And now came the turn of popular songs. In his cottage by the sea he would listen to the radio with great attention. He’d prop a transistor on the bedside table and search till he found music from the sixties and country-and-western songs. A rush of sentiment would go to his head. He’d feel a great benign sadness. If he turned the radio off, in came the sound of the September ocean growing towards the full. He knew that somewhere inland she’d have her record player going. Her songs would be intelligent and sophisticated, while his were belligerent and sentimental.

At five in the morning the radio was a cache of memories.

There came a time when he thought she had slipped away. He could not know what she was doing at all.

Some thin psychic line between them had snapped.

Now came the sound of a quarrel from the past. He saw Catherine’s face switch from hurt to sadness. He heard the static of raised voices. The torch of hatred from an eye. But mostly the awful sound of his voice pleading his case. The malignant cries of blame, and then nothing, absolutely nothing, except a radio tuned to popular songs until the dawn brought short newsflashes that became extended news bulletins, then there was talk of traffic congestion; advertisements shrieked through his brain, the radio studio became smaller and smaller, he felt the wary consciousness of the early-morning announcers as they slipped a new day on to the turntable, and began, at short intervals, reading out the time.

When he turned the radio off for a second there would be a thunderous echo through the room. Then, after a while, a timid silence. It was like he and the radio had travelled out on a boat. They had made a night-crossing together. They had survived. Despite the moments he had suddenly switched the radio off because he thought someone was at the door, when he had lowered the sound because of someone at the window, or because he had heard someone in the other room, they had landed.

He bought a gas oven and had it delivered, but had not as yet taken a gas canister home. He cooked on the open fire with a frying pan, but mostly lived off toast. Toast and gin and bread buttered with black layers of Marmite. Then he’d walk the fields down to Corrloch and stand guard on the dunes waiting on the lights that would signal her return.