Be Careful What You Wish For, page 31
She strolled past the cash desk where he was paying, noticing but charitably overlooking his gun-metal grey fleece. Molly believed an auto-da-fé should be constructed especially for fleeces, an item of clothing she didn’t so much scorn as long to see annihilated. Unreasonable, she knew, but logic disintegrated where the fleece was concerned. She must have it bad-bad-Leroy Brown for Hercules if she were prepared to ignore his fleece. Reassured by this proof of the panoramic scope of her feelings for him, Molly paused by the till so he’d notice her. Hercules, fumbling with his change, turned away without observing her. Good God above, he must be short-sighted as well as sartorially challenged; if Molly knew how to gnash her teeth she’d be doing it this very minute. She caught up with him by the staircase.
‘Hey there, you, what’s on the agenda tonight? Still life – how modernists moved it forward with the times?’
He favoured her with a look she could only interpret as cautious.
‘Molly,’ she said helpfully. ‘I’m thinking of wearing a badge to remind people. I work with animals, my ambition is world peace and my star sign is Taurus, which might indicate I’m a bull in a china shop. But I’m not, I’m the most delicate piece of porcelain in the display case, it’s just nobody seems to appreciate my true value. Now let me guess your name. The mists are parting, I see a G. Is it Genevieve?’
‘Close but no cigar,’ he laughed. ‘Are you always so full on?’
She reflected. ‘Sometimes I switch to automatic pilot, usually while I’m sleeping.’
They handed in their tickets and sat together in the second row from the back. Molly caught his eye on her knee as she crossed her legs: eureka! to quote another Greek. But the lights dimmed and a Picasso flashed up on the screen, distracting her companion into more highbrow admiration.
‘How’s your beautiful friend?’ he asked later over coffee.
‘Joined a cult, relocated to a particularly inaccessible part of Canada.’
‘That was quick,’ he objected.
‘OK, she’s still in Dublin and hasn’t signed herself over to a sect, but she’s madly in love and contemplating a move to Ecuador.’
‘Is Helen involved with a South American?’
Selective memory, thought Molly. He’d forget her name if she didn’t remind him but Helen’s is mentioned once and it’s haunting him. She spooned up froth from her coffee, fantasising about telling Hercules who Helen was in love with. That should take care of Romeo’s roaming eye. Prepare to be shocked, she’d say. How shocked? he’d ask. Think very shocked, she’d advise. Up a bit, up a bit, double it.
Molly sighed and decided to execute a graceful departure as soon as the coffee was finished. Of course she wasn’t going to blab Helen’s secret to their Greek and she’d need to be thick, say, a couple of paving slabs screwed together, to continue hurling herself at a man who had no intention of catching her. And who didn’t appear to realise mouths were for kissing as well as pouring coffee down. Meanwhile, the man who was interested in her mouth, as well as every other part of her anatomy, was currently making love to his wife. Or at least ferrying her about and talking to her, sure that was nearly as bad.
‘You never said whether Helen was involved with a South American.’
Molly forsook the froth. ‘No, he’s a local lad. A childhood sweetheart, you might say.’
Hercules looked downcast. She couldn’t help but feel for him. ‘Let me buy you a bun,’ she offered. Food might not be as satisfying as requited love but it was infinitely more palatable than unrequited love. Molly thought there was every reason to believe his heart was no more than bruised when he brightened at the possibility of cake. However, he declined, somewhat reluctantly, because he was due at his sister’s for a meal in half an hour and she catered with prodigal extravagance.
‘Come with me,’ he suggested on impulse.
Molly clattered her coffee mug against the sugar bowl. ‘I couldn’t,’ she protested.
‘Have you something else on?’
‘No.’ She thought of Fionn, who was probably leaving a series of increasingly indignant pronouncements on her phone messaging systems. ‘No, I’m as free as a bird.’
‘Well, then.’
‘I can’t just turn up unannounced at your sister’s home and expect to be fed.’
‘I’ll ring her now so you’re not unannounced. There’s a callbox on the next floor, I’ll be right back.’
