Now here’s Jack. Standing by the door of the lighthouse, twisting yellow flowers in his hands. ‘Are these yours? They were blowing away.’ The flowers have been shredded, by the wind or by him. Most of the heads have gone. ‘Were they for a friend? I’m sorry.’
‘Go away,’ says the Keeper, exhausted and irritated and desperate to get indoors, but Jack is not going. Sorry for what, exactly? He looks as if he’s been mauled by a beast. This boy – he’s ten years younger, maybe – will keep coming back; the only thing to do is to let him in, let him look around, then get rid of him as quickly as possible.
‘I hear they call you the Keeper. That’s weird.’
‘It’s a lighthouse.’
The guest rooms are mostly in the outhouse, the square block that was built on to the side of the tower as accommodation for the old keepers. It leans into the hill, rising up through three storeys. The first guest room is just inside the door and he opens that first, for Jack to see. A table, a chair, a bed with the mattress on, still wrapped in clear, thick plastic for protection against the damp.
‘There are six of those. They are all like that. She’s not in there.’
Jack must believe it because he doesn’t ask to see the others. They go no further. The Keeper offers Jack the chair, and sits himself on the edge of the bed, feeling the chill of the plastic beneath him. He breathes deeply, pausing in the moment to reflect that he doesn’t have to do this, he need not ask, he could just leave it and tell Jack to go, and return to his world of silence, but today is not working that way. Today, people keep putting themselves in his face. He doesn’t want to care, but here we go.
‘Why are you so sure she’s here?’
‘I’m not.’
‘Right. Wasn’t expecting that, to be honest. From your behaviour.’
‘A feeling? I don’t know where else to look. What am I supposed to do? She’s not at the pub. I checked the hotels in the town, most of them, but there are so many. The police don’t care, they think she’s left me. I can’t raise her father, he’s away. Our friends . . . her friends haven’t heard from her. They want to come down, but that’s humiliating. I don’t want them here. I have to find her, talk to her. Magda – you know her, don’t you? I stayed there last night, she has rung some people.’
‘Did Magda say your wife . . .’
‘Sarah.’
‘Did she say Sarah might be here?’
‘There was something. When she talked about this place. About you.’
‘I see,’ he says, but he doesn’t.
‘They don’t know your name.’
Jack’s fingers are drumming on the table, tapping like a telegraph, while his eyes skitter over the walls, the door, out into the space beyond the windows.
‘Call for her. Go on, if you don’t believe me, call out. She’s not here.’
‘Sarah?’
That’s really loud. The sound of her name makes the Keeper flinch. He wants to shout for Rí too, get the balance back. He should throw this boy out, but the restlessness, the panic, the fear is familiar. They’ve both been shredded, like the flowers.
‘Sorry about your eye,’ says Jack, noticing a cut and a yellow bruise. ‘I didn’t mean to. Well, I did, I meant to, sure, Jesus. I got you, didn’t I? Didn’t want to. Reflex action. You got my arm . . . yeah, well, anyway. We came here before, she loves it. She could do anything out here. I don’t know her any more. The drugs do things. She’s a danger to herself. We’re trying to have a baby.’
Of course you are, thinks the Keeper.
‘That’s all she ever talks about. We’ve had our last go. I’ve got to find her because I know it won’t work, I know what that will do to her. She’s on her own. I don’t even know if I want a baby with her any more. It screws you up, this thing.’
‘I know,’ says the Keeper, softly.
‘You do?’
The floor needs a damn good sweep in here.
‘Yes. You didn’t hurt me. Not much. I’ve had worse.’
‘Damn. I thought I had a good punch.’
The Keeper looks up quickly enough to see the spark of a smile on Jack’s tired face, before it vanishes. Their eyes meet. ‘You should go home.’ He seems to be saying that a lot today. ‘She might turn up back there.’
‘She’s here. I can feel it.’
‘Not here,’ says the Keeper.
‘I mean, out there. Somewhere. Not far.’
‘I hope . . .’
‘Thank you.’
But all the while he is listening to Jack, a question turns over in his mind. He tries to ignore it but the question won’t go away; it just keeps repeating as Jack goes on about his life in that nasal, fidgety way, like a comedian without any jokes. The story Jack tells is all about Jack, and why would it not be? He’s here, it’s him. Still, it is intensely irritating. What about Sarah?
Slowly, the man they call the Keeper feels himself becoming what he was before he came here: the special correspondent, the man in the blue flak jacket seeking tears in the dust. A mildly famous face on the television news. The sympathetic one, the empathetic one who sat for hours with weeping, frightened people who had it far, far worse than Jack, in faraway places first – in bombed-out houses, in refugee camps, in boats smashing against the rocks – with a cameraman and kindness, nothing more. Then back in this country with the mothers and fathers of the disappeared. Milly. Shannon. Young girls, gone. Abducted. Murdered. Crime stories. He doesn’t want to remember. There are too many stories, locked away inside his chest. Too many to bear, as it turned out. They’re calling. He doesn’t want to hear them, doesn’t want to feel it all coming back, hates to find himself listening like this again, biding his time, noting the ticks, the drumming, the tone of all Jack is saying. Waiting for the narrative to be spent, for the moment to arrive – as it always does – when he can put the question that matters, the one that might unlock the story. Whatever that is this time.
Then Jack stops talking. He has nothing more to say, and looks embarrassed, as if he has just woken up from a dream. There is nothing for it now, no choice but for the solitary lighthouse keeper who was once a coaxer of stories from the hurt and the angry, to remember how to do this.
He leans forward a little on the bed, takes a deep breath, looks at Jack until their eyes meet and asks: ‘Tell me about her, will you? What about Sarah?’