Then it began to change, to merge with its background. For a minute he thought he had moved forward, but the next reflection in his mind’s eye showed he had stayed still. The same image remained. He had felt the urge to go, but he had not moved. And though he looked the same, he was not the same. The chair was in a different space. He was in a different space. This was the difference. Then he realized that space was provided by thought. So he tried to fill that space with comforting things. But sometimes the exact same retinue of resentment and nothingness would present itself. Then came a grand spasm of panic.

What was worse, he had no pity for himself. Some cold part of Jack Ferris viewed his disorientation and his collapse without compassion. As he sat in his shirt by the fire in late autumn, with cold knees and thighs, and a mind obliged to consider itself, some cold ghost turned aside.

It was this ghost that took him outside. A whiff of turf smoke told him that there were others about. When he saw a trail of turf smoke going up from a neighbour’s house he knew that at the foot of it was another soul warming itself by the hearth, in britches or frock, easeful.

As he stood out on the moist grass watching his cottage, his head grew enormous, and the parts of his body under his shirt became moist and wavery, then they too became enormous. The sky went back and forth. He dragged the bags of bottles along the front wall. Then he dragged them across the garden and put them round the back. He looked up. There was no smoke coming from his cottage. That meant there was no soul in his house. All of a sudden he realized that the consciousness he inhabited was of a mean, limited kind.

The skipper met him on the road as he was setting off for Corrloch.

“Jack,” he said, “have you finished with the writing?”

“I think so.”

“Good. I need you out on the Blue.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow. We could get in a couple of weeks before the storms. The forecast is good.”

He would have refused but could not. De Largey came for him in a car. They drove down the valley in silence. They went to sea for two weeks after the flatfish – plaice, turbot, white sole. It was a sober, spiritual time. He was standing one morning by the skipper in the wheelhouse looking towards the Skegs. On the radio various voices of other fishermen were cajoling, complaining, cursing, talking of the forthcoming storms. Their voices were always in the background, and sometimes the sound of the radio would drown the sound of the sea. Then suddenly, as he and Thady were cutting slices of white bread, Jack heard Catherine’s voice.

“Calling the Blue Cormorant.”