Night anglers on the pier buy a permit from the pier office and the permit is written in a book, name and date and time in and time out. Every night a permit is written in the book in a hand that is not the office's. Same name. Time in, ten. Time out, blank. The man's rod is on the wall of the office, on hooks, with a label, because he left it on the pier in 1977 and nobody came for it. In the morning the rod is wet, and the reel has been turned, and there is a fish scale on the butt.
I am the pier office manager and the permit book is on my counter, and one line in it every morning is not mine.
The permits.
Night fishing from the pier is by permit, bought at the office, written in the book: name, date, in, out. The anglers come through the side gate with a key the permit gives them. In the morning I check the book against the gate log, so I know they are all off.
Every morning there is a permit I did not write.
The line.
A name. A man's. In a hand I have seen in the old books, because the office has kept every permit book since the pier had permits, and the hand is in the books from the sixties and seventies, every night, the same man, until 1977, when the lines stop, in the middle of a season.
Time in, ten. Time out, blank.
The gate log shows nobody through at ten.
The rod.
On the wall of the office, on two hooks, a sea rod, old, with a label tied to it that says, left on pier, and a date in 1977, and the name. Lost property that nobody came for, kept by a pier master of the time who did not like to throw a man's rod away, and kept by every one since.
In the morning the rod is wet. Salt on it. The reel, a centre pin, has been turned, because the line is wound differently from how it was the night before, and on the butt, where a hand goes, there is a fish scale, bright, from a fish that was caught in the night, and there is no fish.
What has been checked.
The book, locked in the drawer. The line was in it.
The rod, taken down and locked in the cupboard. It was wet in the cupboard.
The pier, at ten, by me, in the anglers' shelter at the end, in the dark. At ten the gate at the shore end did not open, and the boards creaked, out, the length of the pier, and somebody came into the shelter and sat on the bench beside me, and I heard the rod being put together, the ferrules, the reel clicking on, the line through the rings, the small sounds of a man tackling up who has done it every night of his life, and the cast, the whip of it, and the weight going out into the dark, and the splash, and then the waiting, which I know, because I fish, and we waited together for a long time, and at about two the rod tip went, I heard the reel, and there was a fish, and he brought it in, and I heard it on the boards, flapping, and then he unhooked it, and there was a pause, and he put it back. I heard it go in. A good fish, by the sound, and he put it back, and he tackled up again.
At dawn the boards went back along the pier, and the gate did not open, and the rod was on the wall.
Who.
The book stops in 1977 because he did. The pier master's note, in the back of that year's book, says that he had been fishing the end at night, as he did, and that the anglers who came at dawn had found his rod in the rest and his bag and his flask and not him, and the sea had been calm, and nobody ever knew.
He is fishing. Every night. With the rod off my wall. Catching, and putting back, because a man who is where he is has no use for a fish, and he is still, I think, a good angler, because he catches every night and the pier's anglers do not.
What is done about it.
The permit is in the book every night with no fee and no time out, and the council, which audits the permits against the income, has asked why one angler is on the pier every night for free and never leaves, and I have said he has a life permit, and they have asked to see it, and I have shown them the rod.
What I do.
I run the pier office.
An angler who does not sign out is an angler the office goes looking for. That is the rule, and it was the rule in 1977, and somebody did go looking, at dawn, and found a rod.
So I sign him out. At dawn, when the boards come back and the rod is on the wall, wet, I take the book and I write the time in the out column, in my own hand, and I initial it, because an angler who has fished the night and come back along the pier is an angler who is off the pier, whatever else he is, and I am not going to leave his line open every morning for the council to ask about.
The rod has a new label. I wrote it. It says, in use, and under that, night permit holder, and the old label is in the drawer, with the old books, and the fish scale on the butt in the mornings is on a rod that is, as far as the pier office is concerned, in the hands of a man who signs in at ten and signs out at dawn and is the best angler on the pier, and I have started, on the nights I sit in the shelter, to bring a flask, and to leave a cup out, and the cup is empty in the morning, and I do not think that is the gulls.