The Lighthouse

A short story tribute to Peggy Braithwaite, the UK's first and only principle lighthouse keeper - God help me there an audio too!

When I tell you that the Lighthouse called me you might jump to several conclusions. But, like the Little Tern, once native here, my reasons are elusive, even to me.

I am not looking for a beacon. I don’t need guiding home. I am not lost at sea. Shipwrecked. Hijacked by pirates. Abandoned to the sea stallion waves of Poseidon.

No.

I came to find a tiny flower.

Once here (not so long ago) amongst the sand dunes and long, sharp grasses lived a tiny delicate purple flowered plant. It thrived in the salt air, not yet beaten into obscurity by the harsh flat land and ocean winds. A plant that rooted itself into the sand, knowing its foothold would be impermanent. That subtle shifts would cause its mooring to dissolve and reform. And, to survive it would need to ride the waves of millennia ground rock to a new home, daily, hourly, whenever the wind whistled in from the sea.

Once upon a time, when I was small, and I walked knee high to your strong, stockinged legs. You sang to me about the sand fairies that lived here, how they’d hide amongst the tall grasses, braid these purple flowers in their hair. You told me how they made their clothes from seaweed, and their shoes from shells. And you collected them to show me in your cool, but rough-cut hand.

Childish folly. We are digital and techno powered, with little space for magic and whimsy. I live in a World of stinging paradoxes, of brittle conspiracies. But, scarred as I am from the passage of modern life, your words still feel delicate of touch, like the beat of a damsel fly’s wings skimming the water, on a still day.

Breathe.

After you had gone, I placed them and you in a little box. Left you both to gather dust in the attic of my brain. Too busy chasing my dreams, just as you’d taught me, no thought for home or the people there I left behind. Unlike you, I have remained unanchored, a pirate of feminism and adventure. Borderless and free. And, truthfully, sometimes lost and in pain.

I ask myself why now after so many years? Why chase the past?

Sadness.

There is something I have not told you.

The flower I seek has been endangered for over 30 years now. No one has found one here, by the lighthouse, on the island, for at least 20 years. That means you were the last to see one. When you left you took them and the sand fairies with you. Or, maybe when you left the magic of this island could not bear to be without you.

Gone.

Tonight, my room flickers with the bright, white light of the lamp in the tower. It shocks me from my restless dreams, reminds me peril is not far from me, as I lie wrapped in feather down. Out there, the sea on the horizon, is dark and cruel. Like my worst nightmares, as a child. When soft words and arms would soothe me for a while until I drifted back to sleep.

Tonight, I lie alone, rocking with the sound of the wind. In a room so close to yours but now slept in by someone else. I think of rattling windows and cold wooden floors, a soot scarred coal scuttle and candles laid out on your nightstand for when the power gave out. And, an ivory hair comb that held your long silver hair, up high on your head and that you teased was made from seal bones.

In the morning, the muted sun light brings my mind back to my quest. I suffocate myself in wool and sou’wester. Lace myself into heavy boots, bracing my body for a day in the cold. Final adornments: a flask and a walking stick. And, most importantly the small pocketbook, with an intricate original drawing of the flower. Dune gentian. A bible of your delicate design.

Since you have been gone, things have changed. No, not just the shifting sand dunes and lost flowers, fairies and birds. The landscape of people’s lives here. The patterns of nature, the rhythms of our planet. Community. Belonging.

You were no stranger to change or to challenge. But this? A planet and its people, overwhelmed and throbbing with discord?

Born in the shadow of a World War and a Medieval Castle. You were a warrior Queen to me. Pirates be feared of you. You were not gentle. The sea was riven in your skin. But you loved what you loved, with a whole heart. A fierceness of spirit and a vulnerability that always sought connection, even when cut off to land and human touch. To me, your heart was an oyster pearl formed in the black heart of the waters you watched over.

All the barriers you encountered splintered like thin ice beneath your feet, and you didn’t even notice. Because you knew who you were. A part of this land. An Islander. Guardian of both land and sea. Man, woman, sea creature: treasured in all your forms.

The wind is wild today, cutting ‘curlies’ through the dunes, as you used to say. Today, I feel you in the changing of the tides, in the call of the gull, in the softness of sea moss laid on salty stone, in the clamour of deep water, as a new storm begins stirring. More than once I’m sure I catch a glimpse of the silver tendrils of your hair, forever escaping their seal bone moorings, and the cast of an aging hand towards this point and that. Not a ghostly encounter, as such, an imprint of you the island has claimed.

I head North towards the old fort, feet brushing the bright blue Buglass as I walk. Geese cross the horizon in formation and in the distance steel windmills remind me that the passage of time is inescapable. I am head down now, watching the sand suck at my boots, eyes darting left to right, in hypnotic sweeps. No sign of fairies or dune gentian.

Not yet.

Maybe never again.

I think about grief and letting go. And wonder if this is why I have traversed the globe? To avoid coming home to the emptiness of missing you? Distracted, my foot clips a stone and I lurch forward, wind my unwitnessed pride.

I feel cold and dispirited, as I struggle to right myself. Sand stuck to my cheek; my hair unmoored; my clothes irreverent. I have pulled away from love and contentment. Never really feeling it was meant for me. This World demands so much of women. We always have to choose or sacrifice. I’m not confident that that will ever change.

Grief.

For the first time in a long time tears fall. Gush. Unfettered. A gull takes flight, startled by my howls. The sea wind cradles me, the sand contours the shape of me. The Lighthouse guards me, centurion like. In the distance the ruins of Piel whisper of blood feuds, greed and infamy. And remind me of the story of the girl born there, amongst tales of Princes and pirates.

I don’t believe you ever thought your life a sacrifice. I think you made it what your soul needed it to be. At peace. I have chased that all my life. Through war zones and battlefields. Shifting shape and losing more hope, with each new birth year.

I will take myself back to the warmth of the Lighthouse, now. Empty handed. Bruised. Tonight, I will call my friends. My sisters. I will laugh and maybe cry a little. Say sorry for always being on the run. For missing birthdays and births. For allowing the still chains of womanhood and loss, to terrify me, isolate me. I’ll ask them softly, to let me back in.

Home.

I am not looking for a beacon. I don’t need guiding home. I am not lost at sea. Shipwrecked. Hijacked by pirates. Abandoned to the sea stallion waves of Poseidon.

I fool myself. I see that more clearly now.

I am chasing the shape of you in the shifting sand and the wanton waves.

Here, finally, I am reminded, you are not a place.

You are a feeling. A freedom. An energetic force.

In 1975 Peggy Braithwaite became the first female principle light housekeeper, ‘Lady of the Lamp’. She followed in the tradition of her father who worked the lighthouse from the 1930’s relocating his family across the bay from Piel island. As a teenager she assisted her father in his duties, and developed a love of the Lighthouse, that was to span more than half a century, climbing those 91 steps everyday, until she was no longer able.

Her husband, Ken, supported her in her Lighthouse passion. Despite living a life of solitude, she was not a loner and travelled into Barrow once a week for shopping and a chat, often by boat. She was described by Walney locals as gruff but kind.

She was a rare flower in her day.

She was Dune Gentian.

Peggy’s Light house photo by me