Prose Hannah Nagle

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: HANNAH NAGLE

Hannah is a freelance writer

Good Guy

It felt weird to be seeing it in real life, this lighthouse without a house. A single towering pole

with a bulb on top. He’d googled photos of the island before coming but the lighthouse was the only

thing that came up. He found himself on Twitter where he counted seven people who said it was

technically just a light if it didn’t have a house. Then he read an article about how it was controlled

remotely by a company on the mainland, and how this had angered a lot of people. He skimmed

through the comments underneath, all from locals complaining how the strength of the light was too

strong for the size of the island. ‘It makes the whole place look like hell when boats need warning’, MrSav16307 said.

He read all of this, scrolled through all the photos until there were none left, imagined the whole

trip in his head. Like what clothes he’d pack and the music he’d listen to on the way there, never

thinking he would actually come. Just another one of those things he thought about doing but never

would. Until it became something he was doing without really realising it, like he was stuck behind

glass, watching himself do things while the world moved passed. And now he was here and he still

felt like he wasn’t, that somehow he could still be sitting in his room reading blog posts and news articles and what he was seeing was only an image in his head. He looked up through the car

window at the lighthouse as it pulsed around above him and wondered if it was real.

‘Yes’. One single word. Her answer at odds with the delivery. There was no kiss, no signing off with her name. Just a big expanse of white where the rest of her email should have been. He’d only asked to visit as some kind of test. It annoyed him she’d done something to bring attention to herself while also feeling hurt she’d left the city. They’d never gone anywhere together.

‘When shall I come?’ he replied. ‘Whenever’ was all he got back. She said he could only come for two nights but he packed for three. He chose to drive his dad’s

old car, partly to piss her off because she had always told him to get rid of it. The leather seats were

torn and the interior smelt of must. The little scented tree he bought on the mainland swung back

and forth from the mirror and he could hear the sounds of pebbles and shells crunching under the

tyres. He stopped the car and looked down at his phone resting on his knees to check the photo

she’d sent him. A small fisherman’s cottage in the middle of nowhere. It looked more like a shed to him. Without meaning to, he began swiping back through photos. One of some books he saw in the

WH Smith at the service station that he wanted to buy but couldn’t afford. A few of a sunset back home taken through the car window. Paler and less impressive than he remembered, not quite

committed to pixels in the way he hoped. He became conscious of what he was doing and

remembered why he’d gotten his phone out. He went to scroll back to the photo of the hut but under

the glass, a photo had appeared that he hadn’t meant to take. It was taken from above, waist height with the camera looking down. There were his trainers and

his jeans, brown laces where they should have been white, a tear in the denim on his left leg. He

didn’t need to look at the date to know when it had been taken. There was the worn carpet underneath his feet and Jim’s foot creeping in at the edge of the frame. And in the top left corner, blurred because the lens had not focused on this, was a sharp shock of red. It looked like nothing,

something soft like a cushion or a blanket. But he knew it was a very large flag. And he knew

underneath that flag was the rusty box they found under his great-grandad’s floorboards. And he knew in that box was a deep and dirty secret. He would have to tell her.

He hadn’t told her he died. He didn’t know what the protocol was with these things after you’d broken up. As soon as they opened the box he thought of her. They’d only ever visited his greatgrandad once while they were together. He could remember telling her about him in the car on the

way over. How he was quiet and mainly stayed in his house. ‘No need to do that ‘Sir’ ‘Mister’ thing you did with my Uncle Jim either, just call him Carl. Everyone does.’ After tea, she had gone

upstairs to the toilet and then, quite innocently according to her, found herself looking at a

photograph in one of the bedrooms. Carl with his arm around a woman his family never knew the

name of. But then she’d gone further, opened a drawer and found it. A metal badge of an eagle with

its wings outstretched, claws clutching at a swastika. They had argued on the way home. She swore

blind she’d seen it. He told her she must have been seeing things. She refused to go there again.The

next time he visited, he crept into the same room and checked the drawer - it was empty.

