The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter, page 19
“Goodness. I must tend to the lamps,” I remark, noticing how quickly the light fades outside. “I’ll ask Brooks to join you. You might teach him another ballad or two? Father will be delighted to play his fiddle again.”
“I would like that very much.”
I am pleased to see how my brother enjoys Mr. Emmerson’s easy manner and good humor. Brooks is easily impressed with our guest’s repertoire of ballads and far-fetched tales of Scottish folklore. “I’ll apologize in advance for my brother,” I add. “He tends to prefer the bawdier tunes.”
Mr. Emmerson laughs. “Your brother reminds me of myself when I was younger. Full of energy and ambition.”
“He has a good heart, and is a quick learner. He is to be appointed Assistant Keeper and will take over as Principal when Father is no longer able to manage things.” The hint of regret in my voice is audible.
Mr. Emmerson detects the truth in my expression. “You would like to take the position yourself, no doubt,” he asks.
I put on my brightest smile. “A woman does not decide her destiny, Mr. Emmerson. The men in her life do that for her.”
The pause in our conversation underlines the point rather more markedly than I’d intended.
“There’s something about a storm, isn’t there?” Mr. Emmerson remarks, thankfully changing the subject as he packs away his things.
“In what way?” I reach my hands behind my neck to ease the ache left there by the persistent fingers of an icy draft.
“So much energy. Such absolute insistence to be heard and felt. It is almost impossible not to be affected by it. I feel a little wild myself.”
I smooth my skirt, noticing that the hem is frayed and making a note to mend it later.
“There is certainly a passion carried in the sea when the wind blows like this. The island never feels more alive than in a full-blown storm. Visitors in the summer remark on how pretty they find the islands with the turquoise seas and warm breezes, but I prefer the chaos of the later months with snowstorms and lightning crackling in the air.”
Mr. Emmerson wipes his brushes carefully. “I couldn’t agree more. Having spent the past few days here, I don’t think this storm will ever quite leave me.” He stands tall, blocking the light from the window. “I am beginning to understand what you said about the lighthouse enchanting anyone who comes here. There’s something about this island, this place, you . . .”
His words waver like a guttering candle flame, the guilt of his thoughts draining all color from his face.
I pause at the bottom of the stairs, turning half a shoulder but keeping my eyes to the floor. “Enchantment is a fickle mistress, Mr. Emmerson. We would all do well to be wary of her.” I lift the hem of my skirt so it won’t trip me on the stairs. “You will excuse me. I am needed in the lantern room.”
IN THE SMALL room below Miss Darling’s apartment, George Emmerson cannot sleep. He tumbles and turns among the bedsheets until he is wrapped in them like an embalmed corpse, trapped by his emotions and indecisiveness. Only briefly do his thoughts stray to Eliza, no doubt despairing for his welfare, imagining him to be drowned and all her plans for their future dashed against the rocks. Perhaps it would be better if he had foundered in a wreck or become stranded on some island far from these shores where he could spend the rest of his days alone, rather than confront the confounding reality of the feelings he has for Miss. Darling.
He hears his sister’s words carried on the wind, as if she stands now at the small window, reminding him. “Eliza is a pleasant girl, but she is a breeze, George. A breeze. Your heart desires a storm. I can tell.” Even in the pitch dark of the room, he sketches Miss Darling with his mind’s eye. He sees so clearly the rounding of her cheek, the angle of her eyes, the shape of each perfect shell-like ear. He knows he must leave Longstone as soon as the weather improves, but is grateful all the same for these days he has been afforded. Still, Miss Darling has made it perfectly clear that she has no desire for a husband or a life on the Main. She is as duty-bound to her family and the lighthouse as he is to Eliza. Devotion and obligation—the things that must keep them apart while binding them irrevocably to others. There can be no undoing of any promises. He would not ask it of her.
