Page 9

RED JOE

B ack at the cottage, we ate a lunch of roast beef and pickle sandwiches.

“Still want a tour of the lighthouse?” I asked over the washing up.

Eddie fumbled with a plate, almost dropping it back into the sink. “Hell yes!”

I grabbed my coat off the hook on the back of the kitchen door, and we headed outside into the sharp wind.

“I do tours in the summer sometimes,” I said as we crossed the yard to the lighthouse. “It’s a job requirement. I might be a little bit rusty though.”

I unlatched the door at the base of the lighthouse and pushed it open. I rarely kept the lighthouse locked during the day, especially not in winter when there were no tourists wandering around. Well, except for the one with me now.

“So,” I said as we stepped inside. I reached around and flicked the lights on. “This is it.”

The lighthouse was a narrow tower with a staircase that wound around the inside wall like a helix.

There were two rooms off the entry hallway.

The stairs were iron, painted white, with a sturdy handrail following them the whole way up.

These days the stairs were covered in marine-grade non-slip tread, but they must have been a hazardous climb in wet weather in the old days.

Eddie moved over to the middle of the room and reached out to touch the massive central mast—also painted white—that extended up through the heart of the lighthouse. He tipped his head back as he looked up, his long fingers splayed against the glossy white paint.

“The lighthouse was built in 1892,” I said, falling into my awkward tour patter.

It was somehow both easier and more difficult to do around Eddie.

Easier, because even though I wasn’t much of a talker, the words flowed better when it was Eddie I was talking to.

And harder, because every time I met his gaze I felt a spark of interest flickering between us like electricity.

It made it hard to remember my spiel. “The tower is twenty-seven metres high, and there are ninety-six steps to the top.”

Eddie blinked. “Holy shit. You must have thighs like the Hulk!”

That threw me even more. My tourists usually didn’t say anything like that.

“Um,” I said, looking down at my boots briefly as though they might hold the answer.

They didn’t. “Anyway. On the left here is the report room, later the radio room, where the keepers filled out their records and reports. The radio is fully operational, but I mostly use the one over in the cottage kitchen. And on the right is the generator and electrical control room.”

Eddie looked at the padlocked door of the control room with no real interest.

Of course not. Everyone always wanted to go up.

I nodded to the stairs. “Let’s go.”

Eddie put his hand on the rail at the bottom of the steps and began to climb. He tilted his head back to look up and tightened his grip on the rail. “Do you ever get claustrophobic?”

“There are windows along the way,” I said. “Stop if you need to.”

That feeling of the walls closing in wasn’t entirely imaginary. The tower got narrower and the stairs got steeper the higher we got.

We paused on the second floor.

“This is the flag locker room,” I said, pointing at the wooden lockers hugging the edge of the wall.

“We’ve got over forty flags that were used to communicate between the lighthouse and passing ships, in the days before radio.

They’re kept for backup, in case we lose radio contact, but I’ve never had to use them in my time here. ”

Eddie ran his fingers over the surface of one of the lockers, his touch almost reverent.

“You can open it.”

Eddie opened the locker.

I moved to stand beside him. “Each one represents a letter that you can use in semaphore. But some have specific meanings too.” I took a flag from the top of the pile: blue checks on a white background. “Like this one means: ‘Your movements are not understood.’”

“That sounds very mysterious.” Eddie reached for a flag and shook it out. It was a blue cross on a yellow background. “What about this one?”

“Breakdown.”

“I need this one on a shirt,” Eddie said, his mouth twitching in a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

I wanted to say something that would comfort him, or at least ease his fears, but before I could think of the words, he grabbed another flag.

It was two diagonally positioned red squares against a white background. “This one?”

“You are running into danger.”

“Are there any nice ones?” Eddie glanced at me. “Like, what about ‘Hello, I hope you’re having a great day’?”

I raised my eyebrows. “That’s not really the point of them.”

“And this is why people mutiny at sea.” He grimaced. “Everybody’s so tense .”

“You should put that in your thesis,” I suggested. “See how it goes.”

Eddie’s bright laugh felt like an unexpected gift, since it was obvious he was still shaken about last night. It echoed in the confines of the flag room, and warmth flooded through me.

I nodded at the rest of the stairs. “Do you want to see the light?”

