The phone in his pocket vibrated. He checked the message. It was from his mother.
Don’t even think about it.
Down on the stage, things were kicking off. Apollo had struck a pose in the center of the stage, hands clawing at his temples, head weaving from side to side, presumably to imply that he was chasing after inspiration, in a manner Eros knew to be entirely unnecessary. Meanwhile, the sibyls had trotted off in opposite directions, each heading for one of the banked aisles, a lascivious cameraman in tow. Though to be fair to the cameramen, it would be a feat of technical genius not to make the footage a festival of legs, bums, and breasts.
“I’m getting something,” moaned Apollo. “It’s coming to me . . . ”
As the sibyl that was working his staircase drew nearer, Eros tried to hunch behind his fake mustache, drawing one hand up to cover his face. But she didn’t see him, instead stopping a few steps short of where he was sitting, her gaze fixed on a woman in her fifties, wearing a mauve velour tracksuit, with breasts the size of beach balls and solid yellow hair.
“Yes, yes,” said Apollo. “I can feel something now . . . It’s very strong . . .”
Eros was sitting close to the sibyl and he had the eyes of an archer, so he was probably the only person in the room other than Apollo to see her fingers twitch.
“You,” said Apollo. “The beautiful lady in purple. I have a message for you.”
A sound man dangled a microphone over the astonished woman, distracting the audience as the sibyl’s fingers twitched again.
“You lost someone . . . ,” said Apollo. “Something precious to you. A hat.”
This time the sibyl’s twitch was more of a jab.
“A cat,” corrected Apollo.
The yellow-topped woman gasped and nodded.
“That’s right,” she said. “How did you know?”
“Worry no more,” said Apollo. “Rest your troubled mind. Little Cliff got locked in a neighbor’s garage and he’ll be coming home just as soon as they get back from holiday.”
“Little Cliff—that’s his name,” said the woman. “And the neighbors are away. They’re at her sister’s cottage in Wales. There’s no way he could have known that,” she told the rest of the audience. “It’s a miracle!”
The sibyl smiled, resting her hands, but Apollo continued.
“Little Cliff says that you mustn’t fret, he’s fine in the garage, but he’s getting sick of eating mice and can you have his favorite ready for him when he gets home.”
“Fish pie! I will, darling, I will. Thank you,” sobbed the woman. “Oh, thank you.”
The sibyl glared at Apollo, but he ignored her, instead staggering back a few paces.
“That’s it,” he groaned. “It’s gone, it’s gone . . .”
The audience burst into applause, all but Eros, who was incensed on behalf of the sibyls. It was like the Delphi days all over again. Apollo, always the center of attention, palming off all of the hard work on everybody else and stealing all of the plaudits. As Apollo staggered across the room at the beckoning of the other sibyl’s nimble fingers, Eros found his foot stretching out to his bag, stroking the bow and arrows that were concealed inside.
The telephone in his pocket buzzed. His mother again.
Remember Daphne.
Down on the stage, Apollo was enjoying himself. At first it had been confusing to wear the earpiece, to hear the constant flow of instructions from the director telling him what to say and how to stand and where to look, but he soon realized that it was a lot easier if he ignored him, and so he did. Apollo had never responded well to being told what to do.
Now he was free to improvise. Sure, there had been rehearsals. Sure, there had been a script. Sure, right now he could see the producer, the director, and various other people he had immediately and accurately assessed as being too unimportant to register making frantic faces at him through the soundproof glass that separated the production gallery from the auditorium. And he could hear the frantic shouting that corresponded to the faces.
“Get those hairy legs of yours back to the cross on the floor and stop waving your arms around!”
But if he concentrated hard enough, the words in his earpiece were just sounds. Who were they to speak to him, anyway? Those ignorant ants who called themselves the Production Team. Apollo was not a team player. He was a showman. He had been doing this forever, since long before their minor island had broken off into the sea.
“We need to go to a break! Apollo, cut to a break!”
Apollo fell to his knees and clutched at the studio floor.
“By the sands of the Aegean,” he cried, letting imaginary grains run through his fingers, “the future is mine, oh yes!”
Daphne: of course Eros remembered her. Everybody remembered Daphne; she was the reason that Apollo had been giving him dirty looks for the last three thousand years. Apollo had once made the mistake of denigrating his cousin’s abilities, and to prove his strength, Eros had made him fall in love with a beautiful nymph and made the nymph hate him in return. In fact, she had been so repulsed by his overtures that she had persuaded her father to turn her into a tree. It did no good. Apollo would rub himself against her bark and wear her leaves as a crown, while all the other gods mocked him. For hundreds of years, long after Apollo had got over the heartbreak, every time he suggested doing anything at all, the reply to him would be: “I don’t know. I don’t really fancy it. Maybe I’ll turn myself into a tree instead.” In the end, Apollo had started turning mortals into trees himself, just to reclaim his dignity. Daphne, in other words, was a precedent.
Of course, if he had any evidence, any suggestion that Apollo had changed, had discovered a little humility after all this time, he wouldn’t dream of—
On stage, his cousin struck a pose, both arms out: “Cower before my power!” he exhorted the somewhat bemused audience.
