Be Careful What You Wish For, page 18
‘I’m waiting for an explanation.’
‘It was lying on the draining board. I borrowed it to tie on my fishing rod, I thought the trout might be attracted by something shiny. It must have slipped off.’ Patrick takes a step towards his father. ‘You can let Helen go and hit me instead.’
Helen creeps into her eleven-year-old brother’s bed later that night with a bar of chocolate. She finds him bruised but phlegmatic. ‘You must have been mental to think that you could get away with using Mammy’s engagement ring as bait,’ she whispers. He tries to smile, but is in too much pain, and shares the chocolate with her.
A few days later the ring is discovered inside a saucepan under the sink. Patrick invented his fishing rod expedition to spare Helen a beating.
Sunday had given way to Monday, and Helen was still hoping to exorcise her demons by talking about them. She knew Molly would be shocked but she was counting on friendship to outweigh distaste. And she’d been trying to repress her feelings for Patrick – surely that counted for something? The delirium of potential unloading had possessed her all day. But she’d dismissed Molly and her chance. Now here she was, alone again. And the burden was still pressing on her. Oppressing her.
Helen buried her face in her hands and her legs crumpled under her so that she sank onto the floorboards. She hugged the sofa cushion as wave upon wave of darkness teemed over her. First Patrick, now Molly. She seemed intent on pushing away everyone who loved her.
CHAPTER 14
Molly phoned Fionn on arrival home from Helen’s, still shaky from their contretemps – if you can call it such when only one person is slinging insults. Fionn would apply the salve, she reasoned, and he did – with a generous hand that soothed her brittle spirits. His delight when he recognised her voice almost humbled her. He missed her, he’d been thinking about her constantly, he was ready to meet her as soon as she chose. Right now if necessary. Too late? Then tomorrow for definite.
His enthusiasm was a warm bath and Molly slipped into it with relief. Being found irresistible was irresistible. He even imagined she was ringing to enquire about his first day in the new job, which she’d temporarily forgotten about, so she trailed clouds of glory for being considerate. They arranged to see a film together the following day. Molly had philandered with the notion of a night in – it went against the grain but she was thirty-two, for heaven’s sake, she had to ease off sooner or later – but she was easily enticed to ice-pack the slowing down process until later in the week. Or later in the decade. Fionn sounded eager to meet and she preferred her men keen. It made her feel sought after.
Stephen, the news editor, spotted she was in date mode as he stood close, closer, closest to check her storylines for the 4 p.m. editorial conference, when a news list for the next day’s paper would be produced, scoffed at and revamped.
‘Either you’re drenched in perfume or I’m hallucinating,’ he remarked.
‘You’re in a permanent state of hallucination. Do you like it? It’s called Contradiction.’
‘It’s certainly not called Contraception,’ Stephen smirked, delighted with his wit.
Molly affected deafness. ‘It has an ylang-ylang base with jasmine top notes. It’s supposed to unleash the woman in me while subtly defining the child.’
‘Nothing subtle about it but I can vouch for its potential to unleash. I hope you don’t intend to wear that while sitting in an enclosed space with a man. He won’t be responsible for his actions.’ Stephen pretended to slaver, which didn’t require thespian mastery because he was all but dribbling as he leaned over Molly.
‘Does the cinema count as an enclosed space?’ She shifted slightly so he couldn’t see down her shirt.
‘Too right it does, Molloy. Prepare to be jumped.’
Molly smiled mock-appreciatively at the boss, thinking: I can sidestep lechers with one hand tied behind my back. It’s all the practice I get in this place.
He ambled back to his seat thinking: I could have that woman at the crook of a finger. Good job I’m pumped full of moral fibre.
After the film Fionn suggested adjourning to a pub. But by then it was already close to last orders. Molly considered her options:
she could have a drink and go to bed with Fionn
she could skip the drink and go to bed with Fionn
she could have the drink and skip going to bed with Fionn.
If she had alcohol she’d want to sleep with him, that was how it affected her system. Two glasses of lager would be enough. If in doubt, avoid decisions, was her motto. She decided to skip the drink and the sex and catch the last train home. It was nearly her time of the month and that always fatigued her.
