Five Thirty-One

I woke at ten to five because the Herring House was making a noise I had not heard it make all week, a long low shuddering in the sash of the window, and when I got up and looked out there was no creek.

There was no mud, either. There was no quay wall and no slipway and no line between the water and the marsh. The whole of it — creek, saltings, flats, four miles of it out to Scolt — was one flat moving sheet of grey, and it was five in the morning and low water had been at twenty past six the evening before, which meant that what I was looking at was six hours of flood on top of a night of north-easterly, and high water was still seven and three-quarter hours away.

There was a light on in the yard.

I got dressed in…