Feb 1, 2026 · 1 hr 23 min · 18 segments
Tessa Hadley joins Deborah Treisman to read “Gold Watch,” by John McGahern, which was published in The New Yorker in 1980. Hadley has published thirteen books of fiction, including the story…
No entities detected.
Deborah TreismanHostIt was in Grafton Street we met, aimlessly strolling on one of the lazy, lovely Saturday mornings in spring, the week of work over, the weekend still as fresh as the bunch of anemones that seemed the only purchase in her cane shopping basket.
"What a lovely surprise," I said, and was about to take her hand when a man with an armload of parcels parted us as she was shifting the basket to her other hand, and we withdrew from the pushing crowds into the comparative quiet of Harry Street.
We had not met since we had graduated in the same law class from University College five years before.
I had heard she'd become engaged to the medical student she used to knock around with and had gone into private practice down the country, perhaps waiting for him to graduate.
"I felt I needed a change." She was wearing a beautiful oatmeal-colored suit, the narrow skirt slit from the knee.
The long gold hair of her student days was drawn tightly into a neat bun at the back.
"I thought you'd be married by now." "And do you still go home every summer?" she countered, perhaps out of confusion.
"It doesn't seem as if I'll ever break that bad habit." We had coffee in Bewley's, the scent of the roasting beans blowing through the vents out into Grafton, becoming forever mixed through the memory of that morning, and we went on to spend the whole idle day together until she laughingly and firmly returned my first hesitant kiss, and it was she who silenced my even more fumbled offer of marriage several weeks later."No," she said.
If it doesn't turn out well, we can split, and there'll be no bitterness." And it was she who found the flat in Hume Street on the top floor of one of those old Georgian houses in off the green, within walking distance of both our places of work.
There was extraordinary peace and loveliness in our first weeks together that I will always link with those high-ceilinged rooms.
The eager rush of excitement I felt as I left the office at the end of the day, the lingering in the streets to buy some offering of flowers or fruit or wine or a bowl, and once one copper pan.
The rushing up the stairs to call her name, the emptiness of those rooms when I'd find she hadn't got home yet.
Early summer, we drove down one weekend to the small town in Kilkenny where she had grown up, and in separate rooms, we slept above her father's bakery.
That Sunday, a whole stream of relatives, aunts, cousins, two uncles with trains of children, arrived at the house.
This brought the tension between herself and her schoolteacher mother into open quarrel late that evening after dinner.
Her father sat with me in the front room, cautiously kind, sipping whiskey as we measured each careful cliché, listening to the quarrel slow and rise and crack in the far-off kitchen.
I had found the sense of comfort and space charming at first, but by Monday morning, I, too, was beginning to find the small town claustrophobic.
It was in Grafton Street we met, aimlessly strolling on one of the lazy, lovely Saturday mornings in spring, the week of work over, the weekend still as fresh as the bunch of anemones that seemed the only purchase in her cane shopping basket.
"What a lovely surprise," I said, and was about to take her hand when a man with an armload of parcels parted us as she was shifting the basket to her other hand, and we withdrew from the pushing crowds into the comparative quiet of Harry Street.
We had not met since we had graduated in the same law class from University College five years before.
I had heard she'd become engaged to the medical student she used to knock around with and had gone into private practice down the country, perhaps waiting for him to graduate.
"I felt I needed a change." She was wearing a beautiful oatmeal-colored suit, the narrow skirt slit from the knee.
The long gold hair of her student days was drawn tightly into a neat bun at the back.
"I thought you'd be married by now." "And do you still go home every summer?" she countered, perhaps out of confusion.
"It doesn't seem as if I'll ever break that bad habit." We had coffee in Bewley's, the scent of the roasting beans blowing through the vents out into Grafton, becoming forever mixed through the memory of that morning, and we went on to spend the whole idle day together until she laughingly and firmly returned my first hesitant kiss, and it was she who silenced my even more fumbled offer of marriage several weeks later."No," she said.
If it doesn't turn out well, we can split, and there'll be no bitterness." And it was she who found the flat in Hume Street on the top floor of one of those old Georgian houses in off the green, within walking distance of both our places of work.
There was extraordinary peace and loveliness in our first weeks together that I will always link with those high-ceilinged rooms.
The eager rush of excitement I felt as I left the office at the end of the day, the lingering in the streets to buy some offering of flowers or fruit or wine or a bowl, and once one copper pan.
The rushing up the stairs to call her name, the emptiness of those rooms when I'd find she hadn't got home yet.
Early summer, we drove down one weekend to the small town in Kilkenny where she had grown up, and in separate rooms, we slept above her father's bakery.
That Sunday, a whole stream of relatives, aunts, cousins, two uncles with trains of children, arrived at the house.
This brought the tension between herself and her schoolteacher mother into open quarrel late that evening after dinner.
Her father sat with me in the front room, cautiously kind, sipping whiskey as we measured each careful cliché, listening to the quarrel slow and rise and crack in the far-off kitchen.
I had found the sense of comfort and space charming at first, but by Monday morning, I, too, was beginning to find the small town claustrophobic.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.