she half-shut her eyes it was like Aladdin’s chest of jewels gleaming in the light of the magic lamp. Then if she opened her eyes and looked straight into one of the little pieces of glass, what she saw was herself, and if she looked into more than one at a time there were many Breeshas, all at slightly different angles, like the jigsaw puzzle Diya had bought for them all from Douglas, when all the pieces were laid out and not yet put together.

The jigsaw puzzle was another matter altogether. Breesha saw her many reflected selves smile and sit back. It was almost like not being herself, seeing that girl with an oily scarf wrapped round her head so it hid her hair, and a dirty smear on her brown cheek, sitting there in the reflectors with a white sky behind her. But she was inside that girl’s head, because that girl was remembering about the jigsaw puzzle, and only she, inside her own mind, knew that.

‘Aunt Lucy?’

‘Uh-huh?’ Lucy didn’t look up; she was squinting to see if her reflector was done.

‘Remember how we did the jigsaw map?’

‘Did what?’

‘The jigsaw map that Mam got on the Island.’

‘Oh that. Yes.’

‘And it had the whole of Europe and Asia on it. It had India and everything, but it didn’t have the Island.’

Lucy didn’t answer. Breesha went on thinking about the jigsaw map as she polished. She and Billy had put it together so often they knew it by heart. Most of the land in the world was very large. India was far larger than England. England was far larger than the Isle of Man. The Isle of Man was far larger than Ellan Bride. Ellan Bride was about the smallest place in the world, and yet it was the largest, if you happened to live on it and had hardly ever been anywhere else. Breesha had been to Port St Mary, and she had twice been to Castletown, only that was so long ago she couldn’t remember it. From the top of the lighthouse you could see five different countries. Six, Mam always said, if you counted the kingdom of heaven. But you might as well not count that, because you couldn’t go there unless you were dead. It was good doing the jigsaw puzzle. It would be better to have another one, one day. She and Billy had got to the point when they knew their jigsaw puzzle almost too well.

‘That jigsaw puzzle,’ said Lucy presently. ‘Never again. It was nearly driving me mad. All over the kitchen table.’

‘But we always remember to do it on the tray now! We just didn’t know to do that the first time until it was too late.’

‘Pointless, anyway,’ said Lucy.

They worked on in silence. The sun shone fiercely, until it grew so hot inside the lantern that Breesha could feel the sweat running down her back. Lucy wedged the window wide open, and that brought in a whiff of cooler air. Sunlight winked on glass and made Breesha’s eyes water. Outside the island basked in the spring light. Pale tide streaks made long lines off the Creggyns. Breesha shut one eye, and squinted across the last reflector. The mosaic of mirrors gleamed without blemish, every piece.

When Breesha worked with Aunt Lucy there was almost no talking; it was quite different from being with Mam. Aunt Lucy liked it that Breesha never had to be told anything twice. So when all the reflectors were done Breesha went back to the house without being told, jumping down from rock to rock instead of following the zigzag path. Mam wasn’t in the kitchen, but the broth was simmering in the iron pot. Breesha lifted the big kettle from the chain, and half-filled the bucket. The kettle was very heavy. She poured the boiling water carefully. Billy had once scalded himself doing this job, and he’d had to sit with his feet in cold water all morning.

In the yard the chickens were foraging round the ditch where Diya had thrown out the night slops. Flies clouded thickly over the empty feeding trough. When Mrs Black saw Breesha with another bucket in her hand she scuttled over, clucking excitedly, even though she knew just as well as the other chickens that breakfast came only once. Even Mally, who could be silly about chickens, wouldn’t fuss when Mrs Black appeared on the dinner table. Breesha clambered up to the light again, following the path this time and using two hands for the bucket. She topped up the bucket with cold water from the butt outside the storeroom. This side of the lighthouse gleamed in its fresh coat of white. Every summer they had to work their way round the fifteen-foot tower until all the outside was whitewashed. Only yesterday morning Aunt Lucy had touched up the lettering on the carved scroll over the door in black paint: Et in Arcadia ego. The Latin words meant that even though Ellan Bride was the best place in the world men would still get drowned here.

In the workroom at the bottom of the tower Aunt Lucy poured some of the water into a second bucket, and added soap to one and vinegar to the other. Aunt Lucy had already put the oil cans away; the first rule was that the clean things and the oily things must never, ever, get mixed. Even Mally knew that. Breesha took a clean rag for her soap bucket, and a crackly dry leather for the vinegar bucket, where it immediately turned soft and slippery in the hot water.

