Be Careful What You Wish For, page 5
Helen struggled to follow Molly’s thought process. ‘So you’ve gone off him now because that svelte body is a blob waiting to erupt?’
‘Absolutely not.’ Molly was outraged. ‘What sort of a flibbertigibbet do you take me for? Don’t answer that. No, I just thought it showed a human side. The next time I go to the offie I can look at Hercules, lounging there all remote and disdainful, and imagine him with honey dribbling down his chin.’
‘Dangerous,’ cautioned Helen. ‘You’ll find yourself wanting to lick if off him.’
Molly quivered, mimicking libidinous excess, and Helen set aside the Sunday Tribune headlines she was scanning. ‘Tell me what else you learned about Greeks before you bring the ceiling crashing down on top of us.’
Molly sipped coffee and consulted a mental inventory. ‘The men are philosophical and like to discuss Socrates. That reminds me, I meant to look him up, check out his spin on life: the distillation of Socrates’ wit and wisdom in three sentences or less. Back in a second; I have to dig out the reference book.’
Despite the chaos Molly lived in she always knew where to lay her hands on a book. She returned and read: ‘“The celebrated Greek philosopher, died 399 BC, whose method of teaching was to ask his interlocutors simple questions, thereby exposing their ignorance.”’ She frowned. ‘That’s all very well but I need a bit more to dig my teeth into, did he sodomise boys, commit suicide, live in a barrel – no, that was Diogenes, now he was a dude. Alexander the Great offered him anything he wanted and he simply asked him to stop blocking his sunshine.’ She tapped her teeth. ‘What did Socrates believe in? Was life a vale of tears or is that Catholicism intercepting my brainwaves? Was he all for carpe diem or did he believe suffering maketh the man?’
‘Check him out on the Internet at work. Now that the bagels are eaten shall we go to Blackrock market?’ Helen required continuous distraction. Patrick’s face kept superimposing itself on Molly’s.
Molly’s voice spoke from Patrick’s mouth. ‘All the stalls will be shutting up by now. Besides, I’ve no money.’
‘Then don’t buy anything.’
‘Get thee behind me, Satan,’ shuddered Molly. ‘That’s always the time you see hordes of possessions you can’t live without. And apart from anything else –’ she cast a critical eye around her cluttered flat – ‘I need more chattels like I need liposuction. Correction, I do need liposuction, but that’s another story. So that’ll be enough temptation out of you, oh possessor of the face that launched a thousand guilt trips.’
‘I thought you prided yourself on being perennially temptable.’
‘No, it’s becoming too predictable. People don’t see me as a challenge any more. All the others in the office are coaxed when someone wants to drag them off to the pub or out to Bewley’s for a cherry bun but they just assume I’m game, my coat is reached to me and off we head.’
‘Will we take a walk, then?’ suggested Helen. ‘It can trickle past the off-licence if you like. You can check if the Geek is practising his profile angles?’
‘Don’t you mean the Greek?’
‘Whatever. Anyway, I want a look at him. I have a theory he might be squinty-eyed if he keeps presenting his side view to customers. Doing a Padraig Pearse?’
Outrage emanated from Molly.
‘Sharkey, I’m sorely inclined to frogmarch you straight to the shop so you can see for yourself how unsquinty his eyes are, how clear and intelligent and sensitive those compelling orbs are, but I look like a bag lady and my hair’s a haystack. I can’t go spoiling last night’s lissom impression. Anyway, I suppose I should take a look at the Sundays in case any of the stories have legs and I have to follow up the follow-ups in tomorrow’s papers.’
She deposited her chin in her palms and started speed reading. Never was there a reporter less interested in news on her days off than Molly. Colleagues took trips to the jungle and still managed to devour papers; Molly couldn’t so much as bring herself to turn on the TV headlines on a day off. It smacked of work.
Silence punctuated by rustling lasted half an hour while Molly digested the main stories and Helen read about how to achieve the minimalist style in your home. Interior decorator’s suggestion: be ruthless. Helen’s conclusion: be patient and the post-minimalist look, otherwise known as how real people lived, would be back in vogue. At least she kept her clutter tidy. She glanced around Molly’s squalid kitchen and shuddered.
