The last verse in particular cut Daddy to the bone, highlighting the fact that his wife’s final written request was that she be taken back to Mayo and buried with her own people. She was leaving her husband alone to gasp his way to the single grave that awaited him in the cemetery near Ballinasloe. A sort of bleak divorce that Birdie often wondered about.

And look. There’s the picture of Daddy at the church gate. Mr Waters, manoeuvering his enormous body out of the black taxi. And in the photographs she can see the side of Dattledo’s face. He was smoking a Sweet Afton and leaning against the railings, hoping for a signal to join the party. But there was a big scowl on Daddy’s face that wasn’t difficult to interpret. Stay the fuck away from my daughter’s wedding. That was the message.

Hughie had no intention of doing anything of the kind, for he was acting on alternative instructions. He remained on the doorstep of the church for the entire ceremony and he haunted the bar of Hayden’s Hotel later on, while the relations were upstairs enjoying a breakfast of duck eggs and ham at the expense of the old cattle drover.

When the cake was cut, Daddy rose like lord of all he surveyed and smiled a blessing on everyone present. He said his piece and then handed his daughter over to ‘the man from God knows where’ as he called Alex Delaney. And he declared how much he loved his only child. And how happy he was that this day had dawned, and that she had found her heart’s desire.

She was always a stubborn girl he said. But on this occasion he approved of her choice. She had waited. Stubbornly waited, and she had been wise to wait. For she was not prepared, says he, to take any old teddy boy from Ballinasloe. No. The Waters were no ordinary drovers, says he. They were dealers. Great dealers. They knew their meat. Murmurs of moral approval rose from the long table of relations who supposed themselves to be a step above buttermilk, now that one of their own had captured the Vet from Cork.

Then Mr Waters excused himself, saying that owing to his unfortunate chest, which felt like it was lying under an anvil, he must urgently retire from the festivities for a while. It was only when he had left the building and walked down the street with Birdie on his arm that Dattledo got out the flute and started things going with a pair of gentle little hornpipes he had heard in Banagher.

The fact is that the virgins of Ballinasloe didn’t think she’d catch anything. Couldn’t catch a fucken cold, she couldn’t! At her age! Not a trout in the river for her, they hoped. Certainly no one expected her to catch Fred Astaire, as they called the Vet. And them still whispering his name to their pillows long after his wedding. The virgins with their piano lessons and the shopkeepers’ daughters with their repressed desires. Oh Birdie knew what they were saying about her. Even on her own street, she knew what was said by those who called themselves friends. And it was on account of what she knew that she escorted her daddy to the door of his little terraced cottage, and then walked back up past Fahey’s sweet shop on the corner and marched in triumphantly, and displayed her prize to Colette Fahey. The big stone and the gold band around her wedding finger. She shoved it all the way up under Colette’s nose and said, ‘Now, Colette. Take a good look at that. Isn’t it only gorgeous?’