Down Among the Gods (8 page)

The radio is Patrick’s companion in life. But this week every few shillings will count, so he forgoes renewing the batteries. It is a tough, tough week. The price of fixer has gone up by half a pint, and the shop he usually deals with has run out of the paper he needs, so he has to get a larger and more expensive size and cut it down. It works out cheaper in the long run, but the long run has never had a place in Patrick’s budget.

On Friday evening, he and Ray go to a traditional Irish concert in Clapham. By ten o’clock, Patrick has spent all the money he brought with him and is ready to go home, but Ray has heard about the stray film and insists on lending him twenty quid. By the following morning, what is left of it is jingling in Patrick’s pocket, and buys him a couple of pints and a sandwich before the football match he has been sent to cover.

As he is coming home that evening, he runs into Paul, one of the boys who lives above him.

‘How’s it going, Patrick?’

‘Not so bad. And you?’

‘Grim. Any chance of a fiver?’

‘Sorry. I haven’t even got the price of a cup of coffee.’

‘Haven’t you?’ says Paul. ‘That’s rough. Come up and have one with us, will you?’

Patrick has only once been in their part of the house, and that was when he went in to fix up his electrical connection. At that time Paul wasn’t there, nor were any of the boys who now share the house, but its orientation was the same. One by one the lads move on and are replaced by new ones, homeless and stranded in London, glad to meet up with friendly faces and willing, for want of alternative, to join them in their trade.

All the lights in the house are on, even though it isn’t yet dark. The stereo is on, too, and in another room, the TV. In front of it a boy that Patrick hasn’t met before is sitting cross-legged on the floor wearing nothing except Doc Martens and a pair of underpants. He is carefully decorating his legs with tiger stripes, using a thick, black marker. Behind him one of the grids of the gas fire is leaking, sending up a roaring yellow flame which blackens the wall above it as far as the ceiling.

Paul goes into the kitchen. Patrick stands adrift and looks at the TV, but the noise of the stereo drowns out the words of the actors. The boy turns round, and is a little startled to find that he has company. ‘Who are you?’ he says.

‘Patrick. I live downstairs. And you?’

‘Corrie. I like your hat. What you doing here if you live downstairs?’

‘Just called in for a cup of coffee. Is that OK?’

‘Oh, yeah. I’ll put the kettle on.’

He goes to stand up, but Patrick says, ‘No, it’s all right, Paul’s making it.’

‘Oh,’ says Corrie, ‘you with Paul, then?’

‘Yes,’ says Patrick. ‘No. I’ve just come in for a cup of coffee.’

‘So you keep saying,’ says Corrie. He holds the marker out to Patrick. ‘Will you do my back?’

‘We’ve got no milk,’ says Paul, coming in from the kitchen. ‘Do you mind Marvel?’

‘Bloody Marvel,’ says Corrie. ‘Rehydrates instantly into eight pints. Special discount packs available for haemophiliacs, guaranteed HIV negative.’

‘Shut your face, Corrie,’ says Paul. Patrick follows him with some relief as he goes back into the kitchen.

The two pints that Patrick drinks before the life drawing class are his first of the day and his last of the week. It means that he will have to go straight home afterwards, but in many ways that’s not a bad thing. He hasn’t got the fiver for Jessie, and this will give him a good excuse to avoid her.

But as he comes into the classroom, she spots him and waves. He tries to look away but it’s too late, she is already coming across the room towards him. And despite all the resolutions which have accompanied him throughout the week, he is surprised to find that he is delighted to see her.

‘How are things?’ he says.

‘Great. And you?’

Patrick sighs. ‘Bound to get better, I suppose.’

‘Nothing too bad, I hope,’ says Jessie, with a concern that appears genuine to both of them. There is nothing Hera loves better than a man who is all at sea with himself.

‘No,’ says Patrick. ‘Nothing I can’t take care of.’

The teacher calls the class to order and the model takes up a pose. Jessie has bought a new charcoal pencil in the hope that it might make her a better artist. For the first few minutes she does a great deal of loose sketching and rubbing, then eventually screws up the paper and starts again. The teacher gives her a dirty look. She, in turn, looks over at Patrick for support but he is, to all intents and purposes, engrossed in his own drawing.

