Down Among the Gods (18 page)

It wasn’t that Gregory had any particular interest in climbing mountains, but he wanted time with Jessie to discuss the recent events in his life, and there was never enough time to do it during Patrick’s brief absences from the house. So they walked and climbed together, and Jessie led the way while Gregory talked, so engrossed in his problems that he barely noticed the beauty of the surroundings. He was envious of Jessie’s blissful set-up. He had been having problems with James, which began when some strange character moved into the basement flat of Corrie’s house and started getting aggressive about the boys playing music at irregular hours. They ignored him, partly because they were there first and partly because it is their automatic reaction to any form of irritant. But one day the man accosted James as he left the house and, after plastering him with abuse, broke down and wept, saying that the flat was the only home he had and that the boys were making fun of him and trying to drive him insane.

James wasn’t sure that they needed to. He became worried for Corrie’s safety and made an all-out attempt to get him to move out of King’s Cross and in with him. But Corrie made light of James’s fears, and although he never actually refused, it became clear at last that he had no intention of changing his address or his lifestyle.

James had been torn away from his previous social circle by his passion for Corrie. He was welcomed back, but something else had changed. James had had enough of circles. He was ready to settle down. All this and more he told to Gregory over several evenings in Jessie’s house in Camden, and Gregory listened and comforted and realised after some time that his feelings for James were far stronger than he had admitted to himself. Deluded by Aphrodite, Gregory came to believe that James was spending so much time with him because he loved him, too. The fact that he talked almost incessantly about Corrie did not succeed in dispelling the illusion because he also talked about how much he wanted, for the first time in his life, a stable relationship. One night, rather drunk, Gregory suggested that James might like to move in with him. He has been rather drunk ever since.

After he had gone, Jessie persuaded Patrick to go up the fourth of the mountains with her, but it was the first and last that they climbed together. Because although he enjoys walking as well, and loves the increased sense of fitness that the hills have brought, Patrick prefers to walk with a purpose. He doesn’t drive and shows no desire to learn, so he often walks down to the nearest village for the newspaper or the milk, and on a fine day he sometimes takes the longer but more interesting quarry route. He cannot see any sense at all in climbing mountains just for the sake of it.

So lately, when Jessie walks along the shaley track through the young forestry, she does it alone. She usually doesn’t go as far as the top of the mountains, but likes to wander among their craggy shoulders and find the secret places, the little grassy bays and sheltery overhangs where she can sit and drink tea and allow her imagination to wander in peace.

But it doesn’t often go very far. Jessie has plenty of excuses for not having started on her writing. There are still bits and pieces to be done on the house, small improvements, perfections. She has invested a certain amount of time in going round to meet their neighbours, and the neighbours, most of them, have called by in their turn. The editing still has to be done, and Patrick, in good form, is marginally more demanding of her attention than he was when he was more withdrawn. She believes that she is not writing because she still doesn’t quite have time. But Jessie is not writing because she doesn’t have any ideas. Satisfaction, rich and thick as comb honey, has completely clogged her creative faculties.

As she climbs away from the valley, Jessie startles the lean mountain sheep and they bound away from her, nimble as goats, pausing only to call for their lambs. The day started out grey and cool, but during the last hour the sun has burned away the mist and taken sole possession of the sky. Jessie has stripped off her cagoule and sweater and tied them round her waist, but even so the heat and the weight of her knapsack are grinding her towards a halt. She sets her aim on a smooth grassy hollow where she has rested before, but when she arrives she finds that it is already occupied. A ewe is sleeping there, her twin lambs sprawled around her feet, panting in their unshorn coats. Jessie watches them for a while, uncertain whether or not she wants to disturb them, but the ewe somehow senses her presence and wakes, and hustles her little ones over the edge of the depression and out of sight.

Jessie drops her knapsack on to the flattened grass where they were lying and checks the ground carefully for droppings. The warmth and the sweet smell of the sheep is still there in the grass and she lies down on her stomach and breathes it in for a while before sitting up and unpacking her lunch. There is something else in the knapsack as well, that she had almost forgotten: the Tarot cards, wrapped in their blemished silk. Jessie pours tea from a flask and eats a sandwich of Patrick’s home-made soda bread, looking out over the moor to where the house, with its white walls, is clearly visible. The sight of it, and the knowledge that Patrick is there, fills her with pleasure. It ought to be enough, all this, but somehow life is never perfect. In the morning, over breakfast, Patrick brought up the issue of children again.

