After Iona Road..

I had a call tonight from Mick. He's a rare old friend of mine, a boy I grew up with that I see only once or twice a year.

He was raised on Iona Road and we became known to each other through some other pals of mine who went to school with him.

I never considered us close.

He was a very straightforward, GAA-playing sort of a fella. He held no truck with shades of grey. "Lads, we need a plan of action, and we need to stick to it!" he'd say. And he thirteen. And I just wanting to pick my nose and ruminate on the mystery of breasts. And...

As we got older we got to more separate worlds. College and summers spent abroad placed an even greater distance between us, to the point where I felt I barely knew him as our mid-twenties gave way to the threat of our thirties.

He got married last September to Fiona and the wedding passed off well. I was in Spain at the time so I couldn't attend. I texted a message to be read out with the telegrams - something about a teapot - and thought little more of it.

In January we were in the Gravediggers raising pints to Ronan, another wedding in the offing, when Mick showed up.

He sat beside me and told me that he really wished we'd met up more often, he recounted a number of episodes from our childhood/adolescence that I'd long since forgotten, he told me that that 'telegram' meant an awful lot to him and he said that he'd be in to me for tea and biscuits and the chat we'd been threatening to have since we were 12.

I left that night telling myself I'd make more time for him in my life, I really was touched by the fact that he had secreted away artifacts from our childhood that had barely made an impression on me but I never called him. I missed another couple of nights out since.

Last week I got a text saying Fiona had given birth to baby Sean and Mick had become the first of my childhood friends to have a kid himself.

The next morning I wrote back a generic congratulatory text and thought nothing more of it until tonight when I took a call from him, exhausted, saying he was only now getting around to phoning his mates in response to their messages.

I told him I'd phone him for a pint as soon as I got back to Dublin.

He gave a half laugh, a knowing at my line, before saying it was good to talk and he'd catch me soon.

I felt...

1) Like a complete cock, again, and...

2) That you never know the affect you have on someone. You just never do.

Approaching Pearse Street

"I can't believe you go for lunch with a bird every day. It's just wrong."

I wasn't in the best of form today, cranky to a fault, ratty for no good reason. I wanted to quietly sneak off for an hour by myself but a couple of the lads were leaving at the same time. We went to O'Neills on Pearse Street for a carvery.

On our way there the subject of my usual lunchtime routine came up. More often than not I go with a female colleague, a close friend of mine outside of work who is in a different department, for an hour out of the office. Today she had a meeting and couldn't make it.

One of the boys sprang the quoted sentence to me and I snapped. I was very pissed off because I found the comment ignorant at best, misogynistic at worst.

I told him to explain himself.

"I just don't get lads being friends with birds. Never understood it. I mean, what could you possibly get from it?"

"I'm sorry??"

"Each to their own but I'm right on this."

I let it drop because I knew if I got into a heated debate with him, I'd say something I regretted. It was a very disappointing thing to hear from somebody I usually respect, not least his contemptuous use of the word 'bird.'

I love the company of women. I have many female friends, some close, some not so close, but I hold them dear and I regularly seek their advice on all sorts of things - not just subjects romantic, mundanities too. They look to me for the male point of view. Give and take.

Put me in the company of a large group of men and I retreat into myself. Not all of the time, but often. I can talk football and drink pints and talk about matters faecal with the best of them but it gets old very quickly for me. It's probably why I don't enjoy stag parties. The larger the group, the quicker things fall to stereotype. By the same thinking, I'd be unwilling to go drinking with a large group of women only. That would bore me.

I used to get slagged in work.

"He'll only come out to the pub if there are birds involved."

I heard that one a lot. Once or twice I tried explaining that I preferred a mixture because the conversation would be more varied and interesting, only to be told, "fuck off! You just want your hole!" Then I'd remember: never argue with fools or drunks.

I read recently that we've moved into an era where men and women have a far greater kinship with one another, that a man can be seen having a drink in female company without the assumption that he's trying to shag them, or that he's gay, or that he actually is in a relationship with one of them.

I think that's bullshit. I think an awful lot of men carry the same thoughts as my colleague, that a night out spent with anyone but 'the lads' is a great night wasted. I find that pathetic.

Griffith Park

I get off my bike and sit down beside her, looking at the ducks.

"Do you like them?" I ask her.