The fisherman’s hut sat alone. Plants and shrubs were dotted about in an attempt at a garden but there was no fence to keep anything in. Thistles and poppies swayed in the wind by the door and an

old rowing boat sat sad and dry off to the side. The ground was littered with bits of wire, piles of

rocks, an old rusted bicycle wheel. It was an odd place. You didn’t quite understand why anything was there. He turned the engine off and got out the car.

A path leading up to the cottage had been faintly marked out with scraps of orange metal stuck in

the shingle. As if someone had been worried you’d get lost among all the crap lying around. He made a point of winding through it all to get to the set of wooden steps up to the front door. He

climbed up and knocked, the steps too skinny for his big feet. He fell awkwardly back down and

waited.

The door opened. For a moment she seemed to float above him, a green cotton dress waving

gently in the wind. She wore a wooly cardigan over the top and her long wavy hair fell down over

her shoulders. She looked completely different.

Come in, she said.

He started to follow but forgot the stairs and bumped clumsily into the wood. His shin screamed

out in pain.

Inside, the cottage was cosy. Knitted blankets and cushions, lots of wood. A kettle was boiling on

the stove and pots were huddled together by the door behind him, filled with cacti. Everything was

old and worn. So far from their old flat, with its fake marble and matt black.

The kettle started whistling and she turned off the heat.

Do you still have yours the same? she asked. He nodded. He had watched her perform their tea

making ritual so often it was a shock to see her do anything different. In went his usual tea bag, his

perfect amount of milk while for her a strange concoction of herbs and flowers were poured from a

pot on the counter. A sudden sense of loss came over him.

An old Nokia phone vibrated on the table to the side of the sofa and he turned to look. It was

large and brick like and he laughed.

That’s not yours is it? he asked. She shrugged her shoulders. I didn’t want to be on social media while I was out here, she said. An awkward silence settled

between them as they drank. He met her gaze as they finished and neither of them looked away.

He panicked and said, You look good. Really good.

She smiled sadly and asked Is that what you say to all the girls?

He looked down, staring into his cup of tea, unsure of how to respond. When he looked up again

she was still watching him. He wondered what she was thinking, if she was regretting saying yes.

For the first time, he noticed the light from the lighthouse entering one window and leaving through

another. It passed over her face, coming back round again to light up her features for a moment and

the silver earrings in her ears. He tried to find something he recognised in her eyes but there was

nothing familiar to grasp onto. Instead he only found a strength and a hardness that hadn’t been there before. It made him feel ashamed.

The spare room’s through here, she said turning away, Bring your stuff. He leant down to pick up the bag and when he stood up he could see she recognised it. The same

one he’d packed when he’d left her. She went to say something but decided not to. The room was small, the bed uncomfortable. Afterwards she said she was going for a walk and

to make himself at home. He wandered around, looking at the pieces of her left throughout the

cabin. Dried flowers and old books, a desk covered in little ornaments. Wet paintbrushes had been

left on the drainer and a collection of shells sat in a pile on the window ledge. He tried to piece her

together, to separate the things that belonged to the cottage and the things that belonged to her. But

it seemed the two were intertwined, refusing to give up one another’s secrets. Inside her bedroom, he opened the chest of drawers only to find clothes he’d never seen before. Even her underwear was different. He took out a pair of knickers, clutched them in his hand and

wondered if anyone had taken them off her. In the bathroom, the perfume she’d worn for years had been replaced by something nondescript in a plain blue alchemist bottle. All of these things seemed

like souvenirs from a long life lived without him. In reality, they had only broken up a few months

before. He looked at himself in the mirror, dismayed to see he was wearing a jumper she had bought

him two years ago.

He spent an hour going through her stuff and couldn’t recognise anything. In desperation, he rummaged around at the bottom of the wardrobe for a wash bag. He wanted to find a pair of her

used knickers, bring them up to his nose and smell her just to find something he recognised.

