The Ferryman

At the end of the summer, when the high tide of tourists had gone out but autumn proper was still a few weeks away, the foot ferry still ran on the August timetable.

There was one girl he would have married. He’d have given up the fishing in a heartbeat for her, turned his back on the sea

It was always dead quiet when he made the first run over to Fowey from Polruan; even the boatyard workers who put in 12-hour days didn’t get going until later. As he puttered out across water as still and viscous as oil, his eye was always caught by the trawlers that came to be repaired from all over: Denmark and Ukraine and Russia. They looked like toy boats in dry dock: a stubby 80ft bow to stern and the same in height once they’d been hoisted up by the lifts, the deep keel that kept them upright in tall seas revealed after years below the