Down Among the Gods (28 page)

There is plenty of dark, silent water in Wales where a man pursued by Bacchus might, or might not, turn into a dolphin. There are also roads which lead to Manchester and Shrewsbury and London, and there are ferries which cross over the sea to Ireland. There are pubs, too, and maenads, and more lonely women like Jessie. Given time he may find one who has all the good qualities of Hera and none of the bad ones. Given an eternity.

Let him go with Dionysus. Why shouldn’t he, after all? What difference does it make to him which one of us he chooses to ally himself with? None of us can offer what he’s looking for.

In any case, I’m not going to squabble over him any more. I have other business to attend to.

Jessie has not ignored the Priapus dream, even though she doesn’t know what it means. She is already at the dressing table, covering the dreadful face that pleads from the mirror with a mask for a new day.

She drinks coffee, then drives to the Family Planning Clinic in Bangor to get the morning after pill. The doctor there, to her relief, is a woman. And Jessie’s meticulous make-up hides nothing from her.

‘There’s no problem about letting you have the pill,’ she says. ‘You just give this to the woman in the dispensary in the waiting room.’ She smiles. ‘We get a lot of burst condoms around here.’

She writes something on her pad but instead of handing it across the desk between them, she comes around to stand beside Jessie and puts a gentle hand on her shoulder. ‘Is there anything else you’d like to tell me about?’

The accent is musical and comforting, and Jessie is brought close to tears by unexpected concern. But she shakes her head. ‘It was just an accident.’

‘Are you sure? The police are much more sympathetic these days than they used to be.’

‘No. It’s nothing like that. I haven’t been raped.’

But there are times over the following weeks when she feels it might have been better if she had been. She could have despised Patrick, then, instead of despising herself. What she is left with, for a while, is the awful belief that what men say about women is true. They want to be raped.

But she is wrong. They do not, any more than men want to be flogged within an inch of their life by any woman, known or unknown, despite the submissive fantasies they might indulge in. Fantasy is one thing. It is the interplay of the archetypes within the human psyche; the dramas of the gods, perhaps, as they vie for supremacy. Actuality is something else. The two should never be confused.

Jessie returns to the house on the hillside in a state of total confusion. She feels that she has duped herself into acting without proper consideration. If she had known that he would put up no resistance, that he would just go and never look back ...

She makes lunch for herself from Patrick’s home-baked bread and one of the rare winter eggs but she has to force herself to eat it. Her mind is overwhelmed with images and the strongest of them, the one which returns time after time to haunt her, is the look that was in Patrick’s eyes as he leaned above her the night before. It was a look of complete objectification.

Only the gods can see a human being as an object. It is their prerogative. For how can one person in possession of their own senses look at another and fail to understand that they are of the same stuff and involved in the same pathetic struggle for autonomy? All the fear and rejection, the scorn, intolerance and worse, all the murder and torture and exploitation is the work of the gods, let loose among a succession of generations that have no resistance to them.

Jessie has failed the gods, failed all of them, and they are angry. They have failed her, as well, but they are not gone yet. Jessie, with nowhere to go and no one to turn to, is helpless in their midst, torn between them as they carry on their ceaseless squabbles.

Aphrodite loves Patrick, and when she gets the upper hand, Jessie loves him too, desires him, longs for him despite all he has done to her. But Hera hates him. He has escaped her clutches yet again, and allowed Dionysus to make a fool of her. So Jessie hates him as well and can’t understand how she ever came to be taken in by him. And Dionysus is there, too, lurking in the shadows, berating her for having spoiled everything by manipulating Patrick, disapproving of his drinking, dressing him up, trying to turn him into something that he wasn’t. Jessie swings among them all in a desperate arc between love, bitterness and guilt. The only comfort is a voice which emerges and recognises the human weaknesses that gave rise to all the problems. It allows her, briefly, to forgive both of them for what has gone. But the voice comes rarely. The voice is still small.

The mists roll in and out of the valley and the days do, too, and the nights. The last of the year’s growth of weeds remains in the garden among the cabbages which rot on their stalks in the damp air.

