They seemed to turn away after that, their voices lost behind the winter wind that had crept up, whistling up from the Black Country, thrumming around his ears. When he next poked his glass around the corner, they had gone. He wandered over to where they had been standing, hoping to catch a memory of their words on the wind, but the pattern of sound had dissipated.
He slept fitfully, waking when he remembered their plan fitted in perfectly with his planned Summer service, when he’d be out of action over the fortnight they’d mentioned. After a light breakfast, he wound his way back to the conference centre, trying to keep his shutters open as he attended the seminar on radio technologies. The morning wound into lunch, where he once again found Skerryvore propping up the bar, already on his second pint of the day.
“It’s only Deuchars, IPA. A session ale,” he muttered to Round Island’s admonishment. “And anyways, we’re on holiday!”
“Listen, Skerryvore. I was wondering if you knew anything about Tater Du …”
“The Cornish strumpet, you mean?”
“I suppose so …”
“Well, after she and Wolf broke it off–”
“She was with Wolf?” interrupted Voth.
“Aye. Back in the early eighties.”
“But she … she’s a lot younger than him.”
“He was cut up about it, I think. She left him for Mevagissey.”
“Hmm …”
“What’s the problem? You fancy her?”
“No … it’s just …,” he started, before outlining the conversation he’d heard the night before.
“And you can’t change the service dates?”
“I could try, but …”
“I don’t trust him, that Bishop. You remember when that French lighthouse was found, ten years ago, after the conference in Paris …”
Voth remembered this all too well. He reminded Skerryvore that he’d been the first to find the string of stones, the shattered lens. And the bulb which had apparently burnt its life out. There’d been an inquest, the verdict: suicide. Although, some suspicions had been raised, dragging out proceedings. Being the first on the scene, fingers had pointed at Voth. The rumour mill was set in motion, information misdirected, as if someone wanted to divert any blame – and it seemed that the lighthouse responsible for these rumours was the Bishop.
When they’d returned to real time, it was reported that an unusually strong wave had pulled the stricken French lighthouse into the depths of the ocean. But that hadn’t been the end of it - the moon had expressed her annoyance at the length of the hearing by curtailing the annual conference for the two following years. Voth returned to Round Island, his reputation tarnished, guilty purely by his association with events.
“You really thinking they are planning on sabotage?” asked Skerryvore, the next day. He’d just enjoyed a quick whisky chaser before reverting to the Deuchars.
“I don’t know. Maybe I misheard it? It was windy…”
“Sounds like they were up to something… Whatever it was, it was no good.”
“Another one?”
“And why not?”
With hangovers, they departed the conference the following morning, Skerryvore joining Stroma and the rest of the Stevenson flock for the trip back up north. As Voth plodded across the countryside towards Cornwall, he wondered about why the Bishop would choose to help out the Wolf in this way. He swung down to the south coast, passing where Tater Du had re-established herself, plunging her feet back into the comfort of the Earth.
A ruptured tanker would destroy the coastline. He imagined the thick, black slick swallowing all the sea-birds, engulfing the tourist beaches with oily gunk. And all for an act of petty revenge against a former lover? There had to be more to it that that… He scanned the horizon, searching for an answer. In response, the moon appeared, reflected in the sea below, her scowl reminding him that he had to get home. An hour or so later, he had returned to Round Island. The moon winked out and time began once again. His light powered on and began its cycle, scanning the horizon like a searchlight for clues to the mystery.
The months passed, Winter’s weathering storms moving quickly into spring. The puffins returned about the same time the rock moss began to flower, little blooms popping up all over Round Island, lending it a purple shade. And then suddenly it was July and as predicted, mist fell, enshrouding the islands with its pall. Foghorns bleated plaintively at each other through the blind light.
And just as he was getting into his stride, the scheduled maintenance happened. Voth was stripped bare, his bulb removed, his shutters and mirrors unclipped and examined. One day he heard the men who were fiddling with his insides talking.
“Funding cuts, isn’t it …”
“What’s that?”
“The Bishop. They say he’ll fall into the sea if they don’t do that maintenance.”
“It’ll cost a fair few bob…”
“You can say that again. Best do it now, while the weather’s good.”
“They’ll wait until it turns, mark my words…”
And then he thought he saw it. The Bishop and his friends were to fail on purpose. The coastline would be damaged, but Tater Du would soak up most of the blame – it would mostly fall on her patch. Their status would be elevated, they would be regarded as essential. The maintenance would happen sooner. That was assuming they somehow managed to sabotage the GPS systems as well. Did they also want to attract the usual Cornish tourists? Pull them to unspoiled Scilly instead so they could bask in human admiration? Was that another part of their plan? There had to be another way, he thought. Why all this senseless damage to the coast?
The 7th of July rolled around, and the 12th—both nights were clear; the stars bright and almost three dimensional, scattered over the sky like a sprinkling of fine powder. But as the 18th approached, Voth couldn’t see more that a few metres through the thick fog. Even his platform wasn’t visible. The nearby Agnes was useless as well, her light guttering after a few hundred meters. The Bishop, whose glare usually sliced through the fog like a meteor across the heavens, didn’t seem to be working. When he tested the GPS and found it was down, a sense of something like fear collected along his spiral staircase.
“Skerryvore, it’s happening. Thick fog. GPS has somehow been disrupted. Their plans are reaching fruition,” he emailed up to his Hebridean friend.
“Hang in there Voth,” was the short reply.
He listened, his hearing more acute in the fog. In the distance, he could hear the wail of foghorns.
And then, as if from nowhere, beads of brilliant ethereal light appeared in the mist. The tanker, which was about to smash against the rocks, changed course, following the makeshift beacons. A second tanker, also about to prang the North Cornish coast, later described the sight: “Like chunks of the full moon had been sent down, to guide us on our way.”
Months later, the plot was unravelled. The Stevenson collective had decided to inform the moon and the moon was angry: angry with The Bishop Rock. It took her a great effort to deal with human affairs, especially to deal with errant lighthouses wilfully switching themselves off and disrupting GPS systems for their own egregious purposes. Nefarious. All three of them, complicit in this crime, were barred from attending the conference for the next twenty years.
The near misses were logged and described by the two captains. The ‘power cut’ which had affected the Cornish trio, combined with the temporary failure of the GPS, meant that humans began to take the remaining lighthouses more seriously. The Bishop, The Wolf and the Longships got their wishes for upgrades. And Tater Du had escaped unscathed, to Wolf’s chagrin, Voth presumed. Added to which, the surge of interest in lighthouses had resulted in the BBC commissioning a drama series set on Round Island itself.
At the next conference, Voth was lauded as a hero. He found himself enjoying his new status, although mindful of The Bishop, retained his modest nature. And it turned out Skerryvore had been wrong about Tater Du – her liaison with Mevagissey had been brief and unfulfilling. She looked at him with new eyes. They swapped numbers. He returned to Round Island a changed lighthouse.
As he sat on the hump of rock, casting his beam over the fishermen and trawlers of the Scillies, and even further into the major shipping lanes, he felt a strong sense of pride. The moon appeared from behind a cloud and winked at him. He looked out across the islands and realised that this was happiness. His future was bright: brighter than his current 42,945 candles, he mused to himself.
