As Jessie leaves the room with her coffee, he says: ‘I don’t suppose you have a TV hidden away somewhere?’
‘I have, as a matter of fact,’ she says. ‘It’s in my bedroom.’
Patrick had a TV for a while in King’s Cross but the reception there was never good and in the end he sold it for thirty quid during a rare drought. But now, remember, he is available for any of the gods who can get their bid in. And TV is an ideal distraction for him. Its presence eliminates the tendency which is inherent in most people to think about themselves and their lives, and that is exactly what Patrick wants just now.
It is the first time he has been in Jessie’s bedroom and he enters it cautiously, more than a little fearful. It is the shrine of the goddess, decked out in the sensuous colours Jessie loves, deep menstrual reds and soft pinks. The air is fragrant with the essential oils that she sometimes burns when she’s feeling wound up and insomnious. But Patrick is very aware that they mask the more primitive smell that will always, washed or unwashed, perfumed or not, accompany women.
He turns on the light and then the TV. It’s on top of a tall chest of drawers, which is suggestive of the position it occupies in Jessie’s life. She considers it to be an ugly but necessary tool to be kept out of the way and used only in cases of emergency. Patrick flicks through the channels. There are just the basic four, no cable. He settles on a documentary about the prison system that has just started. The only chair in the room is piled high with clothes so he sits, a little apprehensively, on the edge of the bed.
But he is not comfortable. He cannot get rid of the awareness of Jessie’s presence, if not in the room then immediately outside it and about to come in. He feels, he realises, a little like a prisoner himself, awaiting sentence. He watches the images on the screen but his ears are not yet tuned in to the sound. He is listening for Jessie’s footsteps on the stairs.
The office is directly beneath Jessie’s bedroom. She listens for a while to Patrick’s footsteps overhead, wondering if he is having a snoop. She is on edge about him being there, even though she can’t think of anything that she wouldn’t want him to see. She hasn’t kept a diary for several years and she has learnt not to be ashamed of feminine necessities like tampons and contraceptives. None the less, her bedroom is her own private space and no one has been in there except herself since John left.
After a while she relaxes and turns to her work but she is tired from the general upheavals of the week, and can’t give it the attention it requires. Above her, Patrick crosses the room again and switches the channel, then turns up the volume. Jessie grits her teeth and puts her hands over her ears for a moment. Sharing the house is going to take some getting used to.
Patrick has found a good film. Gradually he relaxes and leans back on the bed, propping himself up with his arms, but it doesn’t remain comfortable for long. He listens for a while to the silence in the rest of the house, then lies down on the bed, his shoulders against the headrest, his elbows on the pillows. During the advertisements he relaxes still further and as he does so he notices one of Jessie’s hairs on the pink pillowcase. He picks it up and runs it through his fingers, amazed at its length.
The movie returns. Patrick watches it and begins, absently, to wind Jessie’s hair around his middle finger. When he reaches the end of it he looks down to see the effect. It is like a fine, silken thread. He hunts on the pillow and finds another hair, and another. And on the dressing table is a hairbrush with still more.
He watches the movie with half his attention. By the next set of advertisements he has a copper band around his finger, softly gleaming in the muted pink light of the room.
The door handle clicks like a gunshot. Patrick jumps and sits up, swinging his feet off the bed. With his back towards the door, he rubs surreptitiously at the hair on his finger but it has no elasticity. It won’t slide off.
‘I just brought you some cocoa,’ says Jessie. He turns and smiles. She has, he notices, brought hers as well. He stands up, acutely embarrassed, and slips his hand into his pocket. Jessie crosses the room and hands him a cup. He takes a step back as he accepts it. Jessie pretends not to notice his behaviour. The TV rescues them both from the awkwardness of the situation.
‘That’s
Dog Day Afternoon,
isn’t it?’ says Jessie.
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘It’s one of my favourite films.’
Patrick smiles stiffly and raises the cup of cocoa, slopping it slightly. ‘I think I’ll take this off to bed.’
‘Really? Don’t you want to watch the end of it?’
