Carriglas, August 25th, 1931. This morning John James set up the croquet hoops, and the game was played again, as I remember it in the past. Afterwards the visitors sat beneath the strawberry trees or strolled about. Their presence dominates the household, and has become its centre, even though Villana is the reason for their being here. John James makes what effort he can. Yet neither he nor Villana—and certainly not their brother—seems able to escape from the shadows of their abandoned lives. More than ever I recall the trinity they formed as children, when only my brother was invited to share its secrets. I cannot help believing that their affectionate loyalty to one another has not evaporated, though it’s no longer in any manner expressed. I don’t know why I have that feeling so particularly when the visitors are here.

After lunch a procession left the house, slowly crossing the gravel sweep, moving down the avenue. I had not thought to join it, but Mrs Rolleston pressed me. She says quite often, and more these last few busy weeks, that I should not feel tied so to the house. ‘Yes, do come,’ John James encouraged.

Neither Villana nor Lionel accompanied us, Villana claiming she’d seen the work at the bridge too often, Lionel unable to spare the time. I found myself walking abreast of the Bishop, who at first did not speak and then remembered who I was and wondered if he had been acquainted with my father.

The afternoon was warm and sleepy. When we turned to the left on the road beyond the entrance gates, little puffs of dust rose from each footfall, as dust always does when that surface is dry. I watched it rise and settle, and noted how it was agitated particularly by the heels of Mrs Camier. She walked ahead of the Bishop and myself, her husband on one side of her, her arm in his, Lady Rossboyne on the other. John James was further ahead still, with the Bishop’s wife. Villiers Hadnett was on his own, behind us.

‘No, I believe I did not,’ the Bishop decided. ‘I believe I did not have the honour of personal acquaintanceship.’ But word had spread to him of my father’s scholarship. The clerical world had long been delighted by my father’s thoughts on the Book of Ruth, the Bishop informed me. He coughed and tightly pursed his mouth, as if to punctuate his flow or indicate a change of interest. ‘If my memory does not deny me, Sarah, you came up from Bandon to be Villana’s governess? Perhaps I take a liberty in saying so, in addressing you as Sarah? None is intended.’

I reassured him. I agreed that his memory was not at fault. I mentioned, since the continuation of the conversation was preferable to silence, the Misses Goodbody’s suburban boarding-school, and how subsequently I had spent some years there.