Chapter 13
Lighthouse
It was a small sound that woke him.
He lay on the sofa in the lounge in the dark, and he did not know what it was. It was a soft, rhythmic, careful scrape, like someone pulling a chair across a carpet an inch at a time. It stopped. It came again. He opened his eyes.
The lamp was off. The strip in the corridor was down to its night glow, a dim yellow stripe under the door. He could hear Helen, three cots along, drawing long, easy, whistling breaths. He could hear Tom, on the floor by the door, snoring slightly. He raised his head. The clock on the wall said ten past two.
Two of the cots were empty.
It took him a moment. He counted them as he had counted everything since Wednesday, with a numb habitual care. Helen, asleep. Nora, curled on the cot nearest the radiator, with a blanket over her head. Tom, on the floor. Frank's cot, flat and cold. Greg's cot, with the gray blanket thrown back and a pair of shoes gone from under it.
They've gone.
He sat up. The splint on his ankle bit. He swung his legs to the floor and stood, and the room tilted and settled, and the pain in his side was a small bright coal. He crossed to the door in three steps, holding the wall.
"Tom," he said.
The big man started. "What?"
"They've gone."
"Who?"
"Greg. Frank." He had the door open. A faint cold current of air was blowing along the corridor from the far end, and he stood in it with the hair stirring on his neck. "The shutter."
He did not need to look. He knew it, as a man knows a step in the dark. At the end of the corridor, where the great steel roll-down gate had stood closed all week, there was a rectangle of absolute black. It was open. It had been opened in the night by somebody who knew where the switch was, or had guessed. A faint gleam of yellow came up out of it from the foot of the stone stair.
"Oh, no," said Tom. "Oh, you fools."
They went down in a bunch.
He and Tom and, a few steps behind, because she had woken and followed without being asked, Nora. She had not said a word. She was in her scrubs and her sneakers with a gray blanket pulled round her shoulders. Her face in the pale light was very still. She came down the thirty-one steps one at a time, with her hand on the rail, and at the landing she stopped beside Daniel, close, and he felt her shoulder against his arm.
The coal cellar was lit.
The old yellow lamps were on, all down the wall, and the pit lay open and black beneath them, forty feet long. The steel girder ran across it, brown in the glow. And at the midpoint, on the beam, with their arms held out and their heads bent, two men were crossing.
Greg went first. He went on his hands and knees. He had taken off his coat and was crawling along the narrow steel bar like a man on a ledge, with his big pink face turned toward the far platform and his mouth open in a kind of wet grin. Frank came behind him, upright, stiff, with his arms out, stepping heel to toe. He did not look down. He did not look back. He looked only at the iron door in the far wall, small and square and rusty, with a dull gleam on its hinges.
"Greg," said Daniel.
He did not shout. It came out thin. Greg did not turn.
"Greg. Frank. For God's sake."
"Don't," said Frank, without moving his head. His voice was hoarse and steady. "Don't make a noise. We're nearly there."
"It's a trap."
"It's a door."
"It's the only door that's, don't you think he'd have, think!"
"I've been thinking for three days," said Greg.
He had reached the cross. He knelt at the junction of the two beams, at the very middle of the pit, and looked back, and for a moment his face in the lamplight was clear. It was shining with sweat. It was strange, young, unguarded, almost happy, like the face of a boy who has been told he can go home.
"It's the chute," he said. "The coal chute. It goes up to the street. I saw it on Thursday, when you fell. It's got a, there's a ladder." He giggled. "I'm going to climb out and call the police. I'm going to bring a hundred men."
"Right," said Frank.
"Right. Isn't it? The right-hand arm."
"It's the right."
"I'm going."
"Rule two," said White.
They all froze.
The voice was in the cellar. It came from the little speaker bolted to the wall, close and low, calm. "For the record. It is two-fourteen. Mr. Pruitt and Mr. Ross are on the girder, outside the permitted area. The pieces may not leave the board." A pause. "I would be obliged if they would return."
"Go to hell," said Greg.
"I would ask you again."
"I'm not a piece. I'm a, I'm a free man. I'm a man with a mortgage!" He had stood up. He stood on the beam, with his arms flung wide and his head back, shouting at the ceiling, and the sound rang off the black bricks and came back. "I'm going home! You can, you can write it down! Write it down!"
He ran.
It was a clumsy, joyful, ungainly run, heavy and wild, with his big arms flailing and his shoes ringing on the steel. It was not twelve paces. He covered it in a few seconds. He reached the far platform and flung himself at the iron door and wrenched at it with both hands. It swung open. Beyond it was a dark square tunnel, and a thin iron ladder going up, and, very far up, clear, a little circle of gray.
