THE GREAT EXHIBITION

This way to the Cobra. Wonders of the East!

It was 1851 and they were in Hyde Park.

Dark felt like a man raised from the dead.

He loved the noise, the excitement, the

programme sellers, the postcard sellers, the

unofficial stalls, the rogues in red neck-cloths, all

chicanery and tongue-twisting. There were card

sharps, jugglers, arias from the Italian opera,

sign writers who would paint your name next to a

gaudy impression of the Crystal Palace. There

were miniature train sets that pulled wagons of

dolls, and there were women dressed up as

dolls, selling violets, selling buns, selling

themselves. There were hawkers on boxes

offering the best, the finest, the one and only,

and there were girls who walked on their hands.

There were horses in heavy gear drawing beer

barrels, and a man with a panther offering the

Mystery of India, and all this before they had

queued to enter the Crystal Palace to see the

wonders of the Empire.

It was their honeymoon, Dark and his new wife,

though their honeymoon had had to be

postponed because Dark had fallen ill as soon

they had been married.

Now he was well, and wearing his Man of God

clothes, he was respectfully motioned through

wherever he went.

His wife was tired - she preferred life plain - and

so Dark found her a chair and went to fetch each

of them pork pies and lemonade. The Queen had

been seen eating a pork pie, and suddenly they

were fashionable. Rich and poor alike were

eating penny pork pies.

Dark had paid his money, and was balancing the

pies and the stoppered lemonade bottles, when

he heard someone say his name - 'Babel'.

The voice was soft, but it cut him cleanly, the way

dressed stone is cut cleanly, and part of him fell

away, and what was underneath was rough and

unworked.

'Molly,' said Dark, as evenly as he could, but his

voice was edged. She was wearing a green

dress, her red hair wound in a plait. She was

carrying a baby who put her hand out to Dark's

face.

Dark hesitated with his cargo and lemonade and

pies. Would she sit down with him for a moment?

She nodded.

They went to a series of tables underneath a

spread of palm trees brought from India, and as

strange and heady to London as a primeval

forest. They sat in rattan chairs, while an Indian

waiter in a turban and sash served Coronation

Chicken to a family of coal merchants from

Newcasde.

'Is the baby ...?

'She is quite well, Babel, but she is blind.'

'Blind?'

And he was back in that terrible day, when she

had come to him, soft and helpless, and he

had ...

She had another lover - he had always known it.

He had watched her walking quickly at night to a

house on the other side of town. She was

cloaked, shrouded, she hadn't wanted to be

seen.

When she had gone in, Dark had stood outside

the window. A young man came forward. She

held out her arms. The man and Molly embraced.

Dark had turned away, the pain in his head sharp

in the brain-pan. He had felt his fear drop anchor

in the soft parts of him. This was the fear that

had been sailing towards him through the fog.

He had set off back to town. He didn't expect to

sleep. Soon he began to walk all night. He

couldn't remember when he had last slept.

He remembered laughing, and thinking that if he

never slept he would be dead. Yes, he felt dead.

He felt thin and empty like a dredged shell. He

looked in the mirror and saw a highly polished

abalone, its inhabitant gone, the shell prized for

its surface. He always dressed well.

Molly had noticed the change in him. She tried to

please him, and sometimes he could forget, but

then, making love, at the moment when he was

most naked, he heard the bell again, and sensed

the ribbed ship with its ragged sails coming

nearer.

He had never told her how he shadowed her

steps, and when they had met one night at an inn

called Ends Meet, and she had told him she was

going to have a child, he had pushed her away

and run through the town and locked himself in

his rooms, wrapped in ragged sails.

On the walls of his rooms were the drawings that

Stevenson had made of the lighthouse at Cape

Wrath. The lighthouse looked like a living

creature, standing upright on its base, like a

seahorse, fragile, impossible, but triumphant in

the waves.

'My seahorse,' Molly had called him, when he

swam towards her in their bed like an ocean of

drowning and longing.

The sea cave and the seahorse. It was their

game.

Their watery map of the world. They were at the

beginning of the world. A place before the flood.

