Belinda McKeon - Solace

Mossy scanned the barcodes. ‘I might call out to you this evening, if you’re not busy. I could bring some takeaway around.’

Mark swallowed. ‘I’ve to get pages to McCarthy in the morning,’ he said. It was not true, but he did not want to give up the evening. ‘Thanks anyway, though. Another time.’

Mossy clicked his tongue. ‘Are you serious? Again? That guy’s taking the piss, man. Does he not realize he needs to cut you a bit of slack at the moment?’

‘I don’t need anyone to cut me any slack.’

‘It’s only common fucking decency for him to take the pressure off you for a while. It seems to me like he’s doing the opposite. What’s his problem?’

‘Leave it,’ Mark said, an edge in his voice that he had not intended; he saw surprise cross Mossy’s face. ‘Sorry. I just mean it’s fine,’ he said. ‘I’m fine. I’m the one who wants to get the work done.’

Mossy said nothing for a moment. ‘You mean McCarthy’s not setting you the deadlines?’ he said then, slowly.

‘I’m giving him the stuff, and he’s getting back to me,’ Mark said. ‘It’s the way I want to do it at the moment. It’s fine.’

Mossy regarded him. ‘And you’re getting good feedback on what you’re giving him?’

Mark nodded firmly. ‘He says it’s really going places.’

‘All right, man,’ Mossy said, sighing as he handed him the DVDs. ‘But even so, you want to take it easy.’

‘I’ll give you a call in a couple of days,’ Mark said, strapping Aoife into the pushchair. ‘I’ve got to get to the library before it closes.’

‘Take it easy, man,’ Mossy said again, coming around the counter to bend down to Aoife, who reached for his face and shouted an indecipherable word of delight.

*

He had only intended to leave Aoife with the librarian for a few minutes. He needed to quote a letter from Scott to Edgeworth, and it was in one of the books that was too old and precious to be lent out. It would take no time, he told the librarian. But he found himself quickly sucked into other pages, into other books, into looking again at other letters he had read before and forgotten. It was not until the security guard came to say that the library was closing that he realized how long he had been. It was almost five; an hour had passed since he had left Aoife. He packed up quickly and went downstairs.

She was still where he had left her, sitting on the floor behind the reference desk, her pushchair parked nearby, but he could see that she had been crying. The woman he had left her with looked harassed.

‘Thank God,’ she said, as she saw Mark coming. ‘We didn’t know where you had got to.’

‘I was just over in Early Printed, I’m sorry,’ Mark said. At the sound of his voice Aoife threw her crayon aside and began to cry.

The librarian shuddered. ‘I’m afraid she’s been very upset here by herself,’ she said. ‘I really thought you would be only a couple of minutes.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Mark, as she let him through the low gate at the side of the reference desk. ‘I lost track of time.’

‘Well, maybe a library is not the best place for a little one after all,’ said the woman, and she avoided his eye. ‘We’ve been very busy here this last hour and, as I said, she was very upset.’

Mark saw the irritation on the faces of people queuing at the circulation desk. ‘I’m really very sorry,’ he said again, as he lifted Aoife up. ‘It won’t happen again.’

‘I’m afraid it can’t happen again,’ the librarian said. ‘I shouldn’t have taken her in here in the first place. I just wanted to help, and she is such a lovely little one, but we can’t take this responsibility.’

‘I understand.’

As he went past the queue with the pushchair he kept his gaze straight ahead, not wanting to meet anyone’s eyes. When he felt a hand on his arm, he flinched. His first impulse was to keep going, but it was McCarthy. He nodded down to the pushchair.

‘Babysitter cancelled on you?’

Mark shrugged. ‘Babysitter ran out of patience,’ he said, glancing back to the circulation desk.

‘Well, it livened up a day in the doldrums for them.’

‘She caused a bit of a scene, I think,’ Mark said, and he bent to offer Aoife her soother. To his relief, she took it. ‘She can really tear the place down when she’s in the mood.’

‘You can swap her for my thirteen-year-old any time, if you really want to see what a kid looks like when they’re in a mood.’

Mark laughed. It struck him how much he had come to like McCarthy over the last while; how strange it felt. A tension seemed to have fallen away between them. Now that McCarthy could see he was really serious about his thesis, Mark thought, he was treating him with new respect. Talking to him more on the level. Mark appreciated it.

‘I’m really looking forward to having a chat with you about the chapter I’m working on,’ he said. ‘I’ve decided to take it in a whole different direction.’

McCarthy blinked slowly. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. He took a few steps forward and, as Mark kept pace with him, pulling the pushchair backwards, something occurred to him. He raised an eyebrow at McCarthy, who looked back almost apprehensively.

‘Grace told me you’d be in Galway at a conference today,’ Mark said.

McCarthy frowned. ‘Galway?’ he said, and shook his head. ‘Wild horses wouldn’t drag me to a conference in Galway. Where the hell did Grace get that idea?’

‘I don’t know. She just told me that was why you wouldn’t be around when I asked if she could give me an appointment with you today.’

It was something he had never seen before: a blush on McCarthy’s face. It started in his hairline and spread right down to the collar of his shirt. Mark could not work out what was happening. He knew he had caught McCarthy out somehow, but on what? Was he having an affair with Grace or something?

McCarthy sighed almost frantically in the direction of the circulation desk. ‘Jesus, what is the hold-up?’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘Some of us have trains to catch.’ He glanced at Mark. ‘If you can come in to me next week some time I can have a talk with you about that draft. Or those drafts, I should say. Didn’t you give me more than one?’

‘Two, yeah, but you can pretty much disregard them,’ Mark said. ‘I’m planning to give you a completely new one by Monday.’

McCarthy nodded, but he did not look impressed. ‘Monday?’ he said, and peeled his sleeve away from over his watch once again. ‘You’re hardly going to get me a whole new draft by Monday.’

‘No, no, I definitely will,’ Mark said, feeling his excitement over the chapter begin to swell again. ‘I just need the weekend to get some shape on it. I was over looking at a couple of the letters she wrote around the time of Ormond . I really think they’re going to bring the whole thing together. I think—’

‘Look, Mark,’ McCarthy interrupted sharply. But he did not go on. He seemed uncertain. As the queue inched towards the desk, he stepped out of it suddenly and let the people behind him move ahead. He put a hand to his chin.

Discomfort crept up on Mark. He moved the pushchair into the space between two bookshelves and turned away from it. ‘You have read the drafts I gave you?’ he asked, and immediately regretted the words. They sounded childish, petulant. ‘It doesn’t matter if you haven’t,’ he said hastily. ‘Like I said, I’m going to rework it anyway.’

‘I’ve read the drafts, Mark,’ McCarthy said. He sighed. ‘I mean, I’ve tried to read them. They’re not easy to follow. They don’t really seem to make a whole lot of sense.’

Mark opened his mouth to speak, but McCarthy held up a hand to stop him. ‘I think you need to take a break from the thesis for a while, Mark,’ he said quietly. He sounded as though he did not want to be saying this at all. ‘I think,’ he looked towards the pushchair behind Mark, ‘you have a lot on your plate at the moment, and nobody expects you to be able to do it all.’