Down Among the Gods (20 page)

Lydia sighs and accepts a sandwich. ‘You know the syndrome,’ she says. ‘Women who can’t get on with their lives because they need a relationship and then when they have one they can’t get on with their lives because they put all their emotional energy into the relationship.’

‘But what’s wrong with that, if it’s what people want to do?’

‘There’s nothing wrong with it if it’s what people want to do. But quite often it isn’t. Or at least, it isn’t what people say they want to do.’

Jessie takes a bite out of her sandwich and looks down at the mountain on the opposite side from the house. There are voices down there, a party of climbers out of sight behind a fold in the mountain’s rocky shoulder. Lydia follows her gaze. ‘Sounds like we’ve got company,’ she says.

But Jessie doesn’t want to change the subject. Lydia’s words have made her angry. ‘Are you talking about me?’ she says. ‘Are you talking about my writing?’

Lydia looks down at the ground between her feet. ‘I don’t know, Jessie,’ she says. ‘You tell me.’

The two of them cook together that evening, both working hard to cement a companionship that has become uneasy. Jessie had intended to ask Lydia’s advice on the matter of children, but once again she finds it impossible. On that issue, she is entirely on her own.

Patrick was working in his studio when they returned from their walk. Dafydd, on hearing that he was in company with two women, invited them all to join him for a shepherd’s pie and a pint in the village, but Patrick declined. He had been working on a study of the new cockerel and carries on with it now, experimenting with some chalk pastels that Jessie bought.

When Lydia comes to call him for dinner he becomes a little tense. No one apart from Jessie has ever set foot in his studio.

‘Do you mind if I look?’ says Lydia, leaning into the studio and peering around. He hesitates, but in the end he agrees. She has given him no reason to mistrust her.

He fiddles restlessly with the pastels as she walks around, studying the pictures on the walls, going through a pile on the floor. She takes her time. She is part of the scene in London and gets invited to a lot of openings. She believes that she knows something about art.

‘Have you shown them to anyone yet?’ she says.

‘No,’ says Patrick. ‘Only Jessie. She seems to like them.’

‘Ah, but Jessie’s into literature,’ says Lydia. ‘She doesn’t know anything about art.’

She returns to the drawings. Patrick stands benumbed, staring out of the window, seeing nothing.

It was intended to be a compliment. Lydia really does think that Patrick should ask someone who knows what they’re doing to look at his work. She had no intention whatsoever of injuring him.

But Artemis did. She has not forgotten, will never forget, the death of Hippolytus. Her arrow is unerring, and it hits Patrick where it hurts most.

‘What’s that one?’ says Lydia, looking over his shoulder at the drawing on the board. ‘Ah, the cock. He’s a nice character, isn’t he? I always thought that they were more aggressive.’

‘Are you two coming, or what?’ says Jessie, at the door.

‘Coming,’ says Lydia, leading the way out of the studio. Patrick still stands glued to the floor, rolling the crayons between his fingers.

Jessie crosses the room and stands beside him. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘No. Why?’

‘I don’t know. You just look a bit sulky.’ She reaches up and runs her fingers through his hair but the gesture seems degrading and possessive to him. Patrick bottles a rising anger.

‘Are you coming in to dinner?’ says Jessie.

‘Yes,’ he says, as sweetly as he can. ‘When I’m ready.’

Jessie goes ahead into the house and as she comes in, Lydia tells her how much she likes Patrick’s drawings. She doesn’t mind boosting Jessie’s ego.

Not now, anyway.

There is a roar from the yard as Patrick starts up the bike. He has already passed the front door by the time Jessie gets to it, and he doesn’t look back.

I hadn’t anticipated this. Artemis is the supreme huntress, stealthy and patient as a cat. I am as much taken by surprise as Patrick is.

I could avert him, of course. I could arrange the most spectacular crash, send him flying through the air for fifty feet and land him, winded but unscathed, on a grassy bank. But there would have to be an awful lot at stake to make me cross Artemis, and I’m not convinced that Patrick is worth it.

Better to wait, keep an eye on things. There may be another opportunity.

When Patrick steps into the village pub he is almost overwhelmed by a sudden onset of panic. The small bar at the front is smoky and full of strangers and the familiar, musical mumble of voices is disturbing even before it fades and trickles to a halt. Every eye turns towards him. Patrick looks down, takes a deep breath, and digs his hand in among the loose change in his pocket. It is too late to turn back.

