Be Careful What You Wish For, page 29
‘You’ll know yourself.’
Molly prided herself on being unshockable but as she loitered for Helen at the back door of her office block on Upper Baggot Street she thought about the brother-and-sister scenario. And her flesh crawled. It didn’t make sense to her, with a city full of men. Molly conveniently overlooked her own rants about the dearth of sane, solvent, single men to choose from. Not necessarily in that order.
‘It’s a toss-up between twelve-year-olds and Norman Bates clones,’ she’d grizzled to Stephen only the other day in The Kip. Stephen had blossomed as he’d listened to Molly’s tirade. ‘I’m neither a twelve-year-old nor a psychotic murderer,’ he’d pointed out.
‘Nor are you single.’
‘You’re deliberately finding obstacles,’ Stephen had muttered into his pint, as she’d swept off to speak to Frank Dillon. The security correspondent, who farmed a family holding at weekends, was gratified to be sought out by one of the most attractive women in the office until he discovred she wanted to quiz him about the revised expenses rates.
Still no sign of Helen. Molly glanced at her watch: 5.05 p.m. ‘Hurry up, Helen,’ she muttered. ‘No point in squirting on the scent for my benefit.’
A sandy-haired man with a bold cast to his features emerged from the building and winked at Molly. ‘Talking to yourself. Bad sign, peaches. The fellows in white coats will be after you if you don’t watch out,’ he advised in a north city accent. The sort of man who probably said he was Dublin bred and buttered. The sidelong glance he gave her smacked of promise.
You see, Helen – she mentally addressed her absent friend, taking care her lips didn’t move in case she was overheard again – you’re surrounded by men in your business. I bet he’d be a laugh.
Just then Helen appeared.
‘Who’s the lanky man in his thirties, reddish hair, talks like a taxi-driver and wears a navy Crombie?’ Molly demanded.
Helen frowned. ‘Sounds like Shane. Did he call you peaches?’
‘Affirmative. Never been addressed as that before but it was quite endearing in him.’
Molly helped Helen find the sleeve of her coat as they walked.
‘Middle management. Gay. Lives with a civil servant. The two of them are the life and soul of every party. Shane always refers to his boyfriend as his occasionally naked civil servant.’
Molly shrugged; win some, lose some. Anyway, she was only checking him out for Helen.
‘Where are we headed? I can’t make up my mind if I fancy a coffee or a drink.’
‘Let’s kill two birds with one stone and have a couple of Irish coffees,’ suggested Helen.
‘Plan A works for me,’ agreed Molly. ‘There’ll be too many chancers I know in Doheny and Nesbitt’s, will we move upmarket and flash our cash in the Shelbourne? I fancy the drawing room.’
They clattered past the bronze Egyptian torch-bearers on either side of the hotel’s main entrance and steered right into an imposing room with floor-to-ceiling windows. A table with a pair of armchairs flanking it near the piano was vacant, and they sank into well-upholstered leather. Almost immediately a waiter took their order.
They sized up the other people in the room: inevitably they were tourists. Nearby were three Scottish women surrounded by Brown Thomas shopping bags, forming plans for the evening over gin and tonics – a visit to the Abbey to see Sebastian Barry’s latest play seemed to be on the agenda. Down near the discreetly positioned till was a party of what they agreed must be North European men; Molly thought Dutch and Helen veered towards Belgian. They definitely weren’t French.
‘Still seeing Fionn?’ Helen asked as the whiskey warmed her from the inside out.
‘Sort of.’
Helen knew what ‘sort of’ meant in Molly’s book: she couldn’t decide if he were her boyfriend so she slept with him while she waited for elucidation. Helen pressed her lips together so she wouldn’t be tempted to criticise Fionn but the whiskey loosened them.
‘This man is trouble, Molly.’
‘Which man isn’t?’
‘You were in smithereens after he left you. I was like someone trying to assemble a jigsaw minus a handful of pivotal pieces. You can’t have forgotten how it felt. And what he did once he can do again. There’s a wife on the sidelines somewhere.’ Who’s to say he won’t have his fun with you and then scamper home to her with his tail between his legs? Wives are comforting and men are gluttons for comfort.’ Helen frowned as she leaned into her winged-back chair.
