Singing an Irish song of parting and loss

As Prince Rainier is today laid to rest, Fred Johnston shares his memories of writing at the Princess Grace Irish Library in Monaco and meeting the monarch's successor, Prince Albert

A chauffeur waits at Nice airport. It's a hot, very un-Irish day in September; we drive with the Mediterranean on our right, high dry cliffs going up to our left, on twisting roads and through enigmatic tunnels. Elegant bays with empty, silent boats bouncing on blue water, the adolescent joy of being somewhere new; it is sunny and warm, it is the Côte d'Azur. We drive through villages yellowing in the salty heat.

For the month of September last year I was to be writer-in-residence at the Princess Grace Irish Library in Monaco, a post supported by the Ireland Fund for Monaco.

A punctual bus takes me round the curve of the harbour, a basking-ground for idle yachts of preposterous size and expense, one, the Lady Moura, complete with helicopter - the poor vessel sits there still, target and symbol for every news-camera. The sun shines unselfishly.

Up the bus climbs, past cast-iron figures of famous racing-cars and their cast-iron drivers, solid in their hour of victory, through shadowed streets, past intimate and easy-going shops. We take the last gasping road up into Monaco-Ville, snug on top of the Rock.

Here is the palace, the old town, the narrow streets, the frenzied cafes, the dowager-like churches with bony relics, the resting-place of Princess Grace, the whiff of the Monégasque tongue in the streets, that dainty mix of provencal and northern Italian. The palace guard changes at noon with drumrolls, tourists in gossipy flocks take photographs.

Here are mounds of black cannonballs melting like balls of liquorice in the heat; here a statue of a monk, a famous Grimaldi, who sneaked into the fortress and liberated it centuries ago. Below is a curving view of Monaco and the bay of Monte Carlo and the construction cranes building upward like huge assault-weapons attacking the cliffs. Look far enough south and you're looking into Italy.

The library is announced by a modest brass plaque. Some years ago, a chapter of the Ireland Funds was opened in Monaco by the benevolent Arthur Vincent and everything seems to have become energised from then.

There's a large door to knock on. Then busts, a huge portrait of the late Princess Grace and a photograph of her father; elsewhere, a telephone once used by WB Yeats in his hotel at Roquebrune Cap Martin (where he later died), stuffed and mounted on a wall.

There is a dignified quiet in the rooms. The library, which grew out of Princess Grace's own collection of Irish books, was set up by Prince Rainier following her death in a car accident. It reflects the former Hollywood film star's long special connection with Ireland. With her passing, Prince Albert, along with Princess Caroline and Princess Stephanie became owners of the cottage in Co Mayo from where her grandfather John Bernard Kelly emigrated.

Governed by the Foundation Princesse Grace, the library is run by a three-person committee: Judith Gantley, who has Irish ancestry, Géraldine Lance, the secretary, who is local, dryly witty and impeccably efficient, and Virginia Gallico, widow of novelist Paul Gallico and once lady-in-waiting to Princess Grace and now to the palace, who is a wonderful figure, made of the old stuff, presiding toweringly over events.

For my office, I am given a room en suite, with huge TV and slim balcony in the library buildings. My desk has a framed photograph of Princess Grace; two decades and more after her car-crash, her memory is reflected everywhere, from representations in the library to postcards for sale in myriad tourist shops down in the streets; in windows, Prince Albert and his father, Prince Rainier III, stand together in photographs.

Monaco is a principality, the Grimaldis among the oldest regal families in Europe. Monégasques are very fond of them. Rainier revitalised Monaco, introduced industry in the Fountveille district, built a new harbour, initiated modern commerce where there had been only the fin-de-siècle background music of turned cards and a croupier shouting "Rien ne va plus!" ("No more further bets") as the palmettos clicked in the African-born wind. In the Hôtel de Paris Noel Coward had rooms; Isadora Duncan was here, before she caught her scarf theatrically in the spoked wheels of a Bugatti. You can buy James Bond figurines everywhere.

