Page 21 of Our Song

At four o’clock the day after my surprise reunion with Tadhg, the band – and Katie – were sitting in the café section of the Buttery.

The Buttery occupied the lower ground floor of the eighteenth-century Dining Hall building, with a bright, busy café on one side and a cosy, windowless bar on the other. We had grabbed a table by the windows.

‘I can’t believe I’m going to meet your long-lost bandmate,’ said Joanna.

I loved Joanna. She dressed, as she said herself, like someone going to work in a bank, and people who judged others by their appearance – especially annoying boys – were always taken by surprise when they found out she was an awesome bass player.

‘I can’t believe you didn’t know his real name was Tim,’ said Brian.

I raised a hand in greeting and Katie waved wildly. Tadhg’s face broke into a smile as he approached us.

‘Fancy seeing you here!’ said Katie, jumping up and giving him a hug. ‘I hope you don’t mind me joining your band meeting. I just wanted to say hi.’

‘Course not,’ said Tadhg. ‘This is brilliant. Hey, Brían!’

‘Alright, Tadhg?’ They did some manly back-slapping.

‘And this,’ I said, ‘is Joanna. Jo, this is Tadhg. Sorry, I mean Tim. Sorry, Tim.’

It felt very weird calling him Tim. I’d been thinking of him as Tadhg for three and a half years. Not that I’d been thinking of him that much.

Tadhg smiled at Joanna and I could see her take in just how attractive he was. ‘Nice to meet you,’ she said.

‘Great to meet you too,’ said Tadhg. ‘And you know what, Tadhg’s fine.’

‘Are you sure?’ I was dubious. ‘Feel free to correct us any time we use it.’

‘Nah, it’s grand.’ Tadhg pulled out a chair and sat down next to me. ‘I always liked being Tadhg every summer. It’s a bit more rock and roll than Tim.’ He grinned. ‘It can be my stage name.’

‘Is your actual full name Timothy?’ Katie’s eyes sparkled with mischief. ‘Please say it is.’

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.

Maybe, I thought after an hour had gone by, I should quit while I was ahead. Tadhg seemed very happy to be there too, but perhaps he was just being polite. Perhaps he was dying to get away from me and find his new musical-genius classmates. Perhaps he just wanted to go home.

But then he said, ‘Do you want to get food while they’re still serving?

’ So we went and got chips, and kept talking, and then he said, ‘I don’t suppose you want to get an actual drink?

’ So we went to the bar part of the Buttery and got pints and settled in to a corner table. And we talked, and talked, and talked.

We laughed a lot too. He told me about his older sister, Rosie, who like me had done French in college.

‘She went on Erasmus to Lyon,’ he said. ‘And when she got home she claimed she’d basically forgotten how to speak English. It went on for ages. You’d ask her something basic like ‘Where’s the remote control?’ and she’d pause and point at the couch and say, ‘What’s the English word for that again?”

I told him about Annie, who was now in sixth year in school and had mellowed a tiny bit since her spectacularly grumpy early teens.

‘We actually get on quite well now,’ I said. ‘Which is a huge deal considering four years ago she chucked my favourite top in the bin after I dared mock her love of NSYNC. There was a lot of loud door slamming in those days. Anyway, she’s a goth now so at least she’s stopped playing NSYNC.’

We were on our second pint by then, which is probably why I said, ‘Speaking of teenage years, what happened with you and Caoimhe?’

‘Caoimhe?’ said Tadhg. ‘Which Caoimhe? Oh, Caoimhe from Laoise?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Didn’t you, like, get together on the last night?’

Tadhg looked confused and said, ‘No! Why did you think that?’

I wished I hadn’t mentioned Caoimhe, but now I had to tell him. ‘I thought I saw you together in the practice room on the last night. I was on my way to the loo and the door was open,’ I added hastily, lest he think I was spying on them creepily.

‘Ah,’ said Tadhg. ‘ That night.’ He paused and said, ‘I suppose me telling you doesn’t matter now.’

He didn’t say anything more and I said, ‘Go on.’

‘Caoimhe told me she liked me,’ said Tadhg.

‘And I had to tell her I thought she was great but we should just stay friends. And she was embarrassed – though she had no reason to be, I was very flattered – and kind of upset and asked if we could just sit there until she was ready to go back in the hall, and of course that was fine with me. But nothing, like, happened between us.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Shit, sorry. I totally got the wrong end of the stick. So did you stay in touch?’

‘Ah, no, we didn’t,’ said Tadhg. ‘We met up once but it was kind of awkward. You know what it’s like when a friend tells you something like that. I didn’t want to hurt her, and I didn’t want to lead her on or anything, so I think we both felt it was easier if we didn’t see each other.’

I was suddenly very aware of two things.

One was relief. Relief that he hadn’t been into Caoimhe at all.

Which meant there was a chance that post-gig kiss had been a real kiss after all.

Which meant maybe there was a tiny chance he had liked me back then the way I liked him.

Maybe there was a tiny chance he could like me that way now.

Because I knew I still fancied him. A lot.