One of our own
Billy O’Callaghan Sometimes, when I am down in the pub of a quiet night for a game of cards and the talk at the bar turns to reminiscing, Tadhg Lowry’s name might get brought up, since it’s known I knew him. It’s not that we were friends, exactly, and I can’t say I was ever quite comfortable around him, but London is a tough place to be when you’re young and on your own, and I’ll never deny the good turns he did me, how he set me up when I first arrived and looked out for me on and off after that for the time I was over, and for all of that I was and remain truly grateful, no matter what else might be said. After work had taken me away from his stamping ground, up to Romford, Cricklewood, and for most of my second summer over there even out as far as Maidenhead, I didn’t see so much of him, but sometimes of a weekend I’d walk into a pub and he’d be in there, and he’d step away from whoever he was with, even if it was a woman, some beauty you wouldn’t have wanted to take your eyes off of for gold, and we’d stand at the counter and chat for the slow length of a drink, catching up, our ease probably exaggerating a closeness but not quite put on, either, given the many touchstones we shared, he doing most of the asking, wanting to know how I was getting along, how I was finding the work and what I might have lined up next, and I knew without having to be told that I could take up the phone and call him any time, for any reason or any kind of trouble, financial or otherwise, and he’d be there. I heard the stories, of course, the ones the newspapers couldn’t print, some of them enough to