20

Word gets to egan in the nursing home that Sharkey has farmed out some of his files to a young graduate from the Smurfit School – a chap who plays tag rugby with Brennan in Donnybrook. The files in question did not require urgent attention.

So, despite his doctor’s strict advice that he take a month off, Egan returns to work, brushing aside well-meaning words of caution from friends at Nat Am about not rushing things, and how ‘Deansgrange Cemetery is full of those who couldn’t slow down’. As always, he makes light of such advice, and resumes his high stool at Paddy Cullen’s, even if he is now limited to tomato juice or mineral water. ‘Never felt better,’ he lies when they ask how he is. Laughing off his illness, he says: ‘Remember John Maynard Keynes, fellas: “In the long run we’re all dead.” The padded box is waiting for us all, so what’s the fuss?’

With Philip, though, he drops the devil-may-care routine. ‘I have to, Philip. Sharkey will edge me out: he’s already given some of my portfolios to a mate of that creep Brennan.’

He hides as well as he can his chest pains and his insomnia. But Philip can see through the act: ‘Go easy, Kev,’ he tells him one evening while they are having a coffee in the plaza.

‘No worries.’ Egan shifts in the chair, and fixes his glance somewhere in the distance. ‘Not going to make Gillian a widow quite so soon.’ He adds sheepishly, ‘Although that mightn’t be something she would find too much to cope with. No, I feel I’m regaining my strength.’

Philip listens while he continues to talk about how he is walking out the Blackrock Road every evening. ‘You won’t believe this. I do a few rounds of the old Alma Mater, and sometimes drop into the chapel. A couple of weeks in the clinic sets you thinking about … well … the God thing.’

‘Not like you. You thought we were all bonkers – the Charismatic Masses, braving the freezing nights.’

‘Look,’ says Egan, anxious to change the subject, ‘we haven’t done Picasso’s in ages – I mean the four of us.’ He takes his BlackBerry from his inside pocket. ‘We’ll get more time to shoot the breeze.’

‘I’m on for that.’

‘Saturday night then.’

In the early years, the four of them had gone out frequently together; then it tapered out. Although they were cordial, sometimes even effusive, neither of their two wives liked each other. From the beginning, Sam envied Gillian’s sensuous beauty and the way, even when she had thrown on whatever clothes were near at hand, and was without a trace of make-up, she was the one whom men openly stared at when they were walking down a street together.

On the Saturday night the four of them have a drink at the bar of Picasso’s while waiting for their table. As always, the two women are demonstrative in their greeting and air kissing.

Great to catch up, Sammy.

You’re looking fab.

So are you. New hairstyle looks … just right for you.

After the meal, when they are relaxing at the bar counter and the two women are flitting from holidays to House of Ireland and Brown Thomas, Philip learns the full extent of the pressure Sharkey is exerting on Egan: either take a golden handshake or else be put on a two-day week. He describes to Philip what happened earlier that day when Sharkey called him in. ‘“You’ll have more time on your hands, Kevin”, he says. “Get out there on the golf course. Wouldn’t mind that myself.” Then the gobshite stands up and starts doing air swings. “Yes, that would be the life. You’ve no idea the shit I’ve to put up with in here. We’ll call it a retirement that you opted for. Time out to smell the roses. No loss of face that way.”’ Egan’s round shoulders are hunched, his stout neck sunk into his chest, and beneath the restaurant lighting, perspiration glistens on his forehead.

Leaving the restaurant, the women get back to how great it is to catch up.

Must do this more often.

Absolutely. I’ll look forward to that.

‘Why don’t we do a weekend at Kelly’s?’ Gillian suggests. ‘Brilliant down there.’

‘You’re on, I’d like nothing better,’ says Sam, knowing it will never happen. ‘Rosslare here we go, Gill.’

Egan puts back on the sunny mask as the four of them head for taxis waiting outside on Vernon Avenue. ‘Golf very soon, Philip. I’m shit hot now after the break, probably should give you a handicap.’

‘Very soon at the Glen, Kev,’ says Philip.

Very soon at the Glen never comes for Egan. The following Sunday morning, as he is setting off for his walk around the grounds of Blackrock College, he slumps over at the foot of the stairs.

The Pakistani doctor at the Clinic is very sympathetic to Gillian, their two sons and Roisín, their daughter. He brings them into a private room. ‘So sorry, Mrs Egan.’ He steals a glance at the clipboard. ‘Gillian. We did all we could.’ He holds her hand while he speaks.

The following day, after a night of fitful sleep, Philip makes the dreaded visit to the funeral parlour where his dead friend is reposing. ‘Oh, yes, of course. I’ll take you to view the deceased,’ says the funeral director, a pale man with priestly gestures. He leads him down a carpeted hallway, where churchy music is playing softly. The dark-suited funeral director opens the double doors of a room that smells faintly of varnished wood. At the centre of the floor stands a coffin on its own; the brass fittings glint in the light from the amber table lamps.

‘So you were life-long friends. My goodness, how sad. And a relatively young man.’ The funeral director’s discreet tone is conditioned by day-in-day-out contact with death. He goes around the room, fussing over the flower vases, picking up fallen petals with ladylike hands.

