With her father's return approaching, Nell is getting more and more apprehensive, as she fears his reaction when she tells him about Mick, who in turn is also a little nervous whether he will be accepted by her moody father.

As our two young lovers face this obstacle with mixed feelings and certainly wish they were free of those family ties that bind, they made me think of this beautiful song whose lyrics were taken from two texts by William Butler Yeats (the poem "The Rose" and the play "The Shadowy Waters").

The Waterboys - White Birds

I would that we were, my beloved,
White birds on the foam of the sea
Far from the rose and the lily
And the fret of the flames would we be
For the flame of the blue star of twilight
Hung low on the rim of the sky
Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved,
A sadness that may never die
A sadness that may never die

A weariness comes from those dreamers,
Dew-dabbled, the lily and the rose
Ah, dream of them not, my beloved,
The flame of the meteor that glows
Or the flame of the blue star that lingers,
Hung low in the fall of the dew
For I would we were changed, my beloved,
To white birds on the foam, I and you
To white birds on the foam, I and you

Bend low, that I may crown you, flower of the branch
Silver fish my hands have taken from the running stream,
Morning star, trembling in the heavens
Like a white fawn on the border of a wood
Bend that I may crown you, that I may crown you

For the flame of the blue star of twilight
Hung low on the rim of the sky
Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved,
A sadness that may never die
And far from the rose and the lily
And the fret of the flames would we be
Were we only white birds, my beloved,
White birds on the foam of the sea
White birds on the foam of the sea

The nearer her father's next return to the mainland came, the more jittery Nell got about having to tell him that she had fallen in love with a foreigner.

I had not breached the subject again because I didn't want to put additional pressure on her, but even without a word from me, she seemed painfully torn between her feelings for me and her fear of her father's reaction.

In a way I was excited about the prospect of his arrival. I wanted to meet the figure whose shadow seemed to loom larger than life even when he was away, to see for myself if he was indeed such a fearsome person, since hadn't made a particularly disagreeable impression on me the one time I'd caught a fleeting glimpse him.

I was hoping to finally get a closer look at this Jacques Kervennec who kept me wondering what kind of man he was that Nell lost all of her courage just thinking of him. It had also struck me that her brother never mentioned his father if he could help it. Was he afraid of him, too?

As usual, the boat that carried him back home from the Pierres Noires would enter the village port on Sunday afternoon, and as usual, he expected his family to be assembled around the table with a hearty meal and his favourite dessert ready. That was why I'd have to spend the day without Nell. She was helping her mother with the preparations to make sure nothing went wrong so he'd be in a gracious mood, placated by a good dinner, when she broke the news to him.

She had promised to come and see me when he went out to have a drink at the Korrigan after dinner as he usually did on his first night home.

I spent the day with the Delacourts, starting with one of Marianne's simple but fabulous Sunday lunches and accompanying the family over to the beach where Michel and I helped Juliette build an impressive sand castle. Thérèse looked on over the edge of her book with all the contempt of a fourteen-year-old, but after a while, her grown-up attitude faltered and she joined her younger sister in looking for pretty seashells to decorate the castle with, while Marianne and Louise were chatting beside us.

The afternoon had all the makings of a nice family outing, and part of me enjoyed the experience, although I was secretly nervous about Nell.

We went home when the sky was clouding over in the late afternoon. I declined Marianne's offer to stay on for supper but gracefully accepted the leftovers from lunch she packed for me.

When the clanging old clock in Jean-Luc's kitchen had tolled half past eight, my stomach began to tighten unpleasantly. Would she come, and would she be relieved or devastated?

I was glad Jean-Luc was still at his sister's and couldn't see me pacing the kitchen like a caged tiger. My bedroom seemed so stiflingly small tonight that I preferred to linger downstairs.

I had almost given up on seeing her this evening when there was a timid knock on the door after all.

Hastily, half stumbling on my own feet, I hurried to open.

She flung herself into my arms before I could say anything. I gave her a kiss on the forehead and asked, "How'd it go?"

She bit her lip and looked up at me apologetically. "I … I didn't tell him."

