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Once over the lower area, they faced a slope which led up to the lighthouse. They had thought it barren when they’d seen it from the boat, but it was actually covered in a low tangle of gorse, but had a surprising number of little white tracks weaving through this undergrowth. PB soon discovered why, and he suddenly shot off after a rabbit. It appeared to be one vast warren, and where the creatures ran freely, they’d worn away the topsoil down to a chalky lower level. Ben went after the young dog, eventually managing to get him on a lead too.
They could barely hear each other over the howling now. The wind, caught by the cliff and apparently as angry as the waves were at being impeded, tore up them, whistling furiously. Aleksey glanced ahead at the climb up to the highest point and offered to take both dogs. He’d discovered in the last few months that it was very handy owning a pure-bred husky. PB did on a lead what his genes told him to do: he pulled. And he was incredibly strong. Radulf and Aleksey let him have his head, and they made it quite satisfactorily to the top.
Ben, Squeezy and Tim were already there, standing in the shelter, what there was of it, alongside the lighthouse.
Aleksey joined them.
The tower itself stood on a concrete base about thirty feet square and eight feet high like a WWII pill box defensive position. Set into this was a short flight of steps up to the platform which ran around the base of the tower. The door to the tower was opposite the steps.
There was a large ring fastened to the base by the steps and Aleksey tied both animals securely to it.
Before he went up, he walked around to the edge of the cliff.
From this side of the lighthouse, Aleksey saw that there were windows which he’d not spotted from the boat, four very narrow dark slits only a few inches wide, but high, facing out towards the west over the arch. The first of these was at least halfway up.
Very cautiously he went to peer over the side. He didn’t suffer from vertigo, but he reckoned if he wanted to develop a nice touch of this condition, then here would be a good place to start. Even without the enormous waves breaking up three hundred feet below, the cliffs would have been awesome. With them, it genuinely worried him.
Lying in his sleeping bag that morning, he had planned to walk across the bridge of the arch and to then see how far it was to jump to the stack. He occasionally, at times like this, forgot he was old and broken. And fat, he supposed. Now, peering down, all three of those conditions seemed like very good excuses indeed for not attempting such an inane activity. Not discernable from three hundred feet below tossing on the waves in Spindrift, the bridge of the arch was incredibly thin—possibly why it appeared so delicate. The entire hole beneath the curved bridge was shaped like a vast cathedral window. Aleksey supposed it might take his weight, but…
He felt a hand tucking into the back of his waistband and was about to joke that it would be a good way for Ben to kill him, when he felt himself being very firmly pulled backwards.
‘Yeah, a little too windy to stand that close maybe?’ Theidiotmentally tagged onto this was understood by both of them to have been said.
Aleksey nodded. ‘Why do we always feel like allowing great height to take us down? I had always thought vertigo was a fear of falling, but it’s not, this drop is—’
‘—calling to you?’
Aleksey nodded, pleased that Ben got it. To his horror, Ben let him go then stepped to exactly where he’d been, presumably to test this theory. He even spread his arms out, as if about to take off into the wind. He turned, his eyes alight with excitement, and Aleksey wished he had a camera to capture the brilliance of that green against the blue of the sky and sea behind. ‘Shall I try? Cross it?’
Ben apparently saw something in his expression that answered that question for him and he turned away with a muttered, ‘Who’s being boring now?’
However hard he tried, Aleksey could not rid himself of the thought of Ben in the middle of the bridge and it just disappearing, collapsing beneath him. How long did it take to tumble in perfect free-fall to the deep blue three hundred feet below?
Tim was taking some more photos and wanted to try and capture the lighthouse in one shot, saying how photogenic it was. His comment prompted a sudden thought, and Aleksey declared, ‘I think it is black because it will then stand out against the other colours here. White would be mistaken perhaps for just more of the cliffs, and red possibly for streaks in the sky? But black…’
Ben came to his side, and they gazed up together. Then Ben nudged him. ‘Come on then. You ready?’
Aleksey was surprised that Squeezy was sitting down with his back to the concrete base, playing with the dogs. ‘I can’t fucking open the door, can I,’ was his gloomy explanation.
Aleksey climbed the steps and tried it himself. He’d never felt anything as hard and rigid and unrelenting before, and given his preferences in bed, this surprised him. There was a keyhole, but they had no key and clearly, therefore, no one was getting in.
Ben was standing craning his neck back, eyeing up the light structure at the top, which consisted of a traditional latticed metal gantry around a glass dome with a door out onto the walkway. ‘How high do you reckon that is?’
Squeezy stood up and gauged the tower too, narrowing his eyes. He licked his thumb and held it up, then pinched two fingers against the structure. ‘'Bout eighty-nine feet, I’d say.’
Ben turned slowly to him. ‘About…eighty-nine…not ninety then?’
Squeezy was about to reply when Tim came around from a circuit he was making of the base with the history book open once more, reading to himself. ‘The lighthouse on Luz Island is eighty-nine feet high and was built in 1802, making it one of the oldest Trinity House lighthouses to be constructed. It was decommissioned in 1978, when it was replaced with a light vessel at… Why are they fighting?’
Aleksey shrugged. ‘The moron needed beating up.’
Tim stared up at the light. ‘This is so frustrating. Are you sure you don’t have the key?’
Aleksey dutifully patted his pockets. ‘Nope.’
Ben, now holding Squeezy in a headlock and punching him in the side of the head, panted, ‘Bet I could climb it.’
Squeezy immediately extricated himself from the hold and, skittering away out of reach, held up a hand for peace. ‘Get a rope to the top we could, yeah. Then in through that little glass door no probs.’
