Then he gave up talking about Connemara and Kerry, and he began to wish for a day out at Dun Laoghaire. And he said he’d like to have a day at Greystones. And he wanted to go out to Killiney for a day. Which would Min like best? Maybe they could manage it. Min didn’t see how they were going to manage it. A whole day out of the house, and no guarantee of what the weather might be like. They might not be able to find shelter so easily in case of a sudden shower. If he got his feet wet there’d be the devil to pay. They had no car, even if they could drive, and it was an awful drag out to Killiney and back on the bus, or on the train, if they took the train. It would be foolish to go to the expense of hiring a car. She didn’t see how they were going to do it.

He seemed to let go of the idea, and then one day he said, “Min, do you remember the lovely view of the Slaney from the garden that day? Do you remember how the Slaney looked that day, flowing past us into Wexford? And we all stood looking at it? I thought of the passage of time. I stood there, and I thought for a minute that the garden was moving along with the river. And then later on when Delia and I were at Edermine station waiting for the train to Dublin, there were all the flowers in the station, and the stationmaster laughing at us and talking to us, and the white stones spelling out the name of the station. Delia said an expert gardener must have planted the bed of flowers beside the station house, and the stationmaster said he’d done it all himself, getting the place ready for her. But the garden they had there by the Slaney — that was magnificent. Wasn’t it, Min?”

Min remembered standing in the garden, surrounded by roses with big heavy heads, and hearing her mother say that she would like very much to have a bunch of flowers to take back to Wexford with her. They all got bunches of flowers to take home. And there was a bunch of flowers for Markey to take to his wife. The car was filled with flowers, and still the garden looked as though it hadn’t been touched.

“That was a grand place they had there,” Min said, and she was glad to know that the garden was in ruins now, and that the house stood empty with the roof falling in and that the door there stood open to display the vacant rooms and the cold hearth in the kitchen. “It’s all gone now,” she said.