He reared up that night in the cold cottage and yelled at the thought of his loss and the stupidity of his thinking. He knew finally that the only intoxication he could live with would be himself and yet he wanted more than ever to meet Catherine. He needed to make peace. He needed forgiveness. It had happened in the past – he thought it might happen again.

He took out what remained of her letters and began reading them. He found his heart raging. He swallowed a few Librium. Then read the letters over and over again. Soon the tone, the sound, the hesitations, the acrimony, the exaggerations, the humour, the sensuousness of her voice was pouring through his consciousness. In these letters were references to people he had long forgotten, to old arguments that seemed futile now. Places, words of love, encouragements, erotic endearments. Where was all that love now? Had it drifted into the upper air?

Sleep eventually came amidst a letter of love and reconciliation he was dreaming up in his head to reply to hers.

The skipper he fished with visited him the following day.

“You’re welcome back, Jack,” the skipper said. “Hugh told me you’ve been having a bit of bother.”

“It’s over now,” said Jack and he sought for the skipper’s name.

One night, in his drunkenness, Jack had forgotten it. And now, without the excuse of drunkenness he found in a panic that he again could not remember the man’s name. The nameless figure sat before him stirring a cup of tea and eating a sweet biscuit with uncouth relish. Jack looked at this strange face – windswept, with a garish swollen nose and huge ravaged teeth – and tried to restore an identity to it that he had once known. But the man’s identity remained a mystery. He wondered was this the beginning of cynicism and distortion in himself. Would he begin to lose everyone he’d known?

“I think you should stay,” the skipper continued. “You shouldn’t run.”

“You’ll always have a berth with me,” he said, “out on the Blue.”

He walked with him down the white path. The skipper got up on his Honda 50.

“Be seeing you, Jack.”

“Good luck,” said Jack, and he waved and watched him till he was gone from view, but still the name did not return.

At noon Joe Love appeared in his green post van. While the van rocked in the wind and Daisy barked wildly, Joe handed Jack his mail. Jack looked at Joe Love’s face with its huge forehead, snow-white hair and full whorish lips as if he were seeing him for the first time.

“How are you, Jack?” he asked.

“I’m grand.”

“I saw your picture in the paper,” said the postman. “You looked mighty.”