Belinda McKeon - Tender

“Spirited-looking child, isn’t she?” a man to Catherine’s left said. She turned, startled, and there was Michael Doonan, looking not at her but at the photograph.

“Oh,” she said, blushing instantly. “Mr.—”

“Mick,” Doonan said curtly, and then he turned slightly to the woman who was, Catherine realized, with him, and he put a hand to the small of the woman’s back, and he nodded towards Catherine.

“This is the young lady who interviewed me for the Trinity paper,” he said. “My wife, Julia,” he said to Catherine.

“Oh! Mrs.—”

“Julia,” they both said almost chidingly, Julia shaking Catherine’s hand warmly. She was beautiful, Catherine thought. She looked younger than Doonan, but it was hard to tell; it might just have been that she was so glamorous. She had an ash-blond bob, and sharp blue eyes, and skin that was almost unlined. She wore a white shirt with a high, sculptural collar, and slim black trousers, and on her shoulders was a cropped brown wool cape, and three slim gold bracelets glinted on her right arm.

“We liked your piece,” she said, the word liked climbing steadily in a way that Catherine could not read.

“Oh, God,” Catherine shook her head. “It was chopped to death by the sub-editor.”

“Ah, the eternal refrain of the journalist,” Julia said, laughing. “I’m a publicist,” she added, by way of explanation. “For my husband, not to mention other, more media-friendly clients.”

“I’ve never pretended to like interviews,” Doonan said with a shrug. “I am what I am.”

“Which is bloody awful, most of the time,” Julia said, glancing to Catherine. “Was he awful to you? He came home and told me he’d been awful to you. Which of course means he was actually twice as awful as he’d admit to having been.”

“Oh, no,” Catherine murmured. “I mean, really, I was the one—”

“Well, you managed a good write-up in the end,” Doonan said, seeming unbothered by his wife’s teasing, if that was what it was. “Silk purse from a sow’s ear, as my darling wife put it.”

“From a hog’s arse, more like it,” Julia said, rolling her eyes at Catherine, and with one hand she made a playful swipe at Doonan. “Go over there and get us a couple of glasses of champagne, Mick, will you, for heaven’s sake. Make yourself useful.”

“Right so,” Doonan said, running a hand through his hair, and he trotted off.

Julia watched him go, a fond smile playing on her lips. “I like to torment him,” she said, nudging Catherine gently. “The fact is, I know well what a cheeky article he’s capable of being with young women. I first met him when I was assisting with publicity for Let Her Go all those years ago. He was incorrigible.” She gave a short laugh, a jump of mirth. “And still I married him.”

“Oh! Right! Well, he was fine,” Catherine said brightly. “Really. Fine.”

“Oh, he’s a brat,” Julia said, laughing again. “Now, he’s not Naipaul, I’ll give you that. You read that interview that the woman from The Independent did with Naipaul?”

Catherine shook her head.

“Well,” Julia said, raising an eyebrow. “Beg, borrow or steal it. Sir Vidia decided that the questions weren’t worthy of him, and he stood up in the middle of the interview and said, ‘I don’t have time for this, it’d suit you better to be doing an interview with my wife.’ And he called her down from the kitchen or wherever the poor woman was, and he walked out on the journalist.”

“Jesus!”

“And I don’t think he meant that his wife was a spokesperson for his fiction.”

“Jesus.”

“Then again, here you are, talking to Mick Doonan’s wife,” she said, shrugging off her cape now, and folding it over her arm. “Anyway, what brings you here this evening, Catherine? Are you writing about Ed’s show?”

“Yes, probably,” Catherine lied, though maybe, she thought then, it was not a lie, after all; actually, she would quite like to write an article about Dunne’s photographs.

“He certainly struck lucky with his timing,” Julia said drily, eyeing the photograph in front of them. “Any other week of the year, this stuff would look exactly like the forced, stretching pedanticism it is. But the jammy bastard’s opening night turns out to be the night of the peace talks deadline, and so here we find ourselves, bang in the middle of the most blazingly relevant cultural phenomenon of the year. I mean, look at the size of this crowd.” She gestured around the room, now full to capacity. “I don’t know how Ed does it. He always does, you know.”

“God,” Catherine said faintly.

“I mean, they’re so bloody opportunistic. I mean, Oh, bombing three thousand miles away, in the country I left thirty-odd years ago; oh, I’ll just pop out with my camera and take a snapshot of the first sweet little black child I see. ”

“You’re not Ed’s publicist, then?” Catherine said.

“I am not,” Julia said, raising an eyebrow. “And if you think I’m negative about them, you should hear Mick. But, that said, Ed is a very old friend of ours. He and Mick have known each other since London in the seventies. And I’m sure that he’d have some choice opinions of his own on Mick’s work. These things are just better not spoken about sometimes, you know, if a friendship is to survive.”

Catherine laughed, unable to believe her ears. Doonan hated Dunne’s work, and Dunne hated Doonan’s, and they said horrible things about one another, and yet they were still, after twenty years, good friends? The idea of it staggered her. She looked for James, but he was hidden in the crowd. Twenty years from now, would they be like this, lying to each other, or not telling everything to each other, so that they could maintain the facade of being friends? It seemed impossible. Why would anybody bother?

“And as for our American friend,” Julia was saying now, with a sardonic twist of her mouth.

“Oh, Nate?” Catherine said, relieved for the change of subject.

“Nate from Brooklyn,” Julia said, giving the “t” and the “k” a sharp, clipped sound. “He’s a handful in his own right. We thought he’d have long since moved on by now.”

“Yeah, my friend’s talking to him,” Catherine said, craning her neck again to try and find James. “He introduced him to Ed.”

Julia looked confused. “Your friend did?”

“I mean, Nate introduced my friend to Ed. He’s a photographer too. My friend. He has an exhibition coming up himself soon, actually.”

Catherine was blushing, she knew, and she was furious with herself for this, and she could see that Julia had noticed; she said nothing, but stood looking at Catherine with a strange, tolerant smile.

“Oh!” Catherine said, suddenly seeing James as the crowd parted for a moment. She pointed. “There he is!”

Julia squinted. “The redhead?” she said, sounding surprised.

Catherine nodded, swallowing.

“And you say you two are just friends?” Julia said doubtfully, studying James more closely.

“Well, yeah,” Catherine said. “Good friends.”

“Ah,” Julia said, as though she understood perfectly. “Well, the two of you will have to come to the little party we’re throwing for Ed after this. It’s back at our house. The American over there will have the address. Can you make it?”

“Oh God,” Catherine said, stammering. “Really?”

“Of course,” Julia said, shrugging as though this was a stupid question. “If you want to, that is. If you can be bothered with all us boring elders. Now, where did that gom go for our champagne?” She looked around. “Oh, hark at him,” she said, pointing. “He’s given them to Moira bloody Donnelly and her lover over there.”