When Dafydd comes looking for Patrick, he finds Jessie making a bonfire on top of the compost heap.

‘Hiya, Jessie.’

‘Hello, Dafydd. How are things?’

‘Fine, fine.’

As he watches, Jessie takes a dressing-gown out of a plastic bag and throws it on top of the books and papers that she is burning. There is something about her attitude that he finds unsettling.

‘Everything all right, is it?’

‘Yes, thanks.’

‘Good. I was looking for Patrick. Haven’t seen him about for a few days.’

Jessie adds the plastic bag to the fire and watches it as it shrivels and turns into a waxy puddle. Then she sighs. ‘Patrick’s gone, Dafydd,’ she says.

‘Gone? Gone where?’

Jessie shrugs.

Dafydd stand awkwardly for a moment, then crosses to the other side of the fire and pokes it with a pitchfork. The dressing-gown hasn’t caught light yet. It looks perfect to him and he wonders why she is burning it. Jessie looks fixedly at the flames that spring up from the papers beneath.

‘You’ve split up, then?’ says Dafydd.

‘Yes.’

‘Is that all right?’

‘Yes. It was inevitable.’

The dressing-gown begins to burn. They both watch it in silence, and Dafydd feels that there’s a purpose to the burning which he can appreciate even if he doesn’t exactly understand.

‘If there’s anything I can do,’ he says.

Jessie nods. ‘Thanks, Dafydd.’

He goes back to his Land Rover and drives away, leaving Jessie alone with her pyre.

Most days, Jessie goes into town for provisions and remembers to feed herself. She keeps the fires lit and the house in some sort of order, but that’s the extent of her work. Patrick is gone, the gods have no use for her, and now it is her turn to suffer the pain of withdrawal.

This is what the tool-maker suffers on being made redundant, the businessman on going bankrupt, the young soldiers on returning from Vietnam to find that in their absence, their god has been deposed. And the sailor returned from the sea, the proud housewife widowed, the sportsman retired, the philatelist robbed of his stamps.

Jessie is doing cold turkey. She sits in her office with a manuscript in her lap and stares at it blankly, without comprehension. She lies awake at night, staring at the walls, listening to the stream mimicking the sound of Patrick’s motorbike. At times she brightens and thinks of walking in the mountains. Once she gets as far as the door in her jacket and boots before she realises that she cannot leave the house in case the phone rings. She knows that Patrick will not come back. But she still believes that he will.

When the phone does ring, a week after Patrick has gone, it is Lydia, wondering what has happened to her manuscripts.

Jessie sighs. ‘Everything’s a bit of a mess, I’m afraid. You may have to get someone else to do them.’

‘Why?’

‘Patrick is gone.’

There is a long silence, during which Lydia feels unaccountably guilty. ‘Are you all right?’ she says at last.

‘Yes, I’m all right. I just can’t really concentrate. I’m not sure you weren’t right all along.’

‘Don’t say that, Jessie. You seemed to be doing so well. You seemed to be made for each other. What happened?’

‘I don’t really know. It just did.’

The silence which follows is so long that Lydia eventually says, ‘Jessie?’

‘I’m here. There isn’t anything to be done about it. But it might be best if I sent the manuscripts back to you. Can you get someone else?’

‘Of course, but I’d rather you did them. Shall I come up, do you think? Talk about it?’

‘No. There’s nothing to talk about.’

There is, but where to begin? Jessie struggles on, staying alive. Bereft, terrified of facing the awful fact of being merely mortal, Jessie clings to Aphrodite as hard as she can. If she can only serve that dimly perceived goddess well enough, believe in her totally, then surely she will bring Patrick back. But Aphrodite has no more use for Jessie. The harder she clings, the harder Aphrodite pushes her away. Jessie’s longing and loneliness cause a pain which is physical in its intensity. It is only a matter of time before it will reach the point where she will not be able to hold on any longer. Then she will have to let go.

Gregory comes, driving a small hired van. Jessie breaks down when she sees him and weeps for four hours with her head in her hands over the kitchen table. He makes tea and coffee and dreadful jokes, and periodically he takes her in his arms and hugs her.