Molly stifled her indignation during this speech. Helen, fantasist par excellence, who was contemplating a dangerous liaison with her own brother, was lecturing her on sleeping with the enemy. The woman was delusional. If it weren’t offensive it would be hilarious. However she didn’t fancy an argument so she arced an eyebrow at Helen, who read a thousand words into the flicker.
‘Didn’t mean to climb into the pulpit, Molly. I just don’t want to see you wind up hurt.’
‘Snap.’
‘You mean Patrick?’
‘Unless there’s another brother you fancy,’ said Molly tartly. Immediately she regretted it when the hurt bloomed in Helen’s eyes. ‘Sorry, angel face. You rattled my cage on the Fionn front. You’re absolutely right, he may well shag me senseless and then toddle off home to the Viking but I’m enjoying the shagging senseless part of the scenario and I never believed in shagging sensibly (apart from condoms) so I’ve nothing to lose.’
The waiter, clearing a table close by them, found himself privy to so much personal information about a customer he couldn’t help but hover in the hope of more – trying not to stare. Molly crossed her legs and overacted prim.
‘You could lose your self-respect,’ suggested Helen.
‘Threw that out years ago. Next.’
‘Your peace of mind.’
‘It’s a fair swap for someone to warm my feet on in bed. Next.’
‘Your heart.’
‘Ah.’ Molly acknowledged defeat. ‘Losing my heart once to Fionn McCullagh was unfortunate, twice would be careless.’ She sighed and tipped back her glass. Then she rallied. ‘We’re forgetting I’ve already mislaid that wayward organ. It’s in the indifferent keeping of the Greek. So I’m safe enough with Fionn, who may not be swarthily fascinating but at least he’s available. Also interested in me, which counts for a lot currently.’
‘You can’t marry Fionn since he’s already taken,’ Helen pointed out. ‘I thought you were preparing for a nuptial chapter; he’s a plot deviation. You’re dissipating your energies.’
‘On the contrary, he provides light relief from the tedium of the chase. I’m nasty enough to dump him unceremoniously as soon as a husband materialises. But they’re thin on the ground, these lads.’
‘Except other people’s.’
They finished their drinks, Molly scrutinising the Dutchmen from habit – the Scotswomen having rustled off in a plethora of bags – while Helen wondered why she found it so arduous to ventilate her relationship with Patrick. She’d broached the subject already, Molly knew how she felt about him and she needn’t fear her friend would humiliate her in the middle of the Shelbourne by denouncing her as a libertine. That afternoon she had felt weightless with the promise of a burden shared when Molly agreed to meet her; now she couldn’t frame the words. She envied people who opened their mouths and sounds flowed out, tongues clacking off palates to provide explanations.
‘I feel like another Irish coffee without the coffee,’ said Molly. ‘I’m not fussy about the cream either, which only leaves the whiskey. How about you?’
‘I’ll have what you’re having.’ Decisions were beyond Helen.
‘Ooh, you’re like one of those women in romantic novels from years ago, who’d be whisked off to dinner and simper as the man masterfully ordered for both of them. Could we have two whiskeys, please?’ Molly signalled to the barman.
She decided to pump Helen since she seemed reluctant to volunteer information. ‘You lured me here under false pretences, Ms Sharkey,’ she announced. ‘I was promised an improper chat.’
Helen extended both palms outward in surrender. ‘So I did. The case for the defence is that I was choosing my moment to introduce an unseemly element into what has been a singularly decorous encounter. Not.’
‘Cheap shot,’ laughed Molly. ‘Now do you want to hear about Barry’s connubial trials or shall I subside into silence and listen to you?’
Helen hesitated. She did want to discuss the Westport scheme with Molly but she needed a drink at her elbow first. And since she was embroiled in the Barry affair – at Molly’s behest – she was curious to know how her intervention might have shaped events.
‘Give me a succinct update on developments relating to Barry – we can trawl ghoul-like through the details later – and then I’ll explain what’s happening with Patrick and myself,’ she instructed.
