Like Shakespeare's reluctant schoolboy, "creeping like snail unwillingly to school", the Ulster Unionists are inching towards possible acceptance of the Hillsborough package.
Speaking outside party headquarters in Glengall Street, David Trimble was barely audible above the cranes and buses and all the other acoustics of downtown Belfast. However his message was clear enough: a meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council was being called for next Saturday where he would give a report "on the political situation". But the thrust of that report would not become clear until well into next week: in the light of all the information that became available, he would then consider what recommendation to put to the council. "The calling of the meeting does not mean that we have committed ourselves to endorse any set of proposals."
Inevitably, reporters wanted to know if the UUP had won any concessions on policing. The SDLP quip during the week was that unionists were trying to maintain a body called "The Continuity RUC". Mr Trimble used to call the Patten Report a "shoddy" piece of work, but now he has taken to dismissing it as "crass". He indicated that his party would continue to press the British government on this issue, which would "run and run".
It would have been so much neater for the two governments if the Ulster Unionist leadership had declared its acceptance of the deal early on and proceeded to sell it to UUC delegates. But nothing is ever that simple in the North, where leadership from the front does not always result in a happy ending. All week the Ulster Unionists had, like Oliver Twist, been asking for more, but as the days passed it looked as if the kitchen was closed and the cooks had gone home for the evening. There were the usual reports that London was lending a sympathetic ear to demands for changes in the name of the new police service so that the RUC title could be retained in some shape or form.
Dublin briefed that this was not on, but there might be other, unspecified concessions on policing. Unionists appeared to derive encouragement from this and pressed their case even harder.
The SDLP, buoyed by a strong showing in the latest BBC opinion poll, took a firm line against any "double-barrelled name". It was a good issue for the party to take up, following the decommissioning debate last January when the pointed questions it posed for the republicans were seized on by unionists and others and used to validate the Mandelson decision to suspend the institutions. Perhaps realising that ambiguity and ambivalence are not the best modes of communication with Ulster folk, Dublin reportedly took a similar strong line. But it may have been the reports that the republicans were about to withdraw their offer to put arms beyond use that stabilised the situation. Quietly and almost imperceptibly, the unionist emphasis seemed to shift away from the policing issue to one of seeking greater clarity on last weekend's IRA statement.
Even as the breakthrough was being announced at Hillsborough last weekend, there had been nagging doubts and questions over the position of the UUP, which failed to give a news conference, contenting itself instead with a curt statement. Unionist wobbles and reluctance to reach agreement have been characteristics of the peace process from the beginning. It was probably inevitable they would be suspicious of a process founded by John Hume and Gerry Adams. Playing coy has frequently worked to unionist advantage, as in the days leading up to Good Friday 1998 when Mr Trimble succeeded in reducing the scope and number of cross-Border bodies very dramatically.
As an intelligent politician and strategic thinker, Mr Trimble was obviously aware that constitutional issues were much more important than transient difficulties such as prisoner releases or decommissioning. The constitutional position is the bedrock of unionism: the prisoner issue has all but faded from the news at this stage and all paramilitary inmates who qualify under the Belfast Agreement will be out by July 28th. Decommissioning was an issue without practical value, as security chiefs repeatedly pointed out, but it developed into a shibboleth to which all unionist politicians were obliged to pay lip-service.
London has a history of providing emollients to soothe unionist feelings. This can be hard on nationalist and republican nerves, as they are never quite sure what the British government is going to produce. The Good Friday 1998 sideletter from Mr Blair on decommissioning was vague in content and lacked legal standing but it served a purpose and probably helped to strengthen the "Yes" vote in the referendum. The default mechanism on decommissioning which London came up with last June was insufficient to persuade the unionists to join the Executive at the time, although it greatly annoyed republicans.
The feeling grew over the last few days that the two governments had been so delighted with the IRA initiative they had neglected to nail down the deal with the unionists. Mild concern over Mr Trimble's hesitancy in recommending the Hillsborough package gradually turned into genuine anxiety.
There was said to be disappointment in official circles when unionists failed to give a warm response to a BBC opinion poll which showed a two-thirds majority among UUP supporters for re-entering the Executive on May 22nd. There was more interest in unionist circles in the likely tactics of the Democratic Unionist Party in the event that the Executive was reinstated: if it refused to take up its ministries, it would leave the UUP in a minority, with five ministries out of 12. There was a slight questionmark therefore, until the last minute, over the likely course of action at yesterday's meeting of Ulster Unionist officers.
A failure to convene the Ulster Unionist Council would have amounted to public humiliation of Mr Blair, to say nothing of the Taoiseach. The "No" lobby in the UUP has been largely content to sit on its hands and watch the party leadership wrestle with its conscience. By appearing hesitant over accepting the deal, Mr Trimble acted as his own opposition and temporarily disarmed his internal opponents in the process.
He has now signalled that he will not make his mind up until perhaps Thursday or Friday.
"Keep your critics guessing" may be a frustrating strategy for nationalists, republicans and the two governments but it may also be the only way to handle unionism, which has been in denial over the inevitable changes in Northern Ireland since at least the days of the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Assimilating and voicing the doubts and fears of your followers before coming to a decision on their behalf is not perhaps the most heroic form of political leadership but it may be the most effective for the time being. Certainly it is the only kind of political leadership moderate unionism is likely to get for the foreseeable future.