Be Careful What You Wish For

At the bottom of the stairs, magazine under an arm and mug in hand, she cast an eye back over her immaculate domain. At least some aspects of life were under her control. Control. It was what rendered existence manageable. When she reached the top stair the phone rang. She counted as its bells pealed twelve times. Her fingers itched to lift it but she willed them to cup her drinking chocolate, breathing suspended as she waited for the jangling to cease. When all was silent she walked into the bedroom and pressed a button to read the confirmation – he was calling. The magazine slipped to the floor and she placed the drinking chocolate sightlessly on her bedside table, toppling the alarm clock. Her uncharacteristic clumsiness flung tongues of milky liquid from the mug but Helen didn’t notice the pool’s inching progress towards the table’s edge, or the way it dribbled onto her chrysanthemum-embroidered duvet cover. She curled, foetal fashion, with a pillow clutched to her cheek, too distressed to weep. Longing washed over her. And remembering.

CHAPTER 2

He throws himself onto the ground and subsides against a tree trunk, mute with misery. Sweating from his headlong pelt, he tugs open his shirt buttons to create a current of air against his torso. His pain is so intense she reaches out instinctively, chafing his inert hand. Helen searches for words of comfort – lies or truth, no matter so long as they soothe – but can find none. Every angular line of his body exudes desolation and it gashes her to witness it almost as much as it wounded her to watch the scene five minutes earlier between the boy and his rabid father.

Impulsively she slides onto her knees in front of him, the leaves crackling on impact, and takes his face between her hands. He’s no longer sprawling, disconsolate, but watching her now, mesmerised, as she edges ever closer, bridging the gap between their bodies. Helen’s unaware of what she’s about to do until it happens. Her pulse is erratic, her body curves forward of its own accord; her lips sink onto his and cling there for the space of a heartbeat. There’s a momentary hesitation, then she feels his lips move under hers, warm and moist.

Pinpricks of perspiration flare around the pulse-point map of Helen’s body. She’s tingling and the intensity of her reaction causes her to waver – she pulls back and looks at him, leaning on one hand to steady herself. An indefinable gleam in his expression touches her immeasurably. She subsides towards his mouth, even as he moves towards hers. Their lips collide, his chin rubs against hers and she experiences surprise at the grating of his stubble, then has no further conscious thought.

The two are subsumed by sentience, mouths softening into one another, captivated by the delirium of pleasure. Her hand cradling his head scrapes against the abrasive texture of the tree trunk but the pain does not register. She presses against him, winding her arms around his neck, and her body against his incites a change of mood for his mouth is no longer whispers; there’s urgency in his serrated breathing and in kisses that clash teeth against teeth.

She disengages and rests her face in the hollow of his shoulder. A smattering of hairs clump in the sternum hollow between the salmon-pink nipples and her own hair tickles him as she kisses her way along his chest until she arrives at the downy belly button. And stops. She’s paralysed by a mole an inch to the left of his navel which she recognises as the twin to one she has on her own body. He pulls her to him, attempting to reignite her fire with his, but it’s too late. Reality has doused her and she’s dripping from it. She pushes him away and runs as though flight alone can promise expiation.

‘It didn’t happen,’ she moans, grinding to a halt. But the sensations whirling through her body are a contradiction.

‘Ready to come out and play?’

It was Molly on the doorstep, encased in a calf-length black Afghan coat, collar pulled high against the wind.

‘You look like Snow White in that collar,’ said Helen. ‘I thought we were meeting in the Life Bar. Anyway, we’re not supposed to be there for another forty-five minutes.’

‘I used to be Snow White but then I drifted.’ Molly’s hip-jutting Mae West impersonation backed Helen directly into the living room of her house – the hallway was knocked down to maximise space – and she kicked the door shut behind her with ankle-strapped heels so spindly Helen was amazed she could stand upright, let alone manoeuvre in them.

‘I can tell from those shoes you’re aiming for slut appeal tonight,’ remarked Helen. Only half-critically.

