Down Among the Gods (4 page)

Alec was Jessie’s first long-term partner, when the frenetic relationship with Aphrodite and Eros came to an end. He lasted four years. After him, there was John, who lasted a year and a half. Since him, there has been no one. No one serious, anyway.

The two men were about as different from each other as it is possible to be. Alec was grave and studious and self-absorbed while John was light-hearted and irresponsible. But they had two things in common. They were both heavily dependent upon alcohol, and they both left her.

Jessie knows why. She was too eager and too possessive. With both men she made the fatal mistake of putting aside all other interests and investing herself totally in the relationships, so that they meant too much to her both before and after they broke up. She was bitterly hurt on both occasions, and resolved never to make the same mistakes again. She isn’t even entirely sure, despite her idealistic and romantic dreams, that she wants the opportunity to prove it. There are aspects in each of the relationships that she misses and remembers with nostalgia, but the highest point of her life during those years was the time after Alec had gone and before John arrived, when she was writing. Nothing that went before and nothing that came after can compare with the vitality of those eighteen months. Her life was illuminated by a creative spirit that seemed to guide every waking hour and every step she took. Her mind was as sharp as a razor, constantly active, and she woke early to write before work, and stayed up late into the nights in feverish production. The fact that nothing came of it, that her novel was never finished and her poems still lie unread in the drawer of her desk didn’t matter at the time, and still doesn’t matter to her now. It was the process itself that gave meaning to her life, and it is that which she still awaits, with fading hope. Now that she thinks about it, she has no reason to believe that it will ever return. It is three years since John left and the inspiration that tried to emerge at the time lost out against the necessity to get paid work to cover the debts he left her.

Jessie studies Lydia in the gentle light thrown out by the fire and the reading lamp which sits on the mantelpiece, its face turned to the wall. Lydia is always so certain about life and what she wants from it. She doesn’t seem to be subject to doubts and depressions the way Jessie is, and because she doesn’t fall prey to inertia she doesn’t need anything or anyone to free her from it.

Jessie straightens up and sighs, wrenching herself out of the tightening grip of self-recrimination. ‘Funny coincidence,’ she says. ‘Life drawing.’

‘What?’

‘Life drawing. I’ve just been to a life drawing class.’

‘Oh?’

‘I saw it advertised in the paper about a minute after I opened the manuscript. So I thought, why not?’

‘Indeed,’ says Lydia. ‘Why not?’

‘It was good, actually.’

‘I’m sure it was.’ But life drawing is one of the many things which tend to raise Lydia’s feminist hackles. ‘I bet you there were no male models, though.’

‘Not officially,’ says Jessie, and grins to herself in a way that is offensively familiar to Lydia. ‘Oh, no,’ she says, ‘not again.’

Lydia considers herself to have broken free of the shackles of male/female relationships. She’s not gay, as a number of threatened men have suggested; she has no sexual relationships of any sort. This she considers to be the height of individual attainment, complete freedom. But she is, in fact, every bit as shackled as Jessie is. Her mistress is Artemis, the chaste huntress, goddess of the Amazons. This accounts, though neither of them knows it, for the slight ambivalence that has always existed between herself and Jessie. Lydia likes Jessie, and would count her among a small handful of her best friends. But there is also something about Jessie which makes her uneasy, and particularly when she’s involved in a relationship with a man. Were she to be totally honest with herself, she would admit that her jokes about Jessie’s propensity to fall head-over-heels in love are based upon a deep disquiet. There is a good reason for this. Artemis has no great liking for Hera, but she can take her or leave her. When it comes to Aphrodite, however, there is no love lost, none at all.

It goes back a long way. It goes back for ever, in fact, but probably the story of Hippolytus and Phaedra would be the best place to look, to know what is happening here. They won’t, though, either of them. They might have read Euripides and they might not. If they have, neither of them remembers.

Lydia has never tackled Jessie face to face about her romantic associations. Their conversation comes to a temporary halt, however, and for a while they both gaze into the fire, uncomfortably aware of something which lies, or hovers, in the air between them.

