Jack Ferris walked off swinging his boots. He made his way to a low field, partly flooded, dotted with rocks at both sides and patches of heather. There was only one set of goalposts, at the further end, the other posts had crashed to the ground, and through where the goal once stood swans glided. He knelt, pulled his togs up over his trousers, put on the boots, stuffed his trousers into his football socks, then, sitting into a ditch, pulled out a cigarette and waited. Then he began saying to himself in a distracted fashion, altering the rhythms as he chose, changing the emphasis, scattering the feet, a certain phrase he had heard a man from Inishmaan bellow out on Inisheer as he stumbled drunkenly home:

I am the greatest man in Ballyconeely

I am the greatest man in Ballyconeely

and so on, in a traditional self-deprecating way.

The morning after the storm the sky was black. She cycled up to Glenlara. A few villagers were gathered at the cliffs which gave an exaggerated view of the horizon. She walked up the last stretch to join them. Plaid waves broke as far as the eye could see. The salmon boats were speeding out one after the other. A single dull light burned on the horizon. The high tide had scattered debris as far as the road.

The people stood, looking out, in silence. The gaps in the walls shone like mirrors reflecting the blue-black sky. The earth felt dangerous.

To her left, the sea spilled across the small slipway. There was a heart-stopping crack of thunder from the waves. A fall of rain blew in. She felt light-headed and afraid. She stepped into a hollow on the down-wind side of the rocks where the last of the flowering sea-thrift grew in small pink clumps. The weight of the low cliffs was over her head. The land was made of stone, and each stone was neatly packaged away on beds of slate. And on each slate a record of straight lines and broken lines was kept – of distances, of levels, of the sea and its booms, and gravel blown up.

Now the shore was filled with giant rocks that had been blown in by the storm. They rested unsteadily there, waiting to be carried in. She watched them, amazed by the power of the sea.

A guard cycled up and joined the others above. He smoked cigarette after cigarette. More light rain fell. Gulls shrieked. Then suddenly the sun, blazing white, appeared. With great wonder Catherine saw the Glenlara folk fill up with hallucinatory light. Over the big shadowy sea the sun worked a chisel through the clouds. It slanted purple, then red, then orange.