Eros’s pocket thrummed.
Do it, said his phone.
Eros took one last look at his cousin’s arrogant face and shut his eyes. He knew his vicar wouldn’t be very impressed by this, but then again, there were a lot of things his vicar would be shocked by if he were privy to them. He took a deep breath and began to pray.
Our Father, who art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name. Was it acceptable, he wondered, theologically speaking, to pray for forgiveness for something you hadn’t done yet, just before you were about to do it? Or was there something illogical about it? Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Were you only supposed to sin if you didn’t know what you were doing beforehand? Or how long were you supposed to wait before you noticed? There were still some things he didn’t quite get about Christianity, even though he did his best. Most of the time. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Eros opened his eyes. He reached down, unzipped his bag, and pulled out the longbow and the quiver of arrows that only he could see. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. There was nothing wrong with love, after all: God is Love. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, now and forever. Eros let a gold-tipped arrow fly, perfectly on target, plunging right up to its feathers through Apollo’s chest and into his heart. Amen.
Whoever Apollo looked at next would be the instant object of his most ardent love. Good luck to him or her, was all that Eros could say. He saw the look of love bloom on Apollo’s face, followed his gaze to its unfortunate recipient. He reached back into his quiver, pulled out the lead-tipped arrow that induced hatred, fitted the arrow to the bow, pulled back the string and took aim. He took a breath, then another, and another. And yet another. And then he lowered his bow. He couldn’t do it. Making people fall in love was one thing. But making them fall into hate . . . No. He would let the mortal’s own free will decide what happened next. That’s what Jesus would do.
7
SITTING SQUEEZED UP next to Neil on the narrow studio bench, Alice felt as if she had drunk too ma
ny fizzy drinks. She couldn’t believe she had done it: she had picked up the phone and called him and invited him to come to the studio and now here they were, sitting right next to each other, him watching the stage intently, a frown of concentration on his face, and her pretending to watch the stage but actually watching him.
This had nearly happened so many times. She had looked at the phone and not picked it up. She had picked up the phone and replaced it. She had dialed his number and hung up before it rang. The first time she called him and he picked up, she had only been able to ask if she had left her umbrella behind in the café last time they met, which she knew she hadn’t; Alice never left things behind and she knew exactly where her umbrella was, it was in the umbrella stand with her spare umbrella.
But finally she had managed it. It had been a Thursday evening, after work but before EastEnders. Her hand had been so sweaty that the phone danced around in it like a live eel. He had sounded so confident when he answered the phone that all of the breath had gone out of her. It wasn’t that they had never met up before; they had been friends for two years now, but their meetings had always been at his instigation, and usually only if he happened to be coming to her area for some other reason. But after their initial chat about work and the weather, not a word of which she had taken in, she had done it; she had invited him to come and see the pilot for a new program being filmed, and after a short, agonizing silence, he had said yes.
And now here they were. They were sitting so close that their arms were touching. The place where their shoulders met felt hot. If she moved her leg slightly to the right, their legs would be touching too. She could smell all of his different scents, the fresh clean shirt he was wearing, the sharp tang of his deodorant, and underneath it, just the slightest hint of the warm wood of his skin. She could feel every breath he took and she matched them with her own breathing so as not to disturb him. She could almost hear the beat of his heart.
It would all have been perfect, if only that strange TV presenter would stop looking at her so oddly.
For Apollo, the feeling was like being punched in the chest. He gasped like a caught fish, hooked and pulled up onto deck, left to drown on air. The girl, that incredible girl—how could he have never seen her before? Why hadn’t she been on magazine covers, on billboards, on every television channel, in every film? She was perfection: fine-featured, golden-haired, graceful, adorable in every possible way. What was wrong with the world? As he watched, she leaned toward some hideous rodentlike male who clearly had no idea what he was sitting next to and whispered something into his base, undeserving ear.
He saw them entwined on the floor in an embrace. Not the girl and rat-boy; that, once imagined, would take longer than the rest of his immortal years to forget. No; he could see himself and the girl. Was it a premonition or just a fantasy? He could see her naked body twisting beneath him, arms above her head, face turned to one side, her back arched upward, her breasts forcing themselves toward him as she gripped him between her strong, hot, soft, hard thighs.
“Um, Apollo,” said the director’s voice in his earpiece. “Your mouth’s hanging open, you haven’t said anything for over ten seconds, and you’ve got, if I can believe camera two, what appears to be an almighty erection. Do you want to take five?”
Somehow he got to the end of the show. He’d actually had to go back to that drafty, rotting trailer to masturbate; it was humiliating. He’d wiped the semen that could spawn an entire nation of heroes onto a paper napkin with pictures of snowmen, left over from Christmas, and hid it in the rubbish bin underneath a copy of the Evening Standard. When he came out, there were two muses waiting in the drizzle outside, pretending not to laugh. Not that it did any good; as soon as he got back to the studio, there she was, looking at him with some curiosity now, her lips slightly parted, a small bead of sweat sliding achingly slowly down her neck toward the smooth creamy skin of her breasts. The only thing that could stop the whole embarrassing process from happening again was for him to concentrate all of his attention on thinking about his stepmother, Hera, and what she had done to their former male neighbor when they’d had a dispute about the precise boundary between their two gardens. That’s their former neighbor who had also, formerly, been male.
