Traditional squid on an arm

The tide took the causeway again this morning, so the post will not come until Thursday, and I am writing this by the last of the candle in the old guardroom, where the roof still keeps off the worst of the wind. You asked whether I had gone soft out here on my own. I have not. I have a better arrangement than most married men. The squid came up into the flooded undercroft of the keep three nights ago, a great green thing with its mantle freckled like wet pebbles, and it has lived in the cistern ever since, eating the crabs Mr Pellow leaves on the steps for it.

Pellow thinks it is an omen. He says the Ashcombe family drowned a bailiff in that cistern in 1740 and the creature is his ghost. I told him ghosts do not need suckers. Its eyes are the size of saucers, orange rimmed with red, and when I lower the lamp they open a fraction wider, as if it is reading my face the way I read the tide tables.

Last night it reached over the lip of the stone and laid one arm across the step, slow as a lady taking off a glove, and left a row of orange rings pressed into the wet slate. I stood there a long while. Then I took the chalk from my pocket and drew round each ring so the next storm could not wash them away.

Come at the spring tide if you dare. Bring bread. It likes the crust.

Your affectionate sister, Margery