Swan Light: A Novel, page 6
Bergy Bits was empty except for the cashier, an olive-skinned, serious-looking man in a black T-shirt. He glanced at her, then went back to typing something on the computer. Mari walked along the aisles, thumbing through socks and gloves at random. Her phone dinged. Tim: Finished up on Cherry. Hull almost totally flattened. I’ll send you the readout + keep an eye on H’s notes. Ursula Wednesday.
Tell my love hello, she sent back. Then: This job is shallow. But interesting.
She grabbed the thickest jacket she could find and tossed it over her elbow, followed by a long-sleeved shirt, a hat, and a pair of gloves, all from a sale rack. A bottle of Advil. A few Clif bars. She paused next to an ice cream freezer when her phone dinged again. It was a picture of the sonar, Ursula’s bulky shape at the center, Tim’s hand waving at it. Then: Shallow is good, interesting is better. Do us proud, kid.
Mari breathed out a laugh and put her phone away, this time resolutely zipping her pocket. Thinking about Californian wouldn’t get her back any faster. For that to happen she needed to focus on the job in front of her.
And then, as if she’d manifested it, she saw it. The ice cream freezer was set against a wall covered in faded newspaper clippings and photographs, sepia-tinged and curling. And there it was, near the top of the wall, just below the heating vents.
A photograph of a lighthouse.
Mari set her purchases on the freezer and leaned forward on her tiptoes, but the picture was too high. She hooked a leg onto the glass and climbed up, balancing carefully on the sliding panel. Even then she had to stretch as far as she could, but when she got close enough her heart sank. She was wrong. This lighthouse was on a hill, not a cliff, one that sloped gently downward until it reached the sea. Ferryland Head Light 1940, the print at the bottom read. Disappointment thudded in her chest.
“Can I help you?”
Mari nearly tipped off of the freezer. The cashier was below her, arms crossed and eyebrows raised. She eased down into a kneel.
“Hi,” she said brightly. “Hi. Sorry. I was just . . . looking.”
His dark eyes flicked up, then back to her. “At the vents?”
“Um. No. At your pictures.”
“Pretty sure you’re supposed to enjoy them from a distance.”
Mari couldn’t tell whether he was amused or annoyed. She slid off of the freezer. The cashier looked a few years younger than she, but his curly black hair was flecked at the temples with gray. There were faint lines of sunburn above the stubble on his jaw and below the sleeves of his T-shirt, Mari saw as he leaned forward against the freezer to study the pictures too.
“Looking at the vents?” she chanced, and he met her attempt at a joke with a neutral stare. She winced. Right. Annoyed it is.
“Are you by any chance here for Evangeline Devon?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered, surprised. “How do you know that?”
He nodded at the picture of Ferryland Head Light. “You were looking at the only lighthouse.” He had a faint Boston accent, and Mari made the connection.
“You’re the salvager,” she said, and he nodded again.
“Julian Henry.”
“Mari Adams,” she said. “So I’m guessing you don’t actually work here?”
“No,” Julian said. “I’m staying in the owner’s spare room. I just thought he might not like divers climbing all over his ice cream.”
“Sure,” she said. His face was still so serious she couldn’t tell if he was joking. “Well, can I still pay you for these?” She picked up her gear from the freezer and hefted them hopefully, but he was already shaking his head.
“That register is way more complicated than a sonar,” he said. “Just take them; I’ll start us a tab. Knowing how most of Evangeline’s projects go, we’ll need one.”
She arrived back at Mettle House just as a large, lively group was leaving from dinner. The air that wafted out with them was warm and smelled like toffee and fish, a combination that was somehow intoxicating rather than nauseating.
“Welcome back,” Jo called from the dining room. “Need food?”
“Always,” Mari said, shrugging out of her new jacket. She glanced at the menu, with its Captain Mettle House logo at the top, the letters around a ship’s wheel. “Was there a Katherine Mettle involved with the inn at any point?” she asked. “Evangeline was friends with her.”
“Probably,” Jo said. “The Mettles and the Coopers are both quite large families. I couldn’t possibly name all of my relatives.”
The dining room was dark now, the ship’s lanterns casting dancing firelight over the walls, and it was so quiet that Mari could hear the waves in the harbor through the open windows. The only other patrons were a pair of old men on the center sofa, one with his boots up on a chair, each with a bowl of soup in his lap.
