She told Catherine to sit there on the chair in the shop till she rang to see could George be contacted at sea. When she came back she had a cup of coffee for Catherine in her hand. “No,” she said, “he knows nothing about the Blue Cormorant. The run, he said, is further North.” The two women drank coffee and ate buns in the little shop. “It’s a terrible life they have,” Mrs Gillan said, “but they know nothing else.”

Catherine strolled round Elsinore House where the Yeats brothers had been raised. The roof had fallen in and the walls were daubed with names, kisses and obscenities. She walked the first beach, and the second beach, and the third, till across the strand she could see the woods of Lissadell. A red moon rose early in the sky. A stray dog befriended her.

She stood again on the pier, and found that by now she knew every net and lobster pot. She walked down a newly laid scenic path that gave a view of Coney Island. The dog was with her still. Seagulls were perched on the head of the Iron Man, who looked strangely bisexual above the rising tide. When she came back to the pier she was embarrassed to find that the few men there had begun to recognize her.

“If the fish are running,” she was told, “you won’t see the trawlers back tonight.”

She sat in the car and watched the pier. As small boats would arrive she’d get out and watch them tie up, but still there was no sign of the trawlers. She drove to Dead Man’s Point and tried to pick out a boat making its way in from the sea. Returning, she cut the engine because she thought she heard the noise of another engine out at sea, but there was nothing. At eight the bay was dotted with the multicoloured sails of small yachts gliding in a perfect V towards the setting sun. And still the trawlers did not come.

The stillness, with Ben Bulben in the distance and Knocknaree across the bay, was unnerving. One by one the lights appeared in the houses in the village, then on the prom all the streetlights came on. But still the salmon boats did not appear. She went into a nearby pub and ordered a hot whiskey.

“It’s beautiful here,” she said to an old blue-eyed man who was stroking a blond labrador.

“You get used to it,” he said.

A small while passed.

“W. B. Yeats lived here,” she said.

“So did his mother,” replied the old fellow. “God bless us.” He looked her up and down. “And what are you doing here?”

“I’m trying to find a fisherman,” she replied, “from Mayo.”