After the shoot finally came to an end, Apollo tore through the worsening rain back to the trailer. He pulled off his toga and threw it to the ground, then yanked on his jeans and T-shirt. He felt sure that the girl would come and see him in his dressing room—the attraction had been so powerful, so intense, that he couldn’t believe she didn’t feel it too. And so she would come here—of course she would—wasn’t that what amorous women did? He had seen enough films to suggest as much. He hoped she wouldn’t be expecting cocaine or any of the other apparently indispensable accoutrements of groupie-dom. Only she wasn’t a groupie, was she? This was different. This was love.
He looked for a towel with which to dry his hair, and finding nothing, used his T-shirt instead, squeezing the excess moisture out before putting it back on. It was a shame, really, that there wasn’t somewhere more romantic for them to meet. Still, that could come later, and at least the carpet, thin as it was, would help make the sex a little more comfortable.
There was perhaps time for a little tidying. He picked up his toga from the floor, folded it roughly, and threw the lumpy result onto a chair. Then he started on his dressing table. He was tipping the sludge from two chipped mugs into the sink bolted to the far wall when he heard the door opening behind him. His heart and stomach seemed to swap places. Immediately dropping the mugs into the sink, he wiped his hands on his jeans, molded his panicking features into an expression of charming, knowing surprise, and turned, saying, “How kind of you to drop by.”
“No problem at all. You’ve got coffee on your jeans.”
It wasn’t the girl. It was Aphrodite, looking extraordinarily pleased with herself for some reason. She had probably just fellated a cameraman. His face, though under strict instructions not to, fell.
“What’s the matter?” Aphrodite continued. “Were you expecting someone else?”
“Yes,” said Apollo. “Well, that is to say, not exactly. I mean, I kind of thought, well, there was someone in the audience, who, maybe . . .”
“I thought I’d come and pick you up,” said Aphrodite. “Everybody else has gone.”
“Everybody?”
“Everybody. Well, they didn’t like to linger. It would be unseemly. Like slowing down on the motorway to look at the bodies after a crash.”
“Are you sure that no one . . . no one . . .”
Aphrodite just smiled—not her irresistible one, but something rather more smug.
“Time to leave,” she said.
8
THE FIRST EPISODE of Apollo’s Oracle was screened about a week after it had been recorded. Apollo had spent the entire week trying to track down the angel in the front row. He had managed to charm the woman at reception into giving him a copy of the audience list and had roamed London in search of her, banging on doors in increasing desperation, at first inventing excuses for his unexpected visit, later just turning and walking, wordless, away when the girl that he was looking for failed to materialize. That morning, he had been to the final destination on his list, a squalid bungalow in Forest Gate, only to be confronted by a shuffling old man who had grabbed him by the arm and begged him four times to come in and join him for a sherry. He had tried to shrug him off, but each time he was overcome by a crippling wave of dizziness and nausea as Styx reached out from the underworld and held him to his oath. Eventually he had gone inside, eyes half shut in protection against the kaleidoscope of the carpet, and consented to an hour and a half of photographs of Bill Craven’s koi carp, 1965 to the present.
And now this further humiliation. Aphrodite had clearly let it be known among her relatives that the filming had been a fiasco, because, in a rare moment of togetherness, all of the gods had crammed themselves into the living room to watch the broadcas
t. Hephaestus had patched up some of the furniture for the occasion, so Hermes, Eros, Hephaestus, and Aphrodite were wedged together on the sofa, while the others sat in armchairs or on the floor. Dionysus was busy going around filling up everyone’s glasses with his strongest wine. The mood was festive. Hera and Zeus, of course, were not there, nor were any of the gods who lived off site—Hades and Persephone in the underworld, for example, or Poseidon in his tiny seaside shack that stank, as he did, of fish—but no doubt word had spread and they too were huddled around their televisions, ready for the show. There is little a god likes more than watching another god embarrassing himself.
“It’s very kind of you,” Apollo said, pacing up and down in front of the television, “to take such an interest in my work, but really, there’s no need. I’m sure you’ll all get horribly bored. I wouldn’t want to put you through that.”
“He’s too modest,” said Aphrodite. “Don’t listen to him. I’ve seen it. I know you’ll all find it highly entertaining.”
“Aphrodite’s right,” said Hephaestus inevitably, to groans from the other gods.
“And don’t even think,” said Artemis to Apollo, “about making the television unexpectedly stop working. You’re on sufferance as it is.”
“There’s no reason,” said Apollo, “for me to do a thing like that. It’s not that I don’t want you to see the program, of course I do. I’m just thinking of you and your precious time.”
“Time,” Ares pointed out, “is the least precious thing we have.”
“Speak for yourself,” muttered Hermes, always the busiest of the gods.
“Switch it on,” commanded Artemis. “I don’t want to miss the beginning.”
Marie Phillips Page 4