Down Among the Gods (7 page)

For a few minutes she flips through the thick manuscript, but she is unable to give it her attention. She doodles with the pen on the covering letter, writing her name, writing ‘manuscript’ and ‘buggeritbuggeritbuggerit’ in her best handwriting. She could start on a story now, or a poem, something to express her frustration before it turns into despair, but as always, there is a good reason not to. No time, no energy, no point. She puts down the pen and reaches up to the top of the bookshelf where she keeps her pack of Tarot cards wrapped in black silk. She puts them out on to the rug and spends a moment or two lighting candles and incense, before settling down to business.

I am summoned, and I come.

It is a long time since she has consulted the cards. The broad elastic band that encircles them has decayed; it snaps softly as she takes it off. An edge of the silk has been bleached to a blotchy grey by the occasional morning sunbeam which reaches high enough to touch it. She weighs the package in her hand. It is so, so familiar. There was a time, once, when people came to her for readings. At first it was fun, a bit of excitement for herself and her friends, but gradually it began to become more serious. News of her abilities spread, and strangers with unhappy faces started arriving at her door, offering money for readings. Jessie called a halt to it all. She had no desire for that kind of responsibility, and besides, she was never really sure whether she believed in it or not.

She still isn’t. None the less, she is filled with a familiar feeling of apprehension as she unwraps the cards. The silk slips through her fingers like an undergarment. Disuse has stuck the cards together, but they free themselves up easily enough as she works them this way and that in her hands. As she shuffles, she takes great care to keep the faces of the cards turned away from her. She has no desire to influence their placement, even unconsciously. To be even more certain, she closes her eyes and, still shuffling, concentrates hard on the issue which is uppermost in her mind.

I don’t need this solemnity. It bores me, to be honest. I get impatient.

But it makes Jessie feels better about the business. ‘Tapping in’, she calls it, though into what she has never sought to enquire too closely. Not until the moment feels perfect does she begin to deal the cards; five of them, in a simple cross formation, face up. She puts the rest of the pack aside, drapes the blemished silk across it, and studies her reading.

On the left, the card representing Jessie herself: the Empress. Down the middle are three cards, past, present and future: ten of swords, two of cups and two of swords. On the right, representing Patrick, the Fool. Upside down.

Jessie’s heart sinks a little, even before she begins to analyse the cards. She remembers why she gave up reading them for herself. It is easy to be objective about someone else’s situation, but not at all easy to be clear-sighted about one’s own.

She doesn’t like the look of the Fool. She never could make up her mind about reversed cards, whether or not to use the extra, and usually opposite set of meanings that could be assigned to cards that appear upside down in a reading. Sometimes she used them that way and sometimes she didn’t. Now, almost without thinking, she reaches out a hand and turns the Fool the right way up. And completely changes his meaning.

I’m gone. Bloody mortals! Why did she ask if she didn’t want to know? If she wanted to play it like that, she should have just picked out the ones she wanted.

The candle gutters noisily, as though a door somewhere has opened, or a window. Jessie gets a chilly feeling. She stopped smoking five years ago, but at times like this, she wishes she hadn’t. It is a bewildering reading, and not at all what she had been hoping to hear. Her right knee creaks as she gets up off the rug and searches out a book from the higher shelves of the bookcase.
Tarot and the Modern Psyche.
She brings it with her into the kitchen, where she fills the kettle and switches it on. The book is divided into two sections. In the first are the long, Jungian explanations of the archetypal significance of the cards and the different stages of the querent’s life journey that each of them represents. In the second, shorter section, are the quick and easy meanings; a sort of shorthand. Jessie justifies her faith in the Tarot, such as it is, on the basis of the first set of interpretations, but when it comes down to analysing a reading, she invariably uses the second.

The Empress
: A mature woman, wealthy and fertile. Earth-goddess. Fruitfulness. Satisfaction.

True enough, Jessie supposes. She has everything she needs, and more. The kettle boils. She makes an instant coffee.

The Fool
: Freedom from responsibility. One who follows pure intuition. Divine agent. Innocence.

