'I used to take out the slip of paper and write down options: I could ignore it. I could try and forget about it. I wrote down the most outlandish things I won't tell you about. One night I wrote down the option that I should look out for someone my own age who was gay too. I remember I underlined it twice because it was less drastic than some of the other options.

'And very soon someone came along, or I thought he came along. I used to play rugby then, until I got sense, but our club was tiny and we had no showers or anything like that. We used to put our clothes back on after the game and then go home and shower and change. The first time I played in an away-game there was a communal shower and we all noticed that one of the guys on our team \a151 he's a big barrister now \a151 got an erection in the shower. I stupidly decided that he had to be gay. He was a really good-looking guy, so I watched him, and then one night I managed to walk home with him after a debate, and I don't know what I said to him, but whatever it was he understood my meaning. He said he would be interested, but just not tonight, and we left it like that, and I went home happy. I had met somebody. I wouldn't need to consult the slip of paper again.

'The problem was that I never got to be on my own with him properly again, even during the day, and I tried everything: waiting until he was leaving, trying to find him during the breaks in school. I even called around to his house once, and every time I was about to bring up the subject, he would do something like leave the room or zap the television. It was all hopeless. But I didn't realise he had told everybody. I didn't realise that until Francois was staying and we were sharing a room. Francois' English wasn't great then. Anyway, one night, we were all in the tennis club, it was too dark to play but too early for the dancing to start. So we were all just sitting around. And there was the usual jeering or banter going on. Somebody said that Francois was looking for a transfer to another house and everybody sort of cheered, including the girls who were there. Is it the food, someone mockingly asked. No, someone else said. Is it Paul's oul' ma? No, someone said again. It all sounded like they had planned it. What is it then, someone shouted. It's because Paul's a queer, one of them said, and they all laughed and cheered until one of them said to Francois \a151 who hadn't a clue what was going on \a151 "Isn't that right, Francois?" and Francois, who is very polite, said "Yes" in a French accent and they all fell around laughing.

'My father's system of logic didn't mean much that night. I went home and I was already in bed when Francois came in. "Those boys are not your friends," he said. He tried to explain that he didn't understand what the question was, but I knew that anyway, and I told him so. He turned the light off and got into his bed. I started to cry and he came over and sat on my bed and tried to comfort me and then he lay down beside me and he said that he was my friend and we wouldn't go to the club any more. Anyway, slowly, as he lay against me, I realised that he had an erection. He put his hand inside my pyjama-top and touched my shoulder. But I'd had enough of boys with erections, so that even when he kissed me I lay there frozen. Nothing happened and he didn't do anything more. After a while he went back to his own bed.'

'And what happened then?' Helen asked.

'We became very close, especially when I went for a month to his house in France. His parents were young and he was an only child and they treated us like adults. They had a lot of time for us and they were so polite. Francois thought my father didn't like him because he used to banter with him all the time. But Francois' father always said what he meant and normally that was something quite gentle and straightforward. I loved how straightforward they all were. And Francois was like that too, he was loyal and serious and polite. Sometimes he was also very funny, he wasn't a drip. I loved how clear he was, and how careful about everything he did and said. And I knew he liked me as well and that was amazing. His parents rented a house by the sea in Normandy and we swam and played tennis. We never touched each other, but we did things in France that we didn't do in Ireland, like we stripped off in front of each other, rather more perhaps than was necessary.'

'It sounds like true love,' Helen said.

'It was a sort of pure happiness, yeah it was,' Paul said. He stared out to sea and closed his eyes.

Helen wanted to ask him what happened next, but felt that a single question, phrased badly, could stop him now, and she desperately wanted him to go on. When he did not speak, she decided not to prompt him. Then he began again:

'Francois came back to Ireland when I was going into my third year in Trinity. He had changed a lot, he was taller and stockier. His face was thinner. He had new gestures and was funnier. We had corresponded over the years, but less as time went on. I had a bedsit in Dun Laoghaire but he had rooms in Trinity for the month of September, and the first night we met we found ourselves in the city with the last bus gone. I took up his offer to use the other bed in his room. It was like the old days except we were both nearly twenty. I knew that I was gay, but I had done nothing about it, except wank myself to death, if you'll excuse the language. He'd been with a guy, but only once. Anyway, that night in Trinity, we were half drunk and we made a big play of stripping off and wandering around the room. Someone had to make the first move, but it wasn't going to be me. After we'd been in bed for a while there was a silence, and then he asked me in French if he could come to my bed. I still remember the words and we often laugh at them. But I was too nervous. It was too much, I wanted him too badly, and it was all too real. I said no, but he could tomorrow. I made sure he understood that I meant yes, that I wasn't just putting him off. He stretched his arm out towards me in the dark and we held hands for a while between the two beds. And then the next night we went to bed together for the first time.'

'And have you been together ever since?'

'Well, for the next two years we saw one another as often as we could, and then when I graduated I went to Paris for a year, and then we both came back here for a year. So we've been together for the past eight or nine years but the last two years have been very difficult.'

They stood up and brushed the sand off themselves and began to walk back towards Cush.

'How have they been difficult?'

'When we got together,' Paul went on, 'Francois' parents were just unbelievable. They bought a big double bed for us and put it in Francois' room. I don't think he had a single moment's problem with them about being gay. We saw them often. We usually stayed with them on a Saturday night, or saw them on Sunday. They were our best friends. And they were both killed in a car crash, killed instantly, almost two years ago, they were still in their forties. They were driving out from a side road, the car behind them crashed into them and pushed them out into the path of a lorry. And then our world fell apart. There were no close relatives as both of them were only children; there were no cousins or aunts. Francois was alone except for me, but after a while I was no help to him because he couldn't handle the idea that I might abandon him.

'I said I wouldn't. I tried to reassure him and I thought that soon he would be all right. He had taken time off from work, and I thought that when he went back he'd be better, but he wasn't better, and he couldn't manage -he's a civil servant \a151 so he had to take extended leave. He believed I was going to desert him and after a while no reassurance was any use. The phone would ring at work, and the person on the other end would hang up, but I'd know that it was him checking on me. He was falling apart; he went to a counsellor and a therapist but it made no difference.