Down Among the Gods (29 page)

There is no point in going through it all again. She is too tired. Back in the spare room, she goes over to close the curtains and looks down for a moment at the garden. The sundial is hidden by darkness, but closer to hand there is another reminder of the early days of her relationship with Patrick. Beside the window a drainpipe runs down from the guttering above her head, and something has snagged on one of its joints, brought there by the wind or dropped by a nesting bird. It is tangled now, and jaded by the weather, but there is no doubt that it is the same little circlet of her hair that appeared like an omen that autumn day, more than a year ago.

It is too much. Jessie wavers and clutches at Aphrodite’s robes in desperation. But Aphrodite has had enough. She shakes Jessie to the core, determined to teach her the results of her foolish vanity. Jessie clings even harder. The goddess turns, reveals herself at last.

‘At least there is Gregory,’ Jessie thinks.

And lets go.

I
AM HERMES, MESSENGER
of the gods. Without me, none of the residents of the immortal world can carry on their business. I have credit with just about everyone, and that includes the Muses.

One of them is ready now, whispering, waiting to be heard.

What Jessie has perceived is the soul of an immortal revealed for what it is: an infinite, insatiable vacuum. The desires of the gods are without limit and humans who row in with them may never discover that contentment comes only to those who cease to search for it.

Jessie is falling, tumbling helplessly towards the abyss which lies between human expectation and the will of the gods. She is terrified, utterly lost, aware only of a darkness which gapes like a black hole among the stars.

Jessie is falling, and this is the moment I have been waiting for. As she drops she catches a glimpse of my golden staff, and as I hover before her she reaches out and gets a grip on the strap of my winged sandal.

Now, at last, she is mine. I had hoped, so badly, to have both of them. But Patrick is lost to me, a bacchant on campaign with his master. He has his black hat with him. The only beacon I have for him now is the sundial, but I won’t use it. I don’t want him coming back here, unsettling Jessie in her work. Dionysus can keep him.

Gregory thinks that Jessie is having a breakdown. If she talks to him at all, it is about demons, dragons, mythical creatures, spirits. Sometimes he hears her pacing through the house in the small hours of the morning, talking to herself.

Or to me.

When Lydia calls after dinner one evening, Jessie is asleep in the spare room where Patrick’s dolphin man, newly framed, is hanging on the wall above the bed. Gregory wakes her gently.

‘Lydia’s here.’

‘Is she?’

‘You’d better get up and come down.’

‘Do I have to? I’m very tired.’

‘You ought to come down and see her.’

Jessie sits up and slides out of bed, then follows Gregory down the stairs to the kitchen.

Lydia is boiling the kettle. ‘Hello, Jessie,’ she says. ‘How are things?’

‘What things?’ says Jessie. Her hair hasn’t been brushed for a week and her clothes are crumpled from sleep. Lydia has never seen her neglect herself this way.

‘Oh, you know, things.’

Jessie takes a packet of crackers out of the cupboard and sits down at the table to eat them.

‘How’s publishing?’ says Gregory to Lydia.

‘OK. I’m looking for a good editor, though. Do you know of anyone?’

They both look at Jessie, who notices them after a while and says, ‘What?’

‘Why don’t you start into some work for me again? Take your mind off things.’

‘Off what things?’

‘Oh, you know ...’ says Lydia, lamely.

There is a pause while Jessie chews her way through another dry cracker, then she says, ‘It seems to me that the modern world is nothing but a massive industry to take people’s minds off things.’

Gregory is making coffee. ‘You could say the opposite,’ he says. ‘You could say the modern world is just creating millions more things to clutter up people’s minds.’

‘It amounts to the same thing,’ says Jessie. ‘It amounts to people not thinking about the real issues, you know? The problems of being human. People just surround themselves with toys and comfortable furniture and forget that the gods exist.’

‘The gods?’ says Lydia.

‘Yes. The gods.’

Lydia looks at Gregory over Jessie’s head. Gregory shrugs and hands round coffee. Jessie tips half hers into the sink and tops up the mug with milk and sugar.

‘What particular gods are you talking about?’ says Lydia.

‘Don’t worry,’ says Jessie. ‘You’ll be the first to know.’

It was a difficult decision to burn down the library in Camden, but worth it, even though Jessie has to go to Islington to get the books she needs for her research. She is beginning, at last, to get some ideas about what has happened to her. And she, like anyone else, will find the evidence she is looking for to support her theories. Because Jessie is not having a breakdown. She is working, and working hard. She is working for me.

She has been, in fact, for quite a while, but only part time; only as an apprentice. Now she has learnt to use the tools of her trade. If Frances Bailey never publishes another book after the mess she gets into with this last one, it is of no consequence. She has done her bit.

Now I have Jessie, and Jessie has me. I have guided her through the underworld, shown her the faces of the gods and their natures and brought her back up on to the surface of her life again. She is ready, at last, to listen to that Muse.

As she sits down with her pen in her hand, she is not at all sure whether what she is about to write is the result of madness or divine inspiration.

I have a story for you.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1997 by Kate Thompson

Cover design by Michel Vrana

978-1-4804-2417-3

This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

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