Half a dozen miles away – out of town and way up on the Downs – the man they call the Keeper is running hard. Running into the day, following a wide grass path a good, safe distance from the edge of the cliff. There’s a hard frost some mornings that can crack the chalk, so that shards of white fall away without warning. If you happen to be standing on the grass on top of one of them admiring the view, then God help you. Hundreds of feet to fall, with tons of chalk and rock and earth falling around your ears. There’s no surviving that. He has walked the beach far below at low tide and seen huge half-pyramids of rubble and ruin, leaning against the foot of the cliffs where they fell. So he stays well away as he comes to the last mile of his run, a long loop of the Downs ending in the place he always stops. A bench with a view.
‘Morning,’ he says lightly but she doesn’t answer. There is nobody else here either yet, this early. The sun is hiding behind a flat, white cover of cloud. The wind-chill is fierce. It hurts his ears, so he pulls a hood over his beanie hat and slides himself along the bench, to where there is a little shelter. His love used to sit here with her sketchbook, surrounded on three sides by trees no taller than women, a congregation wind-bent into swaying, pentecostal forms.
‘I said, “Morning.”’
He’s not mad. He knows she’s gone but he still feels her here. It’s like when you know you’ve lost a hand but can still feel the fingers. The white noise of his grief has never stopped, only become part of the music of his life. A drone, a constant note. But it helps to talk. When she’s in the mood, which is obviously not today.
‘Suit yourself.’
This bench was put here a long time ago, in memory of someone. It’s on a slope, just where the hill begins to swell.
‘Like a breast,’ she said when she brought him here.
‘Like a birthday cake in the shape of a breast,’ he said, to make her smile. ‘A birthday cake for a teenage boy obsessed with breasts. Loves Page Three. Collects pictures of tits and sticks them on his wall. His dad is a bit sheepish about it. Mum hates it but doesn’t feel she can say anything, and she’s so used to putting up with it that when he says he wants a boob cake she doesn’t bat an eyelid.’
‘She would!’ said Rí, protesting. When she raised her voice, the Irish sharpened her London accent. ‘I’d tell the little jerk where to get off. And his dad.’
‘Yes, but you’re not her. And anyway, I think the boy knows exactly where to get off. That’s the point.’
‘You’re gross.’
‘I’m not! He is.’
‘He doesn’t exist,’ she said, laughing.
‘Yes, he does. His name is Derek.’
‘Derek the teenager?’
‘Yes.’
‘No wonder he’s odd. That’s no name for a teenager.’
‘He’s not odd. He’s obsessed with breasts. That’s not odd for a teenage boy.’
‘Nor an old one, eh? A filthy old boy like yerself?’ And she snuggled into him. They were sitting together on the bench, on a summer’s evening, with the remains of bread and cheese and an empty bottle of wine at their feet. She smelt of sweat and lemons. It had been a long day, a long walk, a gorgeous time. Gorgeous. She also smelt of the grass and the sea, the wind and the salt spray, just like now.
‘Why is it green?’
‘What?’
‘This cake. This hill cake here.’ She gestured up the slope towards the lighthouse. He thought for a moment.
‘Because Derek is a fan of Plymouth Argyle.’
‘Pardon me?’
‘They play in green shirts.’
‘Can’t you do better than that?’
He couldn’t. He had to admit it. He could make up crazy nonsense at the drop of a hat – they both could, it was their game – but she always won.
‘I can do better,’ she said. ‘Derek the teenager with a breast obsession – I hate the word “boob”, by the way, dunno if I’ve told you that, please never use it in my company again – also happens to be a pagan. It’s a pagan family.’
‘Derek is not a pagan. He supports Plymouth Argyle. That’s his religion.’
‘Okay, so the mother is a pagan. That’s it! She deals with all this breast stuff by making him a birthday cake that is secretly in the shape of the left breast of the earth goddess, so that when teenage Derek and his useless dad – let’s call him Clive—’
‘Why?’
‘Because that’s his name.’ They both laughed. ‘When they eat the cake they are actually worshipping the goddess. Unbeknownst to them.’
‘Unbeknownst? Great word.’
‘I do my best. So there we are. This hill like a green birthday cake for Derek in the shape of the earth mother’s breast, only cut in half to show the cream.’
She thrilled him. The quickness of her mind. The mischief. He looks up at the hill now and smiles, because she was so right. And there at the top of it is the nipple. The lighthouse. Not the most beautiful construction in the world, perhaps – a simple tower of granite, although it sparkles in sunlight and wears a lantern room as a glass crown – but she loved it from the moment she saw it. Even with that ugly three-storey building pushed up hard against it, the keeper’s quarters they were making into bed and breakfast rooms, cut into the slope of the hill so that the top floor meets the bottom floor of the tower. Still, it is the view from that soft peak that draws people and makes them gasp.
