Belinda McKeon - Tender

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 change.

“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?