"The ducks? Yes. I like them very much. They're hungry so I brought them some bread."

"I saw you here yesterday too."

"Yes. They get hungry every day. What's your name?"

"I'm Patrick. Patrick's my name."

"How old are you Patrick?"

"I'm 11."

"You look 11. That's the age I would have put on you. I'm Mary."

"Hi Mary. How old are you?"

"Now Patrick, you never ask a lady her age. It's not nice."

I look back at the river below.

"But it's ok just this once. I'm 57-years-young. Are your friends here? Are you not playing with them?"

"Yeah they're playing football but I can't. I'm not very good so I brought my bike because I can do that."

"Ride your bike?"

"Ride my bike. I can do wheelies."

"You're some man for one man, Patrick."

She goes back to her bag of bread, a Brennan's packet with only the crusts left. She tears them up inside the bag, innocuous still secret, and lops them to the water five feet away.

"Mary, why do you come here?"

"That's a very good question. I don't know really, I like to. I need to walk every day because these old bones are... I like to walk and I find myself here."

"Ah."

"Yeah. It's quiet, you know, and it's good to get out of the house."

"Do you not like your house?"

"Yes I like it very much, but sometimes it doesn't like me so I go away for a while and when I go back, it's fine again. Do you want some bread?"

"No thank you. I'm not hungry."

"No no, to throw to the ducks!"

"Oh sorry, yeah, thanks."

We don't say anything for a few minutes, we just sit while I fiddle with the spokes on my bike.

She's crying.

"What's wrong? Do you want me to go?"

"No no, it's ok. You stay where you are. You have a very wise way about you."

She's smiling. But for her watery face she would seem perfectly nothing. Perfectly...

"Thanks very much. My mam says that too."

"Your mam must be very proud to have such a good son."

"No she gives out to me all the time!"

"She's proud of you. She should be. She is."

"Thanks. I'd better go, my friends are calling me. Are you ok?"

"I'm fine, Patrick, I'm just going to stay with the ducks for three more minutes and go home."

Dorset Street

I had pissed him off. Pissed him off royally. "Look at you with your bird you never come drinking anymore fuck you. You're as bad as McMuck," is what I texted in my cups.

4pm in the day and lampy.

As soon as I'd sent him the message it left my memory. No sent items list in those days. I just carried on drinking and cursing his name, that capital old drinkist buddy of mine now sullied by the loving of a good woman.

Gah to him.

I just carried on drinking and cursing his name and drinking until passing out time.

Later and home and straight to bed. Single room. Box room. Nausea. Too much gargle. Stomach swimming stupid when, 8.14pm, the door bursts open.

"How fucking DARE you accuse me of being a fu... Put on your fucking clothes! I saw your message and ran all the way from Dorset Str... PUT ON YOUR FUCKING CLOTHES."

I never again accused him of preferring women to ale.

Temple Street

Twenty nine, different pieces every time. A broken bone here, a re-set there. The wheelchair whirring through the corridors, picking off the girls, chauffeuses, all important, him in his carriage.

Twenty nine times a hobble home, carried to and from his throne, this throne and that one there.

Over and over and over and the nurses know his name, his gummy smile, his quiet way, his face.
Twenty nine times and the one that broke his heart. His father, sent away in crankiness, the nighttime and the screaming at the church outside, the guilt, "he mightn't come back tomorrow. He might think I don't want that."

"Shush, it's ok, he'll come back. Will we phone him?"

"Yes please."

Twenty nine times, the Connect 4 and Tomy Tronics and Operation! and the buzzer. The trolley, the pointy caps, the quarantine next door and the priest saying everything quietly through the halls. The Dettol, the snapshots, teddy bears and triangles. Stethoscopes and listening posts, the waiting and the dreaded ether...

North Great George's Street

I passed her name today, on Facebook. The tool for finding people you might just know, I must have clicked through a thousand names out of boredom and light intolerance.

Elinor. Ellie. The surname. That surname. Jesus, yes.

I knew her for four weeks, maybe five, in school in the run-up to the Lord Of The Rings. I was to play Sam.

She was a willing extra, a hobbit or some such.

A green costume and orange skin, the Yorkshire accent borne of Dublin's north-side. She saw me sitting alone between scenes as the week's play, the months of rehearsal, drew to a finish. My silent breathing in of the boards broken by her standing there.

"Hi."