The whiskey arrived, along with renewed supplies of nuts, and Helen popped one into her mouth before Molly did her usual trick of annexing the bowl.
‘Chocolate is supposed to be fabulous with whiskey.’ Molly leaned across and grabbed a handful, virtuously leaving the bowl in the centre of the table. ‘Stephen on the newsdesk swears by the whiskey and chocolate combination. He says they complement each other because they’re both sweet flavours. I keep meaning to try it out.’
‘Interesting. Allow me to change the subject forthwith. Is Barry forgiven?’
Molly splashed lemonade into the glass, shading the amber whiskey to the colour of Helen’s antique pine front door.
‘Don’t you love the clink of ice cubes in a glass? It’s so grown up,’ she remarked.
‘Especially when they serve it in a glass with a stem.’
‘That’s the best part of gin and tonics, the lemon slice and ice cubes,’ agreed Helen.
‘Wrong, the gin’s the best part,’ Molly contradicted her, extracting clips from her bag and shoving them into her nest of hair to keep it out of her eyes. ‘It wouldn’t be much of a tonic without the gin. Now about Barry. The fiendish ploy I dreamed up in my plan meister’s brain worked – up to a point. Your phone call left Kay palpitating with jealousy but it didn’t make her kill the fatted calf and welcome Barry back under the Laura Ashley duvet cover. He’s still languishing in the spare room, whining that she won’t agree to let him have the electric blanket on alternate nights. However, she’s suggested marriage guidance counselling, which is a sight more optimistic than divorce lawyers and bedsits.’
‘How does Barry feel about marriage guidance?’
‘Barry would go to a feng shui expert for a consultation if that’s what Kay ordained,’ said Molly, checking how securely fastened her clips were. ‘They’d paint their garden walls two different colours, throw away spiky-leaved houseplants, attach curved handles on their kitchen cupboards and their life would be shiny-bright again. Marriage guidance is a result, the rest is up to him. Now what’s happening with you and the brother?’
Helen winced. She wished Molly wouldn’t refer to Patrick as her brother. She didn’t think of their relationship in that way and it struck her as lewd when someone forced it on her notice.
‘We’re going away for the weekend.’
Molly’s expression betrayed her surprise.
Helen took a steadying draught of whiskey and tugged viciously at a loose thread on the hem of her skirt. ‘It’s not what you’re thinking.’ A slap flared on each cheek.
‘I’m not thinking anything.’ Molly’s facial muscles were back under control and she was impassive now.
‘Yes, you are,’ Helen contradicted. ‘But this is something else entirely.’
‘Oh?’
‘It’s love.’
Molly was silenced. Love she understood. Feelings for a brother which were inappropriate – make that illegal – ([a-z]+) possibly explicable if you factored in love. She had Fionn on the go and she enjoyed making love with him – seriously enjoyed it – but she’d still throw him over in the morning at a word from Hercules, who might not even know where her erogenous zones were. Whereas Fionn had photocopied and memorised them. That could only mean she was unhinged … or in love. She certainly wasn’t in love with Fionn, despite his pleasing attentiveness: he’d even turned up with a ceramic chicken toast rack for her collection the last time they met, a little six-inch-high fellow with a flirtatious eye.
Molly knew you couldn’t choose who to love so Helen’s two-word explanation made the most perfect imperfect sense. The friends sat in companionable silence, the other occupants in the room receding in search of evening meals. Helen mulled over Patrick’s ability to take her grasp on reality and realign it to its antithesis, while Molly remembered how she’d superimposed Hercules’ face on Fionn’s the last time they’d made love and enhanced her own fervour. She made a mental pledge not to do it again, for she knew it was shabby, but it hadn’t been premeditated; it had happened of its own accord and she’d reacted to it. Naturally she ought to have abrogated Hercules’ trespass but it had caught her unawares. She’d veto it next time. Yes I will, she insisted, as a cynical subtext in her brain mocked the resolution.
‘You really are a hussy,’ remarked Molly.
Helen winced.
‘Not you, angel face.’ Molly patted her hand. ‘Me. I’m talking to myself again.’
