When all the wedding guests had been delivered, the traps and the governess-car and the dog-cart stood in the yard, waiting until they were again required. ‘You’re offered a glass of sherry,’ Haverty informed Mr O’Hagan, adding that when the time came there’d be a place for him at the kitchen table. He’d try the sherry, Mr O’Hagan cautiously assented.

Tom watched the party from the side of the house, where he couldn’t be seen. People stood with glasses in their hands beneath the strawberry trees, or strolled out of sight round the corner of the conservatory. Their laughter and their raised voices carried to where he watched. Children who were older than he was stood obediently by their parents, younger ones ran about on the grass. Two men came out of the house and crossed the gravel, both of them smoking cigarettes, with glasses in their hands, it’d be ripe if he turned out not to have a fluke,’ one of them said, and the other laughed.

When everyone sat down at the table on the delphinium lawn Tom’s task would be to go all over the garden in search of any glasses that had been put down. He was to carry them to the kitchen, two at a time, not running in case he tripped. Patty wouldn’t have time to do that, nor would Mrs Haverty. There would be no one to help him, and the glasses would have to be collected so that they could be washed in case there was a shortage afterwards. Later on it would be the same with the teacups.

‘Fish,’ the man who had forgotten to give him the threepenny-piece said to the woman who had reminded him that he should. ‘And a couple of seedy-looking chickens.’

Speculating on the quality of the hams that accompanied the chickens, the Camiers passed as close to Tom as the two men with the cigarettes had. In the greater distance he watched Mrs Rolleston moving among her guests, shaking their hands and pausing to talk to them. Some of them he had never seen before.

He went all the way round the house until the people standing beneath the strawberry trees came into view again. Mrs Rolleston was still going from one person to another. Cautiously he moved closer, making his way through the shrubbery that skirted one side of the grass. Towering rhododendron bushes and bamboos kept him concealed. He gazed through foliage at silk dresses and dark suits. The laughter and voices had become louder. Villiers Hadnett was telling Miss de Ryal about his lung.