There was no answer to that, neither a great one nor a small one, so I said nothing. The rain drummed on the sail over our heads.

‘Long way home,’ he said after a while. ‘Is it bearable now?’ I failed to understand his meaning until he looked down at my bandaged arms. I nodded. We sat in silence, birds wheeling overhead. His long fingers gripped his knees. The inside tip of his right index finger bore a patch of blue ink. In its centre it was bright and new. Further out it traced the whorls in his skin and faded to nothing.

‘Who were you writing to?’

He took a hand from his knees, touched the fingers absently to his lips.

‘My wife,’ he said at length. ‘Pointless letters.’

‘She will be glad to receive them, I am sure, Mister Argyle.’

His head inclined down towards the wet boards. ‘She is deceased, Miss Grayling. A long time ago now.’

‘Oh dear. I…’ I felt a sudden panic over how to respond: the urge in me was to console this man somehow, to hold his hand or embrace him, but manners constrained me. Even to observe him in this state was an unwarranted intrusion.

‘You must have wondered…’

‘No, no,’ I hurried. ‘It is none of my concern.’

‘Yes, of course. You are polite enough to not inquire. Dimity. Dimity was her name. We had no children, you see. It was the two of us, twelve years. She was my friend, I suppose, above and beyond even being my wife. That word. Wife. It sounds like a task, or a title, don’t you think? But she was a part of me, closest I have ever known another soul. I’m not outgoing by nature, you may have noticed. But she understood.’

He sighed heavily, looked up and out at the sea again.

‘Me—against all reason. Which is the nature of love, is it not?’ The stately hands rose in a small gesture of hopelessness, then fell again to his lap. ‘We were unable to have children. No prospect of it. She wept at times about that, and I wept too. But I wept for her and her…grief. That sense of wanting, like hunger. When she was most desolate, she would say that she had let me down, but that was never the case. I could have lived out my days that way, her and me.’

He gestured vaguely towards his quarters.

‘So the dresses are hers. I don’t know how it appears. In truth I don’t care. I brought the sea chest full of everything I could find of hers, worthless to anyone else, I suppose. I hold them sometimes to summon her. The fabric against my skin is a reminder…a connection. As if she is somewhere not far away. They’d whip you for it in the township, of course. But I couldn’t let her go. My body and hers.’

He swallowed.