id the mass in Irish and English both, and the woman from the post office did a reading, and when they carried the coffin out into the rain the whole village f

a service station, with a cup of tea going cold in

say. I said thank you. I said she would have loved the singing. I

ster, and I had decided at the graveside that the story Declan had told me in the harbor office was not a story I could walk away from. A woman was dead. A b

rizzle that evening and I walked do

and the records began with the boats. So I told myself I was doing it for her. I stood at the end of the pier with my collar up and I counted them from left to right. The Mary Rose. The St Bride. The

y again and I stood there in the r

erel were running and the weather was soft, and the whole

ith a magazine and a radio on low, and she looked up at me and her face did the thing every

g to be out

ocolate off the rack and put it on the counter.

ton

is the f

ang it up on the till, and the till made its old mechanical clack

ts, Nora. N

hand stayed on it. "There is always a reason. You should not be counting boa

me through the glass and her hand had already

place where the track turned down to the boathouse, and I stood in the lee of the wall wher

he women from the shop and the post office, the older men from the wake, the tall woman with grey plaited hair. They came down the road in twos and threes with their co

lowed

and furze and it climbed and then it flattened and then it stopped at the edge of the world. There was a wide place there of short grass and bl

the ring, on a flat

and nearly full, and the ring of people stood quiet and watched her. There was no singing and no talking. One of the men from the pier

in the wind, "The fleet stays in. The tide turns at eleven.

people s

d from the

ad never heard forty people say aye like that, in one voice, to a woman

come. I went down the shore road to the pier, and I did the thi

in my coat and I used it on the old latch and it gave. I climbed in over the sill and stood in the dark with my heart going har

und them by the light of my lighter, because there was no electricity on that sid

cognized as my sister's for the last fifteen of them. Each page had a date and a list of boats and a cou

full moon, for forty years, in fair we

e in 1974. The same in the first ledger I could find, which was d

ge that was not part of the book. It was a list of names in my sister's hand, thirty or so of them, th

n. The date of

o. The date of hi

plaited hair: thirty fou

ifferent ink, in a hand t

e. The date of

e rain on the roof. Forty one was the number stamped on the fish on the weight in my coat. Forty one was my mot

and white over the water and the village was dark, and the co-op hall sto

ight in my si

the same window I had stood at when the wolf was on the headland, and I had

it, and my own footsteps s

ith his wet jacket over the back of the chair and his hands flat on the wood and a face on him l

nt of the whole co-op so that nobody can say afterwards that she did not have the right." He looked up at me and his grey eyes were flat and hard and very tired. "I have been trying to work o

t of my pocket and put it

lan. The date beside my name is Saturda