It was such a relief when Dad took Jim and Andy to their bed and breakfast place and then drove me back to Sheila’s cottage.
‘You didn’t enjoy seeing the boys, did you?’ said Dad. ‘And that’s a shame, Bridie. I’d like you all to care for one another. The world’s a small dark place sometimes and we need our friends and relations.’
‘You left them, Dad,’ I couldn’t help saying, ‘you don’t act as if you need them much.’
He remained silent for a while after this and I knew I’d scored a point. It annoyed me being preached at by Jim and now even Dad. People should practice what they preach and to my mind neither of these two were in a position to take the moral high ground. Sometimes I couldn’t help thinking that Andy and Millie, unpleasant as they might be, were at least truthful by just being their nasty selves without any qualms.
‘I’m taking the lads back home tomorrow. I’ll be over to see you in a couple of days, sweetheart. You are happy with Sheila, aren’t you?’
‘I am happy, Dad, unbelievably happy. You’re not going to take me away yet, are you?’ I looked at him as I said this, my face troubled.
He glanced over at me and shook his head. ‘No, no. Don’t fret, ducky.’
By now we had reached the cottages and twilight was coming on fast. The lighthouse lantern had been ‘put in’, as the men termed it, and the long white beam swivelled slowly around the wild, choppy seas. We both sat in the car and watched the light with emotion, a deep love for it and all it meant. It was comforting, this beam of light over the rough seas, an act of pure human kindness. The Cornishmen had long resisted having a lighthouse here because they made their living in those old days plundering the wrecks, even luring ships falsely ashore onto the treacherous rocks. And because of some mad ancient law that said they couldn’t take stuff if there were survivors, they killed anyone who had the misfortune to crawl up on the sands from the stricken ships. Those were greedy, evil times. Then the lighthouses had been built and now ships were safe. Just knowing the lighthouse keepers were there to keep an eye out for any trouble was a great comfort to sailors in stormy weather.
‘Always makes me think of Jamaica Inn,’ I said, ‘that was a brilliant book. How could men have been so cruel and evil, Dad?’
‘No could about it, Bridie,’ he said, ‘Human beings have always been and always will be evil. We’re the oddest animals invented by Nature. Good in many ways and evil in others. The point is we know the difference which animals don’t. Animals act by instinct; they kill from fear or hunger, can’t help themselves. We kill from greed and a wish to possess everything. And we know perfectly well we’re doing wrong. That’s the awful thing. We have a choice which way to go and mainly we go the bad way.’
‘Have you ever killed anyone, Dad?’
‘We all did in the war,’ he said. ‘I try not to think of it. I wasn’t personally the one who sent off the torpedoes, but I was a part of it all and cheered as much as anyone when we scored a hit and sank a German destroyer or U-boat. To hell with the men on it, ordinary sailors obeying orders like ourselves – they weren’t human any more, they were the enemy and we’d hit the enemy, got a bull’s-eye. We all have it in us to kill others.’
I debated this. I hated Mean Millie and her son Andy with all my heart and might wish them dead – but could I actually kill them? I didn’t think I could. Surely my conscience would trouble me forever if I committed such a deed.
‘Anyway,’ said Dad, ‘to answer your question a minute ago, I’m to be sent off after this leave to another light, a tower this time, right up in the North sea. That’ll be a test, right out at sea without anywhere to be but in the lighthouse itself. Towers just come straight up out of the water, no landing stage, nowhere to fish or take a little stroll. You’re stuck there till you get onshore and the weather’s going to be just as rough up there, if not worse. May mean an extra week before the relief arrives.’
‘Oh, that sounds awful, Dad, how will you bear it?’
‘Have to see how I manage, won’t I? Other men stand it and I’m sure I can do the same. It can’t be worse than Longships … bloody uncomfortable quarters there, I can tell you. Sid Waterman reckons it’s the worst one in England but we all put up with it.’
‘How do you get on a tower if it’s right out there without a landing place?’
‘They’ll throw a rope down to the waiting boat and I’ll be winched up to the light, then the outgoing keeper will be winched down to the waiting boat in his turn. Just have to hope I don’t get hit by a wave and end up in the sea.’
‘You will wear a life jacket?’
‘I’ll be in the Bosun’s Chair, won’t I? That’s what they call the breeches buoy. It’s all very safe and properly done, Navy style.’ He smiled and patted my cheek. ‘No need to be anxious, Bridie, it’s being done all the time and I’ve climbed enough heights on ships and cliffs and mountains all my life. It will be exciting. We all love a spot of danger and discomfort, it’s a bloke thing; life’s too boring otherwise. Battling against the elements, fighting with Mother Nature and winning – that’s the stuff of life.’
‘Dad, you will be careful,’ I pleaded. ‘You’ve me to think of and the boys. Please be careful.’
‘I will,’ he promised, ‘and you too. You’ll be fine here and I needn’t worry, I know. You’re being taken well care of and seem to have fitted in like one of the family. Don’t get too cosy, though. Sid Waterman may well have to move sometime and they’ll all have to up sticks and go with him. I’ll have to see what I can sort out with Trinity House when that happens.’
‘Will that be soon, Mr Waterman leaving?’ I asked fearfully. The thought of losing Ryan was the worst thing I could imagine. How would I bear life without seeing him everyday as intimately as if we were relations?
‘Not for a while yet, I’m sure. Just be prepared, Bridie, that’s all. We can’t afford to get too attached to people and places in this job and you elected to come with me, little sweetheart. You chose your mad Dad Joe and his lifestyle.’