“Gentlemen, this is Mari Adams,” Jo said, motioning to the chair not currently holding fishermen feet. “Mari, Theo van Gooren and Bill Baxter. They’re our local gossips and are responsible for about half of my annual booze bill. Mari is here helping Evangeline Devon with a project.”
“Nice ta meet ya,” Theo van Gooren said, a strong Newfoundland accent turning the words rough and musical. He looked like a fisherman straight out of a children’s book: an unlit pipe stuck out of a gray beard so long it touched his chest, his face sun-spotted and lined, an anchor tattoo fading blue across his forearm. “What’s the project, then?”
“Looking for a lighthouse,” Mari said. “It used to be on the cliffs south of here, but it fell into the bay.”
Theo and Bill exchanged a look and chortled. “Oh, sure,” Theo said. “Heard the stories about that growing up, didn’t we? Clean your room this minute or you’ll slide right into the ocean while ya dreaming.”
“You know about it?” Mari asked.
“Sure,” Bill echoed, still laughing. “Right along with the fae of the wood and the ghost of Hazel.” Mari looked back and forth between them, frowning, and Theo cuffed her shoulder.
“We’re only teasing,” he said. “And you seem like a nice lass, so I’ll give some advice that should help you in your search.”
“What’s that?”
“Stop looking. That lighthouse never existed.”
The proclamation echoed in the flickering room. Mari tilted her head at Theo. “What makes you say that?”
“Just an old bedtime story, isn’t it?” Bill said. “We used to go up the cliffs as kids, try to summon the fairy folk. There’s never been anything up there but trees and a hermit or two.”
“It’s more than that,” Theo said. “Maybe there was a lighthouse once. There are certainly enough stories to make you wonder. But someone already beat you to asking, sorry to say.”
“Someone else was asking about Swan Light?”
Theo nodded. “Some people were poking around about it a few years ago. Obsessed with the Norman and Roland families who used to live here, came around looking for modern relatives, and I remember that lighthouse myth got brought up.” He slurped down his soup in one gulp and sat back with a contented sigh. She had no idea how he’d managed it with the pipe still dangling from his mouth. “They were all fancy types, real nice boats,” he said. “If there was any truth to the lighthouse, they would have found it.”
Mari flipped her notebook open. “So they thought the Norman family had something to do with Swan Light?”
“Town’s called Norman Cliffs; the Norman family had something to do with everything. The Rolands married in later. I don’t remember how exactly the lighthouse came up. But I know it did.”
“So what happened?” Mari asked.
Theo shrugged. “There haven’t been Normans or Rolands here for a long time. When they didn’t find any relatives, they left.”
If it was true, it was disheartening. A century was a long time, but 1914 wasn’t the dark ages. Norman Cliffs couldn’t just build a lighthouse without anyone knowing. There were shipping routes, there were ship’s logs, there were government records. If someone had really looked into the light and hadn’t found those, it wasn’t a good sign.
“Hate to be the bearer of bad news.” Theo stood. “But hey, I’ll give you a different project if you want it. I lost the motor on my old boat to those fairy folk Bill told you about,” he said solemnly. “Back in 1971. Snipped it right off the back while I wrestled with a huge fish, longer than you are tall, because they didn’t want me to catch it, you see? Had to go the rest of the way back to town with nothing but my hands and that fish as a paddle.”
Mari wasn’t sure what to do with that.
Later, as she lay in bed listening to the ocean outside, its noise calming her restless skin, she thought about the cliff. Was it at all possible that a lighthouse had survived underwater this long? That it had really collapsed, not been moved? That it had been there in the first place? Or had Katherine Mettle’s drawing come from the same place as Bill Baxter’s bedtime stories, nothing but a fanciful imagining of what could have been? Still, all tall tales started somewhere, and Mari’s last drowsy thoughts were of fish-guarding fairies and a lonely light sweeping across the black of the sea. What was it Theo had said? Certainly enough stories to make you wonder.
Swan, 1913
Swan arrived home from town just in time to light the tower.
The cliff seemed darker than it should have been, twilight catching in the trees and in the clouds going cool on the horizon, and for a moment in the cold silence of the lantern room he felt disoriented, unmoored. But his heart lifted at the sight of two sets of masthead lights out beyond the bay, and as he lit the wick and the glass walls around him flared to life he imagined those far-bound ship’s lights flaring back.
