Hotel George, a short story I wrote in 1999

I think I tried to get this published, but didn't. hotel george My first summer job was in Videodrome, which was apparently Ireland's first video rental, but had singularly failed to capitalise on this advantage and had let first Xtravision and now Chartbuster corner the market. The staff consisted entirely of other students and occasionally the boss, a haunted woman with an infinite sadness in her manner. This was only a few months before Videodrome went bust. Generally there were two working the evening shift, two too many considering the usual business. Mostly I worked with a guy called Dermot, a couple of years older than me. One evening we got talking about our boss and Dermot started talking about his various part time jobs over the years and the bosses he had there. And Dermot told me about "the nicest boss I ever had", his boss when he worked in a grocers in Sligo town, where he was from. "He was called George, and the people called him Hotel George. He worked from 5 in the am to 10 in the p.m., and he lived above the shop, where he had a bed and a bathroom and a radio and some books, all second-hand - no TV or video or anything more elaborate. On Sundays he would go to Mass in the morning and go visiting in the afternoon. He was in his middle fifties, and wasn't married - all the young ones coming in would tease him like, so when are we getting married Mr. George and the like. No one knew his surname. He would just smile at all this - he was so quiet, so laid back, but you knew he enjoyed his life." "His thing was this: to save up his money for a year or more even, and then travel to a really really expensive hotel, for no more than a week, sometimes less, sometimes just a night. He usually went to a hotel in Ireland, in the North sometimes. We all used to slag him about the orgies he must be getting up to, but all he said was that it was nice to be treated like royalty every once in a while." The story of Hotel George became one of those memories not quite forgotten, but lying dormant under our consciousness. Sometimes passing a fancy hotel, whatever chain of thought I was following would come round to a frugal grocer in Sligo Town, possibly living the high life just in there. Generally I never thought about him. Until I came to Boston. It was just coming to the end of August, which in the J1 routine is the time you quit your tedious, menial job and see America. So I left Chicago and spent a few days hanging around Boston being a tourist, lounging about on the couch in my friends' apartment. They were still working as furniture movers, and hinted that if I wanted a wee bit of extra money there was always a need for an extra pair of hands. Then one morning I awoke on the couch to find myself confronted by an unfamiliar figure with something of a lean and hungry look. "Will you work, will you young fella?" he asked in a high West Cork accent "Ah, good man yourself," he said without giving me time to answer or indeed form a coherent thought. In the truck my friends explained the situation - there was something of a crisis in the moving company. It was the busiest time of year, with students moving into new accommodation, and with leases expiring on September 1st, so it was all hands on deck. And they also had a big job - a mansion in a place called Quincy, which was a good distance away. I would go to Quincy in one truck with Mick, as my waker was called, trying to round up more workers en route, while the rest of the moving firm did the student jobs in the other truck, and if possible come out to Quincy to help. I would be well rewarded for my labour - indeed the boss said if I abandoned my plan to travel on to New York two days later, I could make upwards of $600 - well in excess of what I made in a week in Chicago. Barely awake, I assented, and the other truck motored merrily away. Mick had parked the truck at something of an awkward angle, and my first job would be to back it up. So off I went, waving away frantically and then making a stop sign even more frantically, for the truck was headed straight for a streetside sign. The very middles of back of the truck hit the sign, sending it flying. The truck stopped and Mick ran out. He regarded the stray sign with rather more nonchalance than I felt the situation deserved. The sign was neatly cut off just above the base. Back in the truck Mick began to introduce himself. He had been in Boston for three weeks, before which he had never driven a truck before. The conversation drifted around the Cork hurling team and football and America and the physical characteristics of young women passing by and somehow turned to prison. "Have you ever been in prison?" asked Mick "I'm afraid I never had the pleasure." "I remember the Legion threw me in prison once" "What legion?" "The French Foreign Legion. I turned up five minutes late after leave. Then they threw me in solitary. Only a hole in the ground and a canvas sack. Here, young fella, " and now he threw me a map "find the way to Quincy." I was more curious about what exactly he had done that got him thrown in solitary by the French Foreign Legion, but this new task threw me. After all, I was only familiar with the nice, touristy, historic parts of Boston, and the New England aquarium. Much consulting of indexes later, I deduced we had headed exactly the wrong way out of Boston, and then when we were on the right way, I worked out the right exit to take only after we passed it two miles before. As well as asking for directions, we also shouted at any passers-by who looked Irish passing by "Do you want a few hours work there at all?" Surprisingly enough, we received no takers on that front. Finally we reached our destination and my furniture moving career began in earnest. As work it was actually quite enjoyable. I enjoyed physical work, probably because I never had to do it usual. The problem was time. With only two of us, and a seemingly infinite amount of tables, chairs, couches and other paraphernalia, it took three hours to load the truck, and even then we had twice as much again left to move. Thus we had to take our first load to its destination, an equally salubrious suburb not all that far away it turned out, after we had managed to drive back into Boston again. Twice. Another four hours to unload, which was far harder since it involved going up steps. It was now eleven hours since I had received my unusual wake up call, ten and a half since I had eaten anything. I started to plead imminent departure to New York, but Mick's response was "Ah no, young fella, sure just a couple more hours and the lads will be out to help me, and then you can go." Fifteen hours of continuous moving, driving and sweating later, the lads arrived. The boss gave me two hundred dollars for my 18 hours of actual work (we weren't paid for driving) and, to encourage me to stay a while longer, 60 dollars in advance for a few hours more work, and told me what a good worker I was, and how much money I could make in those few days. This charm offensive was doomed to failure, since at this stage I felt like I had been kidnapped by a strange ex-Legionnaire with a definite tendency for road rage - and who, indeed, had been driving his truck without sleeping for at least twenty-six hours - and only lack of willpower and lack of assertiveness and greed was now preventing me from just walking away. I rehearsed assertive, angry voices in my head, imagined myself saying "No money and no plamás will stop me getting on that bus for New York.", standing up to the men who had subjugated my will. Six more hours later, after completing a student move, I was let go at last, with none of my speeches ever spoken. Mick shook my hand, and wished me luck with genuine emotion. I was sorry for some of the less charitable things I had though about him while he had sped around in no particular direction, shouting obscenities at motorists and various passers-by. I was free and naturally had a certain nostalgia for my captivity. Now it was too late for me to go to New York, and in the tumult of the thirty plus that had just passed, my friends had also moved, as their sublet had expired overnight, and I didn't know where they had gone. Thus I had to trudge around Boston, with my worldly possessions on my back, sweaty, unshaven, and alone. The first place I passed was the Boston Meridien Hotel, with the Stars and Stripes and the French Tricolour and the Union Jack waving above the entrance. Why not just see how much a single room is, can't be much more than a hundred bucks. 245 dollars before tax for a Queen size bed, 265 dollars before taxes for a King size bed. I asked the receptionist (more than a hint of a French accent and an expansive, beatific beauty) to factor in the taxes. 300 plus for the king, 280 odd for the queen. Oh well. I picked up my bags, a chunky sports bag and a black garbage bag that carried all the assorted material goods I'd acquired in the states, and walked out. I passed a corporate type at the entrance, made eye contact (doubtless he was looking at my bloodstained T-shirt and general air of dishevelled grandeur), and cracked 'Well, I'm off to the Holiday Inn." A pretty lame witticism, but the guy looked at me as if I'd confessed to some dreadful, sociopathic crime. A block or so away, I realised that I could certainly afford a Queen Size room. But wouldn't it be an awful waste of money, since I could surely find a fabulous hotel for under a hundred? Then all of a sudden I wanted to show the suit at the hotel entrance and I wanted to show the boss and I wanted to show Mick that here was a man for who money wasn't everything or even anything and I wanted one magnificent stupid extravagant gesture. And hadn't I made enough money to do me in Chicago? And hadn't I enough books and CDs and clothes and God knows what else to do me, all too many bundled into that black garbage bag which I had lugged around Chicago and Boston on buses and subways and who knows what streets. It would mean that financially I would be just where I was 48 hours before, except with experience of both slave labour and luxury. I turned back to the Meridien. For my money I got a little credit card key and a key to the minibar full use of the swimming pool and gym, and a complimentary shoe shine service. The receptionist asked if I wanted someone to take my luggage up. I knew what this meant - a tip, and in a place like this a rather hefty one. So I carried the old kit bag and the old black plastic sac up the elevator myself. The room was paltrier than I expected, but right now my ambitions centred on the bathroom. The bath was filled and the complimentary toiletries ransacked in a trice. After about half an hour, I suddenly realised I hadn't slept in about forty something hours, and I'd spent most of that time "straight picking" and "twisting" and various other activities in the not especially obscure arcana of the furniture moving trade. But I wanted to get full value for my money. Thus I had to balance the bliss of sleep with the joys I assumed lay elsewhere in the hotel. Out of the bath I perused the cost of the minibar. Three dollars (before taxes) for a Nantucket Nectar, which would be no more than $1.25 a few hundred metres away! Eight dollars (before taxes) for a beer! Then the breakfast options - a wide choice of exotic French names and prices which seemed to be in Francs. The movies in the hotel room would cost, laundry would cost something laughable, room service would cost big time. So this is how the rich live. It was alright for expense account freeloaders, but my money had only bought me entrance to the outer limits of paradise. I accidentally selected a film from the pay per view list messing around with the remote. Go - I wanted to see it anyway. As I watched the movie I fought off fatigue and vague regret. Think how many CDs I could have bought with that money. After the film I forced myself to explore, and remembering the swimming pool, took a pair of shorts. The fitness centre/swimming pool was an hour away from closure, and a lone Chinese woman manned the desk. Chinese massage was offered at a typically prohibitive rate. The Hotel was an "affiliate" of Air France, and I had seen various not exactly unattractive air hostesses around the lobby, which had been more than vaguely in my mind as I had come down here. But I had the facilities all to myself. A jacuzzi. Never been in one of those before. I fiddled with the switch and went in. At first the water was too warm, the motion too vigorous, yet after I while I saw the appeal. And after another while failed to see the appeal. It was boring, just sitting here, at least without the benefit of employees of Air France or any other airline. To the pool then, which seemed cold after the jacuzzi. Only 4 foot deep all over, so no danger of being out of my depth. The time passed pleasantly enough, practising my ungainly strokes, letting the water take the strain off my back, which had suffered all too much. And then a shower and wandering around the hotel, through the corridors and bars, one drink here would make quite a dent in my Chicago money, looking at the expense account people and thinking, if only they knew what I was doing last night. If only they could see the floors I've slept on, if only I had moved furniture from their house, if only they could then see me here, washed and shaved, perhaps not part of the social scene of the Hotel, a Gatsby maybe, mysterious, inscrutable, walking with kings yet keeping the common touch. As I walked through another corridor this delusion fell away. Who was I trying to kid? It was just an expensive mistake, leaving me a lost soul in the paradise of riches. I wandered aimlessly through the hotel corridors, identical deserted floor after identical deserted floor, locked conference suite after locked conference suite. As you can imagine, I tired of this and decide to head to bed; one last wander to the lobby would do me. A few businesspeople were hanging around the lobby, sleek as seals in the New England Aquarium. And there I saw him, wearing a rumpled shirt, talking to the concierge in a soft Southern States accent. It was Hotel George - perhaps not the man himself, but nevertheless him. What difference do a few proper names and four thousand miles make? Here was the humble shopkeeper, hard-working, God-fearing, gentlemanly. With unhurried kindness he cast his eyes over all he surveyed. No one had ever earned the right more. And I too had earned a little slice of this place. Even if only for a night and part of a day, it was still mine. There was no question of a waste of money. And as I went back to my room to finally get some sleep I was overwhelmed by the sheer magic of geography, countless cities and towns and neighbourhoods and boroughs and villages scattered across the globe, each perhaps with a Hotel George or some other character. From Green Bay to Sligo town to Chattanooga to Heath Row to Strasbourg to Corpus Christi to Cordoba to the Bronx to Stillorgan to Haifa to Yokohama, all over the world shy, diligent men and women, working dutifully and dreaming of hotels.