‘Spoken to Helga recently?’ she asked as Fionn walked her along the quays to Tara Street.
‘No. We weren’t planning to be in contact during the three-month cooling-off period.’
‘So she doesn’t know you’re seeing someone else?’
‘God, no, there’d be war.’ Fionn instinctively glanced over his shoulder to check his wife wasn’t shadowing him.
Illuminating, thought Molly. He has a bird in the hand and one in the bush. And he was still managing to play the forlorn lover. This man should give lessons; he’d earn a fortune.
‘I wish you’d let me see you home,’ he said at the station barrier.
‘Blackrock isn’t on your way to Rathfarnham.’ She mentioned where he lived deliberately, to rub salt in the wound of being a thirty-three-year-old under his parents’ roof and therefore unable to invite the girlfriend home.
‘I won’t be in Rathfarnham for much longer. I’m hoping to rent a room in a house belonging to one of the architects in the firm. He has a place in Leopardstown – couldn’t be handier for Blackrock. This fellow’s often up the country on business because he’s overseeing a development in Dundalk so it’ll almost be like having my own space.’
Molly brightened; that was a distinct improvement. He could invite her over and cook meals for her – she missed Fionn’s chicken paprika. He even chopped his own onions to make French onion soup from scratch. Perhaps he’d perfected some new recipes in Seattle – she was always willing to let chefs experiment on her.
‘Last train,’ intoned the guard, as the bridge rattled overhead. Molly landed a kiss on Fionn’s mouth and legged it for the escalator.
The message light on her answerphone was winking when she reached home but Molly was so exhausted she didn’t notice.
Shuffling her post next morning she listened to Helen’s voice telling her she’d be going away for a few days. She planned to jump into her car and drive in whichever direction the fancy took her. Molly rang Sandycove, hoping to catch her before she left, but Helen had already gone.
‘I wish she’d buy a mobile like everyone else,’ frowned Molly, searching for something that didn’t need ironing to wear to work. ‘Why do I form the distinct impression Helen’s running away from something?’
Helen’s green Golf was travelling west. Irresolute about her destination, she came to a halt in Sligo town and booked into a hotel overlooking the river. The only certainty she could cleave to was the knowledge that she wouldn’t return to Dublin until she’d reached a decision about herself and Patrick.
Her boss, Tony, had been understanding when she’d turned up at work, looked him in the eye and claimed there were family problems in the Kilkenny outback. She’d been aware of his curiosity but he hadn’t pried. Helen never mentioned her family, unlike most of the staff, who chattered freely about feckless brothers and uncommonly talented nephews. Her department head had a hazily formed notion Helen was an only child whose parents were dead. Tony had the impression she always spent Christmas in Dublin – certainly she never objected, as the others did, to being rostered to work on Christmas Eve or St Stephen’s Day. As they’d spoken his electronic diary had beeped to remind him he was due at a meeting with J. J. Patterson, the founder of their computerised feast, so he’d told Helen to take as long as she needed and promptly forgot about her. His brain had been grappling already with how to sidestep a christening invitation so he and his wife could fly to Barcelona for the weekend for a virtuoso flamenco display he’d read about in that morning’s newspaper. Tony’s misfortune was to live for dancing but not dance for a living. He lacked that extra sliver of talent: he had the trifle but not the cherry.
Helen crouched on the window seat in her hotel bedroom and watched the river. It was brackish, which meant it had flooded recently. Her mind mirrored its eddies; it swirled around the subject of Patrick, skirting but not addressing it. Perhaps that was for the best, she thought, shifting position in acknowledgement of protests from her knotted back. It could be that the only way to tackle such an explosive topic was by skirmishing as opposed to full-scale engagement.
Patrick didn’t know where she’d gone or even that she’d gone. She was guessing he’d be obliged to return to England. After all, Miriam thought they were due to be married. He hadn’t agreed to a wedding date but she must imagine it would happen sooner rather than later.