Molly slammed down the last of the newspapers. ‘What about those rugged ruggers? We had a laugh with them. Why did we dump them again?’
Helen, who could restrain herself no longer, was binning some flowers so deceased they were virtually desiccated as they sagged from a Mexican pottery vase on Molly’s windowsill. ‘We had enough of them.’
‘I hadn’t. I was on the brink of having more of one of them.’
‘Exactly. I rescued you in the nick of time. A simple thank you will suffice.’
‘I’m not sure I feel gratitude,’ complained Molly. ‘I could be tucked up in bed with him in The Burlington, ordering room service and allowing him to give me a foot massage.’
‘Or you could have your hand jammed to your forehead moaning, “How could I? Have I no self-respect?”’
‘Now you’re confusing me with yourself, Helen. My self-respect would be one hundred per cent intact after a one-night stand with a South African too drunk to remember my name. Not everybody has taken your vow of chastity; some of us enjoy a straightforward lunge for the sheets.’
‘Fair enough. But if you’d stayed with the tourists you’d never have gone clubbing and met Gabriel Byrne showing some Hollywood types around with a view to using Dublin as the setting for a film they’re casting.’
Molly managed a passable imitation of someone whose jaw was about to sweep the floor, sand and polish it for good measure. She gathered it up and demanded, ‘How could I have forgotten meeting Gabriel Byrne? It was the highlight of the evening. Didn’t he kiss my cheek? He must have taken a shine to me.’
‘It wasn’t spontaneous, Molly, you commanded him to – the poor man was only following orders.’
‘Ah, feck that, I gave him the opportunity for something he was panting to do all along. I’m a touch hazy on the details. He didn’t ask for my phone number, I suppose?’
‘Didn’t get a chance to, you thrust it at him. In fact you attempted to write it on his arm but the pen wouldn’t work.’
‘Never mind that. So my phone could ring at any minute with Gabriel Byrne on the line pleading with me to go for a drink with him. The day is acquiring a completely different complexion, Helen.’
‘If you say so.’
‘You don’t think there’s a fractional sliver of a chance that Gabriel Byrne might be intending to use my phone number?’
‘Not unless he has a photographic memory. I saw the drinks mat you scribbled it on lying under the table.’
Molly was stoical. ‘Saves me jumping like a scalded cat every time the phone rings. Anyway, I prefer them taller.’
‘Your Geek is about his height.’
‘Greek. And these are exceptional circumstances. I always make allowances for men who can dance to bouzouki music. Now, will you watch The Age of Innocence with me or do you have to charge home and polish your brass?’
‘I don’t have any brass. But since I’ve seen The Age of Innocence eight billion times with you, give or take the odd million, I’ll pass. So I’ll adjourn to Sandycove and tackle the ironing, I feel the need for some repetitive action therapy.’
‘We can lay that on for you here, easy-peasy, Helen. My fabled reluctance to handle an iron doesn’t preclude me from allowing others to do so on my behalf.’
‘Molly Molloy.’ (‘Eek!’ squeaked Molly.) ‘I brought you bagels, I brought you milk, I brought you newspapers, I brought light into your murky life, I reminded you about groupying Gabriel Byrne, which inexplicably thrills you, I gave you the strength to propose dragging yourself from the breakfast bench to the sofa to watch a video. Surely you can expect no more of me.’
‘So you’re off then,’ said Molly. ‘Fancy the pictures on Friday?’
‘Suppose so, unless I have a better offer. Sick to death of Friday nights in the pub with the office crowd whingeing about the boss/how overworked they are/speculating on who’s emailing who with a view to some hands-on networking.’
‘Obviously if either of us gets a better offer all bets are off. So you can take it as read that if I’m waylaid by a Greek bearing gifts I’ll stand you up. Similarly, if you decide you can no longer ignore the attractions of Kevin at work, despite bravely denying yourself the chance of a snog with him at every Christmas party since you started at J. J. Patterson’s, I’ll be munching popcorn on my own.’
