The Kingdoms

mean to sound – but are you from the Saints? Because if you’ve got business round here, I’m not – I don’t want any trouble.’
‘The Saints?’ The man sounded honestly mystified, but it couldn’t have been honest. No one would really have thought it was an odd thing to ask. ‘No.’ But he didn’t say what he was. He was watching Joe with some attention now. His eyes were green, very light. They made him look wolfish.
Joe swallowed. It must have been the isolation of the lighthouse and the ghostly feeling of lifting someone unexplained from the sea, but he had not clocked, before, that it might have been more dangerous to take a man like this inside than leave him in the water. ‘As I say, whatever you’re doing round here, it’s none of my business. I’m just the lighthouse keeper.’
‘I know. I’m not … going to hurt you.’ The man seemed finally to understand. ‘We were smuggling sugar, that’s all. We were on our way out of the harbour when the lamp here came on. It made the helmsman jump, he knocked the tiller, we spun, I fell like an idiot into the rip.’ He was making himself smaller, Joe realised; he didn’t like the idea that he’d frightened anyone. His hands were clamped together in his lap.
The words sounded old in a way that Joe’s own English didn’t. ‘Rip?’
‘A fast current. They’re dangerous, you can’t swim against them.’
‘Oh,’ said Joe. Then he laughed, feeling silly. ‘Right. Sugar – I saw you, when you brought it in. And today, on the beach.’
‘Well-known income supplement round here,’ the man said tentatively, as if he wasn’t sure Joe was ready for a joke yet.
Joe smiled. ‘Well, sorry for that little burst of hysteria. I’m Joe. It’s nice to meet you. I should have said that before.’
The man’s eyes ticked up again, not for long. ‘Kite.’ He didn’t say if it was his first or last name, and Joe couldn’t tell; north of the border, people had strange names, from old clans or kings no one had heard of any more. ‘Can I ask how you ended up being a lighthouse keeper on a rock that’s nearly in the Arctic?’
‘I didn’t end up, I applied,’ Joe said. He paused. He had been going to say something bland about it just being his job, but he had a peculiar urge to be honest. ‘I, um … long story, but I lost my memory a couple of years ago. Epilepsy seizure. And then someone sent me a postcard, of this lighthouse. It was mad; it had been held at the post office for a hundred years, and this place wasn’t even built then, but it had my name on it. It must be a hoax, but I don’t know why. I’ve got it here.’ He pulled it from his pocket and handed it over. He must have sounded a lot less casual about it than he’d hoped, because Kite took it in the way he might have touched someone else’s rosary. ‘It’s signed M, and I … sort of remember a woman called Madeline. I think she was my wife. So I hunted out the engine workshop that made the parts for this place. Started work there. Then a week ago we got a message to say there was a fault here, so I volunteered. I wanted to see … well, if any of it seemed familiar. So here I am.’
‘And does it? Seem familiar.’ Kite gave the postcard back as carefully as he had taken it. He had studied it front and back, even the postmark, his expression neutral. He was kind enough not to snort, or to agree that it had to be a hoax.
‘Sort of,’ Joe said wryly. ‘I feel like I’ve been around here before. But epilepsy gives you raging déjà vu.’
Kite nodded slowly, still neutral. It was, Joe saw now, the breakable neutrality people aimed at the very ancient or the nascently lunatic.
‘You’ve got the only mad lighthouse keeper in Scotland,’ Joe said, wishing he hadn’t said anything. He could feel himself going red with exactly the same boiling shame he’d had at the engine workshop. All he had to do to cope with the epilepsy was not run after strangers or blurt out random bollocks. It shouldn’t have been this difficult.
‘Epilepsy isn’t madness, though, is it,’ Kite said. ‘That’s collapsing sometimes. Stop pretending. You’re not that glamorous.’
Joe laughed. ‘I don’t even collapse.’
Kite let his head bow and pretended to fall asleep. Joe prodded him, hot with relief to be teased. Not a single person at home had been easy enough with the idea to poke fun at it.
‘Well. I hope you find out,’ Kite said. He hesitated, and then seemed to decide something difficult. Joe saw him struggle with it for a good few seconds, catching himself on its more awkward angles. ‘You shouldn’t stay here long enough to investigate too much, though. It’s not safe for you here. When the sea freezes, you should go back to Harris.’
‘What?’
‘This tower was dark for a week and now you’ve lit the lamp.’ He was quiet then, but he had stopped on an unfinished uptone. ‘The last lighthouse keepers are gone. Now you’re out here by yourself and you know how all this machinery works. Someone’s going to come for you; you’re valuable. You shouldn’t stay.’ He was urgent without being loud.
Before Joe could say anything, something banged upstairs. They both fell quiet. For five or six seconds there was nothing but the wind and the hail on the window, but then other voices talked again. They were in the bedroom. Kite listened, then went to look. Joe went with him. No one was there.
Joe thought Kite would try to say it was some kind of extraordinary echo from Aird Uig, but he didn’t. He rapped his knuckles against the wall hard, three times. The sound was hollow.
They both waited. Joe jumped when the wall knocked back three times.