The Woman, the Girl and the Goddess

By Mike Pearse

Why is it so hard to find a decent man? That is the question that tortures Charlene as she goes through her boring, lonely life. Then she has an idea: What if she were to ask for help from the Goddess of Love herself? It seems the perfect solution, but what Charlene doesn't realise is that you cannot ask a Goddess for favours without there being a price...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mike Pearse
• Release date: Sep 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9789082274103

Mike Pearse

Mike is an English writer living in Amsterdam.

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The Woman, the Girl & the Goddess

By Michael R. Pearse

Published at Smashwords

Copyright 2014 Michael R. Pearse

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Prologue: The Woman

Tim and Rachel were collecting for Africa. They wore matching red winter jackets and held matching red clipboards as they stood before the supermarket entrance trying to get people to sign up for monthly contributions. There were plenty of people—it was Saturday afternoon—but it was also cold, threatening to rain and shoppers were in no mood to stop. Tim steeled himself as a bunch of them approached, stepping forward with a big smile. You could tell by the way they dressed that these people had nothing to do with each other, but as Tim stepped forward, some herding instinct took over and they merged to avoid him.

‘Afternoon!’ he said to a blond woman in a brown leather jacket who passed closest to him. She glanced over, gave a curt nod and was inside the supermarket before he could say another word. Tim sighed and looked across at the grinning homeless guy selling magazines on the other side of the sliding doors.

‘She was too young,’ said the homeless guy.

‘Pardon?’

The homeless guy looked around and then crept over. Tim groaned inwardly and looked to see if Rachel could rescue him, but she was busy talking to some gent in his fifties.

‘That woman you tried to talk to,’ said the homeless guy. ‘She was too young. Around thirty, I’d say.’

‘That’s ten years older than me,’ said Tim.

‘You should target the older women; the ones with sons and grandsons your age. Your girlfriend’s got the right idea.’

‘She’s not my—’

Tim stopped. It had come out with vehemence, revealing more intended, and it made both of them uncomfortable. ‘Customers,’ muttered the homeless guy as a family approached from the car park and he scuttled back to his spot by the sliding doors. A wave of people came in and out. Tim had to step back to let them through. He sighed and stood watching them, the doors swishing open and closed whenever there was a pause. This charity work was a lot tougher than he had expected.

Rachel skipped over. The red bobble on her woolly hat bounced as she walked.

‘Well, there’s another one!’ she said, handing her clipboard to Tim. He looked at it and there was indeed a new signature on the form. He was about to check the size of the donation when Rachel took back the clipboard and he realised that she had only given it to him so she could put on her gloves. He turned away, facing the supermarket doors.

‘How’s it going?’ asked Rachel.

‘Fine.’

‘Really? I haven’t seen you sign up anyone.’

The supermarket doors swished open and the blond woman in the brown leather jacket walked through, a bulky shopping bag in one hand. The first thing she saw was Tim.

‘Nice gloves,’ he said.

‘Oh. Thank you,’ said the woman.

‘I think they’re the same make as mine.’

Tim stepped away from Rachel and stretched out the hand that was not holding the clipboard. The woman stopped to look. Then she looked at the glove on her own free hand. The colour of both gloves was the same shade of dark brown.

‘You could be right,’ she said.

‘Where did you get yours?’ said Tim.

‘The Ross & Vayne department store.’

‘Ross & Vayne’s? Were they outrageously expensive?’

The woman laughed.

‘Yes, they were,’ she said. ‘But I got a discount.’

‘How?’

‘I got a friend who works there.’

‘Ah, so that’s the secret.’

The woman smiled and shrugged. Tim smiled back.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Now that we’re talking, can I tell you why I’m here?’

The woman’s smile froze. She took a deep breath and looked away, her hair partially hiding her face. Tim stood rigid, his mouth dry, waiting, expecting the worst. Finally, with slow deliberation, the woman placed her bag of groceries on the ground between her feet and looked up at him.

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Tell me why you’re here.’

Tim cleared his throat and referred to his clipboard.

‘Did you know that in Africa, thousands of children die every day of disease?’ he said. ‘I’m not talking about some obscure tropical disease, but everyday diseases where we already have effective vaccines and medicines. Take rubella, for example. Rubella is a disease that every child in this country is vaccinated against. The vaccine is not expensive and easy to mass produce, yet despite this, children in Africa are dying of rubella to this day. Last year, in Ethiopia alone, the preventable infant mortality rate was—’

‘All right, stop.’

