The Hall

It was Cathal's idea, which is how you know it was a bad one. He put it in the group chat in February: lads, the parish hall is free on the 22nd, I'm bringing the switch and the long cables, bring your own machine, we're doing it. Nobody replied for two days. Then Fintan put a thumbs up, and once Fintan's in, everyone's in, that's just how it's always been. Twelve of us. In 2002 it would have been fifteen, but Rory's in Sydney and Declan's dead and Mick, well, Mick doesn't do things anymore since the divorce. The hall hadn't changed. Same stacking chairs, same smell of floor polish and damp, same picture of the Sacred Heart looking down at the stage where the ceili band used to play. We set up on the trestle tables. Cathal had the switch, an actual proper one, on the end table with the cables coming off it like an octopus. Someone had brought a kettle. Someone else had brought a slab of cans and put them under the table where Father Tom wouldn't see, out of a habit from twenty-five years ago that none of us could shake. "Right," said Cathal. "Same game. Same maps. Anyone who's downloaded a mod is out." The game was old. The game was so old some of the lads had to find versions of it that would run on a modern machine, and Ger, who works in IT now, had spent the week on the phone talking men through it who'd once been able to build a PC from parts in an afternoon and had since forgotten everything but their passwords. We got it going by nine. It took a bit. Fintan's machine wouldn't see the network and it turned out he'd plugged the cable into the wrong hole, the same as he'd done in 2002, and the same three lads made the same joke about it. And then we played. I'd forgotten. Honestly. I'd forgotten what it was like to have twelve people in one room shouting at each other over the top of a monitor. Online's not the same. Online you've a headset and a voice in your ear. This was Fintan two tables down roaring "WHO'S ON THE BRIDGE" and Cathal roaring back "I'M ON THE BRIDGE" and Ger saying nothing at all and quietly winning, because Ger was always the best and had never once mentioned it.

Round after round. The maps came back to me the way a song does, all at once, the shortcuts, the ledge you could get to if you jumped off the crate, the corner where Declan used to camp and we'd all give out to him. Someone said his name, actually, about eleven o'clock, "that's a Declan spot", and there was a second where nobody said anything and then Fintan said "he'd have had you there" and we went on. Father Tom came in at midnight to see about the lights. He stood at the back for a while watching twelve men in their forties hunched over screens like schoolboys. "Is this what ye do now?" he said. "It's what we did then, Father," said Cathal. "We're just doing it again." He thought about that. Then he pulled up a stacking chair and sat down beside Ger and said, "Show me," and Ger did. We packed up at two. Cables wound, chairs stacked, the cans in a bag in the back of Cathal's van. The hall looked the same as it always had. Fintan stood in the door and looked back at it. "Same time next year?" "Don't be daft," said Cathal. "Next month."