There’s nothing worse than sudden death. I remember one morning last October getting a phone call to say that an old friend had died suddenly the previous evening after an accident near his home in the High Pyrenees.
For many years Bernard Loughlin had been the director of the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, an artists retreat in Monaghan. When I went there in 1984 I used to argue with him about religion. Not that I ever defended the ontological guff of metaphysics so popular with official churches, but I did contend that faith was a wholesome act of the imagination. Bernard argued robustly to the contrary. And we both relished our passionate disagreements.
On the day I heard of his death I took a flight to Barcelona, and drove up into the mountains of Catalonia. The following day I stood with a small crowd of friends as we watched the hearse zig-zag its way up through a valley and along a mountain path, on Bernard’s last homecoming. Then everyone shouldered the coffin on the final few steps to his house, where his loved ones could touch for the last time his rugged face, and see his eyes closed forever, as they grieved for the man they loved so well.
I too loved Bernard. I loved him as a man sometimes loves another man; not as an equal or partner, but as a guide so close to one’s own psyche that their accidental remarks seem to pave a way into the future. Such mentors have many names – guide, soul friend, elder. And they are valuable components in the fabric of any society, because impressionable young disciples swallow their charm, idolise their words, and transform their ordinary mutterings into wise sayings.
‘Are you the man who had the heart attack? How could you be so stupid?’
Michael Harding: After my heart attack I needed more exercise so I went to Aldi
Michael Harding: ‘The nuns disappeared very fast in the end, like snow off a rope’
Michael Harding: ‘Good morning sir. Did you order an ambulance?’ said the hotel receptionist
After all the years that have passed since then, I can say that nothing ever shaped me as a writer more than that single night
Bernard Loughlin was erudite, well-travelled and widely experienced, so for me he was the perfect model of an elder, despite his passion for argument and controversy.
When I first encountered him in the garden of the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, I was terrified of him. He wore an old hat and a tattered coat. He leaned on a digging fork, shuffling out young spuds.
“Just look at these, Monsignor,” he said, mocking me, “sure who would want heaven, when you can have a garden?”
When he wasn’t in the garden, he policed the interior of the big house to ensure that slovenly artists did not disturb the ambience of quietude and ease that pervaded the house. He often chastised young males who didn’t think that cleaning dishes was a manly task.
“You can take the boy out of the bedsit,” he would declare, “but you can’t take the bedsit out of the boy.”
He never minced his words, and he expected high standards from any artist who had been given the privilege of a residency.
I dreaded being caught putting plates in the wrong slots in the dishwasher. And even in the pub, I dreaded sitting next to him because he was so erudite I feared I’d be shown up as an illiterate gobshite.
I could recognise his footstep anywhere. Especially on the corridor that led to my room above the library. I had to jump off the bed frequently, and sit at the desk, so he’d think I was working on a novel.
But there was one particular night I have never forgotten. I was living in Fermanagh during the Troubles, and I had become a target for a local DUP politician, who was spreading lies about me in the local newspaper. It was a time when slander could shorten your life. And I was so distressed that I turned up on Bernard’s door at midnight.
“What will I do?” I wondered.
“You’re a writer,” Bernard declared. “So write to the fucker.”
Which I did. With Bernard at my right hand, I composed an open letter and sent it to the local newspaper. And when the letter was published, the bullying stopped, and the politician fell silent.
And after all the years that have passed since then, I can say that nothing ever shaped me as a writer more than that single night. He had taught me to write at the cutting edge of terror. So as I stood in his mountain garden, after his funeral, the suddenness of his death overwhelmed me. The tomatoes and peppers he plucked three days earlier still lay in a basket on the grass. A spade stood idle, against the ditch. And all I wanted to say was, “Thank you Bernard.”
But it was too late.