Helen wondered if Miriam wore Patrick’s ring and, if so, what it might be like. Had he surprised her with it or had they chosen it together? She considered the woman Patrick was engaged to marry, possibly sitting at home in the apartment they shared in Camden Town at this very moment, admiring his solitaire – or it could be a cluster – and counting the days until his return. Patrick said she was pretty and iced cakes like a professional. Had she surprised him with a shamrock-shaped one last St Patrick’s Day, somewhat to his embarrassment, or had Helen imagined this detail of their life together? She could scarcely distinguish any more between real and fake. For no apparent reason it became critical to know if Patrick had bought Miriam a ring and whether he had pledged himself in diamonds or sapphires. Not pearls, she trusted, for they signalled tears.
Helen continued to watch the river. A dark rectangle floated towards her – it was almost past before she identified it as a tree branch. For her eighteenth birthday her sister, Geraldine, had given her a scaled-down silver tree to dangle rings from. She still had it in a drawer that housed the flotsam of earlier years. She should hunt it out. Except Helen knew an engagement ring would never hang from it. She’d never be given one of those; her hands were ringless and they’d remain that way. She pressed them together into prayer peaks and thought of Molly, who couldn’t see an engagement ring without borrowing it to make a wish, twisting it three times heartwards. ‘Not allowed to wish for a man or money – doesn’t leave much else,’ she’d invariably quip. Helen never asked to fit on other women’s rings and always demurred when the offer was presented. She’d plenty of wishes but there were full moons and shooting stars on which to float them into the ether.
Geraldine had inherited their mother’s engagement ring, a clump of pinprick diamonds neither valuable nor attractive. Geraldine suggested Helen take it and she’d have the eternity and wedding bands but Helen had wanted none of them. Particularly not the engagement ring. Geraldine didn’t coerce her – she could see Helen writhe – instead she wore all three layered one above the other on the ring finger of her right hand. Her sister wasn’t wed either. Helen suspected the Sharkeys weren’t marriage material, despite Patrick’s stab at it.
No point in driving all this way to sit in a bedroom. She’d walk by the river instead of just looking at it. Helen dragged her arms through the sleeves of a wine-dark reefer jacket, buttoned it up to the neck and dropped her plastic key card off at reception. She strolled in the direction the river was running, hands bundled into her pockets, thinking about Geraldine. Did she know about herself and Patrick? She was their only other sibling – surely she must have suspected the affinity between the two younger ones. Or maybe, reflected Helen, as the wind whipped her hair into a Gorgon’s head, Geraldine shied away from a truth she’d regard as too degenerate to acknowledge.
If only she and her sister were more compatible Helen could confide in her. She could have gone to Geraldine’s house in Galway and sweated through this temptation with her for company instead of kneeling alone in a Sligo Garden of Gethsemane. The fault was as much hers as her sister’s, Helen was aware, for she’d developed a carapace to tide her through the years in that bleak County Kilkenny house at the end of the laneway, at the end of the village – at the end of the world. And if the fortifications excluded her sister, that was the price she’d been prepared to pay. Geraldine had never attempted to scale her rampart; perhaps she detected some hint of the chaos on the other side.
Helen had paid for being the less pretty, less clever, less well-behaved daughter. The less-loved daughter. Only Geraldine’s Holy Communion and confirmation photographs had been framed and hung in the living room. Only Geraldine had been invited to stand out and recite a poem or sing a come-all-ye for visitors, even after Helen’s feis triumph. Only Geraldine had been important enough to warrant a family car excursion to Dublin to settle her into digs when she started at college – Helen made the same journey, the following year on the bus, weighed down by bags.
But for all the favouritism it was possible Geraldine had to make a settlement to the inexorable tallymaster too. Their parents’ hopes had rested on her, and expectations and disappointments were inseparable.
Helen shivered. She was floundering in self-pity; she should find a café and another outlet for her melancholic thoughts. There was a kettle and sachets of Nescafé and Lyons teabags in her room, but she was aware she should avoid her inclination towards solitude. Even if she kept her own company the reality of other lives around her was a healthier alternative.
