The Kingdoms

lighthouse engines. What else does the de Méritens workshop make?’
Joe swallowed. It was a famous enough workshop to be common knowledge. ‘Locomotive engines. Artillery.’
‘Are you involved in the production of artillery?’
‘No.’
‘Have you ever been?’
‘No,’ he lied. ‘Never.’
The soldier behind him finally finished searching his bag. Joe tried not to look too relieved.
‘Tell me once again about the problem at the lighthouse.’
Joe took a deep, slow breath. ‘The lighthouse is very remote; it’s off the coast of Lewis and Harris, on an island called Eilean Mòr. The lamp has been extinguished. It shouldn’t be, not at this time of year. The locals went out to look. They found that the lighthouse keepers are missing, and that the lamp couldn’t be turned on again. Someone then reported the problem to the Lighthouse Board. The Board administers all the lighthouses in the Republic, but the de Méritens workshop builds all the machinery, so when there’s a technical fault, M. de Méritens sends a mechanic out. In this case, I’m supposed to fix the fault and stay at the lighthouse for the winter, as a temporary keeper.’
‘Surely lighthouse keeping and mechanical work are quite different.’
‘No, sir. All lighthouse keepers are qualified to maintain and repair lighthouse engines, and all of M. de Méritens’ mechanics are qualified lighthouse keepers.’
‘Why aren’t they sending someone local, then? There must be qualified people in Glasgow.’
‘I’m cheaper.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘I’m a freedman, not a citizen. I’m on minimum wage.’
It went on and on, for another three hours and well after he’d lost any hope of getting through. There had been a man who was meant to meet him on the other side, with onward passage arranged on a ship up to the islands, but it was hard to imagine he would have waited so long. The questions stopped and they left Joe alone in the little room. The dark came down and the powerful searchlights came on. He saw one of them swing to the right. Then gunshots. He tried not to think about it.
A new trainload of people arrived. Doctors; the checkpoint soldiers let them straight through. They must have been going to the regiments fighting further east. He watched the train pull away, back to Glasgow. In another twenty minutes, the station was silent and empty again.
Joe sank forward against his arms on the table edge and shut his eyes. The lights were too bright. He saw greenish stars behind his eyelids. Carefully, he reconstructed the image of the man waiting for him by the sea. It had some borrowed calm in it.
He wished the Sidgwicks hadn’t told him it might have been real. The thought that the man had been there, really there, only to be lost now, hurt much more than imagining he was just a thing Joe’s misfiring brain had made for itself. Madeline too. But he couldn’t picture her any more.
A younger soldier opened the door. Joe pulled his sleeve over his eyes. The shift must have changed; the man was much more junior than the original officer.
‘You’re staying overnight for more questioning. Come with me.’
Joe felt sick. ‘I have to go. Please. I’m going to lose my job if I don’t get to this lighthouse.’
‘Not my problem,’ the young man said.
Joe pulled out half the money he had for the rest of the whole three months. ‘I’m not trying to say I have no respect for your position, I do. I wouldn’t ask you for anything like this without paying properly.’
The young man looked happy and Joe realised, feeling stupid, that he had been waiting for an offer. ‘All right. I’ll shoot you if you breathe a word to the colonel.’
‘I understand.’
He let Joe take his bag back, then showed him along a dull corridor, to a small door. When he opened it, the lights in the checkpoints were behind them.
Joe dipped his head. ‘Thank you, sir.’
The young man nodded, trying and failing to hide how pleased he was to be called sir by someone twice his age, stamped Joe’s papers, and closed the door again.
Even with the stamp on his papers, it was difficult to walk the stretch of unpaved no-man’s-land between the two borders. A searchlight followed him all the way, throwing his shadow on to the frosted mud in front of him. His spine turned to glass. The night was so quiet that he heard the squeal of the searchlight’s base whenever the soldier behind it moved it to follow his path. He was afraid to breathe, in case he missed the clack of the machine-gun pin.
The Scottish checkpoint was nothing but a wooden hut. Above it loomed a guard tower made mostly of scaffolding. A woman, silhouetted, sat at the top with her arms resting on an old Gatling gun. Joe handed over his stamped papers silently. He could still feel the French machine gun pointing at the back of his neck. The searchlight beamed straight on to them.
‘You’re French,’ the checkpoint guard said, in English. He was having to hold his hand up to block out the light.
‘No, I’m from Londres.’
The man snorted, and glanced at de Méritens’ letter. ‘I don’t speak French.’
Joe translated it. He wished the soldiers on the French side would turn off the searchlight.
‘Ah, the lighthouse,’ the guard said, suddenly cheerful. ‘McGregor! Your man’s here.’
McGregor was the name of the man who was meant to meet him.
McGregor ducked out from the little back room in a haze of smoke and brandy fumes. Before the door creaked shut, Joe saw a slice of what was inside: people sitting on the floor playing cards. McGregor was still holding a drink. It was in a jam jar. He nodded, not as if he had been held up for an unexpectedly long time, and motioned Joe to follow him to where a cart and a sleepy horse waited.
The harbour wasn’t far away. When they arrived, the sea was shushing and the whaling steamer on which Joe’s passage was booked wasn’t even set to sail for another two hours. No