She had come to him that day, soft, open, as he

sat motionless by his dying fire. She had begged

him and he had hit her, hit two red coals into her

cheeks, and then hit her again and again, and

she had put up her arms to shield herself, and ...

She broke his thought as she spoke.

'From where I fell.'

He looked at the child, laughing, gurgling,

unseeing, its hands on its mother's face, its head

turning to follow the sounds. Now he knew what

he had done, and he would have given his life to

put his hand inside time and turn it back.

ʻI will do anything you ask. Tell me. Anything.'

'We have no wants.'

'Molly - am I her father?'

'She has no father.'

Molly stood up to leave. Babel jumped after her,

spilling the bottles of lemonade. Molly held the

baby close, and the baby was quiet, feeling its

mother's alarm.

'Let me hold her.'

'So that you can dash her to the ground?'

'I have thought of you every day since I left. And I

have thought of your child. Our child, if you tell

me so.'

'I did tell you so.'

'I never thought I would see you again.'

'Nor I you.'

She paused, and he remembered her that night,

that first night, with the moon shining white on

her white skin. He put out his hand. She stepped

back.

'It is too late, Babel.'

Yes, too late, and he had made it too late. He

should go back, he knew his wife would be

waiting for him. He should go back now. But as

he took a deep breath to go, his will failed him.

'Spend this day with me. This one day.'

Molly hesitated a long time, while the crowds

passed about them, and Dark, looking down, not

daring to look up, saw reflections in the polished

toe-pieces of his boots.

She spoke like someone far off. Someone who

was a country where he was born.

'This day then.'

He shone. She made him shine. He took the

baby and held it by the hissing engines, and

close against the smooth traction of the wheels.

He wanted her to hear pistons pumping and coal

shovelling and water drumming against the sides

of the giant copper boilers. He took her tiny

fingers and ran them over brass rivets, steel

funnels, cogs, ratchets, a rubber horn that

trumpeted when she squeezed it in her tiny

hands, Dark's hands over hers. He wanted to

make for her a world of sounds that was as

splendid as the world of sight. Some hours later,

he saw Molly smile.

Late now. Crowds were drifting towards the

bandstand. Dark bought the baby a clockwork

bear made of real bearskin. He rubbed it against

her cheek, then he wound it up and the bear

brought two cymbals together in its paws.

It was time for him to go, he knew it was, but still

they stood together, as everyone else parted to

pass them. Then silently, without him asking,

Molly opened her bag and gave him a card with

her address in Bath.

She kissed his cheek, and turned away.

Dark watched her go, like watching a bird on the

horizon, that only you can see, because only you

have followed it.

Then she was gone.

Late now. Shadows. The flare of gas lamps. His

reflection in every pane of glass. One Dark. A

hundred. A thousand. This fractured man.

Dark remembered his wife.

He pushed his way down the galleries and back

to where he had left her. She was still there,

hands folded in her lap, her face a mask.

'I am sorry,' he said, I was delayed.'

'For six hours.'

'Yes.'

Pew - why didn't my mother marry my father?

She never had time. He came and went.

Why didn't Babel Dark marry Molly?

He doubted her. You must never doubt the one

you love.

But they might not be telling you the truth.

Never mind that. You tell them the truth.

What do you mean?

You can't be another person's honesty, child, but

you can be your own.

So what should I say?

When?

When I love someone?

You should say it.

A stranger in his own life, but not here, not with

her.

The house he bought her in her name. The child

he took as his own; his blind daughter, blue-eyed

like him, black-haired like him. He loved her.

He promised himself that he would come back

forever. He told Molly that what had begun as a

penance had become a responsibility. He

couldn't leave Salts, not now, no, not yet, but

soon, yes very soon. And Molly, who had begged

to come with him, accepted what he said about

his life there, and that it would be no life for their

daughter, and no place for the second child that

Molly was expecting.

He said nothing to her about his wife in Salts,

and nothing to her about his salty new son, who

had been born almost without him noticing.

April. November. The twice-yearly visits to Molly.

Sixty days a year where life is, where love is,

where his private planet tracked into the warmth

of its sun.

In April and November, he arrived half frozen,

hardly able to speak, the life in him remote. He

came to her door and fell inside, and she took

him by the fire and talked to him, for hours it

seemed, to keep him conscious, to keep him

from fainting.