‘I don’t think there is a word for what I am,’ said Helen. ‘At least it’s not in my lexicon. Corrupt. Aberrant. Debauched.’
‘Don’t be so hard on yourself.’ Molly pulled her armchair closer to Helen’s and strained towards her, intent on making a connection. ‘You didn’t choose to have these feelings and you’re not a freak, however full of self-loathing you are. You’re not the only woman in the world to love her brother. It’s happened before, it’ll happen again. Lord Byron was supposed to be in love with his half-sister. There were even whispers that he fathered one of her children.’
‘What happened to them?’
He was forced into exile. Better not share that with Helen.
‘Can’t remember, Helen. Sure you know I have a memory like a sieve.’
Helen thought about confiding how she’d spent a night with Patrick. It felt as though it had happened a few months ago instead of three years ago, for time adopted an erratic quality in her dealings with him. But she sensed it would be a betrayal to speak of it – their relationship was founded on love, not sex. Molly might misunderstand.
She continued her internal conversation aloud. ‘I’m not convinced there needs to be anything physical between Patrick and me. We could always love one another platonically, isn’t that an option? People do it.’ Appeal haemorrhaged from Helen.
‘It’s possible,’ conceded Molly.
Helen looked relieved but Molly felt she should be more outspoken in the interests of friendship.
‘But could you really spend the rest of your life with someone you craved and not lay a finger on them, Helen? I know my own limitations: there’s no way on earth I could manage that without imploding.’
Helen’s eyes fastened on the curtainpole finials. ‘I could if the option were not to spend my life with him at all,’ she whispered.
Spare me from a love like that, wished Molly.
Spare me for a love like that, wished Helen.
‘Plato probably had some unpleasant infection that made him favour Platonic love,’ suggested Molly. It was a skewing of their conversation, she knew, but her brain needed respite. Just for a moment or two.
‘I don’t know why a journalist would use as a reference point a man who believed the spoken word was superior to the written.’ Helen decided to leave after she’d finished her drink, if Molly was intent on drivelling on about a Greek who’d been dust for a couple of millennia instead of helping her through this emotional maze. Her discontent lapped out. ‘Anyway this smacks of an elaborate ploy to turn the subject to Greeks. Or specifically your Greek.’
‘He’s not my Greek,’ sighed Molly. Optimism intervened. ‘But at least he doesn’t appear to be anyone else’s either so there’s always hope.’
Hope. Helen quailed at the use of the word she was relying on as her own lodestar. There was only so much hope to go around. She needed the lion’s share – Molly could manage on chutzpah.
Molly realised she should have encouraged her friend to talk through the permutations of her relationship with her brother. That’s why they were meeting, after all.
‘So you’re going away with Patrick, any destination in mind?’
‘Westport.’
‘I’d have preferred Newport myself – the American one, not the Welsh fellow – but I suppose your entire weekend would be devoted to travelling there and back.’ Molly beat the opening bars to the US national anthem against the tabletop.
‘The idea of the weekend is to spend time together but preferably not in an airplane,’ said Helen.
‘Right, time together.’ A pause. ‘Didn’t you do enough of that growing up?’
Silence settled oppressively on them.
But the nature of the hush altered during the course of ten minutes or so. It started as strained and progressed to a tacit truce.
‘Helen Sharkey.’ Molly guillotined the stillness.
‘Is mise.’ Helen acknowledged her name.
‘We’ve eaten all the nuts and the pattern off the bowl to boot. Methinks ’tis time to sally forth, brave the dragons and run some nourishment to ground.’
Helen contemplated food. As Molly’s notions went it wasn’t the most suspect. Helen had eaten virtually nothing all day.
‘Know what I fancy? Pecan pie, a massive slab of it.’
‘I was considering something a little more substantial,’ said Molly. ‘By all means il faut manger brioche but not until after the coq au vin. Or veggie au vin in your case.’
‘This sounds suspiciously like a ploy to carry on drinking,’ said Helen.
‘Since when did I need to resort to ploys? Coq au vin just entered my head but it could as easily have been a Guinness hot pot or a steak flambéd in brandy.’
