Down Among the Gods (27 page)

Jessie finds that she has a sheaf of notes in her hand. In the circumstances it is obscene, and she stands looking at it in helpless confusion.

A match. A match. Patrick hears me, blast him, but he never listens.

The matches are sitting there beside the fire. Jessie would have let him do it, too, the way she’s feeling. They could have stood together and watched those fivers and tenners go up in flames, a little joint sacrifice, a chance to break out of the roles they’ve been cast in. They might even have laughed.

But Patrick doesn’t look. He doesn’t see. Instead he goes through into the kitchen and gets the mackerel out of the fridge. As soon as he is gone, Jessie drops the notes into the drawer and closes it. The
status quo
is resumed.

Dinner is a civilised affair, with as much small talk as the two of them can muster. The bottle of wine has settled Patrick’s nerves but Jessie is drifting in a state of vulnerability, unsure where to turn. She senses that she has dealt badly with the crisis, that it was an opportunity for some change to be made and that it has passed by without her taking advantage of it. Out in the kitchen as they are finishing the washing up, she says: ‘If you fancy a pint, I wouldn’t mind coming down with you.’

‘Yes, you would,’ says Patrick. ‘But thanks all the same.’

He goes out to the yard to shut the hen-house door and Jessie fetches a book and sits beside the fire. When Patrick comes back he refills his wine glass in the kitchen and comes in to join her. She puts down her book, hoping for communication, but he stands looking into the flames.

Jessie watches his face. Everything is so fragile. There can be no more arguments. This is either the end or the beginning.

‘Do you remember,’ he says, ‘the time when we first slept together? When you came into the room in your dressing-gown?’

Jessie is not confident enough to laugh. This could as easily be a launch into a new attack as a fond memory. ‘Yes,’ she says.

‘God, it was great.’ Patrick turns slightly and looks at her. ‘You don’t feel like taking a bath now, I suppose?’

Aphrodite halts in her exodus and flings herself back into the fray.

Now Jessie laughs. It is the beginning. She stands up and kisses Patrick gently, seductively, on the lips. ‘I’d love to,’ she says. ‘A bath is just what I’d like.’

As she goes up the stairs I try to foil her and she trips on an overhanging stair board and almost falls on her face. Downstairs, Patrick grins to himself. ‘Hey,’ he calls. ‘Don’t fall at the first fence. Take your time.’

‘It’s that bloody floorboard again,’ she calls back. But she is embarrassed, and remembers her dignity.

But it seems that everything I do just now is playing straight into the hands of Dionysus.

Because Jessie, remembering her dignity, takes her time in the bath. And that gives Patrick plenty of time for what he is doing in the bedroom.

Or Dionysus. Because Patrick hardly knows what he is doing, or why he is doing it. He himself has been charmed, as Pentheus was charmed before him.

Jessie gets out of the bath and slips into her dressing-gown. She takes off the bath cap and goes into the bedroom to brush her hair. But Patrick is not there. She carries on brushing her hair until she can brush it no longer but still he doesn’t come. She puts on a little make-up, just a touch, and goes to the locker to get her diaphragm. It isn’t there. She hunts underneath the bed then sits on it for a while, racking her brains.

There is still no sound from Patrick. Puzzled, Jessie goes downstairs into the old kitchen. The light is off and the curtains are drawn against the night. Patrick is standing in front of the fire as he was when she left him earlier, gazing down into the flames. But he has changed into the white shirt with the puffed sleeves that he once refused to wear.

‘Don’t switch the light on,’ he says. ‘The firelight is lovely.’

Jessie feels that she ought to be pleased that he is wearing the shirt, but she isn’t. It is her shirt now, and seeing him in it makes her a little uneasy. ‘Have you seen my diaphragm anywhere?’ she says.

He points to the box and the tube up on the mantelpiece beside his wine glass. Jessie breathes a sigh of relief and lays a gentle hand on his arm. The fabric is soft beneath her fingers. Patrick turns to her and she looks up into his face.

It takes her a moment to realise what he has done. His eyes, normally dark, are darkened again by eye-liner. Jessie stares at him, her mouth open.

‘What’s wrong?’ he says. ‘This is what you wanted, isn’t it?’

