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They follow the rocky beach around past Liscannor, taking their sandals off to ford the Inagh where its waters are shallow and warmed by the late morning sun. Past this point, the beach is broad and sandy and so Joe and Nicky amble along it together, shoes still in hand. Joe never thought that one day he'd be glad of sunglasses in Ireland, but so it goes. The light glints off the waves that roll in steadily, grey and green and blue, the salt breeze ruffles his curls, and Joe's fingers itch for his sketchpad.
"There's a golf course now," Nicky says, pointing away to their left over the seawall.
Joe can't see much of it, other than some low grassy mounds, but he can hear the irregular thwack of the balls. "Of course there is." Not a sport Joe's ever much appreciated, but he knows it's popular with tourists with deep pockets.
Running parallel to the beach there's a paved, level path that seems popular with dog walkers and mothers with pushchairs and the occasional harried individual who is both. The path ends in a car park, almost full, where they pause to put their sandals back on. Beyond it is a lifeguard station and then the stretch of the town, further than he remembers, along part of the headland. Holiday homes, he supposes. Joe is no stranger to how a well-known place can change with the years. It's not always for the worse, but it's never without a pang.
They stop for lunch at a chippers, getting a cardboard box apiece of fish and chips that they take down to eat on the beach. It's a weekday but it's still pretty busy, with clusters of surfers enjoying the Atlantic swells and plenty of families paddling in the shallows, young children shrieking out their enjoyment. The food is good and Joe has worked up quite the appetite after their walk. He barters with Nicky—his wedge of lemon in exchange for Joe's tartar sauce—and they talk about Nicky's newly acquired library card and Joe's luck in repairing his bicycle and what they might make for dinner this evening.
"If the shop here has the right kind of rice," Nicky says, lapsing back into Italian as he scoops up some sauce on the end of a fat chip, "I'll cook some risotto. We have everything else back at the house."
"Oh, I see whose comfort food is being prioritised," Joe says in Derja, trying for a mournful tone which he can't quite pull off when he's munching on the last bit of crispy batter.
Whatever Nicky was going to say in response is cut off by a small pack of teenage boys which passes them, all bluster and body spray and vape smoke. One of them, with the bravery that comes from being young and stupid and the ringleader of youth and stupidity, snarls at Joe to fuck off back where he came from with his gobbledygook talk and kicks up a spray of sand into Joe's food. The rest of the group snickers.
Joe takes a breath, meets the teenager's eyes and says, in Irish that's rusty but more than serviceable, "Agus cén áit é seo, a mhic? A'bhfuil a fhios agat?"
The teenager stares at him, clearly taken aback and struggling to come up with any kind of response. Joe is certain that this child is not anticipating taking Leaving Cert Irish at the Honours level.
Joe turns to Nicky and says, jerking a thumb in the direction of the teenager, "Níl aon fhios aige, a Nicky."
"Oh, go bhfóire Dia orainn," Nicky says, in tones of such weary dryness that Joe snickers.
Joe turns back to the group and says, sincerely and with much more kindness than they deserve, "Lads, would ye ever piss off?"
The teenage ringleader turns a mute shade of red and marches off to the steps that lead back up from the beach, his group scuttling along in his wake. Joe laughs.
"I'd appreciate not ending up in a brawl with children this week, habibi," Nicky says mildly.
"Eh, a little embarrassment is good for the soul," Joe says with a shrug. "Helps them grow."
It's Nicky's turn to laugh as he gathers up their empty food containers. "Was that your strategy with me all those years ago?"
Joe doesn't remember his younger self really having strategies so much as panicked persistence, but he says, "Oh, of course, of course."
They go up to the Main Street and find that the Spar there is clearly not one that has ever stocked arborio rice in all its years of business.
"What about this instead?" Joe says, holding up a plastic package that promises tasty microwaveable rice in 30 seconds! and creases up at the disgusted look on Nicky's face.
Nicky settles on some passable items that can be used to make an alternative meal. Joe pays at the till while Nicky packs everything away in a cloth shopping bag that he produces from a pocket with a little flourish. Nicky, Joe thinks, has the ability to make use of a pair of cargo shorts that a pack animal would envy.
They walk back to the house at the same easy pace as before, but turn inland and take some of the back roads to avoid the many tour buses that are chugging to and from the cliffs. It means they don't have those sea views anymore, but Joe doesn't mind. The countryside here is pleasant to walk through on a fine day like this. The road rises and falls steadily through a patchwork of small green and brown fields bounded by low stone walls and far more bungalows than Joe remembers from their last time here.
But that must be more than forty years ago now, Joe thinks. Things change.
Joe and Nicky had first come to this part of the world centuries ago, hoping to ease some of the slaughter and suffering caused by the War of the Two Kings, but had only succeeded in growing weary at the grinding futility of sieges, and corpses in clumps eddying on the river, and treaties that were disregarded as soon as they'd been written. They'd retreated north and west from the city, to where the landscape was the product of a constant war between stone and rain, and nothing like either of them had known in their past lives around the Middle Sea. A couple of weeks to recoup their strength and their spirits had turned into several years. Seosamh and his Nico had wrested a living from the ocean as fishermen and a knowledge of the Gaeilge out of their initial ignorance.
They'd moved on eventually, of course, but come back several times over the centuries since, whenever they had the need to catch their breath and find their footing again and mellow Malta's golden hours hadn't felt quite right for the task. Once or twice Andy and Booker had accompanied them, though they'd never felt the attachment to the lands west of the Shannon that Joe and Nicky had—Booker had always been a city boy, and Andy preferred the richer soils of the eastern part of the island, where such fine horses could be bred.
Joe and Nicky are back here now because Booker is finally and fully lost to them; because they'd spent weeks chained to the middle of a cement floor in Discord's compound, six inches too far apart to be able to touch; because both of them need clean air and the vastness of the wild ocean seen from one steady point on land more than they need to cling to prevarication and lies of omission.
It's mid afternoon when they turn in through the gates of their house. Nicky's much-loved and carefully maintained Cinquecento sits out front, basking in the sunshine. This time around, they've chosen a stout-walled cottage with a yellow door that matches the rose bushes that grow either side of it. The house is generations old, and both of them have to stoop slightly as they cross its threshold, and blink as their eyes adjust to the dimmer interior. Doing so gives Joe a flash of sense-memory—entering neighbours' homes, the smell of turf smoke, dipping his fingers into the holy water font on the wall by the door, the ritual invocation of God save all here—even though the interior has been pretty modernised.
Joe takes off his sandals, relishing the feel of the cool tile beneath his wriggling toes. Nicky puts away the groceries, flicks on the kettle, opens the half door that gives them a view out over the back garden to where the chickens are clucking and scratching peacefully in their run. A few miles away, Joe knows, the tide is booming steadily against the shore and hundreds of tourists will be standing on the cliffs, thrilling at the steep drop below them and shrieking whenever an unusually large wave crashes against the rocks and sends spray flying high into the air. Here, though, it is peaceful and quiet, the air stirred by nothing louder than the rumble of the kettle and the buzz of an industrious bee outside. Joe finds himself stepping forward into Nicky's embrace, letting his head rest on Nicky's shoulder.
"I think we can stay here a while," Joe says, closing his eyes.
"Sarebbe bello," Nicky says, one big hand coming up to cup the back of Joe's head, gently ruffling at the curls there.
And so they do, and it's one of the best cures for a bruised heart that Joe knows: fresh air, and good company, and salt water, and time.