Ruby & the Stone Age Diet Page 2

  One day she is out for a walk through the heather. She comes across a pregnant woman.

  Aha, thinks Cynthia. A nourishing sandwich. And there’s no one around. She eats the pregnant woman. Unfortunately her mother, sharp-eyed, is not as far away as she thinks, and sees the crime.

  Her mother is furious. So is the Werewolf King. Cynthia is forced to flee to London with only her guitar for company.

  I can never find a reliable drummer for my band. This is on my mind while I am patching my jeans and feeling hungry. My jeans are a shambles and we can’t afford any food.

  ‘I think we should become Buddhists,’ says Ruby.

  ‘I am busy patching my jeans.’

  ‘See? You are too concerned with the material world. Once we are Buddhists you won’t worry about patching your jeans or stuff like that.’

  ‘Are you religious about your drumming?’ I once asked a drummer, in a shabby all-night café in Soho.

  ‘Not really. There is no god of drumming. But I do follow the way of the Tao.’

  ‘What will Domino say if you became a Buddhist? Will you still be able to fuck him?’

  ‘Domino can fuck himself,’ says Ruby.

  They have been arguing again. I think about Ruby’s suggestion.

  ‘If I become a Buddhist will I stop being sad about Cis?’

  ‘Right away.’

  Next day, in heavy rain and very hungry, we go up into town to join a Buddhist temple.

  They give us a vegetarian meal which tastes very good and we sit around banging tambourines for a while. I pretend I am banging a tambourine in tribute to the God of Drumming so he will send my band a good drummer.

  ‘I am enjoying this,’ I say to Ruby, and she seems quite enthusiastic as well.

  Everyone has shaven heads and we wonder if we will have to have this done. Ruby says she doesn’t mind, even though she has lots of meticulously cared-for hair, because spiritual people don’t bother about this sort of thing. Also we will get nice orange robes.

  After we’ve banged our tambourines and chanted and had some more vegetarian food a man comes and sits with us.

  ‘I am your instructor,’ he says.

  ‘How long have you been a Buddhist?’ asks Ruby.

  ‘We’re not Buddhists,’ says the man. ‘We’re Hare Krishna.’

  We pick up our shoes on the way out.

  ‘What a disappointment,’ says Ruby.

  ‘How come we picked the wrong temple?’

  ‘At least it was nice food.’

  ‘The act of eating disgusts me,’ says Ruby. ‘Do you think I am putting on weight?’

  ‘No.’

  Ruby worries about her weight. It is stupid. She is not overweight.

  A string of shaven-haired devotees marches past, chanting and banging drums.

  ‘Don’t ask them to join your band,’ advises Ruby. ‘You’ll be wasting your time.’

  ‘Is that—’

  ‘No it isn’t. Cis isn’t here. And it doesn’t look anything like her.’

  ‘Why did you write a letter to your genitals?’

  ‘I was just telling them how much I dislike them. It is a procedure recommended in my new book. Next I have to write them another letter telling them how much I like them.’

  On the way home we meet Izzy who is eating a pizza in the street and carrying a small weight.

  ‘I have to screw this onto my dumbbells,’ she tells us. ‘It’s time to make them slightly heavier.’

  She is wearing a leather waistcoat. She flexes her bicep.

  ‘Do you notice any difference?’

  Ruby and I say yes although actually we don’t.

  ‘How are you getting on with Dean?’ asks Ruby. Dean is Izzy’s boyfriend.

  Izzy shrugs. There is a definite kind of shrug that means you are not getting on too well with your boyfriend.

  Back home I go through to look at my cactus.

  Ruby follows me into my room.

  ‘Let me have a look at that cactus.’

  She studies it for a while.

  ‘This is sensational.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This cactus. According to my book of myths and fables it is the sacred Aphrodite Cactus. Once it flowers your love is sealed forever with the person that gave it to you.’

  ‘When will it flower?’

  ‘Any time.’

