Patrick points out three or four wilted stems which stand among the sparse nettles and docks. Jessie has seen fields of potatoes growing with lush, green foliage. She wonders briefly if Patrick is quite safe.
But the soil around one of the stems has already been loosened. He pushes it aside to reveal a cluster of small but perfect potatoes, brown eggs in a black nest.
‘How did they get there?’ says Jessie, bending down beside him.
‘Did you never grow them?’
‘No. Never.’
He handles the potatoes gently, shaking the last of the soil away. ‘You must have thrown out some old ones then. These guys are volunteers. They can keep going for years sometimes.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘My dad used to grow a few vegetables.’ Patrick pauses, then goes on. ‘Actually, my mother did, mainly. I used to help a bit.’ He begins to gather the potatoes. ‘Shall I cook some?’
‘Are they all right, do you think?’
‘Yes, of course. What could be wrong with them?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘They should be eaten soon, anyway. Before the frost gets them.’
There are nine potatoes under the stem but three of them are no bigger than marbles. They bring them all, anyway, and drop them into the sink.
‘What shall I do to go with them?’
‘Are you serious?’ says Jessie. ‘Are you really going to cook?’
‘Can I? Would you mind?’
‘No. I’d be delighted.’ Together they unpack the shopping. There is hake, broccoli, salad, a crusty stick of French bread and a bottle of wine.
‘Shall I open it?’ says Jessie.
‘No,’ says Patrick. ‘Not for me, anyway.’
It is not the first time that Patrick has come off the drink. He has done it before for a week, for a month, for three months at a time. Since he was never sufficiently introspective to differentiate between the usual state of liverish irritation and the less usual state of withdrawal anxiety, he never found it much of a problem. Walls that can keep out the pain of the past can keep out the pain of the present as well.
Just now, as he moves round the kitchen, he is happy, glad to have something useful to do. As he cooks, remembering techniques long since fallen into disuse, his hands are quite steady. This is because the tremor which is beginning to afflict him has been banished to much, much deeper regions of his being.
Jessie, meanwhile, has returned to her office and the Bailey manuscript. She can’t believe what she has come home to. He gardens, he cooks, he hangs out his own clothes and he clears up after himself. It is too good to be true. And what is even better is that her mind switches easily away from him and into her work. By dinner-time she has run through another two chapters and is in the home straight. In the kitchen, Patrick has laid the table and is making dill sauce to go with the fish.
As they sit down to eat, he says: ‘I hope I’m not being too much of an intrusion.’
‘No, not at all.’
‘The weird thing is that I didn’t really intend to come here. There are plenty of people around who would have given me a bed for the night. I wasn’t looking for one, though. I was just walking. I suppose I must have been in a state of shock.’
Jessie gets up and brings salt and pepper to the table. ‘You certainly seemed to be when you arrived,’ she says. ‘I thought you were having some kind of breakdown.’
Patrick sucks air through his teeth. ‘Was I that bad? I’m sorry about that. I feel a bit of a fool.’
‘Well don’t. You don’t need to.’
They fall silent, eating. The fish is perfect and the potatoes are better than any she ever bought in town, but Jessie barely notices. Her mind is hovering around the question that must inevitably be asked, but she finds that it is almost impossible to ask it. The answer is much more important than it ought to be.
Patrick is enjoying the food enormously. It is the best meal he has had in years and he is making the most of it. If he is not worried by the question that Jessie isn’t asking, it’s because he has developed a phenomenal ability to devote himself to the present moment at times like this. His philosophy, in so far as he has one, is that it is small matters which deserve attention. Left to themselves, the big ones will go away. And if they won’t, then he will.
When at last the silence becomes insufferable, Jessie’s resistance breaks down.
‘So what are you going to do now?’
Patrick is startled back into a larger reality and it shows. It gives Jessie her second glimpse of his fragility. As he covers it with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders, it occurs to him that he might say ‘Wash up’, but he doesn’t. Instead he says: ‘I’m not sure. In some ways it may not be such a bad thing, if you know what I mean. I was in a bit of a rut where I was. Sometimes you need a bit of a shake-up to make you move on.’
‘Yes,’ says Jessie, a little dubiously. She is not as adept at dealing with shake-ups as Patrick.