I liked visiting the lantern room during the day. The view of the island and the vast Pacific was beautiful. I also liked the lantern itself; sometimes looking at it felt like staring into the eye of a giant glittering insect.

“Oh, wow,” Eddie said when we stepped inside the room, drawn immediately to the lantern.

“It’s a Fresnel lantern. The design dates back to the late seventeenth century. There are over 700 lenses, and the bivalve lens prism directs the light into a single beam. The lantern was originally powered by a vaporised kerosene burner and could be seen eighteen nautical miles out to sea.”

Eddie turned and looked through the windows at the ocean.

“The horizon is about twenty-four nautical miles away,” I said. “Since it was built, the light’s been upgraded a bunch of times. It’s fully automated and electric now. Most places on the mainland don’t have lighthouse keepers anymore, but I’m still hanging in here.”

Eddie pressed his nose to the window. “This is incredible!”

I stepped towards the door that led to the catwalk. “Want to go outside?”

Eddie stared at me, wide-eyed, his face suddenly devoid of colour. “ Outside ?”

I opened the door, and a blast of wind filled the lantern room.

“I’m not good with heights though,” Eddie said.

“You’re standing on the top floor of a lighthouse right now.”

“Um, inside the tower part.”

“You camped on a cliff.”

Eddie held up a finger. “In some trees !”

I tilted my head. “What?”

“It’s psychological. I need something solid to hold onto when I’m near heights, just in case.”

I looked at the door, then back at Eddie, considering. I held out my hand, suddenly nervous myself, though it had nothing to do with heights. “I’m pretty solid.”

Eddie hesitated. A shy smile tugging at the sides of his mouth, he stepped forward and took my hand. His fingers were a little cold, and I resisted the urge to chafe my hands over his and warm him up.

“Come on,” I said instead, and stepped out onto the catwalk.

Eddie kept one hand clasped tightly in mine, and the other on the handrail that surrounded the catwalk.

“Keep your eyes on the horizon,” I said.

Eddie took a deep breath and stared out at the horizon. The wind whipped his scruffy dark hair in a thousand different directions at once, and I could feel it doing the same to mine.

I held Eddie’s hand while he slowly relaxed. His shoulders lost their stiffness, and his death grip on the handrail—and on my hand—loosened at last.

“Okay.” Eddie turned to look at me. “You’ve convinced me. Heights aren’t so scary as long as I’ve got you to hold onto.”

It happened before I even knew what I was doing.

I leaned in toward him, lost in his wide, dark gaze, and then we were kissing.

I thought for a brief, crazy second that my heart was going to beat right out of my chest. Then the kiss was ending, and I felt a stab of panic because what if I’d messed it up?

But Eddie was gripping my hips tightly and laughing softly against my throat, his breath hot against my prickling skin.

“I’ll bet you show all the boys your lighthouse, huh?”

I laughed too and drew him back into the lantern room.

* * *

I n the afternoon, clouds drew in, but they were white and distant and brought no promise of another storm. The temperature dropped a few degrees though, and I loaned Eddie a scarf as we walked back down the hill into the village.

Hiccup joined us.

The second we reached the village, chaos erupted. Well, chaos on a Dauntless scale. There was a flurry of feathery movement in the street behind the harbour wall, and a squawking herd of chickens came racing out to meet us, pursued by a yellow dog.

“Oi!” I yelled at the dog—one of Elias Dinsmore’s, probably—and Hiccup barked in agreement. The yellow dog turned tail and ran. A moment later Tall Tom Finch hobbled around the corner on his cane. Tall Tom was about six hundred years old, and definitely outpaced by the chickens.

He waved his cane in my direction. “Bloody dog!” he called out. “It’s chased me chooks off, Red Joe!”

“Sit down before you fall down, Tom,” I said. “We’ll get ’em back for you.”

Most of the residents of Dauntless Island worked the boats, but Tall Tom’s shout brought a few people out.

Buzzy Pete lunged after a brown hen, his orange high-vis vest flapping in the wind.

Verity Barnes and her boy, little Lost John, came out of their cottage to help.

And so did Agnes Dinsmore with Susan Harper.

Susan smiled and called me by my name; she was having a good day.

Most of them weren’t, and she was usually, as her son Nipper Will said, off with the fairies.