Be Careful What You Wish For, page 25
And Helen was remembering the sensation of his lips coalescing with hers; the network of hairs on the back of her neck sprang to attention as she inhaled the lemon peel scent of his breath. She wanted to recall every detail. Even for the sake of peace of mind she’d never annihilate the memory of their moments together. As though she had a choice – it was indelible. Yet she welcomed it, the aching and the euphoria.
It’s one of those idyllic June days that happen all too rarely in Ireland. The heat is already palpable when Helen awakens and it mounts as the hours progress. The knowledge that she and Patrick are on their own in the house stokes her excitement as myriad-eyed midday sinks towards the privacy of evening; by then anticipation is heightened to almost unbearable levels. The day is eternal as it winds down and her sense of expectation ascends with pressure cooker inevitability, even as she carries out mundane chores: washing the kitchen floor, changing the bedding. There’s a sensation in the pit of her stomach that bites with the insistence of cramp and she hasn’t been able to eat since a nibbled slice of toast at breakfast.
As twilight filters indoors she moves from kitchen to living room, so fluttery with anticipation a draught of air would waft her skywards. It’s a room they rarely use and mildew assails her senses. She draws the curtains, lighting the electric fire so that it glows invitingly, carrying the heavy old-fashioned radio – their father still refers to it as the wireless – through from its home on the kitchen dresser and settling it on the sideboard. Finally she steps outside and by the light of the kitchen window cuts a jugful of cream roses. Their heady scent alongside the radio helps to veil the room’s mustiness.
Helen glides into her bedroom, treading lightly so as not to disturb Patrick, studying next door, and slips out of her jeans and T-shirt before stroking on some of Geraldine’s Chanel No 5 – on her wrists, at the hollow of her neck and finally, furtively, between her breasts. She catches sight of her naked upper body in the mirror, hesitates and examines it. Black hair coils onto white skin. She looks like someone else. Someone desirable. A hint of a smile flits across her face at the realisation. She pads downstairs, moves rapidly about the kitchen and returns to the hallway.
‘Patrick,’ she calls, ‘I’ve made some tea and sandwiches. You’ve been worrying at the books all day – too late now to cram for your exams.’
He appears at his bedroom door and lopes down, grinning.
‘Revision gives me an insatiable appetite, Helen. What sort of sandwiches have you made?’
‘Ham, your favourite.’
He heads for the kitchen but she calls him back and gestures to the living room, where a tray rests on the rug before the triple-bar fire.
‘I thought it might make a change to have them in here. We never use this room. It’s a waste.’
Patrick looks surprised but nods. ‘It’s dark in here. You can hardly see your hand in front of your face. I’ll put the light on, Helen.’
‘Ah, let’s leave it a while, it’s cosy. You’ve been swotting all day. It’ll do you good to rest your eyes. Come and sit beside me on the rug.’
He lifts a sandwich and regards the fire with consternation: ‘It’s been a scorcher, have you lost the head entirely?’
‘Don’t worry, we won’t overheat. None of the bars of the fire are on, only the light that passes for flames. Besides, Patrick, it’s pretty.’
He wolfs another sandwich.
She leans against an armchair and sips a cup of tea while he eats, observing him from a sliver of sight under lowered eyelids. He’s a foot away and oblivious to her.
Or is he? He rotates a half-circle away but not before she notices him taking in the strip of uncovered stomach between her jeans and T-shirt.
‘Aren’t you having any sandwiches, Helen?’
She shakes her head.
‘I should take exams more often, you’re spoiling me.’ He hesitates and adds. ‘You look different tonight.’
‘Different good or different bad?’ She digs her hands into her pocket and the hollow of her navel, with its mole duplicating his, is exposed.
‘Different different.’ A troubled expression clouds his face.
She crosses to the radio and trawls through stations until Dusty Springfield joins them in the room singing about being loved by the son of a preacher man.
‘Dance with me, Patrick.’ She extends her arms.
