Sergeant Adams succumbed to an illness in Fermanagh the following spring. The results of the tests were not good. He was removed to hospital, and three weeks later when he knew he was not going to get any better he asked to be moved to the light-keepers’ house in Mullet. Maisie phoned Willy his brother to drive them down. The geese were farmed out to a neighbour. The girls were given leave from school. Willy, who they had not seen in years, thought the decision to go South was disastrous. But Jonathan was adamant.

Willy drove them to the west of Ireland, where he had never been, in the Adams’ car, then immediately returned by public transport. It was a hard and treacherous spring, with gales hammering against the coastline. The dunes blew. Wrack was piled up in the fields. Foam from a blowhole rose over Aghadoon. The women stocked up with food. Joe Love and Bernie Burke came with coal and turf. They lit huge fires. A local nurse was employed. Jonathan Adams was scandalized to find a Catholic attending him. He asked to have her removed. But next morning she was there again. She walked him to the toilet and stood outside.

“All right, Mr Adams?” she’d call.

“Yes, yes,” he’d reply angrily.

She injected him morning and evening with morphine. He’d wake up cold in the bed and see her, a human object in the coldness, wishing him good morning from midway across the room.

“Are you still here?”

“Yes. And so are you.”

“What time is it?”

“Time to wash.”

“I don’t want to wash.”

“You must wash. We don’t want the infection spreading, do we now, Mr Adams?”

Reluctantly he’d offer one limp hand then the other. As she wiped his face he shivered with frustration. She had a habit of hugging him to her that he found distasteful. To do the back of his neck she pressed his face into her shoulder. He sat on the edge of the bed, his chin on her shoulder, looking helplessly towards the door of the bedroom as she towelled his back.

“All right, Mr Adams?”

“Yes,” he hissed.

“It will all be over in a moment.” She sprayed the room. Polished his bedside table. Ran the hoover round his bed. Emptied disinfectant into the toilet.

“Now, Mr Adams. Your daughters are here to see you.”

The girls came and sat by his bed.

“Ask in the travelling library for something on water. Something with tall print,” he asked.