Beyond the Sea Read Online Free Page A

rose-coloured granite quarried on the Isle of Mull. Its beauty wasn’t confined simply to its colour and texture, but to the grace and symmetry of its outline – it was over 150 feet in height, soaring into the sky, from a base width of around 40 feet to just over 15 feet at the top of the tower. Even now, having seen it so many times before, Freya was humbled as she looked upon it again.
    â€˜It was designed and engineered by Alan Stevenson.’ Freya remembered Pol’s words as clearly as if he’d uttered them yesterday. But it was more than two years since she’d watched him clambering up the internal staircase of the tower. ‘He was the uncle of Robert Louis Stevenson. I expect you know him better?’
    Sam nodded, almost overwrought with excitement, following closely like a dog at Pol’s heels. ‘Yes, Mum’s read
Treasure Island
to me a few times, and
Kidnapped
,’ he managed, somewhat breathlessly, trying to balance his elation with the exertion of the stairs.
    Anthony Tipol, or Pol for short, had once worked as a keeper at the lighthouse. After it had been automated, he had continued to be employed by the Northern Lighthouse Board, the body responsible for the upkeep of all lighthouses in Scotland, to check that everything was well maintained and ran smoothly. Pol visited every three or four months. But this particular visit had been a special one. It was the first time that Pol had allowed Sam to accompany him on an inspection. And the last time that Freya had seen Pol.
    â€˜Aye. That’d be about right. But Robert wasn’t keen on spending his life in the family business. Did you know the Stevensons built most of the lighthouses in Scotland?’
    Sam nodded but Pol didn’t turn to look at him. The question, Freya realised, was rhetorical. Pol was simply talking to himself on the subject closest to his heart. Following slowly behind the two of them, she was there ostensibly for the tour, but more to keep an eye on Sam.
    â€˜And for a rock lighthouse, like this one,’ Pol continued, ‘they had to ship all the granite out to the island already dressed and shaped, the slabs ready to fit one on top of another and then be anchored together.’
    As they climbed upwards, Pol would shout out periodically what the rooms on each level of the tower had been used for – rope, lifebelts and a rubber dinghy in one, detonators and chargers for the fog gun in another. ‘And this was where the tanks of paraffin for the light were kept. When they abandoned oil in favour of electrical power for the lamp, they built an engine shed down below, Sam, next to the keepers’ cottage that you now live in. It generates electricity for the light, and for the machinery which makes it revolve, and for your home.’
    Freya listened to see if she could make out the tone of disapproval in his voice that usually became so obvious by this turn in the conversation. But she couldn’t detect it. Perhaps Pol had decided, after all these years, to finally forgive them for now living there. Perhaps he had also decided to forgive her for the automation of lighthouses in general for which she felt, acutely sometimes, that he also blamed her. Still, it was too early to tell.
    As they climbed higher, Freya began to feel claustrophobic. The stairs clung to the sides of the lighthouse wall, ascending in a clockwise direction, and the internal space was narrow, becoming increasingly so as they rose higher. It was also much darker than she had imagined. But then the windows in the tower were small, allowing in only a little light. They spiralled upwards, this unlikely threesome, to the omnipresent mutterings of Pol.
    â€˜This room, see, the last one before the lamp room, once contained the air-pressure tanks for the oil. Me and the other keepers – when it was their turn to light the lamp – would pump the paraffin up to here by hand from the tanks down below; then it