"Can you hear me now, vicar?"

The spell was instantly broken. It was as if Laurence Olivier had tossed "Woof! Woof! Testing ... one ... two ... three," into the middle of "To be, or not to be."

"Brilliant!" the vicar exclaimed.

What surprised me most about Rupert's speech was that I knew what he was saying. Because of the nearly imperceptible pause at the end of each line, and the singular way in which he illustrated the shades of meaning with his long white fingers, I understood the words. Every single one of them.

As if they had been sucked in through my pores by osmosis, I knew even as they swept over me that I was hearing the bitter words of an old man to a love far younger than himself.

I glanced at Nialla. Her hand was at her throat.

In the echoing wooden silence that followed, the vicar stood stock-still, as if he were carved from black and white marble.

I was witnessing something that not all of us understood.

"Bravo! Bravo!"

The vicar's cupped hands came suddenly clapping together in a series of echoing thunderbolts. "Bravo! Sonnet one hundred and thirty-eight, unless I'm badly mistaken. And, if I may offer up my own humble opinion, perhaps never more beautifully spoken."

Rupert positively preened.

Outside, the sun went behind a cloud. Its golden beam faded in an instant, and when it had gone, we were once again just four ordinary people in a dim and dusty room.

"Splendid," Rupert said. "The hall will do splendidly."

He stumped across the stage and began clambering awkwardly down the narrow steps, the fingers of one hand splayed out against the wall for support.