Whenever he saw her he wanted to faint. He

knew it was the sudden rush of blood to his

head, and the fact that he forgot to breathe. He

knew it was an ordinary symptom and an

ordinary cause, but he knew, too, that whenever

he saw her, his desiccated, half-stilled body

jerked forward, towards the sun. Heat and light.

She was heat and light to him, whatever the

month.

In December and May, when it was time for him

to leave, he carried the light with him for a while,

though the source was gone. As he travelled out

of the long sun-spread days, he hardly noticed

that the clock was shortening, that night was

falling earlier, that some mornings there was

already a frost.

She was a bright disc in him that left him sunspun.

She was circular, light-turned, equinoxsprung.

She was season and movement, but he

had never seen her cold. In winter, her fire sank

from the surface to below the surface, and

warmed her great halls like the legend of the king

who kept the sun in his hearth.

'Keep me by you,' he said. It was almost a

prayer, but like most of us he prayed for one

thing, and set his life on course for elsewhere.

They were in the garden raking leaves. He

leaned on his rake and looked at her, their tiny

daughter on all fours, feeling the different-shaped

edges of the leaves. He picked one up and felt it

himself; hornbeam it was, serrated, corrugated,

nothing like the fronds of the ash, or the flat,

spotted, palm-sized curling sycamore, or the oak,

sporting acorns and still green.

He wondered how many days he had in his life -

in his whole life - and when they had fallen one

by one, and him naked again, time's covering

gone, would the leaves be heaped up, the rotting

pile of his days, or would he recognise them still -

those different-edged days he had called his life?

He put his hand into the pile. This one, and this

one - when he had taken Molly and their

daughter to the sea. This one, when they had

gone for a walk along the beach and he had

found her a shell snail-tracked like the inside of

an ear. This one, when he had been waiting for

her, and when he had seen her before she had

seen him, and he was able to watch her, as only

strangers can and lovers long to do.

This one, when he had held his baby high above

the world, and perhaps for the first time in his life

wanted nothing for himself.

He counted out sixty leaves and arranged them

in two blocks of thirty. Well, there were three

hundred and sixty-five days in a year. For three

hundred and five he would no longer exist.

Why? Why must he live like this? He had got

himself caught in a lie and the lie had got him

caught in a life. He must finish his sentence.

Seven years, he had privately decided when

Molly had agreed to take him back.

Then they would leave England forever. He

would marry her. His wife and son in Salts would

be well provided for. He would be free. No one

would ever hear of Babel Dark again.

How were you born, Pew?

Unexpectedly, child. My mother was gathering

clams on the sea edge when a handsome

enough rogue offered to tell her fortune. As such

a thing didn't happen every day, she wiped her

hands on her skirt and held out her palm.

Did he see riches, or a great house, or a long life,

or a quiet hearth?

He couldn't be sure of any of that, no, but he did

foresee a fine child born within nine months of

this day.

Really?

Well, she was very perplexed by that, but the fine

rogue assured her that the very same thing has

happened to Mary, and she had given birth to

Our Lord. And after that they took a walk along

the beach. And after that she forgot all about him.

And after that, his fortune-telling came true.

Miss Pinch says you came from the orphanage in

Glasgow.

There's always been a Pew at Cape Wrath. But

not the same Pew. Well, well.

As I was no longer Making Progress, I let my

mind drift where it would. I rowed my blue boat

out to sea and collected stories like driftwood.

Whenever I found something - a crate, a gull, a

message in a bottle, a shark bloated belly-up,

pecked and pitted, a pair of trousers, a box of

tinned sardines, Pew asked me the story, and I

had to find it, or invent it, as we sat through the

sea-smashed nights of winter storms.

A crate! Raft for a pygmy sailing to America.

A gull! A princess trapped in the body of a bird.

A message in a bottle. My future.

A pair of trousers. Belonging to my father.

Tinned sardines. We ate those.

Shark. And inside it, dull with blood, a gold coin.

Omen of the unexpected. The buried treasure is

always there.

