Belinda McKeown recalls visiting the McGaherns, where the lake waters nudge up to the narrow lane, where the sky leans in low....
It was this time of year, a Sunday like summer, and I was shaking like a leaf in the foyer of the Longford Arms Hotel. How had I had the impudence to write to this man, this giant, this master, as famous for refusing to talk about his work as he was for writing it, and ask to interview him for my college newspaper; how would I speak to him, question him, connect with him, this man who seemed, in every one of the photographs I had seen of him, to be frowning, to be forbidding, to be so very stern and serious?
Those photographs were always in black and white. And I felt as though I was in crayon shades; aged 20 and trembling, and wondering if it was true after all, that thing they said about meeting your hero. And then the glass doors flashed, and John McGahern was standing there, and he had a smile that was all about easiness and decency and warmth.
He got us a quiet space, and he ordered tea and ham sandwiches, and when we had been talking for a while, he leaned over and whispered, creased with laughter, that the couple sat behind us had been having the most hilarious of arguments, and that he had not been able to stop himself from eavesdropping, and that he was sorry, but it was something that he had to hear. It was a story.
John loved stories. They were his life's work, of course; the crafting of a story was his art form, and one which brought to him suffering by times, trouble from within and from without. But stories were also his fascination, his fondness - they were in a way his very oxygen - and the funnier, the stranger, and the more expressive of human folly or vanity, the better. After that interview, he and I began to write to one another.
He would always reply immediately, his words etched hard into the paper, and his letters would ripple with stories, with snatches of news and of memory, with comedy, with life. Come and visit us, they would say, you'd be very welcome. Come for a drink or a bite to eat.
We became friends. My boyfriend, Aengus, was from Leitrim, and when we were down there, we would call to see John and his wife, Madeline. In Foxfield, near Mohill, where the lake waters nudge up to the narrow lane, where the sky leans in low and the quiet settles like a heavy fall of snow, the table was always laid with more food than we could eat.
Madeline would be there, beautiful and interested and inquisitive, and always with an eyebrow arched at his stories; and John would be in his element, talking shop, talking scandal, talking books and plays and poets and priests. We talked about family, about sisters, about parents. We talked about guilt. We talked politics, we talked grudges, we talked secret affairs. We gossiped like mad.
Sometimes John would talk about neighbours who used to call to see him and Madeline, and who had died, and the silence pressing in on the long, low bungalow would seem even deeper for a moment.
Until the next laugh would come, and the drinks would be repoured, and it was time to turn the lights on, for the night had come on, and there was much to talk about yet.
John was fighting the cancer with which he had been diagnosed in 2002, and there were times when he looked frailer than others, times when he could not have a drink with us, but his humour and his energy never seemed to wane, and his capacity for the most delicious of stories seemed without end.
The last time we saw John, he looked in wonderful health, and he was in full storytelling, mischievous, ironic form. He was relishing the success of his Memoir. He was looking forward to the new year. It was three days after Christmas, and he wanted to crack open the champagne, for no reason in particular, except, I suppose, that life was good and that friendship was worth celebrating, and I wish, now, that we had let him.
He and Madeline wanted to hear everything about our lives in New York, where we had recently moved - John had given me the warmest recommendation imaginable to help get me into Columbia, where I had been accepted to take an MFA in fiction - and where Madeline was originally from. And I remember that night as one that tumbled with stories, with laughter, with plans. With affection. He always signed his letters that way. It's hard to believe that there will be no more.