Lighthouse Bay Page 8

  By the early evening her mind is playing tricks on her, because she thinks she can smell roasting meat. She stands and sniffs the air. Her mouth waters. But she knows that she must be imagining it, like a mirage in the desert—only it is not water she craves, it is food. She is up now, and she straps the chest to her back once more and determines to eat something, even if it makes her sick. She can’t go any farther without sustenance. Recklessly, she picks the pink berries as high as she can reach off one of the spindly trees and sucks on them. She fights her way through tree branches and tangled undergrowth, ignores the crisscross of scratches through her shredded sleeves, stops frequently to drink from the creek. Her head pounds, and her thoughts are dark and tangled. “Sh,” she says to herself. “Sh, sh.” Smooth out those thoughts. If you can eat, then everything will be fine. Everything will be fine. Once her stomach is full she can head directly south again. She will find a town and there will be food: roast beef and new potatoes, Yorkshire pudding and jam gravy.

  Isabella is too busy talking to herself to hear the footfalls. A dark shadow has her looking up, has her heart leaping into her mouth. Two black men stand before her, wearing nothing but armbands made of shells. Each of them holds upright a long spear.

  She shrieks. She takes a step backwards to prepare to run, but her bare foot strikes a dropped branch and now she is falling instead. The chest is on her back, and it hits the ground hard, and she hits it even harder. Pain crushes into her neck and she cries out, her hand flailing into the air. The darkness is instant and inescapable.

  Eight

  The field of her vision is a narrow slit; jolting movement; bright and dark. She closes her eyes again, wants to sink back into the dark, soft place. But something doesn’t feel right. She forces them open again, pain screaming into her head. She tries to move her arms and legs, but they are slack and weak. She blinks rapidly, realizes she is being carried—cradled like a child—by one of the natives. She struggles and he presses her more firmly against his naked chest. She raises her hands to scratch his eyes, but he captures them easily and holds them down against her stomach. He says something to his companion, and Isabella realizes she no longer has the walnut chest. Thieves! Kidnappers! What will they do to her? She shouts and curses and struggles, but she is weak and injured.

  The man who carries her says something to her tersely.

  Tearily, she shakes her head. “I don’t understand.”

  He reaches for her throat and she flinches, but then she feels his fingers on the back of her neck and they come away bloody. Isabella reaches for the same place, and feels a stinging gash, oozing blood. Pain sings through her spine.

  The two naked black men take her farther into the forest, across uneven ground. Their feet must be like leather, because they are swift and light. She feels like the gull: too wounded to fight. Her own ghastly end is coming.

  But then she smells the smoky roasting meat. The natives bring her down into a grove that the creek runs through, overgrown with green foliage. On the other side a dozen more black people collect around a fire. Five small huts stand off to one side. Women tend to fat babies, or hold roasting meat on spears over the fire; men talk or sit on rocks sharpening spears or fixing weapons. Not one of them is wearing clothes. Isabella has never seen a naked man, only Arthur in the dark bedroom. She doesn’t know where to direct her gaze.

  “What are you going to do with me?” she says. Do these natives eat humans?

  But then her captor places her carefully on the ground and calls out. Within seconds a large woman with soft eyes and pendulous breasts approaches, and her companions explain the situation in their native tongue. The woman helps Isabella to sit, and mimes putting her hand to her mouth. They are asking her to eat.

  “Yes!” Isabella says. “Yes. Food. Yes.”

  More calling to each other in their native tongue, then she is offered the spear with the roasting lizard on it. She pulls off a chunk of white flesh and puts it to her lips without a second thought. The flesh is soft, a little chewy, and tastes smoky. As hungry as she is, she thinks it the best meal she has ever eaten.

  As she eats, the woman talks softly, cleaning the wound and dressing it with sharp-smelling ointment. She turns her attention to the bite on Isabella’s hand, tuts and makes a few more comments. Isabella tells her that she can’t understand, but the woman talks anyway. A child, just learning to walk, toddles up to them and grasps Isabella’s free hand. Isabella smiles, charmed by the child’s round cheeks and dark eyes. The child pushes up the sleeve of her dress and admires her white skin with awe. Something about the child’s touch encourages her to relax. The child is happy and well. That must mean the people who raise him are good people.