‘No,’ says Patrick, ‘I’ve seen it before.’ It is one of his rare, desperation-driven lies.
‘I’ll leave you alone if you like,’ says Jessie. ‘I’m not quite finished downstairs.’
‘No, no. It’s not that at all. I’m quite tired, really. That’s all.’ He heads for the door, giving Jessie a wide berth. She is strongly tempted to ask him what he has in his pocket, but she lets it go. ‘Goodnight, then.’
‘Goodnight.’
Patrick crosses the hallway to his room and closes the door behind him. He sits on the edge of the bed and puts the cocoa down on the floor, hissing in exasperation as he slops it again, over the pale carpet. His hands are trembling slightly and he interlinks his fingers and bends them until they crack. The room no longer feels like the haven it was in the morning. He has done it again. Made an almighty fool of himself. He cracks his fingers again, then makes another attempt to get rid of the band of hair. It is infuriatingly tenacious. He rubs at it, trying to work it off over the end of his finger but it will not go. By now the ends have become entangled so he has no chance of finding them and unwinding the damn thing. For a moment he stares at his quivering hand in perplexity. What if it never came off? What if he were condemned to wear it for the rest of his life?
In sudden revulsion he stands up and shakes his hand, as though the ring had a life of its own and might give up and drop off. The trembling is beginning to spread inwards, up his arms and towards his heart. With an effort of will, Patrick sits down and slowly, with painstaking care, slides the hair up his finger and off the end. Then he opens the window and throws it out.
In Jessie’s bedroom the TV is still on but she isn’t watching it. She is looking at herself in the full-length mirror, slightly despondently. It’s rare for her to put on weight but her sedentary life tends to pool what she has around her hips and thighs. Even so, despite her best efforts she cannot convince herself that the image which confronts her is ugly. Nor has she been the slightest bit pushy. She knows that Patrick’s weird behaviour is his problem but it’s unsettling, and as long as he’s in her house it’s her problem, too. As she turns away from the mirror, Jessie decides that it’s time to get Gregory’s advice.
O
NE DAY, THE WISE
goddess Athene found Aphrodite working quietly on a loom. Athene complained; it was an infringement on her area of patronage. Aphrodite acquiesced, and has never worked since. She has one divine duty and one only. That is to make love.
Gregory has plans for the weekend so Jessie invites him to come on Monday, even though she suspects that Patrick may be gone by then. But Patrick shows no signs of leaving. He alternates between periods of determined, almost frenzied activity and spells of depressive silence. Several times Jessie comes into a room and finds him just getting up from a chair, about to embark upon something. On each occasion, she has the impression that her entry has disturbed him from some long episode of immobility.
She is right. It is the immobility of conflict, the same conflict which besieged him that day in the kitchen when he brought in the potatoes and sat down for tea. It doesn’t always express itself so clearly to him as it did then but it is essentially the same condition.
Jessie has a suspicion that he might be hiding from something, perhaps even on the run. But the last thing she wants to do is to start grilling him and run the risk of scaring him off. So she leaves him alone, and tries harder than she has ever done before not to impose her will on anything that happens in the house.
They are both, in a sense, engaged in the same struggle. Each of them recognises, however dimly, the forces which have led to the downfall of their relationships in the past, and each of them is trying to avoid repeating the old pattern. And meanwhile, something else is happening here. Jessie and Patrick are sliding steadily towards another of the Olympian deities who is waiting in the wings.
On Monday, there is a friendly squabble about who is going to cook. Jessie doesn’t enjoy cooking for herself, but she loves to make a fuss of her friends. But Patrick insists, and she gives in. She is beginning to understand how badly he needs to have something to do.
Jessie lays the table, complete with candles, and opens a bottle of wine. Patrick throws a slosh into the stroganoff he’s cooking but declines to take a glass when Gregory arrives. Instead, to fill in the post-introductory lull, he takes Gregory out to the garden to look at the sundial.
