Be Careful What You Wish For, page 20
The waitress sweeping up around them alerted the sisters to closing time. Geraldine insisted on settling the bill in acknowledgement of the gift Helen brought her.
‘You’ll come home with me and spend the night.’ Along with her purse she produced a crocheted skullcap from her bag and settled it on her head. It was a statement, not an invitation.
Helen had tossed the idea around already in anticipation, but decided she’d prefer to push back to Dublin since the danger of Patrick confronting her had receded. The most alarming weapon he had in his arsenal now was to telephone her. She could be back in her own home this evening and return to work tomorrow. Time to clutch at normality until the semblance became the reality.
Their farewell was as gauche as their greeting, dry kisses that clanked against cheekbones, but a hesitant warmth marked this second embrace that had been missing formerly.
‘Come and stay some weekend,’ said Helen on impulse as they separated in the car park.
‘My weekends are tied up with the drama society. It’s very time-consuming mounting plays – I doubt if the public realises a fraction of the unpaid work that goes into it.’ Geraldine shook her head sorrowfully. ‘But I might take you up on the invitation later in the year if it’s still on the table.’
‘It’s an open invitation,’ said Helen. ‘Mia casa, tua casa as they say in Mafia films.’
Geraldine opened her mouth to protest she had little time to be watching Mafia films between the drama society and exam papers to correct but, unusually for her, reconsidered. Generally Geraldine believed if a thought occurred you expressed it and never mind the consequences. But she held back, contenting herself with telling Helen to ring her some time and went off to the next level in search of her own car.
Helen created a tranquillising vacuum around herself in the Golf, slipping in her Phantom of the Opera tape, and pointed the car towards the N4. It was already dark, she’d make inching progress, but the idea of being back in her own bed tonight appealed; she was always drawn towards familiarity. Others preferred the excitement of the unknown but she was never attracted to the strange. Where was the comfort in it?
The music failed to pacify her, however. She grew progressively more unsettled as she drove and eventually pulled off the road and into a small hotel for a little-needed coffee and a much-needed break. What was bothering her, she realised, was Geraldine’s resemblance to their father. And Geraldine had acquired a speech tic of his. She’d only used it once during their conversation in the Carleton but it was enough to agitate Helen. ‘As quick as God’ll allow you,’ she’d said, describing how she’d sent a pouting teenager who’d declined to switch off her mobile phone in class to the headmaster. Immediately the expression pitchforked Helen back to their house in Ballydoyle, with her father saying, ‘Get up those stairs as quick as God’ll allow you’ and Helen and Geraldine scrambling for bed before he’d translate the threat underlying his words into something more concrete. She frowned into her coffee; how could a sentence containing the word God be so intimidatory? She tried to corral it but her mind went slipsliding back.
All the others are at church for the Easter Sunday service, even Patrick, whom she believed would support her. But he’s only a kid, thirteen to her sixteen – what does she expect? Their local church is called the Church of the Holy Martyrs. Helen has taken to referring to it as the Church of the Wholly Bored Martyrs because she’s spent so many tedious hours in there she feels martyred herself. She does some mental arithmetic. If she’s been to church for an hour every Sunday of her life – well, say since the age of three – plus all those holy days of obligation, how many are there, let’s be cautious and estimate half a dozen a year that don’t fall on Sundays although there are probably more she’s overlooking, then there are the years she was browbeaten into daily Mass attendance for Lent to take into account, that adds up to – she lays aside the potato peeler to use her fingers for the calculations. Good God above, that works out at more than nine hundred hours. Even allowing for the therapeutic daydreaming she was able to indulge in while her lips automatically mouthed the responses, it strikes her as an appalling waste of time. You could pick up Kiswahili with that stockpile of hours, knit a Dr Who scarf to circumnavigate the globe, become a champion set dancer, learn how to mix the perfect cocktail and acquire all the showy baton-twirling gestures to accompany it. Nine hundred hours. Her mind reels with the enormity of the figure. It’s months of a person’s life.
