Short story
The evening was setting in, and dark blue-gray clouds building up. Hilda had the carriage to herself. The habit of asking oneself whether one’s journey was really necessary was still present to most minds, even though the war was over. Hilda sat neatly in her corner seat, wearing her good new claret-coloured suit and a small hat.
It was a fast train,pounding on towards the rain-clouds over Wales. It whipped through a station whose lights were already on against the gathering dark. Hilda saw the dance-hall, with its lights seeming brighter because of the blackout, and herself dancing with Philip Llewellyn, her cheek against his naval officer’s uniform.
“I think one of the trumpeters has hiccups,” he muttered in her ear.
She laughed. “A new theory of the birth of syncopation?” she suggested.
“No, that was invented by a bad dancer - always half a step behind his partner.”
“Nobody could level that accusation at you.” Indeed he was a very good dancer. She sometimes wondered where he had learned it.
There was so much to say while not saying what they were really thinking.
She looked at her watch and started to gather her bags together. The train was starting to slow, and she had to change.
Forty minutes to wait at the junction. She wished she could get a cup of tea, but it was probably not long enough to walk into the town, even if she could find a tea-room open.
“They say that ABC really stands for Awfully Bad Cakes.”
“They’re not so bad. I hear they make the icing pink with beetroot.”
“Is that what makes your lipstick red?”
“I don’t wear any.”
“I’ll have to test that.”
But she dabbed her lips with her napkin and showed him that there was no stain on it.
The local train lumbered in at last. She wearily picked up her bags and boarded. How on earth could it be worth the company’s while to run these trains?
“Where do you come from?”
“Kent. And you?”
“Wales.”
“Somehow I guessed that.”
“The name’s a bit of a giveaway, isn’t it?”
“And the accent.”
Was it then that he had first told her about the lighthouse? She couldn’t remember.
“You’re a hereditary lighthouse keeper, then?”
“I suppose you could say it’s the family business, yes, my father and grandfather both kept it.”
“It must be so sweet to grow up in a little round house.”
It wasn’t just a little round house, he had said. The lighthouse was on an island, and there were several small cottages there. People had vegetable patches and went fishing. When things were needed from the mainland they had to be brought down the steep zigzag cliff path by donkey and then across the little causeway.
She had questioned him about that. It was so different from anything she knew, growing up in the domesticated surroundings of Maidstone. He had gone to school on the mainland, but had always been glad to get back to his island. She thought of getting the bus back from school, herself, wearing her demure school hat. Seagulls were things she only heard on holiday. It was not surprising that he had chosen to go into the Navy.
The train stopped at innumerable small stations with names to her unpronounceable. Except for that day - was it that day in the café,or another? - they had not talked about the past, or the future. The past was better not recalled, the future too uncertain. Could you really build a love out of jokes and dancing?
But they had written to each other, when he was recalled to his ship, and they had found so many things to make jokes about in those latter days of the war. And now he was demobbed, just in time, he said, to take possession of his hereditary lighthouse, for his father was growing too frail to keep it any more.
There were so many reasons why she should not have gone to join him. But she had gone anyway.
The train drew into the very last station. It was fully dark now and the platform sparsely lit. she climbed down with her bags and found herself caught in an enormous hug.
“Philip!”
He was almost like a caricature of a lighthouse keeper in his enormous jumper and boots, but the planes and angles of the tanned face were as fine as ever.
“Is this all the luggage you have? We won’t have to roust the donkey out, then.”
“Do you mean there really is a donkey?”
“There still is, yes. But I can carry this much.”
Even in her sensible court shoes the path down the cliff, with its irregular steps, was a challenge to her; it was very dark and the rain whipped her face. Philip gave her a hand when he could. It was a relief to get down to the bridge at the bottom. Across it, the path wound upwards through the cottages, and then they were at the base of the lighthouse. It was impossible not to feel daunted.
Philip let her in and said, “Tea?”
“Please,” said Hilda.
She sat down at the little table and he brewed up.
“I know this one,” he remarked. “This is when we discover that once you take away the jeopardy, we really have nothing in common.”
“How can you be so clichéd?” she asked. “Of course we have nothing in common. I thought that that was what we liked about each other. Do I want to marry an accountant from Maidstone? Do you want to marry a fisher-girl? We could have done that before the war broke out if we’d been so minded.”
“And now you’ve seen the worst of it and don’t want to go back to Maidstone?”
“The worst of it?”
“Oh yes. If it were a beautiful sunny morning you’d find the place quite attractive.”
“Even on a dark rainy night it’s still a lot better than the tube from my office and a tiny room in the Euston Road.”
“So you want to be a lighthouse-keeper’s wife?”
“For always. And you want to be a lighthouse-keeper?”
“For always. Trinity house permitting.”
“What’s Trinity House?”
“The civil service department in charge of lighthouses. They’re talking about automation.”
Then silence fell between them.