“I’m sure,” said Josie, “that you can talk with the best of them,” and she trod on by. The moon, like a scooped out melon, was casting a wide ring that would someday soon be full. Bewildered, and breathless, intoxicated, she ran. She stopped on the white shimmering road. Fog from the steaming sea was rushing inland as evening fell. She walked through the fast mist. Birds had collected on their hunkers to the left of the pier. Here, they crouched out of the wind. She could nearly feel the soft breasts of the seagulls in the damp sand. She could feel her own coat, her cold lips, her lust, her cheeks, and the warmth of her armpits.

She touched her eyes and found the lashes wringing wet.

The birds fluttered and moved a fraction at her approach, then, all of a sudden, she was in the middle of the damp mist, and could see neither before her nor behind.

21. The Sea

21

At Sea

When they were about a mile out to sea Catherine began to feel ill. She stood alone at the stern thinking the sea air might restore her, but she only got worse. As the boat plunged beyond Inishglora her perspective danced wildly. A cold sweat streamed down her back. The planks buckled underfoot. She climbed down to the cabin where the men were lying on the bunks.

“Are you all right?” asked Jack.

“If you really want to know,” said Catherine, “I don’t feel well.”

“It’s the same for all of us at the beginning.”

“That’s reassuring.”

The men smoked in the cramped cabin. Jack introduced her to Hugh. “Hugh is the cook on board,” said Jack.

“God bless us,” said Thady, “onions in dripping.”

“I’d prefer if ye did not talk about food,” she asked.

“I know what you mean,” said Hugh. “I often feel the same way myself when I have to fry mince.”

“Please,” she said.

The men drank tea and lemonade, they joked, they slept, waking for a few seconds as the battering gained an extra beat that had not been there the last time. She sat on a bench with her head in her hands. The engine groaned drily, the pistons shook, then the roar tapered off into a low sickening throb.

“You should lie down.”

“It’s not what you’d call romantic,” she said.

She lay on the edge of an upper bunk, very close to falling off, wrapped in a torn sleeping bag and a patchwork blanket covered in fish scales. The smell of oil was everywhere. A few times as the boat lurched Jack nearly jumped up to catch her, but each time she toppled Catherine corrected herself, and cried out: “This is hell!”

“Is this all you do, lie down here and sleep?” she asked.

“Till we get there.”

She turned inward and gradually began to roll towards the edge again. He smoked and watched her.