Light Errant (33 page)

Didn't matter anyway what I wanted, what I might or might not have suggested. Janice held out both her hands towards me,
help me up
; I gripped her wrists and pulled unhurriedly, she swayed to her feet and swapped our hands around somehow so that it was she holding me, tugging me gently towards the door, saying, “Thanks, Laura, you're a pet. Won't be long...”

And then there were the steps down, and her hand on the back of my neck, scratching, not lightly; and her saying, “You know your trouble, Ben lad? You don't
think
, you just panic all the time, do what you always have done, run in circles with a wing trailing...”

Oh, was that my trouble, was it? Right now I thought my trouble was beside me, raising welts; or above me, doing sentry-go more dutifully than we had and still giggling the while, no doubt about that. Or both, a man can have more trouble than one. Born to it, but I did think that this was more than my inheritance as the steps led us downward.

o0o

Halfway down, we encountered Jamie coming up, and received a severe change of plan.

He had cans of Coke in one hand, chocolate bars in the other. “Don't hurry back,” he said. “Sorry, but I've had all I can take of the wet relatives. And it's our turn up there, I reckon.”

Not for the duty, he meant, for the privacy: for kissing in isolation, or doing whatever more their greater nerve could encompass. Or their greater need, perhaps. They had so much more to lose than I did, if either one of them lost the other, which both must have been certain of last night. For sure they deserved some time alone.

Who knows, maybe an objective voice would say that I deserved or even needed a little of what I got in the café, in Jamie's place. Janice wouldn't, but she was no more objective than I was.

We went out of the lighthouse and around its curving bulk, following a brick-laid footpath; came to the little house behind and paused to tut disingenuously at the broken door, where someone—probably Jamie, though it might have been Serena—had forced the lock, with a lump of rock by the battered look of it.

Just inside were the toilets, where we both got what we really did urgently need, a comfort-break, a long and steaming piss. I was out first, and waited for her; then we went on through another door into the café proper.

My female cousins were grouped, almost huddled together by a window, keeping watch over the grey sea more diligently than we had from our far better vantage. Feeling abandoned by the nervy look of them, by the eager way they jumped up to welcome us, or rather me.

“Benedict! ... Ben, come and sit down, sit here... Would you like a coffee? Christa, fetch Ben a coffee. How do you like it? Black, Chrissie, and some biscuits too...”

Oh, it was strange, it was rare to be greeted so effusively by my family, to whom I had only ever been first an adjunct and then a misfit, always something less than I should have been, a weakling and a failure in a tribe that had no time for either.

Briefly, I enjoyed it. Milked it, even. Took the seat they beckoned me towards, and left Janice to drag up another for herself; nibbled a biscuit, sipped a coffee, basked a little in the general relief my womenfolk were showing, simply to have me with them.

The unaccustomed pleasure paled quickly, though. Not quickly enough for sceptical Janice, who'd had to fetch her own coffee also and radiated a silent but scathing discontent at my side, which I felt sure would find lyrical expression later; but I guess I'm not cut out for adulation, especially when it's cut by that same wariness that Christa had shown earlier, that borders on simple fear.

It made me uncomfortable, restless under their eyes. Janice actually broke first, lost all patience with their tongue-tied gladness, their relief; but when she stirred beside me, when she thrust herself to her feet and said, “There's nothing doing here. I'm going for a walk,” it was the work of a moment to follow.

“Hang on, Jan, I'll come with you.”

She checked, and seemed on the verge of saying no, of saying, “No, I don't want you,” which would have been a hard thing to handle for more reasons than the one. She only shrugged, though, pushed her way through the door and left me to catch it on the rebound.

Behind me I could hear soft moans of disappointment, of returning anxiety,
he's our shield and defender and he's leaving us
, but I thought they could live with the disappointment. They didn't really need me, they only thought they did.

o0o

I was expecting excoriation from Janice, but again I thought I'd live through it, if uncomfortably.