Hercules left before she had a chance to proffer her mobile. Which she couldn’t anyway because it was still buried under debris in her apartment. Molly finished her coffee in a daze. These Mediterranean types, even the watered-down south County Dublin versions, were insistent. Imperious even. She felt like the heroine in a Jane Austen novel. Except she couldn’t remember his surname, let alone call him by it. ‘Thank you so much for handing me into my carriage, Mr Popadopolis. I could never have managed that high step on my own.’
This was a wish come true. It was as though her fairy godmother had dropped by with a belated christening gift. Extremely belated. If this wasn’t a date with the Greek god it was a sensational facsimile. It might not be dinner for two by candlelight but it was the same ballpark. Maybe not the Super Bowl but not the Little League either.
Hercules returned and helped Molly into her coat. ‘She’s delighted,’ he said. ‘We’ll catch the DART over. She lives in Booterstown.’
‘We’d need to stop by an off-licence so I can buy some wine.’
‘No problem. I want to pick up a bottle of something myself.’
‘And you’re sure your sister doesn’t mind?’
‘Melina’s enchanted. She wilts without company.’
They were on the street now and steering towards the train station.
Hercules continued: ‘She doesn’t get out much with the twins so it’s a treat for her to meet someone new. She says she’s put the babies down for the night but if one stirs they’ll both wake so we might be lucky enough to see them. Anyhow, we can always creep into their bedroom for a peep.’ He smiled self-consciously, teeth catching the pink flesh of his lower lip. ‘I’m besotted with my nieces, I have to confess. You look like a woman who’s fond of babies yourself.’
‘Worship them,’ said Molly, never having spared them much thought before. If he wanted her to be infatuated with his sister’s babies she could dote with the best of them. So long as she wasn’t actually required to change them. ‘Should we bring some chocolate buttons or lollipops?’
‘Too young, they’re only four-and-a-half months old. They’re called Electra and Antigone, Lectric and Tiggy for short.’
Heavy names for a couple of infants. Molly did a double take while Hercules rummaged in his pocket for a DART ticket. Whatever happened to names people could spell, such as Louise and Donna? Or even something twinnish like Kelly and Shelley?
He slid his ticket into the machine after Molly and went on: ‘Melina and Tim have a semi-basement apartment that suited perfectly when it was only the two of them but they’re house-hunting at the moment because the twins’ paraphernalia has overrun every nook and cranny. Buggies, high chairs, sterilising gadgets, piles of dirty washing, piles of clean washing, vast containers of disposable nappies …’ He almost slavered with fondness.
The man of her dreams was turning into a baby bore. Much more of this and she’d stay on the DART to Blackrock. She scooped up a scowl that threatened to settle on her face, dressed it up in sheep’s clothing as an interested expression and covertly watched a trailer for yet another Star Wars film on the platform screen. A couple more and George Lucas would have enough money to buy planets, never mind recreate them with special effects.
They each held a bottle by the neck as they walked towards a redbrick building with a cherry tree in the front garden.
‘Can’t ring the doorbell,’ explained Hercules, tapping gently on a glass panel. ‘Might waken the babies.’
The door was flung open by his sister, who carried off a somewhat unnatural-looking hennaed urchin cut despite her sultry colouring. She pounced on Molly in the hallway.
‘Georgie never told us he had a girlfriend,’ she beamed. ‘It’s been ages since he brought a woman over, hasn’t it, Tim?’
Tim, invisible in the kitchen, mumbled something that could have been ‘Yes’ or could have been ‘Where’s the garlic presser?’
‘She’s not my girlfriend,’ insisted Hercules. ‘We go to the same art appreciation class, I’m only after telling you on the phone, Melina.’ He pulled a face intended to convey apology to Molly. Meanwhile, on the other side of the narrow hallway, Melina was rolling the whites of her eyes at Molly in a manner which suggested her brother had asinine sensitivities.
