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.’
But as she jammed the gearstick into reverse instead of first she had a premonition it would take more than self-control to bring her home unscathed from this encounter. For he had a knack of dissolving any resolve she managed to muster.
Patrick was standing on the steps of the Fitzwilliam Hotel scanning the traffic.
‘You’re late but I forgive you.’ He jumped into the front passenger seat and skim-kissed her cheek.
She flinched, then tried to mask it by flicking her hair behind her ears.
‘Will I find a parking space so we can go into the Green?’ She gestured across the road towards St Stephen’s Green, the city’s oxygen lung.
‘If you like. Or somewhere more private might be appropriate.’ He took stock of her profile as she searched for a gap in the stream of cars sailing around the park
‘Merrion then,’ she agreed, and headed back the way she’d come.
He started speaking as soon as she’d parked her Golf. As she locked the car, still bending over it, words poured from him in a rehearsed cascade.
Helen touched his elbow. ‘Wait until we’re sitting down.’
But they didn’t gravitate towards a bench; instead they paced the park’s outer perimeter, past the gaudily painted statue of Oscar Wilde facing his home, looking as louche as any devotee of his work could hope for; past flowerbeds waiting for spring to resuscitate them; past the canvas backs of paintings attached to railings, artwork which tourists examined and sometimes bought. But only if it were sentimental or scenic and preferably both.
They returned to Wild Oscar’s statue – another of Molly’s nicknames – and paused to read some of his epigrams.
‘I love his children’s stories although I didn’t discover them until childhood was a dim and distant memory,’ said Helen. ‘Especially “The Happy Prince”; I wept for days about the dead swallow.’
‘How can a story called “The Happy Prince” leave readers sobbing? It’s irrational,’ Patrick objected.
‘You’ve obviously never read it.’
‘I’m more of a P. D. James man myself. That’s when I find the time to read at all. It takes me weeks to plough through a paperback.’ Patrick bent for a closer look at one of Wilde’s witticisms on the plinth, immune to Helen’s scandalised glance. ‘How about this one, “We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars.”’
‘I keep hunting for my favourite one – his spin on the love–hate relationship between parents and children.’ Helen followed the plinth around its four sides but couldn’t locate it. ‘I can never remember the exact wording but it’s to do with children beginning by loving their parents, then judging them and rarely, if ever, forgiving them.’
Patrick zipped his flying jacket against the chill. ‘Obviously too depressing for the tourists, that gem. Safer to stick with the ones that lend themselves to posters and T-shirts’ He laid an arm casually across her shoulder; she sidestepped just as casually to widen the gap between them, and it dropped away.
Two Americans nearby were studying Oscar’s statue.
‘He made perfume, right?’ The woman’s voice was so penetrating it was impossible to ignore.
‘No, honey, he was a writer.’ Her male companion corrected her to Patrick’s and Helen’s relief. Otherwise they’d have felt obliged to set her right. National honour demanded it.
‘One of his books was turned into a movie,’ continued the knowledgeable American. ‘It was called A Picture of Dorian Black.’
Patrick and Helen cringed in unison and turned their steps towards the centre of the park where there were no statues to attract sightseers. As they walked – it was too wintry for strolling – they spoke of his life in London, hers in Dublin, their shared experience growing up in Kilkenny, of jobs and homes and even the lighthouse tattoo he aspired to as a boy. It emerged that he’d actually visited a tattoo parlour, clutching the readies, during his first summer in England but reconsidered when he encountered the needles. Helen laughed aloud while he described his flight, still clinging to the patterns book, and again he spontaneously rested an arm on her shoulder. This time she allowed it to stay.
By and by she sighed. ‘We should talk.’
‘I thought that’s what we were doing.’
‘Chewing gum chatter.’
They ensconsed themselves side by side on a park bench, isolated against the grumble of traffic a few yards away, not touching but acutely aware of each other, and he asked her to tell him what to do. She told him. He asked her again. Her answer didn’t vary. Then he nodded in acknowledgement of her prudence and said he’d return to his hotel now. He was staying overnight, catching the Monday morning red-eye flight back to London.
Helen knew she should feel as though the iron bars encircling her chest had been yanked off; instead it was as if their diameter contracted and they tightened, a tourniquet on her diaphragm. But she realised it was impossible even to contemplate love with this man.
And so she prepared to walk away. Until a minuscule movement changed everything.
Patrick was waiting for Helen as she tugged at a glove lying in her lap, attempting to pull it back on, but her fingers couldn’t find the openings. Her head bent forward, her hair shielding her face, a flimsy carapace against this world breeding bleakness now they were on the brink of taking their leave of one another. She struggled against a sense of loss, an emotion as bewildering as it was overwhelming, for how can you mourn the absence of something you’ve never had?
And