Why didn’t Laura tell the girls she had finally started going out with Richard Culhane?

Why did she tell them something about him that was months or even years out of date?

I ended up driving Laura into college from Rathmines. I thought about asking her if the boy she had met was Richard. But I knew it was. I knew because Conor had already seen them together, on the dance floor at the Bondi Beach Club in Stillorgan, and he had told me all about it.

14

In his six years at Brookfield, Richard got in trouble only once. Because of Richard’s ‘outstanding reputation as a player and a student’, Pat Kilroy suspended him for only a single day, instead of for the full week mandated by the school’s code of conduct. He also invited Peter Culhane to come into his office for a chat.

What had happened was this. During a Senior Cup qualifier, in the last minute of the first half, Richard had the ball and was barrelling towards the post, eight or nine yards from the line. The game was Brookfield against a Tallaght CBC. Three yards out, Richard was tackled by a hooker from the Tallaght side. It was a heavy tackle, above the waist. Richard lay on the pitch for sixty seconds after the whistle blew, convinced his jaw was broken.

In the locker room he said nothing. He didn’t respond to the outraged condolences of Barry Fox and Fergal Morrison. He sat there and drank his water and when the second half began he waited until the Tallaght hooker had the ball and tackled him as hard as he could, aiming for the small of the back. It was a head-first lunge, a savage sprawl of lowered shoulders and flailing limbs. The CBC player went down. Richard braced himself against the ground and delivered three thick punches (bang bang bang) to the other boy’s neck and shoulders before the ref and some Brookfield boys pulled him free. The ball was Brookfield’s and Conor Harris kicked it clear for the line-out.

The CBC boy had a black eye and some damage (it was later confirmed) to the cartilage in his left shoulder. Richard was sent off. He didn’t stay for the rest of the match. He didn’t even take a shower. He grabbed his bag from the locker room and drove home to Sandycove.

‘Richard came in too hard on the tackle,’ was the consensus view of this incident.

‘W a y too hard,’ Fergal Morrison later said. ‘He wasn’t tackling that guy. He was trying to fucking bury him.’

Pat Kilroy was forced to reprimand Richard for bringing the good standing of the school into disrepute.

‘What were you thinking, Richard?’ he asked.

This was the following day. Richard sat in Kilroy’s office in his school uniform with its red-and-white tie.

‘I just lost it,’ Richard said. Throughout the interview with Pat Kilroy his face was red and his throat felt ticklish and constricted. He found that enjoying Pat Kilroy’s respect was a crucial part of his own self-belief.