Checking the back door to see if she was on her way back, he spotted the wash basket outside.

Empty. He stood still and watched the clean clothes waving back at him from the other side of the

glass.

He laid on his bed for a while and watched the light from outside pulse around the room. The

later it got the more intrusive it became. He scrolled on his phone for a while and forgot the light

existed and then fell asleep. When he woke up, she was in the kitchen cooking fish, something he’d never seen her cook before because he didn’t like it. He knew she knew this but she didn’t seem to

care.

They sat in silence while they ate. She looked comfortable and at home while he felt awkward.

Doesn’t that annoy you? he asked, as the light came around once more and lit up silver tankards

and wine glasses on the wall behind her. She shrugged and carried on eating.

Later she asked You can come star gazing with me tonight if you want?

He looked up, surprised at her offer. Yeah, that sounds great, he replied. Suddenly hope filled his

chest and a voice in his head said maybe we’ll have sex. He didn’t think that’s why she’d let him come but maybe it was.

She had kept the dress on. It was a surprisingly warm night and he had followed her to the other

side of the island in just a t shirt. We need to get as far away from the lighthouse as possible, she

called back to him as she walked up ahead. She looked mythical staring up at the sky with the old

telescope she’d found in the desk drawer. She taught him the different stars, what their names meant, how to find them. Kept the conversation away from everything.

Do you do this a lot? he asked.

Only since I got here. I find it calming.

The land and the sea intimidated him. She seemed to fold right into it as if it were cradling her,

protecting her with its invisible arms.

It wasn’t until the next day, after he’d watched her run into the freezing cold sea, that he told her. Carl died.

Words struggled to come out of her.

I’m sorry, she finally said. Yeah, well we found a stash of shit under one of the floorboards in his bedroom.

What do you mean?

The badge you found in the drawer is in there.

Shit, she said under her breath.

The sounds of the waves filled whatever he was supposed to say next. He wondered how much

he should tell her.

What else is in there? she asked.

Uh a flag, massive. Photos of him in a uniform with his arm sticking up. Looks no more than

fifteen.

Fuck

Yeah

And no one had any idea?

Someone must have, but no one’s saying anything. I went over to look at it all a few days ago. The flag, it’s like a film prop. Like I’m holding this thing and I still can’t understand it’s real. Or that he would have been a part of it. Held his arm up like that. There’s a photo of Hitler. Even a fucking bauble.

What are you going to do with it?

I don’t know. Jim wants to sell it.

Sell it? She turned to him, horrified.

He refused to look her in the eye.

Yeah he’s got a friend who collects it. Apparently it can go for quite a lot. That’s really fucked up, making money off it. Yeah I guess so but it’s just stuff. And when you actually look, people are selling all sorts. I did

look into it a bit. I read one blog post by this guy and he said it’s a way of not forgetting everything that happened.

Last time I checked, it didn’t cost money to remember.

Well I guess it does now.

He was getting annoyed.

What about a museum?

We asked mum’s mate about it. She gave us a list of places to contact. But then she had a drink and started telling us about these rumours from the eighties. How people at the national war

museum would take Nazi guns out and go shooting with them for fun. So Jim, did his thing, you

know what he’s like, and said we might as well sell them if that’s the way they were going to be treated.

I’m sure that’s not true.

Maybe not, but I guess when you’re around all this old stuff all the time it just becomes like everything else.

He could feel her judging him, the heat of it radiating out towards him. He felt himself cave in.

I might just burn it all in the garden though. It freaks me out.

Did you come here to tell me that?

She sat wrapped up in a towel watching the sun glisten back in the water. He shuffled restlessly

next to her, shells crunching under his shoes.

I don’t know, he replied honestly. It did make me think of you. And I guess partly out of

curiosity. I didn’t believe it when Leena had said you’d gone away. She took in a deep breath and closed her eyes. She looked worn out.

It’s all in the past though anyway, he uttered quickly. So it doesn’t really matter. Us or the fact your great-grandad was a nazi?

