Thus her thoughts began to move, and thus also, anticipating her, did Cloncraig’s; for Cloncraig, prompted and prodded by Mrs Bannister’s disclosures and by the freedom of her tongue, was rediscovering its conscience, and felt the need to assuage it, for comfort’s sake.

“The girl ought to go to America,” said Paddy Finane, to the bar at large, finalizing their discussions. “There’s doctors there can work bloody miracles. They use electric machines. They can raise the dead themselves.”

“Cost a lot of money,” said Joe Lane, the landlord, judiciously.

“Mrs Bannister could do it. She’s got the money all right. She only needs telling.”

“You tell her,” said a voice. “You know her well enough, so you say.”

“We could get up a petition,” said another voice.

“What’s that, then?”

“Write her a letter, and all sign it.”

“Why do that, when she’s upstairs ready to be spoken to?”

“Aye … Better send up Paddy Finane. He can use his petition, and see what he gets with it.”

“Now then,” said Joe Lane, who was none too sure of the soundproof qualities of the bar’s ceiling. “Order please!”

Paddy turned to James Costello. “What do you say, then? Will you speak to her yourself?”

“What’s that?” mumbled Costello, vague and fuddled. “Speak? What’s that?”

“The girl. Esther.”

“Oh – aye.” He nodded. But he said no more.

“We’ll all speak,” said old Neil Fairlie suddenly. “Bit by bit. A hint here and a hint there. We’ll put in a word, whenever we see her.”

Paddy Finane considered the project. “Father Haggerty could say a word, too.”

“Him, and anyone else who cares. We should do something to help the girl. If Mrs Bannister could just take her to America, she might be cured straightaway.”

Now many voices joined in, eager to prove their goodwill, to show that they had not really forgotten the girl – it was just that she had slipped their memory a little. The bar became a glowing centre of generosity and resolution. Tomorrow they would do this, the next day they would say that. And the day after, all their wishes would come true, and Cloncraig would be an entirely happy place again, with no stain on its character and nothing to prick its conscience from out of the blue.

The whole village turned out to see them leave. This was, after all, Cloncraig’s own invention, practically its own doing …

The car stood outside the Cloncraig Arms while Mrs Bannister was paying her bill there: as it waited, the crowd thickened round it, staring at Esther, who sat in the back supported and cherished by a cocoon of cushions and blankets. Care and proper food (she had for months and years been living on potatoes and soup bones) had made a certain difference to her already; she looked a little better than when Mrs Bannister had first seen her, three weeks before, though she still had that sunken look, that desperate pallor, that air of zoo captivity hopelessly borne … The crowd round her was hushed by her appearance; but in their silence there was something more than compassion, something that peeped out here and there in a half-smile or a lift of the head. They wore an ambiguous air; it was as if they could not quite make up their minds what sort of an occasion this was to be.