It is only five minutes to four, but at the landing stage – a new addition; in the old days they had to jump out onto the beach – there is no sign of any boat or ferryman. The ferries used to run all day like clockwork on the hour, until late into the evening, so he waits for a while, watching the water swirling beneath the wooden piling of the jetty, the seaweed writhing in the current like a tangle of mysterious sea creatures.

Then he spies to the side of the landing stage a white-painted paddle wedged against a post, hand-lettered with the words Call ferry. Arrangements are clearly more informal in peacetime. He waves it about, feeling self-conscious, stops for a moment then waves it again. Is Charlie still alive, he wonders idly, or perhaps the ferry licence has gone to one of his sons by now? Either way, no one turns up. He sets the paddle back and wanders towards the harbour master’s shed. The door is locked and the lights are off.

How many times has he waited here, in every sort of weather? He even recalls that once or twice, having missed the last ferry, he and Johnnie had crawled beneath the hull of a beached fishing boat for shelter, trying to sleep out the night so that they could catch the first run of the morning and arrive back just in time for the early shift. Oh Johnnie, how I have missed you all these years.

The four metal masts, those old familiar friends, are barely visible today through the sea mist, but he knows they are there, on the other side. There too, part hidden behind the pine trees bordering the opposite shore, are the red brick turrets of the manor house itself, that magical, dream-like place, more fairy castle than RAF base, whose secrets were known to only a few. Even now, nearly thirty years later, he feels a flicker of pride.

On the other side of the river he can just make out rusting signs – MINISTRY OF DEFENCE PROPERTY, STRICTLY PRIVATE, NO ENTRY. So they must still be using the place; although he wonders what on earth for, when the greatest threat these days is a bomb that could wipe out a whole country, even the whole world? However hard he peers through the darkening gloom, he can see no lights in the windows.

Drawn by the sound of the waves crashing on the shore behind him, he turns and struggles across the shingle to the sea. How he has missed this sound, the rhythm of the pounding breakers followed by the shushing of the shingle with the withdrawing wave, repeating itself along the length of the beach: boboom . . . shhh . . . shhh . . . boboom. No wonder composers like to write about the sea, he thinks to himself, for the rhythms are already prescribed. ‘Behold, the sea itself,’ he hums, almost happy despite the wet, the cold and his overarching despair, ‘Dusky and undulating . . . and on its limitless heaving breast, the ships.’