Traditional swallow and elephant bands on arms and legs

The tide was still running when we hauled the last crate up the slipway at Tilbury, and I am writing this with my fingers still numb from the cold. Inside, wrapped in oilcloth, were flash sheets gone the colour of weak tea. Someone had cut them into long strips and stacked them tight, the way you would stack bandages. Swallows flew in pairs along one edge. Rose medallions sat between them like coins. Then came a row of elephants marching nose to tail, and a dotted border that ran the whole length without a break, with stars scattered over the top like spilt salt.

Marguerite, who runs the salvage co-op, says the strips were bands, meant to be wrapped round the forearm or above the knee and never taken off. The old parlours sold them to sailors who could not afford a ship's painting or a rope of pearls. Swallows meant a man had made it home across the water. Elephants, she says, were for remembering a voyage without having to talk about it. Nobody can prove any of this, but she has an answer for everything, which is why I trust her with the rope.

We found one strip still stitched to a scrap of linen, and on the linen was a name in pencil, Alfie Dyce, and beneath it a date I cannot read properly because the damp has eaten the numbers. I measured the band against my own arm and it fit the forearm exactly, though I do not think it was made for me.

I have kept the elephants. Tomorrow I will walk them up to the old bridge at Gravesend and tie them to the rail where the swallows nest, so the birds can see somebody came back for the things they left behind.

Love, Mum