United States Weather Bureau
SEPTEMBER 16th, 1938
Captain of Brazilian freighter reporting a gathering storm, north-east of Puerto Rico. Warning radioed at 3.42am. Tracking suggests it will make landfall across South Florida. Further updates to follow.
EARLY EVENING AT the lighthouse and Harriet is knitting a bonnet for Grace. I smile at the unexpected domestic harmony of it all as I sit beside the window, watching Grace sleep, her rosebud hands curled into tiny fists at each side of her perfect little seashell ears. The radio crackles intermittently as the reporter drones on about the developing tensions in Czechoslovakia. It seems impossible that there can be talk of war when my daughter is so full of innocence.
“Hitler and Mussolini and all those other awful men should spend more time with babies,” I say. “Maybe they wouldn’t be so intent on starting wars then.”
Harriet tuts. “Men always think they have the answers,” she replies. “They think they can invade whatever they like: countries, women’s bodies . . . they thrive on the power it gives them, but they’re not as smart or strong as they think they are. If we do go to war, the men will leave and it’ll be the women who’ll tend the lights and work in the factories and do all the jobs they don’t think we’re capable of doing during peacetime. It was the same last time around.”
Now that we can talk more openly, and Harriet is less guarded and more patient with my questions, I am eager to know about my family’s past. “Did you always want to be a light keeper?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “I didn’t want to be anything. I didn’t have what you’d call ambition. I presumed I would become a wife and mother. Cook the dinner. Keep a tidy home.”
I raise an eyebrow at this. “You? Really?”
She scowls good-naturedly in return. “Falling pregnant was a blessing in a way. My da was a rare breed for his generation. He raised me on his own after mammy died in childbirth and supported me when most parents would have thrown their daughter into a mother and baby home.” I’d heard what happened to the mothers and the babies under the care of the nuns in the so-called homes. It was neither godly, nor good. “I was lucky. Da brought me here with everything we owned in that old tea chest of his mam’s. He was a good man, God rest him.”
I give her a moment as she crosses herself and says a little prayer. “Where did he learn about lighthouses?” I ask when she picks up her knitting needles again. “Has it always been in the family?”
“The Flahertys come from a long line of light keepers,” Harriet explains. “Your great-great-granny, Sarah Flaherty—previously Dawson—dedicated her life to keeping the lights. She always said she owed her life to Grace Darling and her father. She remarried an Irishman, Eamonn Flaherty, several years after the Forfarshire disaster. They started a new life together in Donegal where he succeeded his father as light keeper. After her husband’s death, Sarah carried on the role, and when she passed away her son became light keeper. He was reposted to Ballycotton light with his young wife just before my father, Eoin, was born. In time, he became the light keeper there until the war. Even the lights were turned off then to prevent the enemy identifying our ports and landmarks. And now, there’s me. The last of the line.”
I’m fascinated to learn about the history of light keepers in the family, all stemming from my great-great-granny, Sarah.
Harriet glances over to me. “Sure, you might consider a life in the lights yourself. I see that look in your eye when you turn on the lamp. It’s in your bones. I can tell.”
She is right. Over the summer the lighthouse has become less of a landmark and more of a home, wrapping itself around my heart, holding me tight within its walls. In a funny way, it has always felt familiar to me, like a half-remembered dream. The curve of the winding stairs, the smell of salt in the walls, the smooth walnut sheen of the handrail, the steady click of the lamp as it turns. Like a living thing, I see different moods in its tapering walls: joyful in the late afternoon sun, more serious in the flat gray light of early morning, coming fully alive at night when the dark skies allow the lamp to take center stage and everyone’s gaze is drawn toward it. The lighthouse has charmed me. There is no denying it.
“Would you teach me?” I ask. “About keeping the light.”
Harriet looks at me, a wry smile on her lips. “What do you think I’ve been doing these past months, bringing you over here, giving you the old light keeper’s manual and newspaper reports to read and filling your head with stories of Ida Lewis and Grace Darling? You don’t need me to show you, Matilda. You already know.”
THE FOLLOWING WEEK, after making a trip over the bay to check on things at the Cherry Street house, and to pick up some extra things for the baby, Harriet returns with a surprise.
When I hear the crunch of footsteps outside, I finish changing the baby, scoop her up into my arms, and make my way downstairs. The familiar smell of something floral tickles my nose. Lily of the valley?
“Mrs. O’Driscoll! But . . . how?” I am so shocked and pleased to see her that I burst into tears as I rush to her. She opens her arms, enfolding me and Grace in her turf-scented embrace. “What are you doing here?” I laugh through my tears. “I can’t believe it!”
“I remembered your time was close so I wrote to Harriet at the address you gave me and didn’t she kindly write back to tell me all the news and, well, here I am! But I see somebody beat me to it.” She peels back the swaddling so she can see Grace’s face. “Oh, my. She’s a beauty. An absolute beauty.”
“Come and sit down,” I say, ushering her to one of the chairs and placing Grace into her arms. “It’s so good to see you. I’ve thought about you a lot since we said goodbye.”
She bats my hand away affectionately. “You have not. Sure, why would you be thinking about me?”
If only she knew how many times I’ve picked up that scrap of paper and read the word she’d added beneath her address: courage. “I meant to write to tell you about the baby but I haven’t had a chance.”
“Well, no. I expect you’ve had your hands full.”
Harriet makes tea as we swap all our news and I confide in Mrs. O’Driscoll about my plan to stay here with baby Grace and not go back to Ireland. She isn’t at all surprised.
“Well I’m glad,” she says as she coos and fusses over the baby. “’Tis only right that the child should be with its mother. I think you’re a very brave young woman, Matilda Emmerson. Didn’t I say this could be the making of you?”
“You did. You didn’t tell me how awful labor is though.”
She smiles. “Of course not. I didn’t want to put the fear of God into you now, did I? By the way,” she says, lowering her voice to a whisper as Grace falls asleep in her arms. “I didn’t come because your mother sent me, so don’t be worrying. She doesn’t even know I’m here, and I’m certainly not going to be telling her. That’s your business. Not mine.”
I take her hand in mine. “Actually, Mrs. O’Driscoll, there’s something I have to tell you.”
MRS. O’DRISCOLL AGREES to stay for lunch and then for tea and then she agrees to stay the night. Harriet doesn’t like the look of the waves and she knows the combination of the autumnal equinox and the full moon will bring a particularly high tide. I am delighted to have more time with Mrs. O’Driscoll and we talk long into the evening.
A flame-red harvest moon hangs low in the sky over Narragansett Bay. I sit at the window and watch the stars come out and I have never seen a sky more beautiful. I close my eyes as I rest my cheek against Grace’s velvet-soft hair, rocking her in time to the song of the wind at the windows. I sing to her of lavenders blue and lavenders green and despite the gathering threat of war, here in my tower of light with the sea sighing below me and the wind circling the walls, the world has never felt safer, and life has never felt more perfect or peaceful.