Martin was restless too, and the more feeble he became, the less he wanted to stay in the house. He said he wanted to see the water again. He wanted to go to the sea. He wanted to walk on the strand. He even talked about paying a last visit to the west of Ireland. He wanted to walk by the Atlantic Ocean once again. He said the air there would put new life into him. Once he began talking about Connemara and Kerry, there was no stopping him. He liked to recall the adventures he’d had on the holidays he used to take by himself in Connemara and Kerry long ago. He used to go on long walking tours by himself. He’d stay away for a week at a time. He liked to recall those days when he was on his own. He seemed proud of having gone off on his own, away from this house and from Delia and the children, away from all he knew. He sounded like a conjurer describing some magical rope trick when he talked about how he left the house at such and such an hour, and what So-and-So had said to him on the train, and how he carried nothing with him but his knapsack and his blackthorn stick. Min didn’t like hearing about it. She knew his adventures, and she had no sympathy with him. If he was all that anxious to have a change from Delia — and nobody could blame him for that — why hadn’t he come to Wexford to see his mother, and to see his sisters, and to go about the town and have a word with all the old crowd? Most of them were still there at that time.

He could have taken a walk about the town with me, Min thought. It would have set me up, in those days, to be seen with him, show off a bit. Many a time he could have come down to see us, but no, he was off to Connemara, or to Kerry, to enjoy another holiday by himself with the Atlantic Ocean. The Irish Sea wasn’t good enough for him anymore, and Wexford Harbor was nothing compared with the beauties of Galway Bay. He talked about the wild Mayo coast as though wildness were a sort of virtue, and one you didn’t find in the scenery in Wexford. She reminded him that he had once been in love with their own strand at Rosslare, and she described to him how he used to spend half his life out there, riding out on his bicycle every chance he got. Every free minute he could get he spent at Rosslare. He listened to her, but as though he was being patient with her. “I’d be very glad to see Rosslare again,” he said when she had finished talking.