"Somewhere Near Venice", from Shelf Life Magazine Issue #14,

Somewhere near Venice, Guy began talking with a heavy, elderly man, a refugee from Germany on his way to Trieste. The gentleman in the carriage was not handsome, but neither was he particularly bad-looking; he was neither too fat, nor too thin; he could not be said to be old, but he was not too young, either. The land itself was beautiful, with hills that ran down to the sea, and there were cold green waves that broke on the rocks that marked the edge of the land. No sound can be heard from the fields. But I don’t understand the least thing about my illness, and I don’t know for certain what part of me is affected.


The supine figure could almost have been sleeping were it not for the eyes. When the Simibirsk, of the Russian Volunteer Fleet, had at last completely vanished, carrying away the three sisters to Shanghai, I came back to my room at the hotel. She sighed, and sipped, and then to my dismay trotted them out. Of blood that laughs when the tenets mutter ‘Weep’. Then Roscommon stumbled out and tore down our badminton net. From the open windows of her sickroom, a warm draught stirs the loose white hair at her neck, bringing scents of coal smoke, jasmine, opium.

You was in India, and that’s not the East any more than this is. Liebermann edged forward. Janet must have opened the window before she left. Was he born in Paris? “Drink – Rum”.


A dazzling ray of light slanted in through the trees. I was eating chocolate cake and drinking fragolino, a sweet swarthy wine distilled from the strawberry grape, in my bath. A woman in a black dress with a lace collar had led them to the table.





