Tom Bennett

Tom Bennett has run Bennett’s Chandlery, on the western side of the harbour, for twenty-two years. The door is always open.

He holds that a closed door is bad for business and worse for conversation, and this applies in any weather.

He is a large man in his late fifties, weathered by a working life beside the sea, with the steady look of someone used to reading the sky. He does not waste words. Asked whether he has a minute, he has been known to answer: “Several.”

The chandlery is a low building hung with buoys and coils of rope. The sign is hand-painted and has been repainted so often that the letters have thickened into a style of their own. Inside it smells of rubber, diesel and stored canvas. There is a radio on the counter, and tea in two mugs that have seen better decades. The tea would strip paint.

Tom sees what comes in on the tide and asks no unnecessary questions about it. He used to keep a bit of fish back for the grey tabby that sat on the harbour wall.

His account of the town is the shortest on record: “It’s Seabrook. News doesn’t travel. It arrives before you do.”

Where you will find him

At Bennett’s Chandlery, at the harbour end, on the western side. The door is open.