The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter. Hazel Gaynor
been kinder for her to have perished with her children, rather than live without them. Closing my eyes, I pray that she might somehow find the courage to endure this dreadful calamity.
That we all might.
Longstone Lighthouse. 7th September, 1838
WHEN SARAH DAWSON opens her eyes, the sky is chalky gray above her. She looks at the young woman called Grace whose eyes are as gentle as a summer breeze and whose hands grip her shoulders. She watches numbly as the boat sets out again, back toward the wreck.
Her arms are empty. Where are her children? In a panic she struggles and falls to her knees. “They are afraid of the dark, Miss,” she sobs, clinging to the young woman’s sodden skirts, tearing at the fabric with her fingernails as if she might somehow crawl her way out of this hell she finds herself in. “And they will be ever so cold. I have to go back. I have to.”
The young woman tells her she is safe now. “My father will being your children back, Mrs. Dawson. We have to get you warm and dry now.”
The words torment her. Why had she been spared when her children had not? How can she bear it to know they are out there in the storm, all alone?
Her body goes limp again as the noise and panic of the sinking ship races through her mind. She can still feel the ache in her arms from carrying her terrified children, one on each hip, as she’d stumbled up the stairs that led to the upper deck, pushing past passengers she’d chatted with earlier that evening, and whose lives she had no care for in her desperate bid to escape the shattering vessel. Her mind wanders back to the warm summer day when the midwife told her the baby was gone. She sees the tiny bundle at the foot of the bed, blue and still. Now James and Matilda, too. All her children, gone. She tries to speak, but all that emerges is a low, guttural moan.
Giving up her struggle, she allows the young woman and her mother to half carry, half drag her along. With every step closer to the lighthouse she wants to scream at them: Why didn’t you come sooner? But her words won’t come and her body can’t find the strength to stand upright. She crawls the final yards to the lighthouse door where she raises her eyes to pray and sees the light turning above.
Light. Dark. Light. Dark.
Matilda wants to know how it works.
James wants to paint it.
Too exhausted and distressed to fight it anymore, she closes her eyes and lets the darkness take her to some brighter place where she sings to her children of lavenders blue and lavenders green, and where her heart isn’t shattered into a thousand pieces, so impossibly broken it can surely never be put back together.
Dundee, Scotland.
Late evening and George Emmerson waits, still, for his sister in a dockside alehouse, idly sketching in the margins of yesterday’s newspaper to distract himself from dark thoughts about ships and storms. The howling gale beyond the leaded windows sends a cold draft creeping down his neck as the candles gutter in their sconces. He folds the newspaper and checks his pocket watch again. Where in God’s name is she?
The hours drag on until the alehouse door creaks open, straining against its hinges as Billy Stroud, George’s roommate, steps inside. Shaking out his overcoat, he approaches the fireplace, rainwater dripping from the brim of his hat. His face betrays his distress.
George stiffens. “What is it?”
“Bad news I’m afraid, George.” Stroud places a firm hand on his friend’s shoulder. “There are reports that the Forfarshire went down in the early hours. Off the Farne Islands.”
George cannot understand, scrambling to make sense of Stroud’s words. “Went down? How? Are there any survivors?”
“Seven crew. They got away in one of the quarter boats. Picked up by a fishing sloop from Montrose. Lucky buggers. They were taken to North Sunderland. The news has come from there.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, George pulls on his gloves and hat, sending his chair clattering to the floor as he rushes out into the storm, Stroud following behind.
“Where are you going, man? It’s madness out there.”
“North Sunderland,” George replies, gripping the top of his hat with both hands. “The lifeboat will have launched from there.” The impact of his words hits him like a blow to the chest as he begins to comprehend what this might mean. He places a hand on his friend’s shoulder, leaning against him for support as the wind howls furiously and the rain lashes George’s face, momentarily blinding him. “Pray for them, Stroud. Dear God, pray for my sister and her children.”
LEARNING OF HIS sister’s stricken vessel, George throws a haphazard collection of clothes into a bag and leaves his lodgings, much to the consternation of his landlady, who insists he’ll catch a chill and will never get a carriage in this weather anyway.
Not one to be easily deterred by frantic landladies or bad weather, within half an hour of learning of the Forfarshire disaster, George has secured a coachman to take him to North Sunderland on the coast of Northumberland. The fare is extortionate, but he is in no humor to haggle and allows the driver to take advantage of his urgency. It is a small price to pay to be on the way to his sister and her children. He images them sheltering in a tavern or some kind fisherwoman’s cottage, little James telling tall tales about the size of the waves and how he helped to row his mother and sister back to shore, brave as can be.
Partly to distract himself and partly from habit, George sketches as the coach rumbles along. His fingers work quickly, capturing the images that clutter his restless mind: storm-tossed ships, a lifeboat being launched, a lighthouse, barrels of herrings on the quayside, Miss Darling. Even now, the memory of her torments him. Does he remember her correctly? Is he imagining the shape of her lips, the suggestion of humor in her eyes? Why can he not forget her? She was not especially pretty, not half as pretty as Eliza in fact, but there was something about her, something more than her appearance. Miss Darling had struck George as entirely unique, as individual as the patterns on the seashells she had shown him. The truth is, he has never met anyone quite like her and it is that—her particular difference—which makes him realize how very ordinary Eliza is. It had long been expected that he would marry his cousin, so he has never paused to question it. Until now. Miss Darling has given him a reason to doubt. To question. To think. Cousin Eliza and her interfering mother have only ever given him a reason to comply.
The rain hammers relentlessly on the carriage roof as the last of the daylight fades and the wheels rattle over ruts, rocking George from side to side like a drunken sailor and sending the lanterns swinging wildly beyond the window. Exhausted, he falls into an uncomfortable bed at a dreary tavern where the driver and horses will rest for the night.
Disturbed by the storm and his fears for Sarah, George thinks about the cruel ways of the world, and how it is that some are saved and others are lost, and what he might do if he found himself on a sinking ship. He closes his eyes and prays for forgiveness for having uncharitable thoughts about Eliza. She is not a bad person, and he does not wish to think unkindly of her. But his most earnest prayer he saves for his sister and her children.
“Courage, Sarah,” he whispers into the dark. “Be brave.”
As if to answer him, the wind screams at the window, rattling the shutters violently. A stark reminder that anyone at sea will need more than prayers to help them. They will need nothing short of a miracle.