She was still in her bathrobe, although she’d invented a face and drawn it on and her dark Cleopatra bob was blow-dried into symmetrical perfection. Throwing on clothes was always the shortest component in the exercise, providing the brain-squeezing decision about what to wear had been reached. She’d solved that conundrum lying in the bath in her seaweed solution, bought on a weekend trip to Enniscrone when she’d luxuriated in the seaweed baths that had been a tourist attraction in the seaside town since Victorian times. It had taken a few minutes to overcome her repugnance when initially she’d seen the massive cast-iron bath really was packed with seaweed; somehow she’d imagined a sanitised version. But after a while she’d stopped noticing she was sharing the water with an excess of vegetation – and it had velvet-coated her skin like no other softening agent. Helen had balked, however, at obeying the notice which invited her to empty out her seaweed into the bucket provided. It was repugnant enough floating alongside slithery black-green vines, she couldn’t reconcile herself to handling them too. Skulking out, in case she were called back to clear away her detritus from the tub, she’d nevertheless paused to buy a jar of powdered seaweed because of the mermaid undulating across the front and because it promised to caress her skin.

‘That’s the only kind of stroking I can expect,’ she’d remarked, selecting the family-sized container.

But back to Molly, beaming as she produced a half-bottle of champagne from inside Afghan folds with the flourish of a magician conjuring up a dove. ‘The Lifer at eight was a serviceable plan A but it was elbowed aside by plan B. We can share a cab into town. In the meantime this will start us on the right foot, oh Helen of Athboy.’

‘You know I’m from Kilkenny not Meath,’ objected Helen, extracting champagne flutes from the narrow cherrywood sideboard in her living room. ‘Is it cold enough?’ Her tongue was already mentally capturing and splatting the bubbles and savouring their scratchy descent at the back of her throat.

‘Does my granny go to confession?’ responded Molly. ‘Wouldn’t hand over the cash until the Greek god in the off-licence immersed it in his four-and-a-half-minute cooler machine.’

‘And did he chat you up during the waiting game?’

‘Didn’t even remark on the weather.’ Molly’s face epitomised mournfulness. ‘His customer relations skills are non-existent.’

‘Maybe he had a rush on.’

‘One other person came in and bought a few cans of lager.’

‘So you stood there reading wine labels and being ignored for four and a half minutes? Poor Molly, this will wash those bitter dregs away.’ Helen reached her a frothing glass.

‘He didn’t even pretend to be stocktaking. He presented his flawless profile and stared out of the window. Impassive throughout. I might as well have been a nun buying communion wine instead of a gorgeous blonde teetering provocatively on skyscraper heels and handing over my credit card – so at least he’d know my name – for champagne.’

It looked as though Molly were fated to sin with the Greek only in her fevered imagination – ‘Thought crimes again this week, Father.’

Still, there was always alcohol. She rallied, clinking glasses with Helen. ‘Death in Ireland. But not just yet.’

It was her St Augustine toast. She’d acquired it during her two years working in London and still nursed a fondness for it. All the expats chanted it; some even meant it.

As she followed Helen upstairs, Molly sighed. It was just her luck to have a crush on the one Greek in the country who didn’t flirt, didn’t notice women and wouldn’t recognise he was being given the glad eye if he found it giftwrapped in his Christmas stocking. Call himself a Mediterranean – he must have Cidona pumping through his veins.

‘He probably wears a vest. All those fellows from hot countries do, for sweat containment,’ consoled Helen.

‘Checked again tonight: no telltale lines,’ said Molly. ‘Hercules’ body is a vest-free zone.’

She still didn’t know his name but she’d christened him Hercules because he was the strong, silent type. She was sure those capable hands of his could strangle serpents, no bother to them. But he was sturdy rather than large, her usual preference in men. Heck, here she was bending the rules for him and he still wasn’t interested. She had leaned against his counter in rock-chick shoes complete with peep toes on a January night cold enough for snow drifts and he hadn’t so much as looked let alone leered. It was disheartening. It was insulting. It was enough to make a woman throw away her high heels and buy desert boots. Where was the point in shimmying into a man’s shop in black shoes with red heels that added at least four inches to your leg length if he didn’t betray a flicker of lust? It was downright unnatural. But no one with a glass of champagne in her hand could be truly woebegone. Molly knocked it back.

‘Drink it while the bubbles are still smiling at you, Helen.’

She felt the familiar rush as it hit her blood stream at warp speed and added, ‘He’s probably too young for me anyway; he can’t be more than mid-twenties. Now, never mind my legendary Greek, make some room in your glass for the rest of the champagne and show me what you’re wearing. The image we’re aiming for is strumpet with a soupçon of class.’

