Anime bathhouse scene back piece in outline

The boiler at the Ferris Street baths has been coughing since the frost, so Mrs Okonedo sent me up the ladder with a shovel and a torch. You'll remember the soot sprites from when we were small, the little black things that scuttled off the coal when Dad lit the furnace and pretended they weren't there. They were still there. Forty or so, hiding in the flue as if they'd been waiting for someone to notice. I didn't have the heart to sweep them out, so I carried a bucket of them down the stairs and let them go in the yard. One rode my cap all the way to the quay and I've not had the nerve to take it off since.

We've been out eleven days on the Marigold, trawling for haddock off the Dogger, and the weather has been in a foul mood the whole time. Sully, our cook, has nailed three masks above the galley hatch that he bought off a pantomime man in Whitby. Stern faces, mouths turned down. He says they keep the weather honest. The one with the bent nose he calls Gregor, and he swears Gregor went over the side last winter and came back up in the net with a stone of cod. Nobody believes him, but nobody has argued the cod.

Last night the net came up so heavy the winch groaned, and when the cod spilled out there was a paper lantern tangled in the mesh, still lit, with a name brushed on its side in careful black ink. It was the name of the bathhouse, not ours. The skipper turned it over twice, then clipped it to the wheelhouse rail and said we'd return it in port. I think he was pleased to have something on board that wasn't wet.

Come down to the harbour when we're in on Thursday and bring the good soap. Tell Mum the boiler's fixed and the sprites have gone home. And if you see the old bath attendant, ask him whose lantern it is. I'd like to know who was out there with us.

Love, Tom

P.S. The sprite is still in my cap.