25

There are times when the fog wraps you up. You could be out at sea or in a bay and you'd see the same thing, just plumes of fog rolling in. It can be the most serene of places to sit in silence together, hearing the ghostly fog horn reaching out and the water slapping the side of the boat.

Once, when I was young, my father broke such a silence to say how he’d felt more than forty years before. When he was a boy of nine and him and his dad were off St Martins Point, he was hanging mackrel lines over the side and the fog came in so quick he turned around with the headland in sight and looked back to see it gone. 

The older I get, the more I imagine my father as a boy. It used to be he was this distant face, a floating beard in the blurred vision of my mind’s eye. Now he’s the skinny wretch captured in one picture from the early sixties. He’s wearing a grin so cheeky you can imagine the photographer cursing him in the seconds after the picture’s taken.

I can see him leaning on the side of the boat silently watching the fog roll and shift.  Then he sees the  shape behind the fog and he shouts out to my grandfather, who watches ahead and to the side and behind and beckons this other boat at the same time.

They guide the other boat into the harbour, going slowly and keeping quiet. While my granfather goes off to guide others in, my father's left on the pontoon. He waits for what seems like the whole afternoon.

Finally he hears the sound of engines, and water cut through, then instuctions called out by disembodied voices; his father coming in with two other boats. They tie up and the pontoon's loud with chatter.