Tender (26 page)

“Eejit,” said Catherine, through waves of longing and confusion, and as they heard the rattle of the front door, she asked the waitress for a glass of red wine.

Very quickly, the house was full, and James had once again vanished into the fray; he had gone looking for the bathroom ten minutes previously, and had not come back, but Catherine was too concerned with trying not to look lost and pathetic to think about how angry she was with him. At first she drifted around the edges of the big sitting room, looking very closely at the paintings, studying them as though she was thinking of making a purchase; as well as the Bourke and the Scott, there was a McSweeney bog pool that she loved, and a little drawing that she could not identify, but she thought it might possibly be an early Jack Yeats.

“Oh, probably,” said the first person to whom she got talking, a woman in a flowing, peasant-style dress, with very long black hair; the woman had been standing alone at the mantelpiece, surveying the room, and Catherine, taking a deep breath and knowing that she had to take this chance to have a conversation, any conversation, had gone up to her. She was the journalist who had written the
Irish Times
piece, it turned out, and she had many long, dreary pearls of wisdom for Catherine about avoiding the nightmare that was a career in journalism. A man from the Abbey Theatre came up to talk to the journalist, and in that way Catherine got talking, for a while, to him, and a man who taught English at UCD came up to interrupt their conversation, and after a minute the Abbey man made his excuses and slipped away, and so Catherine was left with the lecturer, which was another fifteen minutes of talking to someone, and even though what he was saying to her was mainly unasked-for advice, Catherine did not mind, because talking to him, or being talked at by him, was preferable to standing around on her own again, and after him there was an actor she had never heard of, and after him a woman who had just finished a book about Michael Doonan’s books, so Catherine was able to talk to her for a long while, drawing on all the research she had found herself unable to use in the actual interview with him; then there was the man from the Abbey again, a little more tipsy and flirtatious now; then there was a young guy who wrote for
The Independent,
and who was actually quite cute, which reminded her to go and look for James, and by this time she had had two more glasses of champagne and maybe three glasses of wine, and talking to people was, by now, easy, talking to people was, by now, just, for heaven’s sake, what you
did,
and when she turned around next, David Norris was standing behind her, the actual David Norris, and she got into a conversation with him about American poetry, and he quoted at her a couple of lines from a poem he loved—
Shoot, if you must, this old gray head / But spare your country’s flag
—and she nodded, as though she knew of the poem, as though she had heard of it, and he smiled back, as though they did not both know she was lying, and Catherine was feeling delighted with herself, feeling she had discovered, at long last, the secret of being a grown-up, and she had seen several other people she wanted to talk to—the Doonans, for one thing, and she had spotted one of her English lecturers—when she found herself standing face to face with Nate.
You look like one of the Kennedys,
she had an impulse to say to him, but she managed to restrain herself. Nate, meanwhile, holding a tumbler of whiskey, seemed, for some reason, delighted to see her.

“Where have you been all night? Your sidekick and I are in the kitchen.”

“James?”

“James,” he confirmed, taking a mouthful of whiskey. “That guy can talk. What’s that thing?” He frowned. “That you Irish kiss?”

“We kiss?” Catherine said, thinking that she had misheard him.

“The stone,” Nate said. “The stone…” He arched his head dramatically backwards, staggering a little, the tumbler jerking in his hand.

“Oh! The Blarney Stone,” Catherine said, and then shook her head quickly. “Irish people don’t kiss that. Just tourists.”

Nate burst out laughing. “Whatever. Your friend James must give head to the Blarney Stone every morning. He doesn’t shut up!”

“Yeah. He’s never short of something to say.”

“And you’re the quiet one,” Nate said, skeptically.

“Well, compared to him.”

“Where’s your drink?” Just at that moment, a waitress passed with a tray, and he grabbed a bottle and poured a dark torrent of wine into Catherine’s glass. He pointed to a couch which had just come free. “Take a load off?”

He sat, giving a loud sigh of relief as his limbs sank into the leather cushions, and then he went still, suddenly, and frowned. “Oh, that’s bad.”

“What?” said Catherine, taking a seat herself.

“Saying
Aaaaah
when I sit down. I can’t believe that’s happening already.” He glanced at her. “How old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

“Eighteen?”
he spluttered, and shook his head. “Man, eighteen. You kids.”