‘I detect a theme emerging, Moll.’
Molly prided herself on being unshockable but as she loitered for Helen at the back door of her office block on Upper Baggot Street she thought about the brother-and-sister scenario. And her flesh crawled. It didn’t make sense to her, with a city full of men. Molly conveniently overlooked her own rants about the dearth of sane, solvent, single men to choose from. Not necessarily in that order.
‘It’s a toss-up between twelve-year-olds and Norman Bates clones,’ she’d grizzled to Stephen only the other day in The Kip. Stephen had blossomed as he’d listened to Molly’s tirade. ‘I’m neither a twelve-year-old nor a psychotic murderer,’ he’d pointed out.
‘Nor are you single.’
‘You’re deliberately finding obstacles,’ Stephen had muttered into his pint, as she’d swept off to speak to Frank Dillon. The security correspondent, who farmed a family holding at weekends, was gratified to be sought out by one of the most attractive women in the office until he discovred she wanted to quiz him about the revised expenses rates.
Still no sign of Helen. Molly glanced at her watch: 5.05 p.m. ‘Hurry up, Helen,’ she muttered. ‘No point in squirting on the scent for my benefit.’
A sandy-haired man with a bold cast to his features emerged from the building and winked at Molly. ‘Talking to yourself. Bad sign, peaches. The fellows in white coats will be after you if you don’t watch out,’ he advised in a north city accent. The sort of man who probably said he was Dublin bred and buttered. The sidelong glance he gave her smacked of promise.
You see, Helen – she mentally addressed her absent friend, taking care her lips didn’t move in case she was overheard again – you’re surrounded by men in your business. I bet he’d be a laugh.
Just then Helen appeared.
‘Who’s the lanky man in his thirties, reddish hair, talks like a taxi-driver and wears a navy Crombie?’ Molly demanded.
Helen frowned. ‘Sounds like Shane. Did he call you peaches?’
‘Affirmative. Never been addressed as that before but it was quite endearing in him.’
Molly helped Helen find the sleeve of her coat as they walked.
‘Middle management. Gay. Lives with a civil servant. The two of them are the life and soul of every party. Shane always refers to his boyfriend as his occasionally naked civil servant.’
Molly shrugged; win some, lose some. Anyway, she was only checking him out for Helen.
‘Where are we headed? I can’t make up my mind if I fancy a coffee or a drink.’
‘Let’s kill two birds with one stone and have a couple of Irish coffees,’ suggested Helen.
‘Plan A works for me,’ agreed Molly. ‘There’ll be too many chancers I know in Doheny and Nesbitt’s, will we move upmarket and flash our cash in the Shelbourne? I fancy the drawing room.’
They clattered past the bronze Egyptian torch-bearers on either side of the hotel’s main entrance and steered right into an imposing room with floor-to-ceiling windows. A table with a pair of armchairs flanking it near the piano was vacant, and they sank into well-upholstered leather. Almost immediately a waiter took their order.
They sized up the other people in the room: inevitably they were tourists. Nearby were three Scottish women surrounded by Brown Thomas shopping bags, forming plans for the evening over gin and tonics – a visit to the Abbey to see Sebastian Barry’s latest play seemed to be on the agenda. Down near the discreetly positioned till was a party of what they agreed must be North European men; Molly thought Dutch and Helen veered towards Belgian. They definitely weren’t French.
‘Still seeing Fionn?’ Helen asked as the whiskey warmed her from the inside out.
‘Sort of.’
Helen knew what ‘sort of’ meant in Molly’s book: she couldn’t decide if he were her boyfriend so she slept with him while she waited for elucidation. Helen pressed her lips together so she wouldn’t be tempted to criticise Fionn but the whiskey loosened them.
‘This man is trouble, Molly.’
‘Which man isn’t?’
‘You were in smithereens after he left you. I was like someone trying to assemble a jigsaw minus a handful of pivotal pieces. You can’t have forgotten how it felt. And what he did once he can do again. There’s a wife on the sidelines somewhere.’ Who’s to say he won’t have his fun with you and then scamper home to her with his tail between his legs? Wives are comforting and men are gluttons for comfort.’ Helen frowned as she leaned into her winged-back chair.