‘The hill and the tower are both called Belle Tout,’ she said. ‘People say it like Bell Too. They think it means “good view”.’
‘Surely the French would be “good all”?’
‘If you want to be a smart arse about it. I can see France.’
‘Rubbish. Where?’
‘Where d’you think? Over there on the horizon.’ He looked along the line of her arm to where she was pointing out at sea and she laughed at him doing so and kissed him. ‘You are loveably gullible, do you know that? As a matter of fact, the curvature of the earth makes it impossible to see the coast of France from here, although many people still swear blind that you can. Anyway, you don’t say it like that. You say “toot” or even “towt”. I’m giving you the good stuff here. It’s from the old English for a look-out. Belle is from Belen, the Celtic god of light. They used to sacrifice people up here.’
‘When?’
‘The olden days.’
‘Which was when exactly?’
‘The sunset is to die for . . .’
To die for. That hurts.
Run. Get moving. Get away from here. Think of something else.
So the Keeper runs downhill into the dip, where a narrow road comes almost alongside the edge of the cliff. There’s just a strip of grass between the tarmac and the drop. People like to get out of coaches in the lay-by and walk as near as they dare. They can look back along the line towards Beachy Head and follow the sheer chalk face down and down and down to the rocks at the bottom, where the other lighthouse – the newer, more famous one with its red and white stripes – looks tiny in the landscape, revealing just how huge these cliffs are.
This morning there is just one car, a big silver Mercedes. The driver is still in the car, both hands on the wheel, looking straight ahead. That’s not a good sign, but the Keeper tells himself it’s none of his business what state the driver is in. He is not here to keep people from harm; the Guardians have put themselves in charge of that. He doesn’t want to talk to anyone. So he runs, but as he does a black coach comes gliding down the coast road towards him, indicating to turn into the lay-by. Suddenly there is another coming up from behind him, a white coach, also indicating. There is only room for one in that narrow space in addition to the Mercedes. The white coach gets there first. The black coach carries on, the driver giving an irritated wave. Bad luck, mate.
The white coach stops, sighs and starts to spill out students. Dozens of them, raggedy silhouettes with bobble hats and hoods and long, skinny legs. They will be told to walk up over his hill and past his tower and down the broad South Downs Way to the Gap, to be picked up again a few miles on. They don’t really want to do this, as is obvious from all the slouching and shrugging. It’s part of a schedule that will see them take in Brighton, the Tower of London and Stonehenge before supper, or something like that. Students come to the hill every day and he does everything he can to avoid them, but this time he is caught beside the group and feels conspicuous. What will they make of a bloke twice their age in a woolly hat and black wind-cheater, muttering to himself as he runs?
Half a dozen students in a clump are looking at something very near the edge. Very near. The idiots. Two girls even have their legs over the edge of the cliff. His gut tightens at the thought of being where they are. A couple of boys are jostling, as if preparing to push the girls. His shout may as well be a whisper. Even if they hear him, they might be startled into slipping. This place is a hungry tiger if you show no respect. Beautiful, yes, staggeringly so, but it can bite if you do something stupid like hang your legs over. He looks away, unable to watch, deeply fearful of what is about to happen, but there are no screams and his eyes are drawn back to the girls. They’ve got up. They’re walking away. Oh Lord. He gulps in air, suddenly aware that he’d stopped breathing. He runs, and they see him and laugh like demented gulls.
The Mercedes is still there. The door is open. There is nobody inside now. The car driver is out on the grass, staggering about on uncertain legs. He’s not in good shape. Hunched, barely able to stand in the wind. One rabbit hole, one gust and he’s gone. The Keeper sprints up the slope to him, skidding on the mud, wondering what on earth he’s going to say to get him to come away from the edge, when he hears a voice calling.
‘Hello?’
A hiker. A pair of them. A bearded man in a light blue mac, a woman in red. ‘We’re here!’ They’re coming downhill, calling to the man from the Mercedes, who sees them and puts up a hand to say yes, okay, got you. He’s a taxi driver, of course, the old guy with eyes weeping from the wind. There’s a flash of gold as the clouds break, a splash of sunshine on the grass, and the lighthouse keeper soaks it up and feels his face warm and tighten with a grin. A bloody taxi driver. What a beautiful, bizarre place this is.
And it’s where we’re meant to be.