Tadhg groaned and took out his student card.There it was: Timothy Hennessy.Good Lord.
‘I’m named after my great-uncle,’ he said.‘He was a Jesuit priest.’
‘You do have quite a priestly air about you,’ said Katie.‘Father Timothy.’
‘Okay, that’s it,’ said Tadhg.‘Definitely feel free to call me Tadhg.’
‘I can’t promise anything,’ said Katie.‘You just look like a Timothy to me now.’
Tadhg shook his head in mock frustration and looked at Brian.‘Are you two still …?’
‘Oh no,’ said Katie.
‘Katie fancies girls now,’ said Brian cheerfully.
‘Girls and boys,’ said Katie airily.‘I’m not fussy.About gender, I mean,’ she added.‘I’m pretty fussy about people.’
‘You can’t be that fussy,’ said Jo.‘You went out with Brian.’
‘Hey!’said Brian.
We told Tadhg about our practice space and it was decided that we’d have our first practice together on Saturday afternoon, just two days away.
‘We have a few songs that still need vocal melodies,’ said Joanna, ‘if you want to try coming up with something.’
‘I’ll give it a shot,’ said Tadhg.He leaned back in his seat.‘This is deadly, lads.I was in a band in Cork but obviously we had to split up when I moved back here.I’d been thinking I’d need to start a new band.But now I’ve found my old one.And you, Joanna.’
‘What about the Evil Twins?’said Katie.She turned to Brian and Jo.‘That was his really old band.’
‘We’re on permanent hiatus,’ said Tadhg.
‘So there are no rivals for your attention,’ said Katie.She kicked me under the table and I carefully ignored her.‘Musically, I mean.’
‘Nope.I am totally available,’ said Tadhg, and I had to look down and pretend I was searching for something in my bag in case my face gave me away.
Tadhg immediately fit right in our little gang, as if we all hadn’t lost sight of each other for three and a half years.But after almost an hour Brian said, ‘Oh shit, I’ve got a lecture at five.’
‘Are you doing Ed Rafferty’s Civil War tutorial?’Joanna said to Katie.
‘Oh yeah.’Katie got to her feet and put her jacket on.
‘Are you all going?’Tadhg looked at me.‘Do you have to go now too?Or can you stay a bit longer?’
‘Um, no.I mean, no, I don’t have to go straight away – my last lecture of the day was at two.So yeah, I can stay.’
‘Cool,’ said Tadhg.‘Same here.’
The others hurried off – Katie gave me a meaningful look as she went, but luckily Tadhg was telling Joanna how great it was to meet her and didn’t spot it.
Then it was just me and him.Alone.For possibly the first time since we sat on that rock on a beach in Connemara.
‘Do you want more tea?’said Tadhg.
It seems bizarre and magical now, the fact that when I was in college I could just hang around with a friend for hours on end.It’s easy to forget what student bars and cafés were like, how they were primarily there for hanging out rather than buying stuff, how everything was built around being able to sit around and chat and drink tea (and then, at a certain stage in the day, pints) and flirt and eat chips for as long as you liked.
We drank multiple cups of tea and talked about his time in Cork and my time in Trinity so far, about our college bands (he had been the lead singer and main songwriter of a band in Cork that had played support slots for some big local bands; I turned my time in Fennel into what I hoped was a funny story), about our summers working abroad (Paris and London for me, London and Boston for him).We had both just been in London for the summer, which struck each of us as remarkable.
‘I can’t believe we never bumped into each other,’ said Tadhg, and I agreed, forgetting that since that Laoise fortnight we had spent two other summers living in Dublin, a much smaller city, and had never crossed paths at all.
