They have their own sort of Parliament here, Mr Stevenson said – and the Water Bailiff is part of that.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Ben equably. He had to admit, hard though it was for Drew, that it was going to be much easier without him. Drew and Young Archibald brought out the very worst in each other. When it was just himself and Archie, Archie seemed to relax. Their backgrounds were not so very different after all. When Archie forgot that he had become an Edinburgh surveyor, Ben noticed that he lapsed into the accents of his early years. Today Young Archibald had been harder to handle. It was always the case when he was nervous. Probably he’d been worrying about today’s interview ever since they left Edinburgh. That was why he’d been so prickly. Drew would never understand that, any more than Archie would understand how Drew had got into that fight. And what Drew could never see was that Archie was good at his job. When he was roused you could see that he cared about it passionately. Too much, perhaps. He wanted more than Mr Stevenson was prepared to give. Maybe Robert Stevenson knew that, and maybe he didn’t. It was no business of Ben’s, and it was quite certain that no one would ever ask Ben what he thought about it.
CHAPTER 7
AS THE TIDE EBBED THE CREGGYNS SLOWLY GREW. WHEN IT was as calm as this, at high tide there were only empty circles rippling outwards to show that the Creggyns were there at all. Once Creggyn Doo had revealed all its shining shelves of seaweed, you knew that Finn’s yawl could come alongside the landing rock at Gob y Vaatey. It was too soon yet. The seaweed on the Creggyns rose and fell gently with the waves, gleaming like the hair of an underwater giant. Maybe the golden weed was the thick curls of the sea king who stirred his cauldron at the bottom of the sea and made the storms rise, but he wasn’t cooking anything down there today. Maybe his storm-pot was empty. Today the sea was rippling silver so that when you half-shut your eyes you saw all the sparkles at once like stars falling.
A brig was becalmed south of the Creggyns. Mally was fairly sure it was a brig, though it seemed to have an extra mast. Mally could recognise nearly all the ships that passed. The others knew them all, except for Mam, who was the only one who couldn’t read these things without thinking about it. But other sorts of reading Mam did best of all. Like words. Mam could read words much more than Lucy, but Lucy could read ships like no one else ever born.
This was a good sitting place if the wind was at all easterly. Today there was hardly any breeze, just the warm smells of the island. Mally had done the jobs Mam had given her this morning. She always had to wash and put away the porridge dishes after breakfast because she didn’t work in the lighthouse yet. But when she was eight she would take her turn doing the light and not have to help with the dishes every single day. That would be better than the way it was now.
She could see the horizon all the way round, which meant that this was a very good day. Sky and sea didn’t meet everywhere because of the far lands. The far lands, when you could see them, were always on the horizon, even though Billy said they weren’t all the same distance away. Mally would never have wondered about that if Billy hadn’t mentioned it, but now it was lodged in her mind as another of those inexplicable things, shadowy shapes on the edge of what she knew for certain.
Today the far lands had come very close, more like real earth than blue clouds, which is what they looked like most often. The Gaffer had come from the far lands when he was young. He came from Scotland, which was north. That was so long ago that Da and Aunt Lucy hadn’t yet been born. Today you could see as much of the Island as was ever possible. The Island with a big ‘I’ was the Isle of Man. Ellan Bride had a small ‘i’ because it was little. Last year Mally had been herself in Finn’s boat, and actually stood on the Island. It was as firm underfoot as Ellan Bride. She’d told Mam that, and Mam said the phrase she wanted was terra firma.
Ellan Bride was terra firma, and occasionally the Island was terra firma too. The far lands were just names, and with the names came stories. There were stories from each place, but more stories from India, because India was the mother of all stories, and in the other countries the stories were fine, but just not quite like the India ones. But India was as far from here as any place could be, and never even so much as a very faint line on the horizon which might be a passing cloud, and no one was likely to get that far, unless they were grown up. For grown-ups all things were possible, though often they didn’t seem to bother.
Mally was sitting in a sheltered crevice between two angled rocks. At eye level, about six inches away, there was a little clump of pink sedums growing out of a crack in the rock. This was nearly the highest place on the island, but not as high as the light tower. The tower had been built high enough for the light to shine out to sea on all sides, because that was what it was for. The light was the reason for everything. In the dark or in the fog the light must never go out. That was their job – hers and Breesha’s and Billy’s and Lucy’s and Mam’s. All the ships that sailed the seas were safe, because when it was dark or foggy the light would never, ever, go out.
At the top of the tower, Lucy opened the window to let out the heat and the smell of oil. She and Breesha paused on the platform to look at the becalmed ship.
‘… that’s how you’re knowing it’s a snow, not a brig,’ Lucy was saying. ‘See, there’s another mast next to the mainmast.’
‘Maybe she’s come from the West Indies,’ said Breesha, enjoying the sound of the name. ‘Bringing sugar and rum and tobacco to Liverpool or Whitehaven.’
‘Maybe.’
‘If we had the telescope we could see her name.’
‘Dratted boy. He must have taken it straight after breakfast.’
‘He always wants to look at things,’ explained Breesha.
Aunt Lucy replied, astonishingly, ‘The telescope doesn’t belong to the light. The Gaffer bought it in Douglas. That would make it Billy’s.’
‘But you said before it had to go with the light!’
‘Things change,’ said Lucy.
Breesha opened her mouth to speak, but Aunt Lucy had turned her back. There is something, thought Breesha. She felt a pang of fear. No one had spoken, but something had happened, and Lucy and Mam knew what it was. Billy didn’t know. Mally might have heard something, as she slept in the bedroom. Mally did sometimes hear Mam and Lucy talk when they thought she was asleep. Mally wasn’t quite as young and stupid as they thought. At least, not always. Anyway, whatever it was, Aunt Lucy would know what to do. Breesha watched Lucy trim the burnt ends off the four wicks in the lowest tier of lamps, and draw them out so they were just the right length. This was a job that had to be done just right: Breesha wasn’t allowed to trim the wicks yet.
‘There you are. You can be making a start on those.’
Breesha always did the lowest row of lamps, and Lucy did the top two tiers. No one else could work as fast as Aunt Lucy. Breesha took a handful of tow and started cleaning her south-facing reflector. Now it was nearly summer the black film over it wasn’t nearly so thick. Last night the lamps had burned for barely eight hours; in winter it was sometimes sixteen. But the summer oil was worse to clean off because it was much stickier than the winter oil. The whale oil they had now was quite good. Last winter’s oil had been horrible. Sometimes they’d found bits of skin and blubber floating in it. They’d creamed off the worst bits when they opened the barrels, because usually that kind of stuff was floating on the top. When they’d first opened those barrels they’d smelt like rotting fish. The oil they were using now just smelt as if a hot animal had been sleeping in the lantern.
At last the reflector was as clean as Breesha could make it. She fetched one of the linen rags from the basket and some chalk white, and started polishing. In summer she always started with the south reflector because as the morning went on the sun got so fierce. In winter she saved south until last. Because each of the numerous mirrors inside the reflector was at a different angle to the sun, each one was a different colour. Breesha could make the colours change by moving her head around and squinting at them. She had to do that anyway to make sure there wasn’t a single smear, but if she half-shut her eyes it was like Aladdin’s chest of jewels