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been great news. Here’s the madness—and admitting it doesn’t dilute the insanity—
    “You need booze, dope for music.”
    Sorry, I need them. It’s the illusion. A bottle of Jack, six pack of Lone Star and then…you’re ready to rock. A cup of tea doesn’t do it. Johnny Duhan, the soundtrack to my life, also had a new album, and I’d heard ‘Inviolate’, the best song on grief ever. Forget Iris de Ment with the song on her dad or Peter Gabriel’s ‘I Grieve’…here is THE SONG. It didn’t lash me; it plain out lacerated.
    I lit a cig and dwelt for a moment on a time with my father. We’d stand on these very rocks and cast for mackerel. Those times, the whole town was strung out along the bay, the fish literally surrendering. We took home eight and my mother threw them in the garbage.
    Paulo Coelho in Warriors of Light writes,
    “The warrior of light sometimes wonders why he’s encountering the same set of problems over and over—then realises that he has never progressed past them, which is why the lesson keeps returning to teach him what he does not wish to learn.”
    I did not then, and probably not even now, want to know what drove my mother. I suspect it was rage, but as to where that came from or why, I didn’t want to know.
    Since her stroke, she’d had a live-in nurse. Then a kidney infection landed her in the hospital. At my last visit, strained as usual, her speech had greatly improved, a catheter had been inserted, and I tried not to stare. She said,
    “I was able to use the commode by myself.”
    Heartbreaking, right?
    To hear a tough-spirited woman boast of being able to use the toilet.
    Wrong.
    I thought,
    “Tough shit!”
    No pun intended and I rarely do irony, least not sober.

 
    I took a last gulp of the bay and turned towards town, the final line of Padraig Pearse’s poem…sorrowful. Stopped at Grattan Road and felt a melancholy as deep as false memory. Remember the massive hit Foreigner had with ‘I Want to Know What Love Is’? On a rock nostalgia programme, I caught the version with the gospel choir singing shotgun. Man, that rocked. I was humming it all the way through the Claddagh.
    Evening was in and at the hotel I nodded at Mrs Bailey.
    She said,
    “My, you look healthy, a glow in your cheeks.”
    Windburn.
    She handed me an envelope, said,
    “I don’t know who left it. I wasn’t at the desk when it came.”
    On the front was “Jack Taylor”. Typed. I opened it, read,
    “Jack, can you meet me at 9 p.m. at the Fair Green?”

 
    “Look at him and you’re peering down a hole that needs to be filled but never will be.”
    Andrew Pyper, The Trade Mission

 
    Upstairs, I read the note more fully:
Jack ,
Can you meet me at 9 p.m. in the Fair Green? I’ll be waiting where the City Link coaches park .
Ann
    My heart was pounding, sweat breaking out on my brow. I’d have massacred a double Jameson. Had told myself a thousand times, “You’re so over her.”…Sometimes, I’d even believed it. Once to Jeff, I said,
    “I’m over Ann.”
    He’d been stocking the bar, paused, asked,
    “You give her the acid test?”
    “What?”
    “That’s when you see her with a guy, he’s got his arm round her, she’s smiling up at him and you watch them, feel OK. That happens, you’re over her.”
    I’d made some smart-ass reply. Course, I’d never seen her thus and prayed I never would. Obviously, I’d have failed. Tests were never my strong point, especially if they involved character.
    I showered, shaved and laid out a pair of Farah, marvelling at the crease. Then figured, go for broke and wear a sports jacket. Had bought it in Age Concern. It was a lightweight navy wool job and fit like a metaphor. Transferring my keys, change, wallet from the other jacket, I found the book. Shit, I’d completely forgotten it. It was The Collected Plays and Poems , and I could tell it had almost never been opened. The title page had two words written in black ink:
    The Dramatist
    I