“What do you mean?” Catherine said coyly.

“You know what I mean,” he said, grinning at her. “I see it at every opening. Kids like you, showing up impossibly young and cool and beautiful, sucking all the oxygen out of the room. But—” he tipped his glass to hers—“thank you. It sells the art.”

“So,” she said, feeling she should show an interest in Dunne’s work, “how many hours a day would you usually spend in Ed’s studio?”

Nate looked at her blankly. “How do you mean?”

“Well, James probably told you about when he was working for Malachy Clark in Berlin—he used to work twenty-hour days in there sometimes. Is it that bad in Ed’s?”

He looked no less baffled. “Why would I work in Ed’s studio?”

“I…” Catherine blustered, already feeling the blush climb her cheeks.

“I work in my own gallery,” Nate scoffed. “Ed’s studio? No, thank you.”

“I thought you did. Sorry.”

“No.”

“So you’re not his assistant?”

Amazement spread across Nate’s features; his mouth dropped open, his eyes locked onto hers accusingly. Then a shout of laughter took him, and he slammed a hand down on the couch cushion. “His assistant? His
assistant?! 
” To Catherine’s horror, he leaned forward, now, and shouted out to Ed, absorbed in a conversation by the fireplace. “Hey, Ed! Eddie! I’m your assistant now! You hear that?”

Ed Dunne made his face into a mask of horror and turned away.

“Yeah, the feeling’s mutual,” Nate said, sinking back into the couch. “Christ,” he said, squinting at Catherine. “Ed’s assistant. Do you know what kind of torture Ed puts his assistants through? What in Christ’s name made you think
that? 
”

“Well…” Catherine said, mortified, but Nate’s expression had already changed. He had worked it out, she saw from the way he was holding up one hand, nodding and laughing; he had understood.

“James?” he said. “Well, that explains the conversation I just had with him in the kitchen. For one thing, it explains why he kept wanting to talk about Ed’s darkroom.” He laughed again. “Half an hour of me being expected to take orders in Ed’s fucking darkroom and the only photographer in that studio would be from the NYPD.” He shuddered. “Christ. Our relationship only survives because I stay the hell
out
of his studio.”

Catherine’s breath did something, then, so that she had to make an effort to find it. She knew that it was important, in this moment, not to look directly at Nate; not to let him see reflected in her eyes the rapid calculations and realizations and rearrangements that were clicking and whirring and snapping through the channels of her startled brain. “Yeah,” was all she could possibly manage in the way of speech, and as soon as the word was out, she knew that she had botched it.

“Oh, fuck,” she heard Nate say, through a laugh of incredulity. “Oh, fuck me. Ed and I are partners. Life partners, I mean. You didn’t know that?”

“Oh,” Catherine said, as though Nate had just reminded her of something she had been meaning to do. “No, of course.”

He gave a short laugh. “Of course?”

“No, it’s just…” She shook her head, laughing; going for carefree and landing on crazy. “Just James. James said you were Ed’s assistant. That’s all.”

“Um, I have my
own
assistant. I’m a director of a gallery in Chelsea.”

“Ah.”

“Which is how I met Ed. We’ve been together now for nearly seven years.”

“Wow. That’s,” Catherine said, stammering, “brilliant.”

“Yeah,” Nate nodded. “And because you’re probably trying to work it out right now in your addled little brain, the age difference is thirty-two years.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. He’s ancient. But I love the old son of a bitch.”

“Awww,”
Catherine said, which came out sounding unhinged; which came out sounding more like disappointment, actually, than like the sound of someone who was touched or moved.

“So there you go,” Nate said. “God, I really thought everyone knew that by now. Or, at least, everyone who knew Ed’s work.”

“Well,” said Catherine, wanting, suddenly, to defend herself. “There wasn’t anything about it in the
Irish Times
piece.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Nate said, with a wave of his hand. “Everything that dumb bitch could have got wrong about Ed, she got wrong. I’m surprised she didn’t have him down as married and living in rural Pennsylvania with his wife and family. And Amish. And
dead
.”

Catherine laughed raggedly. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m embarrassed.”

“Well,” Nate said, smiling at her now. He put a finger to her cheek and hissed a long breath through his teeth to mimic the sound of sizzling flesh. “I could tell that. But it’s all right. You don’t exactly talk about this over here.”

