Katherine lay in bed next to Jack. Outside the window, light flickered in the darkness and was gone. Could it be the beam of the lighthouse at St Anthony’s Head, slipping over her on its dutiful circuit? Did its light reach this far?
Jack read; the pages shuffling as he turned them. Why didn’t he turn to her? Why didn’t he kiss her? She glared at the paper, as if, beneath the fire of her gaze, she could make it burst into flame. The pages in his hand were more important to him that she was. It came to her that he had no heart; she wanted to press her ear against his chest and listen, convinced that instead of the thump, thump, thump of muscle churning blood she would hear instead the dry rustle of shuffled paper. But if she did that Jack would accuse her of melodrama.
‘Katya,’ he’d say, ‘really!’ And the temperature in the bedroom, in the bed, would sink even lower.
She gave a little tug at the sheets, pulling them closer to stop the cold seeping in, seeing herself for a moment as a nun that sleeps each night as if preparing herself for death, small white hands crossed over her chest.
A week ago they’d left Zennor, where been staying in a cottage next to Lawrence and Frieda. It had been Lawrence’s idea, to live together, to build a writers’ community. One night, Lawrence had chased Frieda out of the house, a carving knife in his hand, threatening murder. From the window Katherine had seen his naked body in the moonlight as he howled and stamped. Frieda had stopped running and laughed at him, and then they’d both started laughing. Katherine had said to Jack, ‘Enough’s enough. I can’t take any more of this.’
And so they’d moved here to Mylor, to make a new beginning. Now they had a cottage with a garden running down to a tranquil creek, an orchard where the last of the late blossom still dropped from the trees and, best of all, their own little jetty where Jack tied up a borrowed boat. Yet, at times she missed the strange golden light at Zennor and Lawrence stalking the cliffs; the way he’d stand facing into the howling wind, arms wide, as if asking to embrace or, possibly, wrestle it. No, Zennor was more Lawrence’s style than hers; violent, vivid, lawless.
And now the memory bothered her. What was worse? The rustle of dry pages beside her, or Lawrence and Frieda screaming and then the sound of their bedsprings creaking? Katherine turned on her side; beneath her body the bedsprings gave a small, plaintive squeak.
‘Katya? Are you asleep?’
Jack’s voice startled her. She heard him shuffle the papers and drop them on the floor then blow out the candle with a gentle ‘woh’.
‘Tomorrow – we’ll talk tomorrow,’ Jack yawned.
Katherine held her breath, squeezed her eyes closed. Did he know she wasn’t asleep? Did he know if only he’d said ‘Katya,’ half an hour ago then…stop, don’t think of it now - think of tomorrow. She heard a regular lulling sound, Jack’s breathing perhaps or the lapping of water as the tide filled the creek, slapping against the piles of the jetty. Tomorrow Fred Goodyear, soldier, poet, was coming. Tomorrow Jack would row their little boat to Falmouth to collect Fred and bring him to her.
The next day was made of blue. No cloud: the sky and the river filled the world, a thick dew evaporated in the sun’s heat, only the long grass beneath the trees in the orchard stayed moist, the grass blades sticking together; the birds, open-beaked, threw their heads back and sang, their song fell through the air in sweet drips, like honey.
‘Fred spotted the lighthouse as we rowed back from town. Why don’t we go and picnic there this afternoon?’ Jack joined Katherine on the verandah, hands in pockets, cigarette in mouth, fringe shading his eyes.
‘Why not?’ Katherine looked down to where Fred lingered amongst the trees in the orchard, touching green leaf after green leaf and examining them carefully as if they were things he had never seen before. ‘How does he seem?’
‘He seems…fine.’ Jack nodded, as if to underline the words. ‘Fine, I’d say.’
Katherine packed a picnic, wrapping a pie and wine and apples and tumblers in a gingham cloth. They paid a fisherman to take them across the wide Carrick Roads to the beach near the lighthouse at St Anthony’s Head.
Fred jumped down into the turquoise water, mouth opening in a wide ‘O’ against the cold. Katherine put her arms around his neck and he waded to the beach. She put her nose against his sunburnt neck, breathing in the bready scent of him. Fred smiled at her, placing her with care on the sand. Jack splashed to the shore, pausing in the shallows to flick them with beads of water.
‘We might as well bathe now.’ Jack pulled off his shirt. Fred followed him into the sea. Katherine stayed on the beach, watching them.
Fred’s leave was almost over, tomorrow he would begin his journey back to the battlefields of France. Would today be the last day she ever saw him? Would he cease to exist as suddenly as, just over six months earlier, Leslie, her brother, had?
A hay bale, lost somehow from the fields above, was her companion on the beach. The rising tide washed threads from it, and Frank and Jack swam amongst the flaxen strands, slapping them on their heads, larking, pretending to be mermaids. Katherine lay on her stomach on the gritty sand. The bright gold of the straw against the turquoise water made her think of the story of Rumpelstiltskin; she was the miller's daughter and the king was Jack, locking her in the tower, making her spin her stories, her gold, out of the heaps and heaps of straw piled at her feet. ‘Katya, really!’ Jack’s voice sounded in her head, stopping her spooling thoughts.
She turned her head, peeping under her arm at the men, hearing Fred’s laugh carry to her across the water. Why did she feel like they were always hiding the things that they knew from themselves, from each other?
After they’d eaten, Jack dozed on the sand and Fred said, ‘Let’s climb to the lighthouse.’
Katherine took his hand and Fred guided her over the grey rocks. By the side of a narrow path were sparse pines, sculpted like bonsai by the wind. Returning some time later, they found the fishing boat waiting and Jack throwing stones in the water.

Katherine felt a breeze push past her hair. The dining room windows were open; the night air was still warm, loaded with the sweetness of the white stocks that grew by the front door.
‘Did you go to the lighthouse?’ Jack drained his wine glass.
Katherine looked at Fred. ‘Yes.’
‘What was it like?’
‘Oh,’ Katherine pushed some apple peelings to the side of her plate with a small, sharp knife. ‘It was tall, smelt damp, as if the waves crashed over it. But they don’t.’ Did Jack sense what had happened with Fred? That half-way to the lighthouse he had stopped, pulled her to him, kissed her? She studied Jack across the table, his sculpted face, his dark fringe hanging in his eyes; she heard paper rustling and turned, convinced the evening breeze had blown some loose pages off the sideboard.
The more Jack drank the more he talked. Fred, who had said little since they’d returned from their picnic, grew quieter until at last, some time after eleven, he excused himself and went to bed.
Katherine lies in bed next to Jack. Outside the window, light flickers in the darkness and is gone. Is it the beam of the lighthouse at St Anthony’s Head, slipping over her on its dutiful circuit? Does its light reach this far?
Slipping out of bed (her toes curl against the chill wood of the floor), Katherine moves into the hallway. Beneath her feet some boards, as if unwilling to be accomplices, creak. How odd, when she feels so weightless, it’s almost as if she glides towards the window. Light flashes again, not from the lighthouse, she can see that now, but from a cloud-scudded moon.
Fred opens his door.
Jack knows what she’s like, she’s never hidden it from him; to live freely, that’s what she, what they, want – freedom at any cost. She knows unfaithfulness leaves no visible trace; Fred’s kisses won’t stain her skin like the wet sooty marks left on the fingers of a fisherman after touching a saithe. Fred stands in the doorway - the moonlight touches him and drains the colour from his body, as if it had already begun its unstoppable work of turning him from man to ghost. If not now – when?
Katherine moves towards him.

E.L. Timpany