“Not yet.I will, though.In 2019 he and Huddy Jones try to ripoff an incoming supply boat from France.The owner ditchesoverboard and leaves the pair of them holding the baby—ten grand ofcocaine—just as Airborne Surveillance arrives.They get fifteenyears apiece, though Baz swings time off for good behaviour and hasto spend his next five springtimes planting daffs along the edge ofthe A30.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“As a side note, and because I thought it might make you feelbetter about Baz.But to get back to my point—what’s the good ofbeing able to say no when you haven’t got anything to say yesto?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Yeah, you do.You’ve been such a good lad, locked up in yourtower.I bet there’ve been a few nights when you’d have plaitedyour hair and let Baz Dingwall climb up it, if he only brought somegood shit with him.”
“Fuck you, Merou.”
“It’s easy to say no to thin air.I bet saying it now ishard.”
He heldout the joint.Priddy backed up against the sink, head spinning.Merou watched him for a long, thoughtful moment, then took anotherdeep drag.He arched his spine, ran his hand into his hair andshuddered in pleasure.“Oh, God, I feel so sweet.Yes, really hard,eh, Priddy?And the fact is, it wouldn’t hurt you to say yes tothis good weed.There’s nothing in it to harm you.But it’s bloodygood practice for saying no to something that would.”
“You bastard.”
“Yep.And yet here you are.”
Yes, there he was.That was something he could choose to sayno to, as well.He could choose not to stand around and behead-fucked by a lunatic.The owner of the crack-boat had had theright idea, or would have in 2019: Priddy too could just bail outand leave his uninvited guest to take the rap.Serve him right ifthe cops arrived right now.He could explain himself, and the fateof theSweet Rosecrew, and the rich stink of dope that had now no doubt driftedall the way down to the iron door, without any help from Priddy atall.
He wentas far as putting on his coat.Merou watched in amusement while heturned up the collar, then wrapped a scarf around his neck andjammed a woollen watch cap down over his ears for good measure.“Where are you off to, then?”
“Out.Away.”
Merou’seyebrows rose.Then he nodded.“You’re a hell of an eyeful, Priddy.But I’m starting to think that’s just the beginning ofyou.”
“That’s nice.You know what, though?I don’t care what youthink.”The words became true in Priddy’s mind as he said them, aself-made scaffold he could cling to and climb.“I don’t need to betempted by Baz Dingwall, or patted on the head by you forresisting.Screw you both.”
He slammed the door behind him.There were a limited number ofplaces to try and walk off a temper fit in a lighthouse.The fogmight return.Despite the automation, tonight was a duty night andhe didn’t want to leave his post.He stamped down the stairs,getting maximum clang out of each.Then he jogged back up them,trying to invent a new combination of swear words every tensteps.Cockwomble.Hoofwanker.Thundercunt.None of these was original, sohe tried harder.Dickweasel.Knobsocks.Heartbreaking sonofabitch whomight have been kind to him tonight, but instead chose to sit inhis living room, the one place in the world Priddy could call evenbriefly his own, and bloody well taunt him.How often over the lastfew days had he imagined Merou’s return?Strolling naked out of thesea at Portheras, or out of the mist on Bodinnar moor.Poundingdown Hagerawl main street on a white sea-charger, putting down anarm to sweep Priddy up and out of the dirt, mess and pain ofeveryday life...
Not likethis.Priddy planted his hands on his knees outside the door,fighting to catch his breath.Kit’s grandfather had told him tocheck the settings, if the foghorn had sounded and then switcheditself off.The only way to access the controls was back throughhis quarters and out onto the balcony deck.Once the red flashbulbsof rage and exhaustion had stopped popping behind his eyes, hestraightened his spine and let himself in.He didn’t look left orright—marched through the room, jerked open the weatherproof dooron the far side and into the air.
Howbeautiful the night had become!Priddy could hardly believe thetransformation.The wind had died.The sea was held in a stasis ofmoonlight, a silence so vast that his heartbeat rushed in his earslike music.He could hear the workings of the tiny bones andcochlear fibres in his ears, the very buzz and racket of histhoughts.Clasping the handrail, he listened.And, as often on aquiet evening in the wild far west, the sea began tosing.
Priddyknew some of the legends, of course.The best was the tale of afine young man with a voice like an oboe, a blackbird, the plashingof water in the well, who every week came to church and sang thehymns so sweetly that everyone wept.One Sunday in May, a woman hadappeared, veiled and dressed in black.In the middle of the serviceshe’d stood up, and held out her hand to the fine young man, who’dfollowed her out of the church without question and straight offthe edge of the cliff.And up through the screams and the outcry ofhis friends had arisen not one voice but two from the waters of thebay—the oboe entwined with a pure, high viola, braiding and twiningto heaven.The young man had never returned.Why should he?Andevery year on that same night, all the mermaids of West Penwithsang.
