A Month of Sundays

  His joy was tempered when he remembered tonight was the night of the bring-and-buy sale, which was due to start at eight o’clock, and his heart sank at the prospect of an evening spent shifting videos and books from trestle tables to other trestle tables in an endless loop. Upon leaving the building, he met Duffy, who had agreed to help with the event and between them, they decided one way to compensate for the loss of their Thursday evening - the traditional start of the weekend, really, and a night when they had always gone for a pint - would be to move their usual pub session forward a few hours. This was how they came to be occupying their usual corner of the pub, pints in hand, as the clock struck four.

  “No whiskeys,” warned O’Driscoll, remembering the last time they had visited the establishment before a school event, “or Sister Bernadette might end up with another bag of braille.”

  They made strenuous, but only partially successful efforts to moderate their alcohol intake but O’Driscoll found the beer actually had a settling effect on a stomach still fizzing from the malevolent combination of Guinness and fiery Indian food. With a quick freshen up in The North Star toilets - an oxymoronic activity if ever there was one - they contrived to time their arrival at school to coincide with the eight o’clock starting time.

  The hall was busy with staff and other helpers and the two spent the next half an hour diligently carrying items in and out of the room. During one of his entrances, O’Driscoll bumped into Karen who was coming towards him looking radiant in a dark-fitted top. She smiled and his heart did its familiar somersault but there was no chance to say anything because they were moving in opposite directions. After half an hour of activity, O’Driscoll’s bladder was close to bursting, so he made his way into the Gents only to find that Duffy had got there before him. Greeting his friend, he leaned against the wall of the urinal and sighed with relief as the merciful release of liquid began to empty his bladder. At the same time, he shifted his weight slightly and farted, but instead of the expected discharge of wind, a jet of hot liquid exploded out of his arse and into the folds of his boxer shorts.

  He stood rooted to the spot, hoping against hope he had imagined the damp emissions but an exploratory wriggle soon confirmed that his initial impression had been accurate. At the thought of what he had done, his blood ran cold, and a further wriggle confirmed the same lowering of temperature was happening to the emissions in his boxers, producing a most unpleasant sensation. Three days of lager, Guinness and formidably spice-laden Indian food had, perhaps inevitably, resulted in O’Driscoll’s digestive system emitting a howl of existential pain.

  Sensing a change in his friend’s demeanour, Duffy quickly ascertained what had happened and sprang into action. Explaining that a similar thing had happened to him a few years before, he suggested that, as the excretions in O’Driscoll’s boxers were liquid and relatively untainted by odour, the best way to deal with them would be for him to sit down and let his body heat dry them away.

  “You’re telling me to sit down?” said O’Driscoll, aghast.

  “Yes.”

  “Just so we’re clear, you’re asking me to sit in my own shit!”

  “Yes... well... put like that, I can see why you might not fancy the idea.”

  “I should bloody well think not!”

  Duffy was insistent that his plan would work, but did warn his friend that after a time, he might find his boxers had become literally stuck to him. On the night it had happened to him, he said, he had returned home full of warmth and bonhomie and forgetful of the earlier accident, had attempted an act of physical intimacy with his then girlfriend, as a result of which it had been weeks before she had spoken to him or allowed him to come anywhere near her.

  Meanwhile in the adjacent hall, Sister Bernadette was scanning the room, looking for an additional trestle table to cope with the unexpectedly high volume of books that had come in when she noticed John O’Driscoll enter the room and cross it with a curious stiff-legged gait. Remembering he had recently broke up a fight on the playground, she wondered whether he might have hurt himself and watched as he crossed the room and lowered himself gingerly into a chair, an expression of deep distress appearing on his face as he established contact with the plastic seat. Karen came in at this point carrying a handful of books and Sister Bernadette called to her.

  “There don’t seem to be any tables free, Karen, but you could take those books and the others into that little storeroom over there. John,” she went on, “would you be able to give Karen a hand and take the books into the storeroom and put them into some sort of order?”

