“Dooo! Dooo!” Maisie hollered, imitating the hoot of a railway train, “The train from Ballingrane is leaving for the seaplanes in Foynes. Dooo! Dooo! Last change for Askeaton, Foynes and America. Dooo! Doooooo!”

“Dooo! Dooo!” hollered Catherine.

“Dooo! Dooo! Dooo! Dooo!,” shouted Sara.

The kitchen filled up with whistling trains.

On their second night without electricity they were playing patience with the light-keepers’ deck of cards in the wavering flame from the butts of candles. Then the postman who lived across the road came with an oil lamp and a small drum of oil, and pounded on their door.

Joe Love trimmed the wick and set it on the table.

“That’ll keep you going,” he said.

“Will you have tea?”

“Ah no, no, no.” He looked at the cards spread out.

“Have ya heard of 25? That’s the boy to set you thinking.”

“I never learned,” said Maisie.

“It’s never too late, Ma’am.”

Over the next few hours, he taught them the meaning of the five of trumps; the ace of hearts; the highest in the red, the lowest in black. He said: “That’s a very poor fire you have on there.” Dismayed they watched him pile on turf and coal. “You wouldn’t want to be holding back on the hate in this weather,” he advised.

“Now,” he said, “that you have the 25, the next thing you should do is learn the Irish.”

“The language?” Jonathan Adams asked.

“What else is there? You have two bright daughters there.”

“Is it hard?” asked Catherine.

“Hard? Indeed there’s nothing aisy. It would while away the hours for you.”

After he was gone, the game of 25 and talk of learning Irish became the major pastime throughout the rest of the storm. Otherwise they read. Jonathan Adams fled biography for Irish history in a volume going back to his grandfather’s time, till eventually, as a buttress against idiocy, he began reading early Irish mythology. To his knowledge of Moses and King Henry, in the year after his retirement, he added the trials of Cuchulainn and Ferdia on the ford, and stayed his hand momentarily, with a shiver of anticipation, over The Salmon of Knowledge, thinking, I’ll leave that for again.

Life in the South was the beginning of freedom for the girls. To curtail them as he’d done at home would only draw attention to Jonathan Adams. He disapproved and yet consented when they asked to attend dances in the Barber’s Hall. Discos in Belmullet. The Chieftains in Castlebar. The Dubliners in Pontoon.

They dropped the girls off at the door of the hall, and while they danced the Sergeant and Maisie drove round the various towns, or walked along a beach. At twelve they were back at the door of the dance to escort their daughters home. Soon, they relented and let them go by bus. Then eventually, they saw them off in a neighbour’s car.