After she’d had three glasses of whiskey and hot water in Myley Flynn’s Mrs Moledy felt better. She walked down to Coyne’s Garage to make sure the French motor-car was still on the premises, ‘I’m after driving them up to the church in it,’ Mr Coyne said. ‘To see if they’d like the feel of it.’ She called in to Myley Flynn’s on the way back to the boardinghouse, not taking long about it because the last thing she wanted was to find herself involved with boatloads of Protestants on their way over to the wedding breakfast. What would suit her was to cross over herself while they were still in the church and then be quietly waiting for him somewhere in his gardens, not noticeable because of the crowds. She’d never have thought of doing it if she hadn’t had the few drinks in, she’d never have had the neck for it. In her bedroom she changed into the claret and cream outfit she’d bought in Lett’s a year ago. She transferred the money she’d got for him from the hat-box to her handbag.

‘That’s a walk and a half,’ she said, arriving some time later on a lawn with flowers all around it, where a boy and a young maid were laying knives and forks on a table. The pair of them gawked at her, just like the old ferryman had when she’d stepped on to his boat, just like O’Hagan from the post office had when she’d stepped off it. She couldn’t understand what O’Hagan was doing there, sitting on a wall beside a dog-cart. She asked the other man to give her a lift up to the house, but he said he couldn’t unless she waited until after the guests had come across. So she’d had to walk, which hadn’t been easy in the shoes she was wearing.

‘Have you a Power’s for me?’ she suggested to the young one and the boy, but they only went on gawking at her, so she sat down at one end of the table with the cutlery on it. The sister would probably be placed there, with Balt down the other end. The sister wasn’t right in the head, getting tied up to the like of Balt.

‘I’ll go in and ask my mother,’ the boy said, and she recognised him from seeing him at Mass. He was the misfortune that had resulted after one of the maids got herself up the pole.

‘What’s your name?’ she asked the young one, who’d begun to put out the forks again.

‘Patty, ma’am.’

‘D’you know who I am, Patty? Did you recognise me when you saw me?’

‘You’re Mrs Moledy from the boarding-house.’

‘Did you ever hear me mentioned in the kitchen, Patty? What type of thing would they say?’