Page 29 of Our Song

‘Ready for your hot date?’ said Brian with a grin.

Tadhg laughed. ‘It’s family party, I wouldn’t call it a hot date. Sorry I can’t help with the tidying up.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ I said. ‘You go and have a great time with Jess.’

If my smile didn’t reach my eyes, I hoped he didn’t notice.

But still , said a voice in my head, he did say it wasn’t a hot date . And the hope continued to bloom.

I couldn’t bring myself to contact him the next day, and he didn’t contact me.

Then on Monday I was crossing Front Square when I saw him walking towards me from the direction of the áras an Phiarsaigh building, where he had most of his classes.

He was with Jess. My stomach lurched. I had an urge to run back through Front Arch and hide.

But it was too late, he’d seen me and waved, so I had to join them.

‘Hi!’ I said in my most cheerful voice. ‘How was your party?’

Jess looked at Tadhg in amusement. ‘It was great. Almost too great, to be honest. I think my family prefer Tim to me now.’

Tadhg laughed. ‘I wouldn’t go that far.’

‘I would.’ She turned to me, smiling. ‘The sound system broke down and Tim managed to find a guitar in the hotel and entertained everyone until they fixed it.’

‘Wow!’ I said. ‘Well done. That sounds fun!’ Why did I always sound so blandly stupid when she was around? ‘Anyway, I’d better run, I’ve got a lecture in ten minutes.’

‘I saw your gig posters, by the way!’ said Jess. ‘Tim told me about the name thing, it’s so good.’

‘Can you make the gig?’ I prayed the answer would be no.

‘Now I’ve seen what Tim can do with one wonky acoustic guitar,’ she said, ‘there is absolutely no way I’m missing seeing his band.’

His band? But I wasn’t going to argue about that with her right now. ‘That’s brilliant!’ My relentless cheerfulness was sounding deranged even to me. ‘See you there!’

But still , I thought as I hurried across to the Arts Block, but still, they were just hanging out with her family on Saturday. And the hope remained.

The gig was on Thursday, the night before the last day of the college term.

On Wednesday the band met up to go through the schedule.

The gig was starting to seem very real now.

And a huge deal. Would the magic we felt in Brian’s garage vanish when we were playing in front of other people?

Were we just fooling ourselves when we thought we were actually good?

When we left the Buttery, Tadhg and I found ourselves lagging behind the others and he said, ‘How are you feeling?’

‘What do you mean?’ I said.

‘About the gig.’

‘Um, mostly excited,’ I said, which was true. ‘But also a bit nervous.’

‘Don’t be nervous. You’ll be brilliant.’ We were on the ramp that led to Front Square and he stopped and turned to me. ‘We’ll be brilliant.’

‘Are you going to wear the dead man’s suit?’ I said.

‘Course I am,’ he said. ‘Are you going to wear that dress?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I said.

‘You should,’ said Tadhg.

I didn’t wear it, in the end. For a while after that night, I stupidly wondered if things might have been different if I had.

But on the day I was too self-conscious about the low cut, and also genuinely worried about accidentally exposing myself while playing on stage.

So I wore another charity-shop find instead, a black sixties sleeveless shift dress with a white lace collar, less sexy but still, I hoped, pretty cool, which I paired with bare legs and Converse low-tops.

I had butterflies in my stomach as I descended the stairs that led to the venue for the sound check.

Tadhg and Joanna were there already, chatting with Ruairí.

‘The poster child herself!’ said Ruairí. I gave him the finger. He ignored it and said, ‘Shatner are about to soundcheck and then it’ll be you.’

After our very brief soundcheck we barely had time to grab food and get back to the venue before the doors opened.

People were coming in now, and one of the first was Jess, with some extremely glamorous friends.

Jess was wearing perfectly fitting indigo jeans and a tight navy T-shirt with an asymmetric silver print.

I was on my way to the loos to do my make-up when they passed me.

I would have much preferred to meet them after doing my make-up.

I would also have preferred to meet them while wearing the seventies maxi dress.

‘Hi, Laura!’ said Jess. ‘Wow, I love the dress, it’s so cute. Vintage?’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Yeah, it is.’ And then, because I felt I had to say something friendly, ‘Thanks for coming.’

‘I wouldn’t miss it. Is Tim here?’

