The Two-Minute Lighthouse

I told the woman at the ticket desk that I had two minutes. She looked at the clock, then at my boots.

“That's unfortunate. The tower takes six.”

“Minutes?”

“Flights.”

I bought a ticket.

The lighthouse stood on a headland with a small museum in the former stores. I had walked there along the coast, intending to look at the building and continue to the village. From outside, the museum appeared to contain a ship's bell, three photographs and a cupboard. This was an underestimate of both its contents and my susceptibility to cupboards.

The woman was called Vera. She wore a cardigan with one cuff rolled higher than the other and was eating an apple over a folded leaflet. Beside her, a handwritten sign said LAST TOWER VISIT 4.15. Below it, someone had added WEATHER PERMITTING. The weather was permitting very little.

“Can you see anything from the top?” I asked.

“Today? Your disappointment, from above.”

She gave me the ticket and pointed towards the stores.

I went downstairs first.

At the centre of the room stood an old lens in a brass frame, behind a low barrier. It was taller than I was: curved glass, concentric ridges, prisms fitted together with the exactness of something made by people who expected it to matter. Window light travelled along its edges. I moved a pace sideways and a narrow green gleam slid out of sight.

The label identified it as the tower's former optic. A newer light now did the work upstairs. Here, the retired machinery had acquired a little peace and a considerable number of fingerprints on its barrier.

I crouched to examine the lower rings.

“Are you fixing it?”

A child in a yellow coat had appeared beside me. One of her mittens was attached to her sleeve. The other was attached to nothing.

“No. Looking.”

“My dad looks like that when he's fixing things.”

“Does it help?”

“He usually has to go and buy something.”

Her father came through the doorway carrying the missing mitten and a paper cup. The girl was called Bea. They had come for the view. He glanced at the white window and drank from the cup with the resignation of a man who had purchased a horizon which was currently unavailable.

Bea wanted to know why the glass had so many steps.

I began with the shape of an ordinary lens. She looked back towards the stairs.

I stopped. It was a perfectly good explanation for somebody who had requested that explanation.

“Shall we find out what this one does?”

Vera had followed us down. She switched on a small demonstration lamp beneath a clear cover. Around it sat four lens panels on a turntable. A crank projected from the side.

“Gently,” she told Bea. “It sticks at the same place every time. Don't fight it.”

Bea turned the handle. A bright patch travelled across the wall, crossed her father's trousers and went away. Another followed.

“It's blinking,” she said.

I watched the bulb through the top of the cover. It stayed lit.

“Watch that part while I turn.”

We exchanged places. She leaned close enough for the cover to catch a pale reflection of her nose. I moved the crank slowly. The panels went round the lamp, sending the light successively past the room.

“It isn't blinking.”

“From here, no. Stand by your dad.”

She did. The bright patch reached her coat and passed on.

“There!”

The glass redirected light that would otherwise spread in many directions, concentrating it into beams. As the panels revolved, someone standing in one place saw a beam arrive and leave: a flash from a lamp which had remained steadily alight. The old clockwork upstairs had once turned the real optic. Different arrangements and speeds could give lighthouses different flash patterns.

Bea turned again. Her father stayed where he was and counted the flashes. She made him count twice because he had looked at his cup.

Vera let them carry on. I asked whether the old mechanism remained in the tower.

“Part of it. The winding handle's in the case.”

“How often did they wind it?”

“For this one? I'd have to check.”

She drew a binder from beneath the desk. Its cover was splitting at the corners. Inside were copied records, photographs and pencilled additions. We bent over a page together. I had three questions ready when the door opened and two visitors came in shaking rain from their sleeves.

Vera put a finger on our place.

“Hold that thought.”

I held several. They were rather slippery.

While she sold tickets, Bea's father discovered that the tower visit had already begun. He offered to take her up if they hurried.

“I want to do the light,” she said.

He looked towards the stairs. I could almost see the six flights waiting behind his eyes.

“All right.”

They stayed.

I stayed too. The turntable caught at its awkward place, and Bea eased it backwards before trying again, precisely as Vera had shown her. On the wall, a painted ship received four flashes and continued going nowhere.

By closing time I had climbed no stairs. Vera found the relevant maintenance sheet, and I copied its details into my notebook. Bea drew the demonstration beside them, with a very large crank and her father labelled MAN.

Outside, the rain had thinned. They offered me a lift to the village. I accepted, folding myself into the back seat beside a bag of swimming towels.

“Two minutes?” Vera called from the doorway.

“A preliminary estimate.”

She waved her apple core at me.

At the village, Bea asked if I wanted the drawing. I said I had it in my notebook.

“The other one.”

She handed me a damp leaflet. On its blank side she had drawn the view from the lighthouse: a rectangle, coloured almost entirely grey.

“Saved you the stairs.”

I have put it beside the diagram. The diagram is less accurate about the weather.