“And experience,” said Artemis. “Do you have any experience?”
“This is a waste of time.” Aphrodite yawned. “We have all the home maintenance staff that we need in you, dear niece.”
“I have garnered years of expertise cleaning at some of London’s biggest and most exclusive businesses,” said the mortal. “Now I want to bring my skills into your home.”
“Forget it, Artemis,” said Aphrodite. “You’ll never get her past Zeus and Hera. You don’t want to get into trouble, do you? Artemis,” she told the mortal, “is always very well behaved. She’s naturally subservient.”
“Zeus and Hera will never know,” Artemis retorted. “As long as she can follow instructions. You can follow instructions, can’t you?”
“You will find me efficient, obedient, and quiet—” began the mortal.
“Well, I don’t doubt that,” interrupted Artemis. “Right, then. What’s your standard daily rate?”
The mortal told her.
“And do you do extermination?”
The mortal’s face answered that question.
“What if we paid you that per hour? Would you kill for us then? It’s only rats and a few other small things. Cockroaches, flies. I don’t think we have any squirrels.”
“I—” said the mortal.
“And you’ll need to come in every day,” said Artemis.
“We can’t afford that,” said Aphrodite.
“Yes, we can,” said Artemis. “We’ll just have to stop buying food.”
“But I like food,” whined Aphrodite.
“Too bad,” said Artemis. “It’s not a necessity. Having a cleaner is.”
She turned back to the mortal.
“You’ll have to abide by certain rules,” she said. “I’ll have a set laminated for you by tomorrow.”
The mortal was looking slightly dizzy. Artemis hoped that she wouldn’t faint.
“I—” said the mortal again.
“No need to thank me,” said Artemis.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” said Aphrodite, “bringing a mor—a cleaner into this house.”
“Thank you for your input, Aphrodite,” said Artemis, “but I assure you that I know exactly what I am doing. You, the girl, will start at eleven tomorrow. Right now, I have dogs to walk. Good-bye.”
And she swept down the stairs, past the mortal, who was still gaping, and marched away down the street.
11
ALICE STILL WASN’T sure that she’d actually agreed to take the job, and yet here she was doing it. She didn’t like rats and as it turned out she liked killing them even less, which was illogical but no less true for that. Her life was turning into a series of paradoxes (paradox, lovely word for Scrabble) and it had all happened seemingly without her consent. She was making more money than she’d ever made; she was desperate to quit and yet some kind of magnetic force seemed to pull her legs out of her bed in the morning, to wash her, dress her, feed her, and present her on the cracked, mossy doorstep where she’d wait for admittance without ringing the bell—this was one of the rules—while every single day she wondered why, exactly. Her feelings on the matter seemed as irrelevant as those of a chess piece. But it had been her decision. Hadn’t it?
The first day had been strange and from then on things had only got stranger. She had thought herself lucky when, on the very first day of looking for a new job, she had not only been offered one, but at a far higher rate of pay than she had made with the agency. It was Neil who had suggested that she go freelance; he had been outraged at her sacking from the agency and pointed out that there was no need for her to give up a percentage of her takings when she could just as easily find work by herself. When she had protested how deeply uncomfortable she felt initiating conversations and talking herself up, Neil had drilled her over the phone on communications strategy and helped her come up with a sales spiel. It was really far too kind of him; she knew he had better things to do with his evenings than waste them helping her out. But he had insisted; he had even claimed, nonsensically, that he felt guilty about her losing her job.
The uneasy sense that lucky wasn’t quite the word for it had begun the moment she had turned up at the house the next day and the door had opened just as she raised a finger to press on the scratched brass bell.
“Never knock or ring the bell,” said the woman who answered: Artemis. For two minutes the previous day, Artemis had been the most beautiful woman Alice had ever seen. Then the other woman, Aphrodite, had emerged and made Artemis look relatively plain.
“How will I get in?” said Alice. “Should I get a set of keys?”
“No,” said Artemis. “No keys under any circumstances. Just be punctual. Someone will let you in.”
“What about when you go away?”
“We never go away. Incidentally, another rule is no questions. And no speaking unless you’re spoken to. Do come in.”
Alice followed Artemis over the threshold and into the house.
“Rule number one,” said Artemis as they entered. “Never go up to the top floor of the house. Rule number two: I am always right.”
Alice murmured assent but her focus was on the state of the house. It was dirty. Alice had expected that, had seen enough through the open door to testify to it most convincingly. But she hadn’t anticipated quite how dirty it would be. It wasn’t grime so much as sedimentation. Everything: the carpet (she assumed it was a carpet—neither sight nor texture gave much assistance in identifying the substance under the black sludge that covered it), the walls, the windows that let in the barest trickle of mottled light as if through thick gray snow—all encrusted with so many layers of filth that Alice nearly suggested calling in the services of an archaeologist, though that would have involved her speaking, an activity that both she and Artemis were mutually opposed to. And anyway, one of Artemis’s rules was no suggestions.
Feet sticking to the ground with every step, Alice followed Artemis from room to room, noting the broken, listing furniture, the ceilings obscured by spiderwebs, the skirting boards riddled with holes, cozy homes for who knew what. All the while, Artemis was reading aloud from not one but three laminated sheets of rules.