‘He’s at the bar,’ I said. ‘Sorry, I have to dash.’ I scuttled off to the bathroom, and by the time I came out, with an impressively clean cat-eye liner for someone whose hands were almost shaking with nerves, the venue was almost full.

I looked around for the others and to my massive relief saw Katie and Sarah at a table at the back of the venue.

I slipped into a seat. ‘God, I need a drink.’

Sarah shook her head. ‘Turning to booze already. The rock-and-roll lifestyle is taking its toll.’

As if by magic, someone wearing a dark brown suit jacket reached over my shoulder and put a pint of cider on the table in front of me. I turned around in my seat.

‘I thought you might want a pint,’ said Tadhg. ‘Hey, everyone.’

‘Evening, Father Timothy,’ said Katie, winking at him.

‘Do you want to join us?’ said Sarah. She was in college at UCD but she’d met Tadhg plenty of times on nights out.

‘Thanks, but I’ve got a pint over there.’ He pointed to a table where Jess and her friends were talking to Brian and his new girlfriend, the dreaded Caroline, then turned to me. ‘You okay? No last-minute nerves?’

‘I’m grand!’ I lied. ‘Thanks for the drink.’

And then, suddenly, it was time.

The venue looked a lot bigger and more full once I was up on the stage with my guitar slung around my neck. Tadhg gave me a reassuring nod.

‘Come on, Lol,’ he said. ‘Let’s show ’em how it’s done.’

As soon as he walked up to the microphone stand, the entire room quietened down and heads started turning towards us.

He’d had stage presence even when he was a teenage busker, and I don’t know what he’d been doing in that band down in Cork for the previous three years, but now his onstage charisma was off the scale.

It was like he’d turned a light on inside himself as soon as he got up there.

‘I’m Tadhg Hennessy,’ he said in that honey-and-gravel voice. ‘That’s Joanna Smyth, that’s Brian O’Hara, that is Laura McDermott and we are, above all else’ – he threw me a sidelong grin and I couldn’t help grinning back – ‘The Band Laura’s In.’

Then Brian counted us in, and for fifteen minutes nothing else mattered.

This was the thing about our band: we only ever played four gigs, but every time we got on stage people who’d never seen us before were surprised by how good we were.

They expected a shambolic student band and they got something else.

Part of it was down to Tadhg and his undoubted star power, but I’m not being deluded when I say that it wasn’t just that.

Joanna was a brilliantly fierce bass player.

Brian had become a genuinely good drummer.

I won’t indulge in false modesty and pretend I wasn’t a good guitarist, because I was very good.

And there were the songs, the ones Tadhg and I wrote.

We started the set with ‘Anyone But You’, a garage-rock song with a ridiculously catchy, poppy chorus, and before we’d reached that chorus the previously empty space in front of the stage had entirely filled up.

People were drifting across from the bar.

By the time we finished the song the crowd was pressed right up to the edge of the stage.

When I slammed down the final chord there was a tiny split second of silence and then the entire room went wild.

They stayed wild for the rest of our short set.

The second song, ‘Midnight Feast’, was received with even more enthusiasm, and that enthusiasm was infectious – it made us play harder, play better.

Years later I stumbled across a blog post looking back at what they called Tadhg Hennessy’s first Dublin gig in 2002.

They didn’t mention the name of the band he was playing in, but it was that gig all right.

They said everyone in that room knew they were looking at a star, that the two bands who played afterwards might as well have stayed at home.

They wrote about the gig like it was Tadhg’s solo show with some backing musicians, but that’s not how it felt on stage that night.

Playing with Tadhg never felt like that.

When the four of us played together it felt like we were a team, we were a band, we were a gang .

Joanna’s bass and Brian’s tight drumming kept us all in perfect sync, and Tadhg and I communicated without words, my lead and his rhythm guitar combining into one glorious noise.

And then, just as he said, ‘Thank you, you’ve been amazing.

This is our last song. It’s called ‘Tourniquet’,’ Jess and her friend moved to the front of the crowd.

She was gazing up at Tadhg in just the way I’d have liked to gaze up at Tadhg if I were in the audience: cool, amused, impressed but not adoring.

I remembered how nicely she had praised my dress.

She said it was cute. It was a cute dress.

Not sexy like the maxi dress, the one I should have worn.

And I thought, Cute? I’ll give you fucking cute.