Paula Neary

Paula Neary, known at school as Miss Neary, teaches Connell Waldron Economics. Her importance lies less in an extended personal history than in the way her attention to Connell is repeatedly misread: classmates treat it as evidence that he desires her, while Connell himself is unsure how to interpret his discomfort. Their later encounter, after his school years, turns that uncertainty into a more direct test of his ability to refuse unwanted intimacy while severely drunk.

Identity and Introduction

At secondary school, Paula is Connell’s Economics teacher. She sometimes keeps him after class to discuss his life direction and, on one occasion, touches the knot of his school tie. Connell does not describe reciprocating or encouraging her attention; he sits quietly while she speaks and acts toward him. Yet the distinction between her conduct and his response is blurred by the school’s gossip about them.

The rumours become a social fact in their own right. Students say Connell fancies Paula and even claim he tried to add her on Facebook, which he did not do. He finds it difficult to challenge the story: he fears that describing her behaviour would make him seem as though he were boasting. In class, his embarrassment and irritation interfere with his concentration, until the graphs in his textbook seem to blur.

Connell’s Uncertainty at School

Connell’s difficulty is not simply that other students misread him; their certainty begins to unsettle his own. He wonders whether he might desire Paula at some level without recognizing it, and whether the nausea and stress he associates with intimacy are somehow evidence of attraction. The narrative presents this as a genuine uncertainty in his understanding of desire, intensified by a public interpretation he cannot comfortably contest.

Marianne Sheridan takes his account seriously. She says she has noticed Paula behaving flirtatiously toward him and offers to speak to Mr Lyons without identifying Connell as the source. Connell refuses, asking Marianne not to tell anyone. She reassures him that Paula’s conduct is not his fault and that he is doing nothing wrong. Their conversation gives him a private counterpoint to the school’s gossip, although it does not resolve his uncertainty about why others are so convinced he is attracted to Paula.

Reappearance After School

Paula reappears years later at Phantom nightclub, where Connell meets her after attending Marianne’s father’s anniversary Mass. He has gone out with people from school but is not really socializing; he drinks heavily in an effort to become numb. His intoxication is so severe that his vision doubles. Paula buys tequila shots for the group, and Connell later cannot remember how he got to her house or whether they travelled there on foot or by taxi.

At Paula’s home, they drink wine and talk. She says that the football team is not the same without him and calls secondary school the best years of his life. When she begins kissing him, Connell experiences the contact as wrong and tries to pull away. He is too drunk and disoriented to respond decisively at first, but eventually says he is going to be sick. Paula stops, and he stands up, buttons his jeans, and leaves the encounter. He wakes the next day fully clothed on the floor of his own living room, with no memory of how he got home.

Narrative Significance

The two encounters form a contrast. At school, gossip assigns Connell a desire that he cannot confidently name or disprove; later, his intoxication and confusion make it difficult for him to act on his discomfort, even as he recognizes that the encounter feels wrong. The difference between what others say about his attraction and what he experiences himself is central to Paula’s role in the story.

Her return also shows that the earlier discomfort was not merely a rumour about a schoolboy’s supposed crush. The novel links the episodes through Connell’s shame and uncertainty, while allowing his eventual refusal to remain distinct from the pressure and disorientation surrounding it. Paula is therefore a limited but consequential figure in Connell’s history: her attention exposes how social assumptions can silence discomfort, and how difficult it can be for him to trust his own response.