“Yeah.”

“Christ’s sake, first couple of years we came here together, it wasn’t even legal.”

David Norris is here,
she almost said then, but she stopped herself; probably, that would just give him another reason to laugh at her. She felt young—so young and so stupid.

“So,” Nate said, settling his wine glass on his knee. “Tell me about James. I can tell the two of you are close.”

“Very,” she said, nodding fervently.

“You’re the friend, then,” he said, nodding knowingly. “That’s good. Every fag needs his hag.”

Catherine was speechless. She stared at him, her heart pounding. Had he actually just said that? Was saying that even OK?

Nate, noticing her consternation, gave an uneasy laugh. “Hang on a minute. You do know about
James,
right?”

“Yes, I know,” Catherine cut across him sharply. “For fuck’s sake!”

“OK, OK, just checking,” said Nate, holding up a hand, but he was laughing at her; he was really enjoying himself now, Catherine saw. She tried to think of something clever to say to him, something very cutting and very clear-eyed, but a second
For fuck’s sake
was all she could manage, which just made Nate laugh harder, for some infuriating reason. Then she looked up, and there, making his way in their direction, was James—clearly plastered, smiling and waving as though he was meeting her off a train. She scrambled to her feet and got to him before he got to them.

Many drinks later, people began to sing. Was this a new thing in Dublin now, Catherine wondered, that every time a group of people were together in a house they had to start singing? Unlike the evening in James’s flat, though, there were no guitars, and no joints going around; instead, people were taking it in turns to stand by the fireplace and sing mostly ballads of the mournful Irish variety; “Boolavogue,” a woman was wailing her way through now, which was a song that Catherine had not heard since being forced to learn it in primary school.

This was a tradition at the Doonan parties, Nate informed Catherine and James, coming up to them as they stood, catching up on each other’s evenings.

“Well, nobody told us, Nathaniel,” James said, wincing in mock horror.

“Consider yourself told,” Nate said. “Ed takes it so seriously, he made me learn a new song. He tested me every night for a week.”

“You’re codding me,” James said, laughing with his hand to his mouth.

“No, I am not codding you. Whatever that is. It sounds painful. Is it?”

“Sometimes,” James said, suggestively.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Catherine cut in irritably. “I’m not bloody singing. I don’t have a song.”

“What’s your song?” James said to Nate, and Catherine felt a stab of jealousy at his having responded to him rather than to her.

“Well, the one Ed
made
me learn is not the one I’m going to sing,” Nate said. “The one I’m going to sing is a surprise for him.”

“Awww,” James nudged him.

“What are you two going to sing?”

“We don’t have songs,” Catherine said.

“Ah, no,” James said lightly. “I think I can find something.”

Catherine looked at him. “No, you can’t. What can you sing? What song do you have?”

“Catherine,” he said, laughing at her, “I have
lots
of songs.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, James, we’re not singing,” Catherine said.

“Ah, Reilly. Don’t take it all so seriously,” James said, and he pressed his forehead to hers. “Come on, darling. We can come up with something. Do it for me. Go on.”

“You could sing a duet,” Nate said, clearly enjoying the moment. “‘I Got You, Babe.’ Or ‘I Loves You, Porgy.’”

“That’s the spirit,” James said, and he put his arm around Catherine, and if it did not melt her anger completely, it confused it, this gesture; she leaned into him, glad of his touch. In a high, gleefully corny tone, he sang the first line of “Islands in the Stream.” He looked at Nate. “What’s the rest of that?” he said.

“Don’t ask me.”

“Come on, Reilly,” he said, squeezing her. “We’ll dazzle them.”

“I’m
not
singing,” Catherine said.

Nate got up to sing his song soon afterwards, and as soon as he started, with no preamble, just a look—a tender and, it seemed, intensely private look—at Ed, something in the room went still. He had not even finished with the first line—it was not a line that Catherine recognized, though she could tell it was another of the old Irish ballads—and it was as though the entire room of people, thirty or forty of them standing and sitting, had caught their breath and then drawn it in more deeply, a deep, slow breath of sadness and gratitude. Nate’s voice was strong and clear, and he was well able to hold a note, but that was not the reason; it was something else, she knew. Behind her, James sighed heavily, and she turned to him.