Martina Devlin - Three Wise Men

‘Is that the Michelle who always has a copy of Wuthering Heights in her bag?’

‘The same. She says Emily Brontë’s characters are so wretched they cheer her up – her own life seems blessed by comparison. Any time she feels depressed she takes out the novel and dips into Heathcliffe and Cathy’s gaping voids instead.’

As they leave the restaurant, Eimear sees a bus that passes by Trinity College. Impulsively she decides to skip work for the afternoon – she’ll ring in with an imaginary migraine – and boards the bus, deciding to surprise Jack. She’s spurred by the thought of Heathcliff and Cathy; there’s no need for her and Jack to behave like star-crossed lovers over one lapse.

Dodging the traffic, she crosses College Green and heads in through the front arch, past the inevitable knots of students and tourists congregated there. By the porter’s office she almost collides with Kate.

‘Eimear, what are you doing here?’

‘Snap.’

Kate shuffles her feet shiftily and Eimear notices she’s perched on high heels – self-conscious about her height, she usually wears loafers.

‘I wanted to buy some Book of Kells postcards in the shop – I thought I’d frame them and hang them in the hallway of the flat,’ says Kate finally.

‘In your monument to minimalism?’

Well might she look evasive.

‘Give us a look at them,’ prods Eimear.

‘Wait till they’re framed, you’ll see the full effect then,’ promises Kate. ‘You should stop by the shop and have a look at their Book of Kells computer mouse-pads – talk about the ninth century colliding with the twenty-first. I nearly bought one just for the heck of it. But then I thought better not – it’ll only encourage their suppliers. Next they’ll be flogging us video games with Vikings attacking monasteries and the scribes scrambling to find hidey-holes for their manuscripts.’

Eimear purses her lips. ‘Works for me. Do you fancy grabbing a coffee and we can plan the game out and try to patent the rights?’

‘No time, Mulligan, I’m late for a meeting.’ And Kate blows a kiss and bolts.

Eimear clatters across the cobblestones, towards the campanile under which Jack proposed to her one star-strewn night after a ball at the college. He looked like a matinee idol in his dinner suit and she hired a silver dress with a fishtail train that tripped her up when they danced. Jack told her she shimmered like a nereid in the moonlight and produced from his pocket a diamond solitaire that fitted her ring finger to perfection.

She’s suffused by a rush of joy as she passes their bell-tower and veers right towards the English department.

On the ramp outside the door, where the students throng for cigarettes between lectures, she spies Jack’s distinctive tall frame. He doesn’t see her – he’s short-sighted but too vain to wear glasses. Eimear is about to call his name when she notices he’s deep in conversation with a petite dark girl of maybe twenty with a nose stud. She’s wearing an ankle-length Indian dress and the mirrors sewn into the lavender cloth sparkle in the sunshine. Books are clutched against her chest and she’s so dainty she has to bend her head back at an awkward angle to gaze into his face.

Eimear watches them. She could simply be one of his students and yet there’s an intimacy in their stance, as bodies surge around them, that disquietens her. Jack lifts one of her arms away from the books, pushes up the loose sleeve and checks her watch. Eimear’s stomach somersaults: it’s a meaningless gesture and yet eloquent. He holds on to the wrist, stroking it gently, smiling down at the chest-high dark head.

Eimear wheels around and tramps away, past the campanile, past the porter’s office, past the bus stop. Walking, walking, walking.

Jack’s lying so still, Kate panics and lowers her cheek to his mouth for reassurance. False alarm: his breath rustles against her skin. He’s sprawled diagonally across the bed, one arm outstretched, hair plastered into tufts, enveloped in the sleep of the unjust. He always naps in the aftermath of their lovemaking; sometimes his eyelids droop with indecent haste immediately after he’s quivered, gasped and rolled over on to his side, sweat-coated body slithering from her grasp. Kate doesn’t object to his withdrawal, although she misses the reassurance of contact, because it offers a chance to study him.

She never tires of admiring her lover, although he doesn’t look his best unconscious. His face needs its eyes open, brown eyes gleaming roguishly or swimming with invitation or pleading like a small boy’s. As if aware of her scrutiny, he turns his face towards the pillows and burrows in.

She transfers her gaze to the bedroom of her flat, blinds drawn against the afternoon sun, a trail of jackets, shirts and socks leading from door to bed. Pearse is in Limerick on business today and won’t be back until the last train – she must clear up their lovemaking debris before then. Kate’s attention is caught by Jack’s striped boxer shorts dangling from the lower bedpost; she fantasises about washing them and storing them in a drawer with her own underwear but regretfully abandons the idea. She can’t send him home knickerless to Eimear.

‘Baby girl.’

One brown eye is glinting. Jack’s awake. He shields the other eye against a dust mote-peppered ray of sunshine that’s sneaked through the curtains, the gesture lending him a raffish air. She ruffles his hair, quoting: ‘One-eyed Jack the pirate chief/was a terrible fearsome ocean thief/he wore a hook and a dirty look …’

Jack interrupts before she can finish the verse, learned for the town feis at eight and all but forgotten until now.

‘Hey, I’m the poet around here, remember.’

He wags his finger, then pulls her close for a kiss. He’s less than keen on ditties – poetry should be treated reverently, not dashed off in a fit of merriment.

‘Got to run, baby girl.’

Jack is already hunting for his boxers, while Kate is still in post-kissing swoon.

When he first called her baby girl, she cringed – wouldn’t you think a poet could come up with something more original. Dean Swift invented a new name, Vanessa, for his lady-love. But baby girl’s grown on her now.

Jack is talking as he steps into his trousers.

‘Have to shoot back to Trinity for a meeting and I promised Eimear I’d be home early, she needs a hand with something or other.’

‘A dinner party?’

‘That’s it, a dinner party. Did she mention it to you?’

‘She invited me – Pearse too, obviously – but I declined.’

‘Why don’t you come, baby girl?’ Jack breaks off from buttoning his shirt. His voice dips huskily: ‘We could play footsie under the table, I could give you a quick grope on the pretext of leaning over to refill your glass, we could volunteer for washing-up duty and go a-courting in the kitchen.’

‘No Jack, it’s bad enough we’re doing this to Eimear in hotels, borrowed apartments and offices the length and breadth of Ireland without taking it right into her home,’ protests Kate.

‘You’ve developed a conscience all of a sudden.’ He tucks his shirt into his trousers with impatient movements.

‘Not all of a sudden. I’ve always had a conscience about what we’re doing. You help me ignore it most of the time.’

‘Come here and let me help you forget again,’ he coaxes, arms wide open, and before she know it she’s flat on her back with Jack on top and Eimear shoved to the dimmest recess of her mind.

Eimear. Kate considers her friend as she stares at the ravages that lovemaking has wreaked on her face. Obviously there’s the glow in her eyes that magazines always talk about when they write those ‘Sex – The Fun Alternative to Exercise’ articles but her skin is raw from Jack’s lunchtime stubble and a spot is threatening to erupt on her nose.