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When he was a child she would sometimes cry out because she could see a pile of corpses heaped up in the corner of the room in which they were standing. Then he would hold her legs as tight as he could until her terror had passed and the room was empty again. He remembers the smell of her as he buried his face against her skirts: as salt and sweet as a fish. Later he discovered that other women smelled the same. Different, but always the same.
    Everything is because of something and now that a silence has returned he becomes aware of the noises inside his own head. There is a distant roar like the wind among the trees, but there is also a plaintive high-pitched whistling sound, as if a solitary bird was singing within its cage of bone.
    The shoemaker lies very still on his back. He takes a breath of air and pulls it up through the soles of his feet, along the rippling length of his spine and out at the top of his head. Then he pulls the breath down again, from head to foot. He can see the air like a silver thread running through the length of his body. He is stitching himself together with silver threads.
    He places a little fish within the hollow cavity of his skull. It is a single glittering fish; no, it is a shoal of fishes and each one is no bigger than his thumb. He drops them skitteringwith life into a clear stream that is so cold it makes his bones ache when he holds his hand in it. The water is racing over pebbles that are speckled like plovers’ eggs. The fish are moving in perfect unison together; when one turns they all turn, when one holds itself steady they all hold themselves steady. The shoemaker watches them for a long time.
    He hears footsteps on the stairs, a hesitation, the lifting of the latch and the door swings open. Instinctively he closes his eyes against the intrusion of the daylight.
    â€œWho is there?” he asks, his voice querulous through the tears.
    He can feel the presence of someone drawing closer and squatting down beside him. He can smell his wife. He suddenly remembers the slippery softness of her belly and her thighs.
    She traces the outline of his face with the tips of her fingers. She leans forward so that her breath flows over him like warm water. Her hair trails across his lips. Slowly and methodically she begins to lick the tears away, her tongue running across the closed seam of his eyes.
    She clambers on top of him, heavy, salt and sweet, and she rides him just as she used to do in the past. He had forgotten the intense familiarity of her body. Now that he is caught up in it again the sadness leaves him, and he realizes that he has stopped crying.

8
    T he sea along this part of the coast always looks very quiet. Even when the moon is full and the tide at its greatest strength, with a storm blowing in from the east, it appears strangely calm and untroubled.
    But it is quick. I have watched it rushing over the expanse of mud and pale sand as fast as it takes for you to turn your back and when you look around again you might find that you are cut off, with the safety of the real shoreline at a far distance. Then it can be very difficult to retrace your steps because in between the shallow lapping waters there are deep channels formed by the meanderings of the river and if you slip into one of them the mud is so oily-soft that you can never be sure of getting a foothold and clambering out again.
    I was standing where the river joins the sea, a little wayaround the curve of the coastline but still in view of the village. The tide was coming in and as it did so it disturbed the many birds that were busy feeding. It was a storm of birds, something I could imagine from a dream but which I have never seen in my waking life. White clouds of avocets and oyster catchers spun before my eyes. Tern and dunlin flew and settled and flew again like gusts of autumn leaves. The air was filled with the noisy complaint of ducks and geese and swans, the creaking of wings, sudden screams and