It was the sky.
"I told you," Greg yelled. "I told you! It's the, I'm out!"
He went in.
Nobody saw what happened. There was a low metallic click. A long smooth hum, from somewhere in the roof of the tunnel, such as a lift makes as it descends. A flash of something pale and heavy dropping, very fast, like a blade, from the darkness over the doorway. A short, flat, solid sound.
Then a scream.
It went on for four seconds. It was a man's, high, thin, astonished, and it did not sound like a word at all. It was cut off. Something rattled against the door. A hand, an open palm with the fingers spread, thrust itself out through the gap under the steel, along the floor of the platform, and lay there, still, in the yellow light.
A gold ring caught the lamp.
"Oh, God," said Tom Rudd.
Frank Ross was on his knees on the girder. He had been about to follow. He had been two steps from the platform with one foot raised, and the sound had thrown him back, and he had fallen across the beam with his arms round it, hanging on, like a man on a mast. He lay there, with his face against the steel. His shoulders heaved. He made no sound.
"The court regrets," said White.
It was perfectly gentle.
"Mr. Pruitt was offered a choice. He was told twice. I find that I have nothing to add." A pause. "Mr. Ross, I should be grateful if you would come back. I do not wish to lose two pieces for the sake of one."
They got Frank off the beam.
It took Tom to do it. He went out along the girder himself, slowly, with a rope round his waist and Daniel holding the other end, and he got his arms round the old man's chest and drew him back, hand over hand, a foot at a time, while the whole of the cellar held its breath. Frank did not resist. He let himself be dragged. His boots scraped the steel. When they got him to the landing he lay on the iron floor and did not move.
"I should've said no," he whispered.
"You couldn't have known."
"I should have said it. He asked. I said, right." His eyes were shut. "I didn't believe him. I thought it was the only way. I thought, he's got to leave a door open. It's a game. It's got to have one." His chest heaved. "It had. That's what it was."
"Frank."
"It was the one door in the whole place that opened."
Nobody answered. Down in the pit, the little yellow lamps burned. Nobody could look at the far platform. Somebody had switched off the light over the door, or it had gone out, and only the hand still showed, pale and open, in the margin of the glow.
Daniel turned his head.
Nora was sitting on the bottom step of the stair. She had pulled the gray blanket up over her face and was holding it there with both fists. Her whole body was shaking. It was not the silent shake of the other times. It was a long, helpless, rhythmic one, like a motor running down, and from under the blanket came a noise, thin and high.
It was the sound of a person who had been told it would not happen.
She's not crying for Greg, he thought.
It came to him plainly. He stood on the iron landing, with the cold coming up out of the pit and a dead man's hand in the corner of his eye, and watched her. He saw her knuckles. They were white. He saw the blanket jerk. He saw her bare ankles, in the white sneakers, the left one crossed over the right, in a way that he had seen once, in the hall of a school.
She's crying because it was a lie.
Somebody told her nobody would die.
He went and sat beside her on the step.
He did it slowly, with his hand pressed to his ribs. He eased himself down on the cold stone and sat, with his bad foot out in front of him, and did not say anything. After a while the shaking began to slow. She lowered the blanket, a little way. Her eyes were swollen and red, and they were fixed on the wall.
"I smelled it," said Daniel.
"What?"
"On the first day. Across the table. You smelled of something sharp and blue. I thought, it's the soap. She works on a ward." He kept his voice very low. "Hospital soap's pink. It's a quaternary ammonium. It smells like a pool. The blue one, the one that stings, is hand sanitizer."
She did not move.
"I was in a school office on Monday. The secretary's got a bottle on her desk. It's the same kind. I could smell it on her. And on Monday night I could smell it, in my head, on the video, on the, I could hear it. In my daughter's voice. She said, the lady knew the word." He swallowed. "She said it exactly right."
"Daniel."
"You never asked me what the word was."
She said nothing.
"Everyone else did. Helen asked. Frank asked. They all said, what do you mean, a word? You didn't. You sat on a cot and said you were sorry." He turned his head and looked at her. "You said Anna. You said it on the beam. I thought I'd said it. I didn't. I'd said my wife. I never once, to you, said her name."
"I'd like to tell you," said Nora.
It was a whisper. It was dry.
"I'd like to. I've wanted to for three days. I've, I tried. I nearly said it on the cot." She lowered the blanket, and her face was wet, and white, and perfectly open. "I didn't mean it to be like this. I thought it would be, I thought it was only going to be a, I said I'd do it if nobody got hurt."
