I sometimes woke at night and felt a foggy, uncertain anxiety grip my heart and would listen to the comforting, rhythmic sound of Susan’s breathing to make sure I was in the pretty pink bedroom and not in that scruffy cream cell of a box room at Millie’s. This fear would never leave me all my life. Millie was always just round the corner of my mind wherever I went. As soon as I realised I was safe in my room at the Watermans’ house, I’d breathe a sigh of relief and snuggle back under the blankets and feel happy. I was always singing now, all the latest pop songs. When I helped Sheila with her ironing, I sang all the time.
‘You’re a proper little songbird, Bridie,’ she remarked and added, ‘such a cheery little soul you are and such a help to me. What a good girl you are!’
We had what Sheila called Domestic Science lessons in her kitchen and I progressed way beyond scrambled eggs and raised pork pies till I was allowed to cook Sunday roast sometimes. My Yorkshire puds were pronounced to be ‘just perfect’. I couldn’t wait for Dad’s next leave so I could show off my new culinary skills. Above all, I longed to impress Ryan. He was so clever and full of interesting knowledge and I wanted to share it with him. Always somewhere in the back of my head was a memory and he seemed to be connected with this memory though I had no idea what it was.
He liked me, I felt sure of that, but he was not a person to show any feelings. Still I learnt to tell when I did something to please him even though his face remained impassive and he often said nothing, never even a thank you. I didn’t need words – his softening eyes, his occasional smile were thanks enough and I wanted to bring that smile to his face as often as I could because it had this amazing transforming effect on his usual stern expression.
‘You needn’t have done that,’ he said one day when I ran up to fetch a book he wanted. ‘You’re always fetching and carrying for everyone. Why, Bridie? You should look after yourself.’
‘It’s a habit, Ryan,’ I said. ‘Mean Millie always made me do everything for everyone, even her two boys. Hard to break old habits. But I like doing it for you and your mum. You’re all so kind to me.’
He looked at me as he often did, studying me in a dispassionate manner, his eyes screwed up with thought.
‘You’re a funny girl, Bridie, and you’re a caring girl. I don’t think I’ve met as kind a girl before. But you’re too eager to please everyone. There’s danger in that. You need to know who you are, not what everyone else wants you to be. People’ll respect you more for that.’
I listened and felt my old anxiety rise in me. Was he saying something nice or critical? I so wanted to please him but had to tread a fine line. I could see he didn’t like being fussed over and would have to curb my enthusiasm but it was hard. I’d been bred to serve, to feel inferior and unwanted for too long. The only way I knew how to please was by doing things for people. I was also courteous by nature and knew when a door should be opened for someone or a seat in a bus given to an older person or a pregnant lady. These were surely common courtesies and I could never understand why everyone didn’t do the same. The world would be a far nicer place if they did.
‘It may be so, Ryan,’ I replied, ‘but I like to help folks. To put one’s own needs before that of others is selfish. If people take advantage of it, then so be it. If they don’t respect kindness and thoughtfulness, then I must put up with it.’
This brought on one of his rare smiles and for a moment his hand brushed my cheek in an affectionate gesture. ‘You’re too good for this world then, Bridie,’ he said gently. ‘You’ll need someone to look after you one day. People are selfish and someone like you’ll get crushed.’
‘I’ve already been crushed,’ I said, ‘but I’m like a sponge. Wring me dry if you must but fill me with water and I bounce up again. And love’s like water. You need it to live. Dry people are dead people inside. Millie was all dried out and no love left in her.’
‘But she loved your dad once, didn’t she? And he loved her. Why did she dry up, Bridie, that’s the question to ask. Why did she dry up?’
When Dad had shore leave, he always came straight over to visit us. He’d found digs with one of the coastguard’s families. These families lived in a row of tall Edwardian houses a little further along down Maria’s Lane. So Dad was very close, though I sometimes wished there was room for him to live with us in the cottages. Mr Waterman, the Principal Keeper – or PK as he was known – naturally wanted his home to himself and his family though, of course, he and Dad were never on leave together, it was always one man off at a time, two men left to man the Light.
Mr Waterman didn’t mind me living with them he said; he was glad Susan had a new friend. Dad had offered to pay rent, but all they asked for was some money towards my food and clothes. We were all hard up, lighthouse wages not being wonderful but the food on the Light was free and uniform provided so there really wasn’t the need for much spare cash. I certainly didn’t stuff myself with food like Susan nor was I interested in clothes or fashions. My old sweaters and cotton shirts with a pair of ancient jeans were good enough for me when life was spent scrambling about the cliffs or helping in the house and garden. Sheila. said I earned my keep as her little helper and that was good enough for her and Sid.