  She turns to the woman and says, “Thank you,” warmly, with a smile. The woman may not know the words, but she understands the sentiment.

  The woman gestures towards the huts and then points at the sky. Dusk is closing in. The woman is offering her shelter for the night.

  Isabella looks at the hut, with its open front. Clouds have been gathering over the afternoon, and it might rain. The chest is still where she fell. But who is there to steal it? It could do no harm, surely, to stay here overnight. Sleep somewhere soft and sheltered, perhaps even have more to eat in the morning.

  Isabella nods. “Yes, thank you.”

  Isabella lies among the soft leaves and animal skins and sleeps like the dead. When she wakes, the soft-fingered woman is there again offering her food, re-dressing her wound. When Isabella makes to stand, she is pushed back down. The woman clicks her tongue. The message is clear. You are not well. You must stay a little longer. Isabella gratefully accepts. She spends the day watching them come and go, with fish and lizards and wild dogs to eat, with baskets full of berries and fruit that Isabella recognizes from her long walk. They feed her well. Rain moves in. She wonders if these are the only people for hundreds of miles, if she should just throw her lot in with them and become part of their tribe. She would, at least, never go hungry again. But the desire to return to the chest, to Daniel’s bracelet, is strong. She needs to be with her own family, her sister. She vows to keep moving as soon as morning comes.

  She is dreamless until just before dawn, when a confused tangle of images chase themselves across her mind’s eye. She is pregnant with Daniel again, blood is pouring out between her legs, but when she looks down at the sand there is no baby, just the cold corpses of her shipmates. She gives birth to death. Isabella snaps awake, tries to take comfort in the fact that she is alive and safe. But there is no comfort. There is only misery, gray as the gloom before dawn.

  Isabella rises. Nobody is awake. She must get away: that dream is surely caught in the trees around her now, seeped into the sandy ground, will hang around all day, all week. Her head has stopped aching and she is strong enough now to keep moving. She needs to get back to collect the chest and head south, where surely there are buildings and cooked meals on plates. Quietly, on soft feet, she tiptoes past the natives through the dark trees in the dim light. The chest lies, unmolested, where she fell. She re-ties the rope through the brass handle, and drags it behind her once again, down the empty beach.

  Clouds cling to the sky, dark and churning. There will be more rain, but at least it will be a reprieve from the searing sun.

  Isabella’s heart catches on a hook. Is that a flash? She looks to the clouds to the south. Was it lightning? Or was it—

  There. Again. A light, barely noticeable in the pre-dawn gray, sweeps across the clouds and is gone.

  A lighthouse. Meaning returns. Focus intensifies. Hope is reborn.

  For where there is a lighthouse, there is a lighthouse keeper.

  The beach goes on forever. The sea is almost emerald today, with caps whiter than newly fallen snow. On and on it rushes and roars, and Isabella places one foot in front of the other, dragging her load behind her in the sand. The rhythm of walking and stopping begins to change. Creeks are regular enough that she doesn’t go thirsty; an
d she now knows which berries and fruits are edible, even if they taste hard and dry. But she is human. She is wearing out. The stops become longer. The walks slower, shorter. Walking becomes trudging, lumbering, falling with only her knees to catch her. She tries to move forward a little every day: between late afternoon and nightfall, slowly, preserving her energy. A vast, aching emptiness surrounds her, pervades her, inhabits her. Alone, alone, the ocean seems to say. Alone, alone. Slowly, ponderously, endlessly. If she walks, she is quiet; but when she stops, she speaks without knowing she will speak. She hears her own voice and is alarmed. Why is she speaking? What is she saying? She tells herself to stop, but hears her voice again a few minutes later. Isabella lets the talking continue. She is too tired to control her thoughts. Focus slips away from her, and her mind opens and she can see behind the world now, the great gears turning and the bright hot reality of its meaninglessness. Now she has seen it, she knows she will always feel it inside herself. Safety, food, even happiness may come to her one day, but it is too late. She already knows the truth about life.