Resigning himself to the impossibility of sleep, he gets up and walks to the window, watching the reflection of the light on the water. He knows Miss Darling is on watch in her room above, ascending intermittently to the lantern room to keep the oil topped up and to trim the wicks, ensuring the light burns brightly through these, the very darkest of hours. He feels a madness settle over him, knowing that the storm in his heart won’t be silenced until he has spoken his true feelings.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Grace
Longstone Lighthouse. October 1838
IN THE LANTERN room, the wind howls as I refill the oil reservoirs. The spray from the waves flies against the windows, rattling like stones. It reminds me of my father telling dramatic stories of waves so big they came crashing over the top of the lantern room one winter and how the whole lighthouse had swayed from the strength of the gusts. Those were the tales of my childhood, the tales I asked him to tell again and again as I sat, spellbound, beside the stove, eyes alight with fear and excitement, willing such a storm to visit us again. While my sisters didn’t share in my delight for the storms we experienced during the worst winters, I was always drawn to the wildest weather, finding something terrifying and fascinating about the fury of the sea. My father once said if I were to cut myself it would be the North Sea spilling out of my veins, not blood. “That is the way with true islanders,” he says. “At one with the sea; willing participants in the coming and going of storms.”
I haven’t been in the lantern room long when I hear footsteps. Presuming it is Brooks come to take over on watch, I am astonished to see it is not my brother but Mr. Emmerson who appears at the top of the stairs.
“Mr. Emmerson!” Flustered by his presence, I pull my shawl about my shoulders, fussing with the locket at my neck as it snags stubbornly on a loose thread. “You gave me quite a fright.”
He smiles apologetically, his face lit by the hand lamp balanced precariously on the top step. “Forgive me, Miss Darling. I’m sure it is entirely against regulations for me to be up here, but I couldn’t sleep with the storm raging and I very much wanted to see the lamp in all its glory.” I am unsure whether I should insist he go back downstairs or be delighted by his interest. “I’m afraid I have startled and interrupted you,” he continues, “so I will bid you goodnight.” He picks up his hand lamp and turns to leave. “Please, forgive my intrusion.”
“Since you are here you might as well stay,” I offer, regretting the words as soon as I utter them. “It seems a shame to have made your way up all those steps only to start immediately back down again.”
“It does rather, doesn’t it?” His effervescent smile is as distracting as ever, pulling one from my own lips despite the very improper situation I find myself in.
Hauling himself awkwardly up the last step, he apologizes again. “Since your father showed me the apparatus I am like a child with a new toy. I only wanted to see it work.” He walks slowly around the lamps. “It really is extraordinary. Look how perfectly the prisms fit together to send the beam of light farther. It reminds me of a physics lesson. The angle of incidence . . .”
“. . . equals the angle of reflection,” I add.
“Precisely. The universal law of science.”
That impish smile again. Surely it will be the undoing of me.
As calmly as I can and despite the almost audible thumping of my heart, I talk knowledgeably about the Argand lamp and the Fresnel lenses and explain how the soot from the candles dims the light if the lenses are not regularly cleaned. “The Fresnel lenses have a stepped surface that bends the light,” I explain. “I’ve always thought them rather beautiful.”
“They are beautiful indeed. Like rose petals unfurling around each other. Pretty enough in the singular, but something rather spectacular when multiplied and placed together so cleverly.”
“My father was a little doubtful of them initially,” I continue, standing to one side as Mr. Emmerson circles the lamps. “A Scottish physicist first convinced Trinity House to adopt the new lenses. The light travels much farther because of them.”
“It’s extraordinary.” He stands up, almost touching the roof of the lantern room as he turns to look out of the windows. “What a privilege it is to be up here.” For a moment, we stand alone with our thoughts as the wind howls at the windows. “It really is blowing, tonight,” he adds. “It whips up a recklessness in a person, don’t you think? It makes me want to run around in circles and chase the clouds.” He pauses and looks at me, a wild excitement flashing in his eyes. “Could we?”
“Could we what?”
“Step outside.”
I laugh, shocked by the suggestion. “In this weather? You would be blown back to Dundee, Mr. Emmerson!”
