Ruby & the Stone Age Diet Read online

  Ruby has disappeared. I have not seen her for three days. She is not at Domino’s. None of her friends have seen her. I am frantic with worry. I trudge from place to place and after the first place it starts to rain. My clothes are soaked through and no one knows where she is. Dead images of Ruby in a torn lilac dress dance in front of me.

  I meet Cis carrying some parts of a drum-kit but she won’t talk to me. I meet a man with a terrible birthmark down one side of his face and bad acne on the other side and he trembles and tells me that nothing I suffer is as bad as the staring and avoidance of staring that he endures every day. I meet a former flatmate of mine with a suitcase who is walking down to the Maudsley psychiatric hospital for a brief stay as an inpatient. I meet Gerry who plays bass guitar and doesn’t like me because he thinks I tried to steal his girlfriend years ago. I denied it to everyone although it was true. I meet Mary who has had a baby and produces so much breast milk that she is on her way to the children’s home with a spare bottle for the motherless babies alone in their cots. I meet all of the Dead City Dykes who claim to be the only lesbian speed metal band in the country and they tell me they will shake the nation when they find a new guitarist, but they haven’t seen Cis and they haven’t seen Ruby. I meet Izzy who is on her way to see a doctor to start abortion proceedings after calling into the sports shop for some heavier weights, and she hasn’t seen Ruby either. I meet Alice who works in a travel agency, and Maggie who is being evicted, and Jane who is selling communist newspapers and Barry, who has nowhere to stay, but none of them know where Ruby is and I become wetter and wetter and colder and colder and I end up in the centre of London looking in alleyways and other than this I don’t know what to do.

  *

  A few years ago I walked round the centre of London with nowhere to stay the night, not knowing what to do. It was raining heavily and my clothes were soaked through. I wanted to be somewhere warm. Just being somewhere warm would make me very happy. I meet a person at the edge of Soho who is friendly and we get talking and share a cigarette. His name is Phil and he is a drummer. He shows me a comic he is carrying and he says I can read it if I want. It is a tale about some spacemen lost after a meteor storm. I read it in a café he takes me to where we can sit all night.

  The café is full of hopeless degenerates and I feel quite at home. One of them is called Spider because of the spider’s-web tattoo across his neck. His long hair is filthy and even sitting in his seat he manages to give the impression of someone shambling about in an alleyway. As the night passes he starts to shake slightly and tap his foot to an imaginary rhythm.

  I feel all right in the café, at least I have somewhere to sit for the night. On each table there is a vase with one yellowed plastic flower drooping over the edge and I find these quite pleasant.

  Another person walks past and offers Spider a cup of tea and nods to me and I get bought a cup of tea as well. Pretty soon the tea buyer sits next to us.

  He is about forty with a small tough face and thin hair tied in a little ponytail.

  ‘Call me Jocko,’ he says, ‘although it’s not my real name. No one in London knows my real name.’

  He seems pleased that no one in London knows his real name and regales us with stories of his time as a security guard at the local amusement arcades.

  ‘I used to carry a chopper. I found that better than a knife. I’ve had people come up and point shooters at my head.’

  About three o’clock he invites me and Spider home. Spider tells me that normally Jocko would not give him house-room, so it seems that I am the attraction.

  Jocko’s door is bright green and battered. The original lock has been torn off and a new one has been fitted underneath with some metal panelling to strengthen it. Jocko has lots of pornography. A magazine called Bits of Boys sticks in my mind. When I was eight I wouldn’t have known how to give a blow job. Jocko is pleased that he has a nice room to stay in close to Soho, and very cheap, and pleased that he is at home with violence.

  I sleep with Spider, although Jocko says I am welcome to stay in his bed if I will be more comfortable there.

  Probably I will be more comfortable with Spider. He is very dirty but I am not very clean myself.

  ‘Will I toss you off before you go to sleep?’ says Spider, trying to be friendly, but I decline his offer.

  Next day Jocko tries to make me stay in the flat but I say I have to leave. Seeing his small axe lying next to the knives and forks on the sink, I am very polite about it and promise I’ll come back.

