Be Careful What You Wish For, page 24
A jarring note spoiled her self-congratulatory high. Specifically two. Fionn and Hercules. One was all over her and the other was nowhere near her. Longing flattened her.
‘I wish to God Fionn would vanish and Hercules would move in next door. No, that’s a waste of a wish. I wish Fionn would vanish and Hercules would move in with me.’
Molly spoke with such conviction she unnerved herself. She waited for something spooky to happen, like the electricity flickering or a rap on the ceiling. Normality reigned. She decided to give herself a rest from men, even Hercules, which meant no art appreciation lecture the following day but she felt she could handle the sacrifice. Take to your bed with a book instead of a body, Molly advised herself and searched for something diverting. She hadn’t the energy for Anne Frank tonight either. What a relief the diarist didn’t become a journalist as she projected; she was so promising at fourteen she’d make the rest of them look inadequate. Molly extracted a book at random from a precarious heap behind the sofa and glanced at the cover. It was The Mill on the Floss by – good God, by George Eliot. Was this fate’s not-so-cryptic intimation that Georgie her Greek was ready to flood her life – just as she was veering towards the conclusion that men were almost – almost – more trouble than they were worth? Or was she delusional now, to cap it all? She clambered into bed without brushing her teeth, was nagged by guilt and trotted off to the bathroom to repair the omission.
Flossing vigorously – always suggestible, she had been reminded by The Mill on the Floss of weeks of neglect – she made a resolution. Fionn was toast, even if nothing sparked with Hercules. There was no point in keeping to a man until something better happened along. It was energy-sapping and she needed all her stamina for directing Barry’s life, deciding whether she had the stamina to pursue Hercules and ferreting out whatever was wrong with Helen. Molly had a suspicion Barry wasn’t the only one ricocheting off track; Helen was showing evidence of someone out of kilter too.
Molly accidentally soaked her pyjamas at the washbasin as she tossed around possibilities to explain Helen’s prickliness of late. Early onset of the menopause: doubtful. Sexual frustration: possible. Midlife crisis: too soon. Money worries: improbable, she had share options. Sexual frustration was the clear favourite. There now, that left her with a moral dilemma. Maybe she should hand Hercules over to Helen on a dish as the plat du jour. He’d already expressed an interest in her. Just because Helen was currently indifferent didn’t mean she’d stay that way. She could be persuaded to reconsider if the suitor was ardent enough, although he’d have to be inordinately persistent – if the original Helen had Helen Sharkey’s temperament there’d have been no Trojan War because Paris would never have enticed her to run away with him. But Hercules could win an Olympic medal for being coaxing, Molly was convinced. And his Greek lineage lent a certain symmetry to the possibility of his pairing off with Helen. Sure didn’t he have the weight of history on his side.
She trailed off to bed somewhat forlornly. It was a desperate pity Helen and Fionn didn’t hit it off. Sacrificing him to Helen would be no tribulation. But Hercules … now passing him on was genuine hardship. However, Fionn was a non-starter because Helen would never contemplate one of Molly’s rejects, which only left the Greek god. Oh God. Why couldn’t he be cloned? Medical science should get a move on and solve her dilemma with Identikit versions of the same man, one for Molly and one for Helen. Of course she’d never agree to it.
‘She’d never let herself be palmed off with Hercules or Fionn, for that matter. She’d regard it as incestuous,’ Molly explained to Nelson as she relegated him from the pillow to the foot of the bed. ‘Such a shame about her lofty moral standards.’
CHAPTER 18
Molly opened the door of her flat to Helen and nodded at Elizabeth, clinging like a precarious Bambi to the wall by the lift in transparent sandals with heels at once so towering and so narrow they tricked the eye into believing she was walking on tiptoe.
‘Fetching shoes. You need to be fetched in them. Those heels shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near pavements or stairs,’ said Molly, as Helen stepped past her into the hallway.
Elizabeth tottered but rallied. ‘Style over balance is the plan for tonight.’
‘Does your neighbour ever spend a night in?’ asked Helen when the front door was closed.
Molly reflected. ‘I have no evidence that she does. I haven’t bored a peephole into the wall yet so I can’t confirm this but my gut reaction is that Elizabeth last spent a night at home eight years ago. The experience must have been so harrowing she vowed never to repeat it. Hey presto, party girl.’
