LATE AFTERNOON AND the sky turns granite. Secure inside the soot-blackened walls of the lighthouse, we each find a way to distract ourselves from the strengthening storm. Mam sits at her spinning wheel, muttering about birds flying indoors. Father leans over the table, tinkering with a damaged fishing net. I brush my unease away with the dust I sweep outside.
The living quarters is where we spend our time when we aren’t tending to the lamps, or on watch, or occupied at the boathouse. Our lives cover every surface of the room in a way that might appear haphazard to visitors, but is perfectly organized to us. While we might not appear to have much in the way of possessions, we want for nothing.
Bonnets and cloaks roost on hooks by the door, ready to be thrown on at short notice. Pots and pans dangle from the wall above the fire like highwaymen on the gallows. The old black kettle, permanently suspended from the crane over the fire, is always ready to offer a warm drink to cold hands. Damp stockings, petticoats, and aprons dry on a line suspended above our heads. All shape and size of seashells nestle on the windowsills and in the gaps between the flagstones. Stuffed guillemots and black-headed gulls—gifted to Father from the taxidermist in Craster—keep a close watch over us with beady glass eyes. Even the sharp tang of brine has its particular space in the room, as does the wind, sighing at the windows, eager to come inside.
As the evening skies darken, I climb the steps to the lantern room where I carefully fill the reservoir with oil before lighting the trimmed wicks with my hand lamp. I wait thirty minutes until the flames reach their full height before unlocking the weights that drive the gears of the clock mechanism, cranking them for the first time that evening. Slowly, the lamps begin to rotate, and the lighthouse comes alive. Every thirty seconds, passing ships will see the flash of the refracted beam. When I am satisfied that everything is in order, I add a comment to the Keeper’s Log: S.S. Jupiter passed this station at 5pm. Strong to gale force north to northeast. Hard rain.
As Father is on first watch, I leave the comforting light of the lamps, and enter the dark interior of the staircase. My sister Thomasin used to say she imagined the stairwell was a long vein running from the heart of the lighthouse. In one way or another, we have all attached human qualities to these old stone walls so that it has almost become another member of the family, not just a building to house us. I feel Thomasin’s absence especially keenly as I pass her bedroom. A storm always stirs a desire for everyone to be safe inside the lighthouse walls, but my sisters and brothers are dispersed along the coast now, like flotsam caught on the tide and carried to some other place.
The hours pass slowly as the storm builds, the clock above the fireplace ticking away laborious minutes as Mam works at her wheel. I read a favorite volume, Letters on the Improvement of the Mind, Addressed to a Lady, but even that cannot hold my attention. I pick up a slim book of Robert Burns’ poetry, but it doesn’t captivate me as it usually would, his words only amplifying the weather outside: At the starless, midnight hour / When Winter rules with boundless power, / As the storms the forests tear, / And thunders rend the howling air, / Listening to the doubling roar, / Surging on the rocky shore. I put it down, sigh and fidget, fussing at the seam of my skirt and picking at a break in my fingernail until Mam tells me to stop huffing and puffing and settle at something.
“You’re like a cat with new kittens, Grace. I don’t know what’s got into you tonight.”
The storm has got into me. The wild wind sends prickles running along my skin. And something else nags at me because even the storm cannot chase thoughts of Mr. Emmerson from my mind.
If I were more like Ellen and Mary Herbert I would seek distraction in the pages of the romance novels they talk about so enthusiastically, but Father scoffs at the notion of people reading novels, or playing cards after their day’s work is done, considering it to be a throwing away of time (he doesn’t know how much time my sister, Mary-Ann, throws away on such things), so there are no such books on our shelves. I am mostly glad of his censorship, grateful for the education he’d provided in the service room turned to schoolroom. I certainly can’t complain about a lack of reading material, and yet my mind takes an interest in nothing tonight.
At my third yawn, Mam tells me to go to bed. “Get some rest before your turn on watch, Grace. You look as weary as I feel.”
As she speaks the wind sucks in a deep breath before releasing another furious howl. Raindrops skitter like stones thrown against the windows. I pull my plaid shawl about my shoulders and take my hand lamp from the table.
“It’s getting worse, isn’t it?” The inflection in my voice carries that of a child seeking reassurance.
Mam works the pedal of her spinning wheel in harmony with the brisk movement of her hands, the steady clack clack clack so familiar to me. She doesn’t look up from her task. Inclement weather is part of the fabric of life at Longstone. Mam believes storms should be respected, never feared. “If you show it you’re afraid, you’re already halfway to dead.” She may not be the most eloquent woman, but she is often right. “Sleep well, Grace.”
I bid her goodnight, place a hurricane glass over my candle, and begin the familiar ascent inside the tower walls. Sixty steps to my bedroom. Sixty times to remember eyes the color of porter. Sixty times to see a slim mustache stretch into a smile as broad as the Tyne, a smile that had stained my cheeks pink and sent Ellen and Mary Herbert giggling into their gloves. Sixty times to scold myself for thinking so fondly of someone I’d spent only a few minutes with, and yet it is to those few minutes my mind stubbornly returns.
Reaching the service room I stand in silence for a moment, reluctant to break Father’s concentration. He sits beside the window, his telescope poised like a cat about to pounce, his senses on high alert.
“You will wake me, Father,” I whisper. “Won’t you?” I’ve asked the same thing every night for as long as I can remember: will he wake me if he needs assistance with the light, or with any rescue he might have to undertake.
Candlelight flickers in the circular spectacles perched on the end of his nose as he turns and acknowledges me with a firm nod. “Of course, pet. Get some sleep. She’ll blow herself out by morning.”
On the few occasions he has required me to tend the light in his absence, I have proven myself very capable. I have my father’s patience and a keen eye, essential for keeping watch over the sea. Sometimes I wonder if it saddens him, just a little, that the future of the lighthouse will lie with my brother, and not me. Brooks will succeed him as Principal Keeper because for all that I am eager and capable, I am—first and foremost—a woman.
A smile spreads across Father’s face as I turn at the top of the steps. “Look at you, Grace. Twenty-two years of unfathomable growth and blossoming beauty and a temperament worthy of your name. Such a contrast to the rumpus outside.”
I shoo his compliment away. “Have you been at the porter again?” I tease, my smile betraying my delight.
Taking up my lamp, I retire to my room, a shrill shriek of wind setting the flame dancing in a draft as a deafening boom reverberates around the lighthouse walls. I peer through the window, mesmerized by the angry waves that plunge against the rocks below and send salt-spray soaring up into the sky like shooting stars.
Picking up my Bible, I kneel beside my bed and pray for the safety of my brother before I blow out my candle and slip beneath the eiderdown. My feet flinch against the cold sheets, my toes searching for the hot stone I’d placed beneath the covers earlier. I lie perfectly still in the dark, picturing the lamps turning above me with the regularity of a steady pulse, their light stretching out through the darkness to warn those at sea and let them know they are not alone in the dark. On quieter nights, I can hear the click click of the clock mechanism turning above. Tonight, I hear only the storm, and the heightened beating of my heart.