He descended the steps. A cold wind blew along his knees. There was a man hauling a case ahead. After him, a raspberry-haired woman, her shoulders sleek as a starling’s, flitted forward in short bursts. He saw the train draw up at the makeshift depot. The original cut-stone station, which had been bombed, lay empty. Within a wire mesh on the roadway a JCB was screaming as it tore at stone. Chippings flew like hail. Jesus! A stake was being driven home. Under his feet the station vibrated.

He bought his ticket.

“One way?” asked the booking clerk.

“I suppose so,” said Jack.

“Well now, lad, it’s you that’s travelling.” He looked closer at Jack. “Are you the boy I met last night that’s on the radio?”

“That’s me,” said Jack thankfully.

“You were fairly high, son,” the clerk laughed, and he peeled off a ticket.

The train pulled away round the swerve of the river. Jack saw smoke rising from the mountains to his left. They were burning something up there. Herons stalked the river, wild duck scouted the edge of the low marshes. A glider came alongside them and then soundlessly pulled away.

Jack was dreaming ahead. When the half-dream stopped, the occupants of the train, the sea, himself, again fell back into place, each thrown together unwittingly and housed in a multi-layered consciousness. He became aware of a man in a grey suit who was watching his every move with a sour look. He was one of those white-haired, rosy-cheeked men with steel-blue eyes that he had seen everywhere throughout the North. Jack looked away, only to find the man’s eyes still on him when he returned his gaze seconds later. The stare was making him nervous.

He lit a cigarette. Immediately, his neighbour pounced.

“This carriage is for non-smokers.”

“Jesus!” said Jack.

He doused the cigarette, then got up and humped his bags along two carriages till he thought he had put a safe distance between himself and the ominous man in the grey suit. He was sweating profusely. In the final carriage he found a single seat that faced back the way he had come.

On a trolley beside Jack sat tinkling miniatures of whiskey, brandy and gin. Biscuits in cellophane. A coffee urn piped quietly. Plastic cups were piled high. Sitting around him were people drinking. He ordered a coffee, and talked to the woman opposite him. Then he ordered a whiskey to put in the coffee. He praised whiskey in coffee. He praised whiskey. And although the answers he got were without warmth, he persisted. He took off his jacket, and with the driver belling ahead they burst into the tunnel at Downhill, rocked through the darkness, emerged into a brief flash of daylight and the swerving sea, then they were underground again.

As they emerged at Castlerock, he ordered another whiskey.

“He cleans up awful well,” the woman said to her friend.