When it came, though, it was just lamb, and he decided he should probably be grateful for small mercies.
The lodging rooms were meant to hold two people each, but there weren’t enough people any more and so there was plenty of space. The window looked out over the sea, which was whipping itself into a fury now beneath a charcoal sky. It wasn’t the kind of weather you ever saw in Londres. It was wild.
He wrote a letter for Alice and Lily and M. Saint-Marie. He didn’t put in anything about the Psychical Society – Alice wouldn’t like that – but he told them about the journey and the border, and the tortoises, and even that took up a couple of pages. He didn’t seal up the envelope, in case there was a chance to add more tomorrow.
Lily would be wondering where he was by now. He had to scrub his hands over his face. Alice wouldn’t understand Lily’s jokes, the made-up animals. He was going to come back to find a sombre child who had been told to be quiet too much. His insides twisted with the already worn-out certainty that he shouldn’t have left her. None of his reasons for coming looked very good now.
Still, it was only three months. Not the end of the world.
Three months for Lily, the mathematical part of him pointed out, was a fifth of her life. A fifth of Joe’s life would be eight years.
Hail blasted the window.
The storm came in fast after that. The sea smashed right in against the cliffs and the walls. There was a deep hissing behind the boarding house: water receding in the caves and the broken doorways of the fortifications. He was sleepless as always, but he didn’t mind this time. The longer the wind raved around the towers, the more he felt like he was on his way home.
9
In the morning, there was an unearthly quiet. It was the sound of ordinary quiet after the choirs of winds in the night and the smashing of the water on the walls. The sea was calm. Although his watch said nine o’clock, the dawn had only just come, and even then, it hadn’t come all the way. The sky was doomsday mauve.
When Joe ventured downstairs, half the pub floor was covered with trout. That side of the room was too cold for anything to smell much. Two women had set up barrels, two each, one for fish and one for the parts of fish nobody wanted. He hesitated, but then decided there was nothing anyone could say that would persuade him to offer to help.
He edged around the fish towards the bar and the fire to see about coffee. The four giant tortoises were still there, asleep now. While he waited – the barman was grinding beans – he studied the sea from the window. It looked strangely thick; it was congealing. Plates of ice bobbed in the weak surf. No wonder nobody wanted to go out to the lighthouse. He’d have to persuade someone. After coffee, though.
Behind the bar, beyond a glass door that led out into what looked like a back yard, some men in dark blue uniforms slipped by, carrying sacks. The barman fixed Joe with a defensive look.
‘You didn’t see that.’
Smugglers, they must have been. ‘See what?’ Joe agreed.
A girl pattered down the stairs. She was in a wedding dress.
‘Mam,’ she said, and seemed as unworried by the fish as everyone else. Joe started to believe he might be the only one who could see them. She did stop, though, shy of the floor.
‘Before you ask me, I don’t have a telegraph line to God,’ one of the fishwives said.
‘Can you see out the window?’ the girl asked Joe. ‘Do you think the winter might come today?’
‘I have … no idea,’ he said. It seemed like an odd thing to say, the winter coming today, as though it arrived all at once, but it must have just been a local turn of phrase. ‘The sea’s starting to freeze.’
She blinked. ‘Where are you from then?’
‘Londres. I’m here to fix the generator at the lighthouse. If I can make anyone take me over. Congratulations,’ he added.
The girl’s whole expression sharpened. ‘Fix the generator,’ she said. ‘Are you good with technical bits and pieces then?’