‘Good man, Patrick,’ says a familiar voice, and when Patrick looks up he sees Dafydd on his feet, reaching for a spare stool. Patrick crosses the bar to Dafydd’s table, letting out his breath. The curious eyes that still follow him have lost their power.

‘Have you met Mel?’ says Dafydd, nodding towards his companion.

‘No.’ Patrick reaches across the table and accepts the offered hand, slightly disconcerted by the firm grip and the intense grey eyes above it.

‘What are you having?’ says Dafydd. Patrick only intends to have one drink. He has, in any case, only a couple of pounds in his pocket and not enough for a round. ‘I’ll get it,’ he says.

‘No you won’t,’ says Dafydd. ‘I owe you two days’ shearing and after tomorrow I’ll owe you a day’s gathering as well.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. I’ll be bringing down the ewes and lambs from your mountain. Are you busy?’

‘No. I’d love to.’

‘Good. So what are you having?’

‘Guinness, I suppose.’

But when Dafydd returns from the bar and sets the cool, dark pint down on the table, the feeling of panic returns to Patrick and almost overwhelms him. He shifts his weight on the stool and looks around. There are still a few faces turned towards him but they are not as unfamiliar as he had first thought. Dai Evans, the postman is there, and two of the local farmers who had been helping Dafydd with the shearing.

‘Good to see you down here,’ says Dafydd. ‘A man needs a pint now and then.’

‘Yes,’ says Patrick, ‘of course he does.’

As he reaches out for the glass, his hand is a little unsteady. An image of Jessie comes into his mind, her face sour and full of recrimination, and in response to it comes the old spirit of anger and resentment. He drinks from the pint, long and freely, and within minutes the conflicting feelings are replaced by a warm and liberating sensation of coming home.

‘Patrick’s living up in Garreg Uchaf,’ says Dafydd.

‘The high rock,’ says Mel, ‘up in the clouds.’ His eyes seem softer to Patrick now. He no longer has any doubt that he is among friends, and as he empties his glass and sets it back down on the table, he is at a loss to understand why he has been depriving himself of a pint or two for all this time. It makes absolutely no sense to him at all.

D
EMETER, GODDESS OF CORNFIELDS
, crops, the fertile earth, is engaged in a fearful struggle against Technossus, and she needs all the recruits she can get if she is to hold out against him. He has already excluded her from most of Britain, Europe and America and is making strong inroads into the so-called underdeveloped nations, ousting small farmers and sharecroppers and replacing them with huge plantations which cannot be farmed without large machinery. But she is not defeated yet. Not quite. She is even making a small comeback in the industrialised nations where a dribble of people are leaving the cities and following the dream of self-sufficiency and healthy living. Not all of these succeed, but it may be just enough. She just might, with a bit of luck, hold on to her seat.

It is midnight when Patrick comes in. Jessie is in bed, reading. ‘Where on earth did you disappear to?’ she says.

He sighs deeply as he sits down on his side of the bed and begins to unlace his shoes. He is a little unsteady.

‘I just thought you and Lydia might like a chance to talk. I had a few pints with Dafydd.’

‘But you might have told me.’

Patrick sighs. ‘Might I?’

‘You left without dinner.’

‘Oh yes, dinner.’ Patrick giggles. ‘I forgot about dinner.’ His laces seem to have tied themselves into impossible knots, and he gives up on them and kicks his shoes extravagantly across to the other side of the room. He is feeling absolutely marvellous.

Jessie grits her teeth and looks up at the ceiling as Patrick, struggling with his jeans, topples sideways. ‘Whoops!’ He rights himself and pulls his shirt over his head. A button flies off, bounces once and lands in one of his shoes.

‘Bingo!’ he says. ‘Did you see that? Tiddlywinks!’

Jessie fights down a rising irritation as he pulls back the covers and slips in beside her, naked except for his socks.

‘What room is Lydia in?’ he says.

‘The spare room, of course. Where she was yesterday.’

‘Ah, yes,’ says Patrick. ‘Not in the nursery.’

The nursery is the third room upstairs which opens off theirs. They use it for storage. Jessie calls it the box room.

‘Why should she be in there?’ she says.

‘She shouldn’t,’ says Patrick. ‘She should be in the spare room.’