‘I thought we were never to trust Greeks bearing gifts.’
‘No, that’s Greeks cadging lifts. Gifts are fine, gifts are feckin’ brilliant, especially when it isn’t even Christmas or your birthday.’
‘Molly, this conversation is too silly, even for you. I’m off.’
‘Straight home now. No deviating for adventures without me.’
The streetlights were already on; God, for the arrival of spring and a stretch to the evening. Helen climbed into the Golf and pointed it homewards. Except she didn’t want to go home. Without Patrick it wasn’t a home, it was an empty house. And it would be cold because she’d forgotten to set the central heater timer.
Helen heard the radio chattering as she walked indoors; she’d exited the house in such a rush to meet Patrick she hadn’t turned it off. No harm; it would have acted as a burglar deterrent. It was tuned to a play about a young couple with a baby and as she brushed and hung up her coat, Helen cocked an ear. The man and woman were arguing but their quarrel was intercepted by the baby’s wails. The sound of its inarticulate protests catapulted her back in time almost three decades, to when she was a small girl woken by her infant brother.
The baby’s squawks in the next room disturb Helen. She listens, marvelling at their ferocity, the howling blast of indignity issuing from such a diminutive form. She waits for her mother’s step on the stairs and the murmur of pacifying words but there’s no creak of floorboards. She nudges Geraldine beside her in the bed. She’s a year, a month and a day older than Helen; it’s up to her to halt the baby’s tears. But Geraldine mumbles, and rolls over in her sleep.
Helen shuffles barefoot onto the landing and listens. The linoleum is freezing underfoot and she wriggles onto her tiptoes, hugging her hands around her body for warmth. She hears the familiar voices of her parents raised in argument, irascible sounds floating upwards from the kitchen.
The baby is still sobbing but it’s a plaintive wail now, as though he no longer expects consolation. Helen tentatively pushes the partially opened door to her parents’ room. There’s an anticipatory shuffle in the cot and the baby turns his head towards the widening crack of light. He pauses mid-sob, as though considering his next move, then redoubles his efforts.
She skips towards the cot whispering, ‘Hush, little man,’ mimicking her mother right down to the pitch of her voice. His crying eases off and he regards her with bulging-eyed curiosity. Through the bars Helen tracks a path along his tear-damp face, breathing in his milky scent layered with the acrid tang of urine. She casts around for a way to reach into him, spies the pink padded dressing-table stool and drags it across. The baby watches her, frowning faintly, as she balances precariously on the stool and delves into the cot.
He’s more awkward to hold than she expects, heavier than when Mammy sits her down and gives her the baby to mind. But she clutches him tightly, digging her fingers into fledging fat, and hoists him inexpertly over the wooden bars.
‘Hush, little man,’ she croons, slipping down onto the stool and inserting her thumb into his fist. His fingers fasten atavistically and he gazes into her face, eyes luminous in their moistness.
She smiles at him and he smiles back. Mammy says babies can’t do that, it’s only wind, but Helen knows her brother is smiling at her. She listens to his snuffling breath and a sense of peace settles on her four-year-old frame.
‘Helen, put that child down immediately. How dare you come in here and waken him?’
The rigidly disapproving outline of her mother obscures the doorway.
‘I didn’t do anything. He was awake and crying already,’ Helen protests, but the woman grabs the child, setting him off wailing at his earlier decibel-defying pitch.
‘Now see what you’ve done, miss,’ shouts her mother, smacking Helen smartly on the backs of her legs. She deposits the baby in his cot, still bawling, and raises her voice above the din. ‘Pat, can you come upstairs and help me sort out your children? Must I do everything myself in this house?’
Bringing her face down close to Helen she catches her by the arm, pinching her above the elbow, and hisses, ‘You’re in trouble, miss. Just wait and see the trouble you’re in. Your father will take his belt off to you; I won’t be able to stop him.’
The baby’s howls are so anguished that Geraldine appears in her toothpaste-stained nightdress, rubbing her eyes.
