Character Examined

Note: Contains references to death, illness, hunger, and desecration.

The point of the headland was a stone blade honed by the wind. It rose out of the Bass Strait, unbroken and absolute. Upon its crown stood the lighthouse.

In the mornings the spray climbed to its windows and left a crust of salt. Gulls wheeled east and west, screaming thinly to the wind. Below the cliff, the water broke into a colourless foam against a reef.

The lighthouse stood indifferent to it all. Its walls sweated brine in winter and glared pale in summer. To those ashore it was a landmark, to those at sea, a warning. To itself, nothing at all.

Fletcher Darragh was a hardened man with hands cut by salt and lamp glass. He had worked steam winches in the port and hauled wet hemp on the Hobsons Bay pier until his back had learned the lesson labour teaches. He moved inland for a time and drank less. Then he came back, drawn by a posting nailed to a timber wall: Keeper needed. Cape Otway. Stipend small. Character to be examined.

He had character to be examined. It would not bear much looking at, yet the inspector found enough to pass. Spare, serviceable, nothing more. After that, Fletcher came to the headland, carrying a trunk and a hatred he dared not speak aloud.

When he was eight his parents had vanished on a brig named Remora. They said heavy weather in the Heads tore it apart. Later came the stories. Men on the shore with lanterns. Lamps where there should be none. Wreckers feeding on the drowned.

He had hated them since boyhood. The beachcomber who prayed for storms. The thief who pried rings from hands and kicked nails from coffins washed from the sand. The men who split open crates and called it a harvest.

He carried that hatred into the lantern room, where the light was French and fine. Third-order Fresnel, eight-wick burner, lens bent to send its rays in three hard ranks. The cistern fed the wick by gravity and the drum turned on a mercury float. He used sperm oil when he could, colza when he could not. The lens was polished with alcohol that burned the fingers. The room smelled of brass, cold oil, salt. At night when the beam went its course across the water he felt a peace that was not piety but close.

He had one hand, Martin. A boy with eyes too large for his face and wrists too slight to be of use. The government sent them flour, tea, salted meat in sacks, lamp oil in tins, sometimes potatoes already soft. They hauled it all up and stacked it in the brick store where the wind never ceased. The nearest town lay a day’s walk inland along a goat track that tore at clothes. Down the coast were the Shipwreck beaches where broken vessels could be recited like a litany.

Hunger came late that winter, whether from lack of food or lack of certainty, it could not be said. The supply ketch from Queenscliff missed its course and fetched up on a shoal far east, never seen again. Weeks of south wind followed, cold enough to cut to the bone. Martin sickened with fever that burned and drained him. Fletcher cut the oil at night below regulation and wrote nothing of it. He slept in his chair with his boots on.

It was morning when five men came up the track. The one at the front held his hat by the brim. He gave his name as Timothy Harkness of Coastal Salvage and Supplies and spoke as if the wind should clear for him.

We have a proposition, he said.

Fletcher looked from the man to the reef. He did not invite them in. They entered anyway.

Harkness smiled, then let it fall. Simple, he said. The company can guarantee supplies in return for cooperation. Not the stories you’ve heard. Only an adjustment. Ten degrees to starboard in foul weather. Captains look for light. Men push on when they should heave to. Let them tap the reef. We’ll have boats ready. Cargo recorded. Payment generous. You and the boy will not go hungry.

Fletcher told him to leave. Harkness set a wrapped package on the table and went. Inside was bacon and a tin of tea. Martin eyed the bacon. Fletcher threw it on the coals and pressed it until it flamed and shrank to ash.

That night the light went as it should. The sea stayed black.

A week later the weather thickened, then broke. A ship came in from the east under a pale sky and tore itself open on the reef. She hung there, pitched sideways, and was gone in seven minutes.

The men on the beach were not Harkness’s. They came from the scrub with hooks and sacks. They carried lanterns in full day, waving them and shouting. They waded out roped together and came back with barrels, bales, a red shawl snagged in kelp. A boy’s face floated with eyes open, mouth slack. One man shut the lids, then pried a ring from another body and bit it before pocketing it.

Fletcher ran down with a hook, shouting. He struck at them. Martin followed with a boathook and dropped a man, but the scarred giant stepped from the surf and struck Martin with a spar. The boy buckled into the water.

