Down Among the Gods (6 page)

‘Right,’ says Patrick, ‘I’m coming’ He points to the thing on the desk. ‘Do you make your own clothes, then?’

Jessie looks puzzled for a moment, then bursts out laughing.

‘Where have you been living?’

Patrick smiles but as a defence it is incomplete. He has made a blunder and for an instant Jessie catches a glimpse of his underlying vulnerability. It produces an extraordinary effect in her. She has a barely resistible urge to put her arms around him and hold him tight, make it all all right.

Hera has caught a glimpse of the mortal soul that she’s trying to prise free.

But Patrick has closed up again and taken cover behind a stern expression of indifference.

‘It’s a computer,’ says Jessie. ‘I suppose it does look a bit like a sewing machine.’

‘I haven’t seen one like that before, that’s all.’

Jessie leads the way back to the living room where she has spread out the meal on the floor in front of the fire. They are both a little awkward as they sit down to eat but Jessie is confident that it’ll pass. She has had enough to drink, but she tops up Patrick’s glass.

The gods repeat their dramas perpetually, not only in the lives of successive generations, but even within single, mortal lives. Some people seem to make the same mistakes over and over and over again.

Jessie is one of them. If Lydia knew what was happening here she would be tearing out her hair in exasperation. Another Alec. Another John.

Patrick eats carefully, warmed by the whiskey, determined to make the most of the unaccustomed luxury. Jessie is pleased to see that his manners are impeccable, even by her standards.

Patrick’s father was not a brawny, bog-blown Connemara man, much as he would have liked to be. He was born in England of second-generation Irish parents, and brought up there. Four years studying English in Balliol college had a strange effect. It rubbed the last of the Irish edges off him, but also turned him into an aspiring poet, besotted by the bucolic mysticism of Tagore and Wordsworth. He was lured back to the west of Ireland by a romantic dream of rustic simplicity, and soon fell prey to the undemanding sympathy of tall black pints and golden chasers. He was often absent, if not physically then mentally, and he left the running of the household and most of the farm as well to Patrick’s mother. But when he was there he would quote Yeats bombastically from his place at the head of the table while the family, growing in size and unruliness, picked slugs from their cabbage. He had turned his back on English civilisation and despised convention in any shape or form, but even so his conditioning had left certain indelible marks. His fist on the table sent potato skins flying. ‘For God’s sake, boy! Do you still not know how to hold your bloody knife?’

The memory is far from Patrick’s consciousness, along with all other memories of childhood. But he is looking with interest at his fork. He uses a knife to butter bread and a spoon to eat cereals. Fish and chips he eats with his fingers, straight from the bag. He can’t remember the last time he had use for a fork. He isn’t even sure that he has one.

‘I use it for my work,’ says Jessie.

‘Hmm?’

‘The computer. I used to do typesetting for a couple of small publishers, but these days it’s mainly editing.’

‘Ah. You work at home, then?’

‘Yes, mostly. What about you?’

‘Oh, I’m all over London, me. I’m a photographer.’

‘Funny, that,’ says Jessie. ‘I had a feeling you were into something in the artistic line.’

‘I’d hardly call it artistic,’ says Patrick. ‘It’s pretty boring stuff, really. Just keeping half the London Irish in touch with what the other half are doing. I do a few things for myself as well, though. Get some more creative shots.’

‘Can I see them some time?’

‘Yes, when I get round to doing a bit of work on them.’

Jessie hesitates for a minute, then plunges in. ‘I do a bit of writing. At least, I’m not doing much at the moment, but it’s what I want to do.’

Patrick nods, politely.

‘I think it’s the most important thing in life,’ Jessie goes on, ‘to have some sort of creative outlet. It doesn’t matter what you say or what you paint or photograph, it’s what you bring to it yourself. Do you know what I mean?’

Patrick isn’t sure that he does, and his mouth is too full to reply, so he nods again, to be on the safe side.

Jessie has stopped eating and is prodding the food on her plate absently. ‘I think that writers and artists, the good ones, that is, the original ones, have found what it is we’re all looking for.’

Patrick isn’t looking for anything as far as he knows, but his mouth is empty now, so he says: ‘And what’s that?’

