The Lighthouse

Choppy sea, angry-looking in the dark. No lights anywhere, not even starlight. He looked down. The cliffs weren’t sheer there; the land fell away in a series of rolls and declivities to the boiling surf and the rocks fifty or sixty yards below. One of the declivities was clogged with driftwood, a whitish mass in the blackness. Bones of old ships, lost off Cape Despair. Old mariners too, perhaps. Dead things. Piles of old bones.

He listened. Blowhole down there somewhere: he could hear the whistling hiss as one of the bigger waves crashed through the cave or crack. Primitive form of fog signal, blowholes. Drill a hole through the top of the rock and mount a real whistle above it, and every time a wave struck the entrance the whistle would blow. Wheeee-oo! Wheeee-oo!

The wind had numbed his face, his hands; had caught in his shirt and was billowing it violently, threatening to tear it off his back. But his awareness of these things was peripheral: mercifully, the pain had begun to lessen. He stood quite still, his face upturned to the dark overcast sky, listening to the pound of the surf and its whistling hiss through the blowhole. Better. Not gone completely, some of the pressure still there, but better. He could think and see again with clarity.

He took several deep breaths, raked a hand through his beard, and then through his hair. Cold-now he felt it, the numbness and the chill. His teeth began an involuntary chattering. Idiotic, coming out here like this without a coat. Inviting pneumonia.

He pushed away from the cypress, hurried back to the house. Alix hadn’t realized he’d gone out; the same silence told him she was still at work in her studio. He crossed to the old wood-burner, fed several chunks of cordwood to the dying fire within, and knelt before its open door until the numbness left him and his skin tingled from the heat. The pressure behind his eyes was mostly gone now, but the restlessness was still in him, the need for movement. As soon as he was warm he stood up, began to pace the room. Back upstairs to work? No, he couldn’t face the typewriter again tonight. What then? A drive? He didn’t like to drive at night these days, but up here, as isolated as the area was, and if he was careful and didn’t stay out long…

He went into the cloakroom off the kitchen, got his overcoat, and then entered Alix’s studio. He told her he was out of tobacco and felt like a drive anyway; he couldn’t tell her the truth. It relieved him when she didn’t ask to come along. She was caught up in her sketch of the Pharos.

“What do you think?” she asked, turning her drawing board so he could see it. “Satisfactory?”

“More than that.”

She smiled, pleased. “Well, it still needs work. How’s the writing coming?”

“So-so. I can use the break.”

“You look tired, love. Maybe you should wait until tomorrow to go into the village. There might not be any place open this time of night that sells pipe tobacco.”

“No, I’m all right.”

“You sure?”

“Driving relaxes me, you know that.”

In the doorway he hesitated. The need was there again, the need to unburden himself to her. But the words he wanted to speak were walled up inside him and he didn’t have the tools to break down the wall. Might never have the tools; the truth might have to come from Dave Sanderson or one of the specialists.

How do you tell your wife you have atrophying optic nerves and there is nothing the medical profession can do about it?

How do you tell her you’re slowly and inexorably going blind?

Driving relaxes me, you know that.

But not this time. He was on the outskirts of Hilliard when it started again.

The bulging…

Alix

She set down her pen, adjusted the Tensor lamp, and looked critically at the more fully realized sketch of the Pharos on her drawing board. Not bad, really, given that she had so little factual detail to work with. Or maybe that was what made it good, the opportunity to give her imagination free rein. The image had come to her almost unbidden. Wouldn’t it be strange if the shining marble tower of her sketch actually resembled the ancient, vanished lighthouse? How did metaphysicians explain things like that? The collective unconscious? All of mankind’s knowledge stored in a pool and available to any given individual should he tap into it. Something like that. She’d have to ask Jan; he’d know.

She raised her head, looked at the slick blackness of the window behind her worktable. She couldn’t see much of the cliffs and the sea beyond, but she was aware they were there. Normally she loved the ocean, could sit and watch it for hours, even at night. But tonight the thought of it-cold and turbulent, gnawing insatiably at the rocky shore-filled her with a wrenching loneliness. She wanted warmth, cheerful sounds, companionship-none of which were available with Jan gone. The only sound was the wind, baffling around the lighthouse tower, muttering down the kitchen chimney.