The deckchairs on the pier are hired by the hour and counted into the locked store at close, two hundred, by a lad with a clicker. Every morning there are a hundred and ninety nine. The two hundredth is on the deck at the sea end, set up, facing the sea, the way a chair is set up by somebody who knows the angle, with a folded coat on the seat and a newspaper under the coat, and the newspaper is the day's, and it has been read.
I am the pier's deckchair and concessions manager and the deckchair count is the only stock I have that walks.
The chairs.
Two hundred, the striped kind, hired by the hour from a hut by the turnstile and counted back into the store at close, by a lad with a clicker, and locked in. Two hundred in. Two hundred out in the morning.
A hundred and ninety nine.
The chair.
At the sea end of the pier, past the shelter, by the rail, there is a chair every morning. One of ours. Set up. At the angle that is the right angle for a deckchair, which most people never find, and facing the sea, and on the seat a coat, a man's, a raincoat of a kind they do not make, folded, and under the coat a newspaper.
The newspaper is that morning's. The local one. It is on the pier before the newsagent on the front has opened, and it has been read. The pages are out of order the way a paper is when somebody has read it through and folded it back, and the crossword is done, in pencil, and it is right.
The coat is damp. It smells of the sea. Not of rain.
What has been checked.
The store, locked, with the two hundred in it. A chair is on the deck in the morning and the store has a hundred and ninety nine and the lock has not been touched.
The sea end, before dawn, by me, in the shelter. The boards creaked, out, along the pier, the slow walk, and there was the sound of a deckchair being set up, the wood and the canvas, the particular clack of the bar going into the notch, and then the sound of a man sitting in it, the canvas taking him, and the rustle of a paper, and the turn of a page, every minute or so, the whole way through, and the pencil, and at the end the paper folded, and the coat, and he stood up, I heard the canvas let go, and went to the rail, and stood, and then the boards did not go back along the pier, and the chair was there, and the coat, and the paper, and I went and looked at the crossword, and it was done, and I could not have done it.
Who.
The pier's book has him, I am nearly sure. A man who hired a deckchair every morning, in the season, in the fifties and sixties, at the sea end, and read the paper, and did the crossword, and the pier master of the time had noted him because he was the first hire every day and the best behaved, and the book has the morning in 1964 when his chair was at the sea end with his coat and his paper and he was not, and his coat had been, the book says, damp, and the crossword was done, and nobody knew, the book says, whether he had finished it before or whether he had meant to.
He is finishing it. Every morning. With that morning's paper, which he should not be able to have. And then he goes to the rail, and he does not walk back.
What is done about it.
The count is a hundred and ninety nine every morning and the chair is collected from the sea end by the lad and put back and the two hundred is right by nine, and the council's concession audit has asked why my deckchair store is one short every night and one right every morning, and I have said, early hire.
What I do.
I manage the concessions.
A man who hires a deckchair at dawn and does the crossword is a man who is at peace, and the coat and the paper and the chair at the sea end are not, whatever else they are, a sad thing, and I have decided not to treat them as one.
So I hire it to him. I have stopped locking the two hundredth chair in the store. It stays out, at the sea end, by the rail, set up at the right angle, and I have put a ticket on it, an hour's hire, paid, from the hut's roll, and I put the paper on it, the local one, which I buy from the newsagent on my way in, at six, and leave on the seat, with a pencil.
The crossword is done when I get to the end of the pier at eight. The coat is on the chair. And the chair, since I started hiring it, has been moved. Not far. A foot back from the rail. The way a man moves his chair when he has decided he is not going to get up and go to the rail this morning after all, and is going to sit a while longer with the paper, and the boards, on two mornings now, have creaked back along the pier, at the slow walk, to the shore end, and the coat was gone from the chair, and the chair was folded, and leaning against the hut, the way you leave one when you have finished with it and the lad is not about.