by Ashly Graham
THE TRIPLE GODDESS
Ashly Graham
Triple Goddess
From humanity she went into Art,
And I shall never see her face again;
But all of her that lives within my heart
I use to recreate her with my pen.
She never was a statue in my mind,
Or one who only lives where fancy’s bred;
Her image, which she left intact behind,
Speaks eagerly of matters left unsaid.
Words I shape roughly with a knife
And drop in little bundles on the way:
She wraps them in colour and gives them life,
Meaning and context, worthy of the day.
From Hell I gyre momentum in reverse
To reach her high point in the Universe.
THE TRIPLE GODDESS:
a novel in three parts
ARBELLA
OPHELIA
GLORIA
ARBELLA
Chapter One
When Apollo noticed you at fifteen
His composure was blown to smithereens:
There was nothing under the sun to compare
With your innocent beauty, your burnished hair.
Though not intending Apollo disrespect,
Your triumph at such a tender age
First enraged him, then left him marvelling
At the mortal visible ascent of one
Who had no thought to eclipse him.
The dazzler bedazzled, stepping down
From the podium, passed you his crown
And the encomium of an admiring glance.
Bestowing the garland,
He laced your fingers in his hand.
*
It was a work day, and as she came downstairs to breakfast the Honourable Arbella Stace, auburn-tressed and slender-hocked at twenty-two, was in the same ill humour as she always was during the week. She also had a hangover, but so she did every morning and it had nothing to do with her mood. Not to have a hangover would have been cause for alarm, and reason to call the office and say that one was ill and unable to come to work.
Breakfast was the only time that Arbella’s eyes could properly be said to be open, for she lowered her gaze as she left the house and the shutters closed upon her soul. This was not a bad thing, for a full exposure to her viridian irises was enough to overwhelm rather than merely disconcert a susceptible person. From thoughts of Arbella images rose: of a darkened box at the opera, perhaps, with her sitting beside one sheathed in silk as the luminous ice slipped around a bottle of Pol Roger champagne. Her designer shoes were invitations to dance, cheek to cheek by candlelight. Her walk conjured a sleek ketch, sliding pilotless through the Mediterranean into Portofino. Her fingers were drawn by Raphael on one of his better days.
And her voice: her voice was like emerging refreshed into early sun at the entrance of a mountain cave, and hearing the sound of chanting from a monastery below, and the intonation of a bell rising through the mist.
Outside, in recognition of Arbella’s indisposition, the world hid its joys so as not to irritate her by taunting her with cheerfulness. The sky scowled, dropsical bellies of clouds gathered over the streets of London, and rain bounced on the slick shining squares of pavement. A spiteful wind sprung up and the temperature adjusted to an unseasonal low. Amongst the mass of commuters who had pulled themselves out of bed in the dark, nobody spoke. Debouching from the Bank, Monument, and Tower Hill Undergrounds, and the London Bridge, Cannon Street, Liverpool Street, and Fenchurch Street railway stations, the bedraggled crowd toted its umbrellas and bags or briefcases, and proceeded along the spokes of pavement that led to the Square Mile of the city’s financial district.
Clothes and souls dampened in equal measure, for, ignorant that the state of the weather could be determined by the indisposition of a single person, it seemed to each working stiff that the malignant conditions were intended solely for his or her inconvenience. The lucky ones had cars and parking spaces under cover at their destinations; but today, although they drove anyway as a matter of privilege and stayed dry, even that was a penance. The traffic jams were worse than usual in bad weather, and the rain defied the sloshing wipers on the windshields and made it difficult to see ahead.
The drivers compensated by turning up the heat and volume on the stereo, and aiming for the puddles so that they could have the satisfaction of seeing the pedestrians jump out of the way.
Arbella lived with her father, Baron Stace, in an Eaton Square mansion where she had the top floor to herself. For Arbella, living with her father in the sanctuary of his palatial four-storey house was the perfect arrangement, and she had never considered moving into a place of her own; and he, as a widower, was delighted that she felt that way.
The two were close, and made a point of meeting in the breakfast-room every day before going their separate ways to work: Stace in his chauffeured Bentley to pummel the stock, oil, currency, metal or commodity markets, or whatever it was that he did; and Arbella on the Tube to the insurance brokerage company, registered at Lloyd’s of London, where she pummelled nothing but herself for leading such a feckless life.
At night she sighed with relief when she came home, shut the front door behind her, and left the world on the other side.
