I just want to be with you.

Behind him sheep smudged with blue walked a low field. Out beyond was a cold stretch of sea, and boats tied up for the winter. The storm of the night before had left the beach like a bed tossed in a nightmare. He walked through the town. The lads in Belmullet were kicking a football over the ESB wires on the square. It was a Saturday afternoon. A few women were sitting in The Appetizer eating cream buns. He watched a tractor pull a trailer-load of Christmas trees up Seán America Street in the eerie December light.

Jack Ferris had been up and down Belmullet town since early Saturday morning waiting for Catherine. His black hair was pinned to his head with salt. His boots were comic and sandy. He was talking to himself.

The previous night they had docked just before the storm started and he had strolled from the pier to her summer home in Corrloch, pushed in the heavy door and on the wet mat in the hall found the letter waiting for him.

He tore it open – certain that it contained some final words of bitterness. He read it and felt blessed. He lit fires in every room, swept the floors and cooked a meal for her arrival. He was saved.

He sat in the Adams’ house, read from the Bible and studied a line her father had underlined in red – to give some form to that which cannot be uttered. He tidied the rooms. He washed the dishes she’d left behind. He swept away mouse droppings and poured disinfectant along the ledges. He sat on the small bed in Jonathan Adams’ old study and read a children’s Irish Grammar – tá me, tá tu. I am, you are. At three in the morning he walked back across the fields to his cold cottage in Aghadoon. He fed the animals in a wind that blew the milk out of the cat’s bowl. The roof groaned like the keel of a ship. The thump of waves went through the floor under his bed. He had not slept. He scribbled new lines onto the text of the play. He watched the sea, put on the tilley-lamp repeatedly, re-read the letter like you’d read a train timetable to find, yes, I still have time. Any bitterness that had accrued, he let it pass. Because the comfort of her commitment was there. Yes, she’d written, we were just denying love to ourselves. What we had wasn’t love, but nostalgia for love.

He could hear her say that word nostalgia. When she’d say it, his senses would rear back in alarm, then relax, for her inflexion carried all the meanings of the word – her woman’s past, her childhood, her jealousies, her other lovers, her private moments – everything that was herself. Nostalgia. Nostalgia. It was like breathing out after holding your breath for a long time.

Next morning, he turned at the new bridge that spanned a canal linking the two waters of Broad Haven and Blacksod Bay, then retraced his steps, his elderly dog, Daisy, awkwardly skelping elbow-high alongside him on the whitewashed wall. He looked at the scaffolding that had gone up round the water-tower at the hospital. He stopped, clasped his hands in front of his chest, then rubbed the heels of his palms vigorously together. He clapped his hands; his eyes closed, and his mouth veered into a grimace. He bent his head. He opened his eyes and stood with his arms straight down by his sides, shivering.