She explained to him who they were, quiet and decent the two of them. ‘The foreman out at the bridge is a fellow by the name of Ernie Cassidy.’

‘Look, I really don’t know any of these people.’

‘Errah, why would you? Isn’t it great about the bridge, though? I was saying the other day they won’t know themselves.’

‘The bridge is the wrong side of the island for Carriglas, it seems.’

‘They’ve a right to complain about that. Like they have about Corny Dowley’s name going up on it.’

‘I doubt very much that the Rollestons would make complaints.’

‘Wouldn’t Balt do it for them, though? Didn’t he send a letter to the county council about the Dowley thing?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t follow you.’

She wondered if the man was affected in the brain. She watched him eating his fish, the fork going up and down, the single face becoming two and then one of the faces sliding away altogether. It was Dowley who killed the butler, she explained in case the man was ignorant. You couldn’t blame Balt for raising the roof over the bridge business.

He looked at her with his mouth open. He was another of them who was slow on the uptake, which you wouldn’t expect in a bishop of his church. He was slow the way he’d mixed up Corcoran and Coyne, thinking it was Corcoran’s car he’d been given a lift in when it was a known fact that Corcoran didn’t even possess a bicycle.

‘You wouldn’t have been acquainted with Dowley,’ she said in case he got into another muddle over that. She didn’t want to continue looking at him because of the way his face was behaving, so she turned her head away. Unfortunately the faces of the wedding guests who were nearest to her became confused in much the same manner. The paleness of Miss de Ryal was suddenly cheered by a florid tinge from her neighbour. The fleshy neck of the Bishop’s wife shifted to the right and ended by dressing the gaunt bones of Surgeon Woulfe, whose own hooked nose was borrowed by Mrs Prille. The unadorned countenance of Sir Cedric Goff acquired the make-up of Mrs Camier, the moustache of the bridegroom crept towards the faded features of Lady Rossboyne. Old Zeb Sykes developed a lopsided look, children aged. Protestants to a man, she said to herself, or said it aloud, she wasn’t sure which. Protestants and none the worse for it: you knew where you were with Protestants.

‘Tell him I’ll be in the trees,’ she said to the brother when he came by the next time with his wine bottles. ‘Tell him to give a whistle.’ But when she began to get up she again decided it was foolish to attempt to do so.