Now that’s sinful – she addresses the potato peeler as she returns to preparing the vegetables – digging her heels in over Sunday Mass attendance isn’t in the same league. Her mother, caught unawares, can’t devise a punishment for her when she declines to go to church that morning and orders Helen to make a start on the lunch.
‘You needn’t think you can loll about painting your nails,’ she says. ‘And don’t imagine you’re going to get away with this regularly. Your father and I didn’t scrimp and save to rear heathens. You’d never pull a stunt like this if he were here instead of down below in the hospital in Cork waiting for an operation. And on Easter Sunday above all days to decide you aren’t going to Mass – it’s only the holiest day in the Church calendar.’
True, concedes Helen, dropping the last potato into a saucepan of cold water and turning her attention to the beans. She wouldn’t have the nerve to face down her father.
‘Get out that door to Mass as quick as God’ll allow you,’ he’d tell her and, sixteen or six, she’d do as commanded. But insurrection has to start somewhere and her father’s gallstones-induced absence is a heaven-sent opportunity. She giggles as she realises that heaven-sent might not be the most appropriate adjective and hums while she tops and tails.
Patrick is first home, his long legs carrying him in ahead of the others.
‘Geraldine’s collecting the Sunday Independent. Mammy stopped to talk to Father Hogan,’ he responds to the question in her eyes. ‘You couldn’t have picked a better day to stay away from church. The sermon meandered for hours. If old Hog Nose Hogan had a point it escaped me.’ Patrick grabs a handful of beans and crunches. ‘You’re in trouble,’ he continues. ‘Mammy’s invited Father Hogan around after the Sunday dinner to deliver your own personal sermon. Theme: How People Who Miss Sunday Mass Wind Up Sleeping Rough And Covered In Warts. She told the neighbours you were holed up in bed with stomach problems before any of them had a chance to enquire where you were. That’s assuming they would have noticed your absence, although Mammy made sure all of them did by drawing attention to it.’
It’s nearly a relief when Father Hogan arrives, radiating bonhomie, after the dishes are washed and the Easter eggs opened. Cell by cell Helen is being worn down by her mother’s reproachful expression and accusatory silence. She’s not convinced she can weather another Sunday like this. It might be easier to suffer the hour at Mass than the subsequent hours of recrimination. As soon as tea is brewed Helen finds herself alone with the priest, Patrick and Geraldine ushered outside on a pretext.
‘What I don’t understand, Helen, is why a grand girl like yourself is intent on causing her parents so much grief,’ he mumbles between bites of her mother’s trademark walnut cake.
‘I’m not doing it to deliberately wound them, I just don’t believe any more,’ she explains.
He sighs and leaves aside the cake; this is shaping up to be more difficult than anticipated.
‘What about going to Mass while you explore your faith?’ he suggests. ‘This is a small community; your parents are bound to feel compromised in the eyes of their peers.’
‘I don’t see how.’ She’s mulish.
‘Of course you do, an intelligent girl like yourself. And you know you’re setting a bad example to Patrick and Geraldine. Carry on with Mass for now and you and I can have a few chats about whatever it is that’s troubling you, answer some of the questions you have.’
Wouldn’t you imagine, thinks Helen, the Church would have more to do than bandy words with a teenager? Has Father Hogan no sick calls to make, no deserving poor to feed, no GAA teams to coach, no First Holy Communion classes to take? Apparently not. He has no more pressing calls on his time than to wolf her mother’s cake, spill crumbs on his trousers and adopt a placatory tone with herself. She could understand it if she were the leading light in the Legion of Mary and then decided to abandon the Mass-going, that might be a disappointment. But she was never a player: she didn’t sing in the choir, count the collection proceeds or read bidding prayers. Her presence or absence wasn’t worth a penny candle. If he asked her did she ever get urges she’d shove those walnut slices in his face. Ram them up against his cake-hole.