Helen, who never left anything to chance, already had the clothes laid out on the bed. Molly eyed them disapprovingly.

‘Dear me no, these won’t do at all. These don’t spell “unattainable Jezebel”. There’s nothing that says look but you can’t afford to touch. Moleskin trousers, matching waistcoat and Chelsea boots are all very well if you’re going to the pub for a few drinks and want to be left in peace but that’s not what we’re after at all tonight. Our mission is to have the lads fretting into their pints because we’re so distracting.’

Helen stroked her charcoal-grey waistcoat. ‘And how does a “Come, woo me, woo me” T-shirt strike that quintessential note which puts us beyond their grasp?’

‘Abandoned that idea. I decided to shuffle the deck and bring on the ace – the little black number.’ Molly opened her coat to reveal a dress that chastely covered everything from neck to wrist to knee but clung for dear life to each square inch of flesh between, undulating over hips and breasts with a brazenness that drew the eye, pinioned it and ridiculed the concept of allowing it time off for good behaviour.

‘Janey Mac, I’d fancy you myself if I were a man,’ said Helen. ‘Are you sure the rabble are ready for that?’

‘Ready or not, here I come. Now let’s throw comfort to the wind and drape you in something equally alluring.’

‘I don’t have anything in that category,’ protested Helen, but Molly was already rummaging in her wardrobe.

She produced a gold slip-dress, discarded its modest surcoat and handed it to Helen.

‘You’re a demon in female form, Molly. I can’t wear a bra with that, which means my nipples will show through.’ She held her champagne flute before her like a talisman.

‘You’re flat-chested, it doesn’t matter. But your legs aren’t bad,’ Molly added kindly, ‘and that slit up the side will show one of them off, depending on –’ she swivelled the silk dress on the hanger – ‘which way around you wear it. I can’t tell the back from the front on this, Sharkey. Shouldn’t there be a label?’

‘I’m not. Wearing. A gold dress. To the pub.’ Helen drained her glass defiantly. ‘Since you’re determined to make a harlot of me, I’ll put this on.’ She produced a wispy dark blue dress. ‘I’ve had it by for an emergency. But there’s no need to break the glass,’ she added, as Molly flung herself on the bed, kicking over her empty flute.

‘A half-bottle wasn’t enough. I should have gone for the full monty,’ she ruminated, waiting for Helen to morph into a seductress. She brightened. ‘Perhaps I should nip back and buy another half, see if Hercules is pining without me.’

‘No time, the taxi’s due any minute. Pass me those suede slingbacks. I know you haven’t seen them before, they’re part of the emergency package too. God knows if I’ll be able to totter in them. I’m only going to places that have waiter service because I intend to do absolutely no walking in these. In the interests of avoiding a visit to casualty.’

Helen struck a catwalk pose. The dress floated flimsily as a cobweb across her slim body and plummeted at the back.

‘Talk about capitulation. You certainly know how to do slut when you put your mind to it,’ breathed Molly. ‘Even in a navy dress.’

‘It’s not navy, it’s midnight blue.’

The doorbell punctured their quibbling.

‘That’ll be the cab,’ said Helen. ‘Let’s go to a hotel bar instead of the Lifer. The champagne has given me a taste for more of the good life.’

‘We’ll start in The Clarence where we’ll trifle with the affections of U2 fans and tourists. Then we’ll check the immediate vicinity for any pop stars who might be loitering, waiting for their limousines to pick them up. Obviously we won’t waste time toying with them – rock gods can have anything they want from us. Afterwards we’ll plunge into the night and cause all-purpose mayhem on the streets of Dublin.’

‘Promise me this.’ Helen clung to the banister as she negotiated the stairs. ‘We’ll do it sitting down.’

Helen reeled back indoors in the early hours, giddy from laughter and wine. She dangled her shoes by the straps and plotted a route towards bed, dimly aware that every stitch she was wearing reeked of smoke but beyond caring. She was about to nosedive and only her mattress could cushion the landing.

She giggled before oblivion claimed her. A mental image of Molly on her way to the ladies in the restaurant distracted her from sleep: urbane, sophisticated and with a ladder as wide as the Liffey snaking up the back of her tights. Helen chased in after her with the replacement pair she always carried in her bag, a Good Samaritan’s deed that had Molly calling her the battery-powered Little Miss Ever Ready.

