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Decambrais supposed that this Le Guern must have once been in a shipwreck. And it wasn’t too hard to guess that the boat must have been called
Nor’Easter
. That must have been when the fisherman’s mind sprang a leak just like his bathtub. Because just below the Plimsoll line, that apparently fit and firm-minded man was mad, clutching on to obsessions like they were lifebuoys. Just like me, really, Decambrais thought, though I’m neither fit nor firm.
    “City of Cambrai,” Joss declaimed.
    September 15, 1883. French steamer, fourteen hundred tons. Out of Dunkirk for Lorient, carrying iron rails. Ran aground at Basse Gouac’h. Boiler burst, killing one passenger. Twenty-one crew, all saved.
    Joss didn’t need to signal to send his listeners on their various ways, because everyone knew that the shipwreck story always marked the end of the news. It was such a famous feature of the show that people had started to lay bets on how that day’s story would end – “all saved,” “all lost,” or half-and-half, and they settled up in the café opposite straight after, or else when they got to the office. Joss had misgivings about cashing in on tragedy, but he also realised that weeds had to grow back over wrecks on the seabed and that life had to go on – and that was no bad thing.
    As he jumped off his podium he saw Decambrais putting his book away, and their eyes met. As if Joss didn’t know that the old hypocrite had just listened to the newscast! The old bore couldn’t bear to admit that a mere Breton fisherman could brighten his gloomy life. If Decambrais only knew what he’d found in this morning’s catch:
Hervé Decambrais makes his own lace napkins. Hervé Decambrais is a queer
. Joss had a moment’s temptation before putting the message in the pile of “better nots”. That made two of them – three perhaps, if you included Lizbeth – to know that Decambrais had a clandestine one-man lace-making business. In one way this made the bookworm less repulsive; for Joss had spent many a long winter evening watching his own father mending the nets.
    Joss gathered up the rubbish, put his pulpit on his shoulder and, with the help of Damascus, put all his tackle away in the back room of Rolaride. Two cups of hot coffee were waiting, as they always were after the morning cast.
    “I didn’t get number 19 at all,” Damascus said from his perch on a tall bar stool. “That thing about putrefaction. It wasn’t even a complete sentence.”
    Damascus was young, burly, quite handsome, as open as the mouth of the Loire, but just not very bright. His eyes reminded Joss of looking at windows papered over on the inside. Was it to hide an excess of feeling, or a genuine vacancy? Joss couldn’t make up his mind on that. Anyway, Damascus never looked straight at anything, even when he was talking to you. His vague and woolly eyes ranged all around; his glance was as hard to pierce as a Channel fog.
    “A nutter,” Joss explained. “Give up.”
    “I’m not trying,” said Damascus.
    “Hey, did you listen to my weather forecast?”
    “Yep.”
    “Didn’t you twig that summer’s over? Or are you trying to catch cold?”
    Damascus was wearing shorts, a denim sleeveless V-neck top, and nothing else.
    “It’s OK,” he said. “I can manage.”
    “What good does it do you to have your biceps on show?”
    Damascus downed the rest of his coffee.
    “Look, I’m not selling lace napkins here. This is Rolaride: surfboards, rollerblades, skateboards and go-karts. This,” he said, pointing to the hair on his chest, “is what moves the stuff.”
    Joss suddenly became suspicious.
    “Why did you say that about lace?”
    “Because that old stick insect Decambrais sells it.”
    “Do you know where he gets his napkins?”
    “Sure I do. From a wholesaler in Rouen. Decambrais is not a fence. He even gave me a free session.”
    “You asked for one?”
    “Sure. So what? ‘Even Keel Counselling’ is what his nameplate says,