tell me that I could have had a more straightforward reminder by lifting the telephone, you’re absolutely right. But straightforward didn’t appeal to me. Why be guileless when you can be circuitous?’
Helen chuckled but when the merriment died away she was equivocal about how to respond. Her head was telling her to tread carefully; her heart was waltzing. Finally, because she could not hold the words back, she murmured, ‘Your face gladdens me, Patrick.’
They sat looking at one another for a few moments, both flooded with emotion. Then a gust of wind that sent a tree branch scratching against the patio doors fragmented the spell. She roused herself and bent to sniff the snowdrops.
‘They’re sublime. Did you have trouble finding them?’
‘None at all. I knew exactly where to go. I prowled around the park with my trowel and as soon as the light dimmed I was in like Flynn.’
‘You didn’t!’
‘I didn’t. The concierge at the hotel recommended a couple of flower shops. None of them had any snowdrops in pots for sale but I persuaded one enterprising member of staff to rustle up something for me. I can be very persuasive when I put my mind to it, Helen. In fact –’ he leaned conspiratorially towards her – ‘I’m a bit of an operator.’
‘Don’t I know it.’ She lowered her nose to the miniature blooms again, floating above the foliage like froth on the sea. ‘I’ve never seen anything so flawless in my life.’
‘I have,’ said Patrick.
The silence between them was charged with a thousand volts of electricity.
Finally he said: ‘We have to talk.’
‘That’s what we did last time and look how we ended up. Canoodling on a park bench like a couple of youngsters, without even the sense to wait until the weather was fine.’
‘True, but forewarned is forearmed. I’m prepared for the gravitational pull I feel when you’re in my vicinity. I’m wearing my Superman vest under my shirt. So your wiles are useless against me unless you’ve Kryptonite secreted about the house.’
‘I had a springclean and threw it all out,’ she said. ‘You’ve no idea what a dust collector that Kryptonite is. Will we do the talking now or would you like some coffee first?’
‘Better make it now,’ said Patrick. ‘We have to knock this on the head as quickly as possible. We’re in limbo at the minute.’
The day which had started so bleakly, with Helen spooning coffee granules into a mug and wondering how she was going to decimate time on her own, seemed rainbow-hued. Even if what they had to discuss was tinged with sepia.
‘Limbo,’ she reflected. ‘I suppose that’s about the height of it. Although technically it’s been wiped from the theological map.’
‘Since when?’ asked Patrick.
‘Years ago, the Church quietly dropped it. Limbo was never doctrine anyway, although that wasn’t much consolation to all those generations of bereaved parents who were told their unbaptised babies would never go to heaven.’
‘Helen,’ said Patrick, with the determination of a man resolved to return the conversation to relevant matters, ‘I’m in love with you. I don’t want to marry Miriam – attractive, groomed, suitable, organised Miriam waiting for me in Camden Town. Waiting for me to set a wedding date with the same graceful patience she waited for me to propose. It took months to do it. I could trace the outline of her disappointment like you’d skim your hands around the contours of a bowl when another day passed and I couldn’t eject the words. But ultimately I did it. I should never have asked her to be my wife. I thought it would exorcise my feelings for you, Helen, except it didn’t. I can’t ignore how moved I am by you, however inconvenient that might be. If I could press a button and eradicate it I would, believe me, but that’s not an option.’
Dejection oozed from him and Helen had to suppress her instinct to reach out and stroke his hair. Instead she contented herself with watching the way it waved as it grew back from his forehead and in imagining herself running her fingertips along the sharply delineated outline of his widow’s peak.
Patrick scattered her meandering thoughts with his next words, dropped pebbles into a still pool spreading ripples with each sentence.
‘I know I can’t marry you, Helen, but I would like us to be together – somewhere people don’t know us and can’t be judgemental. Which rules out Ireland. But the world is a vast place. We could find a corner and claim it as our own.’
Her head reeled. He was articulating desires she’d suppressed for years – urges she thought were buried so deep they’d never surface. Wishes she could scarcely bring herself to formulate. But a few minutes in his company and they were basking in the open, clamouring for recognition. She allowed herself to luxuriate in the possibility of a lifetime with Patrick, tantalising her imagination as she rolled the scenario around in her mind’s eye, then reality intervened and she clashed down the blinds.
‘Is the world immense enough?’ she asked. ‘Truth will out whether you’re in Ballydoyle or Borneo.’
He stroked the faint blue veins threading her wrist. ‘I believe there’s a crevice we could slide into, Helen.’
She reared back from the duplicity conveyed by his words. From the reptilian slant cast on their future behaviour if she decided they had a hereafter together. But the whispering touch continued against her inner wrist and its hypnotic repetition soothed her. She closed her eyes, excluding everything but the sensation. Until Miriam intruded.
‘What about the woman you’ve promised to marry?’
Patrick’s pupils expanded, black obscuring grey-green. ‘I’ll break it off. I’d never have become involved with her if I weren’t homesick and lonely in England. Work kept me occupied most of the time but there was a chafing, inside and out, that begged for salve, and Miriam offered it. She appeared when I was at my lowest ebb and made it apparent she wanted to be with me on any terms I chose. At the time that was enough for me.’ Patrick shrugged and reached for Helen but she moved and his hand fell in the gap between cushions. It flapped, a stranded fish dangling from his shirt sleeve. ‘Before I knew where I was we were living together and she was making plans that involved the two of us. I went along with them, more from inertia than anything else. I hadn’t the heart to scupper her dreams. Until now.’
He looked appealingly at Helen but she didn’t respond because she could find no words within her. Patrick took up his story again.
‘The last time we were together, three years ago –’ he raised his voice to be heard above a flurry of agitated protest from Helen – ‘I know that’s the time you keep insisting we’re never to talk about but I can’t block out what happened between us, even if you can. It was a validation. But afterwards you were so insistent we must part for ever that I couldn’t allow myself to hope there’d be a reprieve. You convinced me the feelings we had for each other would eventually subside, so I waited for that. And waited. Life without you was an amputation …’ Patrick’s voice trailed off as he struggled with reconvened misery. ‘Then Miriam materialised and distracted me from the pain. She didn’t seem to mind that I was only there in silhouette for her.’
Helen shifted position so she was looking ahead, scrutinising her china cabinet as though it had materialised overnight in