Molly stifled her indignation during this speech. Helen, fantasist par excellence, who was contemplating a dangerous liaison with her own brother, was lecturing her on sleeping with the enemy. The woman was delusional. If it weren’t offensive it would be hilarious. However she didn’t fancy an argument so she arced an eyebrow at Helen, who read a thousand words into the flicker.
‘Didn’t mean to climb into the pulpit, Molly. I just don’t want to see you wind up hurt.’
‘Snap.’
‘You mean Patrick?’
‘Unless there’s another brother you fancy,’ said Molly tartly. Immediately she regretted it when the hurt bloomed in Helen’s eyes. ‘Sorry, angel face. You rattled my cage on the Fionn front. You’re absolutely right, he may well shag me senseless and then toddle off home to the Viking but I’m enjoying the shagging senseless part of the scenario and I never believed in shagging sensibly (apart from condoms) so I’ve nothing to lose.’
The waiter, clearing a table close by them, found himself privy to so much personal information about a customer he couldn’t help but hover in the hope of more – trying not to stare. Molly crossed her legs and overacted prim.
‘You could lose your self-respect,’ suggested Helen.
‘Threw that out years ago. Next.’
‘Your peace of mind.’
‘It’s a fair swap for someone to warm my feet on in bed. Next.’
‘Your heart.’
‘Ah.’ Molly acknowledged defeat. ‘Losing my heart once to Fionn McCullagh was unfortunate, twice would be careless.’ She sighed and tipped back her glass. Then she rallied. ‘We’re forgetting I’ve already mislaid that wayward organ. It’s in the indifferent keeping of the Greek. So I’m safe enough with Fionn, who may not be swarthily fascinating but at least he’s available. Also interested in me, which counts for a lot currently.’
‘You can’t marry Fionn since he’s already taken,’ Helen pointed out. ‘I thought you were preparing for a nuptial chapter; he’s a plot deviation. You’re dissipating your energies.’
‘On the contrary, he provides light relief from the tedium of the chase. I’m nasty enough to dump him unceremoniously as soon as a husband materialises. But they’re thin on the ground, these lads.’
‘Except other people’s.’
They finished their drinks, Molly scrutinising the Dutchmen from habit – the Scotswomen having rustled off in a plethora of bags – while Helen wondered why she found it so arduous to ventilate her relationship with Patrick. She’d broached the subject already, Molly knew how she felt about him and she needn’t fear her friend would humiliate her in the middle of the Shelbourne by denouncing her as a libertine. That afternoon she had felt weightless with the promise of a burden shared when Molly agreed to meet her; now she couldn’t frame the words. She envied people who opened their mouths and sounds flowed out, tongues clacking off palates to provide explanations.
‘I feel like another Irish coffee without the coffee,’ said Molly. ‘I’m not fussy about the cream either, which only leaves the whiskey. How about you?’
‘I’ll have what you’re having.’ Decisions were beyond Helen.
‘Ooh, you’re like one of those women in romantic novels from years ago, who’d be whisked off to dinner and simper as the man masterfully ordered for both of them. Could we have two whiskeys, please?’ Molly signalled to the barman.
She decided to pump Helen since she seemed reluctant to volunteer information. ‘You lured me here under false pretences, Ms Sharkey,’ she announced. ‘I was promised an improper chat.’
Helen extended both palms outward in surrender. ‘So I did. The case for the defence is that I was choosing my moment to introduce an unseemly element into what has been a singularly decorous encounter. Not.’
‘Cheap shot,’ laughed Molly. ‘Now do you want to hear about Barry’s connubial trials or shall I subside into silence and listen to you?’
Helen hesitated. She did want to discuss the Westport scheme with Molly but she needed a drink at her elbow first. And since she was embroiled in the Barry affair – at Molly’s behest – she was curious to know how her intervention might have shaped events.
‘Give me a succinct update on developments relating to Barry – we can trawl ghoul-like through the details later – and then I’ll explain what’s happening with Patrick and myself,’ she instructed.