As for Sidney Waterman, he said I was a good girl and smiled benignly, a funny cracked sort of smile, when I made him a cup of tea and searched for his tobacco or his glasses. He was always leaving them somewhere strange.
‘I’m used to having less space,’ he said apologetically when I brought his spectacles down from the top of a bathroom cupboard. He’d left them in the toothbrush mug last time though why he’d put them there I had no idea. ‘Used to my routines and my little room with one cupboard when I’m on Longships. Things don’t get lost there.’
He always worried that nothing was functioning as efficiently when he was away from his beloved Light and would stand in the garden to make sure it went on at dusk at the exact time specified then get up at the crack of dawn to be sure it was extinguished. Sheila tended to be cross with him about this constant vigilance.
‘You’re supposed to be on leave,’ she said, ‘can’t you pretend the damned light isn’t there? Get Jed to take us into town so we can get away from it for a bit.’
Jed Tresconsin was the boatman employed by Trinity House to take supplies and relief to the lighthouse. He had a big truck too and sometimes gave us lifts to Penzance or the nearest town as we were miles from anywhere and no one else had any transport, though Abbi Simpson next door was saving up to get a little second-hand car. She couldn’t bear the isolation and was determined to scrimp and save towards having some independence and mobility. Plus she wanted Patti to go to a proper grammar school once she’d got her eleven plus and that would mean going in to Penzance every day.
Jed it was who ferried the men offshore and brought them home again, a difficult process and a dangerous one, as the men had to make a jump for the landing stage onto what they called the Bridge and the exact moment had to be calculated and acted on or they’d end up in the foaming sea and possibly swept away for good. Coming back on leave was equally arduous and if the weather was bad the men couldn’t get home sometimes for days or even weeks. They had to wait till Jed pronounced it safe to go over to the rock to fetch them and there was no way he was going to risk lives. But which was home to these men? I realised that Sidney Waterman had been in the service so long and on this particular light for at least four years that he felt Longships to be his home and almost resented coming onshore.
‘It’s time you went to bed,’ Mr Waterman told Ryan the other night. He’d been sitting up reading for hours and the light wasn’t that good. ‘You’ll ruin your eyes, you will, my boy.’
‘It’s too early for bed,’ protested Ryan, looking annoyed.
‘If I says bed, it’s bed,’ declared his father.
‘But Ma lets me stay up till ten thirty.’
‘Well now, she ought to know better. Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise, eh? Isn’t that the way? Haven’t I followed that all my life and done well by it? Off to bed and as for you, you should have been abed hours ago, young Bridie. You’re too easy on ‘em, Sheila.’
Sheila raised her eyes from her sewing with an annoyed expression but said nothing, just looked over at Ryan and shrugged. He gave her a little wink as if to agree that while Dad was home, he was in charge and for his mother’s sake her son wouldn’t argue.
‘Come on, Bridie,’ was all he said and I followed him upstairs and we whispered ‘goodnight’ at our separate doors so as not to wake up Susan.
I realised then that it was hard for Sheila. She was in charge of the family for a month and then her husband would come home for a month and she’d have to defer to him again. Then he’d be off, with such apparent relief to get back it was hardly flattering for her and she had to take up the household reins again. He never interfered with the bringing up of Susan but Ryan was his beloved son and was meant to follow in his father’s footsteps. It was lucky that Ryan by temperament was just like his father, entirely suited to the solitary life on a rock or tower. It was taken for granted he’d enter the service and I think Sidney Waterman rather hoped that some day he’d have his son’s company on his rock.
Dad, as I said, had now found cheap lodgings with one of the coastguards, Arnie Roberts, who was a lively sort of fellow. Dad enjoyed Arnie’s company and liked to get off to the pub and sink a pint or two, talk about his Navy days and the fact he was now a keeper. Some of the keepers got tired of being treated as objects of curiosity but not Dad. I think he liked being different and special.
He never failed to get over to see me every day though, taking me off for long walks on the sands or down to the harbour to watch the fishing boats coming in. I wanted Ryan to come with us on these walks but mostly he didn’t. He said it should be time spent with my own dad.
‘Dad won’t mind if you come.’
‘We can take walks any time, Bridie. You be with your dad. You’ll have things to talk about that mean nothin’ to me.’
I was disappointed but felt it fair and considerate on his part.
Dad would stop to chat to the fisher folk in Sennen, families that had been in the Cove for centuries. The men told us that they used to catch huge shoals of pilchards at this place since the sixteenth century till the turn of this one but now the pilchard had deserted the Cornish coasts where once it was so abundant. In late summer the haul was awaited with hope and enthusiasm, for a good catch meant the families in the Cove could pay their bills and have a little spare cash for things they needed. The pilchards were put in briny tanks to cure them and later packed away in hogsheads and kept in the cellars on the quayside. Even the women worked at packing and sorting the fish when a shoal was caught, paid by the day but glad enough of the money.
