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.’
Mark stared. ‘You’re telling me to stop working on my thesis?’ he said. At his tone, two women in the queue looked to where he and McCarthy stood. ‘You’re my supervisor, and you’re telling me to jack the fucking thing in?’ He laughed, and the women turned quickly away. McCarthy looked extremely unhappy. As Mark watched him fiddle with the books he was carrying, shifting them under one arm and then back under the other, something else dawned on him. ‘You told Grace not to make any appointments for me, didn’t you?’ he said, bending low to force McCarthy to meet his eye. ‘That’s why she gave me that story about Galway. Am I right?’
‘Mark, as your supervisor I have responsibilities towards you,’ McCarthy said quietly. ‘I knew a meeting with me would be disappointing for you because of what I would have to say to you about your work. I wanted that meeting to happen at the right time. I didn’t want you to be rushed into it. I was hoping you would be able to get a bit of distance from the draft.’
Mark grabbed the handles of the pushchair and jerked it out of the aisle. ‘I won’t bother you again,’ he said to McCarthy. He turned his back and moved on. McCarthy called after him as he went, but he did not follow. As the grey-haired security guard saw Mark approach the exit, he left his booth and, with a smile down at the baby, held open the door.
*
When he answered a call from his father that evening and told him that he would not be coming down that weekend, Mark did not mention his work. He did not want to hear his father’s attempts at conversation about Edgeworth, as though she were someone he often bumped into buying groceries in Keogh’s. Aoife had a bad cold, Mark told him, probably something she had picked up in the swimming-pool, and he did not want to put her through the journey until she was better. Had he taken her to the doctor, his father had wanted to know, and he had said he had. Dr Gorman was as good as they came when it came to getting rid of a cold, his father said, and Mark said he was sure that was true, but Dr Gorman was in Longford, not in Stoneybatter. If he wanted, said his father, he could probably get Aoife an appointment today or tomorrow. He did not want to make the trip with her, Mark said again, and his father said again that it was not even a two-hour journey, and that Aoife could sleep in the car. She was not sleeping, Mark said, and his father said that sounded very serious, and that a second opinion could hardly hurt, and again he said that Dr Gorman was the only doctor he would ever trust with a child who had a cold. That’s because Doctor Gorman was the only doctor he knew, Mark said, and then he said that Aoife was crying, even though she was not, and that he had to go.