Be Careful What You Wish For, page 4
In the aftermath, attempting to make sense of what followed, Helen thought there was an inevitability about their caress and the rollercoaster experience it precipitated. Did they really think they could put the brakes on something so powerful? Yet the human capacity for self-delusion is infinite. So she lay against Patrick with her head on his shoulder, his stubble bristling her forehead, and was suffused by exaltation. Nothing mattered beyond this moment ringfenced in time.
She had no way of knowing if they rested together for minutes or hours, leaching solace from their togetherness and content in the chrysalis of one another’s embrace. After a while she became aware of children’s voices as they ran along the path near the bench, arguing about the ownership of a comic. A woman’s voice interjected, refereeing the dispute. Helen lifted her head in the direction of the sounds, hesitant about her and Patrick’s public intimacy. Cities weren’t truly anonymous, particularly not ones as village-proportioned as Dublin – above all when there was something to hide. The voices seemed to be receding. His hand on her hair urged Helen’s head back to its perch. She needed no second bidding; it belonged there.
This time Patrick stroked her hair, winding its skeins around his hand and threading them through his fingers. Once she felt him incline and inhale their scent. Then his hand dropped to the area of her back between her shoulder blades and rhythmically he stroked in circles, easing away a misery she’d scarcely acknowledged existed. And still she kept her face turned from his, for she was loath to meet his eye. Reluctant and paradoxically drawn to it.
She felt Patrick’s lips brush the top of her hair. It wasn’t a kiss, more an unconscious gesture as he moved his head to incline it cheek down on top of her. She waited, accepting the weight of him, and then raised her face to his and they looked at one another. There was turmoil, a churning such as she’d known only with him. And without him. They gazed, grey eyes swimming into grey-green, then she found herself smiling and she could never recall whether he smiled first and she responded or if it was the other way around. But smiling they were, into one another’s face, with an unfettered joy.
They had nothing to smile about. Even as he held her a recess of her subconscious warned she should drop this encounter into amber – store it up against future barrenness – and yet when she looked into the face of the man she loved she could not but register pleasure A memory of reading about Richard Burton gatecrashed her mind. He’d told once in an interview how he’d laughed aloud when he first met Elizabeth Taylor because she was so exquisite. Helen felt like laughing too, even as she studied the path Patrick’s eyebrows cut across his face and the curve of his mouth – a mouth she knew already as well as if it grew on her own face.
A splattering of rain tiptoed across them, an apologetic reminder of a world beyond their cocoon, and Patrick stood, holding his hand out to her.
‘Come on. I’ve already seen to it you’re half frozen, I’m not going to have you drenched as well.’
His hand gripped hers, lacing fingers, and he pulled her to her feet. She’d gladly have sat on that bench until they seeped into the structure, matter fusing with matter, but she allowed herself to be drawn upwards, and walked towards the exit. Towards real life.
Near the gate a clump of snowdrops bowed their heads against the wind; Helen marvelled that no sound emanated from their bell-like heads – she always expected them to chime.
‘There are snowdrops in the front garden of a house in the street behind mine,’ she told him. ‘I haven’t been in my own house long enough to plant any. But whenever I’m melancholic I look at their snowdrops and my heart is lifted. I sometimes feel like knocking on the door and thanking the owners for planting them. I’d like them to know how much joy their froth of tiny blossoms have given me this winter.’
‘Perhaps they do know.’ His grey-green eyes softened. ‘Perhaps they’ve been watching from the window, noticing how you pause to look. They probably say, “There goes the beautiful girl who likes our snowdrops.”’
She felt bashfully enchanted by the compliment, hardly daring to believe that Patrick might find her beautiful.
They walked on and still his hand was woven through hers. But trepidation coursed through her once the park was behind them and they were on the pavement; other people appeared and she dropped his hand. She had to be sensible, even if he seemed impervious to others noticing them behave like sweethearts. Helen didn’t realise that, whether they touched or not, the lover’s mark was upon them. They were linked by that invisible chain binding those who love, a bond which others sense. And occasionally envy.
