Ruby and the Stone Age Diet Read online

  ‘But wear it if you like.’

  Ruby tries to hide her disappointment and quietly throws it away. It sinks down into the plastic bag full of yesterday’s beans.

  ‘We have a brilliant new can-opener,’ I say, trying to cover the slight embarrassment caused by Domino’s disregard for Ruby’s endeavours.

  Domino is not interested in any can-openers so I decide to go out and walk around. It starts to rain, which reminds me of Ruby’s strange accusation that I have been telling Rain God stories.

  At the next corner I meet Shamash the Sun God.

  ‘I see Cis has been busy today making all this rain,’ he says. ‘I am lonely up there in the sky by myself. I could do with a friend. I am on my way to buy a book of mythical history that will tell me who the sun is meant to be friends with.’

  ‘How will you get in touch?’

  ‘I might place an advert. I think I would like to go out with a moon worshipper. Maybe even a werewolf. It’s a long time since I had any excitement.’

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello Izzy, what you doing?’

  ‘I’ve just come back from having my abortion and now I’m going to eat a pizza in the market then I’m going home to exercise the muscles round my knees and thighs, what are you doing?’

  I explain I have just been talking to Shamash the Sun God and Izzy says really, was it nice, and I shrug my shoulders because I don’t want to make too much of it.

  ‘Do you think if Cis was to walk along here with her little sister and her little sister was suddenly to run out into the road and then a massive truck was about to run her down because its brakes had failed and I rushed out and saved her then Cis would start going out with me again?’

  ‘No,’ replies Izzy. ‘And anyway, Cis’s little sister is seventeen and could dodge the truck herself.’

  ‘Suppose she was drunk?’

  ‘Is this likely to happen?’

  ‘Well, yes, her little sister cannot hold her drink.’

  ‘I mean, is the whole scenario likely to happen?’

  ‘It was just a thought. I miss Cis terribly.’

  Izzy says that she has noticed. When we reach the market she offers me some pizza but I don’t enjoy it very much.

  I do not last long as Assistant Head Storeman. The Head Chef, a very pompous man, is annoyed when he walks into the underground food store and catches me juggling oranges. I am reported to the Head Storeman. He gives me a terrible row and I resign in disgust. My benefit is suspended because the DHSS does not think that resigning in disgust is a reasonable thing to do.

  ‘Ruby, why am I condemned to doing terrible jobs all the time?’

  ‘Because the country is in the grip of evil demons.’

  ‘Jane who sells communist newspapers blames the economy.’

  ‘What would she know about anything?’

  During my few weeks at the hotel I am, however, very well fed. Smoked salmon hang in the fridge and I eat strips off them and drink from gallon cartons of cream and devour boxes of expensive chocolates and every day I take a big peach home for Ruby.

  When I get home after the pizza, I find that Ruby has moved house. This is a terrible shock. She has left without telling me.

  But when I rack my brains I eventually remember that today was the day that we were due to move because our eviction notice arrived last week, in fact now I think about it I was meant to be out buying bin-liners to pack our clothes in.

  The council have been and boarded up the door with a huge iron anti-squatting device.

  Cynthia meets two international terrorists, and has to leave the warehouse

  Cynthia’s stay in the warehouse is interrupted by the return of Millie Molly Mandy and Betty Lou Marvel, international terrorists, drug smugglers and good-time girls. The warehouse is their secret hideout and they do not want to share it with a werewolf, even one they like.

  I am doomed in everything, thinks Cynthia. Not only did my true love desert me but I will never even find a peaceful place to be sad.

  ‘We’re sorry about your tragic love affair but you can’t live here,’ says Millie Molly Mandy, dressed as always in a flowery frock. ‘We need it as base for a new smuggling operation.’

  ‘But I’ve nowhere else to go,’ protests Cynthia.

  She is considering eating them but they both have machineguns and it is bound to be very messy.

  ‘Here is some money,’ says Betty Lou Marvel. ‘Enough to live on for a while. We are going to assassinate someone now. Please be gone when we get back.’

