Why does one man covet the life of another? Laurence Gallows has been dreaming his whole life of castles in the air. In the white pyramidical tower and the green cupola roof of the lighthouse he sees white and green dominion. Kingdoms in the sun. A local temple. A white salt mill. A crusader’s Jerusalem and Laurence himself the foolish knight and his squire; although not quite, for that is not how Laurence views himself; not as Sancho Panza and his donkey. No, Laurence is more of a Don to himself than a donkey. The knight errant who goes ahead of his squire pursuing his dribbling, drooling dream.
For metaphorically speaking Laurence’s pockets are stuffed with gold compared to most in this small town; and he is intent on spending it foolishly. The goat is his petty experiment but his pasture land has been foreshortened, for next door is Pond Man; and on the other side the Harbour Master; and neither will indulge his whim of extending his estate. Estate in any case is mightily extravagant for what is up for grabs: an alleyway, and two narrow ribs of garden lawn on either side of a dusty twitten. The Harbour Master’s house (T.H.M. or James Crow as some remember him); but to most in the town he is simply The Harbour Master and like all three men under discussion there are no women. No wives. No female harvest.
Pond Man is a celibate and so easily doomed to become a source of romantic projection. The widowed Harbour Master lost his wife Peggy so many years ago she has turned into a dusty ghost; he sees her sometimes at the foot of his staircase on summer nights when he feels a hint of lonesomeness.
And Laurence? Laurence has been forsaken by his own dreams, it is easy to see, for he crosses town with a beatific smile stuck on like the tail on the donkey. In the length of that grin there is no one else who can possibly enter in — only property, the sacred cow of men who lack substance; who cannot find a way of travelling quickly or thoroughly through the earth: because Laurence has no real idea what ground he stands upon and so everything he lusts after leers up towards the sky: that white salt mill on the East pier built like a miniature Byzantine temple, a rather plain one.