I WOKE up the next morning and it took a while for me to twig where I was.
The ceiling was like an upside-down boat, and the window that the dull outside peeked in from had ledges so deep you could sit in them.
It was the fishing lodge in Mayo, and I had slept like a bag of stones.
The thick, whitewashed walls created a silence that was centuries old and as I entered the kitchen and saw all the wine bottles on the table, I marvelled that I wasn’t too hungover.
The night before had been raucous but funny, and to top it all Genghis had got out the uillean pipes and played as the Vin Rouge flowed.
Scruffly lay by the fire, his big, block head twitching every now and then with the heat.
There was a fair amount of merde talked and McGowan was ever the sickener, telling old, hammy jokes; but I went to the scratcher still giggling.
As I searched for a cafetiere (there was one of course), and some fresh coffee (ditto), I marvelled again; this time at the friendship of the two men I was with.
They merged together seamlessly – I supposed it was because they were Tyrone bachelors from the same village.
But I wondered why I hadn’t a bosom buddy like that. I had Fionnuala, and although James Joyce said that friendship between a man and a woman is impossible, she was my friend; my best friend. But…
I let Scruffly out and stood at the green half-door, sipping my coffee, and the silence from the night before was still with me.
I saw the dark brown, glistening water and thought, where have all my friends gone? Were they only temporary? Had they passed me by like the winding, obstinate river? Why had I not kept in touch?
I thought of all those hundreds of memories and faces over the years; a great feast of humanity I had nothing to do with any more.
Then came a strong memory: I had taken my cousin Bernard to Donegal when we were in our early twenties. We got the bus to Donegal Town and hitched to a hostel somewhere outside Kilcar.
The reason for our trip? He was heartbroken after his then girlfriend (now wife) had finished with him, so I had a plan to take his mind off his despair.
The hostel was white, I remembered, and the owner had thick black hair, and there were two cracking Dutch girls that I was trying to get Bernard interested in, but he was too sad.
I could have killed him because they asked us to go with them into town as there was a session on in a pub, but he said he couldn’t. But you go.
I stayed and we drank a few gloomy tins of warm beer and moped off to our thin-mattressed bunk-bed.
The next day we cadged a lift from the owner to Slieve League, the highest sea cliffs in Europe; he was going to Glencolumbkille and would pick us up on the way back.
We hiked for ages to get to the top – it was easy, I remembered, as we were young and fit – and sat down on the cliff and gasped at the vista.
It really was the edge of the world; the huge horizon; a tiny boat bobbing miles below; two ravens circling in front of us.
I told Bernard that I knew everything was going to be all right with him and he smiled for the first time in weeks and then we heard a man shouting at the top of his voice.
We both turned round to see an Alsatian sprinting towards us and we immediately recoiled.
Bernard reacted first and grabbed my arm as I fell backwards, a moment of silence, then shaking on the ground; the man with the dog now on the lead, apologising wildly.
“Is there no coffee?” McGowan was standing in his pants and a shirt.
“In the cafetiere.”
“I mean real coffee, Nescafe or something.”