Jessie finishes her sandwich and pours more tea, then unwraps the cards and lays them on the grass. The colours seem gaudy against the tired green of the mountainside, and Jessie is reminded of the guilt she felt the last time she read them, in the house in London.

One card. One card only: yes or no. She cuts the pack; lets it fall open where it will. Five of swords. Attack. Peril. Her heart sinks. She feels that fate is against her, somehow, and that it is all unfair. The cards should be different; they should tell different stories, just as her life should. Where are the happy endings?

She resigns herself, sighs, wraps the cards up again. In truth she is all too willing to believe that entering into pregnancy and childbirth at this stage of her life is a perilous undertaking, and is somewhat relieved to know that the cards have advised her not to go into it. She had intended to discuss the matter with Gregory when he was there, but he had been too wrapped up in his own problems to offer much attention to hers. For the moment, like it or not, the cards are her only confidants, and she puts them away carefully before resuming her lunch. The tea is still hot, and she drinks it slowly, looking out over the landscape again. Outside the whitewashed house, she can just make out the figure of a man crossing the yard.

Patrick is still opening new ground, but for next year now. They won’t be anything like self-sufficient in vegetables this year, but what they have planted is flourishing. Beneath the ground, wireworms are mining a few carrots and a single cut-worm has caused the mysterious collapse of several heads of lettuce, but on the whole, the vegetables are growing as boldly as they can at such an altitude.

A week after her walk in the mountains, Jessie joins Patrick in the garden to help with the weeding. Behind them in the yard a few brown pullets and a young cock are cautiously exploring their first taste of freedom. Jessie bought them a few days ago from a dealer near Ffestiniog who raised them by the thousand in covered yards. They have spent those few days in the old hen house, making the place their home. So far, they have not acquired confidence. So far, they have not discovered the garden.

The sun is high and the mountains are in haze. Jessie and Patrick are working in T-shirts. From the valley below, surprisingly clear in the still air, comes the sound of a motorbike starting up.

‘Hello?’ says Patrick. ‘The leather mob has arrived.’

‘What?’ says Jessie.

‘That’s a heavy bike,’ he says; ‘an old one I’d say.’

The sound of the bike gets softer for a while as it runs behind the contours of the land. Then it is there again, climbing sweetly up the steep roads towards them. Patrick straightens up to try and get a glimpse of it passing, but to his surprise it appears around the wall beside the bridge at the bottom of their meadow, heading up their track.

Now Jessie straightens up, too.

‘Who is it?’ says Patrick. Jessie shrugs.

The rider steers the bike carefully through the ruts and bumps of the track, so slowly that each spark in the cylinder is distinguishable from the next.

‘It’s Dafydd!’ says Patrick. ‘What’s he playing at now?’

He no longer calls Dafydd Piers Ploughman. Dafydd owns the land at the back of the house and has grazing rights for sheep on the mountain beyond the forestry. Jessie and Patrick have given him the use of the sheep pens behind their outbuildings and have helped him once or twice with gathering and sorting sheep. During the shearing, Patrick went down to Dafydd’s farm in the valley and spent two days catching the ewes and marking them after they were shorn. Both he and Jessie have become good friends with Dafydd, and he seldom visits the neighbouring land without calling in for a cup of tea.

‘What are you up to?’ says Patrick as Dafydd pulls into the yard and switches off the engine. ‘You never told me you had a bike.’

Dafydd takes off the helmet. ‘It’s a new one,’ he says. ‘Reconditioned.’

‘I can see that,’ says Patrick, hunkering down and examining the engine, the gearbox, the brand new tyres. ‘Single cylinder,’ he says, worshipfully.

‘Want a spin?’ says Dafydd.

‘Can I?’ says Patrick, eager as a child.

Dafydd hands him the helmet, and he starts the bike and turns it, then eases it gently back down the track. Jessie and Dafydd watch him out of sight, then exchange a conspiratorial smile.