"Hi."

"I'm Ellie, my brother goes here."

"Hi Ellie. I'm Sam Gamgee. I go here."

She laughed.

"Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that my mam saw the play last night and said you were the best thing in it, so don't look so sad. Bye."

"Bye."

Ellie.

I found her number, dialled it once out of twenty times paused, but the gruff father's voice made the whole thing redundant, too tall an order for a 12-year-old.

Churchtown

Marie held it together but Liam, Liam wasn't there. He was with them all the time of it, he was talking to them all the way through it. His two daughters. He was talking to them with his head in his hands and his own private mantra. A begging, keening man and his two girls while Marie pressed the flesh and pretended to go on.

-------

I walked into the bar like it was Thursday, pretending to be academic.

I walked in like it was every Thursday, waiting for the simplest excuse to eschew the rows of flipping chairs for a day spent boozing and skitting with the lads. Ollie was there, Mark, a couple of the girls and a gaping hush as though they were mistaking it for a chapel. I gave Ollie a dig. A dig on the arm, playful and unreciprocated. "The lecture was cancelled," he said. "The lecture's been cancelled because Niamh was in a crash yesterday and she's dead."

"Say that again."

"Niamh was killed in a car crash last night."

"Jesus... What? Oh Jesus. I'm sorry for the dig. I'm sorry. Fuck."

"It's ok. You didn't know."

-------

I walked with him towards the Mango, behind the other three or four. We went to the payphone, he rang his mam, he came out and he cried on me. I hugged him. We followed the others.
Inside the hubbub was spoiled by our faces.

"What's the matter with youse?" she asked. "Youse all look like somebody died."

"Somebody did die." Deadpan.

She didn't apologise, just scuttled off to get some tea and conspire with the chef while we stayed there pulling at the plastic fucking table mats, daring each other not to speak one word.

-------

I phoned my dad. He hadn't heard of Niamh because of all our ten, I was the one she stayed farthest away from. Not through dislike or any kind of meditation, it's just the way it fell. Cordial, at best. Small talk, the most.

She was in a band with her sister, Anita. The two of them in the car with their friend, the third member, and the friend's little baby girl. They were putting up posters at the side of the road for a debut gig somewhere in Cork or in Limerick. A drunk driver. The car to the ditch. All of them gone. The way they fell.

-------

We woke in Kehoes with pints for some, vodka for others, tea for me and nothing for those that couldn't bear to sip. Out on to Grafton Street to meet those who hadn't come in that morning because they were late with the essay for Robbie. Down to Suffolk Street and into the corner seat in O'Neills. The pub our default place as ever. All drinking by now.

We took over the front room in Denise's that evening, wondering about the funeral. Taking the conversation on to the time we heard her sing. Her song and her beautiful voice in the student's union room and my disbelief that someone with her thick Cork accent could lilt so magnificently.

People from Cork were never meant for singing, I thought. My uncle Pat had taught me that and he, well, he was dead too.

-------

We took two cars, we met in the car park. The girls with Jason, the girls all loved Jason, and the rest of us with Owen. We stopped for Mass cards and spent the rest of the time listening to music and talking distraction, stopping for food and a pint and a piss along the road.

At Charleville we remembered ourselves, only half an hour to Churchtown and the ringing bells. The music stopped. Our chatter stopped. We passed the place where the girls'... lives... stopped.

And we kept going.

-------

It was still bright when we found the church wall, the resting wall, the wall for waiting and watching every sunken face pass by. Those who knew her best went to the house where she lay with Anita, returning an hour later, gaits changed, the rest of us still leaning.

-------

Marie held it together but Liam, Liam wasn't there. He was with them all the time of it, he was talking to them all the way through it. His two daughters. He was talking to them with his head in his hands and his own private mantra. A begging, keening man and his two girls while Marie pressed the flesh and pretended to go on but she was every bit his broken, every iota destroyed by this.

-------

We drove to my parents' place, not far, my mam had prepared our beds and she got up to talk and make us tea. Words like 'different circumstances' and 'so unfair' hung like smoke around the place before we took to our beds for some shade of private respite.

-------

Another morning and the Mass, another hour questioning, then the burial and the parting. I went to Tipperary, I stayed with Ollie. We thought of drink but we couldn't. We just sat, he on his bed, me on Noel's, two empty heads, the stereo blaring.