Joe stared at the sweep of the rushing frost. It was impossible; nowhere in the world, nowhere, was there weather like this. Not unless there was some sort of mad polar vortex, but there was no storm any more.
It was something to do with the pillars in the sea, though. The winter was radiating outward from those twin spars in the water, like they were sucking through the cold from somewhere else.
‘It’s about twenty seconds off!’ the priest shouted.
‘Ready?’ Fiona said to Joe. She was holding handfuls of her wedding dress, ready to run. ‘It’s coming!’
‘Right …’ He put his hand up, looking through the camera lens now. The frost line came up behind her.
‘Go!’ everyone shouted.
She didn’t have to run fast to keep pace. She looked back at just the right second, and the magnesium flash went off in time to catch how she was laughing, and how the hem of her damp veil froze as it furled up on the wind. The congregation cheered. Someone threw rice at Joe and the priest clapped him on the shoulder when he straightened up.
‘Welcome to Harris, lad. Get it? Right! Better get inside. Everyone back at eleven!’
The whaler from yesterday, Fiona’s father, was waiting just behind him. He nodded to Joe. ‘Time to take you out,’ he said. He looked pleased, and aware of the debt. ‘Just about.’
Joe went to fetch his tools, full of the fizzy joy that came from seeing something he couldn’t explain.
10
Eilean Mòr, 1900
The beach was glittering with frost. Whale ribcages made cloisters all across it, and on the bones perched dozens of cormorants, every single one of them dead, because they had been drying out their wings when the winter came, and now they had frozen.
Once Joe had climbed down on to the boat, the trawlerman set off straight away. The engine stuttered at first, and when they did move off, it was gradual, because they were cutting through ice. The hull was fitted with a steel harrow. They left a black wake. After about fifty yards, it started to freeze again. The cabin was tiny, so Joe sat outside on the bench beside some lobster pots and a collie, which edged across to put its head on his knee.
The little boat gained some speed in the open water. Away from the bay, there wasn’t so much ice, the stronger currents still churning the water. Up ahead were the pillars they’d veered around yesterday, but the trawlerman didn’t do that today. They chugged between them, into a blast of even colder air. The space was broad enough for a much wider ship. On the way past, Joe looked up to see the carvings. They were all chiselled names.
Trying to see where the pillars’ foundations were, he leaned down to the water. So did the dog. The straight shapes of sunken masonry loomed a long way below. He caught a snatch of what might have been crenellations and then, close enough to the surface to touch, a weathervane. There must have been a whole town down there. Joe had a strange coil of nervousness. Maybe it was only because he had forgotten so much, but he couldn’t help thinking that everyone might have forgotten something important here.
The dog whined and hid under the bench. He scuffed up its ears. It only snuffled unhappily and then, as if it could hear something frightening, it shot out and away from him. Before he could stop it, it had gone over the rail, onto the ice.
‘Hey! Monsieur – your dog!’
The trawlerman didn’t seem worried. ‘She’s light. She’ll make it.’
Joe stood at the stern, not sure she would. The dog was tearing back to the beach much too fast to stop herself if she came to a thin patch of ice. She skittered around bumpy ice blocks twice, which made his insides lurch, but she didn’t fall, and then, finally, she sprayed onto the pebbles and stood watching them, barking.
Joe sank down on the bench again. The cold was so sharp that it was biting through his coat despite the sealskin Fiona had lent him to wear inside it. He breathed into his hands. Now that they were through the pillars, there was mist, even though there had been none in the bay. The islands inched closer.
Eilean Mòr was the largest of the islands, and high on its flat top was the lighthouse. He could only just make it out through the mist. Nearer to them, talons of rock ploughed down into the water. The trawler crept further around. Beyond a spar was a miniature cove, hardly anything but a bite in the cliffside. A set of steep steps cut an uneven zigzag into the stone. There was a jetty and a winch to take supplies up the cliff.
The tower windows weren’t broken. There were no birds in the lamp room, and no greenish gauge of the storm tides on the walls. The lighthouse was as whole as the morning it was finished. Something under his liver turned over. He had been sure, yesterday, that it was in ruins. He climbed over some 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.