  It is February. Any time cannot be far away. I am pleased to have Aphrodite on my side.

  Cynthia is very poor, but meets a pleasant companion

  In London Cynthia squats with a few people she meets around. She is very poor. The Social Security will not give her any money and she is forced to scavenge the streets to survive. She tries mainly just to eat dogs and cats, because she does realise that it is not such a nice thing to eat humans, but sometimes she devours one. Humans are very tasty.

  And, when she thinks about it, humans have never been all that pleasant to wolves, and they do eat animals themselves.

  Still, after eating a human Cynthia always feels a little guilty. But when she meets a nice boy called Daniel and starts going out with him she soon forgets all about it, because Daniel is a friendly lover and they both like to fuck for hours on end. Afterwards they watch television or listen to records, and Cynthia plays Daniel a few simple songs on her guitar.

  Ruby comes back from Domino’s, slamming the door, holding a cactus and forcing a smile.

  ‘Domino bought me a sacred Aphrodite Cactus. I made him do it. He wanted to spend the money on beer instead. Look after it till it flowers.’ She storms off, apparently unhappy despite the cactus.

  I put it next to mine and feed them both some plant food. Outside it is thundering and lightning and lashing down rain.

  One time around midnight I met a girl called Anastasia at a bus stop in the rain at Clapham Common. This sticks in my mind because Anastasia is an unusual name. No buses came so we started walking together. At this time I was still in the Army Careers Office.

  ‘It would be nice to control the weather,’ said Anastasia, pulling her collar tight against the rain. ‘Like a rain god. I’d walk around in sunshine all day long. Maybe I might have a little bit of rain so I could make some rainbows.’

  I go through to Ruby’s room and ask her what is wrong and she says that Domino is a complete moron who wants to drink beer all the time and he reminds her of her father.

  I try being sympathetic but I am not a very convincing liar and Ruby sees through me. We disappear into our separate rooms and I get back to staring at my potted plant. I had considered writing a poem but now I don’t feel much like it because with Ruby in such a bad mood I will have no one to show it to. But this is probably just as well, because I am a terrible poet.

  It rained till the gutters overflowed onto the pavements. At the corner of Battersea High Street Anastasia quoted me three lines of a poem by Byron and told me she would like to come home with me. This was a surprise, but fine.

  Possibly I am massively attractive that night. Possibly she is dreadfully lonely. Probably she is just fed up with getting rained on.

  At my front door I find I have lost the keys.

  ‘I have lost the keys.’

  We look at the front door. It is barricaded like a good squat should be, with a rough sketch of Tilka, Guardian Goddess of Squatters, protecting the entrance. Hammering on it produces no results. No one is home.

  ‘Never mind,’ I say. ‘I’ll get in the back.’

  I walk round the corner and beat on Paul’s door to let me in and then I climb his back wall and walk through the gardens of some rented houses and avoid a barking dog to clamber into our backyard. I force the window at the back of my room. Once inside I can’t get out because I now remember I have padlocked my room on the outside as a security measure against everyone else who squats there.

  So I have to hop out the back and break the window of the next room. Unfortunately once inside the room I find that the person who lives there has followed my example an
d this door too is padlocked outside.

  I curse him for being so suspicious of his fellow human beings and wonder what to do. By this time I am growling with frustration and Anastasia is somewhere outside in the rain wondering where I am, so I just take hold of the door and beat it till the locks break. The door is in shreds.

  I run to the front door and haul it open.

  ‘Hi Anastasia, come in.’

  We enter my room via my neighbour’s room, the backyard and my window.

  Up above spaceships fly through the night sky, puny human craft and mighty alien movable worlds. Somewhere on a mighty alien movable world two beings are clambering through a window and into bed. Being mighty aliens they will have conquered all sexual diseases and will be able to fuck with complete abandon.

  ‘This is an interesting way to get into bed,’ says Anastasia, clambering over the window-ledge. After undressing she takes a diaphragm from her bag, smears it with spermicide, and pushes it into her vagina.

