Tommy decides to leave school

Tommy McGeown’s decision to leave school turns an approaching set of exams into a conflict between long-term opportunity and immediate family need. After his father, Seamie McGeown, is seriously injured and told he will not be able to work, Tommy says he will not return to school. Cushla Lavery tries to persuade him to finish his A levels, but he doubts that education can offer prospects worth waiting for and has an uncle willing to employ him.

The Pressure Behind the Decision

Tommy’s refusal emerges in a conversation at Cushla’s house. He has followed her into the kitchen, where she makes tea, and remarks on the size of the house compared with his own. Cushla could have corrected his description of it as a mansion, but recognizes the difference between their homes and instead asks why he was absent from school. His answer is not a passing complaint: he is not planning to go back.

The timing makes the decision urgent. Tommy is close to the end of school, with only a few weeks left before he could sit his exams. Cushla asks him to endure that short stretch at least. Tommy answers with the circumstance that has changed his calculations: people are saying that his father’s injuries will alter his life, and that Seamie will be unable to work. The prospect of losing his father’s earnings gives Tommy’s departure a practical family context; it is not presented simply as indifference to study.

Education and Immediate Work

Cushla argues that even a couple of A levels might enable Tommy to earn more, perhaps go to university, and have prospects. Her appeal depends on a future-oriented idea of education: completing the exams could widen his choices beyond the immediate crisis. Tommy laughs and challenges the relevance of those prospects. Cushla cannot answer him. Her own father has often told her that the family is fortunate to have a business, which shelters them from sectarian bigotry in the job market. That experience gives her a reason to value education, but also exposes a difference between her relative security and Tommy’s circumstances.

In the same exchange, Tommy dismisses tactical voting as a way of changing the situation. He says that nothing will change that way, then offers a more immediate alternative: his uncle can give him a job. The contrast is sharp. Cushla proposes qualifications that might lead to work later; Tommy names a relative who can provide work now. The conversation does not identify the job or establish what Tommy will earn, but it shows the concrete option competing with her hopes for his education.

Refusal Repeated at Home

A few days later, Cushla goes with Davy McGeown to the family home, having not spoken to Betty McGeown for several days. Tommy answers the door in his own clothes. His hair has grown, and he lifts his chin to meet Cushla’s gaze. When she points out that he has not returned to school, he confirms that he has not. She asks again that he at least sit the exams; this time he makes his decision categorical, saying he is done with it all.

Tommy then invites Cushla inside to meet his father. The domestic setting makes the stakes of his earlier explanation visible without resolving them: Seamie is in a hospital-style armchair, his head shaved for surgery, with hair beginning to grow back. Betty sits near him, poised on the edge of a kitchen stool, while Mandy is on the settee. Cushla’s chest tightens as she follows Tommy into the room, aware that her reaction to Seamie’s condition might show on her face. The visit places Tommy’s refusal alongside the injured father whose lost ability to work he had described, and the family members gathered around him.

Significance

Tommy’s departure from school is framed as a choice made under economic pressure, not as a simple rejection of learning. Cushla’s encouragement is sincere, but her appeal to qualifications and university cannot settle the immediate question of how the family will manage if Seamie cannot work. Tommy’s uncle offers a direct route into employment, while the value of exams remains prospective and uncertain to him.

The repeated refusal matters: Tommy first says he does not intend to return, then maintains that decision when Cushla visits the family home and asks him again to sit the exams. The second conversation does not show him reconsidering; instead, he leads Cushla to his father, linking his answer to the household whose circumstances have shaped it. The episode leaves his future beyond the proposed job unresolved, but establishes the central tension in the decision: the education Cushla sees as a source of possibility competes with the work Tommy believes his family needs now.