He begins to clear away the plates. Jessie has bought strawberry tarts from the little French bakery in Bromley. She puts on the kettle, wondering if she is being foolish or if he is being evasive. She has the impression that they are somehow circling around each other.
Now that the question has been asked, Patrick too is aware of some danger in the air. He has never looked too closely at his ambivalent attitude to women. It lies in the Pandora’s box of confusing things which he prefers not to think about.
But from where I’m standing it is perfectly simple. Hera has made repeated attempts to lure him away from Dionysus. And he, up until the last failure, has been most willing to be lured. Being mortal and unaware that he was already spoken for, he has always been completely unable to understand Hera’s fury when she failed, on each occasion, to claim him. Dionysus won’t protect Patrick from the psychological battering that she inflicts. Why should he? It serves Patrick right for not admitting who is boss and binds him ever more tightly into his service. So Patrick, confused, hurt, retreating, puts it all down to the capricious nature of women.
He will never ask Jessie if he can stay. Never. He will wait for as long as his pride will allow for her to ask him and then, if necessary, he will walk out into the midnight streets.
‘Shall I make some coffee?’ he says.
The phone rings and Jessie answers it. It is Lydia, wondering what has happened to ‘Life Drawing’.
‘I’ve done most of it,’ says Jessie, ‘and I’ve made an awful lot of changes. I’m not sure I shouldn’t give Frances a ring.’
‘Don’t.’
‘But I’m being pretty drastic, you know?’
‘Be drastic,’ says Lydia. ‘It’s only suggestions. Frances knows that. But speed it up a bit, will you? I’ve got Jennifer’s new thing coming out and we want it for the Christmas market.’
‘That’ll be tight.’
‘You can do it. Who was it that answered the phone earlier on?’
‘What?’
‘I phoned this afternoon. A man answered. Said you were out.’
Jessie glances towards the kitchen. ‘That was Patrick,’ she says. ‘Just a friend.’
‘Ah.’
‘Goodbye, Lydia.’
‘Goodbye.’
The little game they were playing seems to have lost its importance as Jessie returns to the table. Patrick is pouring coffee. ‘I forgot to tell you there was a phone call earlier,’ he says. ‘A woman. She didn’t leave a message.’
‘That was her. It doesn’t make any difference.’ Jessie puts milk in her coffee. ‘Do you mind if I make myself scarce? I’ve got to get on with some work.’
‘No, go ahead.’
‘You’re welcome to that bed for the time being, if you want it. While you sort yourself out.’
His relief shows in his face. ‘Thanks.’
And Jessie’s does, too. ‘Especially if you cook like that,’ she says.
H
AVING PROVED HIS DIVINITY
throughout Boeotia and the Aegean Islands, Dionysus boarded a ship bound for Naxos. The Tyrrhenian sailors on board were enchanted by the youth’s effeminate beauty and decided to steer for Asia and sell him as a slave. When Dionysus rumbled them, he caused a great vine of ivy to entwine itself around the mast, then turned himself into a lion. The pirates, confused and terrified, threw themselves overboard and into the sea, where they turned into dolphins.
Patrick sleeps long and dreamlessly. When he wakes, it takes him a minute or two to get his bearings, then he remembers and stretches luxuriously. Even with the curtains drawn this room with its pale blue walls and white woodwork is brighter than the one in King’s Cross ever was. For a long while he lies without moving, just savouring the bright comfort of his new life. He hopes that Jessie hasn’t gone out. He has promised himself that he will make pancakes for her breakfast.
With a slight reluctance he takes off Jessie’s grandad shirt and puts on his own clothes. It is a return to his old identity, and yet not quite, because the clothes smell completely different from the way they always did when they came back from the launderette. They smell of expensive washing powder and fresh air, and of Jessie’s house, snug and warm. As he buttons his shirt he opens the curtains and looks out. It has rained again during the night and the garden is gleaming and fresh. The results of yesterday’s labours are visible, the beginning of new order.
