‘Tell us, Mr Harney,’ said the parish priest softly, his voice a raft of sibilant understanding, ‘what does your religion mean to you?’
At the opposite end of the refectory table, James T Harney, B.Ed. (Hons; Class 2:1) shifted uncomfortably in his seat as he felt the irritation well within him like a wave. When he had submitted his application (prepared over the weekend of his birthday in November, neatly typed, duly signed) for the vacant headship of St Joseph of Cupertino’s school from which post Fred Swellands, his dad’s partner at the nineteenth hole, was retiring at long last, the Governors of St Joseph’s had failed to extend to him the simple professional courtesy of taking up his references from St Athelstan’s where he had four years’ experience as deputy.
And, if truth be told, James Terence Harney had run St Athelstan’s singlehandedly every summer for the last three years when, on three consecutive annual occasions, Basil Hanlith, the head of St Athelstan’s (‘Skidpan Hanlith’, as Harry Holwick, the school caretaker, had taken to calling him – a reference to the one and only art and craft class Hanlith had taken during his ten years at the school) had contrived to crock himself, putting himself hors de combat until the September of the succeeding autumn term.
Back in July, 1972, Hanlith’s Volswagen Beetle, pulling away from the kerb outside the Five-Barred Gate Hotel on Hollinwood Avenue, Chadderton, had collided with a Volvo saloon at 11.01 pm on the night of the dress rehearsal for the school show (Hellzapoppin’: Hanlith having assumed responsibility for the scenery for that production – scenery perpendicular, naturally, and, given his peculiar flair, scenery horizontal too).