Unaware of the internal monologue, and with no notion at all of quizzing young girls on their urges – they might tell him and then where would he be? – Father Hogan reads her silence as a chink in the armour. He pats her hand encouragingly: ‘Grand girl, so I can count on you next week?’
She nods reluctantly.
The priest reaches for another slice of cake and settles himself more comfortably in his chair. ‘Excellent, I knew you’d see sense. I told your mother we’d sort you out in jig-speed time. The last thing we want is worrying reports going down to your father in hospital. He needs to concentrate on making a full recovery.’
Helen’s chair clatters and tips onto its back as she stands up. ‘If I thought staying away from Mass would hamper my father’s recovery I’d never set foot inside a church again.’ Her voice drips corrosion onto the bottle-green lino; a slice of walnut cake with Father Hogan’s teeth-mark ends up there too.
Patrick taps on the door of her bedroom half an hour later.
‘Hog Nose has left. I saved you the last chunk of cake before he annihilated every morsel.’
‘Thanks, I’m not hungry,’ mumbles Helen. Her temples are throbbing; she wants to slip downstairs and flee outdoors but is wary of bumping into her mother or the priest.
Patrick stops rearranging the bottles on her dressing table and directs a level look at her, not the sort a thirteen-year-old boy generally has in his armoury. It’s awash with a combination of knowingness and commiseration.
‘Do you need a hug, Helen?’
It’s been more than a year since she crawled into his bed in search of comfort after another of her father’s rages.
She doesn’t hesitate; she nods mutely and he folds her into his arms.
Helen paid for her coffee and made her way back to the car, remembering the tantrum her father had thrown after being discharged from hospital, when he’d threatened her with everything from being cut off without a penny – as though she cared about his money, miserable few pounds that it was – to taking her out of school and putting her to work. The household had gone to pot in his absence, he fumed, incandescent that Helen could no longer be cajoled or browbeaten into setting foot in church again. Barring weddings, christenings and funerals, she never had. She’d hesitated at the blackmail about being forced to leave school but called his bluff, gambling that he wouldn’t want to lose face by passing up the chance of a second daughter at college. Geraldine was due to start at St Pat’s in Drumcondra as a trainee teacher that autumn and Helen’s school was confident she’d be offered a place at University College, Dublin. The dice rolled in her favour; her father left her in school. The one inducement he had at his disposal was taking off his belt to her, for Helen had never lost her dread of physical pain, but the man hadn’t the nerve to beat his daughter any more once she reached sixteen.
The signpost told her it was another seventy kilometres to Dublin and an older one on a pole alongside translated the distance into miles. Helen focused on the journey’s end to encourage herself: she drew pictures of her Golf pulling up on the street outside the house, of turning the key in the lock, stooping to collect mail, switching off the burglar alarm. Retreating to a safe haven where no bogeyman could follow her.
She shivered, adjusting her car heater to maximum: who’d have suspected that the bogeyman would turn out not to be her father but her baby brother?
CHAPTER 15
Molly walked along Merrion Square to the art gallery, telling herself she didn’t care if Hercules was there or not. She deliberately didn’t check her appearance as she left the office. He’d made it abundantly clear he wasn’t interested in her. She didn’t need to read it in Morse code as well for the message to sink in. He wouldn’t notice if she arrived for class in a nun’s habit, unusual in itself because even nuns didn’t appear to wear nun’s habits any more. Then she chastised herself for being extremist. What if she had ink stains or newsprint smudges all over her forehead and looked completely ridiculous? There were more people in the class than a Greek boy who hadn’t the sense to appreciate her. So she paused and peered at her reflection in a parked car’s wing mirror to check nothing was too far awry.
She saw him instantly, of course. He was flicking through greetings cards in the giftshop when she walked in to buy her ticket. She could even distinguish which card he held: Sir John Lavery’s study of his second wife, the epitome of bohemian chic in a feathered hat, with her daughter seated alongside and his daughter leaning slightly apart. Molly knew the painting well; it occupied an entire wall. She liked to look at Hazel Lavery and speculate on whether or not she’d been Michael Collins’ lover. Muse to both painter and rebel, the one offering her immortality, the other blistering with immediacy, saturated in the adrenaline of danger. The society hostess bedded by the guerrilla leader.