I just want to get rid of the stuff and forget about it, he said over her.

They said nothing. Neither of them moved and they stayed like that for a while. He could feel

her by his side, noticing how different they both were, how far apart they felt now. Rejection

suddenly rose up inside him. Ridiculous because he was the one that left but there it was all the

same. He watched the seagulls above them, lost for words. Why had he come? Why would she care

whether Carl was a nazi or not? This was the most they’d spoken since he’d got there and they couldn’t manage it. The burning hot anger. The irritation that always dug its claws into them. It was all still there. This wasn’t putting their relationship to rest. It was digging it up and churning it all over. Shoving it down his own throat just to choke on it. He needed to leave. There was nothing

kind left to say.

I’m going back to the cottage now, she said suddenly. You can find your own way back.

And he knew she had felt it too. That something had snapped in each of them while sitting there

on the beach, separating them for good. It was too much to feel. He took a deep breath and felt

something tear inside his lung. Before he could call out to her, to say he didn’t know the way back, she was already running up the rocks to climb the steep path behind them. And then she was gone.

When he eventually made it back, it was dark. He had decided to leave first thing in the

morning, reminding himself to take his toothbrush he’d left in the bathroom. That was all forgotten when he got out the car. His bag was waiting for him at the end of the path leading up to the

fisherman’s hut. She had packed it for him this time. He would have to sleep in the car and get a

ferry back tomorrow. He drove off and parked somewhere between the cottage and the lighthouse.

The light kept swinging around to illuminate one of the windows. She wasn’t there. Once he pulled up, he opened his laptop and set up a hotspot from his phone. The tabs were

already open. Relicsofthereich.com. Nazi memorabilia, german militaria. ‘WE BUY NAZI RELICS! We pay IN ADVANCE now!’ He copied and pasted one of the links to Jim and sent it off.

He looked in his mirror, the light passing over him in a white glow. It illuminated inside the car and

for a moment, each time it passed, it felt like the light from his laptop was spilling outwards

consuming everything like bleach.

He hadn’t told her he’d already agreed to sell it all. Jim had pulled him to the side just before he left Carl’s and told him if he sold it he could keep the money. It might help you get back on your feet after the breakup, he said. You should get enough for a

deposit, you can start renting again.

He thought of her, of what she’d said about the morality of it. He wondered if the story about the museum and the guns was true. He opened a new tab and searched ‘reddit museum rumours.’ Nothing came up. He tried ‘bad curators’ and then again with ‘misbehaving museum staff.’ He clicked on a thread of museum employees complaining about visitors. ‘I got called a bitch for

asking her not to scratch paint off a Miró.’ Then someone confessing to sitting on a 2000 year old

column because it didn’t look that old. ‘Museum staff aren’t all that either’ one person posted. ‘I used to work at the British Museum and a guy I worked with drank diet coke next to all the artefacts

while he photographed them. Didn’t give a fuck.’ He thought about burning them after all. Then felt annoyed he hadn’t thought to say ‘but it would be bad for the environment.’ She was always going on about how important climate change was. How we shouldn’t waste anything. What would she have said to that? He let his mind wander, wondered how far the future would take ‘reuse.’ Whether they’d recycle the Mona Lisa if things got desperate. He googled what a nazi flag was made out of. Wool bunting.

‘Is wool bad for the environment?’ he typed in. It was. Very. He imagined the flag sitting in a landfill with everything else he threw away in a week. No, he would sell it. Throwing it away would

be a waste. Burning it would only be a symbol and did the world have time for symbols anymore?

Time was running out to save the planet. That’s what they said. He felt a pinch of guilt release inside him. It was alright for her anyway. Not everyone could afford to sit in a fisherman’s hut for three months doing whatever she was doing. He needed the money.