Philip walks slowly to the coffin. ‘School. College. Best-man and then work.’

Egan’s grey face looks swollen and is blotched with purple patches.

‘Yes. Ever since …’

‘My condolences.’

‘Yes … thank you.’

Streaks of light show on the opposite wall when the funeral director half-opens the venetian blinds. Philip finds himself tracing the sign of the cross on Egan’s cold forehead; he tries to shape some prayer, but his mind wanders. An angry curl has replaced the constant smile Egan had shown to the world: must have seen death stealing up on him, and he resisted with whatever strength he had left.

‘Here’s a chair, Mr Lalor, I’ll leave you for a minute.’ says the funeral director.

‘Thank you.’

Play-acting for Egan is over, but Philip still sees the team mate who would always be the sturdy schoolboy covered in mud as they leave the Donnybrook pitch, telling everyone how he nailed the ‘little Gonzaga bollix and the ref never saw it’.

After some time, he touches Egan’s waxen hand, and stands.

The funeral Mass begins with a procession of priests up the nave, accompanied by the full swell of the pipe organ from overhead. Philip is seated beside Sam about halfway down the church. The priests are shuffling in the way of those affected by arthritis; one or two carry walking sticks. They are the decrepit remnant of the men who only yesterday coached cup-winning rugby teams, and tripped along the corridors of Blackrock College.

The main celebrant talks about Kevin Egan’s faith. ‘And Jesus, by his rising from the dead, makes it possible for us to see death as entering a glorious eschatological state.’

Philip switches off – the same rigmarole. Would he be so full of the eschatological claptrap if he were in a cardiac unit, wired up to monitors and waiting for an update on his condition?

‘A man with an abiding commitment to his family,’ the priest continues.

Philip had hoped to hear even a word or two that might show that the priest too would be as scared as everyone else in the church if a consultant had asked him to take a seat in his office, and had muttered about ‘showing up in the scan’ and ‘further tests’.

Sharkey is seated a few rows ahead with Phoebe, his partner, and a few others from Nat Am. He hasn’t changed much over the years – the same comb-over from a low parting just above his ear.

Right through the ceremony, those few who are daily Mass-goers know when to stand, when to sit, and when to kneel. The majority, for whom the Church’s rubrics are now a foreign language, glance over their shoulders and follow their example, so that, like a slow motion Mexican wave, the signal to stand eventually reaches the front where Gillian and the family are still sitting until they sense movement all around them.

Sam discreetly checks the lit-up screen of her BlackBerry and sends a reply. Philip remains kneeling, not in prayer but playing in his head the upset of the previous days from the time of Gillian’s hysterical phone call. ‘Near the stairs … and fell … Come over. Oh God, Philip.’

From the organ gallery comes a beautiful rendering of Fauré’s ‘Pie Jesu’ by the soprano who had sung the Mass; the odd cough or shuffle or the whooshing sound when the door opens is all that disturbs the silence until she fades out. Then after a nod from the celebrant, Roisín steps up to the lectern to deliver the eulogy.

She thanks all who have been a support to the family in their grief, especially her father’s life-long friend, Philip Lalor. ‘Kevin was a dreamer, whose dreams didn’t always bring him the reward he had envisaged.’ Looking out at the congregation, she speaks with a steady voice. ‘In fact, he should never have been a banker. My dad’s spirit was too expansive for balance sheets and for fumbling in the greasy till. The Celtic Tiger devoured my dad.’ She quotes Auden:

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

‘Goodnight, Dad. For me you will be forever among the stars.’

The main celebrant stands and recites the Final Prayers of Commendation.

May the angels lead you into paradise,

May the martyrs come to welcome you.

A woman in front of Philip leans towards the man beside her. ‘She was the apple of his eye, you know.’

And take you to the holy city

The new and eternal Jerusalem.

‘Poor Roisín will have to live in the real world, and forget her poetry.’

‘No money in poetry,’ the man says out of the side of his mouth; his shoulders shake.

His voice shall bid me rise again

Unending joy unceasing praise …

After the burial in Deansgrange, Gillian hosts a lunch at a Dun Laoghaire restaurant overlooking the harbour. Out in the marina, yachts are bobbing and swaying; the scratch of rigging and a tinkle of bells fill the late summer sunshine. A faint smell of the sea rises from the water.

Some have to return to work, but a few stragglers stay behind talking in the sun. On the way out, Sharkey and his cronies stop to admire a crew navigating towards the harbour, at the same moment that Roisín and her friends from ucd appear at the front door. When she sees Sharkey, her body stiffens. He goes over to renew his sympathy. ‘Again my sincerest … Roisín, you can be very proud of your dad.’

She glares at him, refuses his outstretched hand and, before her friends can intervene, says: ‘And I hope you’re proud of yourself. I hope you are very proud of yourself, because you brought about my dad’s death.’

The other women usher her past him, but she stops and says: ‘How you could turn up here today shows you’ve got some brass neck. There’s more to life than money, but you’ll never understand that.’