Now it is Jessie who is caught in the Zen master’s wobble, torn between mortal fear and the desires of the gods. The effect of what Patrick has done is more powerful than he could have imagined. Jessie knows now where the images that haunted her came from. The Hindu gods, male and female alike, have eyes like that. It gives them, as it gives Patrick, a treacherous sort of beauty.

He slips his hand beneath her hair and kisses her lightly on the lips, as she kissed him so recently. But now it is he who is seductive and she is being drawn into something she has never experienced before. She has no impulse to hold him. What stands before her now is not her property.

He lowers his hands to her waist, unties the cord of the dressing-gown and draws it out of its loops. Her eyes remain fixed on his face but he doesn’t look at her. Instead he watches the gown as he slides it from her body and drops it to the floor. Jessie reaches out for his waist but he stops her arms, runs his hands along them up to her shoulders then down again, pushing them gently behind her back. He is still holding the cord.

‘Don’t, Patrick.’

He has moved closer to her now, his body against hers as he winds the cord around her wrists and ties it. The smooth fabric of the shirt smells of herself, smells of nothing. He lifts her face, looks down with those kohl-rimmed eyes. ‘You’re not afraid, are you? You like games, don’t you?’

She does. Her resistance is nominal, produced by an irritant nagging in the back of her mind. It is not a resistance against him, but against the desire which has taken hold of her body and deprived her of her own will.

What is happening here is between Aphrodite and Dionysus.

He moves her backwards and presses her down on to the edge of the armchair. She yields; yields further as he pushes her shoulders down against the backrest. As he stands above her and opens his fly, the small voice is twittering, calling out for the diaphragm, but it has no place in this room.

He steps towards her and leans forward. The arms of the chair creak in submission beneath his weight. As he takes the use of her body, the power in his eyes is like that of the moon. Distant. Indifferent. Ancient.

So Aphrodite yielded, yields, will yield for ever to the charm of Dionysus.

M
ESSENGER OF THE GODS
, guide of souls, guardian of travellers, tricksters and thieves. Some of my titles, not all. I am Hermes Trismegistus, he who the Egyptians called Thoth, god of all scholars and scribes. It was I who invented the alphabet, taught mortals the uses of language, sign and symbol. When The Church tried to banish me I was rescued by the alchemists, who called me Mercurius and remembered that I was, am, and always will be, patron of all the arts.

Afterwards, Jessie cannot look at him. She goes to the spare room and lies on the unmade bed waiting for sleep, but sleep is a long, long way off. What has happened repeats itself again and again in her mind. It makes no sense in relation to the Patrick that she knew during the summer, but it makes perfect sense in terms of what he has become, and of that lurking darkness which she has become aware of lately.

The stream is closer to this room than to their bedroom, almost outside the window, and from time to time the sound of it seems to grow to a roar and drag her out of her thoughts. Each time it happens it is a small relief. Her mind is following spiralling tracks, going nowhere purposeful. She can see no solutions, no return from this.

The sound of footsteps on the stairs sends a shock of fear through her bones and she lies with her eyes wide open to the darkness, holding her breath. With one half of her heart she fears him and dreads the sound of the door handle turning. With the other half she longs for him to come in; to apologise and explain what happened and tell her that it’s all going to be OK.

The steps pass by. She hears him go into the bathroom and piss, then he comes out and goes on into her room. Surely now he will come, to find out where she is, to talk, to look for comfort and to give it. He does not. There is no clock in the room but the stream tumbles on and Jessie knows that time passes and continues to pass. Still he doesn’t come. Jessie’s fear and hurt begin to turn to anger. If he can treat her like that and feel no remorse, then things have gone too far. For the last few months she has been living in fear, and it can’t go on.

She lies still and listens carefully to the house. There is no sound of movement. Carefully, quietly, she gets out of bed. The dressing-gown has become distasteful to her, but she has nothing else to wear so she puts it on and opens the door of the room. Still there is no sound. The landing light is on and so is the hall light below, but she is sure that Patrick is in bed. As quietly as she can she creeps downstairs and into her study, where she brings the Tarot cards out of a long concealment at the back of the filing cabinet.

