Belinda McKeon - Tender

“Fuck, I’m worn out.”

“What did you get up to?”

“I went over to Thomas Street, actually, to see a place.”

“A place?” she said dumbly.

“A place to rent. Someone Aidan knows told him about it, and he told me. It’s in a woman’s house, but I’d have the whole upstairs.”

The words seemed to come apart in front of her as though on a wet page. “Sorry, what? What do you mean? Like, a place to live?”

“Yeah,” he said, looking at her as though he was waiting for her to deliver a punchline. “Sure, you knew I—”

“I thought you meant next month,” she said, hearing herself babble. “I thought you’d stay until the end of this month anyway.” She cast about for the rationale she knew to be in her head, somewhere, and then she found it, and she almost shouted in triumph. “The rent on any place is going to be from the first of the month. You can’t move in somewhere before the month is up.”

“Ah, no,” he said mildly, shaking his head. “The woman’s fine about that. She says I can move in tomorrow if I want to. She’s just keen to get someone in. The last fella bolted on her, I think.”

“But you’re not going tomorrow, are you? I have my Doonan interview tomorrow!”

He looked at her, frowning. “What difference does that make?”

She stammered. What difference did it make? “I won’t be able to help you with your stuff,” she blurted. “And then I have to go home for the weekend afterwards, because it’s Mother’s Day.”

“Oh, yes, Mother’s Day,” he said drily. “I must remember to give my old darling a call.”

“James, you don’t have to move tomorrow,” she said desperately. “Please don’t go that soon.”

“Well, I’m not going anywhere. I’m just moving into my own place. Sure I have to do that. I have to get out from under your feet.”

“You’re not—”

“Yes, I am,” he cut across her. “Catherine. I’m under everybody’s feet.”

“Nobody minds!”

“I mind. And I mind sleeping on a couch, too. I wake up sounding like my old fella, moaning and groaning in the morning.” He stretched his arms up high. “So. You got the paper sent to bed.”

“Well. My part of it, at least.”

“And yet you didn’t take the opportunity to stick around and maybe go to bed with anyone yourself?” He clicked his tongue. “What are we going to do with you?”

“I wanted to come home. Jesus. Am I not even allowed to do that now?”

“You’re allowed to do whatever you like, Catherine,” he said, stretching his arms out wide now, yawning. “That’s the whole point.”

“Yeah, well.”

“Yeah, well,” he mimicked her. He flashed her a smile. Catherine stared at it. Moonfoam and silver, the guy on the television sang.

Michael Doonan was already in the bar of the Central Hotel when Catherine got there, ten minutes before the appointed time. He was sitting on one of the long couches by the fireplace, wearing a brown polo neck and faded jeans, and he was pouring tea from a pot on the low table in front of him. His gray hair was shoulder-length, and though he was bald on top, the tresses were surprisingly thick and full; they also looked freshly groomed. Catherine, who had come racing into the room, intending to set herself up at one of the more private tables in the corner, came to a stop and backtracked a couple of steps, and it was at that moment that he noticed her, and clearly realized who she was; he gave her a cool, appraising nod, and patted the couch cushion. Catherine waved, too eagerly, and lurched forward.

She had spent all morning and all afternoon in the library, frantically trying to extract a set of coherent questions from the dozens of pages of notes she had accumulated. Though the publicist had told her only to concentrate on the latest novel, Catherine had wanted to appear very familiar with Doonan’s work when she met him, and so she had tried, in the week gone by, to cram all of the books, from his debut novel Cunningham onwards, and very quickly she had become overwhelmed, and instead of paring back she had piled even more material onto the fire — calling up critical essays on Doonan from the stacks, looking up old interviews with him on the microfilm machines, emailing one of her lecturers, even, to ask his advice (the lecturer had not seemed to take her seriously, sending her a short note warning her not to be too easily charmed by “the great man”) — and by the time she was leaving the library and walking the five minutes to the Central, Catherine had wanted only to run home to Longford and dive into one of the hiding places she had had as a child. Longford had come to mind, probably, because Baggot Street would no longer be the haven it had been with James there; he would have moved into his place on Thomas Street now, and while Catherine would visit him there often, and while he had promised to call on Baggot Street a couple of times a week, it would not be the same. At the end of the visit he would always have to go home, or she would. And so she wanted, now, to hide somewhere she would not have to leave. Somewhere from which she would not be expelled.

“Miss Reilly,” Doonan said, his tone sounding wryly mocking or ironic, and her surname sounding like an accusation, somehow, and Catherine nodded, and sat down too heavily beside him.

“Thank you so much for meeting me,” Catherine said, all in a rush.

He looked surprised; almost, she thought, offended. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Oh, well,” Catherine shook her head, attempting to push her bag under the couch so that the carbuncle of scribbled notes protruding from it might not be so visible, but of course Doonan saw it immediately, and of course immediately understood her reason for hiding it; as his writing made excruciatingly clear, Doonan missed nothing. It was what Catherine had come, over the hours of rereading him, to dread: the prospect of sitting in front of him, in the full glare of those famous powers of perception.

“So you’re in Trinity,” Doonan said, and he gave her a strange, bright smile. His eyes were an arresting deep blue. His nose was heavily pitted, and flushed in the way she knew to suggest heavy drinking, though maybe it was just one of those things that came with age: Doonan was sixty-one.

“Yes,” Catherine said cautiously, conscious of how, in his novels, he seemed to have only scorn for people who went to university, or who devoted themselves to activities even vaguely artistic or intellectual. In a short story, the name of which she could not, right now, remember — her mouth went dry at this realization, as though Doonan had actually demanded its title — a graduate student at Trinity had died a horrible death, alone and pathetic in his bedsit, and the writing had been utterly devoid of sympathy for him. “English and art history,” she added, in an apologetic undertone.

“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.