Tender

by Belinda McKeon

  “That must be nice for your parents,” he said, gesturing towards the cup and saucer which had been laid out for her; she nodded to say that yes, she would like some tea.

  “I suppose,” she laughed nervously, and Doonan laughed too.

  “Well, you’re in it now whether they like it or not, says you,” he said, winking, and he poured her tea.

  “No, no, I don’t take milk, thanks,” she said then to his silent query, which was a lie.

  Michael Doonan had twice been nominated for the Booker Prize, and had once been described as a Booker winner anyway by a profile in the Sunday Independent, an error which had been picked up as fact and repeated by several other journalists. In the photographs which accompanied these articles, he always looked furious, glowering out of the page with his arms folded, which for Catherine, doing her research in the microfilm room this week, had only made the mistakes funnier, and she had intended to ask him about this, but now that he was beside her, with what looked like the same glower crossing his features every couple of minutes, she felt less inclined. She should stick to biography instead, she decided, and so, she asked Doonan the questions to which she already knew the answers, and she fiddled with the TN Dictaphone while he recited them.

  Doonan had been born above his father’s butcher shop in Glasson, a village in County Westmeath. He had trained as a butcher, and until he was almost forty, he had made his living from the trade. He wrote in the evenings and on Sunday afternoons, and it was the success of Let Her Go, in 1978, that allowed him to retire and write full-time. He was married, to Julia, and they lived in a lovely mews house close to the city center, which was lovely, he said, because his “lovely Julia” had made it that way. He was the author of seven novels and two collections of stories. He wrote every day, including Sundays, and he did not see what all this nonsense was about writing being difficult. It was, he said, about putting your arse on the chair and getting on with it. It was, in that respect, the same as any other trade, except that it was in fact much easier, because you were sitting down while you were doing it.

  “I interviewed Pat McCabe last month, actually, speaking of butchers,” she said as soon as he had finished telling her his philosophy of writing. “The Butcher Boy, you know?” she added, as though it was necessary. “He was gas.”

  There was a long pause, during which her heart began a horrible, dread-steeped thumping.

  “Mmm,” Doonan said eventually, cracking his knuckles. “I hope you didn’t believe everything Mr. McCabe told you about carcasses.”

  “Oh, we didn’t really talk about carcasses,” Catherine said hurriedly. “We talked mainly about writing, actually.”

  “And are we going to talk about writing, I wonder?”

  “Oh,” Catherine stammered, and he laughed.

  “You’re attractive when you blush,” he said, his eyes on her throat. “Do you know that?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Catherine blurted, feeling, now, quite miserable; ostensibly, yes, what Doonan had said had been a compliment, but not really, she knew. Really, he had been letting her know that he saw how flustered she was, and how young and unprepared and incapable of handling this thing properly—and yet, with others she had handled it properly: with McCabe, for instance, she had been completely fine, clear and to the point, and even able to laugh with him, so what was wrong with her now? Why was she not even confident of lifting her teacup, in case her hands would shake so much that she would splash it all over Doonan’s awful, too-tight jeans? Why could she barely even remember the plot of Engines of Everything? She did not even trust herself to mention the name of the main character now, in case she got it wrong. Mickey Donovan, he was called, she was almost certain; but what if it was actually Mickey Donaghy? What if it was Mikey, not Mickey? How could she be unclear on something so basic?

  And now she was blushing even more furiously, she knew, and Doonan was enjoying the sight of it, even chuckling to himself now, the prick, as he was stirring his second cup of tea, and asking her with his eyes whether she was ready for her second cup too, but no, she hadn’t even touched the first one; why would she, when it had no milk? Get a grip, she told herself, gritting her teeth, and she took a deep breath and she looked him in the eye.

  “Mr. Doonan. In Engines of Everything, you return to a theme which has preoccupied you throughout your career.”

  “Getting the damn thing finished, you mean?”

  “No, no,” she said. “The theme of self-reliance.”

