On that rare occasion Margaret Rose had no visitors, Hegs engaged her in a little political discussion, while avoiding it entirely with me. Perhaps he was afraid I might ask him for something he couldn’t deliver, or afraid perhaps I’d bring up Anglo-Irish Bank, or worse, NAMA. Hegs took the politics for granted, and he told Margaret Rose that all his nods at consultants, who knew to offer praise for his soft-foam surface just laid in the local playground, were part of the game, and also thanked them for the praise of the footpaths, as he had them widened in his town and built a cute feeding bridge for the ducks over a miniature lake in the park. It was a town where many of the Hospital’s consultants and young careerists lived, a popular area amongst ‘blow-ins’ with its water and grey stone and farmers’ market and Atlantic spray. Hegs knew how to keep the younger professional voters sweet, he explained to Margaret Rose, winking at her, and of course it involved the obligatory funeral attendances, and he said he liked to visit schools, open a new library and complain about the blow-ins/strangers behind their backs, fill up some potholes, promise a path from here to there, push through the odd grant to an up and coming artist who maybe went to one of the local schools and was not too risqué. He wasn’t into art much himself, he confessed, but asked after my musical tastes, nodding at my headphones as though they were contraband, and after Alex’s profession, his people, where he came from. We spoke a little pidgin architecture. I said I liked fast buildings and fast songs. He said he loved song lyrics, especially country. Margaret Rose agreed about country music, she loved it too. Country music is popular in East Galway, more than West, they both agreed and I didn’t disagree, as we all wondered why that might be, but I liked lyrics too, I said. And I read a little poetry, the odd time, once or twice, you know, loved it in school. They knew. Nodding at my books. Hegs liked the poem about the daffodils and I said I liked the Heaney poem about the child dying but Hegs said they only read the British poets at school. And no, none of us could figure out the why of that.

Hegs explained to Margaret Rose that he popped into the local funeral home just as the remains were about to be brought to the church – sure, otherwise he’d spend his whole life in a queue, and she agreed – and grab the hands of the mourners, but this had taken its toll, all the dead corpses and all the new births and the whining locals who wanted the path to circle the entire village and not just the private estates, or wanted braces for their children, or a free eye test, or a stairlift and some were mad enough to be looking for a cycle greenway, and not even a proper road in or out of the city. I tried to engage him more in politics, pushed him a little on planning laws and where the government could improve on housing, but he was suspicious of me, though both of us recognised it was a mess, especially the horrendous traffic in Galway, and the docks was in real need of some planning. A mess indeed, and I explained that all of my developments were abroad, and he nodded, relieved that I would make no requests of him.