‘What are we going to do?’ A log broke apart and popped. Radulf groaned in bliss at the heat and turned onto his back. These sounds only highlighted the silence of their shared confusion. Eventually, Ben swivelled around and put his head in Aleksey’s lap, his legs stretched out, and fell asleep.
Aleksey went back to his book.
Lighthouses were far less complex than people. Stroking lightly through the dark locks, Aleksey remembered the sense of freedom he had felt walking away from all of this and these human entanglements.
He recalled it vividly, but would never want that again. Just as stepping out on the gantry of his lighthouse always rewarded him with spectacular views and a true sense of being Lord of Light Island, so too did looking down bring a sickening sense of vertigo and fear: there but for the grace of God…
Walking away now from this man asleep in his lap and the tiny look-alike that he had brought into their lives would be as unthinkable as taking a willing plunge off that narrow metal walkway.
* * *
Chapter Sixteen
They settled into a very pleasant few days of nothing much happening, which when Aleksey cast his mind back over the previous few months was indeed a respite from the gods. He wasn’t sure whether he felt his usual sense of impending doom or not. He was so used to the feeling that everything was about to end that it was hard now to compare that alarm to the normal level of concern any adult might have for their future.
Dartmoor was a place of wonder and beauty whatever the time of the year. Each season seemed the best at the time, but then the next one came, bluebells giving way to intense summer aromas of gorse, yellowing turf to spectacular golden bracken, and then all of it covered by glistening frosts before the deep snow arrived. But autumn was hard to resist as a favourite. It brought bonfires and early-morning frozen dew, anticipation of settling in for long, cold days with fires lit, or hard rides with steaming horses and wet dogs. It was elemental in a way, and he and Emilia took every opportunity they could in the few weeks they had left before her departure to ride together. Without the dogs, they rode hard and fast. He challenged her, and she rose to the occasion. She obviously wasn’t as strong or as fit as Ben, but she was a natural in the saddle in a way which Ben was not. However hard Aleksey tried to explain to him the thoughtlessness he needed to achieve, the oneness with the more powerful flesh between his legs, Ben could not relax enough to accept this reversal of power. He was perhaps too strong, too fit, too engaged with his own body to submit. Possibly it was just that he’d been riding motorbikes for over twenty years and only really swapped to horses to pleasehim. If this was so, it was not a gesture of love Aleksey intended to reciprocate.
Emilia, having been taught by him since she first came to live with them in Devon, was a superb horsewoman. He loved to watch her as she rode, and sensed that these few weeks were precious and that, inevitably, she would return after her first term at Cambridge changed. There was a sense in his heart that they were both emerging, reaching a peak of something. The awareness that it had taken him fifty years to get to where she currently was at eighteen did not escape him. When he’d been her age, he had been enduring an existence of unimaginable horror, although he suspected Emilia had a better idea than most teenagers how that might have been. She had been close to experiencing some of the worst aspects of it herself. Emilia was well aware of the heart of darkness at the centre of all things, and her refusal to accept this, her delight in fighting it with her plunge into this new adventure, made him feel at least some of his wasted years had been returned to him purified.
Even now, as they lounged by a stream, allowing their horses to rest for while, she was regaling him with the various things she wanted to study. It seemed to him that this degree was the equivalent of pick n mix from an endless sweet shop. If she wanted to she could study the Romans, the Greeks, Norse, Celtic, language or culture, artefacts, beliefs or history. She particularly liked the idea of studying the Vikingengagementwith the ancient peoples of Britain. He could come up with another word for those unfortunate interactions.
She was especially taken with the idea of learning the Celtic languages, something which, Aleksey was fairly sure, was linked to the fact that the associate professor of Cornish language, history and literature at Cambridge was one Professor Mark Trebetherick. The delectable Dr Mark had been on her interview panel. She didn’t even remember the names of the other five professors she’d met.
He’d looked up Trebetherick’s profile on Facebook, and had discovered a blond-haired, scruffy (although to be fair, as the selfie had apparently been taken on the top of a tor in a storm, the professor could just have been windswept) young man with a wide smile who did indeed look as if he specialised in speaking a language no one else could understand. But he allowed that eighteen-year-old Emilia might have different tastes to him. But maybe not that different he supposed.
‘Babushka’s going to buy me a bike. Everyone rides everywhere in Cambridge.’
‘Molly and Miles will miss you.’
‘Well…if I had acar, I could come home at weekends sometimes to see them…’
He smiled privately. It was amazing how many times an eighteen year old could bring a car into a conversation when they wanted to. ‘You cannot keep a car at college. Besides, you do not want to stand out too much. I think you should suffer in a cold garret while you write your thesis on how mean Vikings can be.’
‘Well think of the favourable reviews I’d give one of them if he bought me a car! Just an old banger. I don’t need a quarter of a million pound Maserati!’
He could point out that she hadn’t earned one of those either but decided that was sailing too close to the wind, given her mind might then drift to speculate on what exactly Ben did to be rewarded with such a gift.
‘This is England. This is not like America. Driving is different here.’
‘Duh. It’s on the wrong side of the road for a start.’
‘Well that gives me a great deal of confidence in your attitude.’
‘If I had a car, I could go out and about and see things all around college, couldn’t I?’
‘I think you’ll be a little too busy to be interested in anything else. AndwhenI buy you a car, it won’t be an old banger.’
She laughed and flung herself back onto the grass. ‘Thank you! I’ll pay you back when I get a job.’
‘Speaking Cornish? I look forwards to that day.’
He lay back alongside her, enjoying the peace of the afternoon. He wished they’d been able to bring the dogs, but Radulf’s slow pace kept them down to a walk, and their horses needed more exercise than that. If the old dog were smaller, he might concoct a way to bring him along, but just the image of the elderly wolfhound sticking his head out of a saddlebag made him smile.
‘What are you going to do when Sarah leaves?’
‘What? She’s not leaving. Is she?’
Emilia rolled her head over to regard his profile. ‘I think she will. She wants to marry Daniel.’