  “Well, I suppose—”

  “Well, you see, what I was thinking,” Catherine said, cutting in—at this, he glanced at her in surprise but allowed her to continue—“What made me think about this was actually Whitman’s poetry. You know, Walt Whitman?”

  “Yes, I know of Walt Whitman,” Doonan said levelly.

  “Well, of course. Well, you see, in ‘Song of Myself,’ he has a line so similar to what one of your characters says to the other when they’re breaking up.”

  “Does he?”

  “Yeah. I’ll find it, I have it here,” Catherine said, and she dug into her bag and riffled through her pages for the place where she had written down his protagonist’s words and underlined them in red pen, adding, beside them, the Whitman line. “See, here,” she said, as she found it, and she thrust her foolscap pages towards Doonan, but thought better of it at the last moment, and took them back to herself. “Leona says, ‘I have this feeling, this fear, and it’s in me, Tommy, and I don’t understand it.’”

  “Yes.”

  “And the Whitman line is, ‘There is that in me—I do not know what it is—but I know it is in me.’”

  There was a silence. Catherine looked at Doonan, and she put the notes back in her bag, which took a couple of moments, but still he did not say anything.

  “It just really struck me,” she said excitedly, as she sat back up.

  “I can see that.”

  “And did you, um—did you think about Whitman at all when you were working on Engines of Everything?”

  He stared. “Why would I think about Whitman?”

  “Oh, no, I mean—” Catherine said, and she stopped. What the hell was she doing? Why was she throwing all of this nonsense at Doonan instead of asking him a simple question? “I suppose you wouldn’t,” she said then. “Necessarily.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, then leaned forward to take a sip of his tea. Sitting back, he indicated Catherine’s cup. “That’ll be spoiled on you shortly,” he said. “Drink up.”

  “Oh, thanks,” she said, and she took a sip: bitter, and lukewarm. It took effort not to spit it back into the cup.

  “Would you prefer a proper drink?” Doonan said, sounding concerned.

  “Oh, no. I’m OK.”

  “You’re certain?”

  She nodded.

  “And you like Whitman, do you?”

  “Well, I’m doing this course on American poetry—”

  “I’m more of a Dickinson man myself,” Doonan said.

  “Really?”

  He nodded. “I like the way she kept to herself, and then left them word to destroy every scrap of hers that they came across after she was gone. That’s the way to do it.”

  “But surely you wouldn’t like that to be done with your work?” Catherine heard herself say, and she could almost have shouted with relief: it was actually something amounting to a question.

  “Well, it’s out there now, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, yes, I know, I know,” Catherine said. “But I mean, the immortality question, I suppose.”

  “Oh, we’re talking about immortality now?”

  “Well, if you don’t mind,” said Catherine, vaguely.

  “Do I mind immortality?” Doonan mused. He glanced at her. “Would I have someone like you for company, though? There’s the rub.”

  “I think your wife might have something to say about that,” Catherine said, with a hectic laugh. Doonan’s expression, intense and unsmiling, did not c
hange.

  “Would I, though? Would I have that luck?” he said.

  “Oh, now,” Catherine said, managing to laugh, and he liked this, she could see, and a thought occurred to her. “Sex,” she said, knowing instantly that she had blurted the word out too abruptly, too randomly, but if Doonan was taken aback, he gave no sign of it.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “You write it very well,” Catherine said, in another blurt. “You write it brilliantly.”

  “Well, thanks very much,” Doonan murmured. “That’s interesting to hear.”

  “I’m just wondering, though, whether it takes a lot of consideration?” Catherine said. “To do that, I mean.”

  “Consideration?” Doonan said.

  “Yes,” Catherine nodded eagerly. “I mean, if you have to think about it a lot? Or try the scenes out in different ways?” This was not what she had come up with in her notes; what had she come up with in her notes? Why had she brought them at all, for Christ’s sake, if they were so unreadable and unusable?

  “I mean, do you have to work especially hard at those scenes in your fiction?”

