The first night he slept in a high bunk at sea facing the porthole. Through the porthole could be seen the city they were leaving at a steady, remorseless pace.

The ship was moving so slow that all night he could see the city through the round porthole.

They were moving painfully slow, and no matter how he turned in his bed he’d look up to see the city was still there.

They were making no headway.

The men in the other beds had made that journey many times. They slept easily and heavily while all night Jack looked at Catherine. Through a fall of light, left on lest anyone stumble in the dark, he had pinned her icon to the wall above bed No. 7.

All night the painful image stared unflinchingly back at him.

As it would sometimes in the future from a splinter of wood. A splinter of wood told her face. From blurred print on a page her features would one day emerge. For a long time her face would enter inanimate objects. Then her likeness began to haunt the living. And one day he would see a picture of Our Mother of Perpetual Succour on the TV before the evening news and even see Catherine’s face there. This was what he had feared ever since he was a child, a fear that he would forever be followed by the face of one he loved and yet never be able to make contact.

Every second signified no change in the icon. The night-light was unerring. Her gaze, a distilled distance.

A man’s heart clicked like a wristwatch in the dim ward.

“Take no notice,” the man in the next bed said in his sleep.

“We’re all neighbours here,” the Leitrim man explained. “We’re all in the shit. I lost two stone because my brain was moving too fast.”

“Never listen to all the things that are said on both sides when your mind is astray,” advised Leitrim. “Why do I wear galoshes? I wear them because I have poor hips.”

The patients, Jack among them, sat around drinking in each other’s thoughts. It was a glasshouse. A shudder ran through the roses when the wrong person entered. But today everything was perfectly normal. The nurses had their feet up.

Jack felt impure in there.

The rest were touched by a violet light.

It was raining. Jack was looking forward to his first sleep in days. He seemed to have spent days walking and walking. He put on the pyjamas he’d brought with him. They felt comfortable. It was raining. The rain will make you sleep, he was told.

Beat death!

Breathe in!

Breathe out!

That’s what one of the women patients told him.

The rain will make you sleep.