Sometimes I would look around my parents’ house and wonder by what miracle, what unimaginable system of bargains and balances, it had come into being. In my late teens I began to realize that our house had not occurred by parthenogenesis, that it had not sprung into existence an instant before my birth, but that my parents had bought it and furnished it and made it what it was, one task at a time, all before I had even been thought of. I couldn’t imagine ever doing such a thing myself.

In the aftermath of Conor’s death people would often say of Richard Culhane or Barry Fox or Stephen O’Brien (or even of Conor himself), ‘He had it easy.’ This isn’t true, of course. Life is easy for no one. But it is true that these boys were born into a life that had been sanded down, smoothed over. It was a polished life, one with no rough edges – or none, at least, beyond the universal pains and worries. But this polishing, this sanding down, had already been finished by the time the boys arrived. They had nothing to add to its completion. All they had to do was keep it going.

I often wonder what effect this had on them – on their generation. They may never have thought about it, of course. Or it might have occurred to them only later, after the fact, after their unquestioned claim on this prepared existence had, agonizingly, vanished.

As he practised his putts in the garage Brendan Harris remembered the easy intimacy he had had with his son when Conor was a child.

Conor’s birth had been difficult. Eileen Harris laboured for fourteen hours before her second son showed his face. He looked red and embittered, as though he had seen something in the womb that had disgusted him beyond belief. He grew up to be a strong man – physically strong, I mean; he had the strong man’s fondness for, and impatience with, delicate things – but he never lost the aftershock of that first vinegary frown, that air of having known corruption early and seen it clearly for what it was.

When Conor died Brendan forgot about this first, sour expression on his son’s pink face. We forget things like this about the dead because there is nothing to remind us of them.

31

Richard Culhane and Laura Haines were sitting on the ground beneath a copper beech in the grounds of Brookfield when they first kissed. It was a Sunday afternoon in the early May of 2004. They had walked along the pier at Dun Laoghaire and then they had caught the DART to Blackrock and bought cheese and wine in Marks & Spencer. As they crossed the road at the gate of Brookfield Richard took Laura’s hand. They sat beneath the copper beech and gossiped about Laura’s friends. They ignored the cheese but drank the wine from paper cups. After an interval of silence (the breeze, the sunlight, the sound of Sunday traffic), Richard leaned over and kissed Laura.