When Pew sent me to bed, he gave me a match

to light my candle. In the tiny oval of the match

flame, he asked me to tell him what I saw - a

boy's face, or a horse, or a ship, and as the

match burned down, the story would burn out

over my fingers and disappear. They were never

finished, these stories, always beginning again -

the boy's face, a hundred lives, the horse, flying

or enchanted, the ship sailing over the edge of

the world.

And then I would try to sleep and dream of

myself, but the message in the bottle was hard to

read.

'Blank,' said Miss Pinch, when I told her about it.

But it wasn't blank. Words were there all right. I

could see one of them. It said LOVE.

'That's lucky,' said Pew. 'Lucky to find it. Lucky to

search for it.'

'Have you ever loved anybody, Pew?'

'Pew has, yes, child,' said Pew.

'Tell me the story.'

'All in good time. Now go to sleep.'

And I did, the message in the bottle floating just

above my head. LOVE, it said. Love, love, love,

or was it a bird I heard in the night?

The mystery of Pew was a mercury of fact.

Try and put your finger on the solid thing and it

scattered into separate worlds.

He was just Pew; an old man with a bag of

stories under his arm, and a way of cooking

sausages so that the skin turned as thick as a

bullet casing, and he was, too, a bright bridge

that you could walk across, and look back and

find it vanished.

He was and he wasn't - that was Pew.

There were days when he seemed to have

evaporated into the spray that jetted the base of

the lighthouse, and days when he was the

lighthouse. It stood, Pew-shaped, Pew-still,

hatted by cloud, blind-eyed, but the light to see

by.

Dogjim was asleep on his peg rug, made out of

scraps like himself. I had unhooked the big brass

bell we used to call each other for supper or a

story, and I was rubbing the salt off it with a

duster torn out of an old vest.

Everything in the lighthouse was old - except me

-and Pew was the oldest thing of all, if you

believed him.

Pew lit his pipe, and cupped the bowl in both

hands, looking up, as the wind-once-a-week

ship's clock struck nine.

'Babel Dark lived two lives, child, as I have said.

He built Molly a fine house outside Bristol - not

too near, but near enough, as though he had to

court danger as he courted his new wife - and

new wife she was, for Dark married Molly in a

thirteenth-century Cornish church, hewn from a

single rock.

'Remember the rock whence ye are hewn? Aye,

but he had forgotten about the pit.

'Down south, Dark went by the name of Lux and

spoke with a Welsh accent, because his mother

was Welsh, and he knew the lilt.

'Mr Lux paid well and lived well when he was

with Molly, and Molly explained to anyone who

was curious that her husband was a man with

shipping interests that kept him away for most of

the year, except for the two months, April and

November, when he came back to her.

'He gave no orders to her but one, that she

should never follow him to Salts.

'One day, a handsome woman came and lodged

at The Razorbill - that is to say, The Rock and Pit

- and gave her name as Mrs Tenebris. She did

not state her business, but she went to church on

Sunday, as you would expect a lady to do.

'She sat in the front pew in a grey dress, and

Dark mounted the pulpit to preach his sermon,

and the text was, T have set my Covenant in the

Heavens like a Bow,' referring to the rainbow

after the Flood, when God promised Noah not to

destroy the world again - I tell you this, Silver,

because your Bible reading is so poor.

'Well, as he spoke, and he was a fine preacher,

suddenly he glanced down to the front row, and

saw the lady in grey, and those about him said

he turned as pale as a skinned plaice. He never

faltered in his speaking, but his hands gripped

the Bible as though a fiend was dragging it from

him.

'As soon as the service was over, he didn't wait

to receive anyone at the church door, he took his

horse and rode off.

'They saw him, wandering on the cliff edge with

his dog, and they were afraid. He was that kind

of man. There was something behind his eyes

that made them afraid.

'A week went by, and when the next Sunday

came the lady had gone, but she had left

something behind in Dark, and that's a fact. You

could see his torment written right across him.

He used to vex the sailors for their tattoos, but he

was the marked man now.'

'Was it Molly?'

'Oh it was her, it was. They had a meeting

together, here in this lighthouse, in this very

room, her sitting in the chair that I sit in now - him

pacing, pacing, pacing, and the rain hammering

at the glass like a thing trying to get in.'

