“You must have had a great time up above on opening night.”

“Yes,” he answered smiling, “we did.”

“It was my dream,” she said, “that something like that might happen to me.”

“It might yet.”

“Never,” she declared.

He sauntered the streets. And then again walked the road to Corrloch. With dread he entered the door of Lavell’s shop.

“You’ve been away, Jack,” Mrs Lavell said.

“I have,” he said.

“Can you hear the cockatiel?”

Jack was startled.

“What?”

“Since you’ve been away I have a cockatiel. Her boyfriend bought my daughter Marie one in Dublin. The bird was driving the aunt mad. Marie was out at work all day and then out with the boyfriend at night and the bird was jabbering away. So, her aunt – my sister – said the bird must go.”

“I’ll have half a dozen eggs.”

“So my daughter asked me to take him in.”

“And half a pound of sausages.”

“Now he has me awake at the crack of dawn.”

“He’ll be a companion,” said Jack.

“It’s a long winter,” nodded Mrs Lavell.

Next morning he crossed the fields and went up to the shop to buy bread. The old fisherman, Bernie Burke, was seated on a sack of spuds getting his breath.

“Morning,” said Jack.

“It’s good to see you,” said Bernie. “I saw your name in the papers, I did. And I saw Catherine’s.”

‘Has the bird talked yet?” asked Jack.

“All he says is in another language,” replied Mrs Lavell.

“You should leave him listening to the radio,” said Bernie. “That’s how they learn.”

“The radio,” said Mrs Lavell, “would only sicken him.”

Jack laughed.

“Isn’t that right, Jack?”

All three laughed together. Jack took a newspaper, and laid the change on the counter. He stepped out. He was home. It was blowing hail. He read that night an Irish Independent dated 1933 from cover to cover. Next morning Daisy fell in behind him and prepared for the walk to the Adams’ house. “Not today,” said Jack.

And so it was. If he loved her in the body once, let his imagination seek her out as best it could. He arranged himself at the kitchen table. He waited. As he had waited in the hospital. But as long as he loved her he could not begin writing again.

The minute he put a word on the page he would stop loving her. Once it became a story it was over. Some other person would materialize.

Still his imagination would not comply. He was not ready yet to consign the real living Catherine to the world of imagination. He wanted to stay in life, to continue with the adventure.