The Lighthouse Keeper's Errand Boy

Every Saturday for the last two summers, Theo had taken a list down to the harbour for old Mr Eichmann at Greybeach Lighthouse.

The list was the same four items, every week. Bread, oil, candles, post. Mr Eichmann's handwriting was tight and slanted, the way old people's handwriting often was. Theo would walk down to the village, get the things, walk the long path along the cliffs to the lighthouse, and Mr Eichmann would give him a fifty-pence piece and a cup of tea so strong it nearly stood up by itself.

Theo was eleven. He had taken on the errand because his mother had said it was a kindness, and because Mr Eichmann lived alone, and because the path along the cliffs was the prettiest path in the world.

That Saturday morning, the list had a fifth item.

Bread, oil, candles, post, and one tin of sardines.

Theo stopped on the path and read it again. Mr Eichmann had never asked for sardines before. Mr Eichmann did not eat sardines. Mr Eichmann, when Theo had once mentioned them, had said, "I have not eaten a sardine since I was nineteen, and I do not intend to start again."

But there it was, in Mr Eichmann's slanted handwriting: one tin of sardines.

Theo bought them. He carried everything up the long path. He delivered them to Mr Eichmann at the foot of the lighthouse, with the gulls calling overhead and the wind coming hard off the sea.

Mr Eichmann took the bag. He did notlook at the sardines. He did not say anything about them.

"Same time next week?" said Theo.

"Same time next week, lad."

Theo walked home thinking about it. Mr Eichmann never lied. But Mr Eichmann had clearly bought sardines for somebody who was not Mr Eichmann.

Who was at the lighthouse?

It was an interesting question. Lighthouses were small places. Mr Eichmann lived alone. There was only the keeper's cottage and the lamp room and the small storeroom. If somebody else was there, they had been there quietly enough that no one in the village had mentioned it.

Theo walked home. He told nobody, because Theo was the kind of boy who did his own thinking before he told anybody anything. But that night, lying in bed, he made a decision.

Next Saturday, he was going to find out.