‘Authenticity. I think that’s what happiness is. The discovery of your own authenticity.’

‘Nice word,’ says Patrick. But happiness for him is this moment, the meal and the warmth of the fire and the pleasure of a woman who is bothering to try and impress him. And it doesn’t last. When they finish eating, he becomes restless. Jessie puts on a Tracy Chapman tape and refills his glass, but he turns to the washing up, despite her protests. He is becoming seriously worried about the time, and the walk ahead of him, and the work. Jessie clears the table, humming along with the tape. As she throws empty cartons into the bin beneath the sink, her shoulder brushes against his. Patrick is also seriously worried about that. He is rapidly getting out of his depth in this situation and is anxious to get out of it. He steps aside to give her more room, not too obviously, but obviously enough.

And she notices the threatened look in his eyes as he explains that he has to go, and why. She masks her disappointment carefully as she accompanies him to the door. They stand together, a little awkwardly, on the front step. The night is fresh and inviting.

‘Can I drop you home?’

‘No. No thanks. I love walking, actually. Especially at night.’

Jessie decides not to push it. Patrick takes a step towards the street. ‘Thanks for the meal. I’ll pay you back next week.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. My pleasure.’

‘No. I’ll pay you back.’ He walks down the steps. ‘Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight. Call in if you’re passing.’

‘I will.’

But he takes no note of the number on the door of the house or its position in the street. He doesn’t even notice what street he is in, but walks with the aid of a sort of automatic pilot towards the High Street and across the canal.

Within half a mile, the walking has warmed Patrick up, so that the cool night air is soothing rather than threatening. The streets are quiet; a lot quieter than the ones in King’s Cross where many of the citizens are just now starting into their working hours. Patrick looks up towards the sky but it is polluted by the light which rises from the city and the smoke from households which defy the smoke-free zones. He is uncomfortably full and not half drunk enough. It is one of the problems he always has with food. Eating soaks up too much drink, and deadens the effect.

‘Damn!’ he says to the night.

Patrick can’t stand to be in debt. He is unconventional but not unprincipled. There is no doubt in his mind that he will have to come up with that fiver. He mulls over the problem most of the way back to King’s Cross, calculating and budgeting and fidgeting with coppers like worry beads in his pocket. He cannot understand how it is that wherever he goes he finds himself, sooner or later, in debt, if not financially, then emotionally or morally. It is almost as though he were jinxed.

Ahead of him a group of young men are straggling along the street, laughing and shouting. He crosses over to the other side, and as he does so he gets his bearings and remembers a short-cut home. He sighs, straightens his back, and strides out more purposefully.

But behind him, Hera is once again slighted. She has been after this one for years in one way or another. Several times she has had him eating out of her hand but in the end he has always given her the slip.

Jessie suffers for it. The fact that Patrick was unwilling to stay cannot, by any reckoning, be considered her fault, but she is being punished just the same.

The gods are not renowned for their compassion.

Jessie lies awake, despite the heavy meal and the drink, and watches the occasional fan of light which crosses her wall as a car passes. She tells herself that she had no intention of sleeping with Patrick, and that things are working out as well as she would want them to. It is true, but not entirely, and it doesn’t dispel the pain of disappointment that lingers and keeps her awake. She replays the evening, again and again until it dissolves into a jumble of conflicting images as she sinks towards sleep.

And dreams that the moon, which lies so distant and cold in the sky, is making love to her.

A
ND WHAT ABOUT THOSE
who follow me? Does anyone? Who, in their right mind, follows a mere messenger?

A little more, perhaps, than a mere messenger. I have a number of other duties, too, out there in the ill-defined region of borders. People have always had a certain amount of difficulty in giving me a clear identity, and I have gathered quite a collection of titles over the years.

When I was young, very young in fact, I made a little set of reed pipes and played a tune on them for my brother, Apollo. He was delighted, and offered me the golden staff with which he herded his cattle and the patronage that went with it; god of all herdsmen and shepherds. I told him that it wasn’t enough, and that I wanted to learn the art of augury from him as well. He said that he couldn’t teach me himself, but he told me where to learn. So I gave him the pipes and he gave me his staff, and I set out for Parnassus where the Thriae live. There, as he had promised, I was taught to tell the future by studying the action of pebbles in a basin of water.