She pressed a hand against her breastbone as her steps turned away from the river and into the town. Through the heavy woollen jacket she could feel the outline of a silver apple pinned to her sweater.
Dusk mantled the utilitarian concrete hotel frontage in an unearned glamour as Helen returned to her room after dawdling over a pot of tea in a café. It doubled as a craft shop and she’d cast a desultory eye over painted plates and mugs, sipping a beverage that purported to convey the aroma of peat smoke – which, on reflection, wasn’t a taste she particularly wanted to experience. Tea and decorated ware with price tags had been discarded alike, and she’d trudged back towards the riverfront and her hotel. She switched on a metal-stemmed lamp to illuminate the room with a single pool and fiddled with the radio knob until she found Lyric FM. Boots off she lay back on the double bed, feeling vaguely discontented above and beyond the mental tumult caused by her feelings for Patrick. Staying alone in hotels was a forlorn pastime; she imagined how different an aspect the room would acquire if it were shared with a friend. Or a lover. Another pair of shoes beneath the bed, another coat draped over the chair back, perhaps the shower running in the bathroom and someone’s voice calling: ‘Will we eat in the hotel or do you fancy exploring the town for a restaurant to take our fancy?’
Helen could bear the isolation no longer. She extracted an address book with a Monet print on the cover from her handbag, flicked to Geraldine’s number and dialled Galway. It was only down the coastline from Sligo; there was nothing to stop the sisters meeting. Geraldine had missed Auntie Maureen’s funeral a few weeks ago. There had been no way for the family to contact her on her winter sun holiday because no one had known which hotel or even which resort in Turkey she’d been staying in. Geraldine had phoned Helen to complain about being overlooked on her return and their conversation had been terse, each deflected into roles they thought had been abandoned with childhood: Geraldine had played the heavy-handed older sister and Helen the recalcitrant younger one.
However, it didn’t need to be that way. Perhaps Helen should swing down the coastline tomorrow to visit her sister, seize this opportunity to mend fences with her. She could volunteer to run through the details of the funeral service and list everyone who attended and how they comported themselves – Geraldine enjoyed the minutiae of family events. Helen could tell her about Patrick flying in from London for the funeral and about his fiancée. About how successful Patrick had become and how disappointed he was to miss her. The addendum was untrue but Geraldine wouldn’t suspect it. Patrick found their sister as overbearing as Helen did and made no effort to see her.
Geraldine didn’t immediately recognise her sister’s voice and it saddened Helen when she recalled this later. Sisters should know one another’s cadences. Did seventeen years of sharing a bed count for nothing?
‘Patrick’s been looking for you,’ said Geraldine abruptly. No civilities. No chatting.
Helen felt a twinge of alarm. Might he be driving towards her now, on the brink of occupying the strip of carpeted corridor outside her hotel room? It was irrational, for he couldn’t know where she was staying, yet she had to subdue an urge to step across to the door and flick down the lock.
She forced herself to affect nonchalance. ‘Did Patrick say what he wanted?’
‘Just to tell you to contact him if you rang. I said I wasn’t expecting to hear from you since you don’t exactly make an effort to keep in touch with me, I’m only your sister.’
Helen suppressed the irritation which Geraldine’s habitual complaint aroused. She banked down too her usual retort that Geraldine was at liberty to contact her if she chose. Instead she selected an all-purpose agreeable note and injected it into her voice.
‘I suppose you know Patrick took time off work for Auntie Maureen’s funeral, Geraldine? He stayed on a while afterwards to conduct some research for his firm. They’re thinking of opening a branch in Dublin.’
‘I only learned it when he rang, and he only phoned looking for your whereabouts.’ Tetchiness sharpened Geraldine’s voice. ‘He hasn’t improved any. He doesn’t remember my number except when he wants something.’
‘He’ll have to want then.’ Helen was dismissive. ‘I’m on business in Sligo but I could slip away tomorrow and come and see you, if you like.’ She waited for a response but the line crackled. ‘Would you like me to drop by, Geraldine? We could meet for lunch.’
