I was still thinking about Richard Culhane. What I thought was this: What you’re saying would be true if it was Richard who had died.

At the trial it was established – legally, officially – that Richard had contributed to the Blackrock fracas only at the end, when he delivered his valedictory kick to Conor’s head. Privately, people have assured me that this was not the case. When the fight began, Richard was punching just like the rest of them. He had been there at the start of the fight and he was there, flailing indiscriminately, at the very end.

In a sense, of course, it was Richard who had died. We just didn’t know it yet.

But he did. And so did Pat Kilroy.

When the funeral was over everybody shook hands with the Harrises and went outside to stand on the steps of the church. It was Indian summer on the open streets. There was a tang of salt in the tidal breeze.

‘Such a beautiful day,’ someone said.

I stood by the doors of the church and watched the people as they talked. At the edges of the crowd, over by the churchyard gates, the television crews pointed their carapaced machines.

I was still thinking about what Pat Kilroy had said at the end of the service. His description of Conor’s ‘dedication and sportsmanship’ squared so poorly with my own memories of Conor’s fitful intensity and quarrelsome playing that I felt aggrieved. I wanted people to know the truth about this boy. Briefly I contemplated telling people, one by one, setting the record straight. But this was impractical. I could only stand aside as the coffin was carried from the church to the waiting hearse. But I remember being haunted, later, by the strength of my reaction to Kilroy’s parting words.

It turned out, you see, that even before the funeral, Pat Kilroy knew what had happened outside Harry’s on the last night of that terminal summer.

Pat Kilroy knew who had killed Conor Harris. He knew as he stared at the crowd from the vantage of the pulpit. He could have pointed, from his wooden roost, at the boys as they sweated in the crowd.

Outside the church Brendan Harris went to stand by himself with his head heavily lowered. I saw Peter Culhane walk over and shake his hand. They nodded together for a moment. Then Eileen Harris called her husband back.

The hearse pulled slowly away through the crowd. The sun was bright overhead and the leaves of the beech trees shook in a tiny breeze. Suntanned boys, back early from their holidays in Portugal and Marbella and Majorca, shook their heads and comforted their beach-brown girlfriends.

The coffin had been carried from the church by six former Brookfield students, Conor’s former teammates.

One of them was Richard Culhane.

He had volunteered to do it.

24

Both Richard Culhane and Barry Fox were offered rugby scholarships by University College, Dublin, even before their Leaving Cert. results had come through. Their college places were guaranteed, in other words. All they had to do was get enough points in their final exams – something no Brookfield boy had ever failed to achieve. Conor Harris was also offered a rugby scholarship. Every year UCD offers to pay fees for half a dozen private-school pupils, usually boys who have performed outstandingly on their school’s Senior Cup team. In exchange, the boys play for the UCD team. The UCD team hovers near the top of the Dublin league. It tends to serve as a recruitment resource for the national squad.