  O’Driscoll rose with alacrity from his seat, stopped abruptly halfway up and then receded slowly into a sitting position.

  “Er... sorry Sister, sorry Karen,” he mumbled, a strange expression appearing on his face, “I think I might be feeling a bit... er... faint.”

  “Better stay there for a few minutes, then,” said Sister Bernadette.

  O’Driscoll’s own feelings, as he sat, literally glued to the surface of the chair, were too deep for words. Here he was, offered the chance to spend time alone with the most beautiful girl in the world, quietly sifting and cataloguing books in an atmosphere of seclusion and intimacy that might have led to who knows what. And why had he had to decline the invitation? Because he had shat himself - that was why! As he gazed disconsolately at the “Toilet” sign on the door, it seemed to offer a final damning verdict, for O’Driscoll worked in an environment whose practitioners habitually used the term as a verb. He was a man of nearly thirty who couldn’t even toilet himself properly.

  Friday

  With Duffy’s advice having proved well-founded, O’Driscoll avoided further embarrassment and was finally able to make his way home to a much-needed hot soak in the bath. The following morning when he arrived at school, Sister Bernadette made a point of finding him and asking him in a most solicitous way whether he thought he was all right to be at work. He couldn’t help think that the nun was a decent old stick, though of course he would much rather have had such concern expressed by Karen, and when it was announced at briefing that the leaving do scheduled for Saturday evening was definitely on, O’Driscoll’s interest quickened and he wondered whether she was planning to attend.

  The only other point of note at briefing was the introduction of the visiting delegation from America, who had arrived the previous evening. There were six of them, school governors of both sexes and they looked a nondescript lot except for Brett’s father, who turned out, like his son, to answer to the name “Brett T. Donnelly”. Mr. Donnelly wore a loud suit and tie, when he introduced the delegation it was with a loud voice, and when he wiped his brow afterwards, it was with a loud handkerchief. As is often the case when teachers observe parents in action, it was easy to see Brett T Donnelly III in the voice and mannerisms of Brett T Donnelly II and staff could be seen exchanging amused glances.

  Later in the staff room, O’Driscoll found himself in earshot of Mrs. Goodwin as she brought her audience up to speed with the latest doings of the exchange students. “Reg had great fun with Henri last night. First he showed him Lord Nelson’s statue on the map and made a point of saying it was in Trafalgar Square, then he made a joke about going to Waterloo Station to see another place where we’d given the French a good hiding. “Funny, I’d always thought it was abroad somewhere.” A sound somewhere between a gurgle and a cough from the corner made her pause for a moment. “Then Reg told him that we’ve hated the French even longer than we have the Germans. He even made a joke that if it hadn’t have been for the English, Henri would have been born in Greater Germany and called Heinrich.”

  She gave another little laugh. “The American boy was taken with that. As for Henri, he was a real wet blanket and spent the whole evening mooning around looking bored. The only time he showed any interest was when Reg showed him a picture of Oliver Cromwell and told him Cromwell and his friends had cut Ch
arles the First’s head off. He sat up and took notice then, did Henri, said he didn’t know the English did that sort of thing and wanted to know why we’d kept quiet about it. Reg put him straight and told him that, actually, it was only one king and that, anyway the English weren’t the kind of people to boast about such things. No, when we had to execute our king, we did it with a bit of respect - a simple, dignified, beheading - not like a certain nation you could mention, turning the whole thing into a performance!”

  As he sat reading, trying to filter out the sound of Mrs. Goodwin’s voice, O’Driscoll heard Karen’s name being mentioned and his pulse immediately quickened.

  “Karen? Yeah, she’s definitely coming tomorrow, she said she could do with a night out after the break up.”

  “The break up?”

  “Yeah, she split up with Darren a couple of weeks ago, didn’t you know?”

  “No, I didn’t even know they were having problems.”

