Pygmalion

He removed a saucepan of mash from under the cushion on the sofa and sat down. How much more was hiding under there? This was becoming unbearable. Ariadne took the saucepan from him and took it into the kitchen.

"If your mother's coming later, since you don't want to fuck, I'd better finish tidying up," she said on coming back."

"Why?"

"You don't want her to see the place like this, do you?"

He didn't seem to care. So many things were turning topsy-turvy that he would have appreciated something familiar. And his mother was used to seeing the place as a mess, no, she wasn't used to it, but she did expect it.

"You'll have to get a job so I'll take you to the Job Center tomorrow," he muttered, as she began to take the room

"Fine," she said. "I've never had a problem getting a job."

He was suddenly suspicious. "What sort of work did you do?"

"I had a very good job," she boasted. "I was a temple dancer."

He spluttered. "What?"

"In the temple of Aphrodite, It was the very best. I would greet the men and..."

"Yes, I know something of the job description." he cut in, then paused. "You'll have to re train."

"Why? Don't you have dancers in London?" she asked innocently.

"Any number. But from what I can work out you have to be French."

"French?"

"Never mind. It's not for you. And you can't go to the Job Center dressed like that," he pondered out loud, observing the transparent gown that flowed from her shoulders to the floor.

She stared down at herself, self-consciously. "What's the matter with the way I dress? Everyone used to say that they liked me dressed like this. I had many admirers."

"I'm sure you did. Don't get me wrong," he consoled. "It's very nice, you look very, stunning. But women don't dress like that in public any more, and people would stare. Yes, they would most definitely stare."

He paused hopefully. "I don't suppose you've got anything else?"

She solemnly shook her head and he sighed. "Oh dear, where am I going to get you some clothes from?"

"You could always hew them in stone and wait for them to be turned to cloth," she said mischievously.

But Cedric was dejected, "Very funny," he said.

*****

Cedric's mother arrived punctually at six thirty. There was one thing that Cedric could always count on about his mother, and that was her punctuality. She had been born on time, had been married on time, it not occurring to her to invoke the bride's right to be late, and she would die on time, she always said.

Cedric had never been able to unravel the many implications of this saying, mainly, his mother had always told him, due to the existence of Double British Summer time during the early years of her own life. An explanation, which, Cedric found on consulting a pocket encyclopaedia during his teenage years, was complete truth.

Therefore, at six fifteen precisely, Ariadne had been dispatched to the stair well with instructions to stay there until his mother left. Cedric had had enough of a scare when Burt called: he was chancing nothing with his mother about.

However, they say that even the best-laid plans can go astray and this was certainly not of that category. Cedric had left the redundant lift out of his calculations. Mrs. Mayfare came slowly up the stairs, tired and dragging her oversize handbag with her. Ariadne, sitting shivering on the cold stairs in early winter and a transparent gown instantly aroused Mrs. Mayfare's overactive curiosity.

"What are you doing here?" demanded the astonished Mrs. Mayfare. "You'll catch your death of cold."

Everything may still have been all right if Ariadne had realized that this imperious lady was indeed the dreaded mother Cedric was expecting. But she didn't. After all, she would be coming up in the lift, wouldn't she?

"I'm just waiting," Ariadne said. "And I haven't anything else to wear."

"But you're almost naked, girl! Why don't you go home?" asked Mrs. Mayfare dogmatically. "You can't stay here. Chucked out by a vicious boyfriend or husband, I suppose. I've read of these cases in 'Woman's Own' many times. Don't worry, I'll sort him out for you. Where do you live?"

Ariadne answered truthfully, still unaware as to whom she was talking. "Number seventy four."

Mrs. Mayfare dropped her handbag with a violent clatter, her face bleached to a whitish shade of purist snow, and, she gasped, "Oh, but you can't."

"But I do," Ariadne assured her. "I checked the number most carefully."

"But..." Mrs. Mayfare's lips continues mouthing the next few words until they suddenly became aware that the rest of her had ceased talking. Her eyes filled with suspicion as to the unexpected savory character of her son.

"Come with me, my girl," she commanded. "I'll soon have this sorted out."

Ariadne was ceremoniously frog-marched back to Cedric's apartment where the dominant and matronly person beside her aggressively knocked.