‘What’s her other name? I’ve only heard her called Elizabeth.’
‘Carroll or O’Carroll, I forget which.’
‘A Kerry name,’ remarked Helen.
‘It’s far from Kerry that specimen was reared. Now, prepare to be dazzled. I bought you a present.’
‘I hope this isn’t intended to soften me up for a pivotal role in your masterplan to tamper with Barry’s relationship.’
‘Naturally it is,’ replied Molly. ‘Here you are, it’s called a Socrates because it’s such a clever corkscrew.’
Helen was enchanted. ‘A new corkscrew, I can’t wait to try it out. It is foolproof?’
Molly was dubious; it might be foolproof but it would take a genius of a gadget to be Helen-proof. ‘I think it works on the lazy fish principle but it seemed churlish to buy someone a gift and use it before they did so I couldn’t say for definite. You can experiment in the privacy of your own home, Dr Frankenstein, and publish the results in the appropriate scientific manual. Barry should be able to recommend one. It’ll give you a talking point.’
Helen grimaced, removing her hip-length raincoat and crossing the corridor to hang it over Molly’s shower rail although it was barely damp.
‘Come out of there, Helen. I can’t trust you not to start checking if I’ve scrubbed down the bath recently. Now, the mojitos are blended, all that remains is the fresh mint I trust you remembered to pluck from your herbal window box – splendid, reach it here. Strew yourself wantonly across the kitchen table. It’ll save you the bother of collapsing presently when you taste how potent these lads are.’
They tasted, decided simultaneously to abandon sipping and savouring and proceeded to swig. On the second mojito apiece Molly took the initative.
‘About Barry and you …’
‘Eek!’ squealed Helen. ‘I don’t like the way you coupled his name with mine.’
‘Uncoupling can be arranged as soon as we have mission accomplished. Kay doesn’t look like a woman of iron to me, she –’
‘Doesn’t drink enough red wine,’ interjected Helen.
Molly eyed her suspiciously. ‘Have you been imbibing?’
‘I cannot tell a lie. I have a mojito in my hand even as I speak. My senses tell me it contains alcohol. My sense of sight, to wit the bottle of gin beside your microwave, my sense of smell,’ she inhaled with some enthusiasm, ‘and my sense of taste. And that, Molly, is the best part.’ At which Helen tipped up her glass and glugged.
Molly shrugged. If she didn’t know Helen better she’d conclude she’d been tippling before her arrival. But Helen had a horror of solitary drinking on account of watching her father stagger home from the pub and wallop into the Jameson’s night after night. She used to explain to Molly it left her terrorised she’d become too fond of the booze on the genetic legacy principle. Molly decided Helen had a puritanical streak and this was one more way of denying herself the bare necessities. But it wasn’t worth arguing the toss.
Helen had indeed uncharacteristically fortified herself with a nip of sherry before catching the DART to Blackrock; she wanted to be relaxed enough to broach the subject of Patrick early in the evening rather than blurt it out in some befuddled state in the wee small hours.
‘So have we a deal?’ asked Molly.
Helen twiddled her empty glass. ‘Tell me exactly what I have to do.’
‘Keep phoning his house until his wife answers. Act guilty and hesitate and then ask for him. If that doesn’t arouse her suspicions she isn’t human.’
Helen was relieved – it didn’t sound too difficult. ‘Game on,’ she acquiesced.
‘Wait, suspicions must be compounded by proof. Kay has to see the pair of you out together, yourself exceptionally glamorous and besotted with Barry, and him looking like the cat that’s licking the cream.’
‘How besotted?’
Molly pursed her lips. ‘Gazing intently into his eyes, collecting stray hairs from his collar, proprietorial gestures.’
‘But no real physical contact?’ asked Helen.
‘Trust me, angel face, Barry’s more nervous of you than you are of him. He says you’re a ringer for a teacher who was always slapping him into detention.’
Helen curled her legs up under her on the chair. ‘Remind me again why I’m doing this.’
‘To save a faltering marriage, as a favour to me and for a get out of jail free card. Now, time to pore over those holiday brochures. I have two on Ecuador, plus purple prose hawking Mexico, Venezuela and Cuba.’
