‘Your dad looks so young in this,’ Sweeney said as she held up a clipping that contained a picture of his father turning the first sod on the Banshees’ pitch. His hair hung scruffily over his face and in his eyes, and his body was leaner, his cheekbones more prominent but, even digging a hole in the ground, his grin could not be contained.
Fin took it, staring at it for a beat. The club had started before he was born so the photo had to be some time in the eighties. His father’s words from their argument echoed around his head.What are you doing with your life, Fin?Even as a young man, his father had been driven by a purpose.
Michael had known what he’d wanted. Going into the family business. Having his own family. And Gaelic football. And he’d accomplished it all. WhathadFin done? Was travel a goal? Was money in the bank a goal? Was just taking each day as it came a goal? Plenty of people would say yes.
None of them were Michael Murphy.
‘There’s a bunch of photographs down here,’ Sweeney said, her arm disappearing before reappearing with a stack of even more memories.
Fin placed the clipping back in the shoebox and replaced the lid before turning his attention to the latest tranche of memories. There was a bunch of old team photos over the years, including his own time wearing the Banshees jersey.
Smiling at the images, Fin studied the one from his first year at the club. Every kid in the picture—boys and girls—swam in their shamrock green jerseys, but they didn’t care. Half the kids sat on a long, low stool, their backs ramrod straight, their booted feet together, their arms extended, fists curled and placed knuckles-side down just above their knobbly knees. The other half stood to attention behind, like eager little soldiers.
He found himself. It wasn’t too hard, with his head too big for his gangly body, his hair a mop, his toothy grin so big it almost fell off the side of his face. Because that’s how he’d felt, big with excitement at finally being old enough to play the game he’d lived and breathed every weekend from as early as he could remember.
So damn proud to be a Banshee.
And proud of his dad, who sat next to him in the middle of the team, an equally big grin plastered on his face, his whistle hanging around his neck.
‘God, look at Donny.’ Sweeney pointed to the kid standing behind and to the right of Fin. ‘I’d forgotten he had thathey babyexpression perfected even back then.’
Fin laughed. His cousin, who had been looking forward to becoming a Banshee as long as Fin, did look the coolest of all the kids, comically puffed chest and all.
Flipping through the half dozen in the batch, he found the photo he was looking for, grinning when he spied Sweeney, dwarfed by her jersey, her scrubbed clean face emphasised by the severity of her tight ponytail. She didn’t look thrilled to be there.
‘You look like you’re in a hostage video,’ he said with a laugh.
Sweeney glanced at it. ‘I much preferred to watch, you know that. I only did it because you dared me.’
Fin remembered. She’d happily come along on weekends to watch his team play either in Ballyshannon or at one of the other locations in the local area. But, with her trusty Kodak camera in her hand ninety per cent of the time, he’d figured it had been more about the trees and the birds and the way the sun hit the dewy grass—her words—than the love of the game.
Hence his dare. ‘I didn’t think you’d take up the challenge.’
She quirked an eyebrow. ‘It’s almost like you don’t know me at all.’ Pulling out a stack of other photos from the bottom of the box she passed them over, plucking the one off the top and grinning as she flapped it in his direction. ‘Aww, look at us.’
Fin grabbed it and laughed, understanding his mother’s nostalgia earlier for a time when people actually got their photos printed. This image took him right back to those days when weekend video games with Sweeney was his second favourite thing to do next to football.
They must have been seven or eight, sitting cross-legged on his living room floor, their knees touching, their expressions intense as they stared at the television. The tip of Sweeney’s tongue was just visible as she concentrated, which wasn’t any less endearing more than twenty years later. They were both in jeans and jumpers so it must have been winter although, god knew, winter in Ballyshannon was more six months than three. His hair was its usual untameable beast and she had been in her scrunchie era, all her hair pulled on top of her head in a messy knot.
‘What game do you think we were playing there?’ she asked.
‘I’m assuming it wasMario Kart.’ They’d been pretty obsessed with that.
She stared at it for a beat or two longer. ‘God, we were cute.’
Fin laughed. His immediate instinct was to be flippant about her boast, but she was right. They were cute. Kid friendship in its purist form. Where a video game was the beall and end-all because everything else in their lives was safe and secure and they could truly be themselves around each other without a thought of artifice.
Lucky. They’d been so lucky. Life had dealt them a good hand. A lot of kids didn’t get that. A fact that had been reinforced a few years later when Sweeney’s world had come crashing down.
‘Who’d have thunk,’ she mused with a dramatic sigh, ‘all these years later those two crazy kids would be engaged to be married?’
Glancing at her, Fin could see the smile tugging at her mouth and he grinned. The situation was not of their making and there’d certainly been some strange moments, but they were handling this well, he thought, those two crazy kids. ‘It was clearly ordained,’ he said, joining the game. ‘I mean, to an untrained eye it might look like we’re ignoring each other, but look at that knee touch. You can practically see the smoke rising off us.’
‘And my tongue sticking out.’ She tapped the picture. ‘That’s a clear subliminal sign of my early desire.’
‘Right? I mean if Feeney watch gets hold of this, we’re doomed.’
‘Pfft,’ she dismissed. ‘If our mothers got hold of it, it’d be worse.’