The bodies were buried in a trench. The priest took breath to speak, then did not. Martin’s wound festered, iron angry. Fletcher stitched him, boiled rags, prayed to nothing. The boy shook with fever. Fletcher burned more oil than he could afford.

A fortnight later Harkness returned. This time he brought papers, signed and sealed by colony, maritime office, salvage company. The right to work the headland. The right to use the keeper’s tram. The right to what washed ashore unclaimed. A clause about navigation aids maintained under authority. Harkness tapped it with his finger.

Martin’s wound stank. The last ketch had brought worm-ridden meat and damp coal. Martin breathed in croaks. Harkness stood on the hearth. He said, He needs a surgeon. I have one. But we must know the captain will see us. Bring the light a little south when weather’s close. We will come through with a boat.

Fletcher looked at the boy. At the blade of the sky. He said No.

That night the tower groaned. Fletcher climbed to the lantern room and bent the flame. It faltered, caught, swept the rain. Out beyond, a ship groaned like a house splitting. He realigned the shutter. The light swept harmless. He thought of the boy’s breathing below. He took the key from the hook. He turned the shutter.

The ship struck. A sound like a nail driven by a giant hand. He saw men scramble, small and quick, then vanish. He did not move.

By dawn the beach was strewn. Men came with gaffs and sacks. Fletcher stood among them. Harkness brought a young surgeon who fussed over Martin with water and rags and said only fever, days.

At dusk Fletcher walked alone. He found a man tangled in cordage, the crabs at work. Fletcher cut him free, pried a ring from his swollen hand, bit it, spat it into his palm. He pocketed it. He opened a trunk, found coins, a doll. He left the doll in the sand.

When he came back Harkness waited. He said, The coast provides. We are cleaners. Sacristans. He handed back the ring Fletcher offered. Fletcher placed it in a tin on the kitchen shelf.

Days followed. The salvage boat used their tram. They hauled crates of rifles, screws sorted in barrels, molasses, shoes too small for any living child. Fletcher kept the light. He moved the shutter in foul weather. He told himself he would stop when the boy recovered.

Martin did not. The surgeon came again, left ointment. He died with his eyes open. Fletcher touched his brow. The boy’s look held recognition, reproach, then nothing.

If asked later when he became what he hated, Fletcher might say the night on the stair when he turned the shutter. Or the night he spat the ring into his hand. The slower truth was that he had carried it from his first loss and in time it showed itself plain.

He kept the light. Sometimes he turned it. He took the salvage owed him by arithmetic. He learned where currents set, what blindness takes a captain in rain. He knew the sound of iron ships breaking on stone. He could feel it through his boots.

At times he thought of the Remora. He saw in his mind a man with a lamp on the shore, and a boy inland being told lies. He pitied the boy, not knowing he pitied himself.

Harkness came in a new coat, confident as ever. He asked, How is the boy.

Fletcher said, The boy is gone.

Harkness looked down, then up. We go on, he said. There is nothing to be done.

Fletcher went back to the lamp. He opened the tin, weighed the ring, put it back.

It is not that men become what they hate as if pulling on a cloak. Hatred is a road. Walk it long enough and you find the house waiting, the door open, the table set. Fletcher learned this. He learned it in the way men looked at him when ships screamed onto the reef. He learned it with the rings in his tin, the brooches, the watch stopped at twenty past two. He kept the light. Sometimes he turned it. Men lived. Men died. The gulls came regardless.

One spring day Fletcher walked inland. A man met him. He said his sister sailed on the Calliope. He asked if wreckers came. If men with lamps took rings. He spoke without accusation, only as one repeating what is said. He held a flannel bundle with a ribbon, scissors, a book of sums. These were hers, he said. They found them at Anglesea. He thanked Fletcher as if given a kindness. Then he put on his hat and went.

That evening Fletcher watched the light circle. Far off a ship crawled west. He set his hand on the burner. He took out the tin, opened it, shut it again. He put it back in his pocket.

Below, the reef lifted out of the water with endless patience. The sea unravelled itself on the stone. The gulls came late and then cried until the air shook. Fletcher listened. Hunger or joy, he could not tell. He stood until only the beam remained, cutting the dark like a blade that had forgotten it was made by men. He did not move.

A character to be examined. In the ledger of the colony his name stood as keeper of the light. On the shore he walked with hooks and sacks, rings in his pocket, the gulls wheeling overhead. The boy who once cursed wreckers had become their kin. He kept the lamp burning and bent it when he chose. That was his service. That was his character.