But the glove impeded her efforts at composure. Tears sprang in her eyes as she channelled her frustration at her and Patrick’s self-imposed separation towards the glove. In a passion, she hurled it to the ground – an insignificant movement charged with import. The butterfly’s wings that flapped up a hurricane. For he bent to pick it up and as he reached the leather to her, their eyes connected; it was as if her misery flowed and melded with his and he could not bear to acknowledge their imperative to separate. Patrick stretched his hand out and guided her head onto his shoulder and she nestled against it. They sat without speaking or moving, his hand splayed around her skull … there was such comfort in his touch.
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.