  There are many interesting stories about Betty Lou Marvel and Millie Molly Mandy and the trail of destruction they have left behind them, and all the fun they have had living it up on the proceeds, but they will have to be told another time.

  They load up their sniper rifles and depart. Cynthia gathers together her guitar and spare sunglasses and leaves shortly after.

  Outside she spends some time meditating in a Hare Krishna temple. They offer her some vegetables, but she refuses politely. Later she wanders round the British Museum, wondering what to do.

  Ruby has gone and our flat is boarded up. I am alone in the world. I am engulfed in a huge flood of self-pity.

  One of the many things I have in common with Ruby is that we are both expert self-pityists. We regard it as a good positive emotion. If I can’t find her again I know I will never meet anyone as good for sitting round being miserable with.

  Homeless, I stare at it, a little perplexed. I shake it but it won’t let me in. Where has Ruby gone?

  She is my only real friend. If she has gone away and left me I don’t know what I will do.

  I wonder if she took my belongings. I wonder if she took good care of my potted plant. I wonder if I was meant to help us move. It seems almost certain I would have been. Ruby will be furious. I have to spend five days sleeping on the floor of a slight acquaintance’s flat and wearing the same clothes, and after I get rained on I am wet and shivering all the time.

  Ascanazl appears, resplendent in his lilac-and-yellow feathered cloak. I ask him for help because now, without even Ruby to talk to, I am as lonely as I can possibly be.

  ‘I’m afraid I am too busy to help,’ he says. ‘And my girlfriend has left me.’

  My next contact refuses to fuck me because I am too dirty. Ruby will be furious.

  ‘Please,’ I say.

  ‘No. You are too filthy for me to abuse. I have a horror of cold shivering bodies.’

  Eventually I bump into Ruby in the street when she is out buying some margarine and she says where the hell have you been and why did you disappear when it was time for us to move? She seems quite annoyed about the whole thing and really I am stuck for a good explanation.

  Eventually I have to claim that I was kidnapped by a spaceship and Ruby seems to accept this as a reasonable story.

  She takes me to our new home, a squatted flat on the Aylesbury Estate. Having arrived five days before me Ruby has taken the best room, but I would have let her have it anyway. I notice she is looking a little fatigued. No doubt it was hard work moving all our things. Also she will have had to make all her own cups of tea and go round to the shops herself. Her dress is badly stained because she can never remember to buy soap powder.

  I am a little sorry about all this so for the next week I try and make up for it by making continual cups of tea and helping her in every way possible. Soon she is feeling better and her dress is clean again. I buy her three new pairs of sunglasses and everything is fine.

  We postpone our gig again. I rehearse with Nigel but we still don’t have a drummer. The boy with attractive white dreadlocks turns up for the audition and he is quite good but he says he doesn’t like our music and the weather turns colder and it rains everywhere and Cis’s mother is living next door.

  ‘Cis’s mother is living next door,’ I say to Ruby.

  ‘No she isn’t,’ says Ruby, pulling down the top of her dress. ‘Feel this lump, I think I have breast cancer.’


  ‘Yes she is, I saw her.’ I feel Ruby’s breast but it doesn’t seem like cancer to me, although I am not an expert.

  ‘No you didn’t,’ says Ruby. ‘You’re imagining it. Do you think it is a malignant tumour?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so, but maybe if you’re worried you should see a doctor. You’re breasts are very white, you have skin the same colour as Cis’s and I’m sure her mother is living next door.’

  Ruby prods at the lump for a little while more and I can see she is worried, although she does take the time to tell me that the flats on either side of us are occupied by black families and as she seems to remember that Cis is white then it is not likely that any of the people there are her mother.

  Reassured I go and look for a clinic of some sort and when I find one I ask for a booklet on how to check for breast cancer and the receptionist is very nice about it and loads me up with leaflets and pamphlets about all sorts of things. I am impressed by her efficiency.

  ‘Would you like to be the drummer in my band?’

