‘Because if there are any phone calls coming in from England for the manor, they will have to go through the exchange there. And we will find out what’s going on.’

Rosie shook her head as an image of half of the women in the village crowding around the post office counter trying to hear the news from Mrs Doyle’s Bakelite earpiece flew into her mind. ‘No, you go, Peggy. I’ll look after the shop and call in and see Keeva. Michael will be back from the deliveries soon. I’ll get his dinner ready.’

Rosie didn’t want to say, but she was secretly enjoying the thought of the unexpected free afternoon ahead. She supressed the spring in her step as she saw Bee and her husband walking down from the coast road towards her. Bee gave her a muted wave and pointed at the shop as she and Captain Bob parted, him heading for Paddy’s bar and her for the Malones’.

*

As Captain Bob stepped into the bar, he was not the least surprised to find it was full already. Unbeknown to Rosie, Michael had heard the bells and turned the van around and come straight back down to the village.

‘God love him,’ said Paddy. ‘Sure, the captain was no trouble. We never so much as saw him walk through the village once, right from when he was a young man. Always in his carriage or on a horse, and just lately in that fancy car of his.’

Michael reached out his hand for the pint of Guinness that had already been poured for him. No one would be leaving for some time. The demise of Captain Carter would fill the Devlin till to overflowing before the night was out. Death and drink went hand in hand and always brought Paddy his biggest profits. ‘Well, they say his family were grand during the famine. Took a few families in and sent out food, and did it all in secret because some of the landowners and the army were giving out to those who so much as gave away the crumbs from their table.’

There was a moment’s silence, as there always was when the famine was mentioned, each one of them the offspring of a survivor and all of them having heard first-hand stories from relatives not long dead.

‘Aye, ’tis a pity that generosity doesn’t run in the blood,’ said one of the farmhands. ‘He was always late with the pay and I haven’t had a rise for years, and neither has anyone else. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but he had enough money for a doctor from Dublin but not enough to pay the cook. The place has been falling down around his ears.’

Before Michael had taken his second gulp, the door opened and in strode Seamus, Pete and Joe. Conversation quickly moved on to the future of the estate.

‘How many rooms has the manor house?’ asked Joe in an almost absent-minded fashion. He’d been aware that the manor house existed, had heard the talk of the declining health of its owner, but, not being from the village, he had no prior knowledge of its inhabitants and, until now, no interest either.