But it’s not going well at all. His attention is being pulled again towards Jessie and there is nothing he can do to stop it. He feels like a foolish teenager, aware of Jessie’s every movement even when he is looking elsewhere.

And Dionysus is getting angry. He has been, perhaps, a little over-confident about his hold on Patrick, who is clearly wavering. If Hera gets her claws into him, there is a chance, just a chance, that Dionysus will lose him. He shoves Patrick’s focus as hard as he can towards the paper in front of him but it isn’t working. The drawing makes no sense to him at all. He looks up and meets Jessie’s eyes. She behaves in a way that would drive Lydia frantic, and herself, too, if she could gain any degree of objectivity. She doesn’t quite flutter her eyelashes but she looks up from beneath them in an engaging manner. Patrick responds with charming smiles and quick, sneaking glances.

The atmosphere between these two is so thick that it is permeating the room. There is no one in the class who is not aware that something very powerful is going on.

At the break, Jessie comes over to look at Patrick’s drawings, but he turns them round before she gets there. She tries to turn them back but he resists, stands in her way, and on a sudden impulse, puts his black hat on to her head.

Afterwards he can’t imagine why he has done it. Something has gone beyond his control. The model is posing again and he starts to draw, but he is becoming paralysed by conflict.

One of the Zen masters once said, ‘When walking, walk. When sitting, sit. Above all, don’t wobble.’ Patrick is wobbling now, torn between the desire to go along with Jessie in anything and everything she might propose and the opposing desire to flee.

But he draws. And the next time he stands back to look at his work, he turns numb with shock. The body he has drawn is a good representation of the model. But the face belongs to Jessie.

He is suddenly afraid that he is cracking up. As quietly as he can, he rolls up his drawings and slides out of the door without a backward glance.

Women. They ruin everything, and they always have done, right through his life. No matter how hard he tries to steer clear of them, they just can’t seem to leave him alone.

As he passes the Red Lion, the door opens and a sweet waft of warm, beer-scented air slips into the street. He almost follows it, is on the point of turning into the doorway and making a fool of himself when he remembers that he’s broke. He catches himself in the nick of time.

At the next corner there is a litter bin strapped to a lamppost. Patrick shoves the roll of drawings into it in rising anger. The twenty-five quid is the worst of it. It has been wasted but it’s the last time it’ll happen to him. He won’t take any more foolish gambles like that. It was just a crazy dream to think that he could ever get going as any kind of an artist. And why the hell should he want to, anyway? He has a perfectly good life, a good job, a comfortable place to live. Above all, he is his own man, a free agent. There is no one to tell him when to come in at night or when to get up in the morning. If he wants to work, he works. If he doesn’t, he doesn’t. Why sacrifice all that for the sake of some stupid fantasy? London is crawling with mugs who are trying to be artists.

He will never, never again allow himself to be diverted by coincidence. It’s dangerous, it leads people into all kinds of illusions and false avenues. He can’t understand now how he came to be deluded in that way; so easily, too. He has always believed that a man must remain in command of his own destiny.

Patrick stops abruptly. Normally he keeps his aggressive instincts locked securely away along with the rest of his emotions, but in a sudden rage now he thumps the wall with his fist, bruising the side of his hand quite badly. The bitch, the fucking whore. She has his hat.

He doesn’t know how long he has had that hat and he has managed to forget who gave it to him. But it is more a part of his identity than any other thing he owns. He measures out the rest of the street, each step a curse, but there is no way out of this. She will have to keep it. Nothing will induce him to go back.

Jessie has been completely thrown off kilter by Patrick’s behaviour. One minute he was flirting like Don Juan and the next he disappeared. She masks her disappointment as well as she can and participates in the rest of the class but she’s sure that she looks a fool. She is wearing the guy’s hat and he is gone. He didn’t even acknowledge her as he left.

She can’t take the hat off, either. The floor is dusty, and the chairs are all stacked at the back of the room, too far away to travel unnoticed.