The whiskey arrived, along with renewed supplies of nuts, and Helen popped one into her mouth before Molly did her usual trick of annexing the bowl.
‘Chocolate is supposed to be fabulous with whiskey.’ Molly leaned across and grabbed a handful, virtuously leaving the bowl in the centre of the table. ‘Stephen on the newsdesk swears by the whiskey and chocolate combination. He says they complement each other because they’re both sweet flavours. I keep meaning to try it out.’
‘Interesting. Allow me to change the subject forthwith. Is Barry forgiven?’
Molly splashed lemonade into the glass, shading the amber whiskey to the colour of Helen’s antique pine front door.
‘Don’t you love the clink of ice cubes in a glass? It’s so grown up,’ she remarked.
‘Especially when they serve it in a glass with a stem.’
‘That’s the best part of gin and tonics, the lemon slice and ice cubes,’ agreed Helen.
‘Wrong, the gin’s the best part,’ Molly contradicted her, extracting clips from her bag and shoving them into her nest of hair to keep it out of her eyes. ‘It wouldn’t be much of a tonic without the gin. Now about Barry. The fiendish ploy I dreamed up in my plan meister’s brain worked – up to a point. Your phone call left Kay palpitating with jealousy but it didn’t make her kill the fatted calf and welcome Barry back under the Laura Ashley duvet cover. He’s still languishing in the spare room, whining that she won’t agree to let him have the electric blanket on alternate nights. However, she’s suggested marriage guidance counselling, which is a sight more optimistic than divorce lawyers and bedsits.’
‘How does Barry feel about marriage guidance?’
‘Barry would go to a feng shui expert for a consultation if that’s what Kay ordained,’ said Molly, checking how securely fastened her clips were. ‘They’d paint their garden walls two different colours, throw away spiky-leaved houseplants, attach curved handles on their kitchen cupboards and their life would be shiny-bright again. Marriage guidance is a result, the rest is up to him. Now what’s happening with you and the brother?’
Helen winced. She wished Molly wouldn’t refer to Patrick as her brother. She didn’t think of their relationship in that way and it struck her as lewd when someone forced it on her notice.
‘We’re going away for the weekend.’
Molly’s expression betrayed her surprise.
Helen took a steadying draught of whiskey and tugged viciously at a loose thread on the hem of her skirt. ‘It’s not what you’re thinking.’ A slap flared on each cheek.
‘I’m not thinking anything.’ Molly’s facial muscles were back under control and she was impassive now.
‘Yes, you are,’ Helen contradicted. ‘But this is something else entirely.’
‘Oh?’
‘It’s love.’
Molly was silenced. Love she understood. Feelings for a brother which were inappropriate – make that illegal – ([a-z]+) possibly explicable if you factored in love. She had Fionn on the go and she enjoyed making love with him – seriously enjoyed it – but she’d still throw him over in the morning at a word from Hercules, who might not even know where her erogenous zones were. Whereas Fionn had photocopied and memorised them. That could only mean she was unhinged … or in love. She certainly wasn’t in love with Fionn, despite his pleasing attentiveness: he’d even turned up with a ceramic chicken toast rack for her collection the last time they met, a little six-inch-high fellow with a flirtatious eye.
Molly knew you couldn’t choose who to love so Helen’s two-word explanation made the most perfect imperfect sense. The friends sat in companionable silence, the other occupants in the room receding in search of evening meals. Helen mulled over Patrick’s ability to take her grasp on reality and realign it to its antithesis, while Molly remembered how she’d superimposed Hercules’ face on Fionn’s the last time they’d made love and enhanced her own fervour. She made a mental pledge not to do it again, for she knew it was shabby, but it hadn’t been premeditated; it had happened of its own accord and she’d reacted to it. Naturally she ought to have abrogated Hercules’ trespass but it had caught her unawares. She’d veto it next time. Yes I will, she insisted, as a cynical subtext in her brain mocked the resolution.
‘You really are a hussy,’ remarked Molly.
Helen winced.
‘Not you, angel face.’ Molly patted her hand. ‘Me. I’m talking to myself again.’
