Peter stared at the place the lighthouse should have clung to the shingle and blinked. The wildness of the ocean was undoubtedly the same, causing the rocks to clink against each other like ice in a glass. The shorebirds teetered against the wind and took agitated steps when the gusts got up amongst their oily feathers. Autumn was beginning to shake hands with winter and the cool wind sliced across his eyes. He should have brought his thicker coat.
He remembered the view so well, even if it had been fifty years since he had stood in this spot. A solitary gull wheeled over the surf and called out sharply, wings catching the grey sky. The headland swept an arc from due west out to the south. It resembled a dragon head with a serrated mane, and in the lee of its neck were quaint painted fisherman’s huts and the beginning of a track leading to the upper headland. They once walked for miles along it, finding themselves further along the coast where they stood on the edge of the cliffs and felt the wind buffet their strong bodies. The water seemed to reflect their hope onto their shining faces, but now the sea seemed cold and restless, and stretched endlessly beyond.
He remembered those late honeymoon mornings. They would reluctantly pull the sheets across the bed, wash, eat a simple breakfast—cold boiled eggs, bread, butter and tea, and walk along the beach, hands clutched tightly, as if the kelp that swept stirringly into their dreams had knitted them together. The salt barely left their skin all week, either from newly wed passion or the stiff afternoon wind that coated them in briny spray as they leaned against each other. They often walked eastward and over the small rise to the river mouth and the tiny tavern that sat discreetly amongst the grasses and stunted, twisted trees, or sat watching the ocean beyond the lighthouse in the very spot they both stood now.
Iris wrapped the tail of her loosened scarf around her neck. She reached for Peter’s arm to steady herself. This was nothing like the advertisement at all. The video segment, loosely a news clip, showed a red and white lighthouse, rebuilt exactly where the old one had stood, the attached keeper’s cottage now an AirBnB. Inside was crisp white with a rustic table by the window with fresh yellow sea poppies in a blue trimmed vase. They had recreated the keeper’s garden. Children played on the beach, and the old lighthouse keeper — or someone pretending to be — spoke warmly of the view from the top. The past, revived. It had felt like a miracle. Iris had watched the segment three or four times. Perhaps if they returned, just the two of them?
He could not fathom how for fifty years they had never had another weekend by the sea, not without children, and certainly not overnight. Had he gazed through the tavern windows into the future he may not have left the beach at all, perhaps begged her to buy the tiny cottage in the hills or walked into the ocean with rocks in his pocket. No young man would have willingly walked into their life, barely making ends meet, losing a child in a senseless road accident, the years of recriminations. He had been driving. Yes, submerging oneself into the sea would have spared them all that grief and the long, long sadness that never gave up. But still, they had stuck by each other and here they were, as far north as they could go, on an island where they had spent their first week of married life.
He sat heavily on the shingle, tugging at his wife to join him. His legs had suddenly felt weak.
“Peter?” Iris said shakily. How was it that she came to place so much hope in the return? How stupid she felt. One cannot pedal backwards and get very far at all. She took another step forward toward where he sat, cautious on the wet rocks, and lowered herself awkwardly to sit beside him.
Why hadn’t they got to Spain instead?
But this place was always vividly theirs, even if the photograph they had of it was faded. It sat in a little frame above her writing desk in the upstairs spare room. In the years after her son’s death she had often sat dazed at the desk, staring at the lighthouse. She wondered how life had led them as far as it was possible to go from the warm light that swept across the bay on those warm summer nights.
“You are my light,” her charming young husband had whispered long ago. She supposed that ended up at least a little true, as they were still guiding each other through the darkest days.
“I remember your dress,” he said suddenly, into the empty landscape. “It was a pale green. Mint, I thought at the time.”
“Oh, Peter,” she said softly. She did not correct him. What difference did it make, if he thought the dress green? It was not the first time they had puzzled over details.
Perhaps they didn’t even know each other. They had found themselves disoriented by the loss of their boy and everything that came after it. Perhaps if they could return to the lighthouse, they thought. But it had been dismantled years ago, after much ado. It was in the national papers. The villagers had a festival to mark its death, with a huge bonfire that burned for weeks. The structure had stood for two hundred years signaling to ships and one Wednesday in June was reduced to rubble by huge machinery.
It was around the same time that their son had died, and she remembered thinking that their lives were being dismantled and restacked like the lighthouse bricks.
She wondered about other marriages that may have begun under the view of the lighthouse. Had they also suffered?
When Iris showed him the advertisement, Peter had quickly agreed they should return to the island. Their daughter didn't question their decision, but her gaze was a thin veneer that hid what they all knew was true - they were elderly people who did not know what they were doing, and were undertaking a futile endeavour to return to a time long lost to them.
They imagined the lighthouse and the beach for months before they raised the courage to go. It appeared in both their dreams. The reporter in the advertisement smiled widely. Their son raced up the beach chasing a football. An old man sat with his wife and drank tea from a thermos, and ate oat cakes with thick slices of cheddar cheese.
