The Kingdoms

lobster pots and a clutter of fishing floats to lean into the cabin. Touching them printed rust-coloured grime on his gloves.
‘Monsieur. Are there two lighthouses here?’
‘Two? No. This is it.’
‘Because … when we came in yesterday, I saw one that was ruined. This one is – new.’
‘Same one,’ the trawlerman said. He seemed to see that that was insufficient even by the short standards of this place. ‘Sometimes it’s old, sometimes it’s new.’
‘What does that mean?’ Joe said. It should have been ridiculous, but the trawlerman had said it too seriously to laugh at. ‘How can it be sometimes old and sometimes new?’
‘Just is.’
Joe went back out again, expecting to come around to a weatherbeaten side, but there was none. They pulled up close to the jetty steps.
‘Can you wait, while I check the supplies?’ Joe said. ‘The Lighthouse Board is meant to have stocked the place, but …’
‘I’m not missing my daughter’s wedding. If anything’s wrong, send up a flare and someone will come when they can.’
Joe wanted to say that was unreasonable, but it wasn’t. Guilty that he had no money to give the man, he edged out, holding on to the mooring bollard in case he slipped. It was so cold his glove stuck to it. As soon as he was over the rail, the trawler looped away again, engines struggling to push it through the ice.
Joe climbed slowly, his left shoulder aching from the weight of his bag and his toolkit, but he wanted his right hand free if he slipped. The steps were irregular and the mist had made the weed on them slick. There was no rail, so he held the stiff grass that grew between the rocks. When he was halfway up, he looked back to watch the trawler. The wind blew a sheet of hail towards him. It stung. He turned his back to it again and carried on, and upward.
The top of the steps came out on the tower porch.
He turned the door handle. It was unlocked.
The tower was cold inside, and dark. The first room was a living room with an armchair set close to a hearth, where the floor was covered in furs and the windowpane was white with frost. Between him and that, the stairs were an ammonite spiral. They went all the way to the top, into dimness. The shutters on the lamp-chamber windows were down. He called, then listened, but nobody moved or spoke. Little echoes came back to him after a while, having explored by themselves.
The engines were usually in a separate outbuilding, but there were no outbuildings here; the architects probably hadn’t wanted to spend any more time outside than strictly necessary. Here, the engine room was underground. The stairs plunged into blackness. He had to sort through his bag to find some matches. The scratch was loud, and so was the gunpowder fizz. He found a lamp just as the match bit his fingers. He shook it out. In the time it took him to light another, the dark raced at him and he felt panicky, certain there was someone here. But there wasn’t. It was just him and the engines.
The new light made gruesome shadows from the belt of the steam engine and the sharp, cog-shaped magnets in the generator. He lit all the lamps he could find, four, and moved them close to the machines.
The steam engine was all right, but as soon as he looked at the generator, he saw what was wrong. One of the electromagnets was missing.
There was a clunk upstairs.
‘Hello?’ he called. He waited but there was nothing. His breath steamed. M. Saint-Marie’s house settled loudly enough in winter. God knew what moved and snapped as the temperature here shot down low enough to freeze fuel lines.
He replaced the magnet – he had brought two – in half a minute. Once he had, he got down on his hands and knees to see under the generator. It had been built into the floor; generators were worth a thousand francs. The broken magnet was just underneath. It had cracked right in two, down a jagged line. He had to lie flat to reach the second piece.
He caught it with his fingertips and sat back, cross-legged on the cold floor, then fitted the two pieces together to make sure there were no shards left that might grind in the machinery. They matched perfectly, but he stopped when he saw the mark on the left one. Someone had smacked it with a hammer.
He rubbed his thumb over the bright dent. There were rigid specifications for the selection of lighthouse keepers; they had to be men below a certain age, because they had to be strong enough to go out on a stormy sea and haul sailors in from a wreck. He couldn’t imagine Paris would send anyone to fetch a keeper for anything except a complete breakdown of food supply. Even that was probably your own problem. From what he had heard of the Lighthouse Board, it was a tight-fisted, pettifogging sort of organisation. They’d be no help even in an emergency.
Much better, if you knew how the contracts worked, to break the generator. Once the lamp went out, procedure was for the mainland to contact the Board urgently.
Joe lit the engine furnace. It only took a match. He stood next to it for a while, listening to the fuel line. It creaked, but didn’t burst. As the engine built up heat, the pistons began to turn and so did the belt that led to the generator. He set his fingertips on it and let it run under them, feeling for tears, but it was new.
The light didn’t come on by itself. Someone had turned off the switch in the lamp room. Not very much wanting to, he put his bag over his shoulder again and started up the spiral stairs.
The doors into the rooms were all propped open. The keepers had made it as cosy as it could be;