Pencil sketch of an anchor

My Tomas drew that anchor on the back of a chandler's receipt the night before the Marguerite sailed for Gdansk. Pencil, because he could never afford ink, and because he said pencil could be rubbed out if a man changed his mind. He was twenty. The crossbar sat crooked, the flukes were wider than any real anchor ever had, and he pressed so hard the lead shone.

He showed it to me at the Dock Gate with the fog coming in off the Humber. I said, that is a poor anchor, Tomas, it won't hold a thing. He laughed and said an anchor isn't for holding ships. It's for telling the ship where it belongs when the wind has forgotten.

The Marguerite never came back up the river. Nobody blamed the sea. The sea had done nothing but what it always did. The receipt came back to me in a biscuit tin with his caps and a pocket knife, and the paper was soft as cloth from being carried. Here is the thing I've never told the chandler's boys. I rubbed at those flukes that winter until the lead went grey, meaning to make him a better anchor, and I could not. Every time I tried to draw a proper hook, my hand drew the crooked one again. So I stopped. Tonight it hangs on my kitchen wall, grey and wide-armed, and when the foghorn goes I say, all right, love, I know where you are.