She sleeps soundly that night for the first time since Patrick left, while the stream remembers old melodies from her childhood.

Gregory takes command and Jessie allows him to. He is taking her back to London, at least for the time being. It comes as a salutary realisation to Jessie that she has nothing to stay in Wales for. Nothing at all.

Together they pack the most necessary things into the van. There are no boxes and Jessie at last knows why she was so covetous about plastic bags. Gregory, with his dynamic energy, makes short work of the packing but the problem arises of what to do with Patrick’s things. There is only one key to the house and Gregory advises Jessie against leaving it under the stone in the yard while she’s gone. For a while they work to the plan of leaving the stuff with Dafydd but then Jessie remembers the studio. Patrick has taken his own key with him, but there is a spare one hanging in the kitchen.

She brings a few bags of clothes out into the yard and around to the studio door. Inside it is as bright as the day. Jessie feels that she has stepped into some kind of mysterious space.

She has. My space. It’s unused now, of course, but I still have special power here, as I do in certain other fragments of the mortal world. There were times when some of the people knew that and marked such places or enclosed them. My names were different everywhere but by whatever name I was called, you will still find my monuments. Stone circles, fairy forts, the ruins of ancient shrines. Even churches, some of them, were built upon ancient sites which belong to me. Listen for me if ever you are passing such places. Some of them I have abandoned, but not all.

Listen for me.

Jessie’s eyes fall first upon the cockerel at the top of the pile of drawings and she experiences a moment of disillusionment. It is not a good drawing and she wonders how she could ever have believed that it was. Was he right? Was his ability a figment of her imagination that she tried to make into reality?

Her eye roams around the room and comes to rest on a pair of envelopes that are lying in one of the alcoves. Intrigued, slightly guilty about invading Patrick’s privacy, she approaches them. One is unopened, a brown vellum one with a window. Inside is a final reminder to send in the change of ownership form for the bike. The other envelope contains the birthday card she gave him, the unsigned form, and nothing else. The three blank cheques have gone.

In sudden anger Jessie turns back towards the door, but as she does so her eye is caught by Patrick’s last drawing. The anger descends as rapidly as it arose, and Jessie walks over to look at the picture. It is of a man turning into a dolphin.

It is a fabulous drawing. The two beings are both clearly represented, not half and half but interwoven, each of them somehow complete in its features and yet barely formed. The figures are interdependent, emerging from each other, neither of them dominant. It is one of the most powerful images Jessie has ever seen. It bristles with my power and for a moment Jessie feels herself being sucked in towards it. There is another world there. The symbolic image is trying to tell her something that she is almost ready to understand.

But not quite. She pulls back, clings to Aphrodite, who fills her heart once again with love for Patrick, then slaps her down to the agony of his loss. Jessie retreats, back to Gregory’s cheering activity. But the next time she comes with a bag of Patrick’s things, Jessie rolls up the drawing and finds a safe place for it in the van.

On the way back to London, Jessie tells Gregory as much of the story as she dares. There are certain things that are taboo, even between the two of them. Gregory, in turn, tells her about James. He has come to the conclusion that she was right and that James just enjoys playing with people. He has put the whole business behind him and stopped drinking. His mid-life crisis seems to have passed.

They unpack as soon as they get back, in the dark. Gregory is keen to take the van back before morning so they leave all the stuff in the hall for the time being. Jessie is slightly horrified by the amount of it. She hasn’t the energy for organisational work of any description. All her energy is elsewhere, at the moment, turned inwards.

Gregory drinks tea with her and then leaves with the van. Jessie sits at the table until she begins to fall back towards despair. She is exhausted.

Her old hot-water bottle is still underneath the sink, so she fills it and goes upstairs. Gregory is using her room, but she doesn’t want it back. It holds too many memories to be comfortable. Instead she goes into the spare room and makes up the bed with clean sheets.

As she washes in the bathroom, the face that looks out from the mirror is haggard and worn. It doesn’t surprise her that Patrick left. It surprises her more that he was ever able to look at it and find it lovely. Perhaps he didn’t. Perhaps ...