The Keeper by Marguerite Poland Read Free Book Online Page A

sake!’ She had thumped a glass down and it had tipped over on the floor and rolled back and forth. ‘Not even wine sometimes at dinner – for a birthday or something?’
    ‘Not even then.’
    ‘That’s ridiculous!’
    ‘Rules.’
    ‘Where else does it apply?’
    ‘Just on the islands.’
    ‘Shit.’
    As they had left Maisie’s house on that first night, Maisie had said, ‘I’ll come tomorrow and help you unpack. Perhaps we can make some coconut cake together. I have a really nice recipe and it keeps very well.’ She had turned to Hannes. ‘Hannes, did you tell her to be careful about mice?’
    ‘Not yet.’
    ‘The buggers have got into everything,’ Maisie had said. ‘You can’t leave face cream or lipstick or anything lying around.’
    When they had said goodbye and the door closed on them, Hannes had stood a moment and looked up at the sky. The stars were like phosphorescence in a midnight sea of sky. Inverted, far below, the sea itself was black and deep and infinite. The clamour of birds had been silenced by the dark. Again, hefelt a fleeting sense of reverence and awe, as he had that afternoon, standing in the shadow of the lighthouse.
    The beam had swept across them. Then it pierced the gloom, far, far out to sea. Sixteen miles – its signal identifying it, its warning clear.
    –
It is not the sea the sailor fears. It is the land.
    His father’s words, repeating some old lore.
    When they reached the house Aletta had said, ‘Don’t bother with the generator. I will take a candle.’
    As she passed him on her way to the bathroom, the candle guttered in her fingers, lighting her face from below, sending a long shadow up across the bedroom wall. He was alert to her then, hearing the water in the bath, the knocking of the pipes. He had used his torch to guide him, leaving the lamp unlit. He set it on the pedestal, beam pointing up towards the ceiling and felt with his hand for the edge of the mattress. His fingers met the fluff of the blue candlewick spread Aletta had bought on her last shopping spree.
    The bed was hard. It smelled new. He had fumbled with the curtains, waiting for her to come down the long passage from the bathroom on her bare feet. He had stood silently, listening to the sea. That old, old sound, the surge across the reef, that distant splintering of water: it was a music long deferred. He was a child again, kneeling by his bed, his brother, Fred, beside him, shivering in their flannel pyjamas as a sly wind slid in through rattling window frames and their mother said their prayers with them and read her nightly passage from the Bible:
    For He will deliver the needy who cry out
    The afflicted who have no one to help.
    He had drawn his hand down across his eyes then, hearing her voice, shaken.
    He heard Aletta’s step on the parquet floor, saw the candle flame waver up and steady as she set it on the bedside table. He did not turn. Every twenty seconds the flash outside swept the ceiling. Then he leaned across and took up his torch and turned it off. He sat on the edge of the bed to unlace his shoes and shrug off his jersey. At last he turned and glanced at Aletta.
    She was sitting with her arms wrapped about her knees, her face averted. The candle flame made a halo of light around her.
    He did not reach for her. He did not speak.
    He went quietly from the room and down the passage and closed the bathroom door, stricken.
    Somewhere far outside, he could hear the gathering surge of the wind.
    With a sense of naked emptiness, of purity, he stood listening for a voice so long silenced. He waited, alert, feeling its presence in every shadow.
    When he went back to the bedroom it was dark. Aletta had extinguishedthe candle. She was hunched into her corner, a pillow at her back, her head tucked down, her arm across her face, warning him away.

Chapter 4
    Maisie came five minutes after Hannes had gone on duty in the lighthouse. No doubt she had watched him cross the yard in his newly