By her car she offered him a lift back to his hotel. Patrick demurred; he needed a brisk walk to stamp the refrigeration from his bones. Helen yearned for him to step inside the metal box with her, to breathe the same air, to be physically close again. Perversely, because she craved it so much, she knew she should deny herself.
‘I suppose this is goodbye then.’ She doodled her key fob across the moisture on the passenger window.
‘I suppose.’
Vehemence laced her voice. ‘How I hate that word.’
‘Then let’s not say goodbye yet,’ said Patrick. ‘Come for a coffee with me. Let’s try the art gallery.’
She went. Virtue definitely wasn’t its own reward and she was being pious enough without aspiring to martyrdom. Besides, they’d be safe in a public place. Consenting adults drinking coffee, what could be more innocent. To the onlooker.
‘We have to admire one exhibit at least,’ she stipulated. ‘Maybe the Caravaggio. I’ll show you where he painted Judas Iscariot’s ear in the wrong place and had to blot it out and re-draw it. I like that – it shows genius takes effort as well as inspiration. More credible than being swept along by the muse.’
She was gabbling, Helen realised, but the way his eyes lingered on her mouth unnerved her.
She hurtled on. ‘I can’t be doing with people who only go into art galleries to drink coffee and buy greetings cards. Kevin Boylan, who’s in my pod at work, meets all his pick-ups there. He thinks it portrays him as cultured, but he wouldn’t know a Yeats from an O’Conor. He’s the sort of culture you find inside the teapot after you’ve forgotten to wash out the dregs for a couple of weeks. My friend Molly, the journalist on the Chronicle – you should remember her, everyone does – has just signed on for a course of lectures here. I wanted to, but Thursday nights are impossible because –’
‘Helen, we can look at the Caravaggio.’ Patrick intercepted her torrent. ‘We can look at as many Caravaggios as you like.’
‘There is only the one,’ she said. But she stopped prattling.
He fetched coffee while she pretended to read the gallery’s February brochure. As he placed the cup and saucer in front of her he trailed his fingertips across her face. She started; the gesture was so tender, so instinctive, it sent delight coursing through her veins, but was he completely insane? Anyone could have observed them.
There was silence. When you want to speak of love, any other conversation is too trite to contemplate. Or maybe, she pondered, they were both struck dumb by their coup de foudre. It wasn’t totally unexpected, it seemed to have been there always in her life, and yet … there’s no way to prepare for meltdown.
‘Do you believe in love at first sight?’ she asked.
Patrick slanted a glance at her. ‘How could I not believe?’
But love, she thought later, is supposed to exault you, to energise you. This love was packaged in wave after wave of misery. Being with him rendered her bleakly disconsolate and not being with him glazed her in yet more desolation. The joy was sporadic, the guilt permanent.
Some people, she reflected that night, lying in bed with her brain whirring, were able to make it work. They fell in love with people who reciprocated. They invented lives together – homes, children, pets, sun-and-sand holidays, Sunday lunches with other couples. Why not her? Why couldn’t she fall in love with a man who was available – that would be a flying start. Start as you mean to go on, isn’t that what they say? No wonder she was toppling over hurdles. But it was all a matter of luck, Helen concluded resentfully, and she’d been short-changed.
The theorising and labelling and deconstructing and attempting to make sense of something that defied definition came later, however. For now she was drinking latte, content to feel his shoulder against hers. Body heat – no comfort could match it. He brought her a scone and jam, she knew she’d never be able to eat it tidily and ignored it until he cajoled her to slice and nibble it.
‘You don’t eat enough,’ he scolded. ‘There isn’t an ounce of flesh on you. You need someone to look after you.’
‘There’s no one to do that. I must be more trouble than I’m worth,’ she shrugged, but her heart was singing.
‘Do you remember when we all used to go on holidays to a leaky caravan in Tramore?’ asked Patrick.