He rolls his eyes, joking that she’s using him as target practice for the next foray to The Gap ballroom, but joins her obligingly on the lino beyond the paisley-patterned rug.
Only seventeen and he’s already more than a head taller than she. She moves her body in time to the music and after a few bars’ hesitation Patrick slips into the rhythm, humming along with Dusty. One hand is around her waist, the other loosely clasps hers. There’s a few inches of distance between their bodies and she’s angled to see over his shoulder instead of into his face.
Helen steps sideways so that both her feet are inside Patrick’s and now she looks directly ahead, eyes level with his throat. His Adam’s apple bobs – is he nervous? Is he becoming attentive to her body as she is to his? She leans forward slightly so that her hair brushes his chin. At once he steps back, as though exposed to an electric shock, but recovers his balance and closes the distance between them.
The song dies away and Helen tilts her head to watch him. His eyes slide away but the hand that’s holding hers is damp with perspiration. Both of them hover, straining for the next song. Make it another slow record, she wishes, and Nat King Cole’s cinnamon toast voice replaces Dusty’s. She relaxes into the melody and her body continues moving. Patrick follows her lead.
It’s now or never, Helen thinks, and rests her face against his shoulder. His cheek dips immediately onto the top of her head. She smells him against her, at once familiar and unfamiliar. The scent of the little boy she bathed and played with is mingled with an adult male fragrance that’s new to her. Her lips brush against the collar of his shirt and she smiles, thinking it fortunate she isn’t wearing lipstick. She wonders if he can detect her perfume. Helen stumbles and her thigh brushes against his, a whisper of contact that causes him to release her abruptly and slap silent the radio controls.
‘Better get back to the books.’ His tone is as curt as his expression.
Helen watches him stalk from the room. His back radiates anger, she fancies. A door slams upstairs, she sighs and clears away the crockery.
‘You miscalculated there,’ she admonishes herself, as she sits at the kitchen table smoking cigarette after cigarette. She’s usually no more than an occasional smoker but tonight she’s desperate for the nicotine’s narcotic boost.
It’s after midnight before she heads upstairs to bed. In the dim of the landing, lit by skylight, a lifeline of electric beam seeps from Patrick’s room. She cannot bring herself to grasp it and enter, rejection seems inevitable. Instead Helen takes advantage of Geraldine’s absence and lies in bed smoking, using the lid of an empty moisturiser pot as an ashtray. The glow at the tip of her fingers comforts her as much as the smoke flooding her lungs.
She hears a click as Patrick’s light is extinguished and imagines him climbing into bed. There’s no way to put this right. She made a clumsy pass at her brother and he rebuffed her. It will always rear, an unspoken reproach between them.
When the packet is empty Helen slides the overflowing lid under the bed. The only sound in the darkness is her breathing as she lies and waits for sleep. But smoke tingles in her mouth still, she runs her tongue along her teeth, grimaces and swings her legs out of bed and pads along to the bathroom.
In darkness she brushes her teeth, looking at the moon. Another day and it will be full. As a girl she used to wish on the full moon: for Maggie Buckley at school to be her friend because she was the most popular girl in school; for her breasts to grow; for Geraldine to lend her the oatmeal-coloured swing coat she bought for a cousin’s wedding. Helen wipes her mouth with a towel and opens the bathroom door. A mass of darkness leaning against the banisters detaches itself from the gloom: it’s Patrick. Her heart lunges while he closes the gap between them. She expects him to speak but the strained-looking white face with black pools for eyes doesn’t move, except to come so near to her that it blurs. His hands cradle her face, their noses bump and his lips land on hers, moist and surprisingly soft. A host of firecraker sensations burst through her as, scarcely daring to breathe, she feels his mouth move against hers. Her heart hammers in her eardrums and then he moves his head away to break the embrace. Patrick’s face is again visible, his breathing appears to be as laboured as her own. The expression in his eyes is questioning as his thumbs sweep her cheekbones.