I have an electric typewriter. My job here is to write, to work on an unfinished project or devise new ones. I do both. The echoes of writers who have read and worked here - Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, Eoin McNamee, Edna O'Brien, Nuala Ní Dómhnaill, Colm Tóibín, Angela Bourke, Jennifer Johnston - chant in the plush rooms. Bruce Stewart, of the University of Ulster at Coleraine, has overseen programmes of rumination and debate here and runs a gargantuan online database on Irish writers, their work and criticism.

My partner, Sylvia Crawford, a composer and music teacher for the Trinity London exam board, pores over old music manuscripts in the Library, which has a piano. She is writing a book of new arrangements of Turlough O'Carolan's music.

Poems emerge cautiously.

My creative mind strolls outside of the library and myself; I seek out other writers, or try to, find the elegant and charming Paulette Cherici-Porello, who proves in her book of poems and stories, Mesccia, that the Monégasque language is still alive and creatively well. I have since translated some of her poems.

I work on my "Paris" novel and write reviews for Poetry Ireland Review on two books concerning John Montague, the poet, who spends some part of the year at Nice. I write trying to look outwards - is it the Irish weather that makes us so creatively introverted? I read in French almost always. We drive into the hills and uncover villages and local poets. I form an idea for a modest Irish-Côte d'Azur poetry festival that engages me still. I give my paper on contemporary Irish writing and politics in the library. Sylvia and I produce a mandoline and fiddle and rustle up some Irish tunes.

Next morning Judith summons me. They are arranging their St Patrick's Day concert programme - would we play at it? Off, immediately, to the music academy and its director, Michel Crosset.

On our last day in Monaco our car to Nice is late. Puzzled, we take a taxi. That night in dark Galway we learn that our car had an accident on one of those snaky corniches on the way to pick us up. The driver had been injured, but thankfully not seriously.

The majority in the principality are not locals - only 6,000 native Monégasques are left. But there is a large contingent of Irish from Antibes to Menton.

We return for St Patrick's Day this year. We play with musicians from Monaco's music academy in La Chapelle de la Visitation in Monaco-Ville, a musée of saints by Rubens, massive in their flowing robes, poignant German sculpture and an orgasmic religious work by Van Den Hecke.

Seats fill, places are marked out with white cards. It is said Prince Albert will attend, a throne-style seat is placed up front, then removed. Uncertainty. Expectation.

A TV camera twitches. Gentlemen with earpieces enter; the congregation rises. Prince Albert strides by in a light grey suit. He walks to the top of the chapelle, chats and sits down. In this slightly old-world atmosphere, wonderful and remorselessly young musicians from the académie play flawlessly on their Baroque instruments, one angelic girl - had she fallen out of one of the paintings? - plays O'Carolan airs on the fat-bellied mandoline with a flair and panache that makes us blush. We rise, play, bow.

A tiny girl presents Sylvia with a bunch of flowers. At the bottom of the aisle Prince Albert, bespectacled and with a lightly American accent, stops and speaks to us about our music.

He knows Irish music well and has particularly enjoyed my singing of Paddy's Green Shamrock Shore. There is an adjournment to drinks and lively conversation in the library. Again we speak for a while with the prince, an engaging and pleasant man. I find him instantly likeable. As he carries out a function that musically unites Ireland and Monaco, around him some Irish companions raise their glasses.

Next morning in the library, I am not surprised to see copies of Paddy's Green Shamrock Shore, significantly on green paper, fluttering gently on a table.

Both of us have found it strangely personal lately to read of Prince Rainier's death and the subsequent cheap tabloid-style stories on the Grimaldi family. We have fond memories of Monaco and pleasant recollections of speaking with Prince Albert, who will now become ruler of that little principality and for whom an Irish folksong of parting and loss was, however briefly, important.

• Fred Johnston is a Belfast-born writer and critic and founder of Galway's annual Cúirt literature festival. More recently, he initiated the Western Writers' Centre - Ionad Scríbhneóirí Chaitlín Maude. See www.twwc.ie