A timid figure answered, cowering guiltily behind the protection of the door. When he saw his mother and Ariadne at her side, and that neither expression gave reason for encouragement, he drooped visibly, like a spindly flower dropped into a roaring flame.

"Hello mother," he said weakly, looking to Ariadne for some sign of explanation or comfort. There was none forthcoming.

"Who is this woman?" Mrs. Mayfare asked angrily, noting that Cedric was wearing odd socks and that his hair was uncombed.

"I'm Ariadne," Ariadne said, but Mrs. Mayfare was interrogating her son, which seemed to demand her total concentration.

"Yes, it's Ariadne," he floundered.

"I've gathered that it's Ariadne," rasped Mrs. Mayfare. "But who on God's earth is Ariadne?"

"I am," Ariadne said.

"She's a friend," Cedric said.

"Mrs. Mayfare," Ariadne contradicted him. "I'm one of Cedric's statues."

Cedric wished she would be quiet and allow him to drown at his own hand, but the remark was ignored by his rampaging mother. "And where is this friend presently living?"

"Er, well..."

"Is she living here? She says she lives here."

"Well, sort of."

Mrs. Mayfare's eyes narrowed in a look of vitriolic scorn as she relentlessly pursued her quarry. "No one sort of lives somewhere. Either she does or she doesn't live here."

Cedric looked at Ariadne for support, and she smiled. That helped. "Then I suppose that she does," he was most surprised to hear himself say. Mrs. Mayfare stuck out her chest like a preening cockerel.

"I'm surprised at you, Cedric. Though I know I shouldn't be. Mr. Walker, the butcher, always said that no good would come of getting your own apartment."

"But that was fifteen years ago," Cedric pleaded.

"Don't argue with me and don't change the subject," she told him. "I am your mother. And I'm not standing by and seeing any son of mine sucked in by some scarlet woman."

"But I haven't been," Cedric moaned.

"I haven't sucked him at all," Ariadne agreed.

"Don't lie," his mother chided him. "You were never very good at it."

"But it's true."

"I wouldn't have believed that any son of mine could have treated me so. To lie in such a brazen way to my face." She glanced sneeringly at the accused standing in the dock at her side. "Her type of corruption spreads like gangrene," she continued. "It's insidious, and there's only one way of getting rid of it, cutting it out. You won't catch me crossing this threshold while she's here. Either she goes now, or I go straight home."

"But that's not fair, mother. She's got nowhere to go. She's a statue I made."

Mrs. Mayfare winced and looked at him knowingly. "As I said, like gangrene. She's driving you mad, can't you see?"

"As I said," repeated Cedric. "Where is she to go?"

"Back to where she came from," his mother snapped. "Get rid of her now, or I leave." Her face was fuming with threat and anger.

"But mother, I can't."

She stuck out her chest again, defiantly. "Is that your last word, Cedric?"

Cedric squirmed under the tirade, looked at Ariadne, and then stuck out his own chest, equally defiantly. "Yes."

"You will regret this, Cedric Mayfare," his mother warned him furiously. "You mark my words, you'll regret it." And true to her previous words, she left.

Ariadne nonchalantly stepped back in and Cedric was thankful to be able to shut the door.

"You were magnificent," Ariadne eulogized.

"I feel sick," her hero replied.

"Can we fuck now?" Ariadne asked, looked devotedly down at his face.

"What is it with you?" he implored. "Do you only have one thing on your mind?"

"Two thousand years of waiting is a long time," she agreed.

"I never sleep with a girl on our first date," he retorted somewhat desperately.

"Then where are you going to sleep?" she asked sweetly. "You only have the one bed."

****

It was agreed that the next day they should both go to the Job Center and then to the council to register Ariadne as a homeless person. But before they could do either it was necessary for Cedric to go shopping. He needed some ointment to sooth his aching joints: the result of a sleepless massage tossing on the sofa.

He also needed to shop for some clothes for Ariadne to wear. This task, however, proved to be much more complicated than Cedric had imagined. For he was confronted with a bewildering assortment of garments and lingerie in colors and sizes that left him reeling in confusion. Finally, having mumbled his way through most of the fashion shops in the High Street, he managed to invent an imaginary sister who had been ill for some time, but who was now ready to relaunch herself upon the world. This greatly impressed an understanding, cooperative, yet perhaps gullible sales assistant. Thus, after an embarrassing initiation into a comparison of bust, waist and hip sizes, Cedric was able to return with Ariadne's new wardrobe.

