Fog on the Inland Platform
The station was twenty miles from any coast. The fog, however, smelled of salt, and the arrivals board listed a tide.
AuthorBy Irene Mallory
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- Reading time: 9 min read
Inland Platform Four had never needed a tide table. It served a market town, a school, and a factory that closed on time. In late June a fog arrived that wet the benches with a film the cleaners said was not rain.
The board, for eleven minutes, showed a service named after a coastal halt that had been demolished in 1961. Two passengers stood up as if they had been waiting for exactly that. They did not board anything. When the fog lifted, the board was ordinary, and the benches were dry, except for two damp ovals where people had been sitting.
A porter filed the event under weather. He also began carrying a notebook, which is not weather, and wrote down names he did not recognize whenever the air smelled of salt.
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