The Thirsty Scholar public house has been a traditional annex of St. Oswald’s for over half a century, providing Games teachers with a lunchtime pint and Sixth-Form boys with a place in which to meet their Mulberry counterparts. We have an unwritten rule whereby if they take their ties off, we, the staff, do not know them, or ask if they have turned eighteen. The boys return the compliment. Of course, to a St. Oswald’s boy, the thought of a Master letting his hair down—of indulging in a couple of pints and maybe a pasty and a Gauloise; of buying a few groceries at the local corner shop; or, still less conceivable, of socializing with the opposite sex—is a freakish occurrence akin to two-headed dogs and plagues of locusts from the sky. My boys, for all their affection, secretly imagine me spending my nights at St. Oswald’s; sleeping at my desk, perhaps, or hanging behind the stock-cupboard door, next to my discarded gown.

Of course, we are all of us prone to these assumptions. We prefer our people to stay in context. Perhaps that was why Harry Clarke’s revelation came as such a surprise to me—not the idea of his homosexuality, but of any sexuality. And perhaps that’s why, when I went in today, I was so surprised to see the Headmaster alone at the bar, smoking a cigarette and drinking something on the rocks.

The end of his silk tie stuck out from the top pocket of his suit—it seems that Johnny Harrington still believes in the talismanic removal of the necktie to confer invisibility—and he was already slightly drunk. Not enough to fall over, but there was an absent look on his face, an unusual vagueness in the way he moved his hands, which strongly suggested the man had imbibed. Which was strange, as I’d always believed that, like my own GP, Johnny Harrington didn’t drink spirits, or smoke cigarettes, or indulge in anything stronger than a glass of wine with his evening meal.

I found a seat by the window, where I hoped to go unseen, and ordered a pint and a ploughman’s lunch from Bethan, the young woman who serves at the bar. I wasn’t spying, precisely—but something told me that Harrington wouldn’t be happy to see me, and besides, I was very curious to know just what he was doing there, drinking alone in a village pub, when he had a wife at home—