"Nellie …"

"I couldn't, Mick, it just wasn't the right moment. He'd got up on the wrong side of his bed this morning. Nothing was good enough for him today. Believe me, it wouldn't have gone down well if I had told him." She leaned her head against my chest, looking drained, and I stroked her back without saying a word.

I couldn't help feeling disappointed a bit while I was deeply sorry for her at the same time, but the uppermost emotion was a flaming anger at her father. She had tried so hard to please him and all she ever seemed to get from him was complaints and harsh words.

Obviously, the man was some kind of tyrannic despot in his own house. No wonder Nell's self-confidence gave way to that strange timidity whenever he was concerned.

"Do you think it would help if I came along and spoke to your father myself?" I suggested, clutching at straws.

"No!" was her horrified answer. "I … I don't think it would be a good idea for you to be there when I tell him. I have to do that alone."

"Well, you know him better than I do. But you know we cannot keep it a secret forever. Why don't you go ahead and get it over and done with as soon as he has calmed down a little?"

"Mick, my father …"

"Yes, I know it's unlikely that he's going to be overjoyed … but don't you think he'd be even less happy if he found out that it had been going on for a while clandestinely?"

"He'll be unhappy either way", she said gloomily.

I tried to reassure and encourage her, but in the end, I changed the subject when she got upset and crossly told me, "Mick, stop it please, you really don't know him. Let me take matters into my own hands and let me determine what's the best time to talk to him."

I held up my hands in surrender. "All right, all right. Whatever you think. I don't want us to quarrel, too."

We took a short evening stroll and tried to chat about this and that lightly, but the atmosphere remained subliminally tense.

"Wish me luck", she murmured when she was about to take the turnoff that led to the hamlet.

I kissed her instead.

Two days later, I found an envelope with my name on it, tucked under a flower pot on the windowsill by the front door, when we came home after long hours of work.

I pocketed it without a comment and took it upstairs to read on my own.

Dearest Mick,

I'm terribly sorry, but I won't be able to see you for a few days. I've asked Loïc to bring you this note just to let you know that I have caught a bad cold and I'm not feeling well enough to go out. I don't want you to get it, too, so it will probably be better if you don't come visiting.

I'm sure I'll be fine by the end of the week and will try to come and see you on Saturday.

I miss you already.

Lots of kisses,

Nell

I frowned. I didn't like the thought of not being allowed to see her when she was ill. She hadn't appeared unwell yesterday, but sometimes a bout of summer flu hit you out of the blue like that. And maybe her father had got the bug, too, which might explain why her father had been so cranky. From what I knew about him, he wouldn't be the kind of man who bore illness with patience.

There was little I could do if she didn't wish me to come, I thought, sighing. And as I didn't know if she had made up her mind to speak to her father, I couldn't possibly show up there anyway to inquire how she was doing. Better to let sleeping dogs lie.

I kept my eyes open for Loïc wherever I went, hoping I'd get a chance to ask him how she was, but I was watching out in vain. I also tried to sound out Jean-Luc and Michel whether they'd heard something of Nell, but neither of them had.

If we hadn't been out on the boat until late every night, I would have been hard pressed not to go and look in on her under some pretext, even if she'd asked me not to. I just couldn't suppress the hunch that something was up, something more than a trivial summer cold.

It was a great load off my mind when Jean-Luc shouted for me as I was just getting changed after work on Saturday. "You've got a lady visitor, Mister!"

I rushed downstairs, barefoot, hastily doing up the buttons on my shirt as I went.

She was standing in the door, beautiful as ever in a short-sleeved off-white blouse and an olive-green skirt, smiling brightly up at me when she heard my footsteps.

I flew down the last couple of steps, almost tripping on the last one, and welcomed her with a kiss.

"I'll leave the two of you alone, then", Jean-Luc said with a wink, lit himself a cigarette and walked off with a casual wave of his hand to potter around in the garden.

"Good to see you", I said softly and pushed a stray strand of her hair back from her face. "Feeling better?"