  “Apparently things haven’t been good for a while, but it came to a head a couple of weeks ago and she gave him the boot - that’s why she didn’t go to the Shakespeare thing or come out on Tracey’s birthday.”

  “Poor Karen.”

  “She’s well rid, if you ask me.”

  As he listened, O’Driscoll’s eyes focused on the copy of History Today that was resting in his hands, but inside his heart was racing. He had always known in a vague kind of a way Karen was in a relationship, but his mind had shied away from thinking about it on the basis that ignorance, while not being exactly blissful, was some kind of protective shield against the misery that would engulf him if he did consider it. However, it appeared she was footloose and fancy free and while the idea of him registering on her romantic radar was clearly preposterous, at least his fantasies could take place in a world that was a tiny iota nearer to the real one. With the words he had heard giving him much food for thought, he applied himself willingly to the grindstone that was Friday afternoon and managed to make it to the end of the day without further incident.

  Saturday

  By early evening, John O’Driscoll was in an unusually ebullient mood. Having found out that, due to the illness of an elderly relative, Karen would not be able to coordinate Sunday’s concert, but she would still be attending tonight’s leaving do, he felt that the fates were for once looking kindly on him. Against all odds and in the face of all the evidence from previous events that indicated only embarrassment and tongue-tied failure lay ahead, somehow he had the feeling that tonight just might be the night he got off with Karen Black.

  His preparations for the evening were unusually comprehensive. Having bathed, showered and deodorised himself, he brushed his teeth repeatedly and rinsed his mouth out with enough mouthwash to take the top layer off his soft palate. He dressed himself in his best “going out” clothes and, having subjected himself to judicious scrutiny in the mirror, turned to the vexatious question of aftershave. There were those in his group who looked on the use of aftershave in the way of those eighteenth century Scottish Presbyterians who believed dancing in the village square was the first step on a road that led inexorably to sexual degeneracy.

  Micky Quinn, for one, was of the opinion that any man who chose to wear the product was by that act alone “suspect.” His own recent flirtation with Paco Rabanne he excused on the grounds that it was worn to please another, rather than flaunted provocatively as a lifestyle choice. So it was not without trepidation that, having sniffed experimentally at a dusty bottle of Blue Stratos and decided its contents probably hadn’t gone off, he wasn’t sure whether aftershave did go off, or whether, like a good malt whiskey, it actually matured with age. O’Driscoll took the plunge and applied a liberal splash to each jowl.

  With the aftershave dilemma thus resolved, he considered his next move. The others had arranged to meet in a pub at six-thirty, but with the function proper not due to start in the church hall until eight, O’Driscoll was determined that for one night at least, the cupid dart of love would not be skewered by the Strongbow arrow of drunkenness. Arranging his beige chinos in a way that would best preserve their knife-like crease, he sat down to wait, and it says much for his strength of purpose that it was nearly seven o’clock before his nerve cracked. Crack it finally did, and shortly afterwards, he was taking up his usual position in The North Star, seating himself and his Blue Stratos so as to keep them firmly upwind of Micky Quinn’s nose.

  His delayed arrival at the pub meant when O’Driscoll did reach the church hall, he was relatively sober, and the moment he clapped eyes on Karen, he was glad he had kept all his senses about him. She was wearing a pair of dark green jeans and above it a checked shirt from French Connection which had been left open to the third or fourth buttonhole and, whether it was a natural phenomenon or the product of some artfully-constructed scaffolding, tonight her cleavage seemed to have more definition than usual.

