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Overview
Set in the early nineteenth century, Pharos is a dazzling ghost story from award-winning author Alice Thompson.
A young woman is washed up on the shores of Jacob's Rock, a remote lighthouse island off the coast of Scotland. She does not know who she is or how she got there. She has no memory. The keeper of the lighthouse and his assistant take her in and feed and clothe her. But this mysterious woman is not all that she seems, and neither is the remote and wind-swept island.
Eerily reminiscent of Turn of the Screw and The Others, Pharos is a breathless tale of the supernatural.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466866423 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 03/18/2014 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 160 |
| File size: | 334 KB |
About the Author
Alice Thompson's first novel, Justine, was joint winner (with Graham Swift) of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. For her second novel, Pandora's Box, she was shortlisted for the Stakis Scottish Writer of the Year. She has been Writer in Residence for the Shetland Isles and for St. Andrews University. In 2000 she won a Creative Scotland Award. Her work has been translated into six languages. She lives in Edinburgh.
Read an Excerpt
Pharos
By Alice Thompson
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2002 Alice ThompsonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-6642-3
CHAPTER 1
THE LIGHT during darkness must never go out: it was the one cardinal rule of the lighthouse. Whatever happened, the lighthouse's lantern was not allowed to stop shining. It made Cameron preternaturally sensitive to light.
Early in the morning, the sun's rays would reach in through the window of his lighthouse bedroom, while Cameron slept. The beams would stroke his face until sunlight became indistinguishable from his waking consciousness. During the day Cameron would become aware of the shifting graduation from light to shadow and he had to be careful not to let each changing hour affect his mood. He would look out over the sea at noon and see glimmers of light sprinkled across the water's skin and feel a surfeit of pleasure.
But at night, while Cameron slept, the candle on his bedside table always burnt brightly. Cameron did not like the dark. Sometimes he felt that he was like the lighthouse: without light there would be no point to him. It seemed to him that if there was only darkness he would disappear into the dark, he would become darkness itself and cease to exist.
* * *
Cameron was the Principal Keeper of the lighthouse. He was its life force. God came first, the lighthouse second, and his life consisted of conforming to these two duties. A tall, slim, well-proportioned man, in his early sixties, he walked with his head upright but slightly forward, as if his thoughts came first and then carried him on.
When he looked up to the sky it would be to check the movement of the clouds. He relied on his own eye rather than the mercury barometer that recorded the weather's pressure in a silver liquid line. Clues always lay outside for him: the colour of the sky, the shape and consistency of the clouds, the direction, strength and temperature of the wind.
Cameron had once been a sailor. Often sailors, grown tired of the hardships of the sea, became lighthouse men. Both sailor and keeper were accustomed to isolation and to living with a small number of men. They felt a duty to the paramount safety of the ship and crews' lives. Dependent on the elements, they shared an understanding of the sea, and knew the importance of navigation. Navigation was not an exact science. Allowance had to be made for currents and drifting leewards.
Sometimes Cameron felt that the lighthouse was his ship and looking out of the window at the far horizon he could imagine he was on the prow of his boat.
* * *
Cameron had a face like a hawk: prominent, fine features which were fiercely symmetrical. The luminosity of his large eyes seemed at odds with the strikingly sharp lines of his cheekbones. His face was mottled brown. His hair was as white as a dove's wing. He had long, thin fingers that tapered to the end as if God had run out of flesh. His light frame belied a strength that was necessary for his work.
He would look into his mirror in his room, the candle flickering beneath it, and see in spite of the shadows around his face a man at the peak of his well-being, and an expression of introspective intensity.
Cameron had respect for the elements, but saw them only in terms of how he could pit his wits against them: he believed that fire, water, earth and air offered up information to him to show in which way they could be defeated.
Cameron seemed to draw his strength from the consciousness with which he apprehended the material world. When he touched the smoothness of the round interior wall of the lighthouse, he felt he was touching the coldness of nature.
* * *
The new Assistant Lightkeeper was due to arrive on the rock that early spring day. He was, like Cameron, unmarried. Keepers on island lighthouses were single men. Cameron had thoroughly checked the new keeper's medical records for any history of mental or physical disorder. It was important that the keepers were healthy in mind and body. Their only regular contact with the outside world was the relief boat which came every three months with provisions and letters from the mainland. Even in an emergency the keepers had to wait for the relief boat to send a message for help or to ask for the visiting doctor.
Cameron was looking forward to meeting his apprentice. He had been alone on the lighthouse for a while. The previous assistant keeper had not lasted long. It took discipline to withstand both the isolation and also the close company of others. But Simon seemed, according to his records, strong: he was in his mid-twenties, an ex-farmer rather than a sailor, who would be useful for tilling the small amount of arable land on the island.
The records of Simon's mainland interview, conducted by the Northern Lighthouse Board, had made a particular impression on Cameron. On being asked why he had wanted to work on the lighthouse, Simon had replied, 'Because the work is a matter of life and death.'
Simon would receive the regular annual wage of forty-five guineas and an extra allowance of two guineas for serving on an island. As well as a roof over his head, he would be given fuel, candles, a new uniform every three years and a small pension.