Almost despite herself, Jessie’s eye wanders over the next two lines:

Reversed
: Irresponsibility. Inebriety. Drunkenness. Delusion. Dementia.

She skips over it, turns to another page. She knows this next one well.

Eight of Swords
: A dangerous oppression. Restriction of vital forces by another. A losing battle.

Jessie nods. Of that, at least, there is no question. That was the state of past relationships. She doesn’t normally take sugar, but she piles two heaped spoonsfuls into the mug. She needs something comforting.

Two of Cups
: A new relationship. Blossoming feelings. A fresh start.

Ten of Swords
: Defeat. Humiliation. The end of a long conflict.

Jessie sips the sweet coffee, then turns back the pages and reads it all through again. She would like to pretend that it made no sense. But it does. Both her serious relationships began with blissful harmony and degenerated into irresolvable conflict. In the past she had come to believe that there was no such thing as love, that all sexual relationships were a sort of power struggle which one or other player inevitably lost. But she had forgotten that, and fallen back into the romantic idealism of her younger days. She isn’t at all happy at being reminded.

For a while the sweetness of the coffee is comforting, but in the end it becomes too much and Jessie pours it away. She remembers the brief feeling that she had of Patrick being dangerous, and wonders if it is true, if she oughtn’t to listen to her instincts and to this reading. The house feels cold, and vague shadows flit about the corners of the rooms. Jessie has a strong desire to leave it.

Gregory has a lot in common with Jessie. He is around the same age, craves monogamy, and is still single. He is a tried and trusted friend, but a little more than that. Lydia is a friend, too. Gregory is an ally.

He is alone that evening, and welcomes Jessie with open arms when she arrives on his doorstep. Her heart is already being lifted as she follows him through the hall and up the stairs to his flat.

‘Notice anything?’ he says, and gestures broadly around the small living room.

Jessie stands at the door and looks around carefully. Gregory goes over to the kitchen area and puts on the kettle. The room is softly lit, softly furnished, living and breathing with dozens of plants. It looks to Jessie exactly as it always has. She racks her brains to spot the difference, but she can’t.

‘Fraid not,’ she says, at last.

‘Right,’ says Gregory. ‘Nothing’s changed.’

Jessie laughs, and all her tensions melt away.

‘How about you?’ Gregory goes on.

‘Oh, not much,’ says Jessie, but it is with an air of mystery that Gregory knows well.

‘Aha,’ he says. ‘Out with it.’

Jessie smirks and settles herself into a comfortable chair beside the fireplace. ‘Well, he’s a bit too tall, a bit too dark ...’

‘And absolutely gorgeous,’ says Gregory.

‘I don’t know. That sort of thing is subjective, I suppose.’

‘Absolutely gorgeous subjectively, then,’ says Gregory. He brings her over a muddy-looking cup of coffee and sits on a bean-bag on the other side of the hearth. ‘They always are, the ones you get.’

‘I haven’t got anything, Gregory. And even if I had, I’m not sure that I’d want it.’

‘That sounds serious. Are you sick or something?’

‘No. Actually, it’s not me so much as the Tarot.’

‘What?!’ Gregory sprays coffee on to the rug as he bursts out laughing. ‘What do you mean, the Tarot? What’s the Tarot got to do with anything?’

‘Well, it said ...’

‘What?’

‘It said that I couldn’t win.’

Gregory doubles up with laughter again, and Jessie, suddenly struck by the absurdity of it all, joins him. After a while, Gregory regains temporary control. ‘You need a pack of cards to tell you that?’ he says. ‘Why didn’t you come to me?’

They laugh again until they are laughed out, then Gregory says, ‘They never last, we both know that. But you can’t give up. Never say die. Tell us what happened.’

Jessie sips the coffee. Gregory doesn’t buy jars of coffee, he buys drums of it. It is the cheapest on the market and looks and tastes like powdered clay. But it has the effect that Gregory wants. He speeds through his life with a minimum of sleep. He is one of those people who is never bored, always up to something or other. Jessie sometimes wishes she had half his energy.

‘We went for a few pints, then picked up a Chinese take-away.’

‘Your place or his?’

‘Mine.’

‘Candles?’