  *

  I desperately want Ruby to come back.

  The nightmare in the mailing firm continues. After two weeks of thirteen-hour nightshifts I have turned into a zombie. During the day I seem to have no time to sleep because I am busy trying to organise our gig, and rehearse my new song about Cis, and look for Ruby. I struggle up the ramp, loading the truck. The DJ is playing records.

  ‘Get a fucking move on,’ says Mark, the shift foreman, as I start to wilt.

  Mark knows all about being a shift foreman. He told me he learned it quickly because he doesn’t just want to be a shift foreman all his life. And when he worked cleaning cars he learnt everything about cleaning cars in one day as well.

  I pound down the last sack and collapse onto the floor. It is three o’clock, time for a fifteen-minute break. By the third shift of the week all five of us are so exhausted that we curl up on empty sacks and sleep during these fifteen minutes, although sleeping for fifteen minutes only makes you feel worse when you have to get up for the next lorry.

  I think about Cis. I have never felt so lonely and hopeless as when lying on these mailsacks.

  I want to go and tell Ruby about it. Ruby has disappeared.

  ‘She’s visiting her mother,’ says Ascanazl, Spirit Friend of Lonely People, making a brief appearance. I know he is lying.

  Here’s a record for you, says the DJ. It’s from Cis, and the message is, come back, I love you.

  When I arrive back at the flat Ruby is home. I hug her and tell her how worried I was. She says she was visiting her mother and didn’t I see the note she left in my room?

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or the one in the kitchen?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Next time I’ll spray-paint a message on the wall.’

  She tells me it was a pleasant visit except her mother moaned about her not wearing any shoes.

  She has brought back some fishfingers as a present from her mother so we cook them into sandwiches.

  The sacred Aphrodite Cactus was first brought to Britain by Brutus. Britain is in fact named after Brutus. He was a refugee from Troy.

  Aphrodite, sympathetic to the defeated Trojans but unable to help militarily, gave the refugees food and supplies for their journey, and a few cactuses to help them with their love affairs.

  Geoffrey of Monmouth won his true love, the daughter of a local noble, in this way. As soon as the cactus he presented her with flowered, she fell powerfully in love with him.

  Mine will not flower. Neither will Ruby’s. It is almost June. June must be a good flowering time for cacti.

  I ask Aphrodite if there is any problem but she is too busy to talk to me because there are broken hearts everywhere. She refers me to Jasmine, Divine Protectress of Broken Hearts. Jasmine says she will see what she can do but she is also very busy. The number of broken hearts there are is increasing all the time.

  ‘I know,’ says Ruby. ‘And there is not much to do about a broken heart. But don’t worry. I heard that Cis is missing you.’

  I finish the fishfinger sandwiches and bring them through on our metal tray, green with a tobacco advert.

  ‘I think it is a little banal,’ says Ruby.

  ‘You told me you were keen on fishfinger sandwiches,’ I protest.

  ‘Not the fishfinger sandwiches. I love fishfinger sandwiches, as long as there is plenty of mayonnaise. I think your story is banal.’

  ‘What story?’

  She looks a l
ittle impatient.

  ‘The one you told me last week. About your spaceship crashing and you walking around on the planet with a robot.’

  I have no idea what she is talking about. I never told her any story like that. I have never been in a spaceship that crashed onto another planet. But I go along with it while we’re eating our sandwiches.

  ‘Why is it banal?’

  ‘Because you stare at people doing things in canyons and don’t know what they’re doing and really that is a very obvious image and not original at all.’

  I am hurt, despite having no idea what she is talking about. The amount of times I have helped Ruby with her hair, not to mention her sandwiches and putting in her diaphragm, she could be more polite than to call me banal.

  She starts writing a letter.

  ‘Is it to your genitals again?’

  ‘No. This one is to my orgasmic response. I am really fucked off at my orgasmic response. Sometimes it is pathetic. I am going to give it a good telling off.’

  ‘I want to write something too.’

  ‘How’s your orgasmic response?’