“Rule number twenty-nine: never let anybody else into the house under any circumstances whatsoever. Rule number thirty: you must always dress conservatively—that one’s for your own protection.”
Alice could do little but nod, though Artemis never turned around to check her agreement or even to make sure that she was still there and had not fled the house entirely. Artemis, Alice realized, was the kind of person who assumed that her commands would be carried out. That kind of person, Alice knew, was the kind of person whose commands always were carried out, so she never had to doubt this perfect feedback loop. Alice was not that kind of person.
When they got to the kitchen, Alice nearly vomited. To her credit, Artemis seemed at least a little embarrassed.
“Well, yes, I do agree,” she said, though Alice had not ventured any kind of opinion except that which could be read into an involuntary spasm, “that the source of the rat problem is probably in here, but I’m sure when you’ve cleared away most of the decomposing foodstuffs it will seem far less daunting. Shall we head upstairs?”
Alice should have walked away at that very moment but she had not. Trying to figure out why yielded nothing. It was like trying to look at something that wasn’t there.
On the afternoon of the third day, she met Apollo. The worst of the rotting objects had been put into a legion of reinforced garden-strength bin bags and loaded onto a truck sent round by an obliging environmental health department (calling in outside help was against the rules too, but as the call had been made from her home, and nobody had actually crossed the threshold, it seemed to be an acceptable and necessary risk). She had laid down traps and poison next to each of the Gruyère-like holes that made up the house’s multistory mouse park, and emptied the traps, several times each. She was standing in the living room,
twirling spiderwebs around a broom as if making giant candy floss, when the door had opened and he had walked in, trailing an acoustic guitar.
She recognized him immediately from the TV show, but, mindful of Artemis’s instructions, couldn’t say anything even if she had wanted to. His reaction, meanwhile, was nothing short of bizarre. (Bizarre: another lovely word.) Apollo stared. The guitar fell, unnoticed, from his hand. He reached over to his forearm and gave it a long, hard pinch. Alice didn’t want to look at him but felt it would be rude to look away. She prayed for the ground to open up and swallow her whole, but it didn’t. Instead she felt herself blush under his scrutiny. She remembered his staring from the show, before. Maybe he had something wrong with his eyes.
“What are you doing here?” said Apollo eventually.
“Artemis hired me,” said Alice, repeating what that woman had told her to say if questioned. “I am the new cleaner. If you have any problem with this, speak to Artemis. You’re permitted to fire me, but only if you swear on sticks that you’ll do all the cleaning from now on yourself.”
Apollo reacted to this as someone might had it just been proved that the Earth was made of blancmange.
“Artemis hired you. Artemis! That’s impossible! How does she know you? Nobody knows you but me! Has she known you all along?”
“No,” said Alice. “I came to the door.”
“But I don’t understand,” said Apollo. “How did you find me?”
“Oh no, I didn’t,” said Alice. “I didn’t know you lived here.”
Apollo struck his hand against his chest and held it there.
“The Fates!” he said. “We haven’t always seen eye to eye. At last they bow to my superiority! What’s your name?”
This was the first time anyone from the house had asked Alice’s name.
“Alice,” said Alice.
“Alice,” repeated Apollo, rolling the word around his mouth as if tasting it. “Alice. Such a poetic name. So sweet and yet so strong. Really, it is a beautiful name, especially considering that it contains the word lice.”
“Thank you,” said Alice.
“And you’re the cleaner?”
“Yes,” said Alice.
“What a noble calling. They say cleanliness is next to godliness. Don’t you wish that were true?”
The collar of Alice’s shirt stuck to the side of her neck where she was sweating. She wanted to pull at it—actually, she wanted to push past him and run away as fast as she could out of the room—but she couldn’t move.
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Alice.
“Of course you don’t,” said Apollo. “You’re virtuous, aren’t you, Alice? I can see that. Virtuous . . .”
His eyes looked dreamy for a moment, then snapped back into focus.
“What are you doing?” he said. “Put that thing down. Sit down.”
“I can’t sit down,” said Alice. “Artemis said—”
“Oh, fuck Artemis,” said Apollo. “You mustn’t listen to a word that old witch says. She’s not the boss of me or anyone else and she certainly shouldn’t be the boss of you. Would you please put that broom down right now and sit. Sit!”
Alice jumped, dropped the broom, and sat on the very edge of a wooden armchair that had lumps of black grease on it that looked oddly like boot polish. Apollo sat down on the floor in front of her, unpleasantly close. She drew her feet a little farther under the chair.
“Tell me something, Alice,” said Apollo. “What did you think of my show?”
This put Alice in an awkward position. The two things she hated most in the world were lying and hurting people’s feelings, and here she was, apparently forced to do one of them. She thought about it for a while.
“Your assistants were very pretty,” she said in the end.
“Not nearly so pretty as you,” said Apollo.
Alice pushed back as far as she could go, until she was sitting bolt upright. She could feel her spine trying to climb up over the back of the chair.