Tim had his mouth open. He closed it. The woman waited until she had his full attention.

‘Get to the point,’ she said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘How much money do you want?’

Tim shook his head.

‘It’s not about that,’ he said.

‘Of course it’s about that,’ said the woman. ‘I don’t see a collecting box, but I imagine at the end of your story, you’re going to ask me for money. So let’s cut to the chase, shall we? How much are we talking about?’

Tim continued to shake his head, his face red. He was chewing his lips and his breaths came out hard through his nose.

‘Madam, I’m sorry,’ he burst out, ‘but I do not like the way you’ve reduced the issue to money! I’m not standing out here in the cold because I want money! I’m here because there’s things happening in the world that shouldn’t be happening and I want to do something about it!’

He turned his head, scratching the side of his face to mask the tear he was brushing away. Shoppers were coming and going and he saw with relief that Rachel was talking to someone; that she had not seen his little outburst. Hopefully, she wouldn’t see him being walked out on by an angry customer.

‘You’re right,’ said the woman. ‘I apologise. I meant no disrespect.’

Tim looked at her in surprise. The woman sighed and put her hands on her hips.

‘But look,’ she said, ‘I’ve just come out of the supermarket with a heavy bag of shopping. It’s my weekend, I want to go home and suddenly I’m confronted with a story about dying children in Africa and made to feel it’s somehow my fault.’

‘I never said that.’

‘Not directly, but your story is designed to make me feel guilty. That’s how charities raise money. They present us with a victim and suggest that we are culpable in their suffering unless we contribute. It’s highly manipulative and I don’t like it.’

‘What are we supposed to do then? Should I not be here?’

‘I’m not saying that. Just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be doing it. If you believe in this cause, you go ahead and good luck to you! I’m just telling where I stand.’

‘And where is that?’

The woman looked at Tim, considering his question. She smiled and lifted her hands as though pressing them against a window pane.

‘I’m standing behind a shield,’ she said. ‘An invisible shield which protects me from people who want something from me. Everyday I get bombarded with messages from people who want my money, my time and my attention and I need this shield otherwise I’d go mad. However, when you made that quip about my gloves, you struck me as a decent guy and I put the shield to one side. But the moment you said, Can I tell you why I’m here? it went straight back up and it stayed up. I could feel you wanted something; that you had an ulterior motive for stopping me.’

Tim looked away. The woman waved a gloved hand to get him to look back.

‘Hey, I don’t have a problem with it,’ she said. ‘I don’t even have a problem with you trying to get past my shield—that’s what you have to do if you want to raise money. But the story you told didn’t work. It didn’t work. My invisible shield is right there between us and I’m still standing behind it.’

The woman pulled a face and shrugged. Tim saw that her eyes were blue-grey—a cold colour, but they were not cold eyes. He nodded slowly and smiled.

‘Fair enough,’ he said.

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means I get it. Actually, it’s a real eye-opener.’

‘Having a tough day?’

‘This is not as easy as I thought it would be.’

‘I can imagine.’ The woman picked up her shopping. ‘And I’m afraid I’m not going to make it any easier.’

‘No, you’ve been great.’ Tim stuck out his hand. ‘Madam, thank you for taking the time to explain it to me. I appreciate it.’

The woman shook hands with him.

‘You’re welcome,’ she said. ‘But, if you don’t mind, I’m not quite ready to be called Madam. Not at thirty.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t apologise.’

The woman smiled and walked away. Tim watched her disappear into the Saturday crowds. He tapped his chin with the corner of the clipboard and sighed. Rachel came up to him.

‘Any luck?’ she said.

‘I don’t know,’ said Tim. ‘I don’t know.’

Chapter 1: The Girl

'WHY IS IT SO HARD TO FIND A DECENT MAN?'

Charley put down her pen and took a sip of coffee. The journal was brand new and that question was the first thing she’d written on the smooth, cream page. This gave it authority, a quiet importance, and the more Charley looked at it, the more she wanted to cry. There was a longing, a deep ache, like an ocean wave of sadness building in the distance, far away, but rolling inevitably towards the shore. Charley turned and stared through the window of the coffee house. People were rushing past, on foot or on bicycles. Cars and vans droned along, their headlights yellow, their tyres fogged in clouds of spray. And faint over the scene, she could see her own reflection on the glass—a miserable blond woman sat nursing a coffee, alone.