"Yes, very much", she replied quickly, her eyes darting away from me and back again. "It was nasty but at least it didn't last long."

"Good. Hope your family's well."

"Yes, thank you." She didn't elaborate any further. Strange to find her so monosyllabic, I thought.

As if she had sensed I was about to ask the dreaded question about her father when I opened my mouth to speak, she cleared her throat and quickly asked for a glass of water.

I went over to the sink to fill a glass and handed it to her, looking at her from close up in the rather dim light of the kitchen. There was something odd about her face, a funny shadow high up on her cheek. No, it wasn't a shadow; it didn't flit away when she moved her head.

"Did you rub your face in the dirt on your way here?" I said jokingly, trying to brush the dark smudge away with my thumb.

She winced slightly at the touch, and I realized that it wasn't a smear of something she had on her cheekbone but a faded bruise.

"Jesus, Nell!" I exclaimed in alarm. "Now really, what happened to your cheek?"

"Oh, just a stupid mishap. I bumped into a shelf in the pantry. Nothing serious. You see, I can be clumsy, too. Shouldn't go walking around in the dark." She added a laugh that had a false, exaggerated ring to it, and I noticed she was fiddling with the water glass in uncommon agitation.

That was when the scales fell from my eyes.

A hot flame of rage rocketed through me.

"Oh, no, Nell, please don't give me that", I said hoarsely, barely pulling myself together. "It was him, wasn't it? Damn him. How dare he lay a hand on you. What a … what a …" I clenched my fists in helpless anger.

"Stop it", she cried out, sounding tormented. "Don't say these things, please."

"So it was him?"

"Yes, it was my father. He … he sometimes doesn't know what he's doing when he's furious, but he's not a bad person, he really isn't." She closed her eyes, looking very distraught, a heartbreaking tearless sob escaping her throat. "It was all my fault. You were right, Mick. I should have told him right away."

I was positively fuming. I just couldn't bear how she hurried to defend her father by blaming herself.

If I had needed any proof he was a horrible person, here it was. He had cowed this otherwise outspoken and confident young woman into trembling submission, making her still take his side when she bore the visible traces of his latest fit of violence. I was dead sure it hadn't been the first time he had hit her, and I couldn't stand the way she was trying to protect him nevertheless.

"No, Nellie, no!" I shouted as I jumped up from my seat to find an outlet for my seething wrath and smacked the windowsill behind me with my fist.

Turning back to Nell, I added emphatically, "It's not your fault if he can't control himself!"

Nell flinched as if she expected me to lash out at her any minute. I took a deep breath and tried to cool down. A twinge of guilt tugged at my stomach when I realized my outburst had scared her.

"Nellie … you're not afraid of me, are you?" I said, sitting back down and reaching for her hands across the corner of the table.

She shook her head, but I wasn't quite convinced. Inwardly, I cursed that dreadful violent man who had instilled that cautious wariness in her.

"I would never do you any harm. You know that, don't you? Even if I was angry at you, I'd never lay a hand on you. I don't believe in violence, it only serves to makes things worse."

She nodded and murmured, "Of course I know. It was just the ... the yelling and …"

"I'm sorry, Nellie. I wasn't ranting at you, really. It's just killing me to think that he struck you, right in the face." I stroked the dark stain on her cheek, sadly, gently. "It's killing me to see he's hurt you."

She looked at me with dark, desperate eyes. "He just doesn't know better", she said. "He's the kind of person who can't really talk about what he feels. He gets angry when he's worried or afraid about one of us. He's very much a family man, you know. We're everything to him, and he cares a lot about us, perhaps a bit too much at times. And it's not like it hurts very badly. It looks worse than it actually is, and it'll be gone in a few days' time."

"It doesn't matter if it hurts badly or not, Nellie. He's got no right to hit you, no matter why and no matter how hard." I paused for a moment, wondering if there was anything I could do other than giving the bastard a taste of his own medicine, which certainly wouldn't work in Nell's favour. "Will you tell me what exactly happened, love?"

She nodded, her eyes filling with tears after all. Haltingly, she began to explain.