All of These People: A Memoir. Fergal Keane

still the headmaster at heart, still with an eye for the telling observation. While my wife was in the house he whispered to me. ‘Make sure you give time to your marriage. Don’t become too wrapped up in your work. All that work will go in the end but your family won’t, if you work at it.’ His instinct for getting to the heart of my world was as acute as ever.

      I asked him why he had worked so hard to keep me at Pres. ‘That Fergal was a troubled boy,’ he said. And that was that. It was the only explanation needed. A few months later I had a call from Cork. It was a colleague of Jerome’s. He was dying. The leukaemia had attacked again. This time there was no hope of remission. The end was only days away.

      I booked a flight to Cork for the following morning and arrived at the Bon Secours Hospital around lunchtime. Walking up the hallway I saw members of his family standing around crying. He had passed away a few hours earlier. I was late. I had been late for him all my life. I think he would have smiled at that, shaken his head and told me to do better next time.