  ‘All right I think. I haven’t had much use for it recently. I don’t think I could write it a very interesting letter.’

  ‘How about writing a hippopotamus story instead?’ says Ruby. ‘That would be nice.’

  Cynthia descends into hell, develops a liking for country music and eats some more friends

  Cynthia drags her broken body out of the sewers and back to her rubbish tip. She lies on a cardboard box and bleeds.

  This is the end, she thinks. Life is unbearable. I am pursued everywhere and my body is mangled beyond repair. But this is as nothing compared to the fact that Paris doesn’t love me anymore. All I want is a friendly lover and a roof over my head. Is that too much to ask?

  ‘Why are you bleeding all over my cardboard box?’ demands a tramp. ‘I have to sleep on that tonight.’

  Cynthia loses consciousness. The tramp, a kindly soul, takes her to hospital where she almost dies. The doctors wonder how a young girl came to be riddled with silver bullets and have her ribs smashed to a pulp, but they battle to save her life.

  Unconscious in hospital, Cynthia sinks into a terrible nightmare where she descends into the werewolf underworld. All around are the faces of the people she has killed and eaten.

  ‘Die now,’ they say. ‘You deserve it.’

  On the verge of being trapped there forever, the power of her love for Paris drags her back. She refuses to give up life while he is still in the world, and recovers.

  She discharges herself from hospital and buys a bundle of sad country music tapes. All night long she lies on a rubbish tip howling at the moon and listening to Patsy Cline and Tammy Wynette, a terrible state for any creature to be in.

  Hopelessly and helplessly alone, Cynthia visits the South London Women’s Centre for some company. There she meets a few friendly women who invite her to join their plumbing company. Cynthia considers the offer but as she is on the point of agreeing the full moon shines through the window. By this time a fairly crazed werewolf, Cynthia is unable to resist, and eats them all up. She goes back to her rubbish tip in despair. She is tired after being hounded through the streets by irate friends of the mangled plumbers.

  She changes back into human form and listens to some country music. Later that night she sneaks around the streets near to Paris’s house, hoping she might accidentally run into him. Unfortunately, she is not successful, even though she checks all of his favourite pubs.

  The young werewolf is in misery over Paris. Her only true love and he fell for someone else. Cynthia loves him to distraction. She gave him part of her soul.

  We have no food and I am hungry.

  ‘Why don’t you go round the shops for some chocolate?’ asks Ruby.

  ‘I am scared of the werewolves. Yesterday they almost trapped me at the bus stop.’

  ‘Right. You better just wait till daylight.’

  Ruby is surrounded by bits of paper and magazines and seems pleased with herself.

  ‘Maybe I could risk the shops anyway. Do you have any money?’

  ‘No. But we’ll be rich after our contact article rocks the nation. I’ve sorted out the ads to reply to. Here’s your bundle.’

  There are about fifteen, mostly from sex magazines, a few from other things with contact columns. I read them.

  BEAUTIFUL THIRTY-FIVE-YEAR-OLD RED-HAIRED WOMAN SEEKS YOUNGER MAN, PREFERABLY ARTISTIC AND ATHLETIC. MUST BE SEXUALLY SUBSERVIENT.

  SINCERE GUY, FORTYISH, SEEKS YOUNG FRIEND FOR MUTUALLY SATISFYING FRIENDSHIP. INTERESTED IN DISCIPLINE.

  OLDER GUY, GOT BOOKS, MAGS, VIDEOS, SEEKS SLIMYOUNG GUY FOR TRAINING. ACCOMMODATION NO PROBLEM.

  MOTHERLY FEMALE, FORTY-THREE, INTERESTED IN FLOWERS, MYTHOLOGY AND DISCIPLINE, LOOKING FOR YOUNG MALE FRIEND IN NEED OF LOVE, AFFECTION AND CORRECTIVE TRAINING.

  MUSCULAR GUY, INTO BODYBUILDING AND WALKS IN THE COUNTRY, SEEKS SINCERE YOUNG FRIEND TO EXPLORE THE WORLD OF SUBMISSION – PHYSICAL, MENTAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL. ALL LETTERS ANSWERED.