“I don’t want you to judge me on the basis of this house,” Apollo said. “It wasn’t always like this. We were . . . famous once. Back in Greece. And in Rome—Italy. Everyone knew who we were. People were different then. They believed. The adulation, the fame, it was like—well, it was worship, really. We lived in a palace—I wish you could have seen it, Alice! The fountains, the pleasure gardens, nymphs gliding gracefully through the forest—I never looked at them, of course. We had everything, literally everything. Can you imagine it?”
He appealed for a response with his eyes.
“It sounds nice,” said Alice.
Satisfied, Apollo continued, his voice taking on a darker timbre.
“Then times changed,” he said. “We went out of fashion, we fell from grace. I can’t tell you the details, it’s all still too fresh. It was a long way to fall, Alice. It hurt. This degradation around us—it only reflects the pain inside. So that television show—it was like balm. Recapturing something I thought I’d lost forever. Can you understand that, Alice?”
Alice, as ever, could not lie.
“Not entirely,” she said.
“Of course not,” said Apollo. “How could you? Innocent child. How old are you?”
“Thirty-two,” said Alice.
“Thirty-two! Barely even born,” said Apollo. “Alice, may I confess something? We’ve only just met and already I feel a connection to you. This conversation—it’s moved me more than I can say. We’re like twin souls. Do you feel it too, Alice? Do you?”
Apollo put his hand on her knee. Alice jumped up from her chair and seized the broom. For a moment they both thought she might hit him with it, and were equally astonished by this prospect, but instead she just held out the cobwebby end toward him.
“Spiders,” she said, as the spiky brown things seethed in the gray. “I forgot. I need to take them outside. And then it’s time for me to go home.”
Apollo looked stricken. Alice actually thought he might cry, and it suddenly occurred to her that he must have been drinking, or even taking drugs—all of these TV stars did. The thought was reassuring; none of this had anything to do with her, and when he came down, if that was the right expression, he would forget all about it.
“Will you ever come back?” said Apollo.
“Oh yes, of course I will,” said Alice. “I’ll be back tomorrow. I’ll be here every day.”
A smile dawned on Apollo’s face like sunrise after a dark night.
“Then there’s no need for us to rush into anything,” he said.
And Alice began feeling nervous all over again.
12
SUNDAYS WERE DOG-FREE days for Artemis, but she always did her run on the Heath all the same, going faster and farther since she didn’t have those soft-toothed mutts slowing her down. This was power: the strength of her limbs, the pounding of the turf beneath her feet. She needed that feeling. Passing a newsagent that morning, she had heard a snatch of radio news, that campaigners (idiots, the lot of them) were trying to bring about a ban on the shooting of game. She was losing her grip on the world. She would not lose her grip on herself.
The mood in the house had been subdued since the screening of that appalling television program her twin brother had insisted on being a part of. He had made a fool of himself. There was nothing new in this. Gods were always tricking each other into looking foolish; if they didn’t, the world would probably stop turning because they would be too bored to keep it going. But Apollo had made a fool of himself in public, before the eyes of mortals (assuming any of them had bothered to watch), without anyone else’s involvement, as far as she could tell, and it had been quite obvious that there was nothing he could do to stop it. Artemis wondered just how long it had been since he’d had a clear premonition of the future. It used to be almost impossible to shut him up about them. And yet the sibyls apparently still retained that ability. And they weren’t even gods! Running up a grassy slope, Artemis almost tripped on a root. There had b
een a time when they hadn’t been gods either. The Titans had been in charge once, but they had weakened, and the Olympians had exploited that weakness. Despite herself, Artemis couldn’t help but imagine the world under the control of the sibyls. It was a lot pinker than the world was now.
She shook her head to rid herself of the image. The sun was shining, and Artemis could feel herself beginning to sweat. Spring was coming yet again, and soon Persephone would be home. She made a face. She hoped that they wouldn’t have to have Persephone sleeping in their room again this year. She would have a word with Athena, make sure that she crammed even more books than usual into their space, making it impossible to squeeze the spare mattress onto the floor. There simply wasn’t enough room for all of them in that house. Fortunately, Persephone had been making her visits to the upperworld shorter and shorter. Long ago, when Zeus had banished her to the underworld for every winter, he had bound her to a minimum yearly period to be spent underground. At the time, there had seemed to be little need to set a maximum limit. Of late, Persephone had begun taking advantage of this loophole. Artemis suspected she only came back when she and Hades argued, and eventually, she supposed, Persephone would stop coming back at all.
Walking up the road to the hated house after her run, stretching her limbs out and cooling down, she saw Eros lingering on the front step, wearing a smart suit, his hair neatly combed. She waved, and he waved back. She and Eros got on much better these days than they used to—ever since he had discovered morality, something the rest of her siblings could do with a little more of.
“What are you doing?” she called out as soon as he was within earshot.
“I just got back from church,” Eros called back. “Beautiful service. I love the solemnity of Lent.”
Artemis nodded in agreement. She sometimes wondered whether she would make a good Christian, though she couldn’t quite bring herself to even feign worship for a mortal—it would be like worshipping a slug.
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