As for Arbella’s mother, Veronica, she had died long before her husband had been ennobled for services to the realm. In her dreams the daughter saw her, lovable and distracted, enthroned in splendour and not knowing what to do with her hands. Strangely, although Arbella did not remember her father paying more than passing attention to his wife—and she was never mentioned between them—in these visions the baron waited on her hand and foot. Under celestial law he was not allowed to address her, which for the first time after many years of suffering with impatience her concerned and anxious ministrations he was eager, even desperate, to do. But now things were the other way around, and, despite his pleading eyes as he knelt before his former spouse proffering her harp on a velvet cushion, or offered to preen the feathers in her wings for her, Veronica Stace seemed not to be aware of his presence.
Arbella had not given thought to why this dream occurred so often. The stringed instrument she recognized not because it was a heavenly tradition but because, although her mother did not have an ear for music, she enjoyed a good radio concert on the BBC’s Third Programme and was fond of Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp.
The door opened and, preceded by the envelope of certainty that surrounded his diurnal progress, admitted the full parental frontal of Lord Stace. The door had no choice but to open, if it were to retain its designation as a portal, for the details of his lordship’s days were fixed by unalterable law and facts before they occurred. They could be entered into the almanac like Easter and the dates of full moons. Had Stace ever decided to do anything so frivolous as to take up golf, which he would not, his score could with confidence be recorded before he started the back nine; and, if he were playing in a tournament, his name engraved on the cup before the last couple of holes were played.
The clock on the mantelpiece synchronized itself to eight twenty-eight—the baron scorned the top and bottom of the hours and the median quarters thereof—confident of the accuracy of the adjustment because Lord Stace was entering the room. Whilst his lordship appreciated the timepiece’s good intentions in striking at regular intervals to get his attention, he regarded it as he might a person who was persistent in trying to make an appointment to see him, but whom he had instructed his secretaries to refuse because the individual could not possibly have anything to offer that his lordship did not already have or know about.
Upon the assurance of his consultant horologist, formerly of the Royal Observatory, Stace
had established that, by adopting an alternative temporal system to Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC, he could add fully two hours and thirty-five seconds to his day: starting at five forty-nine, when he awoke refreshed after the four hours and two minutes of sleep, or brain defragmentation as he termed it, which was all he needed after poring over his journals into the wee hours, and telephoning his subordinates awake with peremptory questions and instructions.
It was by designing for himself such an existence, one which imposed minimal strain upon his neurons, that his lordship was able to regulate his metabolism and remain such a powerhouse of activity. His wife, rest her soul, had been a mess in this regard and always in a tizzy, either forgetting things or doing them in the wrong order, or procrastinating over some and rushing over others; in the process wasting so much energy that finally she was worn out, poor girl. It was hardly surprising that she had gone a bit barking towards the end.
According to the pre-ordained breakfast pattern chez Stace, his lordship was about to address the stencilled space that always at this moment contained his daughter, nursing her coffee-cup with both hands. Coffee was all that Arbella took for breakfast, black and strong and in quantity.
‘G’morning, Arbella, dearest.’ Thus cued, the stilly form of Garforth the butler emerged from the paintwork holding the baron’s decaffeinated brew, with the handle pointed to his right for ease of docking with his fingers as the predictable peer advanced to meet it; eyed the faint swirl of steam and pretended to assess its temperature...which he knew was one medium-length sentence away from drinkability. His lordship walked clockwise around the table to kiss the top of his daughter’s head, and completed his greeting. ‘Your papa postulates that you have slept well and risen refreshed. Please confirm.’ He drank, once, twice; the cup was empty, and Garforth refilled it.
The baron’s abhorrence of referring to himself in the first person, and refusal to entertain the possibility that things could be other than they ought to be, was complicated. Despite the brusque manner that he displayed in public, he was a shy man. Because it pained him to think that all might not be right in his world, he had adopted a mode of expression, which, in stating his convictions, coerced them into truth by stating them as he did in memoranda to his employees, to whom his word was law.
As the sole person with whom Stace had a personal relationship, Arbella recognized her father’s inability to operate on two levels, professional and personal. She knew how solicitous he was towards her and concerned for her well-being, and that was enough for her. She took comfort in their closeness, which was manifest in the mutual concerns that they expressed to each other about their health and welfare at the breakfast table every day, and the mild remonstrances that took place. It did not bother her that every day resembled the last, for she depended upon the routine to mentally stabilize her before she had to step into the chaos and confusion outside.