  The whole arrangement was framed tantalizingly and deliciously by the cloth of the unbuttoned shirt and as he gazed, transfixed, at the garment in question, some distant part of O’Driscoll’s brain began to send signals to his eyes, telling them to stop counting the buttonholes. After all, he didn’t want to give the impression that he had been staring at Karen Black’s tits, although, of course, that was exactly what he, and probably every other man in the room had been doing. Karen’s hair shone with health and vitality and tonight she had tied it up at the back, allowing a curled ringlet to fall on either side and frame her face. It was a style that O’Driscoll had seen her wearing before and tonight, it left him as numb with desire as it had on the previous occasions. Divining something of this, Duffy observed, “Hey up, John. Karen’s got her Hasidic hair on again,” but when O’Driscoll gave no sign of having heard, Duffy moved his hand up and down in front of his friend’s face and looked at the others.

  “What’s up with O’Driscoll?” asked Sweeney.

  “He hasn’t had enough to drink, that’s what’s up with him, the shirking git,” growled Micky. He opened his mouth to continue but stopped suddenly and like some vast Celtic Hannibal Lecter, raised a quivering nose to the air, nostrils flaring as he scented the atmosphere around him. Satisfied that the suspect fragrance that was polluting the air around him had not come from his friends, he made his way to the bar.

  An hour later, O’Driscoll felt like pinching himself to make sure he wasn’t dreaming as he looked into the eyes of Karen Black, who was dancing with sinuous grace a couple of feet away from him. In fairness, it should be pointed out the two of them were actually part of a larger group that was dancing, with varying levels of coordination, to Jeff Beck’s ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’, but what could not be denied was that Karen Black was occupying a space on the dance floor not two feet away from him, dancing with him and doing her best to have a conversation with him against the ear-shattering backdrop of the music.

  “Your hair looks nice tonight,” he said, his heart thumping in his chest as he spoke.

  “What?” she mouthed, with a quizzical expression on her face.

  “I said your hair looks nice,” he shouted, desperately trying to keep his eyes from travelling southwards towards that shirt and those buttons. She smiled and moved towards him so that her mouth was inches from his ear. “Do you think so? I’m sure I heard your friend Micky saying it looked a bit ... Jewish.”

  When O’Driscoll indicated that he hadn’t heard what she said, it was done partly to buy himself time but also so that he might once more experience the gossamer touch of her breath on his ear as she spoke. She repeated the question and he leaned back and subjected her face to a solemn and judicious scrutiny. “No,” he said in answer to her question, “there might be a hint of Afghan and those earrings do look a bit gypsy - better keep out of Father Kennedy’s way or he’ll chuck you out - but it’s definitely not Jewish.”

  There a pause in the music so she was able to hear what he said and laughed,
shaking her earrings as she did so in a way that O’Driscoll found most disturbing. Feeling things were developing along most interesting lines, he wondered whether inveigling Karen towards the more secluded setting of the bar might be a good move. “Fancy a drink?” he said, just as another guitar riff drowned out his words but she shook her head and said, “Let’s stay out here a bit longer, this is fun.” As she floated effortlessly across the dance floor and O’Driscoll clumped after her, straining to keep his dancing just the right side of embarrassing, she smiled again. Gazing into her eyes, O’Driscoll couldn’t see what was reflected in them. Was it interest? If so, was it simply friendly interest or something more? For the life of him, he couldn’t be sure.

  At that precise moment, the DJ did what all good DJ’s do, which is switch without pause and without warning from a fast record to a slow one, thereby denying the girls who are happy enough to dance in the vicinity of the males near them but wouldn’t be seen dead in their arms the opportunity to retreat to the seating area. O’Driscoll found that at the precise moment the first soft chords of 10CC’s ‘I’m Not In Love’ replaced the more energetic ones of ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’, he was staring straight into Karen Black’s eyes. He saw them change, but try as he might, her couldn’t interpret the new expression.

  Was it embarrassment or was it something more? Bollocks, he thought, there’s only one way to find out, so screwing his courage to the sticking place, he started to cross the space between them and at that precise moment the music stopped, the lights went up and Father Kennedy’s gruff tones could be heard announcing, “I’m sorry to spoil ye’re enjoyment but as chair of governors, I want to take this opportunity to make a small presentation...”