1
The old man feels exceedingly guilty about putting off work, but he knows he has no choice. He’s a lamplighter, the last of a dying breed, employed in the streets of London to ignite and extinguish the few kerosene street lamps that remain. Each day at sun down he begins his rounds through Richmond, visiting the fifty lamps in his jurisdiction, pausing at every single one of them to rest his ladder on their post, climb its rungs, and bring light to the good people of his town. Tonight the corner of Quadrant Street and Duke’s Road is his final stop. He lights it well past last light. When he is finished, the man descends his ladder, places it under his arm, and begins the journey back to his flat by the riverhouse where he’ll promptly go to bed in anticipation of the dawn shift in which he'll undo all his work from the previous evening. As he walks away he gives a nod to the sole figure walking briskly opposite from him. The figure tips his bowler hat in response.
2
It begins to rain on his return home and the man feels a sense of nostalgia that only London in the nighttime can bring. Not soon after, the wet brick road takes on a reflective quality and the headlights from cars rushing by glisten off the street as their wheels kick up a mist. He reflects upon the twenty seven years he has spent as a lamplighter. When he began he had over one hundred lamps under his care, but with each year that number has dwindled. His colleagues joke about how the job is getting easier and easier, he doesn’t find these jokes so funny. The man worries about the future, and how his beloved city sprints blindly into it. He worries about the change he has witnessed since he was a child in Hackney. He had visited his old neighborhood a year ago and found it nearly unrecognizable. The haunts of his youth had all been replaced. He wondered with despair how many ATM machines a city could need. He’d been crossing the street a week ago when a car slowed down to allow him by, he turned to show the driver gratitude and found nothing but an empty seat behind the steering wheel. Where did London go? He’d thought to himself then. But his wife reminds him it isn’t all for the worse. “Things are safer now” she says. And he supposes she is right. Fewer traffic accidents. Less fighting in the pubs. Not as much burglary with the cameras on every street corner.
The previous night walking home the man had experienced nearly identical thoughts. In fact, it’s hard to call them thoughts when they are better classified as routine. Nearly all strolls after the dusk shift evoked meditations along the same notion. But that night they had been interrupted. Two boulders of men pulled him into an alley and explained things. When someone wrongs their brother, revenge is a duty. The target would be standing for the tram by the bank on Quadrant and Duke’s. They had been told this. He’d be alone from 8:16 PM to 8:30 PM as he always was after the last light. The street would be empty. They had been told this. The only complication was a lamp by which the street camera could see. They had been told this. The man tried to look into their eyes but their bowler hats were pulled so low upon their heads it was like staring into slits. He was pushed back out onto the street.
3
The man turns onto Lancaster Park and he is only a half mile from home. He considers what his wife would think about automatic lamps. He wishes they existed more than anything else in the world.