On his return, Cedric found that another transformation had taken place. That of his apartment. As he stepped through the door he decided that he had come to the wrong floor. He surreptitiously closed the door again, only to find on going back out onto the landing that he was indeed on the thirteenth floor. For his apartment was spotless: the kitchen sparkled; the furniture gleamed; the carpets were shampooed.

Cedric gazed around in stunned amazement. "You've been cleaning," he said at last to his industrious houseguest.

Ariadne nodded expectantly. "It gave me something to do while I was waiting. Do you mind?"

He shook his head. "No, of course not. You've done really well. It's just that the last time I saw the apartment this tidy was when it was vacant just before I moved in."

She said. "And this is the way it stays. Or else."

"Or else, what?"

She eyed him mischievously. "Or else I'll pull down your pants and suck your cock until it spurts."

She grinned as the panic set in. "I won't touch a thing," he promised. "Just keep away."

"Well at least let me show you whether the clothes you bought are any good," she said, picking up the bags, that impish flash of light reappearing in her eye. "Shall I change here? I don't have so very much to take off." Her hands moved to the hem of her robe.

"The bedroom," he commanded pointing at the door, and she slipped laughing through the door. She remained in there, out of sight, for several minutes while Cedric attacked the lucozade.

"Are you ready?" she called finally.

"Ready for what?" he replied distrustfully.

"For me," she giggled opening the bedroom door.

"Oh," he said in stunned monosyllablism. For as she stood in the doorway, she was everything he had ever dreamed, and then more. She was wearing a fitted cobald blue mini dress that clung to her sylphlike figure. It had a buttoned front with a plunging neckline. Its brevity highlighted the long lines of her legs.

"Don't you think it's a little brief for this time of year," Cedric observed dubiously.

She shrugged her shoulders. "I didn't buy it. You'd better complain to him that did. However, I was a little more concerned about these." She began unbuttoning the buttons of her dress.

"What are you doing?" Cedric stammered. "This wasn't part of the agreement."

She pulled the dress open revealing the briefest of lingerie sets. The bra was a cobald blue half-cup that framed rather than covered her nipples. Her briefs consisted of a thong with a translucent panel through which could be seen a shadow of dark triangle of hair.

"I do wonder, at you, Cedric Mayfare. Buying me such things," she said with a wicked glint. "You are very naughty."

"The sales assistant said they are very popular," he explained hastily. "With men who want to buy underclothes for their sister."

"I'm sure they are," Ariadne murmured softly. "However, I'm not your sister. So what do you think?"

"I think you need to... to put something else on."

"I'm beginning to wonder whether you do think I'm attractive at all."

"You are very attractive. Too attractive."

"How can anyone be too attractive?"

"When they stir in someone else feelings they may not be able to control."

She reached over, her twins inches from him. He could reach and touch them if he choose; he could see that her nipples were distended and hard. "Kiss me," she demanded.

"I may not be able to stop."

"I'll take that chance." He planted a firm passionate kiss on her cheek. She had him truly flustered. Then he finished his lucozade.

*****

Cedric and Ariadne were shown into a small room and sat opposite a smart lady who spoke in a posh accent at about twice the speed that Cedric could understand. Every now and again she would stop and ask a question, at which one of them would try to waffle an answer.

The fact that Ariadne was Greek seemed to be a stumbling block for some reason, though not an insurmountable one because of the European Union, in whatever way that was relevant. Eventually she produced a form numbered, "Something, something stroke something" and the questioning began in earnest.

"Name?" she asked tersely.

"Ariadne." Ariadne said.

The woman neatly printed the name in the box.

"Surname?"

"Surname?" queried Ariadne. "What's that?"

"Your last name," Cedric helped out.

"But that is my last name."

The woman looked up tiredly, scowled, and scratched a line through what she had written, transferring the word to the next box.

"First name?" she asked, returning to the beginning.

"But that's my first name too. It's my only name."

The woman stared through what had become slits of eyes, then cut a dash through the first box.

"Address?"

"Well, I'm living with Cedric at the moment. That's 74 Ropey Mansions, but I've only been there since yesterday, and I'll probably be leaving in a day or two, we're going to the council when we've finished with you. Does that count?"

