Tom watched the ferryboat until it reached the other side. Haverty and Mr O’Hagan intended to remain on the pier until the wedding party returned. They sat on the wall and lit cigarettes. They began a discussion about greyhound racing. Tom went back to the house, where he watched his mother chopping the mint on a board at the kitchen table. Then he helped Patty to carry the cutlery to the delphinium lawn, ‘I’ll show you now, Tom,’ she said, and showed him how the knives and forks were laid at each place, with a spoon and a smaller fork.

Finnamore changed into the clothes that had been made for him. While he was still eating his breakfast, Eugene Prille had arrived with a rose for his buttonhole. Eugene’s small, round cheeks had been affected by a glow of warmth, and Finnamore had received the impression that the day meant almost as much to his clerk as it did to him. Eugene and his wife, who was in every way her husband’s twin, would enjoy the outing to Carriglas. They would take a certain pride; Eugene had said as much. Finnamore believed they had cultivated the rose specially.

Items he had read in his newspaper over breakfast had stuck in his mind. A firm of Swedish blanket-manufacturers was seeking representatives to sell its blankets in Ireland. A national government had been formed in England. A meeting of the British Dental Association had taken place in Wales. In Co. Tipperary a man had gone berserk with a pitchfork. A ledger clerk in Arklow had confessed to stealing £15.12s.6d. Lord Fermoy had become engaged.

He believed he would never forget those items of news because he had read them on this day. Nor would he forget the sleepless night he had spent, the doubts that had constantly assailed him, the lingering impression that the Carriglas visitors thought little of him. He would never forget the distressed face of his maid when he had said good morning, nor the way she had smacked down in front of him his two poached eggs. She had not spoken. A week ago he had asked if she intended to stand outside the railings of St Boniface’s, as Catholic women often did at Protestant weddings, waiting for the bride. She had curtly replied that she certainly did not.

Having dressed, he clipped his moustache with his nail-scissors. Why buy new clothes, an advertisement in the newspaper had asked, when your garments are only soiled and shiny on the one side? A woman in Maryborough had kissed a dog and died. It was the day that honoured St Zephyrinus.

Seeing the postman pass by, she ran after him, a thing she had never done in her life before. But he only shook his head: that morning he had no letters for the Rose of Tralee.