Patrick hums a tune as he straightens the bed and picks up the clothes he slept in. He has the new leaf feeling that he sometimes got as a child when he made the decision that he was going to be helpful around the place and avoid his mother’s disapproval. He goes into the bathroom and runs hot water into the hand-basin, enjoying the novelty of it and of Jessie’s musky soap slickly turning between his hands. But when he looks up and encounters himself in the mirror, his sense of well-being evaporates. It is a familiar feeling, learnt way back in those chaotic childhood days. No matter how hard he tried, he was never quite good enough.
Patrick hasn’t seen himself in a properly lit mirror for nearly six years. He would see no reason to complain about those years, but every one of them has taken its toll. They show in his skin, his eyes, the grey hairs shoving through the black. Even his stubble is greying. He stares at his reflection until the details begin to become magnified and the image threatens to melt into some Daliesque monstrosity, then he looks away and blanks out his vision with soap and water.
But washing his face makes no difference to the way it looks. Afterwards, he sits on the edge of the bath and stares at his hands. Even they have grown old. His spirit sinks down until, despite himself, it reaches the place where the pain lies. He must be crazy to think that he can just change, just take up a new life in a place like this with a woman like Jessie. As he washes, he realises that he has nothing except the clothes he stands up in, not even a toothbrush. It has all been a dream, a childish fantasy. There is nothing for him to do except to go back where he belongs, to King’s Cross.
Downstairs there is no sign of Jessie. The clock says 2.30. Patrick isn’t sure whether to believe it or not. There is bread beside the toaster, coffee and tea beside the kettle. He looks round, hoping to find a note, something which would recognise his existence and make him feel welcome, but there is none. So he makes toast, butters it and brings it out into the garden. The smell of the broken earth where he lifted the potatoes reaches him and he breathes deeply, hungrily. Beside him, Jessie’s bird table leans precariously over the tangled grass of the lawn. Patrick straightens it and heels in the hole at its base, then leaves a few crusts on the top, a little offering for Demeter as he takes his leave of her. He would have liked to finish straightening out those tiles. The brief spell of work he did here has changed something for him. He wonders now if he might be able to get the money together to go back to Ireland and rent or even buy some small place in the West. From time to time he reads the
London Irish Weekly
so he knows that it’s still possible to find small farms going cheap.
The sun is beginning to break through the clouds as Patrick leaves the garden behind him and goes through the house to the hall. His black hat hangs on a peg above his coat and as he puts it on he has a sense of returning to a bleaker sort of reality, like an actor changing his bright costume for street clothes. He makes a mental search in case he has forgotten anything, then opens the front door. Jessie is on the doorstep, fumbling about in her pocket for her keys. She has a plastic bag in her hand with a newspaper sticking out of the top.
‘Hello,’ she says. ‘Where are you going?’
Patrick is acutely aware of the stubbled face he saw earlier in the mirror, but there is no way of hiding it from her.
‘King’s Cross,’ he says.
‘Why?’
He shrugs. ‘I left all my stuff there, Jessie. I don’t even have a razor blade.’
‘Hang on a minute,’ she says.
He waits on the doorstep, looking up to avoid looking out at the angular nature of the street and its houses. The sky is surprisingly clear and blue. It occurs to him that he could stop in at the
Irish Weekly
office and find out where Ray is. Ray would certainly give him a hand to get set up again, or if not, then to find something else. Except for that twenty quid. He can’t face Ray without that. He is just wondering whether he would have the neck to borrow it from Jessie when she comes back and stuffs a crumpled bundle of carrier bags into his hand.
‘And I got a key cut for you,’ she says, dropping it into his other hand. Her fingers brush his as she does so.
‘I might not be here when you get back,’ she goes on. ‘I have some business in town.’
Her face is open, fresh, almost eager. As he looks into her eyes it is not gratitude he feels, but the first, welcome stirrings of desire.
The door of the basement flat is still ajar, the plastic bag still wedged underneath it, still breathing. It seems likely that no one has been there, but even so, even in the bright daylight, Patrick feels the familiar dread.
There is no sound from the boys above. Patrick has a vision of them lying around the flat, their bodies open, murdered by some madman for their sins. He creeps through the door, every nerve on standby. He isn’t sure whether he has more to fear from the gloom within or from the dark shadow that he has begun to perceive at his back. But when he turns round, the street is empty apart from the anonymity of passing cars and buses. He edges forward. Nothing has been touched since he was last here. The floor is still strewn with his possessions.