In fact, after she'd stormed and scrabbled her way down the hill—straight down, not troubling to follow the road around—with me trailing puppy-style in her wake, she stopped and waited for me, breathing hard; and when I reached her she slipped her arm through mine and said, “Never mind, eh? I was adored once, too.”

I shook my head, wanting to say no, it wasn't that, it was only that they felt safe with me there and scared without, and fussing was the only way they knew to say so. But I didn't have much spare breath myself, it had been a steep and tricky scramble; and by the time my lungs had caught up with me my brain was way ahead and wondering, thinking that she wasn't just talking about the girls in the café. And before I could work my way up to asking her—
how do you mean, what are you saying here, something about Laura and me?
—she was tugging on my elbow, wanting to be moving again.

I glanced around to get my bearings, then said, “No, this way. I'll show you something, a special place of ours.”

o0o

I took her round the ragged rock that we called Greenbeard, to the smooth-worn boulder where Jamie and I had always liked to sit and talk and watch the sea, where we'd brought fish and chips and griefs just days before, where I'd never brought and never thought to bring anyone else.

This was the far side from the causeway, where the Island's rocky flanks plunged into unplumbed depths of churning water. Unplumbed by us, at least; drop pebbles and kraken-waking chunks of stone into it as we could, as we did, as we had all our lives, we'd still never heard an echo coming up from when they settled on the sea-bed.

“They'll not be coming now,” Janice said, scanning the bare horizon. Then, “Will they?” with a touch of uncertainty.

“No.” Not with the sun already westering somewhere behind us, below the peak of the Island already, casting its shadow out across the sea. Not time enough left for a game of hide-and-seek through the attractions, even if they'd worked themselves up to face me again after my little touch of temper at the causeway. Come nightfall, there'd be Jamie, and for all they knew there'd be all the family massing on the shore. They wouldn't come now. “I didn't bring us here to watch.”

“What, then?”

“Just to sit, I guess,” I said, and did; and so did she beside me, grunting with pleased surprise when she found the boulder still warm beneath us.

Only I couldn't sit here without talking, without being serious. Even without Jamie, the habit was too ingrained. “You know,” I said slowly, watching how the spray flung up beneath our feet, “I used to think...”

“Did you? So why did you stop, then, too much strain on the old brain cell, was it?”

I just looked at her. She grinned, hugged herself against my arm, said, “No, go on, then. What did you use to think?”

I used to think that I was born to run, that this wide horizon was a fence made to close me out, to keep me from ever coming home; but I was back now and I was looking at her, and the second of those two states was the greater surprise. I felt suddenly that I owed her something, more than I actually had it in my gift to bestow; so I did what I could, I gave her what I had, I lied to her.

“I used to think I'd bring Laura here,” I said, though in fact I'd never got that far. I'd learned too soon that Laura would never grant me that right, to bring her to my special places.

“Uh-huh,” she said, and her grin had a wholly different quality now. “Starting to figure it out now, are you?”

“What?”

“Why you don't hate Jamie, fool.”

A bit before dusk, we made our way back to the road, and so up the hill to the lighthouse.
Before the light fails
, I'd said, meaning it two different ways. I didn't fancy that scramble over weed-wet rocks in the crepuscule; and my shift was over anyway, my time was passing, I had to hand the baton on to Jamie.

Which I did with a flourish, albeit only verbal.

He and Laura were already down from their vigil, whatever they'd actually been doing up there. One day, I thought, I might ask, see if they really were bolder than I was. We found them in the café, sipping coffee, seemingly undisturbed by the ongoing anxieties around them. The cousins were at the windows still, watching the sun, silently urging it on down; after my abandonment, they were obviously desperate for the dark, to be under his protective aegis.

I detached my hand from Jan's, purely to clap it loudly onto his shoulder. Never mind that Jan instantly put her arm round my waist instead, and never mind that Laura smiled privately at the sight of that. I had my own pleasure to exact.

“Sun's going,” I said, loud enough for everyone to hear, though I knew damn well that everyone was well aware already. “It's your turn now.”

