Feathers and zigzag band on a thigh

The gulls have gone quiet over the pier since the wind turned, so I am writing this at the kitchen table with the window open and the kettle on its second boil. Your father's tin is still under the stairs. I did not open it until Tuesday, when Mrs Abbott from number nine came round asking for the regatta bunting, and I went looking for the old braid we used to dress the boat with.

Inside was the strip of zigzag ribbon you wore round your wrist the summer you were seven, the one with the little navy triangles stitched along it. Tied to one end were two grey feathers from the gulls he fed off the harbour wall, and between them a string of wooden beads, nine of them, one for every trip he made past the breakwater before his chest gave out. He never once told me why he kept them. I suppose a man does not say such things to his wife over the tea.

I have pinned the lot to the curtain rail in the front room, where the light comes in sideways in the mornings. The feathers catch it and go pale at the edges. Mrs Abbott says it looks proper for the festival, and she is right, though I told her it was only rubbish from a drawer. Come home at Easter if the trains are running. You can count the beads yourself and tell me if I have miscounted.