‘Pour me another mojito,’ said Helen. ‘I need to talk to you about something else first. Something personal. I’m calling in my get out of jail free card in advance.’
Molly regarded her friend. She saw eyes which were fever bright, and a fidgety quality in her mien quite unlike the serene Helen. Molly opened her mouth and then thought better of speaking. She’d whip up a new batch of mojitos first. Helen rasped her Socratic corkscrew with what remained of her fingernails while bartending duties were carried out, Molly shimmying and singing, ‘I-I-I-I-I-I like you verr-ay much’ in an accent more Hibernian than Hispanic.
Two brimming glasses were next to them before she addressed Helen. ‘Ready when you are. Yourself and this pale green concoction have my undivided attention. Or to rephrase it, you’re sharing my attention but it’s with a cocktail which won’t be around as long as you.’
‘It’s going to shock you.’ Helen reached for her drink.
‘Sounds promising.’
‘A lot.’
‘Don’t you have a get out of jail free card? Lash away,’ invited Molly. ‘Let me guess. You had a rush of blood to the head and a one-night stand with someone unsuitable, unknown, unpalatable, ungovernable, delete as appropriate.’
‘Worse than that.’
‘The mind boggles. Have you been forging fifty-pound notes, throwing away the gas bill unpaid, converting to Breatharianism and trying to subsist on oxygen instead of food?’
‘Molly, this is serious,’ said Helen. ‘It’s about –’ she faltered, inhaled and rallied – ‘it’s about Patrick.’ And with that she dried up.
Molly waited patiently, then impatiently, as Helen trailed her index finger around the rim of the glass. The urge to consume alcohol had abandoned Helen as precipitately as it had struck her.
‘It’s about Patrick and what? Or who?’ prompted Molly.
‘Patrick and me.’ The ‘me’ fluttered from Helen.
Molly continued to wait. ‘Are you having problems?’ she ventured. This was like extracting teeth.
Helen nodded.
‘Helen, I can’t help you if I’m not told what the trouble is. Now, I’ve known you fourteen years. Nothing you could say is going to make me recoil. So if you’d like to confide in me I’m ready, and if it’s too painful for you to discuss intimate family matters I understand.’
Helen twisted an earring so that the gold crescent moon shape ended face down in a topsy turvy smile that was no smile at all. She struggled for words and tripped over a torrent, all of them delivered with her eyes on the table. She shrank from Molly’s gaze for fear of reading censure in it.
‘Patrick and I are in love. I don’t love him, I’m in love with him. Not like brother and sister but like man and woman. He’s engaged to be married and wants to end it and go away somewhere with me, live with me as husband and wife. I’ve told him the world isn’t wide enough but he disagrees. When I’m with him he almost convinces me because it seems eminently reasonable that two people who love each other should be together. And when we’re apart I’m repulsed by what he’s proposing.’ She glanced at Molly to see how she was digesting the information and was heartened by the fact her face wasn’t registering revulsion. Indeed, it looked sympathetic, if somewhat dazed, so she continued. ‘It’s the classic scenario of can’t live with him and can’t live without him. I’m crazy about him, Molly. I’ve loved him since I was a little girl. He’s the reason no boyfriend lasts the distance with me. I measure them all against Patrick and they fall flat on their faces …’ Her voice trailed off.
Molly, more shell-shocked than she appeared, collared her straying senses and essayed a question. ‘Have you … have you been together, I mean like a man and woman?’ She sounded hollow, even to her own ears.
Helen continued to explore the lip of her glass with a fierce concentration. ‘Sex? Is that what you mean? Incest? Yes, three years ago. It put the fear of God in me. Patrick moved to London afterwards and we didn’t see each other until my aunt’s funeral a few weeks back. I imagined it would be safe by that stage but it wasn’t. I don’t think we’ll ever be safe together, Patrick and I.’ Her mouth twisted as though she were tasting vinegar.