“Then at least I wouldn’t have to suffer the agony of another boat trip. You would be doing me a great favor!”
There is something so infectious about his enthusiasm that I feel myself start to concede. The storm’s wildness has found its way under my skin, too. I glance at the door which leads to the platform that runs around the perimeter of the lantern, from where we clean the windows on clear days.
“I suppose, since you’re here, you might as well experience the full force of the storm. The wind will take your breath away, mind.”
Mr. Emmerson grins. “Then let us hope I have plenty to spare.”
Opening the door, I tell Mr. Emmerson to follow me outside. We are instantly buffeted and blown so violently we have to grip the top of the iron grillwork to stop ourselves being blown away. I shriek and then laugh at the sheer absurdity of it all.
Mr. Emmerson tries to speak but his words are whipped away and all he can do is peer at me through narrowed eyes, laughing with the wind as we are pushed forward and pulled back, nothing but a pair of rag dolls. A sudden gust blows me sideways, causing Mr. Emmerson to reach out and steady me. My hair whips wildly around my face as I am buffeted again, glad of Mr. Emmerson’s arm locked around mine like an anchor, securing me to him, and for a wild wonderful moment I want only to stay here at the top of my dear lighthouse, with Mr. Emmerson beside me and all of the North Sea’s temper booming like cannons below.
The energy of it infuses me with a rare recklessness, and as Mr. Emmerson leans toward me I close my eyes, ready for the kiss I have imagined in my most secret, private thoughts. But his lips do not meet mine, only press close to my ear so that I can feel the warm touch of his breath against my skin as I catch the words “. . . wonderful, Miss Darling! So very wonderful!” Beneath the noise, I cannot be sure if it is the lighthouse, the storm, or something else he is talking about.
“We must go back inside,” I shout, barely able to form my words through the wind.
We stagger forward like a pair of drunken sailors spilling out of a tavern, fighting against the strength of the wind to open the door before we stumble back into the lantern room, laughing and catching our breath.
Mr. Emmerson smooths his hair, sent every which way by the wind. “I’m afraid I resemble an inmate of Bedlam, Miss Darling.”
“Then I must resemble one myself,” I laugh, straightening my shawl and tucking stray hair behind my ears as I catch my breath. “What madness!”
“Beautiful madness though, Miss Darling.”
“Island fever infects us all, sooner or later.”
His quiet smile ignites the ember of intrigue I’d felt the very first day I met him at Dunstanburgh. I feel it in the burning of my wind-whipped cheeks and deep in the pit of my stomach.
Desperate to return to more familiar ground, I tell Mr. Emmerson how my father gave me and my sisters lessons in astronomy up here in the lantern room. “I once envied my brothers for being sent to school at the castle in Bamburgh, but not anymore.”
“I cannot think of a finer place to study the stars. Believe me, there is no worse place to learn anything than a frigid schoolroom with a teacher too eager to use his cane.”
“I can imagine. I feel very fortunate to have been raised here.”
Mr. Emmerson turns to look at me. “No wonder the prospect of exchanging it all for a drab rectangular home on the mainland is so unappealing?”
The inflection in his voice carries the same question I’d heard when we’d walked among the rock pools earlier. It is a question to which I do not have a ready answer, and yet there it is, suspended between us like the spider webs that hang between the rafters in the boathouse.
I let out a weary sigh, wondering if he hears the regret carried in it. “It would certainly not be an easy exchange, Mr. Emmerson. And certainly not one I care to dwell on when I am still needed here.”
I try to focus on the storm beyond the window but I see only how different things might be in less complicated circumstances. Might I then permit myself to give up everything I am in order to know what I might yet become?
An uneasy gaze settles in Mr. Emmerson’s eyes. “Of course. We must always put duty first.”
And with that, as surely as an oar knocked clumsily against the boathouse rafters, the strands of what might have been are snapped, the fragments left behind to blow in the wind.
With my mind and my heart racing, I turn my attention back to my task. “I must go to the service room to record the tides.”
