‘Did yous catch anything?’ he yawned as he put aside the paper, drawing the back of his hands over his eyes like a child. There was a dark stain of hair oil behind him on the whitewash where sometimes he leaned his head and slept when the bar was empty.
‘We roused only one and he slipped them.’
‘I’m thinking there’s only the warriors left by this time of year.’ He laughed, and when he laughed the tip of his red nose curled up in a way that caused the teacher to smile with affection.
‘I suppose I’ll let the old towser out the back?’
Charlie nodded. ‘I’ll get one of the children to throw him some food later.’ When the door was closed again he said in a hushed, solicitous voice, ‘I suppose, Master, it’ll be whiskey?’
‘A large one, Charlie,’ the teacher said.
In a delicious glow of tiredness from the walking and the sensuous burning of the whiskey as it went down, he was almost mindless in the shuttle back and forth of talk until he saw Charlie go utterly still. He was following each move his wife made at the other end of the house. The face was beautiful in its concentration, reflecting each move or noise she made as clearly as water will the drifting clouds. When he was satisfied that there was no sudden danger of her coming up to the bar he turned to the shelves. Though the teacher could not see past the broad back, he had witnessed the little subterfuge so often that he could follow it in exact detaiclass="underline" the silent unscrewing of the bottle cap, the quick tip of the whiskey into the glass, the silent putting back of the cap, and the downing of the whiskey in one gulp, the movements so practised that it took but seconds. Coughing violently, he turned and ran the water and drank the glass of water into the coughing. While he waited for the coughing to die, he rearranged bottles on the shelves. The teacher was so intimate with the subterfuge that he might as well have taken part in the act of love. ‘If I’m home in time for the dinner she might have something even better for me afterwards,’ he remembered with resentment.
‘Tom didn’t come with you?’ Charlie asked as soon as he brought the fit of coughing under control.
‘No. He was done in with the walking and the wife was expecting him.’
‘They say he’s coming up for permanent soon. Do you think he will have any trouble?’
‘The most thing he’s afraid of is the medical.’
Charlie was silent for a while, and then he said, ‘It’s a quare caper that, isn’t it, the heart on the wrong side?’
‘There’s many a quare caper, Charlie,’ the teacher replied. ‘Life itself is a quare caper if you ask me.’
‘But what’ll he do if he doesn’t get permanent?’
‘What’ll we all do, Charlie?’ the teacher said inwardly and, as always when driven in to reflect on his own life, instinctively fixed the brown hat more firmly on his head.
Once he did not bother to wear a hat or a cap over his thick curly fair hair even when it was raining. And he was in love then with Cathleen O’Neill. They’d thought time would wait for them for ever as they went to the sea in his baby Austin or to dances after spending Sundays on the river. And then, suddenly, his hair began to fall out. Anxiety exasperated desire to a passion, the passion to secure his life as he felt it slip away, to moor it to the woman he loved. Now it was her turn to linger. She would not marry him and she would not let him go.
‘Will you marry me or not? I want an answer one way or the other this evening.’ He felt his whole life like a stone on the edge of a boat out on water.
‘What if I don’t want to answer?’ They were both proud and iron-willed.
‘Then I’ll take it as No.’
‘You’ll have to take it whatever way you want, then.’ Her face was flushed with resentment.
‘Goodbye, then.’ He steeled himself to turn away.
Twice he almost paused, but no voice calling him back came. At the open iron gate above the stream he did pause. ‘If I cross it here it is the end. Anything is better than the anguish of uncertainty. If I cross here I cannot turn back even if she should want.’ He counted till ten and looked back, but her back was turned, walking slowly uphill to the house. As she passed through the gate he felt a tearing that broke as an inaudible cry.
No one ever saw him afterwards without his brown hat, and there was great scandal the first Sunday he wore it in the body of the church. The man kneeling next to him nudged him, gestured with his thumb at the hat, but the teacher did not even move. Whispers and titters and one hysterical whinny of laughter that set off a general sneeze ran through the congregation as he unflinchingly wore it through the service.
The priest was up to the school just before hometime the very next day. They let the children home early.
‘Have you seen Miss O’Neill recently, Jim?’ the priest opened cautiously, for he liked the young teacher, the most intelligent and competent he had.
‘No, Father. That business is finished.’
‘There’d be no point in me putting in a word?’
‘There’d be no point, Father.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. It’s no surprise. Everything gets round these parts in a shape.’
‘In a shape, certainly, Father.’ There was dry mockery in the voice.
‘When it gets wild it is different, when you hear talk of nothing else — and that’s what has brought me up. What’s going the rounds now is that you wore your hat all through Mass yesterday.’
‘They were right for once, Father.’
‘I’m amazed.’
‘Why, Father?’
‘You’re an intelligent man. You know you can’t do that, Jim.’
‘Why not, Father?’
‘You don’t need me to tell you that it’d appear as an extreme form of disrespect.’
‘If the church can’t include my own old brown hat, it can’t include very much, can it, Father?’
‘You know that and I know that, but we both know that the outward shows may least belie themselves. It’d not be tolerated.’
‘It’ll have to be tolerated, Father or …’
‘You can’t be that mad. I know you’re the most intelligent man round here.’
‘Thanks, Father. All votes in that direction count round here. “They said I was mad and I said they were mad, and confound them they outvoted me,”’ he quoted. ‘That’s about it, isn’t it, Father?’
‘Ah, stop it, Jim. Tell me why. Seriously, tell me why.’
‘You may have noticed recently, Father,’ he began slowly, in rueful mockery, ‘a certain manifestation that my youth is ended. Namely, that I’m almost bald. It had the effect of timor mortis. So I decided to cover it up.’
‘Many lose their hair. Bald or grey, what does it matter? We all go that way.’
‘So?’
‘When I look down from the altar on Sunday half the heads on the men’s side are bald.’
‘The women must cover their crowning glory and the men must expose their lack of a crown. So that’s the old church in her wisdom bringing us all to heel?’
‘I can’t understand all this fooling, Jim.’
‘I’m deadly serious. I’ll wear my hat in the same way as you wear your collar, Father.’
‘But that’s nonsense. It’s completely different.’
‘Your collar is the sublimation of timor mortis. What else is it, in Jesus Christ? All I’m asking is to cover it up.’
‘But you can’t wear it all the time?’
‘Maybe not in bed but that’s different.’
‘Listen. This joking has gone far enough. I don’t care where you wear your hat. That’s your problem. But if you wear it in church you make it my problem.’
‘Well, you’ll have to do something about it then, Father.’