She moves her head so that his hands drop away, then twines her fingers in his and leads him into her bedroom. It smells smoky but neither notices as they sit on the edge of the bed and swivel towards one another. They sink onto the pillows, face to face, swimming in kisses. Patrick rolls on top of her and now there’s an edge to their embrace, an insistence in the way his mouth fuses with hers. His hand travels along her body, lingering on the curve of her breast before descending to her stomach.
Only the persistent jangling of a telephone stopped them that night, the intrusion propelling them apart in a welter of guilt and fear and drumming pulse points. But there had been no timely interruption three years ago, when Patrick and Helen took their irrevocable step …
‘I think it’s time I made us some supper.’ Molly’s voice reached down the years and yanked Helen back to the present.
The vacancy in Helen’s eyes unclouded and she nodded.
‘Have you spoken about any of this to Geraldine?’ Molly filled the kettle with her back to Helen.
‘God no. I don’t find her particularly approachable, I never have. She suspects nothing and I’ll be doing everything in my power to keep it that way.’
‘Going to be tricky if you and Patrick vanish off the face of the planet to an Amazon rainforest or wherever you plan to construct your love nest.’ Molly was striving to keep her voice deliberately light as she persuaded the freezer to part with a couple of slices of bread and laid them under the grill.
‘That’s not on the agenda,’ insisted Helen.
By unspoken mutual consent they abandoned the subject while they ate toasted sandwiches. Molly made a desultory attempt at conversation but Helen was monotone.
‘I think I’ll catch the last DART home,’ she told Molly as soon as was decently possible.
Molly inclined her head. She’d welcome a breather herself; this would take some absorbing. Helen oozed exhaustion and Molly knew exactly how she felt.
‘Listen, we’ll talk about this again,’ she promised Helen, dimly conscious they hadn’t so much tackled a problem as let a few gasps of air into it. Helen didn’t respond; Molly thought she was withdrawing into a defensive remoteness, already regretting the confidence, but she was wrong – Helen’s brain was swirling with images of Patrick.
‘There’s something about all this I can’t understand,’ Molly said to Helen by the lift.
Helen turned to her.
‘Patrick’s your double. The pair of you are obviously brother and sister. It’s more difficult to see the attraction when you’re mirror images of one another.’
Helen stuck her foot in the lift door to force the mechanism to wait. ‘That’s not so unusual. You often see couples who’re alike – as though they feel validated by a lookalike partner.’
‘True,’ conceded Molly. ‘Is that how it works for you, the ratification experience?’
Helen stepped into the lift. ‘I’ve never audited the attraction, it’s simply there. He’s just the man I love. Who happens to be my brother.’
The door closed on a tormented face. The face of a woman in love.
Molly found herself shaking. If that was how a woman in love looked she’d settle for lust any day.
CHAPTER 19
Next morning Molly was ashamed of herself. She should have said or done something to remind Helen that she wasn’t alone, instead of which she’d sat there like a lump of wax waiting to be moulded into the appropriate shape. It was ludicrous expecting Helen to play her puerile game with Barry under the circumstances. She’d ring her at work and scrap that plan.
‘It was a ridiculous scheme anyway.’ Molly chattered aloud, padding about the apartment, tidying up after the previous night’s session. ‘I must think I’m God Almighty to interfere in people’s lives. I’m not even sure I was doing it for the right reason. It was as much to unhook Barry from the limpet-like position he’s adopted on my back as to save a friend’s marriage.’
She stacked glasses and mugs in the sink, briefly considered washing them and jettisoned the notion as a waste of morning-fresh bursting energy banks. Dishwashing was a tail-end-of-the-evening task when the brain cells weren’t powering on all cylinders. Admittedly you were more likely to break something then but who wants a mug to last a lifetime anyway? She spotted a pile of holiday brochures on the worktop and sighed. Presumably her wizard wheeze to take a trip away with Helen was off the agenda.
