The Bench

The provincial final was Sunday. It was now Wednesday. Luke was sitting on a leatherette armchair outside the manager's office with his kit bag by his foot and his hands very quietly locked together between his knees.

The manager's office was in a Portakabin. All the team's big conversations happened in Portakabins. Luke had, over his four years on the panel, been told he'd been dropped in a Portakabin; been told he'd been put back into the starting fifteen in a Portakabin; and been told, once, by a strength-and-conditioning consultant in a Portakabin, that he ate "too much bread for a man of his position," which was a line he had never fully recovered from.

The door opened.

"Come in, Luke."

Mick Colgan, the manager, was small, grey, and exactly the same temperature as the wall he was standing beside. He had been managing Luke's invented Leinster county for four years and had a reputation for two things: remembering every ball a player had ever won or lost, and saying almost nothing about either.

Luke went in. He sat. Colgan sat.

"How's the ankle."

"Good. Ninety per cent. I'll be right for Sunday."

"Grand."

They sat for three seconds. Colgan did not ask Luke why he had requested the meeting, because Colgan never asked. Colgan waited.

Luke said, "I wanted to tell you something, ahead of Sunday, so that if it leaks — which it probably won't — but if it leaks, it's not news to you. I'd rather you heard it from me."

"Right."

"I'm gay."

Colgan did not move any of his face. He said, after a neutral beat, "Alright."

"Alright."

"Is it going to leak?"

"I don't know. Probably not. My family knows. Some friends outside the panel know. One of the physios knows."

"Which physio."

"Una."

"Una's solid. It won't come from her."

"That's what I thought."

"Who in the panel."

"Nobody, yet. I'm — I wanted to tell you before I told anyone in the group. If I tell anyone in the group. I don't know if I do. Not this week."

"Mm."

Colgan tilted his head slightly. Tapped his pen twice on a blank piece of paper.

"Okay. One, thank you for telling me. Two, it changes nothing about your selection or your place in the panel or my opinion of you as a player or as a person. Three — " he paused " — three, you don't have to tell anyone on Sunday. Or at all. That's yours."

Luke breathed out, slightly too obviously.

"I wasn't planning to tell anyone on Sunday."

"Grand."

"I wasn't planning to tell anyone any particular Sunday."

"Also grand."

"I just — wanted it to not be a weight you didn't know about."

"Understood."

Colgan put the pen down. For Colgan, putting the pen down was roughly equivalent to another man standing up and crossing the room.

"Luke. One thing. Is there anything I'm doing, or anything anyone on my staff is doing, or anything you're hearing in the changing room, that I should know about."

"No."

"Sure?"

"I mean." Luke thought. "The lads are the lads. There's banter. There's nothing horrible."

"Would you tell me if there was."

"I'd tell Una, probably, first. Then she'd tell you."

"Fair. That's how it should work."

They sat for another moment.

"Can I ask," Colgan said, "without crossing any lines. Why now. Why this week."

"Because I've been closeted on this panel for four years." Luke's voice was steady. He hadn't expected it to be. "And I've always been scared that the day I made it to a provincial final, I'd look back and feel like the whole thing had been done with a pillow over it. I don't want Sunday to be that. I didn't want to win a provincial final — or lose one — as a lad who his manager didn't know."

"Mm."

"That's it. That's the reason."

"Fair."

Colgan thought for a moment. Then he stood up and did something Luke had never seen him do in four years. He walked around his side of the desk, stopped beside Luke's chair, and put his hand on Luke's shoulder. He left it there for about three seconds. It was, emphatically, not a hug.

"You're a credit to yourself, Luke."

"Thanks, Mick."

"Go and train well on Thursday."

"I will."

"Ice the ankle tonight."

"I will."

"And if you ever want help thinking about who on the panel you'd want to tell, and when, come back here. We can — I don't know. We can figure it out. The county has a welfare officer. She's also solid. You don't have to do any of it alone."

"Thank you."

Colgan nodded, once, and sat back down.

"Right. Now. Get out of my office, I've an analysis meeting in ten minutes."

"Grand."

Luke stood, picked up his kit bag, walked to the door. As his hand touched the handle, Colgan said, without looking up:

"Luke."

"Mick."

"We're going to win on Sunday."

Luke blinked. This was, again, not a thing Colgan said. Colgan did not predict. Colgan assessed.

"We might."

"We are." Colgan flicked the page over. "I've seen the tape of their half-back line. They're not as quick as they think they are."

"Right."

"You'll be picking up their number twelve. He's left-footed, he'll drift in off your shoulder if you give him room, don't give him room."

"I won't."

"Good."

Luke went out. He closed the door carefully.

Outside, in the shared space with the kit room and the ice bath, one of the selectors — Colie Heneghan, assistant manager, former dual player, kind eyes, never-uttered-a-word-about-politics-in-his-life — was coming up the corridor with two bottles of water.

"Alright, Luke?"

"Alright, Colie."

"Meeting?"

"Yeah. Logistics stuff."

"Mm. You leaving?"

"Yeah. Gym later."

"Sound. Safe home."

Colie passed, and nothing about his face indicated that anything in Luke's life had changed in the last ten minutes; which was correct, because nothing had; which was, somehow, the entire point.

On the drive home Luke did not cry, although he had set aside the permission to. He put on Lyric FM and let the announcer talk him through a piano concerto he did not know. Near Portlaoise a small rain started, and he turned the wipers on a slow setting, and the wipers clacked in that steady, slightly-out-of-sync way that they always did, and by the time the music ended he realised he had been singing along, under his breath, to a concerto he did not actually know the tune to.

On Sunday his side lost the provincial final by two points. Their number twelve drifted in off his shoulder twice, and Luke closed him down both times, and his ankle was fine. Afterwards, in the changing room, Colgan said a very short and very good thing about honour and about the season, and then he shook every hand on the panel. When he got to Luke, he did the hand on the shoulder thing again, briefly, and said, "Well done, Luke," in exactly the tone he used for every other player, which was the correct tone, and was the one Luke had needed.

On Monday morning Luke woke up and decided he was still not going to tell the group. Not yet. Possibly never. The world was not going to fall apart if he didn't.

It had been a good week, in its way.

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