This wasn’t meant to happen, she thought. The whole point of starting a diary was to make her feel less miserable—a self help book had recommended it and Charley had decided to give it a try. Now, after one sentence, she already felt like stopping. The story of my life, she thought covering her eyes. She was a disaster.

It wasn’t true, of course. There was nothing wrong with her life or with her and deep down she knew it. She was not yet thirty and had a reasonably well paid job and her own flat. The only things that bothered her were the neighbour who kept leaving his bike in the narrow entrance corridor and still being single. There had been men, of course—a five year period she referred to as the Graham Years and a smattering of boyfriends and near-boyfriends—but there hadn’t been a man in her life for several months and it was getting to her.

Charley turned away from the window and the grey of the outside world. Inside, the coffee house was warm, relaxed and light jazz floated in the air. The table where she sat was huge, a communal reading table made of rough-hewn, polished wood that stretched all the way along the windows facing the street, surrounded by black chairs with steel legs. Further into the café there were soft cushioned benches along the wall, but Charley preferred the great table and on this evening she had it more or less to herself. There was a guy with curly hair who worked on a laptop nearby, but not too near. He was definitely not her type.

There were newspapers and magazines lying across the table and Charley idly picked one up. It wasn’t so much a newspaper as a supplement, something on the arts. The cover showed Venus from Botticelli’s painting ‘Birth of Venus,’ the one where she stood naked on a giant seashell, long reddish hair blowing in the wind. Charley flicked through the pages and then went back to pondering the cover. It irritated her. Charley wondered why and realised it was the name. When she had been a child, her mother had loved to tell her stories of the Greek myths and Charley grew to share her mother’s opinion that the Greek gods were far superior to the Roman versions; that their identities had been stolen. Even the name Venus did not sound nearly as musical on the tongue as the goddess’s true name:

‘Aphrodite,’ said Charley, quietly, to herself.

Charley put down the paper and looked at the diary that was still open, the question lying unanswered on the table. She nearly laughed out loud. An idea had popped into her head—a silly, impish, playful idea. Looking at the picture, she thought: Who better to answer her question than the Goddess of Love herself? Charley clicked her pen, ready to continue writing, and then clicked it away again. She packed her things, put on her brown leather jacket and picked up the newspaper supplement, taking it over to the counter. The barista was a young guy with long hair tied back in a ponytail.

‘Can I take this?’ she asked, waving the paper.

‘Sure,’ said the barista. ‘We’re only going to throw away.’

‘Thanks.’

Home for Charley was a plain apartment that she had gone to great lengths to make cosy. She had painted the walls yellow in the living area with its couch, armchair and television at one end and dining table and chairs at the other. A plain wooden bookshelf filled with books stood near the dining table and there was a bead curtain across the entrance to the kitchen. During the day, the large window and glass balcony door looked out onto the apartment blocks opposite, but at night only the yellow lights in the windows were visible.

There was the metal clatter of keys and Charley entered, a shopping bag in each hand, kicking the door shut behind her. She dumped one bag next to the table and took the other into the kitchen, the bead curtain rattling behind her. For a while, there was the banging and thumping of cupboard doors. Then she came out to unpack the other bag, her face pink with excitement. Carefully, she began to prepare the room.

A half hour later, Charley stood by the bead curtain and looked around. The entire room was bathed in the flames of silver tea lights that stood on every shelf and cupboard top. A cloth covered the dining table and there were two large candles upon it. Between them lay the journal and the pen. Charley lit a stick of incense, went to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of white wine. She hadn’t had anything to eat, but that somehow felt appropriate, like a fast, and she made a point of doing everything slowly, with a sense of ceremony. She was, after all, intending to summon a goddess.

Charley sat at the table, put the glass of wine to one side and unfolded the picture of the goddess she had separated from the rest of the newspaper. She placed the picture before her and meditated on it. Thoughts wandered through her mind. The first was of a book written by a man who had had an imaginary conversation with God, asking Him questions and then writing down the answers. These answers turned out to be so extraordinary that they had literally changed his life. Charley looked at the face of the woman before her and started to feel excited. She picked up her pen. Then another story came into her mind, something she had read during the Graham Years.

