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Literary Ireland turned up en masse for the professor’s funeral. All the tired usual suspects who hadn’t acknowledged him in years lauded the two books on drama he’d written. That these volumes had been out of print for years wasn’t mentioned. The papers gave him polite obituaries, and one article hinted at his death as a tragic accident. Between the lines was the unspoken word, managing to convey the sad accidental deaths of his wife and brother, the strain of suicide never actually articulated.
I was in Nestor’s, reading all this, a cup of neglected coffee before me. Jeff was changing a barrel and we were dancing around the chasm between us. The sentry was watching Sky News, the battle for Baghdad at its height. Man U had walloped Liverpool by four goals. Leeds, despite their troubl
