The Red Knickers Theory

A bathroom quote, a fashion tip and a tea break that got away from everyone.

Over thirty-four years in school staffrooms, I heard conversations that could move from the price of a bathroom to a highly questionable piece of fashion advice before the kettle had boiled. Someone was usually willing to stir things up. Someone else would object. The person doing the crossword often heard more than anyone.

There were mornings when that laughter was badly needed. You might come in after a difficult phone call or a lesson that hadn’t gone well, and find yourself laughing despite yourself. Some mornings, you went back to class in better form than you’d arrived.

This is a fictional piece drawn from fragments of conversations overheard across those years. The characters and exchanges are invented, but the staffroom humour is familiar.

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Eileen had been staring at her phone for ten minutes.

‘Eleven thousand, nine hundred and three euro,’ she said, without looking up. ‘For an en-suite. They’re not plumbers. They’re highwaymen.’

Karen was fixing her hair in the window. ‘Forget the bathroom. Did you hear about the red knickers?’

Nobody had.

‘Red under white trousers,’ Karen said, turning round. ‘Invisible. Completely invisible. We’ve been buying nude for years like eejits.’

‘That can’t be right,’ said Eileen.

‘It’s science.’

‘Whose science?’

‘Instagram’s.’

The door opened on the word. Declan came in from the yard with a net of footballs over his shoulder and the look of a man who had heard just enough.

‘What’s science?’

‘Nothing,’ said three women at once.

He dropped the footballs by the radiator. ‘Go on.’

Karen weighed it up and told him anyway. Declan gave it the same grave attention he gave the under-twelve selection.

‘That’s colour theory,’ he said. ‘Same as the jerseys. Red disappears under the floodlights.’

‘It does not,’ said Eileen.

‘Liverpool,’ said Declan, as if that settled it.

Brendan was in the blue armchair by the electronic noticeboard with the crossword folded on his knee. Thirty-one years in sixth class. He didn’t look up.

‘Mary has a theory on that,’ he said. ‘I’m not allowed to repeat it.’

‘Then why bring it up?’

‘So you’d know there is one.’ He filled in a clue.

Séamus came in looking for the key of the boiler house and stayed for the figure. Eileen handed him the phone. He held it at arm’s length, then closer, then at arm’s length again.

‘Is that with the tiling?’

‘It is.’

‘And the shower screen?’

‘It is.’

He handed it back. ‘I’d have done it for six.’

‘Then why didn’t you?’

‘You never asked me.’

Nuala looked up from the corner, where she had been pretending to plan.

‘Trish has been telling us this for years,’ she said. ‘We owe her an apology.’

‘You can tell her,’ said Karen.

‘Why me?’

‘You’re the one who remembers.’

‘I’ll explain the colour theory,’ said Declan.

‘Please don’t,’ said Eileen.

Séamus was laughing in the doorway, the boiler house forgotten. Eileen put her phone face down on the table.

‘I’m going red myself,’ she said. ‘White trousers and all. If I can’t afford a toilet, I can afford a pair of knickers.’

‘I’ll fit the toilet,’ said Séamus, ‘if you promise never to tell me how that goes.’

Karen lifted her mug. ‘Keeps the morale up.’

‘Whose morale?’ said Declan.

‘Ours.’

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