It was about a temple on a hill. When a boy came of age, he would go on a quest to find this temple and when he found it, he would be taken in by the priestesses who lived there. He would join them for a time, hunting and providing and, in exchange, the women would teach him the secrets of love. By the time he left, he was no longer a boy, but a man who knew how to love a woman.

At the time, Charley had felt ambiguous about this story. Part of her wished that Graham had been to such a temple and another part was glad he hadn’t. The story wasn’t specific about what happened inside, but Charley had a suspicion that ‘priestess’ was a euphemism for ‘prostitute’ and that they basically taught the men how to fuck. She thought a lot of men could use lessons, but she didn’t see how a man would learn anything about love from such women. Love was different, a higher emotion, and giving a man sex without love just devalued the whole experience.

‘Are you sure about that?’

It was as though another voice had spoken in her mind. Charley looked at the picture of the goddess. Aphrodite, is that you?

There was no response.

Charley opened the journal and looked again at the question she had written. Then, slowly, she turned the page, pressing it flat with her hand. She knew what she had to do. It was time. Charley clicked her pen, took a deep breath and began to write.

***

I stand at the foot of a hill surrounded by cypress trees. It is a warm night and the sky is a deep shade of indigo with shining stars. There is no moon; the whole scene is lit by starlight. The grass is dark blue, the trees even darker and the surrounding hills roll away into the distance, empty of any sign of habitation. I hear the chirping of crickets and I smell the scent of cypress and orange blossoms. On the summit of the hill is a Greek temple with pillars of white marble. I know this to be the temple of Love.

I walk up the hill towards the temple.

I wear a long white dress that reaches to just above my ankles. It is sleeveless and made of cotton, but I am not cold. I do not wear shoes or sandals and the grass feels cool beneath my bare feet as I walk. A warm breeze blows on my face and ruffles my hair. I’m naked under the dress and my heart beats faster as I near the base of the temple steps.

The temple is not the Greek temple of today—a ruin of chipped and discoloured marble—but complete, the pillars smooth and the marble glistening white in the starlight. It is quite a modest temple in size, nowhere near as huge as the Parthenon, but beautiful in its modesty which feels, somehow, appropriate. From between the pillars I see the faint orange glow of firelight.

There is someone there.

When I reach the steps, I pause on the grass and notice a few things about myself. My hair is long—instead of shoulder-length I feel it reach to halfway down my back. I wear no make-up and my fingernails have no varnish. However, I notice that the fingernail on the index finger of my left hand is cut short. I tore it in my kitchen a couple of days ago and had to cut it short, and it is also short here.

(Charley paused in her writing. ‘What is the relevance of that?’ she thought. Don’t judge, said an inner voice. Just write.)

I stand and look at my left hand and puzzle over my fingernail. Then I shrug and begin to climb the steps. I reach the top, walk through the columns and find myself in a kind of inner courtyard, rectangular, wider than it is long, and surrounded by white marbles pillars. It is lit by two iron braziers holding some kind of burning coal which gives a faint orange glow to the place. There is incense in the air; not sweet-smelling, but a richer, subtler scent that makes me think of Christmas. I walk across a stone floor that feels warm under my feet towards the pillars at the far side. Between the pillars hang heavy tapestries, each one depicting a scene from Greek mythology. There are seven in all and I stop a short distance before the one at the centre. The air is still and I hear the faint crackle of the coal as I look at a figure on the tapestry in the dim flickering light.

It is Perseus. He wears a warrior’s helmet with a tall crest and holds a sword dripping blood in his left hand. Held aloft in his right hand is the head of the Medusa. Her mouth gapes hideously in death and the snakes she has for hair seem to move in the flickering light. As I gaze at this image, it ripples, is pulled aside and a woman steps out from behind the tapestry.

It’s not Venus from the picture. This woman has long brown hair that looks almost black in the dim light and I can’t tell what colour her eyes are. She is slightly taller than me and wears a long white robe that hangs straight on her body. I try to smile, but I feel disappointed and a little confused. I was expecting the goddess and somehow I know that this woman is not her. Still, I don’t want to be rude.

‘Hi,’ I say.

‘Hello,