But Molly admitted she was glad of Helen’s taste in sheer denier when they returned to their table and found the couple next to them had bailed out, to be replaced by four South African rugby fans weekending in Dublin for a Lansdowne Road match. What a result – the craic ratio was about to skyrocket up the Richter scale, although the friends had derived a certain entertainment value from spying on the first-daters preceding the foursome. Their body language had been fascinating. They could tell from the girl’s this was going to be another case of sudden-death dating; the end was as visible as if the fellow had a dagger protruding from between his shoulder blades. It was pitiful watching the polite indifference with which she treated him. Molly was prepared to gamble a month’s salary there’d be no good-night kiss; that girl would be ducking for cover before the car’s handbrake was on. The Boers were a distinct improvement, she mouthed to Helen, just before turning towards them, radiating a glow of invitation so brazen even the Statue of Liberty couldn’t have held her torch any higher.

The friends’ return from the ladies precipitated copious eyeball slewing while the fellows tried to think of an opening gambit. Easier said than done in view of the regularity with which they’d been raising and lowering their elbows since late afternoon. Despite Molly’s signals, which spelled out ‘Ready when you are, boys. Form an orderly queue and I’ll attend to each of you in turn’, the visitors had a few false starts before they were up and running. The whole point about picking up men was the fellows had to imagine they were the hunters. So Molly and Helen ignored ‘Do you always wear so much perfume?’ and a burst of ‘Molly Malone’ when they heard her name. ‘Must try harder’ was the subliminal message. Finally they decided to put the lads out of their misery and asked if they could recommend any of the South African wines on the menu, offering them a shatter-proof excuse to buy a couple of bottles and push their tables together. Mingling hands and mingling glances, step one of the courtship dance.

Molly automatically chatted up a massive specimen – Hercules truly was an aberration on her usual type, best categorised as the larger the better. Obviously, she’d once rationalised, she was in the grip of some primeval instinct to select the biggest troglodyte in the tribe – what could she do? It was genetic programming.

One of the South Africans pressed dessert menus on the women and tried to cajole them into choosing the restaurant’s cheesecake speciality. Molly was willing – she prided herself on being available to temptation at all times of the day or night – but Helen frowned.

‘You mean voluntarily order a dessert? A high-calorific, sugar-drenched, artery-clogging pudding? Ask for it and then eat it? I think not.’ Her look was withering. ‘And attempting to induce someone else to do it is even more reprehensible. I call that corrupt. It’s the sort of behaviour that might be acceptable in the Transvaal but it simply won’t pass muster in Temple Bar.’

A study in primness, Helen signalled to the waiter and asked for a chocolate fudge ensemble that made the cheesecake seem positively spartan. Meanwhile, Molly, not fully convinced she was witnessing a wind-up, heaved a sigh of relief and added banoffi pie – ‘with ice cream as well as cream’ – to the order.

The men had Irish coffees with whiskey chasers in case there was too much coffee in the coffees. Molly and Helen exchanged pitying glances at their ignorance – by the dregs of the weekend these visitors would have more faith in Irish coffees. Then Molly became engrossed in experimenting whether Hercules’ place in her affections could be usurped by a Goliath of a South African with blond hair and – a million points deducted for this – a moustache that settled on his upper lip like a third eyebrow. She was inclined towards giving him a chance, when she became aware that the foot tapping against hers under the table didn’t belong to … what was his name anyway – Pieter? … but to Helen. Who seemed to be suggesting, make that insisting, they adjourn to the ladies.

‘How are we going to rid ourselves of the away team?’ hissed Helen, surrounded by mirrors and wash-hand basins.

‘I didn’t know we wanted shot of them.’

‘Eejit, of course we do. We don’t want to go clubbing with that crew playing albatross.’

Molly brightened. So Helen was up for a stint in clubland. Usually she ended their evenings out when the restaurant staff stacked chairs around them. Molly flicked one of her corkscrew curls and waited for an escape plan to inspire her. Nothing happened.

‘It’s a long shot, angel face, but there’s just one course of action open to us,’ she said eventually.

‘Name it.’

‘We tell them we’re tired and we’re going home.’