Dad came to see us a few times before leaving for the Northumberland coast and I knew it would be a long time before I saw him again. It was too far away for him to travel to see us often, though he promised he’d come down south when he could. Parting from him would have upset me once, but now I had new friends and new people about me so I accepted the separation with equanimity. The thought I might have to part from Ryan and Sheila sometime was one that troubled me a great deal. However, I said nothing of it and just made up my mind to enjoy each day with them as if it was the last.
It was a lovely summer that year and, looking back on it, one of the happiest of my life. The days were long, sunny and peaceful. I enjoyed the lessons with Sheila and learnt to cook well. Ryan even taught me how to cast a line and fish off the rocks – not that I ever caught much. I was better at catching crabs and sometimes I’d go down to the cove and beg a lobster from a fisherman down there, one that had maybe lost a leg or wasn’t up to standard. Ryan taught me to make fish stock with the heads of the gutted fish we had for supper which I would then use to make a delicious fish soup with the crabs and crayfish I’d snared. They all went in the pot. Everyone said it was the best soup they’d ever eaten.
I felt great pride in these little successes and being accepted as part of the family. It was the first family I’d ever really belonged with. In some respects it was still a fatherless family, with Mr W so often away, but in his absence Ryan assumed the role of head of the household and Sheila often asked his advice as if he was a grown man. Ryan had never been a child, in my opinion; he had tumbled out of his mum as wise as Solomon. He was an amazing person in my eyes and I loved him fiercely and silently, with no possible hope or expectation that he might love a scraggy, red-headed fourteen year old in return. To him I was just a kid and a bit of a loopy one at that.
‘Half your trouble is you feel too much,’ he said to me when it was chicken day. Chicken day was when we took one of the fowl for supper, generally when Mr W was expected home or it was someone’s birthday. Ryan and Sheila thought nothing of going out and grabbing one and calmly wringing its neck. Even Susan was capable of grabbing a chicken and would smash its head against a wall then bring it in to pluck. The plucking I didn’t mind so much, the feathers all going into a big box to be used for refilling pillows and mattresses when they got too lumpy, but the killing part – no, I couldn’t do it.
‘Suppose you marry a keeper one day, yourself,’ said Ryan, ‘you’ll have to get used to doing a bit of butchering and wringing a few chickens’ necks. You might end up anywhere; nearest town could be miles away.’
‘I’ll cycle in or save up and buy a car and drive in and buy my meat from a butcher, thanks,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I’m not going to marry a keeper. I’ll think of something more exciting to do.’
‘Like what?’
The strange thing was that the future was never clear to me. I had no idea what I wanted to do at all. I would get my O levels and maybe stay on in the sixth form … and then what?
‘I dunno,’ I said, making a face. ‘I suppose I will end up just a housewife. Millie always said so. It’s her fault. It’s all she taught me.’
‘You say it like it’s not an important thing to be,’ said Ryan, ‘which goes to prove you’re still young and a fool. It’s good for a woman to be looking after her home and her kids and her old man like my ma does. It’s not a thing to be shamed about like so many girls seem to be nowadays. Don’t you get like that, Bridie, don’t you get all feminist now.’
‘I’ll try not to,’ I said meekly, not too sure what a feminist was like.
‘See … life’s sort of led you this way … you’ll make a pretty decent housewife one day. Like it’s meant to be that way for you. Your fate. You can’t go against your fate, you know.’
‘I suppose not,’ I replied, ‘but I would like to do something else first before I settle. I’d like to be a teacher maybe, like your mum was.’
‘Yes, I think you’d be good at that. You’re patient and caring and I think you could keep kids in order. Kids need to be kept in order or they don’t learn anything.’
I contemplated my choices in silence for a while. ‘I dunno though, I’m not all that fond of little kids.’
‘You’ll be fond of your own, that’s for sure.’
‘Do you think so?’ I asked dubiously. ‘I’d like to be a lighthouse keeper but they won’t take on girls any more, which is a cheek, I think. We could run it just as good. Dad reckons it’s much easier now things have become electrified, not half the work it used to be and I’m good with electrical things. Girls ran a lighthouse in the old days, especially in the States.’
‘Well, you’re not going to be a lighthouse keeper,’ said Ryan firmly. ‘That won’t happen, Bridie. Think again.’
‘Oh well … maybe I’ll write a book instead. I’d like to write crime stories like Agatha Christie.’
‘That’s all a waste of time,’ said Ryan scornfully. ‘You’d be a sight happier caring for a home and kids. Writing’s living in a dream world, that’s what it is. It’s making up things to be real that aren’t real. Writing about murder, that’s not nice at all. You’d have to think like a murderer, you’d have to imagine what would make him want to kill another person, get in his head and heart. Why should anyone want to spend time doing that? What sort of mind would you have to dream up stuff like that? Or reading it for that matter? It’s not real, Bridie, and what’s more it’s sort of corrupting, to my way of thinking.’
‘Corrupting?’
‘Yes, like putting ideas in people’s heads and making them get so they don’t know truth from fiction any more. Makes them hard inside.’
‘Is that why you never read fiction books?’
‘Yes. I prefer to know about real things. Things like the winds and clouds and birds and the types of fishes down there in the deep.’
‘But you said once that you hated a lot of people.’ ‘And so I do,’ he said with passion. ‘People can be so cruel to each other. I can’t understand that sort of thing. Most folk are only interested in money and collecting lots of useless things, getting drunk and being stupid. I believe in a quiet, honest, simple life.’
‘Are you really going to be a keeper one day?’
‘Yes, I am,’ he said and then he did something quite astonishing. He looked at me, his eyes deep and solemn, and took my hand in his. ‘And one day you will be my wife, Bridie, so you’d better start getting used to the idea. You’re the only girl I think I could bear to marry.’