Lauren — as in, like, my best friend Christian’s wife? — has never been my number one fan. There are many reasons for that. For storters, she wouldn’t be what I would call a rugby person? And then of course there was my famous best man speech at her wedding when I went to put on a videotape of the 1999 Leinster Schools Senior Cup final but instead put on a tape featuring — let’s just say — intimate highlights of me and Sorcha’s second honeymoon in Puerto Banús.
All I’m saying is that there’s, like, history between us. Which is why, when she suddenly rings me out of the blue, I know it spells trouble.
I’m like, “Lauren, how the hell are you?” because I’m still a people person despite everything.
There’s no “hello” or “how are you?” or “I heard you’re the new Director of Rugby in Castlerock College — one or two people in the Ireland set-up will be very interested to see how you get on”.
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Instead, she goes, “Today was supposed to be one of Christian’s days with the children.”
Yeah, no, I sort of broke up their marriage as well. I won’t go into the specifics of it.
I’m there, “Er, why are you telling me this?”
She’s like, “Because he didn’t show up to collect them. Is he there with you?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Just because I’m a serial liar, Lauren, doesn’t mean that I can’t be trusted.”
“Were you out with him last night?”
“No, I swear.”
“He told me that he was meeting you in The Bridge.”
“Then yes, I was.”
“And?”
“And nothing, Lauren. He wasn’t drinking and — yeah, no — he left early. He wasn’t with anyone if that’s what you’re wondering — as in, like, with with?”
“We’re divorced, Ross. I don’t give a fock what he does. All I care about is that I’ve got two children here who are crying their eyes out because their daddy was supposed to bring them to the Lego shop.”
Focking Lego. I end up nearly saying it as well. Their eldest must be, like, 13 now and he wouldn’t know a rugby ball if it hit him in the head. Which it did, by the way — repeatedly — when I took him to Old Belvedere to play with the Minis back in the day. I felt like such a failure as a godfather that I nearly left him there to walk home on his own.
“How did he seem to you?” Lauren goes.
I’m like, “Er — in terms of?”
“Well, did he seem happy, sad, what?”
“I don’t know.”
“How could you not know what kind of mood your best friend is in?”
“Lauren, we’re dudes. We don’t talk about shit like that. We tend to stick to—”
She just goes, “Focking rugby,” because — yeah, no — I mentioned that she wasn’t a fan, and then she hangs up.
I end up having one of my famously deep moments then. I stort thinking back to the night before and remembering the conversation. I was naming the squad that I’d bring with me to France if I was the Ireland coach and the World Cup was this year and — yeah, no — he did seem a bit distant and didn’t laugh at all when I announced that I was leaving out one or two, let’s just say, Munster favourites.
And then we were talking about what exactly? The usual. The old days. The glory days, as I call them. And Christian was quiet when I was reminding the goys about the three-day bender we ended up going on after The Ster beat the Tigers to win their first Ken Cup in 09. And suddenly the penny drops — as in, I know where Christian might be.
I hop into the cor and I point it in the direction of Donnybrook. Half an hour later, I’m throwing the thing in a porking space outside Ed’s and tipping across the road to the spot where Kielys used to be. It’s hord to look at it. Like presumably most of you, when I’m driving out of town now, I tend to avert my eyes because it’s still too painful.
When I step on to the — yeah, no — building site, I notice a bunch of dudes wearing hord hats and high-viz bibs standing around a JCB, looking upwards. And there, sitting in the, I don’t know, bucket of the thing, 20 feet above the ground, with his legs dangling over the edge, is the dude himself.
“Do you know this man?” one of the presumably builders asks me.
I’m there, “We played rugby together,” meaning I know him better than he knows himself. “Me at outhalf, him at inside-centre — that answer your question?”
“Can you just get him out of there,” he goes. “We’ve got work to do.”
One of the dudes leans a ladder against the — again — bucket of the JCB. I stort climbing up it — slowly, because I haven’t been on a ladder since I slept with a woman in a house in Leopardstown and her husband came home early from his watercolour class.
“You know,” I go when I reach the top and sit down beside him, “I should have known something was up when you didn’t react to me leaving out Peter O’Mahony. It was a joke, by the way. He’s the first name I’d have on the team sheet and he focking knows it as well.”
Christian’s there, “Why do we only ever talk about rugby?”
“Er, I don’t know,” I go.
“Like, we don’t talk about, you know, stuff.”
“I can talk about stuff. What kind of stuff?”
“I don’t know. Just how the world seems to be going to focking shit right now.”
I look down at the giant hole in the world where the greatest pub on Earth once stood.
I’m there, “You struggling at the moment?”
He goes, “A bit.”
I’m like, “You should have said something.”
He sort of, like, sighs deeply, then he shrugs and goes, “I was supposed to collect Ross and Oliver hours ago.”
I’m there, “To bring them to the Lego shop. There’s things I could say, Dude, but I won’t.”
He laughs in fairness to him.
He goes, “We should let these men get on with their work.”
But I put my hand on his leg — something I’d never normally do? — and I go, “There’s no hurry, Dude. We’ve got all the time in the world.”
