He felt a hand laid on his arm. The bride was looking up at him. “I think you must be out with us, Father!”

“Out with you? I’m not, indeed.”

No, of course not. Yet, she was right; he was making no effort, had made no effort all day. She was a lovely girl, too – much too good for Jimmy – with her level blue eyes reproaching him. Did she know that she was being bought, a Conroy acquisition worth so many votes?

“You’re looking very cross, then.” She smiled, but a little anxiously, and he realized that she was keyed up with the effort to make the day go well. He reached out and touched her hand where it lay on the table. And, though she smiled at him, he could feel her tremble slightly.

“I’m having a good old time, behind this poker face.”

“I don’t think you are,” she said, a little too definitely, for she flushed and turned back to her plate.

He remembered the biggest day of his own life, his first-communion day. It began with the fuss of being bathed by Kate in front of the kitchen fire, of being dressed in his new suit, cut like a man’s by the village tailor. Kate led him into the slow, self-conscious procession of children up the aisle. On he moved, slowly approaching the altar, nearer to it than he had ever been before, so near that the forest of votive candles shone in his eyes. His hands were joined on his breast, the hands into which, later that afternoon, new shillings were pressed by uncles and aunts when his father brought him visiting. In strange houses of distant cousins, he played stiffly, in his new clothes, with children he had never met before.

Home then, they came in the pony and trap, he full of jelly and cakes and sweets, his father singing as they drove into the yard. Then, suddenly, at sight of the house, of his mother in the doorway, the day broke in a frightening tempest of tears.

His mother’s angry face followed them into the hall. “What’s the matter with that child?” As his father carried him up to bed, he heard her call, “It’s spoiling him you are!”

His father sat beside him for a while, bewildered, asking, “What is it, little man, tell me?” And all he could do was to shake his head, unable to understand, himself, what it was he had wanted of the day. What had he wanted? What more could he have had?