Seamus Sweeney is a writer from Dublin. He won the 2010 Molly Keane Short Story Competition.


Note on the composition of "Somewhere Near Venice"

Take a bookshelf (perhaps you can do this with a Kindle or the like as well, but an old fashioned shelf of old fashioned books has a certain physical reality to it). Take the first book on the left. Copy the first sentence. Then, copy the second sentence from the second book. Then, the third sentence from the third book. Then, the fourth sentence from the fourth book. I'm sure you are getting the picture. You can either confine yourself to fiction (I did) or not. On our shelves, as well as the volumes already there, there are infinitely many other possible narratives waiting to be combined. I imagine a perfect library in which this method can be used to compose an entirely fresh and coherent new story.

Books used:
The Great Fortune - Olivia Manning
Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol
Dream Angus - Alexander McCall Smith
Sorochintsy Fair - Nikolai Gogol (from "Village Evenings Near Dikanka")
Notes from underground - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Witchdoctor of Chisale - Stephen McWilliams
Futility - William Gerhardie
Flashman and the mountain of light - George macdonald Fraser
Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake
Zodiac - the Eco thriller - Neal Stephenson
The Difference Engine - William Gibson and Bruce Sterling
Time For A Tiger - Anthony Burgess
Vienna Blood - Frank Tallis
The Fit - Philip Hensher
What a strange creature is man - Johann Peter Hebel (from The Treasure Chest)
"The Balance" - Evelyn Waugh (from Collected Short Stories)
He who fears the wolf - Karin Fossum
Quentins - Maeve Binchy