  Her arms ache. She keeps going.

  She keeps going.

  Isabella doesn’t count the days. She refuses to go back over them in her mind, because to do so makes her feel the throbbing exhaustion, the desperate fear that there really is nothing to the south. Nothing at all. The nights have been clear with no clouds for the light to reflect off, so she doesn’t see it again. She has always been prone to excessive imagining: perhaps the lighthouse was a fantasy. Each day, before she starts to walk, she wades into the warm sea water to clear her head and clean her wounds and gather her courage, and lets it carry her a little while. Her gown, once a good going-to-town dress, is shredded and misshapen, encrusted with blood and dirt. It floats around her like a giant jellyfish. She closes her eyes, feels the motion of the sea. Then opens them and looks south.

  And on this day, she sees it. She sees it clear and bright with her own eyes, not half-imagined against clouds.

  A light. The lighthouse, sparking into life in the misty distance.

  She lurches out of the water, its weight making her cumbersome and slow. She is not hungry now, not tired, nor sore. She is focused solely on getting to the lighthouse. It is perhaps fifteen miles now. Perhaps she can be there tomorrow, before it sparks into life again.

  And then, whatever comes next.

  Isabella hardly sleeps for excitement. She fights the urge to walk all night; she knows she won’t make it without collapsing. Finally, she drops off. When she wakes, she can see it. The headland beckons, under a light sea mist. She can see the lighthouse now, red and white. Not far, not far. She gathers fruit and drinks from a stream, but she is restless to keep moving, even in the sun and the heat, beyond endurance. The end is finally in sight.

  Little by little, walking slowly, resting often, she makes her way down the beach.

  But she cannot make it. Not in one day. If she were well and unburdened and walking in the shade of tall oaks, perhaps. But she fears killing herself by pushing too hard. Midmorning she shelters again in the woods. Late afternoon she walks. She sees the light come on and wants to sob. She had wanted to be there by now. She doesn’t want to die this close to refuge.

  She sleeps long and hard. Her body has reached its limit. She cannot risk walking in the heat, so she waits through the day, then climbs to her feet only when the sun has moved into the west. Her legs are like jelly, her feet sting. She draws herself up, pulls on the loathsome petticoat rope. Nearly there, nearly there.

  One foot. The next foot. The beach grows increasingly rocky as she nears the lighthouse. One foot. The next foot. Each step takes an age. Live, Isabella, she directs herself sternly. Don’t collapse now.

  The lighthouse can only be reached by a rocky climb of about ten feet. She considers going around through the bushes, but fears losing her way without the direct line of the ocean beside her. She ties the wooden chest to her back again and begins to climb.

  Dusk is settling around her. Seagulls wheel above and the breeze grows fresh. She is bent over, picking a path over the rocks with bare hands and bare feet, groaning, gasping. She slips, pitches forward and gashes open her injured hand on a sharp rock edge. But nothing will stop her now, not even fresh blood. Forward, forward. Up and up. Until at last she is at the top and the lighthouse bursts into life just as she looks up at it. Her beacon in the dark. Now she is here. Now everything must be all right.

  It must.

  Her head swims. Her ears ring.

  She rounds the lighthouse on feet made of lead and finds a tiny cottage attached, no more than a wooden box built out of the side of the lighthouse. It takes the last of her energy to lift her hand and knock weakly at the door. She fears there will be no answer, so she waits only a few seconds before knocking again. This time she calls out too. “Help!” Her voice is so thin it frightens her. “I need help.” She realizes that she has left a smear of blood on the door from her hand. She turns it over in front of her. The blood is dark in the half-light.

  The door swings open. Isabella looks up into the black eyes of a tall, lean man of about forty years. His eyes widen when he sees her.

  “Please, please,” she says. It is all she can say. Other words have fled, and now she is falling forward, crashing to her knees. He catches her in strong arms, takes her weight and draws her inside. She has an impression of dim spaces, flickering light, then everything goes gray.

  When she opens her eyes, it is nighttime. There is candlelight and she is lying on top of rough blankets on a small bed.

