The Lighthouse Keeper · The Cartographer's Daughter · Pulse Beat
The keeper was a woman of sixty with grey hair under a knitted cap, who watched Isha climb the iron stairs with open suspicion. "You're the Varma girl," she said. "You've his walk." "You knew him?"…
The keeper was a woman of sixty with grey hair under a knitted cap, who watched Isha climb the iron stairs with open suspicion.
"You're the Varma girl," she said. "You've his walk."
"You knew him?"
"He came every summer for thirty years." Her name was Lata. She poured tea from a tin kettle on a paraffin stove, and the lamp room smelled of brass polish and diesel. "Last spring he came twice. He was frightened. He asked me whether the rocks had moved. I said rocks don't move, Mr Varma. He said, then somebody's moved the numbers."
"What did he mean?"
"I didn't understand. I do now." She looked out at the water. "There was a survey boat here in January. Government colours. Very polite men. They ran their lines and left. In April your father found a second survey, a different one, in the harbour records at Kolar. The depths were all eight metres deeper than the real ones. Same date, same boat, but the figures changed."
"Someone altered the official record."
"Aye." Lata set down her cup. "And then there was a fire at the harbour office. In May. All the old paper gone."