"Say it."
"Promise me you won't. Promise you won't shout."
"I won't shout."
"I'd like you to be, to hear all of it. Before you, I know what you're going to. I'd just." She took a long breath. "Say the word. The family one."
"Lighthouse," said Daniel.
"Lighthouse," said Nora.
She said it softly, with a small downward lilt on the second syllable, the way a mother says it, and it went through him like a thin cold wire. He closed his eyes. He had heard it said in exactly that voice, in his own kitchen, over a plate of pancakes, a hundred times. It was not a trick. It was only the sound of a word that had been used on a child, by someone who understood how to use it.
Lighthouse.
"I picked her up from school," said Nora.
She told it plainly.
It was easier, she said, if she did not stop. She sat on the cold stone stair with the blanket round her shoulders, a thin, pale girl in hospital scrubs, and told it to the wall. Frank had been sat up against the rail with a coat round him. Tom stood by the landing with his big hands hanging, and his mouth slightly open, and a look on his face of one who has been shown a thing at last that he has been trying not to see.
"My name's Ivy Lowe," she said.
Nobody said anything.
"I was fourteen when it happened. I sat in the third row, on the left. I had a ribbon. It was yellow. My mother put it in every morning." She said it flatly. "I used to look at all of you. I'd go down the line. I thought, one of those twelve people is going to look at us. I thought, one of them's going to know. I thought if I looked hard enough, I could make it be so."
"I remember," said Daniel.
"Do you?"
"I do now."
"Good," said Ivy.
She did not say it harshly. She said it very softly, almost as a statement of fact. She pulled the blanket closer.
"My mother died eighteen months later. I was home. I came back from school and she was on the sofa with the television on. She'd taken the pills. It wasn't a, they said it was an accident. I think it was. I think she took the wrong number because she wasn't, because she'd stopped counting." She drew a breath. "I went into care. I had four homes. I was in the last one when my father died."
"Ivy," said Tom, thickly.
"I'm all right."
"I'm so sorry."
"I know you are. You were the only one who ever carried my mother's coat." She almost smiled. "You carried it out to the car. On the last day. She was sitting on the bench in the corridor. She'd left it. You said, Mrs. Lowe, you've forgotten this. You were the only one."
Tom made a noise like a man struck.
"I wasn't angry," said Ivy. "I want you to know. Not at first. I thought, it's a thing that happens. It was a mistake. I thought, they'll find out. They'll find the sheet. They'll find the, someone will say." She shook her head. "But nobody did. And I grew up. And I got, I got a job, as a nurse's aide, because I couldn't afford the course. And one day somebody came to see me."
"Who?" said Daniel.
"I can't say."
"Ivy."
"I can't. I promised. I'm sorry." She looked at him, and there was a terrible straightness in her face. "He told me what happened. All of it. The jury. The sheet. A woman who asked, and was taken away. A man who folded a note." Her voice was steady. "He said, I want them to say it. I want them to sit in the room, and say it aloud, to each other. That's all. He said nobody would be hurt. He said, a person will have to be afraid. That's what it is. It's a, it's only fear."
"He lied," said Frank.
"I know."
"Two men. Ray's dead. Greg's, there's a hand in the door."
"I know." The word cracked. "I know. I didn't, I didn't think. I thought it'd be the, you'd all sit in a room. He'd put up a few locks. He'd, it'd be like a play." She was crying again, quietly, steadily. "He said he'd talk to you. I'd be, I'd be in the room. I'd watch. I'd tell him what you were like. I was only supposed to, if you were frightened. If you were going to, if one of you was going to do something stupid."
"Like fall off a beam," said Daniel.
She flinched.
"Say it."
"He said left," said Ivy.
She said it almost inaudibly. She was looking at her hands. "I've an earpiece. It's in my hair. It's small, it's a, you can't see it." She put a finger to her left ear, under the dark knot, and drew out a tiny thing, flesh-colored, like a bead. She held it on her palm. "He talked to me. All the time. He told me what to say when you asked me where I came from. He told me which cot to take. He said, you'll be the guide. I said, no. He said, the clock will lose four hours."
"What?"
"If I said right. If I got you across, he'd take four hours. For not doing it his way." She was shaking. "He said, you will say left, Ivy. It's a bruise. It's a few ribs. He'll live. He said, or you can say right, and I'll take four hours off a child."
Daniel did not move.
"She's twelve," said Ivy. "I met her. I took her from school. I, I sat with her in the car for forty minutes. She, she held my hand. She said her dad was going to be so worried." Her voice broke. "She asked if I had a dad. I said I'd had one. She said, I'm sorry. She said, Is it all right if I tell you a knight joke?"
