MORNING SERIAL
I WAS told that there would have to be an autopsy to determine the cause of death and that I should stay away from the cottage. I didn’t like that and explained about the paint outside. He said I could do that little job, but the cottage would be locked up until matters were settled. Then he let me go.
Time went by slowly. I wanted to buy the boat and become a fisherman but we, my mother and I, had little spare money for that sort of thing. I got a job of sorts, but it didn’t pay much. On the first weekend I painted the herrings on the boat as I’d promised, taking care to highlight all the tiny scales, remembering that Grandfather had said If you made a promise, you must keep it. I thought about putting the paint back into the shed as I had the key but decided it would be a bad idea, so I just put the paint pot and brush under the boat. I kept thinking about the message that Father had left, especially the part that read, Exchange the pebbles. The box was still there by the white wall with its pebbles neatly lined up in rows, and I looked at it each time I went to the beach. One day I picked up a likely looking pebble and took it to the box. As I went to lay it alongside the others it didn’t quite match up. Then it dawned on me, Exchange the pebbles meant that only the best would be suitable no matter how long it took to find them. I continued with the search each time I went to the beach. My father, as I realised I now regarded him as, would have liked that I knew.
Weeks later an official looking letter arrived for me from a firm of solicitors in a nearby town requesting me to call on them at my convenience as they had some information for me about a Mr Gwyn Dorian Evans. They gave the address of the cottage on the beach. Gwyn Dorian Evans; I had never heard his name, but it had to be Father. I recognised the initials G.D.E. carved into his netneedle. He had bequeathed everything to me in his will: the house, boat, and shed plus all the tents.
The Herring Man by Cyril James Morris is published by Parthian at £7.99
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