'What did they talk about?'

'I only heard some of it - I was outside, of

course.'

'Pew, you weren't born.'

'Well, the Pew that was born was.'

'What did she say to him?'

Dark could feel the familiar pain behind his eyes.

His eyes were bars, and behind them was a

fierce, unfed animal. When people looked at him

they had the feeling of being shut out. He did not

shut them out. He shut himself in.

He opened the small door at the base of the

lighthouse and climbed round and round the

steps to the light. He climbed swiftly and the

stairs were steep, but he was hardly out of breath

at all. His body seemed to get stronger as his

grip on himself lessened. He was in control, yes,

he was in control, until he slept, or until his mind

escaped his cage as it sometimes did. He had

been able to stop it by force of will, just as he had

been able to wake up at will, driving the dreams

back into the night, lighting his lamp and reading.

He had been able to force it all away, and if he

woke exhausted in the morning he did not care.

But lately, he could never wake out of those

dreams. Little by little, the night was winning.

He walked purposefully into the room. He

faltered. He stopped. Molly was there, with her

back to him, and as she turned round, he loved

her. It was very simple; he loved her. Why had he

made it so complicated?

'Babel ...'

'Why have you come here? I asked you never to

follow me.'

'I wanted to see your life.'

'I have no life, but for my life with you.'

'You have a wife and son.'

'Yes.'

He paused. How to explain? He had not lied to

Molly - she knew he was the Minister of Salts. It

had never seemed necessary to tell her about his

wife or his son.

There had been no more children. Couldn't she

understand?

'What will you do now?'

ʻI have not the least idea.'

ʻI love you,' he said.

The three most difficult words in the world.

She touched him as she went past him and

slowly down the stairs. He listened until he heard

the door close a long way off - at the bottom of

his life, it seemed.

Then he started to cry.

That day in the lighthouse she had gone up into

the light, and in her copper-coloured dress, and

autumn hair, she stood like a delicate lever

amongst the instruments that revolved and

refracted the lens.

This was Babel's beginning, she thought, the

reason for his being, the moment of his birth.

Why could he not be as steady and as bright?

She had never depended on him, but she had

loved him, which was quite different. She had

tried to absorb his anger and his uncertainty. She

had used her body as a grounding rod. She had

tried to earth him. Instead, she had split him.

If she had refused to see him that day, if she had

not even spoken his name, if she had seen him

and hidden in the crowds, if she had climbed up

onto the iron gallery and watched him. If she had

never bound up his finger. If she had not lit a fire

in a cold room.

He was like this lighthouse in some ways. He

was lonely and aloof. He was arrogant, no doubt

of that, and cloaked in himself. He was dark.

Babel Dark, the light in him never lit. The

instruments were in place, and polished too, but

the light was not lit.

If she had never lit a fire in a cold room ...

But, when she slept or when she was alone,

when the children were quiet, her mind spread

round him like the sea. He was always present.

He was her navigation point. He was the

coordinate of her position.

She did not believe in destiny, but she believed in

this rocky place. The lighthouse, Babel. Babel,

the lighthouse. She would always find him, he

would be there, and she would row back to him.

Can you leave someone and be with them? She

thought you could. She knew that whatever

happened today, whatever action they took,

whether she kept him or lost him, it hardly made

any difference. She had a feeling of someone in

a play or a book. There was a story: the story of

Molly O'Rourke and Babel Dark, a beginning, a

middle, an end. But there was no such story, not

that could be told, because it was made of a

length of braid, an apple, a burning coal, a bear

with a drum, a brass dial, his footsteps on the

stone stairs coming closer and closer.

Dark opened the door.

She did not turn round.

Eyes like a faraway ship, Pew was sleeping.

After I had walked the dog and made the first pot

of Full Strength Samson, I sat out on the deck of

the light, and started to go through the post. Post

was my job because Pew couldn't read it.

There were the usual things - brass instrument

catalogues, special offer oilskin coats, thermal

underwear from Wolsey - the suppliers of

Captain Scott's 1913 Polar Expedition. I put a

tick by a maroon vest and longjohns, and opened

the last long white envelope.

