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?
“I mean, do you have to work especially hard at those scenes in your fiction?”
He looked offended. “Do they read like that?”
“Oh, no,” Catherine said quickly. “Not at all.”
“That’s a relief.”
“It’s just, the challenge from self-consciousness that I’m interested in, I suppose,” she said.
He twitched an eyebrow, raised a hand to get the attention of the waitress. “I can see that, darling,” he said.
“Look, it probably wasn’t as bad as you think,” Emmet said half an hour later. He had been at his usual desk in the publications office when she had arrived, still in a state of shock, and one glance had told him all he needed to know about how the interview had gone. He had laughed at her, of course; he had thrown his head back and guffawed, but then he had seemed to register the fact that Catherine was actually upset, and now he was trying to talk her round.
“No,” Catherine said, slamming down the Dictaphone. “It was horrific. It could not have been worse.”
“Well, no, it could have been,” Emmet said. “By the sounds of it.”
“What do you mean?” Catherine said, wretchedly.
“Well, that you could have actually…I mean…” Emmet shrugged, to indicate that he preferred not to say any more.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Emmet. Of course I wasn’t going to sleep with him. Thanks very fucking much.”
“I’m not saying you were. I’m just saying, it could have been worse. And it sounds like he was an arsehole to you.”
“No, not really,” Catherine said. “I was — I mean, Whitman, for Christ’s sake.” She let out a low wail. “Oh my God.”
“You’ve lost me now, Reilly, just for your information,” Emmet said, glancing back to his screen.
“Why did I have to open my mouth?”
“Ah, relax, Reilly. I’m sure you’ll listen to the tape and it’ll be grand.”
She looked at the Dictaphone as though it was an active grenade. “I’m not fucking listening to that,” she said. “I can’t even look at it.”
He grinned. “I’ll gladly listen to it, if you want me to.”
“You must be joking,” she said, clamping a hand on it. Then something occurred to her. “Here, you better not write about this in your column.”
“I’ve better things to be writing about,” Emmet scoffed.