‘I don’t think there is a word for what I am,’ said Helen. ‘At least it’s not in my lexicon. Corrupt. Aberrant. Debauched.’
‘Don’t be so hard on yourself.’ Molly pulled her armchair closer to Helen’s and strained towards her, intent on making a connection. ‘You didn’t choose to have these feelings and you’re not a freak, however full of self-loathing you are. You’re not the only woman in the world to love her brother. It’s happened before, it’ll happen again. Lord Byron was supposed to be in love with his half-sister. There were even whispers that he fathered one of her children.’
‘What happened to them?’
He was forced into exile. Better not share that with Helen.
‘Can’t remember, Helen. Sure you know I have a memory like a sieve.’
Helen thought about confiding how she’d spent a night with Patrick. It felt as though it had happened a few months ago instead of three years ago, for time adopted an erratic quality in her dealings with him. But she sensed it would be a betrayal to speak of it – their relationship was founded on love, not sex. Molly might misunderstand.
She continued her internal conversation aloud. ‘I’m not convinced there needs to be anything physical between Patrick and me. We could always love one another platonically, isn’t that an option? People do it.’ Appeal haemorrhaged from Helen.
‘It’s possible,’ conceded Molly.
Helen looked relieved but Molly felt she should be more outspoken in the interests of friendship.
‘But could you really spend the rest of your life with someone you craved and not lay a finger on them, Helen? I know my own limitations: there’s no way on earth I could manage that without imploding.’
Helen’s eyes fastened on the curtainpole finials. ‘I could if the option were not to spend my life with him at all,’ she whispered.
Spare me from a love like that, wished Molly.
Spare me for a love like that, wished Helen.
‘Plato probably had some unpleasant infection that made him favour Platonic love,’ suggested Molly. It was a skewing of their conversation, she knew, but her brain needed respite. Just for a moment or two.
‘I don’t know why a journalist would use as a reference point a man who believed the spoken word was superior to the written.’ Helen decided to leave after she’d finished her drink, if Molly was intent on drivelling on about a Greek who’d been dust for a couple of millennia instead of helping her through this emotional maze. Her discontent lapped out. ‘Anyway this smacks of an elaborate ploy to turn the subject to Greeks. Or specifically your Greek.’
‘He’s not my Greek,’ sighed Molly. Optimism intervened. ‘But at least he doesn’t appear to be anyone else’s either so there’s always hope.’
Hope. Helen quailed at the use of the word she was relying on as her own lodestar. There was only so much hope to go around. She needed the lion’s share – Molly could manage on chutzpah.
Molly realised she should have encouraged her friend to talk through the permutations of her relationship with her brother. That’s why they were meeting, after all.
‘So you’re going away with Patrick, any destination in mind?’
‘Westport.’
‘I’d have preferred Newport myself – the American one, not the Welsh fellow – but I suppose your entire weekend would be devoted to travelling there and back.’ Molly beat the opening bars to the US national anthem against the tabletop.
‘The idea of the weekend is to spend time together but preferably not in an airplane,’ said Helen.
‘Right, time together.’ A pause. ‘Didn’t you do enough of that growing up?’
Silence settled oppressively on them.
But the nature of the hush altered during the course of ten minutes or so. It started as strained and progressed to a tacit truce.
‘Helen Sharkey.’ Molly guillotined the stillness.
‘Is mise.’ Helen acknowledged her name.
‘We’ve eaten all the nuts and the pattern off the bowl to boot. Methinks ’tis time to sally forth, brave the dragons and run some nourishment to ground.’
Helen contemplated food. As Molly’s notions went it wasn’t the most suspect. Helen had eaten virtually nothing all day.
‘Know what I fancy? Pecan pie, a massive slab of it.’
‘I was considering something a little more substantial,’ said Molly. ‘By all means il faut manger brioche but not until after the coq au vin. Or veggie au vin in your case.’
‘This sounds suspiciously like a ploy to carry on drinking,’ said Helen.
‘Since when did I need to resort to ploys? Coq au vin just entered my head but it could as easily have been a Guinness hot pot or a steak flambéd in brandy.’
‘I detect a theme emerging, Moll.’