* * *
The lighthouse's giant lantern flung its white beam scores of miles over the sea. It was not the strength of the low fixed flame of the oil lamp which give the light its strength, but the lantern's myriad of carefully positioned mirrors and prisms. Sections of the lantern were blanked off to create intervals between the beams. Each lighthouse had its own intervals which denoted the lighthouse's 'character'.
Jacob's Rock stood at a point where three strong currents met over an invisible reef. The island was about one and a half miles long. Jacob's Rock's lighthouse was built on the place of maximum danger, where most people's lives had been lost, most ships wrecked. At the point where boat met stone and the sea swallowed the corpses left behind on the rocks. On a calm day, a smaller group of jagged rocks projected out of the sea, hundreds of feet off the island. More dangerously, on a rough day, these rocks became invisibly submerged.
At the peak of the winter storms, the waves reached up to the lighthouse's top windows, over a hundred feet high, the greater part of the tower disappearing beneath a cascade of salt water. After the storm subsided, the inhabitants of the lighthouse would inspect the ruined island, their vegetable garden wrecked, the grass strewn with shells and gasping fish.
The lighthouse stood on the western point of the island. It looked out over the sea as if it had always been part of the landscape, a natural formation. Its whiteness picked up the whiteness of the seagulls around it, and the white markings they left behind on the rocks. At night the light was another moon or sun in the sky.
* * *
Cameron heard voices and looked out to see that the relief ship, broad-decked with a main mast, had moored a few hundred yards off the pier. The voices were coming from a small boat being rowed towards the lighthouse. Cameron took up his binoculars and trained them on the man rowing the boat. It was the relief ship's first mate. He turned the binoculars on the man sitting at the prow. Cameron could see only the back of the man's head, the waves of his black hair just reaching his shoulders. He turned his head as he approached the island and Cameron, training his glasses directly, saw Simon's face for the first time.
There was a strange stillness about Simon's features as if thoughts were the last thing on his mind. He did not look strong, his arms were quite long, his shoulders narrow and his hands on the gunwale fine. Cameron noticed these things without drawing conclusions.
Cameron quickly put on his uniform jacket, and went out on to the pier to greet him. Because of submerged rock, boats could not land on the pier directly but had to anchor ten feet out with man and possessions hoisted on to land by a pulley attached to the pier.
Cameron hauled Simon's belongings on to the island before helping the man himself on to Jacob's Rock. Cameron shouted out a few words to the first mate, who then turned to row back to the relief ship. Cameron picked up Simon's bag. He was surprised by how heavy it was. As the two men made their way up towards the lighthouse, the sun was just beginning to set, turning the lighthouse stone to rose-pink.
* * *
They ascended the sharp stone steps carved out of rock to the gun-metal door and Simon entered the lighthouse for the first time. They climbed up the further stone steps that curled round the central hollow of the lighthouse. The pendulum hung down the centre of its space.
The pendulum – a weight on a chain – descended to the bottom of the lighthouse from the lantern room. It was the pendulum that drove the clockwork mechanism which rotated the glass lantern around the oil lamp. The pendulum clicked down an inch at a time as the giant flat cog wheel at the top turned. After a few hours, just as the chain was about to graze the bottom, the cog had to be wound up again at the top.
The pendulum hung in a long vertical line down the centre of the lighthouse like a line drawn in the air. Like an obsession, the movement of the pendulum downwards always had to be at the back of the keepers' minds; the movement of the pendulum in some way always pre-occupied them. The click of the weight as it made its way down was a sound of comfort, meant that everything was in order. It was the beat of the lighthouse's heart.
They climbed past the water room, the oil room, the store room and the living quarters, until they reached Simon's bedroom, which was opposite Cameron's. Each of the two higher landings had two bedrooms.
Simon's room was small, with a square window, curved white walls, a table, chair and bed and a worn rug. The sun on the horizon, brimming over the edge, was the only source of light in the darkening room. Cameron instinctively walked towards the window and the light, looked down at the path of light across the sea that led directly to the sun.
* * *
At the north-eastern end of the island, at the furthest point from the lighthouse, stood the ruined walls of an eighth-century chapel. Out of sight, between the ruins, lay a rough oblong of stone. The stone was low and flat with black railings around it and surrounded by a narrow ditch. A crypt, about twenty feet long, lay beneath it. Chinks of light fell through the decaying stone roof of the crypt into the interior, casting patterns on the floor.
Pieces of driftwood, the shape and colour of bone, decorated the inside of the crypt. The sides of the inner walls were encrusted with pearly and bruised-patterned shells. Strands of lush green seaweed dangled from the roof, giving the crypt the aura of an underwater cave.
At the far end of the crypt, a young girl was kneeling in the dank shadows. She was wearing nothing but an old ragged white petticoat that emphasized the dark gold of her limbs. Her black curly hair clung tightly to her skull like lichen around a rock. In front of her, on a pedestal, crouched a small ebony statue of a naked man, his mouth gaping open as if the centre of his being was a hole - or he could have been gasping in wonder.