Patrick has, as he often does, left everything until the last minute, and he works through the night to get his photographs ready for the next morning.

There is no electricity in the basement. The meter and most of the wiring had been ripped out before he moved in. His darkroom, originally the flat’s kitchen, is powered by a wire run down from the flat above, which is occupied by a varying number of rowdy but well-disposed rent boys. Patrick suspects that they may be paying for his gas as well, because he has never had a bill, so he helps them out with the occasional fiver when times are lean.

As he mixes chemicals, Patrick remembers the woman with the red hair. He isn’t quite sure whether the look she gave him was a come-on or a get-off. He plugs in the kettle for coffee to drink while he works. Whatever she meant, it makes no difference. There’s no way he’s going to get involved again.

The night draws on. As the prints come out of the wash, Patrick spreads them to dry in the soft, grey room next door. They cover more and more of the floor space as the hours go by. Apart from the ones of the library, almost every photograph has Irish associations. There are pictures of weddings, football matches, and touring musicians. The negatives of the life drawing book and the plastic chair gargoyles remain unprinted, and join a collection in a personal file which is growing to unmanageable proportions.

All the photographs he needs are eventually spread out. The week’s wages, for his milk and coffee and Weetabix, his bags of chips and his beer and naggins of whisky. There will be enough to replace the photographic paper, visit the launderette and pay bus fares. No sleep, though, and no dreams. By the time morning comes, Patrick is liverish and dazed by exhaustion. He is not prone to hallucinations, but it’s as good a time as any to give him a reminder of a dream he had long, long ago and which woke him, sweating, in the early hours of the morning.

He was still young, still strong enough to resist the rapidly increasing influence of Dionysus upon his life. I offered him, in his dream, a glimpse of what was happening to him, a true picture of the god that was slowly but surely enslaving him. He opened his eyes and sat up in bed, but failed to rid himself of the monstrous image which gripped him with terror for several days. Had he looked more closely at the dream he might have picked up the signs of who he was dealing with. The demon was draped with vines, after all, and carried a great staff topped with a pine cone. Dionysus goes nowhere without his thyrsus, every Greek knew that. But every Irishman doesn’t, and Patrick chose not to enquire. Instead he took to his heels. And ran, of course, in the wrong direction.

Patrick wonders briefly why it is that the image from that dream should have started recurring lately. It has some sort of uncomfortable connection with the anxiety he feels about the flat these days, and his fear of the darkness. The dream troubled him a lot when he first had it, but he had presumed that it was forgotten. It was, after all, only a dream.

Only a dream. A message for you, for you alone, privately in the night. A message from Hermes, messenger of the gods, guide of souls, bringer of dreams. When the postman arrives with a letter for you, do you shake your head and close the door in his face? ‘Only the postman, dear.’

It reminds Patrick, none the less, of the time when the Muses still lived on the hill, or on the horizon, or just over it. And it seems to him that they could be there again if he only knew how to start looking. If he had a bit more money, he could print those special negatives and put together an interesting exhibition. But his deal with the
London Irish Weekly
is pretty regular. He works on commission, and occasionally gets orders for extra copies from readers, but on the whole there is little room for expansion. And if he can’t increase his income, then he has to look at his expenditure to see if he can lower it. But that, like his press card, will not stand up to close scrutiny.

He begins to gather the dry prints. Hope is a scarce commodity these days. It is crazy to waste it. In rare, quiet moments like this one, eight hours since the last pint and several hours before the next, Patrick knows that he is in an awful mess.

W
HEN QUEEN INO’S ATTEMPTS
to hide Dionysus failed, Zeus asked me for assistance. I turned Dionysus into a young goat and gave him into the care of the nymphs who live on Mount Nysa. They were delighted with him; fed him on honey and took care of his every need. It was here that he invented wine.

As Jessie is leaving the house on her way to the second of the art classes, she remembers, for once, to bring an umbrella. The memory triggers a chain reaction, and she has gone back to the kitchen and released the plastic bags from their restriction before she realises that she’s not going shopping and has no use for one. Back in the hall, she remembers that she is driving, and therefore has no use for the umbrella, either. But as she parks the car in Griffon Square, she finds that she has forgotten to bring her pencils.

