Sulland Voss
People say there are no more manned lighthouses – and that’s almost true. But Peter Finlayson was keeper of one of the last. A third of the way between Shetland and the Faroes, Sulland Voss lighthouse was out of range of wifi, electrical currents and civilisation itself.
It was everything you’d expect: tall, white and built in the nineteenth century. Last upgraded fifty years ago, it was just a matter of time before some official would decide this lighthouse was too expensive or pointless to maintain.
Peter had signed up as the keeper for three years. At the time, it felt right: unwilling to continue his work as a maritime engineer, Finlayson wanted to spend more time with his family and write about his travels around the seas. He’d drunk and fought in every port from Shanghai to Panama, Gabon to Amsterdam: those thirty years of seafaring had left scars on his hands and no experience of any other kind of life. Solitude in a lighthouse seemed the answer to that darkness within him he could not name.
***
The blue and grey, the grey and blue: the horizon not so much a line as a grey-blue murk that grew lighter in daytime and darker at night. The supply ship once a month. The intermittent connection to e-mail, video-links and internet via satellite. The sound of gulls, the whispering and crashing of waves that grew so loud at high tide he found it hard to sleep.
At first, there was optimism and productivity. He spoke to his wife and children daily. His salary, of which he had no need, was deposited in his bank account by the Government for his family’s use. He maintained a disciplined schedule, rising at four to check the mechanism that turned the giant reflective light at the top of the tower: the oil, diesel and electrics. Then his report to the mainland: nothing to report.
Sometimes he thought he saw ships passing, identifiable only by a far-off light winking through the waves. Otherwise, nothing but birds and waves and wind in cacophony. Far from peaceful, it seemed to Peter that Sullen Voss lighthouse had been segregated from humanity as a hell for noise.
***
He wrote every morning for an hour after work. Stories of bar-fights in Sierra Leone, of spilled blood and bones broken, stolen love in Singapore doorways, contraband and drugs smuggled into Rotterdam. He had drunk deep of life – and now he sat alone on the roof of the world, surrounded by a raging sea, writing stories for an audience that didn’t and might never exist.
***
Six months in, his first visit home. No replacement was sent when he went on leave — an admission his job was unnecessary. His wife’s initial welcome in body and spirit fading to that last night when she turned away from him, the mattress between them a chasm love could not cross. And the kids’ smiles fadedfading. After a few days of curiosity at having a Dad again, they reverted to asking their mother permissions and questions as if he wasn’t there. And in many ways, he wasn’t.
***
After his leave, the launch dropped him off with supplies during a rare calm on the waters. Each morning, the mechanical checks; then the empty page. Thoughts of making love with his wife; the slow creep of desperation. Consulting the i-Ching online, reading horoscope sites he’d previously ignored as nonsense. Looking up tarot cards, necromancy – anything to give him some hope that this emptiness might end.
Then one day, a smashed mirror. It happened after he’d been shaving. He straightened up after washing the shaving foam from his face to find his tired features — more grey than black in his beard, eyes sunken like some ghost vessel in a fable. Before the next thought occurred, he saw his face shattered into a thousand splinters and blood on his fist, the crimson pulsing from the white where knuckle-bones met skin.
He picked the shards of glass from his hands and dressed the wound. Then he opened his desk drawer, took out a bottle of whisky, sat down in the mess-room and drank the whole thing before noon.
***
The blue and grey, the grey and blue: his prayers transforming to litanies, recited five times a day between professional obligations, writing and, at last, drink. Prayers to be delivered from this place. To be reunited with the wife he now believed was betraying him with a fantasy cast of men who came and went in his mind; reunited with the children he could hardly picture after such long absence.
That last night with his wife played over endlessly in his head, the gap in bed like miles over dark water, her silent face still seen in the lighthouse window panes at night.
When he spoke to God, at first he heard silence. Then, over time, God’s voice told him he would be released. God said his wife waited faithfully and his children spoke of him often. And in time God told him to paint strange ikons on the walls, hymns to the movement of the sea, paeans to the sealife that flourished beneath the waves outside his window.
As the days blurred into one, God’s voice grew darker – and he listened. Not to do so might have meant being caught on this rock forever.
***
OFFICIAL REPORT No. 230924/Sulland. In the absence of any communication from Lighthouse Sulland Voss for two weeks, the decision was taken to send a Coast Guard vessel to investigate. On forcing open the door, our entry team found Finlayson at the foot of an unintelligible mural he had painted throughout the living quarters. Whales and fish featured, together with images of the sun and moon, waves and clouds and lightning. The images included a huge scene in which devils and saints murdered and copulated inside an image of the deceased’s head. Finlayson’s corpse was bagged and tagged and placed on the vessel for return. Next of kin have been informed.