There was no television, no horse racing. No radio, no music.
No one looked our way.
The man with the ponytail was reading a magazine. It sat on the counter between his gin and tonic and an ashtray. The musicians were talking quietly. I didn’t know it then but the College of Music was around the corner, on Chatham Row. I heard strings and a trumpet coming from an open window the next time I passed it, the following Monday, when I was off on a wander during the lunch break. I’d been walking past the building for months.
There was no barman.
We stepped closer to the counter. We passed the musicians, went further – deeper – into the room, and took two stools at the end of the bar. We sat, and saw him. He was down on his hunkers, filling the lowest shelf with bottles of Britvic Orange. He heard us and turned, stood up, groaned, and smiled. It was the first time a barman had smiled at us.
—Gentlemen, he said.
He was happy to see us.
We stayed there for months.
* * *
—
She walked right through the thirty-seven years as she got nearer to him. The age crept across her face. Her back took a very slight stoop.
—But she was beautiful, he said.
Beautiful wasn’t a word we’d ever used. The women we’d liked were always gorgeous. But we saw her the first time and she was beautiful.
—And she knew me, he said. —She came right up to me.
—Was it the first time you’d seen her?
—What do you mean?
—It wasn’t the first parent–teacher meeting you’ve been to, I said. —Was it? And the school concerts, the football, hockey – all that stuff. All your kids went to that school, didn’t they?
—I know what you mean.
—You’ve been going up there for years then. Was this the first time you saw her?
—Yeah, he said. —Yes.
He said Yes; he’d changed Yeah to Yes. He was in the witness box.
—How come? I asked.
—How come what?
—All those meetings and matches and you never saw her.
—You don’t know the school, he said. —It’s huge. There’s over a thousand brats go to that place.
—Yes –, I said.
I was at it now, playing the prosecutor.
—Yes, but parent–teacher meetings aren’t convened for the parents and guardians of every child in the school, are they? This one, when you saw her, it would have been just a form – a year group. Am I right? What class is Holly in?
—It was a year ago, he said. —She was in Transition Year.
—What’s that again? I asked.
He looked at me.
—I don’t live in this country, I reminded him.
—She was sixteen, he said.
—Four years’ worth of meetings and sports and cake sales and sponsored walks.
—And I never saw her.
—How come?
—Maybe I wasn’t looking, he said.
Now I stared at him. Was he making this up?
He shrugged.
—There’s no answer, he said. —I don’t know. It’s a big school. It’s possible.
—But improbable.
—Okay.
—Was it the first time she saw you? I asked.
—It’s not really –.
He stopped. And started again.
—It’s not really the point, he said. —The fact is, she saw me and it was like she’d seen me the day before. The way she behaved, the way she spoke to me. Like it was 1981, or whenever.
—Okay, I said. —But had she ever kissed you before? In 1981?
—Back off a bit, Davy, he said. —Just listen. She came up to me and kissed me.
—How?
—The cheek.
—One cheek?
—You didn’t hear me, he said.
—I did, I said. —What do you mean?
—She kissed me, he said. —She didn’t – whatever – offer her cheek for me to kiss. She kissed mine.
He was right; I hadn’t been listening.
—Lips, he said. —Her lips kissed me – made actual contact with my skin. Not the air near my skin. Do you remember her well?
—Yes, I said. —I do.
—Do you remember her smile?
—Yeah, I said. —I think I do.
—Well, she smiled – while she was kissing me.
—Did she not smile when she saw you?
—She was smiling when she got there, like we’d arranged to meet – like she’d expected me to be there when she arrived, leaning there against the wall.
—Did that not worry you – a tad?
—No, he said. —Why would it have?
—Well, it was so – like – out of nowhere.
—I felt the exact same way, he said. —It made complete sense.
—Well, I said. —No offence. But it makes no fuckin’ sense at all.
We were in a newish restaurant on the Clontarf Road, close to the Wooden Bridge. It was six months since the last time we’d met. We emailed each other occasionally, or texted, usually about music or football or dead friends and neighbours. We didn’t crawl the pubs in town, the old places, like we used to when I came home. I’d always added an extra day’s recovery before I went back – home – to England. I didn’t drink now. I’d stopped. A glass of wine, the occasional bottle of craft beer at home – that was me. I stayed out of pubs. I don’t think he drank much either. It was Monday night, this time. The restaurant was half empty. We weren’t loud men. There was no one sitting too near us. The waiter was young but old-school. He stayed away between courses and didn’t keep passing, to ask us how we were getting on or if everything was perfect.
—Well, that was how it felt, he said. —Like we’d never been apart.
—But –.
—I know, he said. —I know. We’d never been much together. But I’m talking about feelings here, not facts. Feelings. The feel of the thing.
It sounded like something he’d said before. More than once.
He looked different, I decided. He looked bad – torn. In crisis. He was picking at his food. There wasn’t much left on the plate – he must have been eating. But he looked too thin. The skin under his neck had become loose, wattled. I’d told him he was looking well, when we’d met an hour before, and I’d meant it. But now I was actually looking at him. He was scratching the palm of one of his hands. He’d been doing it since we sat down. He kept putting his fork down to do it. He’d been scratching his neck too. There were pink tracks under his ear. I’d almost been enjoying the car crash – man meets old flame and ruins his life. He’d been helping me. It was almost like he’d been sitting back, relating his misadventures, an arm resting on the back of the chair. But I saw it now, he wasn’t like that. He was leaning forward, looking down at the table – examining what had happened.