"The Solitary Golfer" Written in 2004. Published on nthposition.com March 2012

Simon loved being on a golf course. Happiest playing the course alone, free of having to compete with another player, free of the steady succession of patients, he found the game an unexpected source of solace and freedom. In his surgery there was control, there were books, the internet, even Sandra’s advice on the mobile if need be - but there was still the unknowable, the potential chaos and hassle brought by every new patient.
Thursdays he took a half day. Before Paul Gildea had come back from America, he used this time to read and daydream. After this, he played golf with Prof Gildea each Thursday. They had been in medical school together, and lived with each all the way through college. Simon found that he began to enjoy the experience of being out playing golf, and began to play every Thursday, even if Paul Gildea was at a conference or otherwise engaged.
At ten to one that morning he had seen Mrs Watters. She had been attending the practice for ten years. Always presenting with headaches, or backaches, or general fatigue, nothing was ever discovered to be the matter with her. Simon knew, for Beda the practice nurse knew, that Mr Watters drank - not in a spectacular, destructive way, but in the slow corrosive way of late middle aged disappointment. It seemed obvious to Simon, at this stage, that Mrs Watters' great disappointment with her life had transmuted itself into aches and pains, but every time he asked how things were at home, or if she felt stressed, or if things were OK between herself and her husband, she smiled and denied anything was wrong. This would usually frustrate Simon, but he found Mrs Watters likeable, always feeling a strong desire to put his arm around her and tell her that it was alright, no one would judge her if she admitted the truth.
Today, Mrs Watters looked a little more drawn than usual.
"I'm very tired, Doctor."
She had been tired two months ago, when she was last seen, and Simon had ordered routine bloodwork which was - as always - absolutely fine.
"Are you more tired than two months ago?"
Simon was hungry, and was consciously trying not to seem irritated, for anxiety not to offend her.
"Its more intense tiredness. Then I was tired all the time. Now I'm tired right through me, all the way."
"Has anything happened?"
"No, nothing, everything is fine. It's only that - well my appetite is totally gone." This was another frequent symptom of Mrs Watters', investigated many times.
"Do you get food into you?"
"It's a struggle. I don't, really."
Simon had resolved the last time to limit the investigations on Mrs Watters. This was a recurrent resolution.
"Let's go back to the tiredness. How are you sleeping?"
"I'm sleeping better than I was, but I just feel exhausted. I go to bed for a nap after a few hours and sleep the afternoon."
This was a new variation. Simon paused, and then launched fluently into a explanation he had given many times before.
"Now Mrs Watters, you know that isn't a good idea. If you nap during the day, you'll have a worse quality sleep at night, even if you sleep. If you just stay up through the tiredness, you'll feel better in the long run."
"I've tried that, I've really tried, but I'm just so tired."
"I really think if you try for even a week, it'll make a big difference."
What he disliked about golf was having to take it seriously. It was a chance to be in the open air, to daydream. It was an escape from the cares of running a clinic, not only the stress of seeing patients but of managing the practice, ensuring everyone got paid and had their ego massaged appropriately. Paul used the game to regale Simon with malicious gossip about medical and academic figures Simon had usually only dimly heard of, if at all.
The day had begun with towering slate grey clouds looming from the Atlantic, usually the harbinger of the inescapable rain. Today, however, the day had turned out sunny. Dr Simon Harris, who took everything he told his patients seriously, shifted a little uneasily in the sun. He had no sunblock or sunglasses, and thought of all the old ladies and gentlemen he had solemnly commanded to always cover themselves in Factor 50 at the very least, and to make sure to wear proper ultraviolet-resistant sunglasses. Prof Gildea, who liked to holiday in Florida ever since working there as a medical resident, strutted confidently in the sun. Simon, feeling fat and red-faced beside him, was crushed at cutting such a ridiculous figure.
Futhermore, he was worried about Mrs Watters. He had managed not to order any investigations, which was a victory. And yet he thought back to his consultation. She did look like she had lost weight. She looked drawn. Why hadn't he done a quick physical? She was the last patient before lunchtime, or on Thursdays finishing for the day, and he had been impatient. Despite his liking for her, his desire to comfort her and help her, he had been impatient. Thursday afternoons were a time he felt younger, when Paul Gildea was a satisfyingly bitchy companion and, by his gossip, seemed to treat him as an equal.
The night before, after dinner and a few glasses of wine at Paul’s house, Simon had lain awake for two hours, or maybe more, picking over the endless I-me-my-mines of his old friend’s conversation. He felt guilty at resenting Paul, and wondered if it was rooted in resentment at how far his academic and social star had risen. No, he didn’t think so. Paul was still very nice to him, very considerate. He suddenly thought - one could be considerate, kind even, and yet utterly self-absorbed. Indeed, the listener - or rather the one who had the privilege to attend to the egoist’s remarks - with their individual virtues, could become part of the awesome, humbling egotism of Paul Gildea.
For it was an egotism so monumental it humbled, a force of nature; which Simon found it hard to blame Paul for. Paul had always had a fairly healthy opinion of his own worth, but in the last year the self-absorption seemed to have taken nearly entire hold of his person. Simon noticed it in his every utterance - everything he said seemed intended largely to reflect the greatness of Paul Gildea. It was impossible to converse with him any more. He delivered monologues, anecdotes which he seemed to have learnt off by heart. Simon had a mental image of him getting up early each morning and polishing his lines in the mirror each morning. Paul did not so much brook no interruption as carry on unregarding of not only interruption, but the normal conversational give-and-take. It seemed at times as if he was afraid, as if he felt that to allow the other to speak would compromise him in some way. Only on the golf course did he seem to relax - a little. For there, while he needed to dominate the conversation, he seemed to want to entertain.
On the par four 15th, Simon hit the ball sweetly, full on. For once, he knew he had hit a good shot. He experienced the keen pleasure of something done well. The satisfaction of achieving. At instants like this, Simon understood why some became so fixated on golf. If only it could be a succession of these moments and nothing else, free of the false bonhomie hiding so much resentment and disappointment, free of the losing and the failure.
The ball flew high and true. It would get close to the green, Simon thought. No, it would get closer - it would make the green. It flew right towards the hole, and Simon and Paul both were seized by a feeling of certainty of what was about to happen. The ball neatly disappeared into the hole.
“A hole in one!” said Gildea, redundantly. “and on a par four too!” It was the sort of obvious thing the new Paul Gildea would say, except Simon did not mind, for this time it was said simply and unaffectedly. For an instant the achievement transcended things. They were simply two figures on the golf course, enraptured by one of those special moments that made sport worthwhile.
In the silence, Paul addressed the ball. He played (as Simon almost always did) woefully and holed in ten. The quiet continued as he completed the hole.
Walking to the next tee, Paul said “A funny thing happened the other day” and Simon knew that what he was about to hear would certainly not be funny. He tightened his buttocks and curled his toes, and tried to assume an interested expression. Does Paul notice the disappointment, disdain even, on my face? he thought. Simon however was already in anecdotal midstream, and Paul knew from experience it was impossible to steer back to any shore.
That morning, before they had gone to work.
"I need a break. We need a break, I should say."
"Where would you like to go?"
"Well, I know I don't want to just go to Connemara and do what we always do."
"Oh, you know I don't mind much where we go."
"But you never want to go anywhere new."
"Well, I guess I do think that if you own a holiday home, you should get use out of it."
"I know, I know. But we've been done six weekends already this year. We've got great use out of it. We get nearly as much out of it as our own house."
"I have no problem going anywhere."
"But you always do, Simon, you always worry about the money."
"Well, that isn't so unreasonable."
"Simon, we have nothing to worry about."
"We still have to finish off the mortgage."
"Yes, in triple quick time. Everyone else is buying property to invest, to let out. While we are just in hock to your fantasy about living without debt."
"Is it a fantasy? We are nearly there. In another year it'll be a reality."
"Look, why not celebrate by going somewhere really nice?"
"Like where?"
"South Africa."
"South Africa." he trailed off. A trip to South Africa would hardly be bad. "Would it be expensive?"
"We could always take out a loan?"
"Why?"
"Not this again. Oh, Simon, this is so bloody irritating."
"I just don't see the point in getting into debt."
Simon was happy enough to stay around and read novels during his holidays or perhaps go to the bungalow in Connemara. Dutifully he went on ski-ing holidays with Sandra and the Maxwells - she a psychiatrist from Sandra’s college class, he engaged in some line of business Simon could never pin down - despite the fact that the activity held no interest for him whatsoever. He would gingerly slide down the basic slopes, while Sandra and the Maxwells went straight to the black ones. These holidays had resumed after a break of some years now the Maxwells children were older. The children too could ski with verve and confidence. All Simon could do was the snow plough, badly.
At moments of loneliness in the early years of college, Simon would think to himself “I was the brightest student in one of the best schools in the country. Therefore, I’m one of the brightest people of my age in Ireland. Therefore, I’m not too far from being among the brightest people of my own age in Europe.” He drew comfort from this. He imagined himself, after a few years of medical practice, pioneering some new treatment or - better yet - conceiving an entirely new concept in medicine. Then, in retrospect, his early years in medicine, barely passing each exam despite long hours of looking at textbooks and anatomy atlases.
He had always been around pass or at most low second class honours standard. Academic achievement was something that you never talked about, but everyone coveted.
Harris didn’t think he was a bad GP. He was kindly, and sympathetic, and had developed enough clinical confidence to have a pretty good idea what needed to be referred on and what could be kept at his level. He knew many of the patients, particularly the older ladies, had become slightly dependent on him. He had a certain edge of fear, the fear not just of litigation but of the shame of anything that he could possibly accuse himself as malpractice. As an intern, once he noticed an elevated sodium on a patient who had subsequently died, but hadn't discussed it with anyone superior, until he was asked about the patient an hour or so later. Simon knew - he knew at the time - that it would be stretching the point considerably to blame him for this, but he still felt that if any, even the remotest, possible blame attached to him, he was complicit in a wrongful death.
Is this what I want? he often asked himself. He still indulged in the schoolboy dreaming of making some great discovery - a Harris constant, a Harris’ procedure, a Harris equilibrium.
Life was good. Sandra was extremely congenial company. They had a beautiful house in Galway and a neat bungalow in Connemara. They had had no children.