Then everything went red outside. He stopped thinking, his train of thought cut in two. The hairs

went up on the back of his neck and he pummelled the palm of his hands into his eyes, rubbing at

them to try and get the colour out. His brain finally caught up with what he was seeing. He wasn’t going mad. The lighthouse had turned. The red from the bulb was so intense it felt like liquid was

seeping into the car seats and into his skin. He hadn’t noticed the weather change but now he could see the little diamond drops of water hitting the windows and feel the force of the wind against the

car. He closed his laptop and got out, his hand briefly touching his pocket to feel the shape of his

phone. The guy on the internet was right. It was like hell. Like being underground or in a cellar,

somewhere deep below. Not on the coast, with wind and sea salt whipping around him. He walked

closer to the light, marvelling at the puddles that looked like blood. There was something horrifying

about it, all this red where there should have been light shingle and black sea.

He stood in front of the lighthouse and stared up the pole. Feeling dizzy he tried to plant his feet

on the ground. Suddenly everything felt disorientating. The red light was like a pulse, making his

heart palpitate. He started to think about things he didn’t want to. His mum’s new partner up close in his face. At his cousin’s wedding, smelling of alcohol and cigarettes. Telling him he was moving in and that he would really need the space in the garage. He could remember his mouth, the bit of

food stuck on the corner of his lip, watching it fall off as he said

Maybe it’s time to sell your dad’s car? It’s not like he’s coming back is it? Slapping his back and walking off to dance with his mum. Everyone happy and hopeful but there

was that feeling again, like none of it could reach him.

He imagined the ground opening up like the wide black mouth of a monster, where he’d fall into it and it would swallow him whole. It was a nice thought. Things began to snap inside him over and

over again. Little thought bubbles he’d been keeping closed off, safe above, floating somewhere that didn’t count as real life. Things had gone so wrong with her. He thought there would be

something gentle left between them. Something to salvage, that he could make amends for the way

he left. He’d felt so bad for so long and he just wanted to feel like a good person. Now he felt even worse. Was that why he wanted her to know about Carl? He saw himself above the box, seeing what

was inside for the first time, and knew that it was.

Because when they opened that box, he hadn’t felt anger or sadness or fear, or whatever you were supposed to feel when you found a load of nazi stuff stuffed under the floorboards of your

relatives’ bedroom. But had actually felt a perverse sense of glee, a sickly giddiness. Because now he had a reason to contact her, to maybe make amends. To make her feel better. To say sorry, I was

wrong. And it would be like one of those conversations where what you were saying and what you

were actually saying were two different things. Not always clear but if you knew the person well

enough then you knew. Like a conversation within a conversation. So that when he said, ‘Sorry, I

was wrong’ he was actually saying sorry I was wrong to leave the way I did. And she would understand what he was really referring to. Because they’d been together so long and you understand people in a deeper way after that, don’t you? But none of that happened. She wasn’t interested in Carl, had felt so removed. Far away from anything that happened in his life. This imagined conversation that had run through his head was

based on what he knew and he knew nothing of the person she was now. She had burnt all of herself

up just to survive him. Or maybe she had never been that person to begin with. Just with him, and

after they broke up it was like taking off a mask and throwing it away. He wondered who she really

was, whether the person he had lived with all those years was a construct and not real at all. Had

she always liked herbal tea? And knitted cardigans and things with scratches on them? Panic rose

up inside him, confusion tilting into madness. The wind was getting in his ears. Had she always

wanted to leave the city?

Standing in the rain, submerged in the hot light, he let himself feel it all. There would be no

closure, no nice ending. They were something worse than they had been before, over but not. For

the first time since he got there, he stopped pretending. He looked back at the fisherman’s hut and

decided he quite liked it, looked at his dad’s old car and wished he’d hired one. With air con and a usb charger and that thing where it beeps at the back to help you park. He got out his phone and

took a photo of his trainers in a patch of red grass. Then an arty one of the car off to the side. He

turned his phone outwards, keeping the lighthouse to the edge of the screen and took a landscape

shot of the light tearing through the darkness above the sea. Something to keep at least, he thought.

A good photo of a terrible time.

(Hannah Nagle)