Molly felt a list demanded compilation. She adjourned to the sofa with one of her employer’s spiral notepads, chewed the top of her pen and decided the crux of everyone’s problems was they were in love with the wrong people. Including herself.
Helen: monumentally in love with the wrong man. And that was an understatement, scribbled Molly.
Barry: in a state of emotional chaos but still in love with Kay despite it all.
Fionn: imagined he was in love with Molly, possibly in love with the uncomplicated relationship they had four years previously. Marriage obviously not devoid of complexities, she might need to reconsider appetite for day out in white frock.
Herself: fancied she was in love with her Greek, may well be in love with him, but he was a lost cause unless she could dream up a wooden horse stratagem to storm his citadel. And was all that effort really worth it for a twenty-five-year-old student with a minor crush on her seriously deranged friend?
Molly re-read her list, enchanted with her perspicuity if a little less captivated by the negative conclusions she was drawing. A church clock nearby chimed to remind the faithful it was time for ten o’clock Mass – and she was supposed to be in the law courts at ten thirty for the next instalment of the rentboy episode. No more lingering over lists – she’d have to dash for a train. And if she wanted another coffee she’d need to drink it on the Howth-bound DART because judges were odd about people carrying polystyrene cups into their courtrooms. They seemed to regard it as offensive to the majesty of the law. Although there wasn’t supposed to be any majesty in Ireland, it being a republic, try telling that to people who wore wigs and gowns dating back to colonial days.
Sidling into court number two fractionally after the judge’s arrival, Molly nodded at the detective who’d filled her in on some background yesterday and borrowed a pen from the RTE reporter. She switched her mobile off, checked out what the rentboy was wearing – a navy suit, as decorous as a choirboy; someone had done a makeover job on him – and listened to the senior counsel for the prosecution.
There were two messages on the mobile when she turned it on at lunchtime, one from Barry suggesting another drink in The Kip after work (he really doesn’t want to go home at night, deduced Molly) and the other from Fionn on an insistent rather than conciliatory note, stipulating a meeting either tonight or tomorrow. He didn’t expect to hear back from her because she didn’t have the manners to return calls (ouch) but he’d be in Kehoe’s from seven until eight on both evenings. No word from someone you’d really like a message from, such as Hercules or, er, Hercules. Molly chewed glumly on a prawn salad sandwich from the Epicurean Centre.
Hammering out the court copy later, Molly was aware of Barry watching her. He was nudging her off stride with those beseeching eyes. Now she couldn’t remember if it was Judge Kelly or Melly presiding; the sooner she sorted Barry out the better. But that meant contacting Helen, and she needed a breather before she could stomach more tribulations. Fionn was her best alternative – she’d allow him to buy her a drink and worship her for a couple of hours this evening. They might even go for something to eat since it was a Friday night. There was a new restaurant on Wicklow Street the food critic had been raving about in the office yesterday. Once the review appeared she’d have no chance of booking a table so she might as well put her inside knowledge to some use. A self-satisfied smile played around Molly’s lips as she typed.
‘You look pleased with yourself – did the rentboy go down?’ Stephen asked Molly.
Barry smirked.
She favoured them both with an old-fashioned look. ‘A fine plus suspended sentence in view of the fact he comes from a worthy family, et cetera. Kelly was a Fianna Fáil appointment so someone in the minister’s department obviously leaned on the judge. My bet is he’ll be back turning tricks at the papal cross by tomorrow night if either of you fancy the look of him.’
Both reacted as though their flesh were crawling.
‘Bestial,’ spat out Stephen.
‘Depraved,’ hissed Barry.
‘Business was brisk so not everyone shares your sanctified responses,’ remarked Molly. ‘Now stop distracting me, I have a hot date.’
Tepid was nearer the mark but Fionn might know how to operate the thermostat.
She spotted him immediately as she entered the crowded pub; he’d monopolised a corner, thrown his overcoat on a spare stool and was nursing his pint of Guinness over the Chronicle’s crossword puzzle. Molly felt a tingle of anticipation when she saw him.