‘Geraldine, go downstairs at once and tell your father he’s to teach Helen some discipline.’
Geraldine stares mutely and is skelped into action.
‘At once, I said, or you’ll have a taste of the same.’
Geraldine patters away while Helen waits, clinging to the cot bars, immobilised with fear.
She tenses at the tread of her father’s boots mounting the stairs; his belt makes a slithering sound as it’s uncoiled from around his waist, the buckle jangling against the door handle. The baby senses the tension in the room and his crying jerks into whistling half-sobs. It’s as though he, too, is poised for what follows.
‘Pull your nightie up and bend over.’ Daddy’s voice is conversational.
She whimpers, pushing her face so hard against the cot rails that two indentations etch themselves into her right cheek. The baby is mesmerised.
‘I’m waiting.’ The voice is still gentle.
She’s incapable of obeying. Her puny body quivers, shuddering and subsiding with gulping breaths.
Her father’s hands seize each shoulder, bruising the flesh, and haul her away from the cot. The nightdress is yanked over her head and a button pops and rolls dizzily like a spinning top. As her father propels her to the side of the bed, face pressed against the rosy candlewick cover, Helen’s mother walks from the room, steering a gawping Geraldine ahead of her.
With the first blow of the strap, cracking against her bottom and thighs, the baby howls. The belt rises and falls to the baby’s screaming and it saves Helen the bother of crying. Her body twitches as her brother sobs for her.
Later, when she’s blubbering in bed with camomile lotion on her welts and the trace of her mother’s kisses damp on her face, Geraldine slips something smooth and round into her hand. It’s the pearl button from her nightdress.
‘I crawled under the baby’s cot and found it for you, Helen,’ she whispers.
Helen’s fingers close over the disc with the same reflexive action that the baby’s fingers fastened on her thumb. It’s still wedged in her hand when she awakens the next morning. She flushes it down the toilet and washes her hands afterwards like a good girl.
She returned to the present with a jolt, her nails jagging crescent moons into the palm of each hand.
‘How can Patrick love me? I’m unlovable,’ whispered Helen, awash with self-loathing.
CHAPTER 5
Molly knew if she didn’t get up right now there’d be no lying in bed waking up gradually with a cup of coffee, no leisurely shower, no time to drink a second cup of coffee while she applied her makeup. She lay on ten more minutes: that meant slapping on the warpaint at the DART station again; another five minutes: she’d just traded in breakfast – what odds, the cereal was stale and the bread could probably crawl to the toaster of its own accord. She wrenched herself out of bed and made it to the bathroom, bouncing off walls, before she ran out of time to wash.
Minutes later she was at Blackrock station, waving a mascara wand, which could double as a threatening weapon, in the direction of her eyes, and debating whether to collect a chocolate chip muffin or a toasted cheese sandwich on her way into the office. She found herself ordering the sandwich; obviously the great nutritionist in the sky was on her case again. She even asked for a few slices of tomato to accompany the cheese as a nod to healthy eating.
It was quiet as she strode through the Chronicle’s newsroom, aiming for the seat furthest away from the newsdesk. Out of sight, out of mind. Hopefully it wouldn’t be a busy day; maybe extra advertisements would be booked and they’d drop a few news pages. She was two months behind with her expenses and tomorrow was the deadline. The paper’s expenses forms were demonic to fill out; if there wasn’t money in it you’d never persist. She barely had time to slide the wrapper off her breakfast when a 127-page report from the Department of Justice into drug abuse in prisons landed on her desk. Stephen Horan, the news editor, delivered a crocodile smile along with the depressing information that the security correspondent, who’d normally tackle this tome, was on holiday. Frank Dillon could reel off the difference between hepatitis B and C without looking it up while Molly wasn’t even sure how to spell it. Nevertheless she was stuck with making a page lead out of the report. May it be lashing with rain wherever Frank was. She hoped he’d spent a fortune jetting off in search of winter sunshine and wound up with freak monsoons. She studied the report’s index, quivering with distaste as she imagined all those bruised and prominent veins locked up together.