“There will be new life on the island now,” said the old publican, who they remembered meeting in the tavern on the second night of their honeymoon. He certainly had the same beard, although he had aged well, they thought, better than them in any case. She needed a walking cane and Peter’s heart left him breathless.
It will do them good, they told each other. The sea air.
They thought for a moment she could see its outline, swimming into focus. When one wills hard enough, they say, stranger things happen. Peter lifted his hand to his brow in a kind of salute, as if that would make him see more clearly. Perhaps they could do with something to drink. She reaches into his small backpack for the thermos, unscrews the lid, and pours them a lukewarm tea which they share. A little whiskey would be better, Peter thinks. Iris pulls a small flask from her bag and tips a little too much into the cup.
Iris remembers waking alone in the hospital, the year after their son died. She could still hear the roar of the car, feel the shock of impact. She had woken slowly, disoriented. The shadows were strange, and there was a dull pain throbbing throughout her body. Something was missing. She couldn’t hear the children’s voices. The warmth of their cat Rosy wasn’t curled beside her. She had not died after all, but for a while she wondered if she’d woken in another version of her life.
“Where were you?” she asked Peter when she awoke from her drugged sleep.
“I was here. All night.”
For years, she didn’t believe him. For years he insisted, until eventually that became her memory: Peter asleep in the chair beside her or stroking her hand when she cried out.
Which memories were real?
She insisted she stepped into the flow of traffic into the road on purpose, but Peter never accepted that. He blamed the driver, called it an accident, or suggested she wasn't thinking clearly. He knew what grief looked like too, knew what it felt like and how it changed one's ability to think clearly.
On the beach, Peter collects himself first, and while she empties the last of the tea onto the rocks, her husband shouts a little too loudly at a passing jogger.
“The lighthouse?” he yells. A gull startles and takes flight. The jogger shrugs and keeps going, keeping his own time. Perhaps they are in the wrong place, but they know full well they are not. Eventually they shuffle quietly toward the tavern. At least that was familiar and present.
At the tavern the young barkeeper tries her best to be kind. She guides them to a table and says there is a room available if they want it, breakfast included, warm scones and fresh eggs and bacon.
“I’m sorry, and don’t feel too bad, but you aren’t the first. It was AI generated. A scam.”
They have heard of deep fakes and artificial intelligence, they have read the news. A politician who was framed for an assault he didn’t commit, a celebrity soliciting in a dark alley. You couldn’t believe anything you saw or read in the news, that was for damn sure.
But this ad? This was pleasant. It was a resurrection of a much-loved relic, a tourist spot, a historical building. What had anyone to gain?
“Clicks. Ad revenue. I don't know. Everyone's always trying to make money in some way aren't they?” The girl shrugged, putting two shandys on the freshly wiped table. 'There's more and more of them these days. My uncle bought a guitar he believed was owned by John Lennon. There was a photograph that looked exactly like him, holding the same guitar - there was a small mark in the corner that seemed to prove it. It wasn't his at all."
Iris stared at the condensation on the glass. Was she complicit in some way, wanting the illusion so badly she ignored the possiblity it was fake?
“But there was a reporter?” Peter said, still unable to comprehend how they had been fooled.
“Look,” the girl said, “read the comments.” She hands them her mobile. Peter pulls his reading glasses from his pocket and peers at the screen, reading the strangers who admired the realism of the lie or forewarning the downfall of humanity. One even warned that it would be easy to manipulate people to believe anything, and another pointed out the flaws in the scene.
“Here, you can buy a small print, if you like, half price,” she says, reaching for the stack of recoloured historical scenes on the mantlepiece behind them. On the thick card there is a pasted photograph of a young couple on the beach holding hands, looking out to sea. The young woman is wearing a blue dress cinched around her tiny waist. The man’s hand is perched on her shoulder, pointing at something in the distance.
“You were pointing at a whale!” she said.
“No, my love, it was a school of fish. I remember the water was white with them and birds were diving into the fray!”
She thought of the whale tail slapping the ocean and the way his hand had rested on her shoulder, and she thought about the ghostly, unsteady glimmer of the room around them back then - their hands holding, their limbs interwined, the lighthouse and their future just out of reach.
But for now, they gratefully receive the offered room, where a small window frames the ghost of the lighthouse. It feels very quiet, almost too still, with almost pixelated shadows that linger oddly, as if they don't align with their objects in the way they should. At midnight, a faint, wavering light sweeps across the space. They turn to look at each other in the semi-darkness. Everything flickers, unsure of whether to stay or go.
"Are you real?" one of them whispers, waiting for the other to reach across time and pull them back to where they belonged. The reply is only an echo.
"Are you real?"
NB Oddly, when I edited my own photo and saved it it pixellated, which freaked me out a little bit, given the story.
With Love,
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