The garden has already changed beyond recognition. Patrick has weeded out everything that looked small and insignificant from the flowerbeds and spread the compost evenly among them. He has cleared the flags and scrubbed them clean. Earlier in the day he took the garden shears and trimmed back the buddleia and laburnum which were leaning out over the windows of the conservatory and blocking out the light. The shears are still propped against the wall of the house. Tomorrow he plans to start on the lawn.
Jessie stays outside the back door and watches, giving Gregory space to follow his researches. As she stands with her glass in her hand, she catches a glimpse of something odd which draws her attention away from the men. She bends down to look more closely. On the coping stone of the low wall which surrounds the laburnum tree is a little twist of her hair, glinting in the light thrown out from the conservatory. The starlings have taken Patrick’s crusts from the bird table, but it is autumn now and none of the birds is collecting anything else. No one has use for Jessie’s hair.
She stares at it in bewilderment. It is not one of the tangles that she pulls from the plughole of the sink from time to time, nor is it the fluffy cleanings from a hairbrush. It is a carefully fabricated circlet. Something that someone has made.
It gives Jessie the creeps, reminds her of some kind of voodoo charm. She remembers Patrick’s strange behaviour of the other night and wonders if the two things are somehow connected. She has heard that there are occult fellowships gaining strength here and there around the country, and it occurs to her once again that she really knows nothing at all about this man who has moved so abruptly into her life. On the other side of the garden, Gregory and Patrick are looking down at the fallen sundial in a purposeful sort of way, discussing the possibilities of putting it up again. The daylight is almost gone, but she can still just about see them as they bend down together and heave the short pillar upright, then make a few adjustments and step back. It stands on the broken base, held secure for the moment by its own weight. The two men congratulate each other, and Patrick calls over to Jessie to come and see, but as he does so she becomes aware that she is only wearing a light blouse, and the evening is growing cold.
‘Well done,’ she calls, then turns and goes back into the house.
Patrick follows her in. ‘Is everything all right?’
‘Yes. I’m a bit cold, that’s all. I’ll keep an eye on the pots.’
‘They’ll be OK for another few minutes. Why don’t you come and help us?’
‘You don’t really need me, do you?’
‘I suppose not.’ Patrick goes into the conservatory and sorts out a few lengths from the old timber that Jessie saved when the staircase had to be replaced a year ago. He takes them outside, but before he can cross the garden to where Gregory is waiting, he, too, catches sight of the ring of Jessie’s hair. He had put it out of his mind so successfully that its reappearance comes as a profound shock, and he stands paralysed, staring.
‘Got some?’ Gregory calls.
Patrick looks up. ‘Yes.’ But still he can’t bring himself to move. In his mind the resurrected sundial has become imbued with the same ominous and primitive menace as the tiny band of hair, and he has no desire to step out of the light towards it. He is on the point of returning to the house and telling Jessie that he will have that glass of wine, after all, when Gregory begins to walk towards him. In desperation, Patrick picks up the circlet and throws it towards the branches of the laburnum.
‘What was that?’ says Gregory, stepping into the light.
‘Cockroach,’ says Patrick.
Some perceive the gods as being outside themselves, others as being within. Patrick’s life is haunted by shadows, insubstantial but threatening forces in the world around him. His tendency is to mistrust people and he is continually suspicious of their motives with regard to him. He has a preference for being with a crowd of people, where the talk is bound to steer clear of the personal and remain among the wider issues with which he is comfortable. Gregory likes to party as well, but for another reason. As far as communication is concerned, he, like Jessie, prefers one to one. What fascinates both of them is what makes people tick, what draws them together and pushes them apart, what they feel, and not what they think. They are both inclined to look towards their own conflicts and motivations more than those of others, whereas Patrick cannot, for fear of what he will find. By the time he and Gregory have finished propping up the sundial, they are getting on well. But when they sit down to eat, the conversation is a little less successful. In normal circumstances, Jessie would have found the evening boring, but she is too enchanted by Patrick to take much notice of what he is saying. Gregory does his best, but he finds photography boring, and Irish history, and motorbikes. In an attempt to bring the subject round to more acceptable territory, he says, ‘And have you read
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
?’