  He looked offended. “Do they read like that?”

  “Oh, no,” Catherine said quickly. “Not at all.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “It’s just, the challenge from self-consciousness that I’m interested in, I suppose,” she said.

  He twitched an eyebrow, raised a hand to get the attention of the waitress. “I can see that, darling,” he said.

  “Look, it probably wasn’t as bad as you think,” Emmet said half an hour later. He had been at his usual desk in the publications office when she had arrived, still in a state of shock, and one glance had told him all he needed to know about how the interview had gone. He had laughed at her, of course; he had thrown his head back and guffawed, but then he had seemed to register the fact that Catherine was actually upset, and now he was trying to talk her round.

  “No,” Catherine said, slamming down the Dictaphone. “It was horrific. It could not have been worse.”

  “Well, no, it could have been,” Emmet said. “By the sounds of it.”

  “What do you mean?” Catherine said, wretchedly.

  “Well, that you could have actually…I mean…” Emmet shrugged, to indicate that he preferred not to say any more.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Emmet. Of course I wasn’t going to sleep with him. Thanks very fucking much.”

  “I’m not saying you were. I’m just saying, it could have been worse. And it sounds like he was an arsehole to you.”

  “No, not really,” Catherine said. “I was—I mean, Whitman, for Christ’s sake.” She let out a low wail. “Oh my God.”

  “You’ve lost me now, Reilly, just for your information,” Emmet said, glancing back to his screen.

  “Why did I have to open my mouth?”

  “Ah, relax, Reilly. I’m sure you’ll listen to the tape and it’ll be grand.”

  She looked at the Dictaphone as though it was an active grenade. “I’m not fucking listening to that,” she said. “I can’t even look at it.”

  He grinned. “I’ll gladly listen to it, if you want me to.”

  “You must be joking,” she said, clamping a hand on it. Then something occurred to her. “Here, you better not write about this in your column.”

  “I’ve better things to be writing about,” Emmet scoffed.

  “I doubt it,” Catherine said miserably. “I doubt you could come up with anything better than me sitting on a couch beside Michael Doonan and saying ‘So! Sex! Do you like it, do you?’” She shook her head. “Basically.”

  “Well, when you put it like that.”

  “Anyway,” Catherine shuddered. “I’m going home for the weekend. I’ll see you next week sometime. If I ever come back to this city.”

  He looked at her, surprised. “Oh. You’re going down home?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. It’s Mother’s Day on Sunday. Don’t you know that?”

  “Well, make sure to tell your mother all about your affair with whatshisname. That’ll make a nice present.”

  “I hate you.”

  “Here,” he said, leaning over his desk for a sheet of A4 paper; he folded it, before scribbling something on each side. He handed it to her. “That’s for your mother.”

  In blue biro on one half of the page, Emmet had drawn a vague squiggle, and on the inside, in block capitals, he had written HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY, MRS. REILLY. YOURS, EMMET DOYLE.

  “It’s a card,” Emmet said.

  “You are actually insane.”

  “Did you get your mother a card?”

  “I’m getting her one at the train station.”

  He clicked his tongue scornfully. “Shop-bought. You’re a great daughter.”

  “You’re nuts!”

  “At least I don’t go around propositioning sixty-year-old men,” he said, turning back to his computer.

  “You shouldn’t proposition anybody, Doyle,” she said, trying for wryness, and she waited for his retort, but to her discomfort, nothing came; he kept looking at his screen, clicking now a couple of times on his mouse. Maybe he hadn’t heard her.