Her drawings, she realises, are atrocious. All she has got out of the classes has been her flirtation with Patrick, and she has already let herself go too far. On the third time of meeting, he has succeeded in knocking her for six, and it’s clearly time to get a grip on herself. She brightens and finishes her last drawing with more assertiveness than usual. The teacher notices and nods her approval. When the class is over, Jessie circulates and introduces herself to some of the other members of the group, feeling slightly ashamed that she hasn’t done it before now. As she makes her way down to the Red Lion with the others, she stops off to leave her drawings and the hat in the car. It isn’t until she is inside the door of the pub that she realises how much she had been hoping that Patrick might have been waiting for her there. But by the time she gets to her second gin and tonic, her spirits are lifting.

Is there any god greater than Dionysus? Imagine a world bereft of his gifts and condemned to eternal sobriety. Who else among the Olympians has the power to soothe all griefs and lift the soul towards joy? To coax tired feet into dance and weary voices into song? To wind down the over-stimulated mind and wind up the listless one?

For an hour and a half, Jessie loses herself in laughter and companionship. When she leaves the pub, she is light-hearted. It is not until she catches sight of the black hat in the passenger seat that she is brought back to Hera’s heel with jarring speed.

‘Fuck him!’ she says. She almost flings the hat out into the street and there are times afterwards when she wishes that she had. But it wouldn’t have made any difference. Patrick isn’t to blame for what she’s going through, even though he might take credit if he knew. The problem that Jessie has is with Hera.

D
IONYSUS WAS, IS, WILL
always be on campaign across the world. This time around, he has some new avenues of influence. Vines do not grow in the large modern cities, and nor do mushrooms, but marijuana plants do, and so do small chemical factories and large dealership networks. Dionysus, in all probability, has never been so powerful before. He has taken over the centres of all the major Western cities and, along with his cohorts is marching outwards, through the suburbs and into the rural areas. As well as his old and reliable alcoholic beverages, he is armed with smack, crack, coke, acid and Ecstasy. He looks set to prove once again that he is entitled to his seat among the greatest of the gods. And Hera is furious.

The next day brings a bonus for Patrick. Brendan pays him for this week’s work and takes as well the belated theatre and O’Mahoney photos. He also pays for some extra photos he used several months ago that Patrick had forgotten about. It isn’t that he has any particular sense of obligation towards Patrick, even though he pays him less than he should. If it was left to him, he’d give Patrick the shove at the first opportunity. But he isn’t so keen to lose Ray. And Ray has given him a talking to.

Patrick binges. He calculates the money he needs for the week and brings the rest of it with him to the local. There he spends a rare, uninhibited evening with his squatter neighbours, buying drinks for them and enjoying for a brief interval, the illusion of wealth.

It isn’t until the next morning that he remembers the twenty quid he owes Ray. But he has no regrets, not even during the liverish gloom of the following morning. There are easy ways of dealing with liverish gloom. Regret is a different matter.

Jessie, too, gets a surprise this week. The estate agent phones to say that there has been a good offer for her mother’s house in Bromley and he advises her to accept. She phones Maxine in Uruguay and they agree to go ahead with the sale.

Jessie has never had much truck with Ploutos, the god of wealth. Her promiscuous days were lived out in squats and cheap rented accommodation in and around the Angel, and most of the people she mixed with had a similar disdain for money. Jessie herself always had a small income from her grant, and later from temping as a typist, but most of her circle of friends were on the dole. It never seemed to matter that there wasn’t much money about. If one person didn’t have it, another did. There was always just enough.

After she split up with Alec she came into her first inheritance, when her father’s widowed and childless sister died. It was enough to put down a deposit on the Camden house and buy a good computer. The work was satisfying and kept her afloat but she never saw it as a means to getting rich. Getting rich is not among her ambitions.

But this news has taken her by surprise. Her share in the price of the house will be enough to make her dream of rural bliss into a reality. At this moment, the thought is a little too terrifying to take on board.

The sale of the house has other consequences as well. The contents have now to be sorted out and disposed of. Maxine is too far away to be of any assistance. Over the phone, she earmarks one or two things that she wants to be kept for her. The rest is up to Jessie.