The slits of eyes glazed over. "No, it hardly qualifies as a permanent address. Where were you before that?"

"Oh, here and there," Cedric responded for her, being deliberately vague.

"And before that I was in Greece," Ariadne added.

"I see. No fixed abode," the woman muttered under her breath. "Date of birth?"

Ariadne squirmed. "Seventeenth of the first," she said.

"And the year?"

"Sixty nine."

The pen paused at the box, and the woman looked up. " Sixty nine?" she asked disbelievingly, mentally calculating an improbable age. "If this is a prank," she warned.

"326 BC", Ariadne finished.

The lady official was not amused. "I have other people to see, and since you are just wasting my time...."

"No I'm not wasting your time. It's the truth, tell her Cedric."

Cedric didn't get the chance to tell her anything, not that he wanted to say anything apart from "goodbye". For they were treated to a lecture on the law as it relates to the giving of false information, and that they could be prosecuted with possible imprisonment.

At some point during this lecture Cedric panicked. He grabbed hold of Ariadne and pulled her bodily through the door. The chair she had been sitting on got caught in this abrupt maneuver, it being sent hurtling across the room so as to hit a sedentary umbrella stand sideways on. This tottered for a moment in distinct indecision before tumbling forwards, casting a number of rejects from the lost property department in a noisy sprawl. In the meantime Cedric and Ariadne had made a very speedy getaway.

They made their way to a quaint little cafe not far from Ropey Mansions, and there they had lunch. Run down would have been a complimentary way of describing it. The chipped melamine tables were scrawled with the nicknames of most of their previous occupants along with their sexual orientations or lack thereof. Condiments consisted of the manufacturer's containers. But it was clean, cozy, warm and run by somebody that didn't know Cedric. So it gave them a chance to regain their composure and replan their strategy. Ariadne was still half way through her two bangers, chip and peas by the time Cedric had both finished his and completed an in depth study on the ingredients of the salt packet. He pushed away his plate and leaned conspiratorially across the table, neatly placing his arm in a dollop of spilt ketchup.

"There's no point in going to the council," he hissed. "They're only going to ask the same questions. They're not going to give you a apartment without knowing who you are."

"We could lie," she suggested.

"They would check," he replied dubiously.

"How?"

"I don't know. But it wouldn't work. I can't make up the lies as fast as they make up the questions."

"But I've got to have somewhere to live. If I were still a statue they'd put me in a town square, somewhere, with my own pedestal." She finally caught up with a pea that she'd been chasing around her plate.

"But I can't do that now. I'm too scared of heights and what's more, I hate pigeons. As you keep saying, I can't stay with you, forever."

He looked down sulkily. "Maybe not forever. But I suppose you're going to have to stay. For a while longer anyway."

"What about your mother?"

"Mother will be back, if only to tell me how much I need her. She didn't like it when I got my own apartment, but she got over it in the end."

Ariadne sighed. "But at least let's give the council a try."

He paused, seriously contemplating the remains of the tomato ketchup on the table. "No, Ariadne. Let's not," he said finally. "I've sort of had you around for almost two years since I shaped you, and, well, I've got used to it. I know it's not the same now that you're real, and you've got your own life to lead, and you're not going to hang around too long with a nerd like me, but, please, couldn't you stay awhile?"

She stared at him for a long time, but it was a kind stare, and then she smiled.

*****

The next day Cedric was back on his beat, continuing his personal vendetta against grime in the streets of London, sweeping with long lazy strokes of his big broom. As usual, there were the familiar friendly faces on their way past, and the trades people who always gave him a nod as they busied on their way. It had been a frosty night and the last of the late autumnal foliage had fallen into his care. Slowly he packed it into plastic sacks and stacked them at the kerb awaiting collection.

"Hello," a familiar voice said.

He swung round, a little too quickly, surprised by the utterance, losing his balance in the process and falling into a messy heap amongst half a dozen sacks of dead leaves. Ariadne, lavishing apologies everywhere, pulled him up and helped shake him clean.

"I told you not to call me at work," Cedric said.

"I haven't," she protested. "I just happened down the same street you're in."

"It amounts to the same thing," he mumbled grumpily, noticing that two of his environmentally colored sacks had split open spilling their crumbling contents on to the road.

"Well, why shouldn't I come?" Ariadne asked. "You talk to other people. I've seen you. So why can't I walk down this road?"