Martina Devlin - Be Careful What You Wish For

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.