She rolled her eyes and giggled. Theirs was invariably the wettest fortnight of the summer, the first two weeks in July – decreed by Helen’s mother from habit because her parents had always taken her away then. But her mother grew up in Belfast and Helen’s grandparents had wanted to avoid the North’s tribal tensions during the run-up to the Orange parades on the Twelfth; it was hardly relevant in Ballydoyle, a mote of a village in County Kilkenny.
‘Who could forget Tramore: Aran cardigans over our swimsuits and goosebumps among the freckles- the epitome of the Irish summer?’ said Helen.
‘Do you ever go to Tramore at all now?’ He tapped his spoon against the handle of his cup.
‘Haven’t been for years. The last time I was there we were on our way to the Burren – I know it was a convoluted route – and stopped off for chips. It looked seedy and peeling but it was out of season, and I’ve heard the place is buzzing now.’
‘Shall we go? Will we jump in the car and head off?’
Helen looked at him in wonder. ‘Tramore in late January – have you been so long in London you’ve forgotten what it’s like, Patrick?’
‘Come on, it’s the best time. Think of the Atlantic breakers, the salt air, the strip-the-flesh-from-your-bones freshness of it all. We can go into the amusement arcade and shove coins into the claw machine, win you a cuddly toy instead of all the gobstoppers we ended up with as kids. I’ll buy you an ice-cream cone with everything on top.’
His enthusiasm was infectious.
‘Let’s do it,’ she concurred.
However, with her agreement, his get-up-and-go stood up and left. His excited expression evaporated, he clattered his cup against the sugar bowl. ‘It’s too late in the day.’
Did he mean literally or figuratively? she wondered.
‘We’d never reach there before dark,’ he added. ‘We’ll do it another time.’
‘Sure,’ she agreed, knowing there’d be no other time.
All they had was now. There was no future for them. Certainly not as lovers; she didn’t think as friends – that required a mental somersault she was incapable of executing. And comradeship was unsafe. It offered intimacy and they needed distance.
She was word-perfect on the theory, no bother to her, it was this business of executing it that foxed her. So when they loitered on the pavement after their coffee, and instead of turning his steps in the direction of his hotel Patrick walked towards her car, she didn’t object. Helen should have pointed out he was going the wrong way but she held her tongue.
Only five more minutes, she promised herself. That’s not too much time to steal for ourselves; as remains of the day go, it’s meagre enough.
At the car she paused and turned to him. ‘Goodbye then. It’s for the best. And for what it’s worth, I truly think we’re doing what’s right.’
His bewildered stare implied the decision they’d jointly made in the park was a revelation. Had he blacked out and forgotten? This was ridiculous – they agreed on a course of action. Mutually. She jingled her keys, stuttering something inane like ‘Take it easy’.
‘Can I come home with you? I’d like to see where you live. So I can imagine you there.’
‘No!’ Helen practically screeched the refusal. ‘I mean,’ she amended, ‘the place is a tip. I’ll invite you over sometime. Yourself and Miriam.’ She said the woman’s name deliberately as a reality fix.
He ignored it. ‘Please.’
She compressed her resolve. One of the pair had to be strong and he was caving in like ice under sunshine.
‘Patrick, don’t ask me,’ she supplicated.
‘I am asking.’
He tilted her chin upwards so their eyes met and she felt like submitting because she didn’t want to be firm any more. She didn’t want to be virtuous or to worry about doing what was right. She wanted to love and be loved. And this compulsion was beginning to outweigh any other consideration.
‘Another time.’ Helen willed him to leave her alone, knowing if he pressed her again she’d yield. And a miracle happened – he retreated.
‘I’ll call you,’ said Patrick.
He walked away without a backward glance. She watched him until he disappeared from sight and then she watched the empty space which his frame had filled. His tall, lean, rapidly moving shape.
She knew she should feel relief at averting something they’d both regret when the insanity passed. But she was conscious of desolation and the prescience that unfinished business dangled between them. As this certainty over Helen she leaned against the car door to steady herself, for she suddenly felt unable to support her own weight.