As time went by, I expanded on the theme. First there was divination by knuckle bones and later ... well, one thing follows another ...

Patrick, so far, has had a bad day. A very bad day. It was three o clock in the morning before he got back from Jessie’s place. The flat above was as dark and silent as his own, and he stood for a full five minutes on the basement steps before he could find the courage to go down there. When he did the work went badly, and not only because he was exhausted. Again and again throughout the night he found Jessie’s face drifting into his mind, and images of the meal, and the comfort of her house. At times they were so strong that they seemed to distort the projections from the enlarger and some of the prints turned out badly and had to be done again. Worse than that, when he comes to sort through the photographs in the morning, he realises that he has forgotten to develop one of the most important rolls of film. It is still in his coat pocket.

The
London Irish Weekly
is no longer run on the shoe-string budget that it was when it was first starting up and Patrick came to work for it. It has increased its circulation steadily both in London and abroad, and is picking up more advertising every year. But Brendan Haymes, the editor, sees no reason at all to inform Patrick of the fact. This isn’t the first time that Patrick has let him down.

He is understandably annoyed. Patrick and Ray, the reporter he usually works with, had two good evenings out of the events that the forgotten film covers. One was the opening of a series of Irish plays in the King’s Head and the other was a gathering of the O’Mahoney clan from all over the world to celebrate a wedding between two distant branches of the family. The theatre article can run as it is, but the O’Mahoney gathering was to take up a half-page spread, most of it pictures of the better known members of the family. Brendan is unlikely to get others, especially at such short notice. He refuses to pay Patrick for work that he hasn’t delivered.

As Patrick walks back towards King’s Cross, it begins to rain. Women out on the streets put up umbrellas, unfold plastic raincoats, pull up pram hoods over their sleeping infants. Patrick falls into a furious rage. The bitch will have to do without her fiver. She can afford it after all, with her car and her fancy house and her bloody computer. He should have known better than to go with her. Amazing that he hadn’t more sense, didn’t see what was coming. That was a nifty move, stopping off to buy that meal. If it hadn’t been for that he’d have been nowhere near her house, nowhere near her and her filthy schemes. It’s always the same when men get mixed up with women. Things start to go wrong.

And there’s the ghost of Hippolytus, hovering around again.

‘Can I really do what I like with it?’ says Jessie.

‘Go ahead,’ says Lydia. ‘
Carte blanche.
’

‘Are you sure? Shouldn’t I speak to Frances about it first?’

‘No. She won’t object.’

‘Even when I send her the ashes?’

Lydia laughs. ‘She’s getting worse, isn’t she?’

‘Much worse.’

‘Just lazy, I expect. Too reliant on you. How are things, anyway?’

‘Great. I had Patrick round for dinner last night.’

‘Patrick. Wait, don’t tell me. He’s a Celtic prince from County Fermanagh who followed a ley line right to your door.’

‘Wrong. I already told you. I met him at the art class.’

‘Did you? Oh, god. What’s he like?’

‘I don’t know, really. Too early to tell.’

‘I’ll tell you, then. He’s a loser. The ones you go for always are. Get rid of him.’

Jessie laughs. ‘Shall I tell you about him?’

‘No,’ says Lydia. ‘Not before, not during and not after. I’ve heard it all before. Never again.’

‘I see,’ says Jessie. ‘Like that, is it? Well, that’s one topic of conversation up the spout.’

‘Maybe it’ll encourage you to keep track of some others, then. This time.’

‘Oh, come on, Lydia! I’m not that bad.’

‘I hope not,’ says Lydia. ‘Keep in touch, won’t you?’

Jessie sits and looks at the phone for some time after she puts it down. The conversation has irritated her, but what bothers her more is the suspicion that Lydia may be right. Because what is the use in going through it all again? The yearnings, the efforts to make it work, the inevitable disappointment when it doesn’t. For a moment she is tired, older than her years, utterly cynical. But there is always hope, there must be. She just needs a bit of help, that’s all.