It was the alphabet that brought Professor Paul Gildea, Professor of Medicine at the University of Galway, and Dr Simon Harris together. Gibson, Sorcha. Gleeson, Sandra. Gleeson, Suzanne. Gildea, Paul. Harris, Simon. That little group, for six years, sat in tutorials together, gave presentations to each other, was ignored in outpatients and ignored on ward rounds, and ultimately filed up one after another for their degrees, their brief moment with the President of the College. Of the six, Simon had married Gleeson, Sandra, had lost touch with Gleeson, Suzanne and Gibson, Sorcha, still played the odd game of golf with Fadden, Eamon and was the best friend and confidant of Gildea, Paul.
Paul had returned to become Professor of Medicine two years previously, the youngest incumbent in living memory and wildly believed to be the youngest Professor of Medicine in Irish medical history. He had come back from Boston, having established an international reputation in his field.
Calm, judicious, politically adept in the widest sense, Professor Paul Gildea was the risen star of Irish medicine whose horizons were still expanding. The only question was, what next? He had already been inducted onto various committees, and was spoken of as the most influential voice in shaping health reform in the country. All sides, even the most seemingly radical, in the often vicious debates about the nature of the reform seemed to feel that Professor Paul Gildea was on their side.
With Simon, Paul could relax. They played appalling golf together, laughing until Simon’s cheeks seemed to hurt at the successive awfulness of each of their games and for once Simon felt it wasn’t such a bad game after all. That was the first year of Paul’s return, the first few months when things seemed as they were. .
Sandra shoved The Connacht Advertiser under Simon's nose. She wheeled around, obviously gleeful; Simon tried to decide if it was innocent or malicious glee.
"Look who it is."
She pointed vaguely at the page. Simon looked down, but could only make out a sea of print and photos.
"Who? Where?"
"There." She pointed at an ad in the left-hand corner.
It was a full page ad in the tabloid section of the paper. “Dr Simon MacSorley, Natural Healer” was printed in large letters on the top of the page. “Simon MacSorley, a Registered Medical Practitioner with a degree from the University of Galway and qualifications in Chinese and Ayurvedic (Indian) Medicine, will be in attendance at the Merlin Park Hotel every Saturday during April”, it read.
“So that’s where he is,” commented Paul. Sandra had taken back the paper. She started reading from the advertisement in an archly sarcastic tone. Paul hated it when she read stories from the paper in tones of either righteous indignation or of outright mockery. She would say something like “you should read this” and, after he had made some noncommittal noise, begin to read it out aloud. It was annoying, but a habit he objectively saw was so trivial that he could never bring himself to say anything to Sandra.
“Dr MacSorley has travelled Asia and South America studying traditional healing in those countries,” she put a special emphasis on the word ‘countries’, “as well as immersing - immersing - himself in the faith healing tradition taught by Fr Antonio del Amici in Padua, Italy.”
If Simon Harris was someone who never quite fulfilled his promise, Simon MacSorley did not have any promise to squander in anyone’s imagination. He had been a completely unknown presence to his peers as well as to the faculty when an undergraduate, both as a preclinical and as a clinical student. He had failed into the year Simon Harris' graduated form after beginning two years previously, and somehow managed to get through despite having to repeat nearly every exam. MacSorley was neither a big drinker nor a great socialiser - indeed no-one knew him well. He graduated with his peers as a sort of afterthought. There was a certain amount of bitterness expressed by some. They had slaved so hard, had turned up at so many lectures and on so many early hospital mornings to be roundly ignored, that it seemed unfair that MacSorley had the same degree as they did. There was even talk of a petition.
By now he was the object not of sorrow but of pity. MacSorley had become an infamously hopeless intern - not lazy, not dangerous as such (enough checks and balances were in place), but hopeless. He was adequate at internship, but his was an adequacy that would go no further. He managed not to land a job after Intern year and spent time wandering around looking for work, and had then got a place on one of the nascent GP schemes. Soon he was dismissed from this for chronic non-attendance at his Obs and Gynae rotation. “By mutual consent” was the phrase used in the inevitable gossipy exchanges in the medical world.
Mrs Reilly was one of Simon’s regulars. At least thrice weekly she attended the clinic, with the elderly constellation of anxiety, arthritis, hypertension and at the back of it all loneliness and a fear of the next world.
Paul was neither particularly anti-alternative medicine not completely for it. He could reconcile an ungrudging appreciation of its possibilities with a cynicism about the scientific basis, or lack thereof, of the enterprise. His attitude could be summarised as: it might make them feel better, but does it actually work?
Mrs Reilly’s major complaint was rheumatoid arthritis, for which she was on a great range of conventional and unconventional treatments. None seemed to make much difference to searing pain of the evenings. She habitually wore a little brass band, purportedly magnetic, on each wrist, as well as various scapulars.
But today things were different. Mrs Reilly walked in - no, she bounced in. Paul, in the five years he had been attached to the practice, had known her to be his most consistently unhappy patient. Always the pain of the arthritis, always the worry of being worried.
“How are you, Mrs Reilly?” he asked.
“How are you, Doctor?”
“I’m fine. I have to say you look marvellous.”
“Doctor Mac Sorley has me cured,” she announced.
Doctor MacSorley’s name was being mentioned more and more by the patients. Most of them felt just as bad, or worse, after whatever exactly MacSorley did to them or for them - nevertheless, their reverence for him held. Simon began to feel a resentment at this unquestioning allegiance.
Simon had his memories of first year physics, and his later reading of popular science magazines, to thank for his big idea.
Every so often, seized by an enthusiasm for science, he bought a copy of the New Scientist. Seduced by the fascinating variety of the world of science depicted therein, he would subscribe to the magazine, and over the next year accumulate a stack of unread copies. For he was much more interested in the publication as an abstract entity than a reality. He would flick through the news at the front, then the letters and the amusing column at the end, start on one of the feature articles which always seemed to promise much more than they delivered, and that would be that.
He would unwrap each from the plastic wrapping, for he would feel guilty if he left the magazines not only unread but unopened (like the medical weeklies) After a while he would put the growing pile into the attic, with the other unread copies.
It was a long summer for him. Sandra’s annual leave had all been taken earlier in the year, and St Elizabeth’s Maternity was much busier than usual. Thus he was spending the earlier part of most evenings alone. The slight disappointment he had began to always feel grew. He began to think on what might have been. He should have studied history, or even better done pure science. Then he would have achieved something, left some kind of mark.
He had always felt an affinity for Simon MacSorley, possibly because of their shared first name, but more fundamentally because they were both, in very different ways, at odds with the mass of the class. MacSorley had done something with his life, he thought. Something ridiculous perhaps, but remembering Sandra’s cut phrases of disdain, Simon felt a great sympathy for him. Sandra at times like that took on the form of the great, impersonal world, crushing the spirits brave and eccentric enough to follow their own paths.
Simon Harris had never really been an enthusiast for “travel”, but the idea of MacSorley’s travels - not the travels themselves or the places he had gone, but the idea of them, with their search for the healing, the search for the sublime, appealed to his sense of life as a novelistic series of grand gestures. He had come to believe that the rational calculation of advantage was not only impossible, but not a true motivator for any human being, no matter how seemingly rational. People acted as they were emotionally impelled to. The rationalisations followed. This was not a call to indulgence of whims; Simon’s own thrift, for example, was his own emotional need and also in his own interest.
He was not naturally given to ruminating, and after a short while he would get up, pace around the house, and start reading a book. Or watch TV for a while, although he disliked the passivity. It was better than the ruminating, and then Sandra would come back and they would talk over the events of the day.
One evening this ruminating went on longer than usual. What might have been, if only I had used my talents, he thought. A prize he had won in school for science writing - it was on quantum physics, Simon forgot most of the details - had come into his mind. It felt so recent; his self-image was the same as that fifteen-year old. This is what the passing time means, he thought, the realisation that possibility has come to an end. And then, returning suddenly to his usual essential optimism, he thought no, that isn’t necessarily it.
He got up and went to the attic, and began to dig around the stack of old New Scientists. Then he found it.
“The Computing Power of the World in a cup of tea.” The cover showed a cup of tea in plain white mug, against a white background. One could barely tell where the cup ended and the background began. Only the crescent of brown liquid reassured the viewer that this was a cup of tea. It was an article he had never finished, but the idea had stayed with him.
The article itself he skimmed over, reading the enticing opening paragraph with great attention but gradually losing interest as the article became more detailed. The idea of immense computing power in a little liquid stuck with him. Sometimes he wondered if something like the colloid plasma expanders who used to write up for intravenous administration for so many patients when he was a young doctor might do the job.
If only he had devoted his life to something like this! It was not too late. But where to begin? After all, he couldn’t even finish the article.
Then he thought of the savings he had accumulated with Sandra. They had bought a house in Galway when the prices were reasonably, and two doctors had no problem getting a mortgage at at time when this was not to be taken for granted. As the mortgage reduced in scale, their not inconsiderable salaries had gone into high-interest accounts. And all through the years Simon himself had put a thousand pounds here, a few hundred euro there, into various saving certificates and government bonds and forestry shares.
“The Irish Investor’s Bible” - that was the subtitle of Investment Republic, the magazine which Dr Harris subscribed to. Usually he would hop over from the surgery at lunchtime, and would pick up the post. He hid this from Sandra, feeling a vague shame. It would be like being found with a self-help book, of which he had more than a few hidden in drawers and amongst piles of clothes Simon liked to keep in touch with the world of investments, as high yield and low risk as possible. These aspirations are of course mutually contradictory, and up to now he had always leaned towards the low risk.
Therefore, for a long time he had never looked in the section called “Investment Opportunities” Investing in a company as opposed to a savings plan, guaranteed by a reputable financial institution, had never appealed to Simon, but now - mesmerised by the idea of money as a stairway to, if not scientific eminence, than the visionary status of a Craig Venter, he looked eagerly every month, especially for the magic q word. He might not understand quantum computing, but he knew that his greatness, his destiny, lay in the field.