“To do what?” he demanded.

“Get us off, of course.”

“Yeah, right. How do I do that?”

“Well, first,” I said cheerfully, having it all planned out in my head, “you let the family know where we are.”

“How, Ben? We don't have the phone any more. They took it off Laura at the station. This one's dead,” with a jerk of his head towards the payphone in the corner of the café. “Either they've cut the lines or you did, when you ripped up the causeway.”

“Yeah, I'd expected that. But it's okay,” it was all part of the plan. “You just set a beacon, something the family can't miss. They'll come. Then we'll know it's safe to cross back. No one's going to be watching for us with a rifle after a fleet of Macallans turns up.”

“Unh.” He thought about that for a moment, nodded slowly, then went on, just as I'd hoped. “But how do we get across? They're not going to turn up in boats.”

“Don't need them to. We'll walk. I'll show you. But we need the beacon first, soon as it gets dark enough...”

o0o

I was teasing and mysterious, he grumbled and glared at me; but he came outside, with all the others following. To the east the sky was fading to purple, and the moon was up as though she knew we'd need her. I grinned contentedly, and pointed at the black bulk of the lighthouse like a finger shadowed against the falling sun.

“Beacon,” I said. “That's what it's
for
, right?”

“Right...”

There was respect in Jamie's acknowledgement, as well as confusion and some irritation. Just the combination I'd been working for. Sheer ego, but I wanted to show my clever cousin, all my cousins just who was still in charge here, even after my light was gone.

We waited, not for long and I at least was not impatient at the waiting; the sunset was gorgeous and I enjoyed every moment of it, leaning on Jan's shoulder and talking quietly about the colours, about other sunsets I'd seen on my travels, high in the mountains or down on the coast. I didn't get much back from her but grunts and frowns, but that was okay. I was riding shamefully high on my own self-satisfaction, and refusing to be ashamed about it.

At last the sun was gone, we were left only the moon and stars to play with, no trace of a tingle on my skin except when I touched Jamie's. I touched him, and he turned his eyes up towards the lantern of the lighthouse, dead these many years but due to live again tonight, though it would die a lasting death in the process. More obedient than inspired, Jamie reached out with his talent, and set the lantern suddenly ablaze with nightfire.

Cold blue light, flickering and flaming, guttering in no wind that we could feel; we had stark shifting shadows at our feet now, and it was easy to see the path down to the road below. All part of the plan.

“Let's go down to the causeway,” I suggested, knowing that my suggestions were orders tonight. “By the time we get there, something may be happening.”

o0o

What was due to happen duly did. There were plenty of houses along the coast here, plenty of people to see the light; some if not most would know what it was, what it portended; one at least was sure to have a contact in the family, sure to let them know. The Macallans have few friends, but who needs friends when the bulk of your enemies are cowed and subservient?

We took our time, going the long, slow way all around the Island for reasons of comfort and safety, for a total lack of hurry now. We watched and worried over each other's footing at the top, where the path might be clear to see in the ice-blue light but jumping shadows made every step uncertain; Jamie took the steepest section backwards, risking a fall himself to hold Laura's hands and guide her feet directly. Jan and I, we linked tight together and took it side by side, risking each other, both for one and one for both and “stop
giggling
, girl, we'll slip...!”

The downspiralling road took us out of the immediate glare, the lightfall from the lighthouse, though it still flared its
look at me!
message to a hopefully-watching world. Jamie could have made torches or fireworks or wills-o'-the-wisp if they'd been needed, but the moon gave us light enough to walk by.

Light enough to romance by, also. Janice's feet lagged, unaccountably to me; when even shy backmarker Christa had overtaken us, I murmured, “What's the matter, is it all catching up with you? Not far to go now, love, and it's over.”

“It's not, you know,” she said certainly. “It's hardly started yet.” And then she stopped dead, whch meant perforce that I stopped too; and she said, “Nothing's the matter,
actually
, I just wanted to be sure you weren't staring at Laura over my shoulder,” and then she kissed me. Again.