"He continued his story - how at the age of 42 he found himself both unemployed and too old to be re-employed, how his marriage suffered, how his friends disappeared, how his children first sympathised with him and then despised him. And how, recently, himself and his wife began to think of building on something to the side of the house and maybe opening a little bakery there...
I dont know how many coffees we had - but I do know that when we stood up to leave, I was already planning a play.
It wasn't, I am certain, just the story I had heard - but rather the story in relation to the background to this man that had moved me so much. As I walked away, I wanted to abandon all present work and begin the play at once.
I had been at school with him. He was the one who, delirious at passing Latin, flung his books through the second-storey window - thinking it was open! He was the one who, when I broke a bone in my ankle, put me on his crossbar to take me to hospital - but crashed into the kerb on the way and broke a second bone! He was the one who, at our first Past Pupil's Reunion, arrived in the white MG, smoking cigars - and said that in five years he'd be back to buy the school and turn it into a casino!
He was the one we all knew would succeed - he was the one who was unforgettable. Now, he was the one who was old beyond his years and forgotten."
To see more plays by Bernard Farrell, click here.