Jessie laughs and puts down her book.

‘Because then,’ says Patrick, ‘she won’t hear you scream.’

He dives on to her with a roar, and she is so shocked that she does almost scream. But he is just tickling, and nuzzling her neck, and then he is kissing her with a tender intensity.

There is a quality in that kiss that has been absent in their relationship before now. In the beginning there was the inevitable unease that unfamiliarity brings, but by now the sexual side of their lives has become relaxed and open. They have played all the usual lovers’ games, taking it in turns to be dominant and submissive, and they have settled into each other like symbiotic plants.

Jessie has observed Patrick closely. When they make love he is attentive and considerate. He adjusts to the needs of her body more carefully than any man she has ever known, but always with reserve, as though his desire arises in a way that is secondary to her own and in some way subject to it. He is a little too careful, as though some aspect of him were not involved at all but set apart and watching, as if through glass.

She tried in the early days to engross him, to persuade him to let go and allow his feelings to lead him, but he seemed unable to understand and there was a danger that he would take her well-intended words as criticism. In those days he was so besieged by insecurities that she couldn’t risk crippling him still further, and she has come to accept that if some aspects of his character are still hidden from her, it is perhaps best that they should be.

Tonight, though, he is different. Jessie knows it’s because he is drunk, but it makes him no less exciting.

Aphrodite has always been charmed by Dionysus.

Jessie is so much aroused, in fact, that she almost forgets about her cap.

‘Patrick, hold it,’ she says into his ear.

He stops, and for a moment he is quite still. Then he looks into her face, bemused. ‘Hold what?’

They giggle together like teenagers. ‘Give it to me,’ says Patrick. ‘I’ll hold anything, any time, honest.’

Jessie, still laughing, fumbles in the drawer of the locker beside the bed. Patrick rolls away and sighs. ‘The barrier method,’ he says. ‘The almighty god Latex, defender against the parasitic scourge of children. Defender of middle-class order and peace of mind. All praise.’

Jessie finds the diaphragm and squirts cream on to it from a tube.

‘Pesticides, herbicides, spermicides,’ Patrick goes on, ‘fratricide, matricide, infanticide. Protect us, almighty rubber, against the seedling masses of the unborn.’

‘Shall I put it in or shan’t I?’ says Jessie.

‘You shan’t,’ says Patrick. ‘Thou shalt not defend the ultimate virginity, the violation of the womb by ... What are they called?’

‘Nihilists,’ says Jessie. ‘Shall I or shan’t I?’

‘What are the options?’

‘Goodnight or good morning.’

He sits up and looks blearily at the clock. ‘Good morning, please,’ he says.

Jessie slips in the cap and slides into his outstretched arms. But it’s pretty much back to square one. The chasm has still not been bridged.

It takes two to bridge one, though. It might be thought that Aphrodite, being the goddess of procreation, would be slighted by the advent of contraception. But not so. She is, first and foremost, the goddess of desire, and she has discovered that contraception offers her the chance to prolong her involvement with most mortals. Pregnancies and crying babies are more often than not the occasion for her departure from the scene. Motherhood is Hera’s department. Contraception gives Aphrodite more opportunities on earth than ever before.

And Jessie is doing her utmost, in more ways than one, to resist the return of Hera.

Dafydd arrives early and Jessie brings him into the kitchen where she and Lydia are having breakfast.

‘He’ll be down in a minute,’ she says. ‘Will you have a cup of coffee while you’re waiting?’

‘I may as well,’ says Dafydd. ‘I’d say he’ll be a bit the worse for wear.’

‘Where are you going?’ says Lydia.

‘Gathering. I’m going to bring the wether lambs down to the valley for fattening.’

‘And where will you be gathering?’

Dafydd gestures towards the gable end of the house, above the fireplace. ‘The mountain.’

Lydia groans in exasperation. ‘God. I’d love to help.’

Patrick groans, too, as he comes through the door and looks at the plate of scrambled eggs on toast that Jessie has put out for him. He reaches groggily for Lydia’s coffee cup. Jessie hands him his own.

‘Two cups,’ he says. ‘If that doesn’t wake me up, nothing will.’

‘I wish I could come with you,’ says Lydia, gently reclaiming her coffee. ‘I wonder if I could get out of this meeting tonight?’