On the other side of the square, beneath the autumn trees, Patrick is standing in an agony of indecision. His left hand is in his trouser pocket, rubbing a small collection of coins against each other. He knows exactly how much is there. Two pints. Two pints to last him through the evening, through the night and up until the delivery of his photographs tomorrow. If he drinks them now, he will miss them after the class and the night will be that much longer. But if he doesn’t drink them now, he won’t have the courage to attend the class at all. There is, as always, a reason for a mortal’s dependence upon the gods. Patrick, without the help of Bacchus, is a social cripple.

‘You coming?’

Patrick jumps, yanked out of his inertia. Jessie has recognised him by his hat. She is breezy, clearly pleased to see him. It helps.

They fall into step along the side of the square and across the road towards the college.

‘I almost missed you in the mist.’

‘Missed me in the mist, did you miss?’

Jessie giggles. ‘How do you know it’s miss, eh?’

‘Ah. Am I being presumptuous?’

‘Yes. Actually it’s Ms.’

‘Ah. Ms.’

‘Ms.’

‘Mzzzzz. Ms what?’

Jessie gives the swing doors a shove. Patrick watches them close. He is in, now. No going back. Jessie has gone on, but he catches her up. It’s easier to enter a room full of people if you’re with someone else.

‘Jessie,’ she says, as he draws alongside.

‘Ms Jessie?’

‘Just Jessie. And you?’

‘Patrick.’

She glances at him approvingly. ‘I love the hat.’

The hat says something, but not a lot. There is nothing else about him that gives any clues as to what sort of person he is. Patrick is a boozer and he lives a bit rough, but he’s not a bum. He shaves and washes every day in the leaking bathroom at the back of the house. He sets aside money for the launderette and even washes his sheets. That much self-respect remains to him.

But not much more. The class is a torment. He cannot recapture his free-flowing hand of the week before, and each line that he draws is tortuous and strained. He is acutely embarrassed by his efforts and is flustered when the teacher arrives at his side.

‘Can’t seem to get a feel for it this week,’ he says.

‘Why do you say that?’ she says. ‘It looks fine to me. What’s the problem?’

‘Well, it’s a bit stiff, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t think so. Not at all. You really have a good eye, you know. You have a great feel for perspective.’

She moves on. Patrick is astonished. The truth, though he still can’t see it, is that his drawings this week are every bit as good as they were the last. It is his opinion of himself that is different.

The teacher’s praise bucks his spirits. He catches Jessie’s eye for the first time that evening and gives her a nod. She returns it, feeling the conflict returning, that strange mixture of attraction and antagonism. It makes her uncomfortable. She has a strong suspicion that he’s dangerous.

She’s wrong, though. If you were to ask me, I’d say that Patrick’s worst fault is his cowardice, his inability to face the things that go wrong in his life and the reasons for them. He isn’t dangerous at all.

But Dionysus is.

As the class draws to an end, Patrick draws a quick cartoon on a discarded page. It shows a humanised pint glass, very macho, winking down at a coy, feminine half-pint. He holds it up for Jessie to see, a question in his eyes. It takes her a minute to work it out, but then she gets it and laughs.

Now it is Jessie’s turn to feel flattered, and it is this that has impaired her judgement. In normal circumstances, she would have been appalled by the tasteless and stereotypical images in the drawing. As it is, she has a vague sense of unease as she returns the borrowed pencils, but it passes as she strolls through the college with Patrick and out into the misty street. She likes Irish men. Always has.

‘You’re obviously not new to this game,’ she says, as they walk towards the pub.

‘What game is that?’

Jessie brushes damp leaves with her feet, suddenly uncertain. She decides not to laugh. ‘The drawing,’ she says.

‘Oh, that.’

‘You’re very good at it.’

‘No, not really.’

‘You are.’

Patrick glances at her. He is always hungry for praise, but right now he is hungry, above all else, for a pint.