It’s cold. In the old kitchen the fire is still burning. On the mantelpiece above it is an open cigarette packet, and two empty wine bottles are standing on the brick hob. Jessie picks them up and brings them through into the kitchen where she puts on the kettle. Then she throws a few sticks on the fire and sits down with the cards. She shuffles without ceremony and deals.

This time, she gets what she wants. A set of five delightful cards, her favourites, all with wonderful associations. The Star is there, representing inspiration, and the three of wands, the boundless spring of creative energy. The Papess turns up, head declined in contemplation of her feminine wisdom, and the Queen of Cups, emotionally replete. And in the middle of it all, holding the ebb and flow of the universe between his outspread hands, is the Magician. The air around his head is full of mysterious symbols. His eyes are dark and capricious. Jessie loves him, always has, but here? Among yet another set of her ruins?

She shakes her head, looks over the cards again, can find nothing in which to believe. It is almost as though they are mocking her. A kind of convulsion begins in her abdomen which might be laughter and might be howls of rage and grief. She stops it before she finds out, and with a sudden deft certainty gathers up the cards and drops them on to the fire, where they produce quick flame, as colourful as themselves. She watches them for a while, without regret. She doesn’t need cards any more. She knows what she has to do.

Patrick doesn’t move as she comes into the bedroom. He is still dressed, half under the covers, and snoring deeply. Jessie changes out of the dressing-gown and into jeans and a sweatshirt before she leans across the bed and shakes him.

He wakes with a start. ‘What? What?’

‘We have to talk.’

Patrick looks up through bleary eyes. The eye-liner is still there, hardly smudged, but the only effect it has on Jessie now is to make her feel slightly saddened, slightly disgusted.

‘Wake up,’ she says, ‘come on.’

Patrick lifts his head and then drops it again, falling back to sleep. He smells strongly of stale alcohol and tobacco and fills Jessie with repugnance. Now that she has made her decision it seems obvious what the problem is, and she is amazed that she has taken so long to realise it.

‘Patrick!’ She shakes him again.

‘What!’

‘I want to talk to you. Will you wake up?’

‘There’s nothing to talk about. Will you just leave me alone?’

‘No, I won’t. But you’re going to have to leave me alone.’

‘I don’t have to do anything.’

‘You do. You have to leave, Patrick. I can’t take things the way they are.’

‘Right.’

Jessie looks down at him. His eyes are closed again. Her heart feels hollow as she says, ‘Is that it, then?’

But there is no answer and she doesn’t know whether or not he is awake.

‘Patrick?’

He pulls the covers up over his head. Jessie goes back to the spare room.

In the morning she is woken by the sounds of Patrick moving around the house. Her first thought is that he is making tea. He will bring her some in bed. She dozes off again.

And dreams of the hideous child with the pruning shears and the enormous genitals. He is in her arms, and over her shoulder someone is saying, ‘And his name shall be called ...’

The front door closes. Jessie opens her eyes and discovers that she is in the spare room. Maybe Lydia is staying, or Gregory, otherwise why ...

‘Priapus!’ I yell at her. ‘Priapus! Aphrodite’s son by Dionysus!’

It all comes back, in stark horror. Jessie sits up, her dream forgotten. She is still in the clothes she put on last night. She remembers the burning cards.

The sun is streaming in through the window. One of the shed doors in the yard is opening. Patrick must be feeding the hens. Jessie gets up and goes into the bedroom for clean clothes. There are inky tearstains on the pillowcase, still wet. As Jessie looks at them, she hears the bike being kicked into life and purring away down the track.

She stares at the square white dazzle of the window. She didn’t really believe that it would end like this, despite her resolutions of the night before. He can’t really be gone.

He is, though. I could have worked wonders with Patrick. I could have taught him, with time, how to capture that elusive iridescence and know when to use it in his work. I could have shown him how to paint the magical light that I sent that day, and the shifting moods of the mountains. I could even have taught him how to portray the nature of the gods without giving them the faces they don’t have. He is one of the few who could have listened.

I can move in two directions at once, no problem. I can move in a million directions at once if I want to, but there’s no point in following Patrick. He is utterly deaf to me now.