Molly’s head was reeling. Patrick was a handsome man – she’d be the first to acknowledge that – but your own brother, for heaven’s sake. It made her flesh crawl. Her brother, Timothy, was stolid and reliable, he ran a small grocery shop a few streets from where they grew up and Molly would sooner have considered sleeping with Barry or the news editor Stephen, or even the twelve-year-old at work masquerading as a reporter, as with Timothy. On second thoughts she’d simply take a vow of chastity: all the men at work and Timothy were equally unappealing.
But Helen was her friend. She loved Helen; she shouldn’t be judgemental. And just look at the woman, she was in ribbons. She wasn’t doing this for kicks. Molly swallowed an excess of saliva, which seemed to be cluttering up her mouth. Don’t go all tongue-tied now, Helen needs to talk about this. Encourage her to open out. But what on earth could she say? Molly grappled for comprehension. Meet Helen’s eyes, don’t look away, don’t let her think you’re repelled.
‘Most people have a lever inside that flicks to “not interested” when it comes to a sibling, Helen – what happened to yours?’
Helen chewed her lip savagely. ‘Defective model; I was born minus that lever. Some of us have to be, just as some are born colour-blind or diabetic. And if your brother or sister is also born without the lever you’re in trouble. You see,’ she frowned, willing Molly to understand, ‘I don’t regard Patrick as a brother in the same way as I look upon Geraldine as my sister. I’ve always understood that my feelings for him were special, that they went beyond affection or loyalty or comradeship or however brothers and sisters are supposed to feel for one another. And I always knew it was reciprocal, that’s why such an enduring bond formed between us. He went to England to escape the connection but there’s no eluding it.’ The sorrow that laced Helen’s voice attempting to explain the inexplicable subsided beneath a swelling of elation as she added: ‘Yet it gladdens me to realise there’s no reprieve for him from his feelings, that he can’t obliterate them, even while it creates tortuous complications. Amidst all the turmoil, there’s a pea-sized part of me that’s delirious with rapture that he can no more forget me than I can forget him.’ Helen subsided, caught in a maze of half-formed imaginings.
Molly drank, refilled her glass and drank again and felt more sober than ever before in her life. She supposed it was possible for a brother and sister to love one another but not if they’d grown up together surely? She could only imagine it if they were reared separately. Her eyes flickered across to Helen, a stranger to her; she thought of a swan, graceful on the surface yet pedalling furiously below the water line. And then she remembered that swans started life as ugly ducklings – the ugly duckling was still inside the swan somewhere.
The silence was protracted. Molly grappled with Helen’s – what? confession? revelation? disclosure? – and wanted to say or do something that would show Helen she wasn’t alone in her quagmire, that she’d continue to be her friend come what may. Although Molly shuddered to imagine what might transpire. She groped for words but could find none.
Finally, when both women thought they could tolerate the hush no longer, Molly spoke. ‘What do you plan to do?’
‘I don’t know.’
The stillness extended again until Helen picked up the thread of her concentration.
‘I know what I should do, I know what I’ll probably end up doing, I know it’ll be for the best. It’s just …’ her voice quavered, ‘Christ, Molly, I’m so tempted. I want him so much and I know we could make each other happy. We’re all going to be dead in fifty or sixty years anyway, as you’re forever reminding me. Why shouldn’t we eke what joy we can from life?’
Molly could think of a dozen reasons off the top of her head but kept her counsel. Helen, she realised, wasn’t looking to her for a solution – she was easing the misery by acknowledging it. I’m not going to condemn her, Molly reminded herself, it’s not my place. Helen and she had been through too much together to falter now. Nevertheless she was frozen. This went so far beyond confessions about teenage abortions or cameo roles in porno flicks it was torpedoed into another stratosphere. Be supportive, she screamed at herself.
‘When did you first know?’ she asked Helen.
‘I always knew on one level. And then there was an incident that cemented it for me. I suppose I was pro-active then, more so than Patrick, but you have to remember he’s three years younger than me. I was twenty, home from college for the summer break, and he was studying for his Leaving Cert. I knew there’d only be the two of us in the house. Geraldine was working in Munich as a chambermaid in a hotel, and Mammy and Daddy had gone to Tramore for a week. So help me God I came close to seducing him, Molly. I can remember the searing sensation of his flesh against mine as if it were yesterday …’ Helen’s voice trailed off and she stared into middle distance. Molly could see she was travelling back through time.
