A few sober days passed. Some self-respect would return. They asked him to return to the boat, but he said, “I can’t, I’m working.” He made plans to leave, and yet there seemed no place to go. And her smell was on the breeze, the fresh smell a body brings in from the outside world. A ripe, perfumed presence would slip through the room. A teasing whiff of her frustration. Then he could actually feel her bed down at night beside him.

As he lay in bed her body-presence would float past. Warm. Protestant. Seductive. He kissed the place where her face would have been. Now at last apart, whatever the hurt, at least they were themselves.

Now that she was gone, he did not move as one person through the day. Walking the street of Belmullet he would hear a laugh he’d think was hers. Then would start the search. He’d go from pub to pub – shifty, transparent, bad company, nervous – searching for her. His jaunty conversation would become deadly earnest. Have you seen her? Oh yeah, she had been in town. Collecting her things. Oh, she was happy, they said.

She said she was happy?

She did.

If he turned a corner he expected to see Catherine. Some days he’d stay out of the house and stop with Thady. He imagined that if he stayed away she might return. While the boat went to sea without him, panic-stricken, he watched the house from the dunes. The rain would blow. He’d get drenched. She’d not come. Then one day she did.

He saw the light go on in the house. He ran back.

She was walking down the path to the Lada carrying some clothes she’d left behind. As they approached each other his heart and her heart beat furiously.

They recognized each other, not with a start but with a fatalistic shudder, for that meeting was not by chance. The meeting had occurred in the mind over and over. It had happened long before it had taken place. And as they walked by each other they were already preparing for the next encounter.

She did not speak. He called her name.

He put his hand on her arm. She shook it off.

“Catherine, please.”

“No,” she said. She pulled away.

For her, it was necessary to show no affection. If he was suffering, then that was good. She wanted him to suffer. His suffering lightened hers. He sat in the house dreaming of making a new beginning while, estranged and angry, she drove back to Dublin. He waited on the phone to ring. She stood remote at the furthest point of his consciousness, at the end of a long tall corridor which had no sides.

For days he searched the peninsula looking for a house to rent. He stood under thatched roofs, galvanize roofs, and despaired at the thought of starting a new home. It seemed an impossibility.