The onlyperson who could sweep Priddy up out of the dirt was Priddyhimself.He’d known this for some time.Whether he was ready forthe effort didn’t really matter.Whether he was sane was of littlesignificance, too.He saw visions and heard mermaids.That had beentrue long before he’d poisoned himself in a basement club inPenzance.He closed his eyes for a moment in sheer lonely pain,then gritted his teeth and let go of the rail.
Heclimbed the ladder into the control cabin.The music followed him,seductive, wrapping itself sensuously around him.He shook hishead: even if he’d finally lost his grip, the foghorn needed to bereset.He did it quickly, then worked through the other checks onthe sheet and climbed back down.
Thesource of the music had shifted.Maybe Priddy had written himselfoff too soon this time.Maybe Merou was listening to the radio, orhad found some documentary about whale song.At any rate, the soundwas now coming from inside.
Heopened the door, and a perfect silence fell.No radio, no TV.Notrace of dope in the air either, somehow, as if a spring breeze hadblown through the room and taken all that away.The chairs werestraightened up, the foil packet vanished from the table.Priddywent to stand by the bed, where Merou was stretched out on the topbunk, stark naked and apparently sound asleep.
“You’d better not have thrown that shit out of the window.Godknows what it’ll do to the fish.”
Thebeautiful mouth curled up at the corners.Merou shifted his headagainst the pillow, as if a pleasant dream had taken hold of him,and trailed one hand down his chest.Priddy had thought himhairless there, but now he came to look again—and he couldn’t lookaway—he was lightly furred, a near-translucent down that marked outfrost-fern patterns between his nipples, then a delicious runwayline across his solar plexus, over the pit of his belly, and out,spreading butterfly wings to frame the root of what he called hisexternal John Thomas, now stirring and lifting at his own touch.The hair was strange.Each curl of it seemed to be flattened,pressed close to the contours of his body.It gave off a faintsheen like opals or mother-of-pearl when he shifted, pushing up onehip to meet his blindly seeking hand.
Priddyremembered his kiss.It caught up on him like a time bomb, as ifhis reactions had been waiting at the end of a mile-long fuse.Heretreated from the bed, hot shivers running through him.Whatevergame Merou was playing, he didn’t want to be part of it, wascertain he’d provided enough amusement for one night.Hepassionately wanted two conflicting things—to be up there in thebunk, taking hold of that swelling cock and guiding it between histhighs, and to be completely alone.
Theformer was impossible: the latter a big ask in a one-room tower.Kit had left him the keys to the keeper’s cottage.Priddy couldlock himself away down there.That was a good idea, cold and dampas the place was.He could crack a window open, put the fire on,air it and warm it through ahead of Kit and Geoff’s arrival.Curlup and put his hands over his ears, and whatever madness andmystery was arising in this room beneath the Hagerawl light, itcould all play out without him.
Heunhooked the keys and stumbled out.But he wasn’t going to get thatfar, not by a hundred feet of spirals.He ducked into the bathroomon the half-floor below and shut the door.
As refuges went, it was an ice-box.The moon was making herwestward arc now, hanging like an old bronze coin over the sea.Thebathroom was nothing but a whitewashed concrete box, but the top ofthe window had a poignant, church-like arc, and Priddy went tostand there in the moonlight.He pulled off his hat and scarfdespite the cold.His coat, too: an unbearable constriction,dropping to a heap behind him on the floor.The various heats andpressures racking him began to converge.Oh please, he silently begged themoon and the glittering lifeline she’d thrown to him across thewater,let this one bereal.Not a twitch, an unscratchable itch,an impulse that arose then died off like a lost bloodysneeze...
He undid his jeans, and gasped in relief as proper big hard-onrose into his hand.He pressed his other palm flat down on thewindow ledge, leaning his weight on it, feeling with joy the clenchof bicep and forearm.He hadn’t destroyed himself entirely.Hewrapped a soft grip around his balls and the root of his cock,lifting himself clear of the elastic of his briefs.Kicked hisshoes off, even though it was so perishing cold, to get the pressand thrust of concrete against his feet, to make a strong pyramidout of himself, his propping arm and straddled, tense-muscled legs.Jolts of laughter met his arousal like backwash under an incomingwave: he’d end up on Southwest news himself, if any of his mateswere passing in a fishing boat just now.Local lad wanks off in lighthouse window.“We won’t need alight up there anymore,” the elderly keeper humorously remarked,“with Priddy-boy flashing away...”He wasprobably safe, the angle wrong for anyone outside to see, but hewouldn’t have cared, not if a cruise liner had been driftingby.Moon goddess, sea goddess, just let mecome...