‘Friend, girlfriend, what does it matter? You’re welcome here, Molly. I hope you’re hungry. Tim’s chef tonight and he always imagines he’s feeding the five thousand although we offer a little more variety than loaves and fishes. Come in, let me prove we have a living room as well as a hallway. We’ve even managed to clear teething rings and teddy bears off the sofa so there’s space to sit down.’ She spotted a stray bib on the arm of the sofa and stuffed it into a trouser pocket without drawing breath. ‘It’s wonderful to see a new face – I’m crawling up the walls by the time Tim comes home from work. I have a horror I’ll end up conversing with him in babytalk and neither of us will notice. Let me pour you a glass of wine, Molly. Better still, I’ll send Georgie out to do it for me. You can have any colour you like as long as it’s red.’
‘I brought some white but red would be lovely.’ Molly was warming by the second to Melina’s surfeit of welcome.
‘I’ve doubled my alcohol intake since the babies came along.’ Melina tugged at her shirt hem in a vain attempt to cover her bottom. ‘I have the gin bottle sitting on the table ready for Tim’s key in the door. Of course, that’s not the only reason I’ve stacked on the beef since the girls made their appearance but it’s a contributory factor.’ She adjusted her voice upwards a couple of octaves. ‘Tim, is the virtuoso at a crucial stage of the culinary proceedings or could you step in to greet our guest?’
Tim, cheerful and balding, wearing a grey apron emblazoned with ‘Silence, genius at work’ that engulfed his skinny frame, popped his head around the door.
‘Molly, glad you could make it. You may not realise it yet but you’re providing a valuable social service to my terminally understimulated wife. Food will be ready in ten minutes. Here’s Georgie behind me with the fruit of the vine.’
‘Ignore anything she says about me,’ instructed Hercules, doling out glasses.
‘Even the part about you being a child with healing hands who made St Francis of Assisi look indifferent to animals?’ Molly widened her eyes above the wine, realising she was going to relish the evening.
‘No, you can believe that.’
‘And what about the story about you giving all the pocket money you’d saved up for a mega-gears bicycle to the foreign missions?’
‘Er, you can believe that too.’
Melina grinned and went into the kitchen to carry through a salad to the table in the corner of the living room. ‘Georgie’s in denial about the girlfriend bit. There’s a science lab of chemistry sparking between the pair of them,’ she whispered to Tim, popping a crouton into her mouth.
He patted her rump indulgently. ‘Matchmaking again, Melina. Don’t forget the tomato bread. I’ll turn the oven off and follow you in.’
‘She’s just Georgie’s type, he always had a weakness for blondes.’
‘It’s brunettes he favours.’ Tim pushed the bread basket into her hand and turned back to his saucepans. ‘Remember to light the candles on the table. If nothing else it should appeal to your romantic streak.’
In the living room Molly was dutifully admiring a silver-framed photo of the babies in christening gowns while Hercules explained how to tell the identical girls apart. ‘Tiggy’s nose is slightly snub whereas Lectric has a Roman one.’
Molly scrutinised a pair of Identikit noses.
‘It’s easier if you see them. Melina, we’ll just nip into the babies’ bedroom and Molly can have a look at the girls. I promise not to wake them.’
‘You don’t need to promise because you’re not going anywhere. Dinner’s ready, and since man cannot live by tomato bread alone I have your favourite Caesar salad here, Georgie. Now do you want Molly opposite you where you can admire her or beside you where you can hold her hand under the table?’
‘You do realise,’ said Hercules, ‘this is the last time I’ll invite a woman friend to your home. Molly, where would you be most comfortable sitting?’
‘Oh no, does this mean I’m required to express an opinion?’ said Molly. ‘Anywhere’s fine by me. I like being admired and having my hand held.’
Hercules checked her expression to gauge whether she was joking but couldn’t decide.
Molly thought he looked particularly beguiling by candlelight. Mind you, she thought he looked tantalising in daylight too and, yes, 100-watt lightbulbs cast a certain glow on him. Especially since he’d shed the fleece to reveal a plain black T-shirt, her favourite sort on a man. No city names or beer advertisements.
As Hercules stacked plates after the first course, Molly was unable to withstand asking about a peculiar noise she’d noticed intermittently since sitting down.
