“Jazus, Jack,” Hugh shouted. “How is life on the mainland? Wait till you hear this job that I’ve got here.” And he brought out from the kitchen a two-wave radio, shot the aerial into the air, pressed a button and spoke to the Blue Cormorant. “Ye poor bastard,” said Hugh. “Over.”

“Did you ever feel the whole thing was a waste of time?” Jack asked in an attempt to ingratiate himself with the gardener.

“If I ever felt like that, I’d change my drink,” the man laughed, and inside the other room Hugh laughed.

“I’ll have a brandy,” said Jack, “and give this man whatever he’s having.”

“No, thank you,” said the gardener, “I’ll stop by myself.”

“I’ve just had some good news,” announced Jack.

“Is that a fact?” replied the gardener, laughing ironically again. “You wouldn’t think it to look at you.”

“If that’s the case,” replied Jack, “it must have been a long time since you heard anything worthwhile.”

He brought the corrected pages of the text into a building society office in Belmullet where the woman was editing the disc that contained the play. He gave her the corrected manuscript, let himself out onto the street and walked round the town. I’m raving, he thought. He tried to keep from entering a pub so that his head might be clear if there was any further work to be done. He could not wait to see the text. Each time he called back she was still working on the various corrections. He looked over her head at the computer and saw with relief whole pages being erased. Nights and days of work were disappearing. Characters, lines and moments went off the screen like magic. This gave him a crazy sense of satisfaction.

He would like to have leaned in and pressed the erase button so that the entire play would be wiped from the memory. That would have been the business! Leave nothing, nothing at all!

He watched enthralled as the voices of people he had invented sped by like trains into the night. One press of the button and another whinge disappeared into the void.

32. A Time of Big Seas

32

A Time of Big Seas

The first time it happened Jack was sitting in the council offices that acted as a court house and library. He had been in there sorting through old mariners’ maps and local history books. Then he sat back to smoke a cigarette. The window looked out onto a yard with a street beyond. He looked up and let his mind idle. He was thinking of something utterly banal, something nonsensical.

A man walked up and down the street, then another. Their forms passed the window. And though Jack could not make them out he knew they were familiars, they were human beings, he could taste the life-breath of them.