‘Come off it, will you? That’s a bit too blatant for me.’

‘Not for me.’

‘I know. That’s why you always scare them off.’

‘Is it? Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

‘I did. A hundred times.’

Gregory sighs. ‘I suppose you did. Never mind. Go on, anyway.’

‘That’s all. He’s a photographer. We chatted a bit and then he went home.’

Gregory is crestfallen. ‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. He said he had some work to do.’

‘Maybe he did.’

‘Maybe. I don’t know anything about him. He could be spoken for, you know?’

‘Maybe he’s gay?’

‘Don’t get your hopes up.’

‘Why not? He’s no use to you if he is.’

‘I suppose not. But I don’t think he is. I think he’s just cagey.’

Patrick wakes in the early hours of the morning, from a recurring dream in which he is imprisoned in a soundproof bubble, unable to communicate with the outside world and slowly suffocating. Wide-eyed in the pale city darkness he listens to the rustle of rats in the rubbish bags and the distant wail of a siren. He reaches out for the radio beside his bed, but it is already turned on. While he slept, the batteries have gone flat.

The gas fire is on low, and Patrick has a sensation that there is no air in the room. He fumbles around on the floor until he finds matches, then he lights the candle. A lorry passes along the road above, and after it there is the long, low drone of a descending plane.

Patrick pulls on his trousers and brings the candle to the darkroom, where he plugs in the electric kettle. Then he goes out into the back yard, to breathe the cool air. A single light burns on the top floor of the house, but there is no sound.

A light rain is falling into the yard. Patrick turns sideways onto his back door, to ensure that nothing can come out of the flat and take him from behind. Increasingly, the daily six or seven pints that Patrick can afford are not enough. He has to spread them out, often starting earlier in the day than he would like in order to set himself up for work. He is just getting by.

The few pints he keeps for the evenings are the best. Taken together they relax him, and if the right sort of crowd is in the pub he can even feel quite exuberant. But it doesn’t last. On the nights when he can’t afford the luxury of a bottle to bring home, he finds himself struggling to keep his back turned against the enemy.

He knows that he will have to get out of this place before it drives him mad. Jessie returns to his mind.

Hera can be devastatingly attractive to men. Who would not love to have their slippers put on, their bath run, their meals brought hot to the table and cleared away afterwards? Who is there who does not, from time to time, long to hand over responsibility for their lives and all their problems to someone who appears to be ready and able to take it all on?

Hera will do all this, and more. She will listen to troubles and give sound advice. She will rub aching muscles, attend at the sickbed, repair damaged pride. And all that she asks, for all that she does, is one small thing in return.

Obedience.

Patrick recoils from Jessie’s image. If he does get out it will not be that way. Never again.

D
IONYSUS, PERHAPS BECAUSE OF
his half-caste status, has a constant need to prove his divinity and gain recognition both among the other gods and among mortals. The powers that be, whether in the form of the king or the government, seek to repress him and to that end they imprison him. But being sent underground has no effect on Dionysus other than to make him more powerful than ever. He bursts forth, and under his influence his followers turn upon the authority of the state and tear it to shreds. The fact that he has done this successfully in the past makes no difference. He acts, as do all the gods, according to his nature.

As the gods’ messenger I have been asked, many times, if there is any way of becoming free of their influence. Given my nature, it isn’t easy to offer a straight answer. Various methods have been tried. The Indian yogis, for example, have discovered that if you sit in the same place for long enough and refuse to move, the gods will eventually get bored and go away.

Jessie has tried it, on more than one occasion. She has even done a course in TM, where they charge you £250 for your own personal piece of gibberish which will keep your mind busy while you are refusing to move. Whenever she has done it, Jessie has found meditation beneficial, but in the end she always slides. It takes too much effort, too much willpower and too much time. Besides, she knows of one or two cases of people who have become completely addicted to it.

Patrick, however, is in no danger there. He has never, ever tried meditation. Any form of reflection or contemplation is anathema to him. It is crucial to his survival that he does not stop and think. To this end he keeps himself permanently occupied in one way or another, and when he has nothing else to do and no more money to spend in the pub, he listens to the radio.