  After fucking I have the longest journey ever up to the kitchen to make some tea and carry the teapot back through the obstacle course of the shattered door. Two windows and a backyard is no easy matter. Later I have to make the same journey again to rummage round for some dog-ends to roll a few cigarettes, but all in all it is a pleasant experience, though as I never see Anastasia again, possibly she does not enjoy it as much as me.

  The following day Danny in the next room is furious that someone has torn his door off its hinges but I just deny all knowledge of it, and when he gets round to taking some glue and some heroin he soon forgets all about it.

  Cynthia gives way to her appetite

  ‘Let’s go out for a walk in the beautiful full moon,’ suggests Daniel.

  ‘No,’ says Cynthia. ‘It’s not safe outside at night.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’says Daniel. ‘Of course it’s safe.’

  Round the first quiet corner Cynthia changes into wolf-form, kills Daniel and eats him. The full moon always gives her a powerful appetite.

  ‘I told you it wasn’t safe,’ she says.

  Daniel did have the slightly unfortunate habit of often not listening to Cynthia’s opinions carefully enough.

  Ruby comes out of her room and starts being friendly. I immediately co-operate because if Ruby is friendly to me I will always be friendly right back, even if she has been unpleasant to me only minutes before.

  ‘Here is some tea,’ she says. ‘Help me with my hair.’

  She is tying some small lilac ribbons into her plaited locks.

  ‘They are lovely,’ I tell her. ‘They look beautiful with your dress.’

  ‘I’d like to show them off. Let’s go out.’

  We walk down into the centre of Brixton and call on Izzy. Izzy lives with Marilyn. They are both Ruby’s friends rather than mine. Marilyn is not in and Izzy is busy lifting her weights. They seem like very small weights but she must have been lifting them for a while because her body is glistening with sweat.

  ‘See the improvement?’ she says flexing her biceps.

  ‘Yes,’ we say, although neither Ruby nor I can see any difference.

  Izzy is wearing a dull yellow tracksuit with the sleeves ripped off and holes in the knees. For some reason I feel sorry for her, standing there in rags, pretending her muscles are growing.

  Before we go Ruby asks her how she is getting on with Dean. Izzy tells us she is mad at him because he is busy rebuilding an old motorbike and never has any time for her. And then when he does call round he expects her to drop everything and pay him lots of attention. What’s worse, she always does. And she still thinks he is fucking someone else.

  We leave Izzy to her weights. Outside Ruby says she feels a little sorry for her, though she isn’t sure why.

  We set off again to visit some more of Ruby’s friends. When we arrive they are busy putting some padlocks on their front door.

  ‘Can’t be too careful,’ says Phil, who is a small-time cocaine dealer, and attracted to Ruby.

  When they hear about how Domino has been unpleasant to Ruby and I have been left by Cis they do their best to cheer us up.

  ‘How could Domino be so unpleasant to you?’ says Phil. ‘Compared to him you are a goddess.’

  Later on I go home and Ruby stays. Close to our flat I am so full of things to cheer me up that I find myself lying face down in a puddle with a vivid memory of someone telling me that you can drown in only two inches of water.

  I struggle to my knees. Only an inch and a half, I estimate. A lucky escape. Four young men pass by, singing and shouting and causing a disturbance. I hate them. They ask me if I am all right and they go to a lot of trouble to help me home. I still hate them.

  Next morning I wake up in bed with the Great Goddess Astarte.

  I am surprised, of course, that the Great Goddess Astarte has chosen to visit a council flat in Brixton, let alone sleep in my bed, but I go along with it because I do not want to offend her in any way. I have nothing but respect for the Great Goddess.

  At this time I am working for a man in Dulwich who does painting and decorating. I have to strip off wallpaper with a steaming machine. It is unpleasant and difficult.

  Some people do easy jobs and earn huge amounts of money. I do dreadful jobs and am always poorly paid. I am not quite sure why this is. Maybe I didn’t pay enough attention at school.

