“It was a very Christian act,” said Jonathan Adams.

“I wonder,” laughed Maisie, “should I leave my dirty washing out?”

“Sometimes woman, I despair of you.”

They invited local carpenters in to pull out the cupboards. They paid their bills in Irish pound notes. Sometimes of an evening, Jonathan Adams accompanied Maisie for a walk on the beach. People called out to them and they called back. It was a new experience. To find they could befriend Catholics without appearing Fenian-lovers. It was a great release that first summer. A night sky illuminated every ten seconds by three sweeping flashes of light from Eagle Island. When they woke in the middle of the night, they waited for them: the Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

In the year of his retirement Sergeant Adams and his wife became dependent, like many other Northerners, Catholic and Protestant, on their hideaway in the South. By locals they were seen as romanticists. They were the preservers of old Romantic Ireland.

They were delighted that complete strangers on country roads waved at their car. The finger of a Southerner would rise peasant-like to the forehead in a gesture that was individual, submissive and comic. The girls were taken by these greetings, and tried to mime the movements in the car. A single finger to the temple, a raised palm, a small sweep of the hand, an index finger pointed to the sky. A single, solitary thumb. A nod. A downward nod of the chin. A huge wink.

It could be simple-minded, it could be tradition, it could be habit, but somehow it soothed them. Yet, it never struck them that when they were walking on a country road they, too, should salute the strange car approaching them. Only when it had gone by would they remember. They were conscious of this restraint. And the gesture, when they tried it, appeared contrived.

The South was a museum in which Jonathan Adams, at least, wandered as a stranger. It stored quaint phrasing, soft vowels, superstitions, unpunctual tradesmen, maddening longueurs, stray donkeys. Shouts at midday, cheers at midnight. And no violence. Goats strolled the village. Turf went over and back. Swans flew. And the price of goods changed every day. They bought old crockery. Had a second-hand range from an old estate cottage installed. They queried the cost of everything and drove miles for bargains.

Like everyone else who came there to visit, they deplored the new bungalows, the stone houses ruined by pebble-dash, the absence of flowers, the untidiness. They considered the prices of certain goods horrendous. They considered it contemptible that the Southern farmers had abandoned husbandry. They wanted to see the old style of thatched cottage remain.