Parent–teacher meetings were a disaster. They were a ritual humiliation. Squirming in front of the local court clerk, Trevor Higgins, with his neat, black moustache, and black wool coat, and his trousers creased like razor blades. Higgins, a posh little peasant with a good job, who spent his summers in the south of France and got his clean, white underpants in a twist of rage and irritation when he had to confront Mr Mediocrity, as he described Gussie.

Gussie never made much progress at teaching Alicia Higgins her irregular verbs. And it was all dragged up at the parent–teacher meetings. Alicia was lanky and as tall as himself, and she was all blushes and shy in front of Daddy, as if butter itself wouldn’t melt in her mouth. As Daddy began tearing strips off the teacher for his inadequacy in the French tongue, Gussie would go beetroot and invariably fart like an officer’s horse, so that eventually Alicia would come close to wetting herself in the effort it took to avoid laughing.

Then there was the school principal, Mr Crosby. He was some tulip. And down on Gussie like a ton of bricks when he got the chance. He used to play rugby. Not blessed with a sense of humour. Enormous lips the colour and texture of dough, which were always squeezed into a zero as tight as a duck’s hole when he was displeased with a student’s behaviour. That was his nickname. Duck’s-arse. Didn’t Birdie have to listen to her son whingeing one night that Duck’s-arse was always picking on him? And what do you mean picking on you, his mother wanted to know. Sure you’re not a student. Aren’t you supposed to be one of the teachers?

Crosby’s face was flat. Something like a lump of dough that someone had fisted. His nose was broken and had never been fixed right. His ears were chewed to their stumps. If you met him in a bar, with a pint of beer and his head shaved to the roots of his follicles, you’d be hard got to figure out was he a policeman or a criminal. But anyone would guess that he was one or the other.

It was certainly difficult to think of him as principal of St Angela’s Secondary School, on the outskirts of Kinnegad.

He could barely squeeze himself in between his glass-topped desk and his black plastic swivel chair. Such weight!

Gussie cringed for fear the seat would collapse.

Then Crosby stared at his keys. He had a lot of keys. Forty or more dangling from a large steel ring. He was like a prison officer. His head lowered. His big fat paws on the keys. On the desk. Tapping with his sausage fingers.

‘I’m a little concerned about some of your days off last year, Mr Delaney.’

‘It’s a medical condition, Mr Crosby.’

‘Arah for fuck’s sake, I know that Gussie. For Jaysus sake, I know. You tell me that every fucken year for as long as I’ve known you. The question is … have you ever seen a doctor?’