‘Them huge shoals don’t come no more,’ said one of the fishermen. ‘Them days is done. We’re glad to live on mullet and lobsters and crabs now or whatever else we can get.’
I liked the fishermen, liked their tanned, weathered faces and honest, kindly expressions. Dad liked them too. They were his sort of men.
We walked up to the coastguard look-out high on the cliff and looked over to Longships.
‘Sometimes I wave to you from the gallery when I’m offshore,’ Dad said. ‘Time you waved back, Bridie.’
‘I never see you, Dad, it’s too far away,’ I said, indignantly.
‘Have to teach you semaphore, ducky. That’s how all the keepers’ wives used to let their men know the news in the old days.’
He fixed the problem by bringing me home a pair of binoculars so that I could look over to the lighthouse and see him waving. Even looking through them I could only just make him out, a minute moving figure on the gallery. We arranged he’d try and be there to wave at about six o’clock in the evening depending on what watch he was on.
‘No good my waving in middle watch when you’re all fast asleep,’ he joked.
Middle, or ‘guts’, as they called it, was between midnight and four a.m. and the loneliest of all the watches. Dad said some of the men found that watch the toughest of them all.
‘I‘m used to it from Navy days,’ he said. ‘Mind you, it was quite different being on a ship with lots of people still around and your mates all sleeping in their bunks. Out there on a lighthouse in the middle of the sea it can be inky-black with the wind howling at the panes of the lantern and rattling the deep set windows, while waves come crashing right up over the rock and banging on the walls as if asking to come in. It really feels as if there was no one else in the world and it’s a funny feeling.’
‘It sounds scary, Dad.’
‘Aye, lass, it is in a way but I’m rather getting to like the drama – and even the loneliness. The PK loves it, he does. I swear he’s glad if he’s overdue coming home, he’s so taken with this life. But then he’s become obsessive about everything on that rock and between you and me he can be a stickler for things, a bit of a pain. I’m used to his sort in the Navy so it doesn’t bother me. All the same, I hope I don’t end up like him. He won’t even put a hand on the brass stair rail so as not to mess up the polish on it. One day he’s going to fall down them stairs and crack his flippin’ skull. That’s going a tad too far, don’t you think?’
I agreed. I could tell Mr Waterman was like that; he was always tidying up after his wife who, though not sloppy, was more relaxed and comfortable with life and left the occasional book or newspaper about, umbrella in the hall or whatever. Mr W would tidy it all away and then she’d be looking all over for things. I did my best to keep an eye on them both during these times and produce items that had found their way into cupboards where they didn’t belong. On the whole, I think we all felt a vague relief when he went off with Jed in the boat with his tin full of goodies baked by Sheila. Sometimes I contributed one of my famous hand-raised pork pies to the tin and Mr W said I’d have to teach Susan how to do them.
Knowing Dad was coming over to see us, I’d spent the morning baking him a pie and a fruit cake to take back with him. There was only one phone amongst the three cottages and Abbi from the cottage across from us had brought the phone over, plugged it in and said, ‘It’s for you, Bridie.’
I was surprised as I’d never had a call. We always knew when to expect Dad for he would come onshore when Abbi’s husband went back. He generally came over to say hello first and then take his case and gear off to his digs where, Dad said, he could catch up on some sleep.
‘Bridie,’ said Dad, ‘I’m going to give you a little surprise this time. I’ve got Jed to drive me to Penzance and that’s where I’m talking from. I’ll catch up on some sleep, then I’ll be over with my surprise.’
‘All right, Dad,’ I said, but felt disappointed not to see him or get the chance to hug him and stroke the luxuriant beard which he had grown. He always looked so handsome in his keeper’s uniform and cap and I liked to see him in it before he went home and changed into casual clothes. Mr Waterman always wore his uniform even when on leave. He was going a trifle batty, I reckon, and I think it worried poor Sheila a lot.
I wondered what Dad’s surprise was going to be and felt quite excited. He’d begun learning from Mr Waterman how to make a ship in a bottle, a craft that required immense patience and skill. Had he finished it, maybe? If that was the surprise it would be interesting to see the finished result. There were ships in bottles all over the cottage but I firmly believed that Dad’s would be best.
However, I had to be patient as Dad wouldn’t be along now for a day or two. I put the pie and cake in sealed tins and set them aside for him. I knew he’d be pleased with those and proud of my new culinary skills.