  She thought about him as she walked to the train station. She had thought about him plenty; she had thought about him for weeks. She had not gone out with him since the night of the Stag’s, not that the night of the Stag’s had been a night of going out with him, in any real sense; it had just been a drink, no matter how excitedly Zoe might insist otherwise. And yet, it had not been just a drink. The way he had looked at her today when she had walked into the office; the way he had looked at her every time they had seen one another since that night. Something was different. He blushed, but then again it seemed to her that he always blushed; that his blush was just something he had not been able to get rid of, and that it dogged him all the time, not just when he was talking to her. It was not the blush; it was the way he sort of…wavered. A waver that, when they saw one another, came into his eyes. That same hesitation that she had noticed that night. As though the entire space around him was somehow taking a breath; and, in truth, she felt it in herself too, felt herself taking a breath more deeply when she saw him, felt that she had, now, always to get something settled in herself, put aside in herself, before she could actually talk to him.

  And when she had said that she was going down home for the weekend, had she imagined it, or had he reacted to that? Had he sort of blinked more quickly, or done, anyway, something rapid and distracted with his eyes? And was she going mad, counting and parsing the blinks and the eye movements of Emmet Doyle? Had she lost it completely?

  Oh, Catherine, Catherine, James responded in Catherine’s mind now, because of course it was James she was addressing, James to whom she was writing an imaginary, long juicy letter, as she went through all of this, as she turned it all inside out and back again. It was James she was moaning to, James to whom she was presenting the ever-more-convoluted elements of her case, and James who was absorbing it all, and James whom she was causing to frown thoughtfully, and James whom she was causing, now, to crease up with laughter, delighted with her latest drama, full of attention for this, the latest fine mess she had got herself into.

  Except, of course.

  Except.

  And at Connolly station, as she walked towards the platform, she passed the bench where on another Friday evening, she had sat pressed up against James, listening to OK Computer. But it wasn’t “Exit Music” she was hearing now, as she went through the gates; it wasn’t the mumbling, monotone Yorke singing of escape, singing of a chill. It was the jangled nerve endings of “Lucky,” its wary promises, its leaden warnings: I feel my luck could change.

  7

  James’s new flat was on Thomas Street, near O’Brien’s, and also near the art college, which explained why the flat had been laid out as a studio by the previous tenant; what little furniture there was in the big sitting room had been pushed back against the walls, and the floorbo
ards were speckled with paint drops. James’s landlady had not wanted to rent it to another artist, but he had persuaded her, promising that there would be no paint, and no smell of turpentine, and no smell of hash, either, and no loud music.

  “My God, James, you’ve signed up to a very boring existence,” Aidan said, laughing. James had invited a few people around for a housewarming dinner; Amy and Lorraine and Cillian were there, and Zoe, and Lisa, the girl Catherine had met in the PhotoSoc office, and Aidan’s friend Liam was due to call in on his way home from work in the Buttery. James had cooked a huge Bolognese, and they had eaten it sitting around the room, James and Aidan and Cillian on the floor, the girls on the kitchen chairs and the couch. It was James’s second week in the flat now, and he had made it his own; his books were on a low shelf in the corner, and on the walls he had tacked up dozens of postcards and magazine images of artworks he loved. Warhol’s blue-toned Jackie O was up there, and a shot of Vito Acconci panned out under the platform in Seedbed, and one of Walker Evans’s pinched-faced sharecroppers, though James had explained to Catherine that that image was not actually Evans, that it was a piece that another artist, an American artist, had made by taking a photograph of the Evans. There was a postcard of a Matisse nude, a woman, one leg slightly bent, her hands clasped in front of her crotch, the space behind her seeming to explode with dark browns and blues. There was a whole row of Wolfgang Tillmans photographs, all of beautiful, thin people staring at the camera, their expressions as hard, in their way, as that of the Evans sharecropper; in the largest of these images, which was in black and white, a guy with a shaved head stood in front of a wall from which graffiti seemed to have been ineffectually scrubbed. He wore ripped camouflage trousers, and Doc boots, and a shiny bomber jacket of the type that Catherine could remember boys on the school bus having worn a few years ago; his arms were folded and in one hand he had a cigarette, and in the other what looked like a small stack of magazines for sale. His cheekbones were sharp, one of them marked by a mole. His eyes were two dark, unreadable dots.