"What knight joke?"
"I don't remember. It was terrible." She laughed. It was a ghastly, hiccuping sound. "I remember I was, I remember thinking, I could stop. I could turn the car round. And then I thought of my father. And I didn't."
Nobody spoke.
"So I chose her," said Ivy. "Over you. I said left. I said it, and I thought, oh God, oh God, he's going to die, and I said it anyway. I've thought about it every hour since. It was the worst thing I've ever done." She raised her face. "I'd do it again."
He sat on the stair for a long time.
He did not feel angry. He had expected to. It was the sensible thing to feel. A girl had walked up to his daughter outside a school and whispered the one word that made a child trust her. She had sat in a car. She had held her hand. She had said left, on a beam over a fourteen-foot drop, and lied. He had every right to take her by the throat.
He felt only a vast, weary, hollow pity, and under it, very faintly, a kind of recognition.
She did what I'd have done.
She chose a child over a man she'd known two days.
She did it with a reason.
"You asked me once," he said, at last, "if I'd been on a jury."
"I know."
"I said no."
"You didn't say anything. You said you'd been an insurance man."
"I've been lying to you. For four days."
"Everyone has."
"Not like this." He kept his eyes on the lamplight, on the bare wet brick. "There was a woman. A juror. She wrote me a note. She asked for a piece of paper that would have been, it might have, I don't know if it'd have mattered. I never found out. I put it in my pocket. I said I'd take it to the judge. I didn't."
Nobody breathed.
"And then she was going to ask him herself. And I told the bailiff she'd been using a phone." His voice was perfectly level. "She hadn't. I knew she hadn't. I made it up. I said it because my wife was dying and I wanted to go home."
Ivy did not move. She sat with the blanket round her and her face turned toward him, white. Her lips parted a little. It was the first time he had told it aloud. He listened to the sound, with a kind of detached wonder, as a man listens to an echo in a cave. It was so short. It was so small. It did not sound like a thing that could have taken a family.
"That's all of it?" said Ivy.
"No."
"What's the rest?"
"I don't know yet," said Daniel. "There's something I don't know. I keep thinking. There's a piece I've got wrong. I've been wrong about it for nine years."
"What piece?"
"What was on the sheet."
She looked at him for a long moment. Something moved behind her eyes. It was not forgiveness. It was not anything so large. It was something smaller and more terrible, a kind of fierce, exhausted, aching attention, as if she were hearing a thing she had waited her whole life to hear, and found that it did not make the difference she had hoped.
"Thank you," she said.
"I don't want thanks."
"I know," said Ivy. "I know. Thank you."
"For the record," said White.
He had been silent so long that they had almost forgotten him. The voice came out of the stone, from the speaker on the wall, soft, tired, and level. It was a quarter to four. The cellar was very cold.
"I regret Mr. Pruitt. I will say that once, and not again. I should like it noted that he was told, and that the rule was not enforced on a whim. I think we all know why he ran." There was a very small pause. "I would also like to say something to Mr. Wells."
Daniel did not look up.
"You have told one person the truth tonight," said White. "That is more than you have told in nine years. I am glad. I think it was well done." The voice was almost gentle. "I should like to answer a question that you have not asked."
"What question?"
"You have been wondering why your daughter."
He did not breathe.
"She was not chosen at random, Mr. Wells. I should not like you to think so. It would be a kind of insult." A paper turned. "I wish to read a short extract. It is from a notebook. It is dated the second day of deliberations, the seventh of March. It is in a woman's handwriting."
The old dry voice dropped. It became lower, flatter, and slower, like a man reading aloud from the back of a book.
"The foreman has a little girl. She is three. Her name is June. I said, how lovely, it's the month we were married. His wife is in the hospital. He is a decent man, I think, but he is very tired. I do not want to be unkind to him. I'll try to be quick."
A pause.
"You told her," said White, softly. "In a cold jury room, with the radiator off. You told her that your wife was dying and that your daughter was three. You gave her your reason. You handed it across the table."
Nobody moved.
"I have always thought it was a very good one," said White. "I wished only to see what it weighed."
The speaker clicked off.
In the silence, far off, down in the black pit, something moved on the iron platform, where a pale hand lay on the floor. It stirred. It was only a draft. It was only a scrap of paper, that the air from the chute had lifted. It slid, and turned, and settled against the fingers, and lay still.
Daniel put his face in his hands.
June.
She wasn't chosen. She was the reason.
She was the thing I said.