Helen considered. ‘They’ll suggest accompanying us,’ she pointed out. ‘Should we mention our boyfriends will be waiting up?’

‘Shame on you, Sharkey, depending on a man – or the shadowy outline of one – to spring the trap. So much for your feminist principles.’

Helen pulled a face. ‘Fair’s fair, we’ve been leading them on. Behaviour like that isn’t in the feminist handbook. And backless dresses don’t leave much room for principles. So here’s what we’ll do: you ring for a taxi on the mobile from in here and when it arrives we’ll have our handbags and coats at the ready, leap to our feet and exit in a flurry of “wonderful to meet you and enjoy your stay” civilities, blowing air kisses two yards west of their cheeks. Deal?’

‘Deal. And the taxi will convey us straight to a club, not back to Sandycove via Blackrock.’

‘Certainly. You can choose whichever club you like, as long as it’s not too noisy, too dark, too funky, too happening, too crowded or too hot.’

‘Wonder which club is most popular with Dublin’s Greek community,’ puzzled Molly.

‘Dublin doesn’t have a Greek community. Now I’ll wend my way back to the table while you set our fiendish plan in motion.’

The nightclub was predictably grim – ‘face it, Moll, we’re too ancient for clubbing’; ‘speak for yourself, Sharkey’ – but Helen enjoyed the sense of connection with the wider world that she experienced simply by being immersed in a communal mass of bodies. Sometimes she had the feeling she was too self-contained and an evening like this reminded her she wasn’t an island. An isthmus existed, even if it tended to flood over.

Molly was right, there was nothing like a night on the tear. But in the aftermath Helen was jaded, spent both financially and physically. Her head was pounding – she couldn’t consume alcohol at the rate Molly packed it away – and her system by the following lunchtime hankered for caffeine slightly more than it craved licence to lie on the sofa. Although both were imperatives. So Helen wandered out to the kitchen. As she pressed the button on the kettle, realisation slammed her with the jolt of a cattle prod. She hadn’t thought of him once since 6.10 the previous evening. That totted up to eighteen hours in succession. Could this mean she was cured? Maybe the attraction was something she’d magnified out of proportion. Impossible to resist checking the answerphone, however.

She approached the phone, lifted it and the automated voice said: ‘You have three new messages.’ When she played them there was only static on the line – none of the callers had left a name. Except Helen knew there was only one caller and his identity was no mystery to her. A worm of unquiet niggled as she spooned granules into a mug patterned with an inverted comma – all right, it was a Celtic spiral although she tended to shy away from ostentatiously Irish objects. She made an exception in this case because it amused her to have a symbol representing infinity on an object with a lifespan as limited as a mug.

The phone rang: once, twice, three, four times. On the fifth peal she answered it.

‘Helen, I’ve caught you in at last. Where were you last night? Never mind, you can tell me when we meet. I’m in Dublin, staying at the Fitzwilliam and I’m coming to see you. We need to talk. You must give me your answer. I’ll order a taxi and be with you in half an hour or less.’

‘No, wait. I’ll meet you somewhere.’

‘Where?’ The man’s accent was similar to hers, but with an English intonation overlaying the Kilkenny pronunciation.

‘I’ll collect you from your hotel; we can find a park to walk in.’

‘See you in half an hour then. I’ll be waiting in the foyer.’

‘Patrick, I’m not even dressed yet. Make it an hour.’

Why oh why had she agreed? Why oh why had she stayed out so late last night? The hollows under her eyes would be sagging to her jawline. Why oh why hadn’t she sprung up and taken a shower as she intended, instead of diving below the duvet for an extra snooze? Why oh why was she thinking in cliché-ridden why-oh-whys? But a final one – why oh why was she developing a spot slap-bang between her eyebrows? Still, she could take care of that in seconds; concealer was up there with the polio vaccination in terms of service to humankind as far as Helen was concerned.

She washed and dressed at warp speed, cramming herself into last night’s moleskin rejects and adding a heavy woollen coat and velvet scarf. Her car keys went AWOL and she spent a frantic ten minutes turning her bag upside down and combing the pockets of all her jackets, until she found them in their usual place in the letter rack.

‘Catch a grip, Sharkey,’ she instructed the pallid face in the hall mirror. ‘It’s daylight, he’s not going to pounce. And, above all, remember you have willpower. Use it.’