The lifebelt at the end of the pier is in a housing with an alarm that sounds in the pier office when the belt is lifted, because a lifted belt means somebody is in the water. Every night at a quarter to three the alarm sounds. The belt is gone from the housing, the rope is over the rail and paying out, all thirty metres, taut, into the dark, for the length of time it takes to reach somebody, and then it is hauled in, hand over hand, and the belt comes over the rail, wet, and goes on its hook, and nobody is at the rail.
I am the night security officer on the pier, a job that exists because of the anglers and the arcade, and the lifebelt alarm at a quarter to three is the reason I do not sit down after two.
The belt.
At the sea end, by the shelter, a lifebelt in a housing on the rail, with thirty metres of rope, and a switch in the housing that rings the pier office when the belt is lifted, because a belt lifted at night is a person in the sea and the office rings the coastguard.
At a quarter to three the alarm rings.
The throw.
The belt is out of the housing. The rope is over the rail, paying out, fast, the way a rope goes when a belt has been thrown hard and well, and it goes the whole thirty metres and comes taut, and stays taut, out into the dark, down, at the angle a rope makes to somebody in the water holding on. For about two minutes. And then it comes in. Hand over hand. The rope moving over the rail, the belt coming up out of the dark, wet, over the rail, and into the housing, and the door of the housing shuts, and the alarm stops.
Nobody is at the rail. The camera on the shelter shows the rope and the belt and the rail and the dark and the rope paying out and coming in, and no hands.
The paint on the rail, where the rope goes over, is worn through to the metal in a groove, and the groove is older than the paint, and older than the rail, because the rail was replaced in the nineties and the groove was in the new one within a year.
What has been checked.
The housing and the switch, replaced. The alarm rings.
The rail, at a quarter to three, by me, beside the housing. The door opened. The belt came out, lifted, and went back, the way a belt is swung back before a throw, and went, out over the rail, and I saw it go, the white of it, into the dark, and the rope ran out past my hip, and came taut, and held, and I put my hands on the rope, because you do, and it was taut with a weight on the end of it, and the weight was moving, the small movements of somebody in the water holding a belt, and then the rope began to come in, and it came in through my hands, and I was not pulling, I was holding, and the belt came up over the rail beside me, wet, and went into the housing, and I looked down, and there was the sea, and I said, are you all right, to it, and the sea did not say anything.
Who.
The pier's book has the night. The fifties. A man off the end, in the dark, and the night watchman, who was the job before mine, had thrown the belt, and the man had got it, and the watchman had hauled, and had got him to the piles, and the man had been too heavy and too cold to get up the ladder, and the watchman had held the rope for an hour, alone, until the lifeboat came, and the man had been alive when the lifeboat came and not when it reached the shore.
The watchman had written it up himself. The book has his hand. It says, I held him as long as I could, and then it says, I should have gone in.
He is throwing the belt. Every night. And hauling. And getting him to the piles. And the rope comes in and the belt goes on its hook and the man is not on it, because the man was never going to be, and the watchman has been doing it for sixty years because of the last line in the book.
What is done about it.
The alarm at a quarter to three is on the pier office log every night and the office rang the coastguard, for years, every night, and the coastguard came, and found nothing, and the office stopped ringing, and there is a note on the wall by the alarm panel that says, ignore 02:45, and I took it down.
What I do.
I work nights on the pier.
A man on a rope at the end of a pier for an hour, alone, needs a second man. Not to go in. To hold the rope with him, so he can rest his hands, and to say the things you say. Nobody was there. He wrote, I should have gone in, and what he should have had was somebody beside him, and he did not, and he has been alone on that rope every night since.
So I am beside him. At a quarter to three I am at the rail, and when the belt goes and the rope comes taut I put my hands on it, below where his would be, and I take the weight, some of it, I can feel it come off the rope above my hands, and I say, I've got him, you're all right, rest a minute, and I hold. Two minutes. Then the rope comes in, through both our hands, and the belt comes over the rail, and I say, that's it, he's up, which is not true, but the rope does not know that, and the belt goes on its hook.
The book is in the office. I have started writing the night in it, under his, every night, one line, and the line is, belt thrown 02:45, two on the rope, recovered, and I sign it, and I have left a space beside my signature, and last week there was something in it, in pencil, faint, which was not a name, which was, thank you, in a hand from the fifties, and I have left the pencil out.