  When I am doing these menial things I think about whatever band I’m playing in at the time. I imagine us being successful. I imagine that one day I will not have to visit any more building sites or factories because I will be making records and making money and having fun. Even though I am realistic enough to know that this is unlikely, I still think about it.

  However, I abandon the decorating because I cannot leave the Great Goddess to go and strip wallpaper. It would be a terrible insult.

  For some days I go around making food and keeping the flat tidy and generally being organised because I am sure that the Great Goddess will be totally fucked off if she keeps tripping over old clothes on the floor or finds there isn’t any soap in the bathroom.

  She seems to adjust to the modern world very well, working the TV doesn’t cause her any problems at all and she consistently plays all the best records in Ruby’s and my collection. Ruby seems to be away somewhere, which is a shame as I know she would have liked to meet Astarte.

  ‘Can you make Cis come back to me?’ I ask, respectfully bringing her a cup of tea.

  ‘Of course,’ she replies. ‘I can do anything. But I’m not going to. She has a life of her own to lead.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I think about asking her to find me a good drummer but I do not want to burden such an important being with my petty problems. She has told me that she is presently engaged in trying to stop the world being destroyed by heartless humans. Apparently it is a very close thing. She does however take the time to say a few words to my cactus and afterwards it is always spectacularly healthy. It starts to grow, but there is no sign of a flower.

  Cynthia finds happiness with another lover

  After eating Daniel Cynthia is very very lonely. She deeply regrets it. So she takes her guitar and goes busking in tube stations to try and earn some money and take her mind off things.

  She is quite successful at busking. Cynthia has a good voice. Also, something about her eyes makes the police hesitant about moving her on.

  Later, still lonely, she has a drink in a pub.

  A girl comes over and talks to her. Her name is Albinia. They go home together.

  Cynthia moves in with her and they are happy for a while. Albinia is a dress designer and works every day in a studio surrounded by other young artists who she finds very pushy. She appreciates Cynthia’s relatively simple manners, and she likes her singing.

  Cynthia, of course, does not let on that she is really a werewolf. She knows that Albinia will find this hard to understand.

  I meet a man who can’t relate to the world because he is too shy to talk to anyo
ne. He is too shy to talk to me and we don’t have any fun. I meet a woman who hates herself because she is fat and she apologises for not saying she was fat in the contact advert. I tell her not to worry about it because I don’t mind but she says she knows I am lying and that really I hate her for being fat and she wishes she’d never met me. I meet a man of fifty who runs a company making yachts and he says he is looking for a nice young houseboy who he can fuck on his own personal yacht but I am not good-looking enough so it isn’t going to be me. I meet a man who lives in a cardboard box under the National Theatre and he promises that he is only living there whilst pursuing a sociological study of the homeless and if I will take him home and let him fuck me we will be very happy together. I get rained on and wet waiting for a woman who wants a young lover to take her to art galleries and she never shows. I meet a young man with a withered arm who says he used to be a drummer until he got burnt in a fire. I like him but he says he never wants to have sex because he is ashamed of his withered arm and he is sorry he wasted my time. I brush my hair downstairs in McDonald’s whilst waiting for a young soldier who promises he has books, magazines and videos, but he never shows and I don’t wait long because four noisy young men at the next table are making me nervous. I meet a man who wants to teach me to fly helicopters but when we get undressed he is nervous that I will steal his suit so he cannot concentrate. I meet a woman who says she is embarrassed about placing an advert but since her husband died she has not been able to stop crying and the doctor told her to get out of the house more. I meet a young woman from Iceland who is so bright, intelligent and attractive that it seems like a bad miracle that she cannot meet anyone she likes and has to sit every night alone in a bedsit with one ring of her gas cooker lit because her electric heater is too expensive. On reflection she decides that she does not want to sit there with me. I do not want to sit there with her. I do not want to do anything with anyone. I want to wake up in bed with Cis.

  I wake up in bed with Ruby.