Molly thought not, on balance. Still, she must have been tempted. Even with the mammy’s boy haircut parted at the side and brushed straight across, Collins cut a handsome figure, especially in his Sam Browne belt. And the charisma of the man – it must have been leaching from him with the network of people he was able to establish, all of them risking their lives to pass information to him. You don’t do that for Mother Ireland if her firstborn’s an eejit or a yob.
‘Hello there.’
Hercules hauled her back from contemplation of past affairs to a present one that held all the promise of a soggy teabag because he was no more taken by her than by the mysteries of pattern-cutting.
‘Tonight’s about nationalist allegory in depictions of the landscape. It should be fascinating. You look flushed, Molly – was it a rush getting here?’
Flushed nothing, she was blushing. Molly mentally shook herself and struggled to keep the warble in her voice to a minimum. What was it about this man? He only had to look at her and she was a quivering wreck. And the chain reaction principle meant she daren’t so much as meet his eye in case the crimson spread from her face to her neck and travelled along her wrists to her ankles. If Molly weren’t so distracted she’d be formulating choice swear words. She was too old to behave like a teenager.
Having her Greek elbow to elbow all through the lecture was distracting: Molly didn’t register a word of it. Not so much as a syllable. Yet despite the concentration vacuum her sense of smell seemed heightened. She could detect his Fahrenheit aftershave, and an underlying muskiness that had to be his body scent drifted across to her. She risked a peek at his hands: the hair curling finely down to the knuckles didn’t seem so repulsive, sure it was only natural. The lecture theatre was dimly lit and he was angled slightly away from her so she was unable to tell if he had a pool of hair spouting from the shirt opening at his neck but she suspected it was so. Now why didn’t she mind that? Normally she preferred her men as smooth-skinned as Fionn.
Molly felt a sense of shame ooze up inside her as she remembered Fionn. She’d slept with him only the previous evening – although he was chased home afterwards because she had work the next day and wasn’t up for a marathon session – and yet here she was allowing her eyes to linger on another man’s hands. To imagine them touching her. Stroking her. Travelling across her body in a pleasure-giving odyssey.
She had no reason to feel abashed, she reminded herself. No vows were pledged to Fionn McCullagh. Their lovemaking wasn’t that of marionettes; it was given and received in the spirit of no strings. At least that was her understanding; it might do no harm to check his interpretation. Did his reading of the small print differ? Stop that, Molloy. They’d signed no contracts.
The lights were raised and Hercules turned, brushing against her upper arm. ‘I must take a look at that Men of the South painting in Cork Museum we saw in the slide,’ he said.
‘Mmm,’ agreed Molly, realising she was in trouble if he insisted on deconstructing the lecture. Sorry, Hercules, so fascinated by the way your hair carpets the back of your hands I haven’t a notion what was happening on the podium. Flattering, yes. Too flattering, definitely yes. Unflattering to her, feck it yes. She’d come across as a solid-gold sap.
They filed out, collecting their coats from the rack by the door. She noticed her eyes were on a level with his nose. And yes, there was an excess of hair tumbling from those nostrils. Nasal hair wasn’t bestial, it was nature’s filter system.
‘Fancy a coffee?’ enquired Hercules.
If he’d asked her did she fancy rat poison she’d have agreed.
‘Love some, it’s my turn to buy. You bags a table and I’ll queue-jump. Hey, I’m only joking about the queue-jumping,’ she added, perceiving his alarm.
So he was law-abiding – it matched that manly profile. He probably never skipped paying for his DART ticket, even when there were no staff on duty in the station.
Setback: no chocolate muffins. Solution: carrot cake.
‘The good news is I come bearing cake,’ she told him.
‘What’s the bad news?’