And one day it appeared. Quark Quantum Qumputer Inc. Simon giggled at the name. How could it be so incredibly perfect? Then he read the brief profile. Q3, as they referred to themselves throughout, were a start up company based in Duluth, Minnesota. Their CEO was Allan Archibald Montgomery. They intended “to bring the quantum revolution into every living room.” They were looking for an investor with one million U.S. dollars to kickstart their work. They had a promising prototype quantum computer. For more details send an email to info@q3.com. Simon accepted this invitation.
A week later so some folders came through the post. Simon had got into the habit of coming back home at lunchtime to check the mail. There were pages and pages of diagrams - the prototype computer was a small gel which exploited gammatronic properties of Polybendium. That sounded good. There were many press cuttings - from newspapers such as the Pennsylvania Democrat-Enquirer, the Skokie Constitution-Telegraph, the Alabama Vanguard and the Peoria Post-Palimpsest, from magazines such as Investment Frontiers, Technology and Computing Quarterly and The Monthly Atlantean. Simon had never heard of any of these publications before, but they were all evidently genuine - in the margins of each photocopied piece there were items of unfakeable local colour - Senators and Congressmen and Mayors praising or denouncing this or that, Skokie and Peoria residents achieving notable feats or bemoaning official apathy.
There were pages of financial details, which boiled down to one salient fact - investors who put their money into Quark Quantum Qumputer would have a unique opportunity to get involved in the tomorrow’s biggest technology - today. Not only were riches promised, but a place in history.
Why not? Why not? The thought stayed with him all through the afternoon and evening clinics. He sent another email later that evening, before Sandra came home. This was addressed directly to Allan Archibold Montgomery. In it, Simon proposed that he invest one million dollars in Q3
Two days later, he received a reply.
“Dear Dr Harris,” it began. As he opened it, Simon felt a surge of joy, of anxiety. “We would of course be absolutely delighted to have you on board. In exchange for your generous investment, we can guarantee you a seat on the board of Q3, and 20% of all profits for the next ten years. As the Q3PO prototype is nearing the end of beta testing, we anticipate a launch date in the next eighteen to twenty months.”
It continued in this vein for a while, and ended with a request for wire transfer of funds to an account in Duluth. They would dispatch contracts of agreement immediately, and once returned signed Dr Simon Harris would be “on board” the Quark Quantum Qumputer bandwagon.
“Separate accounts and separate beds”, Sandra had once read before marriage, and sometimes repeated, “are the secret of a successful marriage.” Simon was glad she had ignored both parts of the saying, and she entrusted their savings to Simon. Cashing in all their savings plans, Simon knew he could raise two hundred thousand euro. Not enough.
What about the house? His name was the only one on the deed. Sandra had never bothered to make any enquiries about it. She need never know. Their income was pretty much guaranteed, and once Q3 came good there would be no problem in any case. There was the flat above the King’s Head that they had bought as a buy-to-let investment. Every academic year it was let to students, and then in summers it would be let to tourists, or JYAers from the States.
Simon couldn’t face evicting the students now, right before their exams. For he wanted the money quickly; he wanted to have made the investment yesterday. There was a rush of impatience in him that would not be satisfied to wait. As he sat in front of Montgomery’s email, his thoughts turned to Paul Gildea. Arrogant, masterful Paul Gildea, strutting around the golf course, talking about his keynote presentation to the European Society of Renal Medicine or somesuch body of chancers. Paul Gildea. Simon resolved that he would outstrip Paul Gildea, outstrip him easily.
Sandra rang at this point. She had been driving home when a call came from the hospital - a woman in the twenty-third week of pregnancy coming in. She had to rush back to the maternity hospital. It could be late when she got back. She was sorry, Simon told her not to be.
He would do it. Tomorrow, he would go into Connacht Building Society and remortgage the house as soon as possible. He could arrange to cancel the morning clinics for a few days next week, arrange to have a valuer come round, and within a few days the remortgaging would be arranged. A house three doors down with only three bedrooms had gone for six hundred thousand euro the previous month. Theirs should easily realise at least that. At the current rate of exchange, he should easily be able to accumulate a million dollars.
Three weeks after he had went into the Bank of Ireland, and waving his passport at the disbelieving manager, arranged to have the million dollars transferred to the Q3 account, Simon sent another email to Montgomery. Where are the memoranda of agreement that were to be sent, the contracts? He had been anticipating their appearance in every post. He then thought that they would be delivered by registered mail.
There was no reply. And no reply either to the succeeding emails. At first, Simon told himself that something had perhaps gone wrong with the email server. He also wondered if the money had disappeared into the ether. There had been something unbelievable about the series of transactions. He had been a millionaire, and then no longer a millionaire, without ever seeing any money. A check at the bank had confirmed that the money had gone into the Minnesota account. The account had, further enquiries confirmed, since been closed.
Simon would always have been terrified of just this eventuality. Yet now he faced it with utter equanimity. After all, their salaries were equal to the mortgage repayments. And despite the evaporation of Q3 - their website still existed out there in cyberspace, but no-one answered the phones - Simon felt that at least he had staked his all on something. Sandra noticed his detached air, but didn’t say anything. It was just Simon. She felt no guilt when she rang to say she was working late, and then drove to a room in the Radisson Hotel to change for dinner with Paul Gildea.
There was no reason things couldn’t go on as they were, Simon realised with relief and disappointment. There was no reason things couldn’t go on as they were, until one day Sandra came home. She came into the living room, where Simon was reading the Irish Times, evidently holding herself together with great difficulty.
“I had a needlestick today. In theatre.”
A needlestick incident. Of itself, this wouldn’t necessarily be anything to worry about, he thought. There would be a tiresome series of tests. It happened to him every so often. Usually he ignored it. In hospitals, and especially in theatre, it was harder to just carry on - so many people saw it.
Sandra continued with a clipped delivery. “She’s HIV positive. High risk. High viral load. It’s always the way.”
What did that mean, “it’s always the way?” Simon thought. Then he realised that Sandra had abandoned her mask of self-control and was weeping openly. He went to embrace her, folding his arms around her awkwardly.
She cried and cried, and then composed herself. Then she told him she needed to take some time off work for the series of blood tests that would be required. The initial tests might be negative, but she would need to have them again over the months. Due to the bloody nature of her branch of medicine, she would have to take this time off work.
“Still,” she was almost smiling as she wiped away tears, “we have all those income protection insurance things, don’t we?”
She was smiling fully now, with a look that said “I always thought you were a dry stick, but now look who’s right.”
Simon felt fear grasp his intestines. There was no way to avoid it now. Perhaps he could tell her half the truth, tell her that he had cashed in some of those policies, but leave out the mortgage and the bulk of their savings.
But he realised that he couldn’t - not anymore. Each lie would only lie buried for a little while, and would then be uncovered. He would have to tell her everything.
“Sandra, I have to tell you something about that.”
She looked alarmed. He wondered what was the best, the most persuasive way to explain what had happened.
“Sandra, you do know that when I was young, I was one of the most brilliant boys in one of the best schools in the country...“ he began.
Simon walked out of the house. It would always be empty for him from now on. It was the end of the academic year, and the flat above the Kings’ Head was becoming free. He got into the waiting taxi, looking back at the door. Sandra wasn’t there.
It had all been smooth, really. Respective solicitors had taken care of everything. One day he had gone back, to get his clothes and a few books. It had been pre-arranged that Sandra would not be there. The practice was finished, after all.
When he got back to the flat, he went straight to the bedroom and lay down. He was wrecked, too tired to move his things from the house into the flat. They could stay in the car another couple of hours, what harm?
What will I do now? He thought, and for the first time he realised that this was more than just what would he do for the rest of the evening. This was what now for the rest of my life. He couldn’t go back to the practice, that was certain. While his medical registration was obviously unaffected by all this, the incident at the conference had ended it all forever. His patients had been taken over by Dr de Morgan, an eager young man with none of Simon’s apprehensions and hang-ups.
He looked through his phone numbers. He still had Simon MacSorley’s number, as he hoped. He went to find a pay phone, for he could no longer pay the mobile phone bill.
Three months later he was walking along the beach at Berehaven. Running up a sand-dune, he felt exhilarated. He had become used to the life as Simon MacSorley’s Personal Assistant, seeing the desperate men and women who came to see him.
The day of the interview with MacSorley, he put on a suit. He went back to his parents' home to pick it up. It was the suit he had worn for work experience with an estate agents firm when he was in school. He had lost so much weight that it now fitted once again.
The interview hadn't lasted long.
"Ha, you. Not so up yourself now, are you?"
"I'm sorry."
"You and that Sandra. Weren't you great? Well, how the mighty have fallen, eh?"
"Look, I don't need this..."
"But you do. You wouldn't be here if you didn't. And I can tell you something else too. All of this is bull. Only fools and dopes could believe it. You have got to pretend you do, and you don't have to pretend very well, because Simon boy you wouldn't believe how bloody stupid people are. They believe what they want to believe."
Simon came to hate the work more than he hated Simon. However he slept well, and felt full of energy and enthusiasm. He made the little bit of money that was needed, and most of all he had no limit on his time. He could walk in the wind and rain, and felt connected to the universe then. He had tried. The universe carried on, oblivious to our efforts, our triumphs, our failures.
As he reached the top of the sand dune, he suddenly realised how close he was to the golf course. The realisation came just as the course itself came into view, and all at once he could see Paul Gildea and Sandra on the course. They were laughing, and Gildea was standing astride Sandra, taking her hands through the motions of the swing. She never played golf before, was Simon’s first thought. He then noticed their physical proximity, their ease together.
Simon saw them on the course, and told himself: To hell with them. I feel sorry for them, I feel sorry for their lives. Not half as beautiful as mine is now.
He said this to himself a few times, but he didn’t feel it. He didn’t feel sorry for them. Try hard as he could, he really longed for the warmth of Sandra again. The wind picked up a step, and the gust made Simon shiver. And with that shiver, Simon suddenly felt the beauty of the world, and he felt sorry for the laughing golfers.