  She blinks, reorientating herself. Sitting on a stool next to the bed is a bearded man with a serious expression. The lighthouse keeper. She is at the lighthouse at last. She groans with relief.

  “What is your name?” he asks, gently.

  She opens her mouth to give him her name, but then stops herself. What if the Winterbournes come looking for her?

  “Mary Harrow,” she says.

  “Do you think you can stand, Mary Harrow? I have soup and bread, and clean water. You ought to eat, get your strength back.”

  “How long have I been asleep?”

  “Six hours. It’s nearly midnight.”

  Isabella sits and gingerly lowers her feet to the floor.

  “Here, let me help you,” he says. With his arm around her waist, he leads her from the bed, past a spiraling staircase to a small, low-ceilinged room. There is a sink, a round table with a single chair, a cast-iron cooker. A smell of cooked fish and tobacco lingers in the air. He slides her onto the chair. She sees the wooden chest, still tied in the petticoat rope, sitting by the door on the bare floorboards.

  Isabella sits quietly. The lighthouse keeper is in charge now; she can stop. He goes to a chest under his sink for a box of first-aid supplies, then lights a lantern and positions it on the table close to her outstretched palm. While he cleans and dresses the wound, he doesn’t meet her eye. His head is bent in concentration, so Isabella has ample opportunity to study him: his dark curling hair and neat beard flecked with gray, his serious eyebrows, his agile fingers.

  “Where are you from?” he asks her, at last.

  “I can’t say.”

  “What was that box on your back?”

  “A burden I soon hope to rid myself of.”

  He bends to look at the chest, and she flies from her seat and throws herself in front of him. “You mustn’t touch it.”

  Startled, the lighthouse keeper recoils. He speaks to her as he might speak to an injured animal, palms held up gently. “Steady,” he says. “I won’t touch it if you don’t want me to.”

  Isabella is desolate and uncertain. She feels as though her edges are dissolving, as though she is made of sand and the wind is eroding her. “I’m so hungry,” she says.

  He nods, then stands and moves to the cooker. She stares at her bandaged hand, and can’t remember how she cut it. She strains her memory. Flashes come to her. Eating lizard. Hunting berries. Pushing her feet up the beach. T
hen she remembers that she cut her hand just hours ago, climbing up the rocks. The fact that a hole seems to have opened up in her memory makes her panic. What is happening to her mind? She shoots out of her seat again and begins to pace.

  The lighthouse keeper turns to her with a plate of steaming soup. He watches her pace and he stands very still, as though his stillness can infect her. Eventually she stops, blinking at him in the growing dark.

  “My name is Matthew Seaward,” he says.

  “I’m so hungry,” she says again.

  He nods towards the table, and she sits. The lighthouse cottage smells oily and hot: trapped air, old seaweed, moldy wood. She doesn’t mind. She breathes in the present, and it fills her lungs brightly. She is safe, for now. The soup is salty and thick. Her mouth and her stomach are in heaven. She eats her fill, then washes it down with a cup of clean, cool water. Her mind slowly seems to reassemble itself. She settles.

  “I have nowhere to stay,” she says. “I don’t know what to do.”

  He leans back on his sink, his gaze traveling from her hair to her dress to her hands and then finally to her eyes. “Your eyes are haunted. What have you seen?”

  She shakes her head. “Please don’t ask me.” She sinks forward onto the table and puts her face on her outstretched arms.

  The lighthouse keeper allows the silence to stretch between them, and then finally he speaks. “The town is just a half-mile from here. I’m sure somebody will take you in.”

  “I can’t go looking like this.”

  “There are clothes in the bedroom, left over from the previous keeper’s wife. And shoes. There’s a big house at the nearest end of the main street. Pale pink boards. Mrs. Katherine Fullbright. She will take you in.”

  Isabella’s stomach drops with disappointment. She doesn’t want to go to town. She wants to stay here, completely still, on this stool. The ordeal is supposed to be over, but clearly it is not. And now she considers it, the ordeal will never be over. She was broken before the ship went down, now her pieces have become muddled.