The little girl was in a trance. Her eyes were shut and although her lips were moving they made no sound. Her tongue was flickering in and out of her mouth like a snake. Then, as if she were struggling to speak for the first time, words came out of her mouth, hesitantly and deeply, as if they were made of solid matter.
'It was a small space, not enough to turn in. The wooden ceiling of the hold hovered a few feet over my head as I lay. It was darkness in there. A pitch black, so when I opened my eyes it was as if I were blind. So this was what it was like to be blind. To have one's eyes open and see nothing.
'I could hear the other bodies lying beside me, breathing. I could hear the words spoken in their sleep, the names of daughters, husbands and sons. Names which they would never speak again, except in their sleep.'
Suddenly the girl's eyes opened wide. They were staring straight ahead. She sat like that for a few moments as expression slowly returned to her eyes and she gradually came back to herself.
* * *
During darkness, watches on the light, as if on board a boat, were kept. During the day, the roles of the keepers were clearly delineated. Cameron was responsible for the light, the rota for the watch, the fuel and the trimming of the lamp. Simon's duties included the polishing and cleaning of the windows, especially the dome of the lantern room, and the growing and gathering of food.
At dawn, Simon would walk along the beach on the south side of the island collecting shells. He did not care what kind of shell he found, only that each one was perfect: without chip, scar or dirty mark. He picked up round ones with frilled edges, thin, razor-sharp ones, small snail ones and some so fine that if you put them to the sun they were almost transparent. He picked up scores of shells, dipping them in the sea to wash the sand from them.
Simon also enjoyed catching the fresh food which supplemented their diet of salted meat and biscuits. He fished, put out lobster pots, and collected seagull eggs by getting in a basket attached by a rope to the top of the cliff and lowering himself over the edge. He also tended the vegetable garden on the small, soily patch behind the lighthouse, which produced potatoes and carrots. It was impossible to grow vegetables that reached any taller, or depended on canes, because of the winds.
Simon was fearless. He climbed up cliffs, regardless of their height, and dived off the edge of high rocks to collect winkles from their underbellies. He collected seaweed which would grip his fingers or slide between his hands; sometimes he would, in spite of his sense of balance, trip and fall into a pool of green weed. The slippery texture and strong sea smell reminded him of the act of love. He knew the land and the sea, felt at one with it and forgot himself when he was collecting its food. He saw himself as part of the natural world rather than a man who inhabited it.
The world, for Simon, was not something to be controlled or managed or done to. He had no logical dialogue with it. He moved like an animal, with grace and sinuousness within it. He clambered over rocks with perfect balance, like a dancer, finding poise on a pinnacle of rock, balancing his whole body on an outcrop of stone the size of a fist, or on a cleft edge as narrow as a piece of twined rope.
At night, back in the lighthouse, he lay in bed frightened that an alternate life should have been the one he was living. But when he woke up in the morning and saw the dawn cover the sea he felt content again. There was no doubt life was difficult and solitary here. But on the lighthouse it was also simple.
* * *
Cameron enjoyed the night watches. He liked the night stars with the moon high up in the sky, as if he were the only man in this new, strange night world. He liked the feeling of importance the night watch gave him: people's lives depended on his alertness. A ship passed in the distance far away from the hidden reef that spread underwater for a quarter of a mile, invisible just below the surface. The only signal of the reef was at low tide, when the sea brushed its sharp-edged peaks, causing a creamy, foamy ribbon to weave through the curls of the waves.
Cameron looked out at the approximate point where the reef ended and wondered about its treachery. The sea was so calm and immaculate on the surface, the reef lurking like a leviathan beneath it, ready to sink its jaws into the hulls of passing boats. Days later the skeletons of ships would wash up on the shore.
Cameron had grown aware of a central paradox about the lighthouse. The lighthouse was a warning against this natural reef formation and the jagged rocks, but it was also a sign of the reef and the rocks' existence. The light had become synonymous with the danger it represented. The lighthouse kept people away from itself. As it shone across the sea in its generous circular sweep it meant safety and danger at the same time.
And Cameron, alone, watching the still black sea and the full white moon, suddenly wanted the pendulum to reach its end and the light to go out. For things to reach their natural end, and for the reef and sea to claim what was rightfully theirs.
* * *
When there was a stillness to the weather, the tower seemed redundant; an aesthetic form, decorative rather than functional. It was as if Cameron and Simon were playing out some elaborate ritual, enacting a religious belief without the presence of God. Only when storms were present did God seem real. And then the function of the lighthouse would return with a force which shot through a keeper's being. But otherwise, there was a sense of waiting and the odd acceptance that when nothing happened, when no boats were wrecked, the absence of events or drama was the point to their existence.
One keeper reflected light, the other the pulse of the body. Like the building, the process of Cameron and Simon getting to know each other was circular. The keepers exchanged no late-night conversations. Diffidence was needed to live successfully together in a lighthouse.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Pharos by Alice Thompson. Copyright © 2002 Alice Thompson. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
Map,
Epigraph,
Begin Reading,
Acknowledgements,
Also by Alice Thompson,
Copyright,