"The Driver", winner of Molly Keane Memorial Creative Writing Award 2010

The driver

The driver.

I have seen things that you people would never believe. I have driven into the sunset on the coast road between Gortahork and Gweedore, driving along the height of Bloody Foreland with nothing but some stone walls and the Atlantic Ocean between my car door and Newfoundland. I have got gloriously lost along the roads north of New Ross, emerging somewhere near Borris having driven through a vision of green innocence, with Van Morrison on the CD player singing about walking and talking in gardens all misty wet with rain. I have gloried in the sleek smooth drive that is the M50 at four in the morning, communing with the sodium-lit bulk of Dublin’s industrial outskirts all around.

I am of Ireland. I have slept in my car in commuter towns; Newbridge, Arklow, Rathcormac. I have slept in the carparks of Belfast, Derry, Galway, Kilkenny, Waterford, Athlone, Newry, Armagh, Drogheda and Dundalk.I have recognised no division between North and South; wherever I can park my car, that’s my home.
Call me Alan. I am a captain, and the roads are my Mississippi River, my Seven Seas. I have listened to the greatest minds of their generation debate on my in car world band radio; from London, from New York, even from the RTE studios. I have contemplated mortality to the sound of Beethoven’s late quartets, while driving the stony gray roads of Monaghan. I have felt buoyant and weightless while singing to the electropop of MGMT while crossing the border on the M1. I have felt rooted, part of a timeless Celtic twilight, listening to sean nós on the road to Clifden.
I am Alan, and I am a driver. I work as a Sales and Marketing Manager with a mobile broadband company, and my role is to travel the country ensuring our nationwide sales teams are fully up to speed with the latest promotions and products. I have worked in this job for eight years. Before that, I lived in an apartment in Maynooth, and commuted on the train to Dublin. I’m from Athy, and after three strange years in UCD – from the first day until graduation I felt like something marvellous was about to be revealed, and college would become the wonderful, revelatory, spectacular experience I had always wanted it to be. It never happened, and though I was not unhappy, I was not entirely unhappy. Those days, a job was waiting on graduation, and I was helping to plan marketing strategy a few weeks after leaving college. Soon I bought an apartment – in those days – well, you know the rest.
I loved commuting. I love being part of the great engine that disgorged masses of people into Dublin city every morning, and I loved knowing that across Ireland, across Europe, across the world the same thing was happening. I felt connected in the train, and bus – for having got into Heuston Station, I had two buses to get to the warehouse housing the company office – to everyone else, to the unsmiling faces, to the cups of coffee grimly grasped in each arm. I fantasised about the women on the train and on the bus, and cherished memories of brief conversations.
When I was promoted, I had to get a car, and resurrect driving skills I hadn’t used since being taught by my father in a hotel car park near Athy. At first, I thought I would miss public transport, miss being part of the great machine. Now, while I would be part of the machinery of commuting, I would be an atomised one. Or so I feared.