It was from Glasgow. The lighthouse was going

to be automated in six months.

When I read the letter to Pew, he stood up very

dignified and threw the ends of his tea into the

sea. Gulls screamed round the top of the Light.

'There's been a Pew here since 1828.'

'They're going to give you a lot of money when

you leave. It's called a Redundancy Package,

and it includes Alternative Accommodation.'

ʻI don't need money, child. I need what I have.

You write to them and tell them that Pew is

staying. They can stop paying me, but I'm staying

where I am.'

So I wrote a letter to the Northern Lighthouse

Board, and they replied, very formally, that Mr

Pew would leave on the appointed day, and there

would be no right of appeal.

Everything happened as it always does; there

was a petition, there were letters in the

newspapers, there was a small item on the

television news, a picket in Glasgow, then after

what was called a period of 'consultation' the

Board went ahead as it had planned.

Miss Pinch came visiting, and asked me what I

intended to do with my Future. She spoke about

it as though it were an incurable disease.

'You have a future,' she said. 'We must take it

into account.'

She suggested I try for a Junior Trainee Assistant

Librarian Temporary Grade on a three-month

work placement. She warned me that I shouldn't

be too ambitious - not suitable for Females, but

that librarianship was suitable for Females. Miss

Pinch always said Females, holding the word

away from her by its tail.

My future had been the lighthouse. Without the

lighthouse, I would have to begin again - again.

'Isn't there anything else I could do?' I asked

Miss Pinch.

'Very unlikely.'

'I'd like to work on a ship.'

'That would be itinerant.'

'My father was crew on a ship.'

'And look what happened to him.'

'We don't know what happened to him.'

'We know he was your father.'

'You mean I happened to him?'

'Exactly. And look how difficult that has been.'

Miss Pinch approved of automation. There was

something about human beings that made her

uncomfortable. She had refused to sign our

petition. Salts, she said, must move with the

times, which seemed odd to me, when Miss

Pinch had never moved at all - not with the times

nor with anything else.

Salts - boarded-up, sea-lashed, ship-empty,

harbour-silted, and one bright light. Why take

away the only thing we had left?

'Progress,' said Miss Pinch. 'We are not

removing the light. We are removing Mr Pew.

That is quite different.'

'He is the light.'

'Don't be silly.'

I saw Pew raise his head, listening to me.

'One day the ships will have no crew, and the

aeroplanes will have no pilots, and the factories

will be run by robots, and computers will answer

the telephone, and what will happen to the

people?'

'If ships had had no crew when your father came

to call, your mother would have not have been a

disgrace.'

'And I would not have been born.'

'You would not have been an orphan.'

'If I hadn't been an orphan, I would never have

known Pew.'

'What possible difference could that have made?'

'The difference that love makes.'

Miss Pinch said nothing. She got up from the one

comfortable chair where she always sat when

she visited us, and swept down the spiral stairs

like a hailstorm. Pew looked up, as he heard her

leave - metal-capped heels, keys jangling, ferrule

of her umbrella drilling every step of the stone,

until she was gone in a shatter of slamming

doors, and clatter of bicycle across the jetty.

'You've offended her,' said Pew.

'I offended her by being born.'

'Well, and that can't be held as your fault. It's no

child's fault to be born.'

'Is it a misfortune?'

'Don't regret your life, child. It will pass soon

enough.'

Pew got up and went to tend the light. When the

men with computers came to automate it, it

would flash every four seconds as it always did,

but there would be no one to tend it, and no

stories to tell. When the ships came past, no one

would be saying, 'Old Pew's in there, lying his

head off with his stories.'

Take the life away and only the shell is left.

I went down to my eight-legged bed. Every time I

had grown, we had just stuck an extension on

the bed I had, so four legs had become six, and

lately, six had become eight. My dog still had his

original number.

I lay there, stretched out, looking at the one star

visible through the tiny window of the room. Only

connect. How can you do that when the

connections are broken?

'That's your job,' Pew had said. 'These lights

connect the whole world.'

Tell me a story, Pew.

What story, child?

One that begins again.

That's the story of life.

But is it the story of my life?

Only if you tell it.

Date: 2016-01-03; view: 788