Shortly after dawn on the day of the wedding Brigid looked out of the bedroom window of the gate-lodge and said to herself that the weather had held. At Carriglas Patty’s alarm clock sounded, and an hour later Mrs Haverty arrived in the kitchen. She asked Brigid if the fish had kept and Brigid replied that it had. The chickens supplied by Mrs Haverty had been stuffed and roasted the day before, and put to cool in the far larder, beside the hams. Before preparing the breakfast dishes Brigid now removed the skin from the hams and dusted them with breadcrumbs. She told Patty to leave the wedding-cake alone. The wedding-cake would remain where it was until the fish and the meats had been eaten. She herself would then arrange for its conveying to the lawn. She repeated all this so that Patty and Mrs Haverty would understand. She reminded them to have kettles boiling for tea when that moment of the day arrived.

The ferryman told Tom that the ferryboat was to be waiting at the pier at ten o’clock and that Mr Coyne would be waiting in one of his motor-cars on the quays to drive everyone to the church. He’d have to make a couple of journeys, and a couple of journeys back. At half-past eleven the ferryboat would be waiting to return the wedding party to the island. It, too, would make as many journeys as were necessary to accommodate the extra guests who’d been in the church, ‘I’m invited myself,’ the ferryman reminded Tom.

Rows of bottles stood on the stone floor of the near larder: red wine, Tom was told, they contained, and champagne. On the kitchen table the glasses were on trays, which would soon be carried up to the delphinium lawn. ‘Did you ever see as much lettuce as that, Tom?’ Mrs Haverty remarked in the sculleries, washing the lettuce, leaf by leaf. Near the cold frames in the walled garden he picked mint.

‘Just lead her on,’ Haverty reminded him later that morning. ‘Keep her steady behind me.’

In the governess-car Tom followed the trap which Haverty drove, gripping the reins as he’d been taught. Mr O’Hagan was directly behind him, then came the other traps. Mr O’Hagan was dressed as he might be for Mass or for a funeral, the paleness of his face and his moustache accentuated by the black material of his suit. ‘Keep her steady, boy,’ Mr O’Hagan said also.

At the pier the horses’ heads were held while everyone left the conveyances. Over his navy-blue jersey the ferryman was wearing a navy-blue jacket, which he hadn’t been wearing when Tom had talked to him earlier that morning. He held his hand out to receive the passengers, something Tom had never seen him do before.