Three months into my driving life I had my epiphany. I could sell my apartment, for what I knew ever then was a ludicrous amount of money compared to its real cost. I cannot claim any prescience about this – just that I always felt property was a rather dull, unproductive investment, and I was better off with as much liquidity as possible. I wanted a liquid life, and I realise in my battered Toyota Starlet, with a surprisingly strong heater and a passenger seat that reclined to nearly horizontal, I could achieve the ultimate liquidity.

So I became a driver in a floating world. My parents’ address was used for driving licences, payroll purposes, bank statements, and such. They had never really approved of my getting an apartment, and all told, as I slept there about one weekend a month, began to see me more often than any time since leaving school. This delighted them, and they didn’t ask too many questions about the apartment. My salary went straight into my bank account, and without mortgage or rent, and with the bulk of my petrol paid for, as well as most lunches during the week and expenses for accommodation for more distant trips (I would still sleep in the hotel car park) my liquidity steadily increased. As the rest of my generation lumbered themselves with more and more debt, I was going in the opposite direction.

I could easily have bought a more glamorous car, by the way – any car would have been more glamorous – but I didn’t want to. I was fiercely proud of the Starlet. I loved the way she could accelerate so well, how she was so light and maneoverable and yet sturdy. I got her serviced every ten thousand miles, and as I treated her well, so she treated me well.
The Toyota Starlet is not a car that excites. And yet, she proved more than adequate for romantic assignations. My lack of a permanent residence actually saved me from complications. I was not in a place where I wanted a lasting relationship. I went out for two years with Judith, the director of an accountancy firm – a woman who was, in fact, younger than me. She was a very good accountant. She was usually in London during the week, despite being supposedly based in Dublin. We met at weekends, and I would stay in her apartment sometimes, but more often drop her home. She liked the Starlet, she liked my lack of pretension, my lack of any desire to impress her. I treated her well, and generously, and listened to her tales of workplace woe. My parents liked her. She didn’t believe me when I said I lived in the car, and in the end thought I was lying to her about it. That ended it. I felt annoyed at the time, but then rationalised the whole thing, and then felt better so quickly I realised how little I had wanted a serious relationship.

A year or so later, there was Alison, the surgeon-in-training. We had met at Mondello. I often paid to take the Starlet around the track there, to the amusement of the staff. One day, while drinking a coffee in the reception after a few laps, I noticed a tall red-haired girl looking at me. Her car was certainly far more glamorous than mine. This was, I would later discover, one of her very few weekends off, and she was indulging herself by driving this beautiful sports car very fast.

Alison worked in Dublin, then in Cork, then in Limerick, then Dublin again. I would say she lived in those cities too, but she didn’t really. She worked. If I wasn’t nearby, which was most of the time, I would talk to her on the phone at ten or eleven or night, and she would tell me about her day. I didn’t always follow her tales of workplace woe, but it sounded pretty bad. She would start work at quarter to seven each morning. It was a little different at the weekends, but not much. If I was nearby, I would pick her up from work at night. More often than not – much more often than not – she would fall asleep in the Starlet, and I would drive the city streets, until the morning, or rather the hour before dawn, came, and it was time for her to work again. She never questioned what happened.

I think I did love Alison, the sleeping girl in the passenger seat, while I drove the M50 or the Outer Ring. I remember being told once that we all look younger sleeping. Alison certainly did. When awake she looked drained, exhausted, under strain. Sleeping, bathed in sodium light, she would look alive again. I did love Alison, and would have settled with her in some place– but then she had to go to America for her career, and she decided to end it with me.
Both Judith and Alison had been, I had thought at the time, serious relationships. I was certainly much more upset about Alison than Judith, but in both I quickly recovered. Both had been long relationships – two years, three years – and yet felt like they had lasted about a month. This was not a case of time flying when you’re having fun – both of them had generally been too tired when we did meet face to face for all that much fund to happen – but of how little we actually saw each other. I realised that I had fulfilled a need for them, for a time, as they had for me, but I was fundamentally alone, and meant to be alone. This realisation came rather dramatically.
The weekend after the breakup with Alison I woke on the Saturday morning in Killarney. I drove to Mizen head, and then turned around and raced up by Limerick and Galway and Sligo through County Donegal to Malin, where I arrived at ten p.m. I turned round and crossed over the Northern Coast, taking the coast road past Carrick-a-Rede and the Causeway to the Rathlin Ferry. There, in the car park, at two a.m., I tried to sleep. But I couldn’t, and at three I set off again, down past Belfast and then onto the great motorway, sweeping past Portadown and Newry and Dundalk and Drogheda and then going through the Port Tunnel, into the heart of Dublin. Dawn was, for once, glorious, as I drove through the industrial landscape of Dublin Port, made to look fresh and full of promise by the morning light. Picking my way across the city, I kept driving along the N11, the first dual carriageway, all the way down Wicklow and Wexford, hitting mass traffic in Ferns and Enniscorthy, and then on to Kilmore Quay. It was a beautiful Sunday, and tourist parties were scattered around, waiting for a boat to the islands. I drove to the end of the pier, got out, climbed the harbour walls, and looked out to the Saltees, so far, so sharp, so beautiful. I cried.
I had not cried for years. A fisherman approached me, as if to say something, but thought better of it. I got back in the car, drove a little up the road, and booked into a hotel. The room would not be ready for a couple of hours, so I sat in the bar with a coffee and a notepad. I began to write on this furiously. I had decided to write out a marriage vow to the road. I was not in love with the Starlet, or Alison, but with the road. I thought about how the ancients made rivers into gods, and in the case of the Nile, they made the annual flood itself into a god. We should make the road a god, I thought, and when I realised this I realised that it was blasphemous to marry the road. I would serve it.
I cancelled the hotel booking, got back in the car, and drove. Driving helped. It brought me perspective. I came to terms with everything. I realised that the important thing to do was to keep moving, always moving.

Word count: 1966