Only a shower

An original first-person fictional account of an invented visit to a weather station facing closure.

The weather station occupied a flat roof above the council offices. I had imagined a platform crowded with shining instruments, but the caretaker led me into a room hardly larger than a cupboard. Paint had lifted from the window frame, and a brown stain spread across one corner of the ceiling. On the desk, a metal cylinder turned slowly beneath a pen that drew a trembling line.

It seemed an elaborate way of proving the obvious. If rain struck the window, it was raining. If the flag outside snapped straight, it was windy. I wondered why anyone needed a room full of numbers to confirm what could be seen by looking up.

The caretaker did not defend the station. Instead, he asked me to name a day I remembered clearly. I chose the afternoon of a school sports event when, as I recalled it, rain had fallen without stopping. He opened a cabinet and moved through a row of grey folders until he found the date.

“Eleven minutes,” he said.

The page recorded a sharp shower beginning at 2.17, followed by a dry hour and a steady breeze. I was certain that the rain had lasted all afternoon. I could picture people sheltering beneath coats and water shining on the running track. Yet the narrow lines on the page disagreed with me calmly, without trying to win.

We examined other records. One showed the frost on the morning when pipes had burst in the market hall. Another marked the week of heat when the soft surface of the playground had become sticky beneath people’s shoes. A page covered in sudden, steep lines recorded the storm before an old tree came down beside the library. The measurements had seemed small and fussy when I entered, but together they formed a patient witness: not the weather in general, but what had happened here, above these particular streets.

The station was closing because the handwritten records were no longer required. Most of the folders would be placed in storage, although nobody could say how often they would be consulted. The caretaker replaced the page about the sports event and shut the cabinet carefully.

Rain began to tap against the window. He glanced at the clock and wrote the time in a notebook, although there was no official form left to complete. I looked at my watch too. It was 3.42. For the first time, I wanted to know exactly when the rain had started.

By the time I reached the gate, the shower had ended. A visitor asked why my coat was wet, and I heard myself reply, “It was only a shower.”

How does the writer show the narrator’s changing view of the weather station, and how far does the ending suggest that this change is secure? Support your answer with references to the passage.