  ‘Do you notice anything about your ads?’ asks Ruby.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Right. I’ll help you write some replies. Go and get those photos you had taken last year when you weren’t looking such a shambles as you are now.’

  Still hungry, I go out to rehearse with Nigel. He tells me our drummer has left the band to go to acting school instead. We will have to postpone our gig again.

  ‘I wanted to play my new song to Cis.’

  Nigel has brought his drum-machine so we can rehearse on our own. It is a small drum-machine, an out-of-date model that cost him thirty pounds from the second-hand shop. All it does really is keep a beat. Compared to some drummers, however, this is not too bad.

  We are rehearsing in a makeshift room downstairs in a squat that we rent for four hours at a time. The microphones will not stay on the stands so we have to tape them in place and sometimes the amplifiers stop working, but it is convenient and very cheap.

  I get on well with Nigel. If we could find a drummer we would be a good band. No one would care if we were a good band and, playing the sort of gigs we would get, no one would ever hear us. But we would still be a good band.

  Rehearsing is fun sometimes. Putting your guitar up full and thrashing it takes your mind off everything else and there is always the thought that today’s rehearsals might be tomorrow’s big success. And sitting round on rickety old chairs in a shabby rehearsal room smoking cigarettes between playing is fun as well.

  Carrying my guitar home through Brixton is a little worrying. If someone stole it off me I could not afford another one. I like my guitar. It is a Burns, an unusual old British make. Actually it looks better than it sounds, but it has a nice aura.

  Walking home I carry on a conversation with Cis in my head.

  ‘It’s cold tonight. Can you feel the drizzle? We can cut through this road here. It’s quicker. Yes it is, really.’

  I imagine her smiling, willing to go along with my shortcut although she doesn’t really believe in it.

  These imaginary conversations go on all the time.

  I have the sudden inspiration of calling on Cis and telling her I’m locked out. She will be sympathetic about this and let me sleep on her couch, or rather her mother’s couch, as that is where she is living just now. Her mother answers the door and refuses to let me in and tells me not to come back. I head on home and cut through the little park, past some trees.

  Ruby is standing beside a tree. Her feet must be cold in the damp grass, unless they have become immune to all feeling.

  ‘What are you doing, Ruby?’

  ‘I’m seeing what it is like to be a tree.’

  I stand beside her for a while. Nothing much happens.

  ‘I think this is a little boring.’

  ‘Yes,’ agrees Ruby. ‘I had hoped for better.’

  ‘Should we go home? I’m hungry.’

  ‘There isn’t any food. Bu
t we can have some tea.’

  We walk home, holding hands.

  At the bottom of our tower block I think I see Cis but she is holding hands with Fanfaron, God of Electric Guitar Thieves, so we run up the stairs as fast as we can. The police would never be able to protect us from the God of Electric Guitar Thieves, and anyway there is never a policeman around when you need one.

  Next day Cis phones me up and screams down the phone for a while and then she sends me a letter telling me how much she hates me. I am pleased to hear from her. I wonder if she would like me to send her some flowers.

  Ruby is quite sympathetic when I tell her all about it. Domino is with her and they seem to be back together again and outside the next block the old woman is having a friendly conversation with Ascanazl, ancient Spirit Friend of Lonely People. She has made him a cup of tea and is telling him how hard it is to manage on her pension.

  He tells her that she should have joined a private pension plan while there was still time.

  I phone up the people we hire our PA off to tell them our gig is cancelled again and they are quite annoyed about it and say I have to send them some money anyway or they will sue me.

  I wonder if they are serious. I do not want to be sued. I go to ask Ruby what to do but she is busy fucking Domino and I sense that she will not want to hear about my PA problems right now. Another important question springs into my mind however, so I go into her room where Domino is lying on top of her.

  ‘Ruby, about this contact article, I have replied to all these gay adverts and I am not gay. Is this not a bad thing to do?’

  ‘Well, you never fuck anybody these days so it doesn’t really make much difference, does it?’

  There is some logic in this.

  ‘But they are bound to sense something is amiss.’