Dear God, what were they letting themselves in for?
CHAPTER 4
Helen pulled over at a Centra to collect the Sunday papers on her way home. As she wandered along the aisles, lobbing into her basket purchases that she definitely didn’t need and probably didn’t want, the idea of surrounding herself with supplements and a conveyor belt of tea against a backdrop of easy listening music lacked its usual appeal. Molly’s apartment wasn’t much of a detour – she’d hive off there.
Molly was wearing glasses, which meant her hands were too unsteady to negotiate her contact lenses, although at least she was dressed. Sometimes she lasted all day Sunday without prising off her dressing gown.
‘You’re up and about early – it’s only four o’clock,’ said Helen.
By way of response, Molly extended the elastic on her joggers to show she was still wearing her pyjamas beneath. The polar bear ones. ‘I like to keep them on during days when I might have to crawl back under the covers at a moment’s notice. I suspected this might be one of those days,’ she expanded.
Helen followed her through an archway into the kitchen, where unwashed dishes were stacked on work surfaces like mockeries of the tall food trend all the rage a few years previously.
‘I don’t have any milk,’ said Molly, ‘but I have lemon left over from the gin – I drank it all before I was halfway through the lemon. If I make tea you can slap in a slice.’
‘I came prepared.’ Helen brandished a plastic carrier. ‘This deceptively humble container is a receptacle for milk, cinnamon bagels and Sunday newspapers.’
‘Magnificent. If you remembered to buy proper coffee I could plunge us some. No? Never mind, saves me from overdosing and turning all jittery and thinking I need a cigarette, and if I could get through last night without buying, borrowing or mugging for them, I can get through the morning after.’
‘So you saw some of the morning?’ Helen was surprised.
‘Negative. Technically I saw nothing of the morning, unless you count last night. But “the afternoon after the night before” doesn’t have the same ring to it. Do the bagels have raisins?’
‘Naturally, Molloy.’
Molly recoiled. ‘Helen, I’ve begged you from the first day I met you never to use that name. It’s meant to be a secret.’
‘How can the fact that your name is Molly Molloy be a secret when it’s splashed over the Chronicle on a daily basis?’
‘I don’t have a byline on a daily basis, only when I write a story – sometimes I only do a crossword puzzle and make personal calls. Anyway, when I’m not working I like to forget the tasteless joke of a name my parents saddled me with.’
‘So you’ve changed it by deed poll, excised it from your passport, driver’s licence, credit cards, electoral register …’ Helen periodically trotted out the list to torment Molly.
Molly affected deafness, rustling through the carrier for bagels, which she jammed into the toaster – complaining when the raisins plopped out and joined charred bread crumbs on the floor of the gadget.
‘Library cards, bank account, P60, health club membership …’ Helen continued inexorably.
‘You know I promised my mother I’d never change the name – it was Granny’s.’ Molly passed a couple of used mugs under running water, her concession to clean china. ‘My only hope is to marry someone with a more acceptable name – let’s face it anything else would do – and, hey presto, no more Molly Molloy. I could be Molly Dunphy or Molly McGinty or Molly Popadopolis.’
‘Don’t tell me that’s Hercules’ surname.’
‘Haven’t a notion. But it’s bound to be something that defies spelling and pronunciation. And, you know what, it still has to be better than Molloy.’
‘Only when it’s teamed with Molly,’ Helen objected. ‘Although Malone wouldn’t be an ideal partnership with Molly either. You’d never hear the end of that cockles and mussels song.’
Molly crunched on a bagel, spurting butter onto the worktop. ‘I never hear the end of that as it is. Even last night’s South Africans knew the words.’ She wiped her fingers on her tracksuit bottoms – ‘They’re for the wash anyway’ – and added: ‘Greeks have a sweet tooth. Everything is drenched in sugar and deep-fried; I saw the tail end of a programme about Greek cuisine on the television while I was waiting for the Fair City omnibus. They eat honey balls and baklava and all sorts of cavity fodder.’
