There once was a boy from Nantucket

I’d only known Nantucket from a rude limerick. But it exists and as it’s no longer the centre of the world whaling trade, its cobbled main street is now lined with immaculate shops selling Ralph Lauren rather than sou’westers. So avoid her older sister, Martha’s Vineyard, and take a ferry to Nantucket Town from Hyannis Port.

The white clapboard houses, wedding cakes, are named after whalers and can be rented by the week if you have tens of thousands of dollars. We feel as if we’ve fallen off the East Coast of America and woken in the 1950s, but it’s not as bad as it sounds. The landing was soft.

Drawn to the sea, like the whalers before us, we wander to the beach. There’s ice to the air, it’s off-season. And it’s the best time to visit, avoiding the pastel colours of well-to-do summer visitors. The white sand is like a Japanese garden. Workmen with rakes must hide behind the dunes, ready to smooth away any trace of life. The polite bicycle bells of the town’s few tourists fade behind us, replaced by the snare rush of the sea.

Like a child banished from class, Brant Point lighthouse stands at the edge of the toe of beach that extends into the Atlantic. Is it weird to fall in love with a building?

My wife says yes, it is.

But I can’t help myself. The lighthouse is a squat structure, a chubby toddler, painted white. Black metal holds tight the light and sits atop the lighthouse like a hat. It’s its lack of size, compared to the stark lighthouses of your imagination, that stirs something in our chest. Even though this structure has saved countless lives, it seems strange to describe it as friendly. But that’s the word we agree upon.

We clamber over the dark rocks that protect its feet from the sea. There’s been a lighthouse here since 1746, when Massachusetts was a British colony.

‘Is that a whale?’

My wife shields her eyes from the setting sun. Here the sun is either setting or rising, spreading a spectrum of reds across the flat water either way. It’s a place to bring a loved one. The space is too exposed to stand without holding a hand. And I wish I’d brought a hat.

It’s not a whale. It’s a ferry, blinking over the horizon and speeding towards us. A dog barks further along the beach and we remember that there’s more to the world than us two and the Brant Point lighthouse. And more’s the pity.