The drying room is where the crew hang their kit after a launch, on numbered pegs, one per crew member, and the heaters run on a timer. Every morning there is a set of oilskins on the spare peg that was not there at close. Wet. Seawater in the pockets, weed on the boots, and the kit is old, the pattern from the eighties, the station's name stencilled on the back in a hand that did the stencilling forty years ago.
I am the station's kit officer, which means I count the oilskins, and there is always one more.
The drying room.
Warm, with heaters on a timer and pegs on the wall, numbered, one per crew member, twenty two of them, and a spare at the end, twenty three, for a visitor. Kit goes on the pegs wet after a launch and comes off dry. At close, on a night with no launch, the pegs have dry kit on them and the spare is empty.
In the morning the spare has kit on it.
The kit.
Oilskins, yellow, the old kind, heavy, with the station's name stencilled across the shoulders in the paint the station used in the eighties, and boots under them, and a lifejacket of the kind we stopped issuing, over the top, the way you hang it. Wet through. Seawater in the pockets. Weed in the boot treads. Dripping onto a floor that was dry at close, in a pool, and the pool is salt.
I have dried them. They are wet again the next morning. I have taken them home. They are on the peg the next morning, wet, and the ones I took home are in my garage, dry, and there are two sets in the world and one of them is always on peg twenty three.
What has been checked.
The room, at midnight, by me, in the corner, with the heaters off so I could hear. At about one the door opened. The outside door, from the slip, which was bolted. Boots on the floor, wet boots, the sound of them, coming across the room to the end peg. The sound of a lifejacket being unclipped. A jacket coming off, heavy, wet, the sound of it going over a peg. Trousers. The boots, set down under them, one and then the other. And a breath, the long one a man lets out when he has got his kit off after a bad one, and then the boots on the floor again, bare feet now, going to the crew room, and the kettle.
I went to the crew room. The kettle was on. Nobody was there. A mug was out.
Who.
The crew in the eighties are mostly alive and some of them are still on the station committee, and one of them looked at the stencil on the shoulders and said it was his. Not the jacket: the stencilling. He had done all the kit in 1983 with a stencil he had cut himself, and he knew the letters, and he said that set was the set he had done for a particular man, because the name inside the collar, on a label, which I had not looked at, was that man's, and he read it to me, and went and stood outside for a while.
The name is on the wall. 1981 has two. He is the other one.
He comes in off the sea at one in the morning, every night, and hangs his kit up wet and puts the kettle on, because that is what you do after a shout, and in the morning the kit is still wet because he goes back out in it at ten to three, when the pagers go, for the shout that will not end.
What is done about it.
The extra kit is on the inventory as a spare set, unissued, condition poor, and the inspector has asked why a spare set is wet every inspection, and I have said, it gets used.
What I do.
I look after the kit.
Kit that comes in wet is checked. That is the job. You go over it while it is on the peg, before the heaters dry the salt in, and you look for tears, and you check the lifejacket's gas bottle, and the light, and you say it is serviceable or you take it out of service.
So I check his. Every morning, first thing, before the crew come in, I go over the set on peg twenty three. The jacket, the seams, the zip. The trousers. The boots, which I tip out, and the water and the weed go on the floor. And the lifejacket, which I have never once found faulty, and which I check anyway, and when I have done I say, out loud, kit checked, serviceable, which is what you write on the card, and I write it on the card, and I hang the card on the peg.
The card is gone in the morning. Every morning. The kit is wet and the card is gone and I write another one. And the man who did the stencilling came in one morning to watch me do it and stood at the door and said, when I had finished, that the man whose kit it was had been the only one on the crew who ever read the card, and had always said thank you for it, and that I should listen, and I did, and from the crew room, where the kettle was on, I heard it.