  ‘No,’ she replies. ‘I am already a drummer in someone else’s band and I wouldn’t like to take on any more work because I am really involved in our music.’

  ‘Oh well, thanks for the leaflets.’

  ‘Be sure and have the young lady come in if she’s still worried.’

  ‘Right,’ says Ruby. ‘If I’m not going to die of breast cancer then we can get on with the insurance fraud.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Come with me,’ says Ruby. ‘Mind the door when you leave, it’s still weak after I jemmied it in.’

  Ruby takes me round to the house of some friend of hers who I have never met and we immediately start loading up rucksacks with stereo equipment and videos.

  The house is full of potted plants and flowers in vases.

  ‘Will I take the flowers?’ I ask, but Ruby says you cannot claim insurance for stolen flowers.

  Cynthia meets Paris, is heartbroken, gets betrayed, but has a good meal at the end of it

  Well, thinks Cynthia. I may as well go and visit Uncle Bartholomew. It is a long time since I have seen a friendly face.

  On the way she bumps unexpectedly into Paris.

  Cynthia throws her arms round him. They go for a drink together.

  ‘Did you miss me?’

  He says he missed her last week. This week, not so much.

  Cynthia is more heartbroken than before and starts to cry in the pub. She is embarrassed at this, though Paris is reasonably kind about it.

  Cynthia leaves and visits her Uncle.

  He pretends to be pleased to see her but really he slinks off and telephones Lupus, because Lupus has threatened him that he’d better co-operate, or else.

  So Cynthia is betrayed by her only friend.

  When the detectives come, Cynthia, fired up after meeting Paris, eats them all without any trouble.

  Fuck this, she thinks, finishing off her bad Uncle. I have enough problems without werewolf detectives chasing me all over the damn place. I am going to sort out King Lupus once and for all.

  The pretended robbery continues until everything is packed into bags.

  ‘Now we just wait for the van to take all the stuff down to Izzy’s. Then we get a big cut of the fake insurance claim.’

  The van doesn’t arrive. After waiting for two hours Ruby says we had better just set off on foot. At one in the morning I have to walk the streets of Brixton with a rucksack full of stereo equipment and a video recorder in a black plastic bag, trying to protect them from the thick cold rain.

  There seems to be a policeman on one corner and a gang on the next. At any moment I will be arrested or robbed.

  Ruby strides confidently on, however, and we deliver the goods safely to Izzy’s house.

  ‘I’ll help you carry them upstairs,’ says Izzy. ‘These days I’m pretty strong.’

  ‘Now we have money,’ says Ruby. ‘And the rain has stopped. The pub round the corner is still open because there are bands playing. Let’s get a drink.’

  We overindulge in drink, relieved that we have not been arrested or robbed in the street.

  The toilet in the pub has no glass in the window but still smells bad.

  ‘Stop killing Irish children with plastic bullets’ says some graffiti on the wall.

  Two men in the pub make a comment about Ruby’s bare feet and she tells them to go and fuck themselves. The band plays and they are quite good, which is a surprise.

  ‘Do you know anyone with a chequebook and cheque card?’ asks Ruby. ‘I know where we can sell them for a good profit.’

  ‘How is my cactus? It is August. It should have flowered.’

  ‘Yes, it should. And so should mine. But they haven’t. Perhaps something is holding them up. Did you notice Izzy had been crying?’

  ‘No. What’s wrong with her?’

  ‘Dean hates her for having an abortion and so do her parents. She told me the whole world is against her. Would you like to hear a story I just wrote?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sit down comfortably, then.’

  Cynthia flies a helicopter

  Why oh why did Paris desert me, thinks Cynthia, landing her helicopter on top of Lupus’s palace.

  ‘Where did she get a helicopter?’

  ‘She stole it,’ says Ruby.

  ‘How did she learn to fly it?’

  She shrugs.

  ‘Are you going to write any more about Millie Molly Mandy and Betty Lou Marvel?’