Swan had only ever seen the light from sea himself once, nearly five decades ago, when he’d been held up getting supplies in St. John’s and Grace had lit the tower in his absence. He hadn’t even thought about it, caught up in the numbers and prices of everything on his list, hadn’t considered how it would feel, but he’d rounded the edge of Norman Cliffs Bay in the dory and there it was, a beam soaring out into the sea, slicing open the darkness, fierce and strong and immovable, and Swan had felt goose bumps spring up all along his arm.
Inside, the tower felt different: mechanical, loud, nothing like the peaceful marvel that it was from afar. The beam that looked so singular from the sea was here a complex contraption of glass and brass sitting around a well of burning oil, each line perfectly engineered to amplify the flame behind it, the lens itself nearly as tall as Swan was. And seeing it from the sea captured none of the heat, the slick smell, the beehive whirring of the clockwork mechanism in the room below as it kept the lens turning, so strong it shook the floor. In the middle of the night, the only things awake here were the keeper, the tower, and the sea.
Swan didn’t linger this time, giving the churning lens a pat before going back to his house and collapsing into his chair. The ride home had been a blur, his chest tight until he made it out of town. He was convinced that at any moment Abigail or Cort would come galloping up behind him. He’d raced past a startled Lou Roland, who was walking toward the bank, and even though he was the one Swan had gone to town to see, he couldn’t bring himself to do more than return Lou’s wave as he rattled on. It was only now, in the stuffy safety of the kitchen, that he felt his heart slow. The rest of Peter’s cloudberries still sat on the table, as if nothing had changed since that morning. You’ll miss the days it was only Cort. His friend had been right.
His logbook sat beside the berries, leather-bound and brittle, and he realized that he still hadn’t written an entry for today. It was unlike him. His memory wasn’t what it once was, and he found that it was easier to note things as they happened to keep the records as precise as possible. But he couldn’t bring himself to start this entry, one that would start with Cort Roland and end with Abigail Norman. Swan flipped mindlessly through the week before, buying himself time.
OCTOBER 11, 1913
STORM COMING IN? W. METTLE AT STATION. THREE STEAMERS PASSED FROM ST. JOHN’S. CLEANED AND PUT NEW PIPE IN BOILER. REPAIRS NEEDED IN SIDE ROOM. SIGNAL IN USE.
OCTOBER 10, 1913
STORM COMING IN. MADE REPAIRS IN LANTERN ROOM. FULL DEGREASE OF LENS MACHINERY. REPAIRS NEEDED IN SIDE ROOM. SIGNAL IN USE.
He’d been putting off the side-room repairs for months now. It had been their guest room, back when he and Grace had guests, her parents and cousins and Peter and Sophie coming to stay and turning the tower bright and loud. Now the room was sullen and sinking, the only part of his home Swan avoided. He glanced at its closed door, then went back to his log.
OCTOBER 9, 1913
STORMED ALL NIGHT, STRONG SOUTHWEST WINDS AND SLEET. RECEIVED GROCERIES AND CARPENTRY FROM W. METTLE. REPAIRS NEEDED ON OIL SHED DOOR. REPAIRS NEEDED IN HOUSE WINDOWS. SCH NELLE GROUNDED AND PULLED INTO HARBOR. SEA SPLIT RAN AGROUND BY COVE AND NEEDED REPAIRS. SIGNAL IN USE.
Swan winced. That note was worse than the side room. Swan had given Sea Split to Will Mettle decades ago, after inheriting her from Nico, who had inherited her from Tomas at sixteen. Old enough for a life at sea, their father had said gruffly. Old enough to die at sea, Silvy had thought. But Nico had been successful, vanishing to the Grand Banks for weeks on end and returning on a ship full to the brim with cod. And Nico had been happy with Sea Split. At least until one summer day, his first day back after his third season gone. The two of them were in the cove, fifteen and nineteen years old, Silvy floating in the water and his brother in his customary perch in the rock above it. Nico had gotten broad and brown this trip, and Silvy found that he had to keep staring to make his brother seem real at all.
A boat passed the narrow cove entrance, then doubled back: How’d She Take It, the pilot boat, Peter grinning at its wheel. “Oh-ho!” he called. “Got a report of some sea monsters around here, didn’t think they’d be ugly as all this.” In answer Nico pulled his lips back with his fingers and stuck his teeth forward like fangs, his release of the wall sending him into the water and dousing a drowsing Silvy. Peter bobbed alongside the rocks. “Are you both going to Francis Norman’s boil-up tonight?”
