‘Once or twice,’ says Tadhg.
‘You don’t have a super yacht in the Med or anything, do you?’
Tadhg laughs.‘No, I don’t!They’re my idea of hell.’
‘I wouldn’t mind having a small boat,’ I say.‘Like the ones they have at Clontarf boat club.Just to, you know, pootle about Dublin Bay.’
‘That actually sounds pretty good,’ says Tadhg.‘A little rowing boat with an outboard motor.’
‘You could get a sailor hat,’ I say.‘It’d be even better than your farmer’s cap.’
‘Aye aye, captain,’ says Tadhg.
For a while we look out at the little boats bobbing in the distance in companionable silence.
‘Next week,’ says Tadhg, ‘we should give our song another go.Now we’ve got used to working together again.’He turns and looks at me.‘What do you think?’
Well, we couldn’t keep putting it off forever.And besides, I feel differently about it now than I did at the start of the week.
‘Yeah, sure,’ I say.‘That’d be good.’
When we get back to Tadhg’s house, we play through the song we did this morning and I tweak one of his songs from yesterday.All of which keeps us busy for what’s left of the day.
It’s not until after he’s told me how much he’s looking forward to tomorrow’s dinner and I’ve said goodbye and left the house and started walking home that I realise I haven’t thought about Dave and his news once all afternoon.
Chapter Twenty-Two
2002
‘I need to buy a suit.’
It was less than two weeks to our first gig and I was sitting in the library trying to read about deconstructionism when Tadhg sat down at the desk next to mine and made this declaration in a stage whisper.
‘A suit?’I whispered back.‘Why?’
‘For the gig!’
‘I know you’ve got a grant,’ I said.‘But I doubt it’s going to cover a decent suit.’
‘I’m going to try the charity shops on George’s Street,’ he said.‘Would you come with me?We’ve got nearly an hour before they close.I bet I can find a suit in an hour.’
I looked at the Jacques Derrida book on my desk.The thought of leaving it for Tadhg was more than tempting.‘What do you need me for to buy a suit?’
‘To make sure I don’t look like a total wanker in it,’ he said.
‘Oh well, in that case,’ I said.And I put on my coat.
We had just left the library when we bumped into Ruairí.
‘I was just going to email you two!Does your band have a name yet?I need it for the poster.’
Tadhg and I exchanged glances.The four of us (five when you included Katie, which we often did) had discussed potential band names ad nauseam in the pub over the last few weeks, but the conversations usually descended into joking.We still didn’t have a serious contender.
‘We’re still finalising it,’ I said.
‘Well, you’d better do it fast,’ said Ruairí.‘I want to print out the posters tomorrow.’
‘We will!’I promised.