  ‘No. They belong to another story. Now stop interrupting or I won’t finish before dinner.’

  ‘We don’t have any food. You burned it all.’

  ‘Good. Food disgusts me. Now listen.’

  I wake up with Cis wrapped round me. A tiny bug walks over the quilt. I brush it off, taking care not to kill it.

  When I sit up it wakes Cis.

  ‘I have an idea for a new song.’

  I get out of bed and drag my guitar out of its case, a good case, second-hand from the music shop in Coldharbour Lane, and start strumming. Cis joins me on the floor and works the tape recorder because it is fun to record a few chords and listen to them later.

  Crawling around we are soon all wrapped up in guitar leads and tape recorders and when Ruby comes into the room to see if she can borrow some money she laughs at us naked on the floor with musical instruments draped around us. Then we laugh too because it seems funny, although before we had just been having a good time and had not considered the fact that we hadn’t got dressed.

  My guitar lead stretches round Cis’s thigh and between her legs, black against her very white skin. Beside her I look a grubby sort of light brown colour. Cis says that today she would like to buy some new earrings, small silver pendants with fake ruby stones she has seen in the market.

  We play my new song, sit next to each other’s bodies and think about making tea and buying earrings.

  At four in the morning I walk past Cis’s window. I stop and stare for a while, wondering what she is doing. Standing looking at her window is a ludicrous thing to do.

  A policeman cycles up. I have never seen a policeman on a bicycle before. Bicycles are bad for the knees. After working in the private mailing warehouse my knee hurt for months.

  ‘Ruby, do you know what I can do about my—’

  ‘My knee is sore,’ said Ruby. ‘Can you go out and get me an elastic bandage?’

  She had stolen my injury.

  I walked round to the chemist but it was shut so I had to walk on further. At the next chemist I met Izzy.

  ‘I’m just buying a bandage,’ she told me. ‘I hurt my knee doing exercises.’

  It was an epidemic.

  ‘What are you standing here for in the rain?’ asks the policeman on the bicycle.

  ‘Staring at my ex-girlfriend’s window.’

  He takes my name and date of birth and radios it in to the police station to see if I am a wanted criminal. I am not.

  ‘You look
bad,’ he says. ‘Try and get more exercise. Sleep with the window open. And good luck with your staring. I often stare at my ex-girlfriend’s window myself. She left me for a guitar player.’

  ‘Acoustic or electric?’

  He doesn’t know. He cycles off. It is still raining.

  The stairs up to our flat make my knee hurt. My leg shakes inside as the muscles try to pull away from the cartilage.

  Some time ago I bought Ruby an elastic bandage but I can’t find it. I make straight for her bedroom, a room that, as is quite normal for Ruby’s various bedrooms, has one wall painted black and the other three whatever colour they originally were, because Ruby’s feeling that a black bedroom would be nice never extends beyond her first tin of paint.

  I wake her up.

  ‘Ruby, my knee is sore, remember you said I should see an osteopath, how do I find an osteopath?’

  ‘Why do you want to know at five in the morning?’

  ‘Because I’m feeling bad about Cis leaving me. I’ve just been staring at her window.’

  ‘Never stare at someone’s window in the middle of the night. It is a creepy thing to do. Also, you’ll get arrested.’

  ‘I almost was.’

  Ruby struggles into her dress and brings a towel to dry my hair. Then I make us some tea and we talk about things and switch on the television.

  An American comedy actress is being interviewed in front of an audience of fans.

  ‘What is your inspiration for working?’

  ‘The Big Guy in the sky.’

  She says what a wonder and a privilege it is to be a mother, particularly in America. The audience applauds and Ruby says she is starting to feel sick.

  I am a little hungry and offer to try and make breakfast, something I can do because yesterday we imposed some iron discipline on ourselves and went shopping.

  Ruby declines the offer.

  ‘The act of eating has started to repel me.’

  ‘Has it? OK, I’ll just get something myself.’

  Ruby tells me I can’t because she has burned all the food.

  In the bin there is an unbelievable mess.