The sea in the cloakroom

At a quarter past seven, a woman in a dry coat left the sea with Madame Vey. She asked whether she would need a ticket. Madame Vey said that everybody needed a ticket, and tore number forty-three from the roll.

The woman put her half in a pocket and went upstairs. Madame Vey tied the other half to a wave. It came back wet, so she tied it to another wave, with much the same result.

For the first hour the sea behaved reasonably. It occupied the space beneath the coats and made a noise which Madame Vey attributed to the ventilation. A man returned for his scarf and remarked that it smelled of his childhood. She told him that complaints about cleaning should be addressed to the management.

At eight thirty a small fishing boat passed between the umbrella stand and the radiator. Its captain asked how far it was to the coast. Madame Vey pointed at the skirting board. He examined it through binoculars and said he had been there already.

She had worked in the cloakroom for nineteen years. There had been wet winters and a touring production which left a horse, but nothing for which the opening hours were so plainly inadequate. She looked upstairs. The music had stopped. Somebody was making a speech.

The sea began to rise. Madame Vey moved the suede jackets to the upper rail. She put the till on her stool and stood on a wooden crate with an inventory book. Under the heading “Item” she wrote “sea”; under “Condition on arrival” she wrote “uncertain.” The boat captain requested a copy.

At ten the woman came back with the ticket. She was carrying a paper plate with two untouched sandwiches.

“Forty-three,” she said.

Madame Vey held out the sea. It came easily enough, gathering itself beneath the woman’s arm in folds that seemed much too heavy for her sleeve. A few coats swung in the air it left behind. The boat captain removed his cap.

“This isn’t mine,” the woman said.

She set it on the counter, where it continued to break against a saucer of safety pins. Her sea, she explained, had a green light on the far shore, visible every nine seconds. There was no green light here.

Madame Vey checked the ticket. Forty-three. She checked the roll, the inventory book, and the hook which now held nothing except a smell of iron. No other sea had been deposited that evening.

“Perhaps they’ve switched it off,” she said.

The woman shook her head. She knew the person who kept the light. There was no need to say any more about him.

For a while they stood on either side of the counter. The captain secured his boat to the lowest coat hook. Upstairs, chairs were being stacked. The woman offered Madame Vey a sandwich, and Madame Vey accepted the one without mustard.

At eleven she telephoned the manager to say that the cloakroom would be staying open. She did not explain why. She moved the crate beside the counter and brought down a chair for the woman. They faced the far shore, leaving nine seconds between each attempt to speak.