Whimbrel

Wilf Chalmers’ shed is tarred black boards on a frame of ship’s timber, forty feet by twenty, with a stove at one end and a door at the other and a smell in it that I would know blindfolded in any country in the world: linseed, pine tar, two-stroke, coffee and wet sawdust.

He was in there at twenty to eight with the stove already going.

“Bunting,” I said. “Bea says you’ve got a hundred feet of it and that I have to ask properly.”

“Loft,” said Wilf.

“And Elias says you’ve got a black boat that might carry four people up the creek on Saturday if the water holds.”

“Might.”

“Is that a yes?”

“Might,” said Wilf, and went back to what he was doing, which was scarfing a new piece into the gunwale of a dinghy with a plane, in shavings that came off in one continuous curl…