‘What’s that snuffling sound?’
Tim pointed to a baby alarm near the table. ‘Monitoring our heavy breathers next door. They do a lot of snorting for a pair of little ladies. It’s better than a concert when Georgie goes in to sing them Greek lullabies. I keep waiting for the sound of smashing plates.’ He smiled at Molly. ‘Are you a student too?’
She must look young enough to be a student. I love this man, thought Molly. I love candlelight too.
‘No, I’m a wage slave, a journalist.’
‘Who do you work for? Would we recognise your name?’ Melina perked up.
‘The Chronicle.’
Melina’s interest levels troughed. ‘We read the Enquirer.’
By the time Tim’s speciality curry was on the table the conversation had moved on to house-hunting.
‘Melina and Tim are practising restraint on your behalf; they’re one hundred per cent house-hunting bores,’ said Georgie. ‘It’s a wonder they haven’t quizzed you about prices in your area.’
‘Where do you live, incidentally?’ asked Melina.
‘Blackrock. I’m only a few streets away from you.’
‘Apartment or house?’ Melina’s eyes gleamed.
‘Apartment.’
‘Purpose-built or conversion?’
‘Give her a break, Melina,’ objected Hercules. ‘And don’t you dare ask how much she paid for it.’
‘I suppose you snapped it up for a song years ago and it’s worth a fortune now.’ Melina was wistful. ‘We have a fair stack of equity in this place but houses are still beyond our reach unless we go right out to Greystones.’
‘Your apartment is wonderful.’ Molly’s gaze travelled around the high ceiling, marble fireplace and elaborate cornicing of their late-Victorian home.
‘We only have one bedroom, which is seriously over-crowded with two cots jammed in.’ Melina passed mango chutney to Tim. ‘We need a house and we need my salary. I’ll be going back to work any day now –’ Melina had an administrative job in the Department of Finance – ‘although I hate the thought of leaving the babes.’
‘Greystones is lovely,’ said Molly.
‘Commuting gives me the shivers.’ Melina handed across a second helping of saffron rice to Tim; Molly wondered if they communicated by telepathy. ‘Besides, I’m a Dub,’ Melina carried on. ‘I don’t want to end up in Wicklow. That’s the sticks.’
‘You pays your money and you takes your choice,’ said Hercules. ‘Booterstown equals an apartment, Greystones equals a house. Tim’s from Belturbet, Molly. Ask him to tell you some of his Cavan jokes.’
‘Nice try, baby bro,’ interjected Melina, ‘but I’m nowhere near through obsessing about house prices. Molly, did it take you long to find your place?’
‘Months,’ shuddered Molly. ‘I only bought it in the end so I could reclaim Saturday afternoons instead of spending them viewing properties. I also thought it might be agreeable occasionally to speak to people who weren’t estate agents.’
‘Georgie’s not on the ladder yet,’ sighed Melina. ‘He doesn’t know the horrors that lurk in wait for him.’
‘I particularly like Tim’s Cavan joke,’ interrupted Hercules, ‘about the fellow who berates God for not letting him win the Lotto and he makes such a pest of himself that finally God speaks to him. “Meet me halfway and buy a ticket,” he says.’
‘Only Cavan people are allowed to tell Cavan jokes,’ protested Tim. ‘Georgie, why don’t you change the CD – we’ve all had enough of John Lee Hooker – and I’ll clear the table while Melina establishes exactly how many rooms Molly has in her apartment and works out the market value of each one. By the way, don’t even think about digging out the George Dolares CD. Anyway, you won’t find it because it’s been confiscated.’
Melina made eye contact with Molly. ‘You see what I have to contend with? A husband who censors my CD collection.’
During a lull after coconut ice cream Hercules and Molly slipped next door to admire the twins, now whistling as they snored. In the bedroom he rested his arm on Molly’s shoulders and she squirmed with pleasure.
‘What do you think of my nieces?’
She squinted with limited interest at two lookalike bundles, one in a peach sleepsuit and the other in turquoise, dark curls clinging damply to the backs of their necks.
