For hours he’d be filled with unrelenting hurt and resentment. He culled old notebooks written in Belfast and found there no record of their day-to-day life. He had always, out of a naïve sense of loyalty, wanted to live there and yet his time in Belfast had barely registered in his mind. What was I doing, he thought, during those years?

A link had snapped between him and the past. There was no use looking for it. He stopped mourning his forthcoming death. The drunk, Jack realized, is the chief mourner at his own funeral. The drinker would like it all to happen in the one day: his birth, his lovemaking, his death. So he speeds up the process.

Scarves, he thought joyfully, she had an inordinate number of scarves. Some that were large as the capes west of Ireland women wore; scarves that were black, made of crepe, black satin, green woollen scarves, red cotton scarves. The memory of the scarves filled him with tenderness. As he used to be filled with sentiment at the sight of her washing hanging up in the back yard of their house in Belfast, or in the sea-fog in the back garden of the dwellings in Corrloch – the line of black skirts, jumpers, blouses.

Scarves, he thought.

When the bad days came he’d grow frantic and nervous. His heart would beat like an oncoming train. He’d wait. His body would shudder. I’m being punished. Let it pass. His daily life became a battle between resignation and the will to change. He began to find comfort in his bed, in the Tilley lamp beside it, the candles burning, in Hugh who had visited him. The male nurse who gave him the extra pills. The Leitrim man. Nurse Rita. The hairdresser. The woman from Pontoon. The dining room where he’d waited all that long day and listened to the raucous chatter of the kitchen staff.

At last he walked the peninsula, but the insults he expected never came. Life was going on without him. Then one day, with an overpowering sense of guilt as if he had recommenced secretly drinking, he began again walking like a disturbed soul past the Adams’ house. The next evening he was back and the gardener, whistling softly, slipped by him into the dusk.

At last, he completed the triangle and ventured as far as the Erris Hotel for coffee. Mrs Moloney stepped out from behind the counter.

She leaned forward and took his hand.

“You’re welcome home, Jack Ferris,” she said. “We could all do with a break.”

“Thank you,” said Jack.

“Do you know what’s wrong with us?” she confided. “We’re far too passive. There should be a band out on the street to welcome you back.”

“Do you think so?” he asked incredulously.

“I do. We never look after our own. My daughter saw your play and thought it was wonderful.”

“I’m glad.”