Patrick turns away from the bridge and drives up the steep, narrow road which lies between their boundary wall and the edge of the forestry. At the top, there is a long, level stretch where the road passes the craft-workers’ cottage and crosses the lap of the mountains before descending again into the next valley. He changes gear, and rolling his wrist gently, respectfully, opens up the throttle.

A few minutes later, turning back in through the gate, Patrick has decided that he will never own another motorbike. The drive has exhilarated him, but it has also reminded him of his messenger days, his narrow escapes, his complete inability to resist the temptation of speed. His life has changed, settled. He loves the quiet pace of it now and the chance to appreciate the surroundings that only walking can give.

His face is flushed as he hands the helmet back to Dafydd. Dafydd puts it on the wall.

‘Tea?’ says Jessie.

‘No, ta,’ says Dafydd. ‘I’d better be getting back.’

‘Can I give you a lift?’

‘No. I left the Land Rover and trailer at Cae Coed. It’s only five minutes down across the Black Ram.’ He moves towards the gate at the other end of the yard.

‘Thanks,’ says Jessie.

‘Hold on a minute,’ says Patrick. ‘What about your bike?’

‘It’s not my bike,’ says Dafydd, ‘it’s yours.’

‘Happy birthday,’ says Jessie.

Patrick stares at her, dumbstruck. She grins with glee, interpreting his slack-jawed expression as one of astonished delight.

In fact, it is thinly disguised horror. His mind has gone into a tailspin, assailed by so many implications that he can barely grasp the slightest of them. With a supreme effort, he succeeds.

‘How did you know it was my birthday?’

Dafydd has disappeared beyond the sheep pens. Jessie moves over and slips her arms round Patrick’s waist. ‘You told me,’ she says. ‘Ages ago.’

He dimly remembers something like that from the early days of careful divulgence. He drops his head on to Jessie’s shoulder and draws her close. For a long time they stay in that gentle embrace, but Patrick’s attention is a long way from it. Another womb has been prematurely, split open.

Jessie is the driver, the one who makes the decisions. She is not aware that she makes the decisions, but she does. She and Patrick talk about everything, down to the smallest detail, but it is more in the nature of mutual affirmation than discussion. Jessie makes suggestions, Patrick complies. Or Patrick makes suggestions and Jessie agrees. He adds to her plans, her proposals and her shopping lists, but they remain essentially hers. As do the car, the property and the money. She offered when they first moved to open a joint account in both names, but Patrick declined. He has never had a bank account in his life. Instead a drawer in the Welsh dresser has replaced the jar in the Camden kitchen.

Jessie has learnt her lesson from the condoms, and keeps no account of the cash. She seldom uses it herself, preferring to use plastic money when she can, but she keeps enough of an eye on it to be sure that it’s always topped up. She wants to be sure that Patrick never has to ask her for money.

To that end she anticipates as many of his needs as she can, and quite often buys things on the off-chance. He has paper and pencils and charcoal to last for the next six months, and pastels and paints that he hasn’t yet opened. There are books that he reads and books that he will never read on the shelves in their bedroom. And she is always buying him clothes. She has moved him up gradually from the black trousers and plain cotton shirts that he came with, to denims for the garden and comfortable, well-tailored jeans for the evenings. She buys him warm-coloured shirts in brushed cotton and silk and loose, round-necked jumpers with subtle designs. He wears them all willingly, happy to please her. She panders to his vanity, and the better he feels, the better he does, in fact, look.

Only once did Jessie overstep the mark. She came home with a beautiful shirt that she bought in a sale because she couldn’t resist it. It is white, with a blunt collar and open neck. The sleeves are wide and loose, but pulled in at the cuff like something a Cossack might wear.

Patrick stared at it, aghast. ‘That’s not a shirt,’ he said, ‘it’s a blouse!’

So Jessie wears it now, instead. She never thinks twice about what she is spending these days, even though it is far more than she is earning. She justifies it all as investment in their new home. But the money which remains from the sale of the Bromley house is dwindling fast. It is still subsidising the mortgage on the Camden house where Gregory is living for a nominal rent, caretaking until she can find a buyer.