Emma Stonex - The Lamplighters

Lighthouse people are ordinary. You’ll find that out and I hope it doesn’t disappoint you. People on the outside think of it as a clandestine sort of occupation, seeing as we’re quite closed off in the way we lead our lives. They think being married to a lighthouse keeper must be glamorous, because of the mystery of it, but it isn’t. If I had to sum it up, I’d say you’ve got to be prepared for long periods of time apart and short, intense periods of time together. The intense periods are like a couple of distant friends reuniting, which can be exciting but challenging as well. You’ve had things your way for eight weeks and then a man comes into your home and suddenly he’s the master of the house and you have to play second fiddle. It could be very unsettling. It’s not a conventional marriage. Ours certainly wasn’t.

Do I miss the sea? No, not at all. I couldn’t wait to move away from it after what happened. That’s why I came here, to the city. I never cared for the sea. Where we used to live in keepers’ cottages we were surrounded, it was all you could see from the windows, everywhere you turned. Sometimes you felt you could be living in a fishbowl. When there was a storm and we got some lightning that was quite spectacular, and the sunsets were pretty too, but on the whole it’s a grey thing, the sea, big and grey and not much happens on it. Although it’s more green than grey, I would say, like sage, or eau de Nil. Did you know that ‘eau de Nil’ means ‘water of the Nile’? I always thought it meant ‘water of nothing’, which is how the sea makes me feel, in a way, so I still think of it like that. Water of nothing.

It doesn’t make any more sense to me this morning than on the day Arthur disappeared. It does get easier, though. Time gives you a bit of distance where you can look back at whatever’s happened to you and not feel all the feelings you once had; those feelings have calmed down and they’re not at the forefront of your mind in the way they are at the beginning. It’s odd because on some days it doesn’t seem so strange, what they found on that tower – and I think, well, a heavy sea must have washed up and drowned them. Then on others it strikes me as so outlandish that it takes my breath away. There are too many details I can’t shake off, like the locked door and the stopped clocks, they nag at me, and if I start thinking about it at night, I have to be strict with myself and get rid of those thoughts. Otherwise I’d never sleep, and I’ll remember the view of the sea from our cottage window, and it seems so huge and empty and uncaring that I have to turn the radio on for company.

I think what transpired is what I just told you: that the sea came up suddenly and caught them unaware. Occam’s razor, it’s called. The law that says the simplest solution is usually right. If you’ve got a mystery, don’t go complicating it beyond the sum of its parts.

Arthur drowning is the only realistic explanation there is. If you don’t agree then you’re making your way down all sorts of fanciful roads such as ghostly things and conspiracy theories and all the nonsense I just told you people believe. People will believe anything, and given the choice they prefer lies to the truth because lies are usually more interesting. Like I said, the sea isn’t interesting, not when you’re looking at it every day. But it was the sea that took them. There isn’t a doubt in my mind.

The thing you need to know about a tower lighthouse – have you ever been on a tower? – is that it comes directly up out of the sea. It’s not a rock station where you’re on an island and there’s a bit of land around you where you can walk or have a vegetable plot or keep some sheep or whatever it is you want to do; and it’s not a land light, where you’re on the mainland so you stay close to your family, and when you’re not on duty you can drive into the village and go about your life as normal so long as you’re fulfilling your responsibilities when your watch comes about. A tower light’s just stuck out there in the sea, so there isn’t anywhere for the keepers to be except inside the lighthouse or out on the set-off. You could go running around the set-off if you wanted some exercise, but you’d get dizzy very fast doing that.

Oh, right, sorry: the set-off’s the platform underneath the entrance door, it wraps all the way round like a big doughnut. The set-off’s about twenty or thirty feet above the water, which sounds like a lot, but if you’re out there and a wave comes up and catches you then you’re gone. I’ve heard about keepers fishing from it, or bird watching, or passing the time of day reading a book. I’m sure Arthur used to do that because he was always one for reading; he said being on a lighthouse was his time to learn, so he took all sorts of subjects off with him, novels and biographies and books about space. He became interested in geology – stones and rocks, you know. He’d collect and sort them. He said he could learn all about the different eras that way.

Whatever you’re doing out there, the set-off’s the only bit of fresh air available on a tower. You can’t just poke your head out of the windows on account of the walls being so thick; they were built with double windows, you see, an inner and an outer, three or four feet apart, so you’d have to sit in the little space between and I shouldn’t think that would be very comfortable. You could go out on the gallery, that’s the walkway up top that goes around the lantern, but there’s not much room and, besides, you’d need a jolly long fishing rod, wouldn’t you.

One of them, and I wouldn’t like to guess who, but it could have been Arthur because he was one for having time away from people, being on his own, he liked that. He could have gone out on the set-off and been sitting there reading and the wind was quiet, a force one or two, then out of nowhere a big sea swells up and sweeps him away. The sea can do that. You’ll know it can. Arthur was caught out once at the Eddystone, early on; he’d just made AK – that’s Assistant Keeper – and he was out there drying his washing when a giant wave came out of the blue and knocked him off his feet. He was lucky his mate was there to grab hold of him, otherwise I’d have lost him years before I did. It rattled him, but he was fine. The same can’t be said for his washing; I’m not sure he saw any of that again. He had to borrow the others’ clothes until the relief was due.

But things like that didn’t affect Arthur. Lightkeepers aren’t romantic people; they don’t get nervous or look into things too much. The point of the job is to keep a level head and get on with what needs to be done. Trident wouldn’t hire them otherwise. Arthur was never afraid of the sea, even when it was dangerous. He told me how, on a tower, the spray from the waves can come right up to the kitchen window during a storm – bear in mind that’s eighty or eighty-five feet above the water – and the rocks and boulders roll against the base, so it shudders and shakes. I’d have been scared, I think. But not Arthur; he felt the sea was on his side.

When he came ashore, he seemed, at times, out of sorts. Like a fish out of water, that’s exactly it. He didn’t know how to be here, whereas he knew how to be on the sea. I’d say goodbye to him to return to the tower and I could see he felt very pleased indeed at the thought of seeing her again.

I’m not sure how many books you’ve had published about the ocean, but writing a story about it isn’t the same as writing how it really is. The sea will turn on you if you’re not paying attention; it changes its mind in the snap of a finger and it doesn’t care who you are. Arthur had ways of predicting it, such as what the clouds looked like or how the wind sounded against the window; he could tell you if it was blowing a six or seven just by how it sounded – so if a man like him, who is the most experienced person I can think of in these things, could be caught, then that proves it can change suddenly. Maybe he had time to shout and the others came running; the set-off’s slippery, there’s panic in the air and it wouldn’t take much, would it, for all three of them to get washed away?