He nods. “I have distracted you long enough.” As he turns to leave, he notices a conch shell on a ledge beside the door. “Your favorite, I presume? I’ve seen lots of them dotted about the place.”
“My father used to tell me the North Sea lived inside,” I say, picking the shell up and pressing it to my ear. “He said even when I was far away, I would always be able to hear home, as long as I had a conch shell with me.” I smile at the rush of imaginary waves caught inside before handing it to Mr. Emmerson. “You must take it with you, as a reminder of your time here.”
He hesitates. “Would you speak into it, Miss Darling?”
I laugh. “Speak into it? Whatever for?”
With his eyes fixed firmly on mine, he rests his hand on the shell. “So that I might hear your voice, even when you are far away.”
A flush of heat rushes to my neck and cheeks. “Mr. Emmerson, I . . .”
“Forgive me. I have said too much. I am not myself tonight.” Picking up his lamp, he starts to make his way down the steps. “Your father said he expects the storm will blow through tonight.”
I nod, barely able to think or speak. “All storms pass, Mr. Emmerson. Even the most passionate and persistent ones.”
The gentle acquiesce in his eyes is the only reply required.
I wait until I can no longer hear the echo of Mr. Emmerson’s footsteps before I sink onto the stool, as dizzy as a new sailor at sea. With the wind shrieking at the windows, speaking my anguish for me, I accept that whatever my heart might fool me into feeling, and however convinced Sarah Dawson might be of her brother’s true feelings, the irrefutable fact remains that George Emmerson is engaged to be married and even the wildest storm in the whole of Northumberland cannot, and should not, tear apart a commitment such as that.
At 4:00 A.M. Brooks relieves me from my watch and I sink into my bed, where I lie awake until dawn, no longer disturbed by the wind, but by the very absence of it. The storm has passed and with its departure Mr. Emmerson will also leave.
After all, I have given him no compelling reason to stay.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Grace
Longstone Lighthouse. November 1838
THE MORNING OF Mr. Emmerson’s departure arrives with calm seas and a breeze as soft as a child’s whisper. I watch the sunrise from the lantern room, remembering the quiet September morning when Father and I had joked about birds flying into the living quarters downstairs, unaware that before we would see another sunrise we would encounter such drama and tragedy.
It strikes me, as I stand here only two months later, that life is a constant surprise. No matter how many charts and maps we study, or how cleverly we believe ourselves able to interpret the change in atmosphere or the shape of the clouds or the movement of the waves, we can never truly know what the day will bring; cannot plan for every eventuality. Only as each dreadful misfortune or delightful surprise unfolds can we choose how to respond; fleeting decisions made in an instant but which carry an echo across a lifetime.
After tending to the lamps, I take advantage of the clear day to take a walk along the tidal pools. A bitter chill laces the air and my cheeks soon flame from the bite of the wind and my exertions as I clamber over the exposed rocks. I pay no heed to the frigid temperature, only glad to be outside. I stand at the edge of the sea, throwing pebbles in looping arcs, watching the ever-spreading ripples. I am fascinated by the invisible force that propels them on long after the pebble has sunk from view. I wish I could do the same; sink back into the quiet days of invisibility when Grace Darling was an unremarkable young woman, known only to her family and those in her close acquaintance.
Lost in my thoughts, I don’t hear Mr. Emmerson approach until he is beside me. He stands quietly for a moment as we watch the path of sunlight on the water.
“Such a contrast,” he remarks. “It is hard to believe the storm of the past week was ever here.”
I turn to him. The early morning light paints his face golden, erasing some of the confusion and doubt I’d seen last night. “That is the way of the island, Mr. Emmerson. Sometimes a lion. Sometimes a lamb. No two days ever quite the same.”
“I have fallen quite under Longstone’s spell, Miss Darling. I envy your ability to say this all belongs to you.”
“Oh, it doesn’t belong to us, Mr. Emmerson. We are only looking after it for a while. In time the lighthouse and the island will pass to another keeper and his family, and so on. People will stand here in years to come and never know the Darling family once lived here.”