She enjoyed cleaning the windows on a sunny day. She liked the smell of soap and vinegar. At first the water was so hot she could barely put her hands in it to wring out the cloth. It made her skin red and raw, but it soon cooled. First she washed each pane with hot soapy water until it was clean, then she rubbed it with the leather until it shone. She took care to get right into every corner; Lucy always noticed if a corner got missed. That took a long time. Even after a short summer night there was a greasy film all over the glass. The light chamber had six glass windows facing all round, because shipping could come from any direction. Each of the six windows was made up of six small panes. Aunt Lucy always did the top four, and Billy or Breesha, whichever it was, had to do the bottom two. Cleaning the glass was the longest job, and in winter it could take the rest of the morning. At first the soapy water just made the glass even blurrier, and then as Breesha rubbed and rubbed it gradually got clear again. It was hardest on sunny days because she could see every single smear, and she had to go on until the whole pane was shining bright.

‘Clean water,’ said Lucy.

Breesha sighed; they could have made it last just one pane longer. When she came back up the ladder with the heavy bucket, she glanced out of the cleaned north-west window. A small black speck was detaching itself from the Calf. ‘There’s a boat coming from the Island.’

Lucy stopped cleaning and looked out of the window. ‘So there is.’ There was something in her voice Breesha hadn’t heard before. She felt that same quick pang of fear. There is something, but they’re not telling us. Lucy cut across her thoughts. ‘That window’s still mucky, Breesha.’

‘It’s on the outside.’

‘We’ll see.’ Lucy stood upright and shook out her leather. ‘I should be doing the outside today anyway, while the weather’s so good …’ She looked at the distant speck, and seemed to hesitate.

‘Can I help?’ Doing the outside meant getting onto the balcony and moving the rope ladder round that was fixed to the iron weathercock on the top of the tower, and climbing three steps off the parapet, with a leather bucket on a rope beside you, then leaning on the wooden ribs between the panes, with your face against the roof of the tower, higher than anything else in the world, while you rubbed away at the outside glass, right into the very topmost corners. On a day like this there would be just the blue arch of sky above you. In stormy weather it was different, but those were the very times that the lantern got most salted up. That was when Lucy tied the rope round her waist, and Mam and Billy both went up and held the end of the rope looped round the rail, and the job had to be done one-handed because Lucy always had to have one hand to cling onto the hooks when the wind was wild. Aunt Lucy was the strongest person in the world, and afraid of nothing.

‘No,’ said Lucy.

‘But you let Billy!’

‘Billy’s a boy.’

‘But you’re not a boy!’ cried Breesha.

‘You can be doing the bottom panes, same as inside.’

Breesha stood between her aunt and the top of the ladder. ‘Aunt Lucy. You let Billy do the top ones outside and you don’t let me. I’m three months older than he is. When you were young you did all the jobs. You told us. But you weren’t a boy.’

Lucy relented, and gave her an answer. ‘My Da was only ever letting me do outside when Jim was away. I was older than you when I was starting boy’s work. And I only did it all the time after your Grandda couldn’t manage it any more.’

‘So if Billy goes away one day, I could then?’

A shadow seemed to cross her aunt’s face. ‘God knows what you’ll be needing to do, Breesha veen, before we’re done. Now then, I’ll fill up the oil cans while you’re getting some more water. Did you refill the kettle?’

‘Of course I did!’ It was lazy and thoughtless not to leave the kettle full. Only Billy sometimes forgot. Indignantly Breesha seized the bucket and tipped the dirty water over the rail. There was no wind today; it fell straight down. On windy days you had to throw the water downwind, and it flew up in a shower of spray and vanished. Breesha went backwards down the ladder to the platform floor, then ran down the spiral steps, bare feet pattering on the stone, the empty bucket swinging.

When she came back Aunt Lucy was leaning over the rail, looking north towards the boat they’d seen. Just looking at her from behind, Breesha could see how Lucy’s shoulders had suddenly relaxed. ‘It’s just a smack. It’ll be slow going for them today. Poor weather for fishing, too.’

The relief in Lucy’s voice was palpable. So everything was all right again; the unknown threat had passed. But Breesha knew she was right: there was something. And if Lucy and Diya didn’t mean to tell them, she and Billy were going to have to find out what it was.