It didn’t seem quite a boil-up, Silvy thought, but instead a much larger and grander affair, meant to celebrate some new bank opening. “Don’t much fancy spending the night watching Francis Norman try to get three new ships named after him,” Nico called back, and Peter gave a wry grin.
“Please come,” he said. “Father says we have to, and Soph will just be following Callum Cooper around all night. Don’t leave me alone with that.”
“Maybe we should go,” Silvy said to Nico after Peter had departed. “When’s the last time you were at the mansion? I haven’t been in years.”
Nico looked out to sea, his eyes flashing gray to blue as if the current was flowing right through him. Then he looked at Silvy. “I was there this morning. Don’t tell Mum I didn’t come straight home.”
“You were? For what?”
“Okay.” Nico treaded to face him. “Don’t tell Mum this either, or Father. But I’ve been doing odd jobs for Francis Norman. I’ve been saving to get a bigger ship.”
“Nico!” Silvy felt his face glowing. “Father won’t be surprised in the slightest. He’ll be so proud.”
Nico grinned, bashful, under his brother’s enthusiasm. “I don’t want him to think it’s because Sea Split isn’t good enough,” he said. “She’s a great ship. She’d be a great pilot ship, actually. She’s just not long for the Banks; she can’t take that kind of trip anymore. I’ve been talking to Bowen Smith, in St. John’s, paid him half a commission upfront. She’ll be ready in January.”
“In January!”
“I think I’m going to name her Count Your Lucky Stars,” he said—his favorite song—and whistled a quick bar.
And so Silvy had inherited Sea Split, used her once, and then left her dry-docked until he finally gave her to Will Mettle to repair. She didn’t have to travel far as a pilot boat, but Swan still knew her days were numbered. He would be sore to see the harbor without her cheerful yellow hull. She was a brave little ship. Braver than him.
Swan sighed and picked up his pen.
OCTOBER 12, 1913
C. ROLAND AT STATION TO DISCUSS LEGAL MATTERS. P. METTLE AT STATION TO DISCUSS PERSONAL MATTERS. CLEANED INTERIOR KITCHEN AND SITTING ROOM. KEEPER IN NORMAN CLIFFS FOR PERSONAL MATTERS. SIGNAL IN USE.
The night of Francis Norman’s party, Nico, Silvy, Peter, and Sophie were splayed around a fire cracking merrily outside the second mansion on the hill. Silvy sat beside his brother, watching the sparks leap and skitter and feeling very much at peace.
Until Abigail strolled out of the house.
She was as absent as Nico these days, busy at her father’s bank. But the town was still watching her, eighteen years old now, Abigail Norman with those morning-blue eyes and shiny black hair, her heavy-lidded way of looking at people that made them feel both like they weren’t good enough to be speaking to her and like they wouldn’t rest until they were.
She came right for Nico. “Bowen Smith told me he’s working on your ship.”
Nico glanced around for his father. “Don’t—”
“He was very impressed with himself. Apparently it’s quite a fine ship.”
“It will be,” Nico said quietly. Abigail looked at him, lip curled, then deposited herself between Nico and Callum Cooper, both of whom went slightly flushed. Sophie, who, true to Peter’s guess, had been watching Callum all night, went pink as well.
“My father is looking to sign another trading vessel,” Abigail said.
“Better not, Nico,” Sophie spoke up. “I heard Francis’s last cargo got all the way to America only to find out no one even wanted it.” Silvy felt a rush of affection.
“Hmph,” Abigail said, and stood again. “Well, think about it. Trading is better money than fishing.” Nico watched her go, his face thoughtful, and for the first time Silvy felt a chasm open between himself and his brother. And then it started to rain.
The group scattered, losing each other in the mess of people running for the house. Silvy found himself in a room with a fireplace and a big bay window, and he sulked on its sill, looking out through the waterlogged darkness toward the invisible cliffs. He wished he and Nico were still there, that they’d never left the cove this morning, never left to hear about Francis Norman and his stupid money and his stupid trading ships. He stood to look for Nico, to ask if they could leave, and he trod directly on a taller boy’s feet.