‘Good morning, Daddy,’ Arbella replied, and coughed. ‘I’m the same as I was yesterday, neither better nor worse.’
‘You were later than usual coming in last night.’
‘Was I?’
‘Three and a half minutes past midnight...one approximates, of course. One knows, because your father had just left the library and gone upstairs. A girl your age needs sleep, not too many drinkies, and one does so wish you’d give up smoking.’
‘If you say so, Daddy, and perhaps one day I will. But please don’t ask Garforth to mix me up another of those awful prairie oyster things for my headache. The last one he made, following the recipe you gave him, I swear contained the hundred-year egg you brought back from your last medical fact-finding trip to China.’
Stace smiled tolerantly. ‘His lordship’s man in Beijing assures him that the combination of lime, ashes, and salt with which such oviparous productions are coated, plus the length of the burial period, causes a mutation in the proteins that is effective in counteracting the malady. Though not having drunk more than a glass of sherry, once in his wild and crazy youth, his lordship has had no reason to assay the efficacy of the remedy as a cure for hangovers. As to the strength of his constitution, it speaks for itself. Didn’t it work? Please advise. The fate of a Beijinger hangs in the balance.’
‘Well, it cured the headache but I had stomach cramps for a week. Please don’t fire him, though, Daddy, it’s possible the rare tuna I ate at dinner was responsible. But never mind me, how did you sleep? You seemed to have the beginnings of a cold yesterday, have the symptoms got any worse? If so, you must take something for them. You drive yourself too hard and omit to take care of yourself, and you get run down.’
Stace laughed at his daughter’s little joke. It went without saying that his lordship had slept very well; and, thanks to his daily regimen of taking forty-two mineral, vitamin, and other dietary supplements, he had not had so much as a cold for the past thirty years, three months and nine days. He had regular homeopathy treatments—similia similibus curantur—and sessions either with one of his two personal acupuncturists or both together, one at each end. So boundless was his energy that he had to meditate for five minutes and twenty seconds every hour to keep himself from taking off like a rocket. So multi- was his tasking that he had electrodes attached to his temples at night to keep him apprised around the clock of what was happening on the world exchanges. They scanned financial statements into a portion of his brain that he kept formatted and blank for the purpose, and awoke him if anything required his attention, such as someone shorting his stock.
‘Really!, her daddy’s darling. Your pater is quite well, you have no need to worry about him. Though, one does have to guard against those damnable mould spores that are prevalent at this time of year, and so pernicious to the alveoli of the lungs. One refers you to the monograph that one’s consultant, Botulisti, wrote on the subject. You’ll find it in the library. Unlikely as one’s poppet is to do so, your father would most earnestly caution you against venturing into the Square park after twenty forty-three. It is no coincidence...there is no such thing, of course, as coincidence...that that is the moment...such an imprecise word...when one is in the habit...such a general term...of coming in from one’s ten minute and twenty second after-dinner stroll.
‘One wears a mask, naturally. For those spores, if inhaled, irritate the trachea, the windpipe, and can at present only be treated, not with an anti-histamine as many doctors stupidly maintain, but a gargle of three parts root beer and one part each of valerian and baking soda.’
Arbella drank her coffee.
Stace continued, ‘Another remedy is in the offing, however, as science marches ever on, which gives cause if not for cautious optimism then a strait-jacketed tremor of excitement. An infectious disease professor at Princeton University has posited that the Grade-B allergic reaction induced by decaying vegetation might be neutralized with an infusion of sandalwood and a gram of powdered Asian sparrow liver, followed by the daily application for a week of a skin tonic made from the carapaces of dung beetles. These ingredients his lordship has been happy to obtain for him from his man in Djakarta after rejecting, as an alternative to the sparrow liver, an uncatalogued species of wort indigenous to Pinxiaou Province.
‘The results so far are, against all odds, promising; though it will take another five years—one apologizes for using such a terminological inexactitude—and a mountain of dung beetles before the therapeutic properties, if any, of the formula can be certifiably ascertained.’
His lordship’s daughter put down her cup.
Stace’s obsession with his health was well known. With the assistance of the scientists whom he kept on retainer, he was able to identify whatever outrageous pathogens of virus and bacterium were headed his way with malice aforethought and either block them; or, by taking arms against a sea of troubles, as that pussy Prince Hamlet had wimped out from doing, oppose and end them. Disease-bearing microbes and bacilli, parasites, and toxins, homing gleefully to their target, gnashed their teeth in frustration as they beat upon the doo
rs of his lordship’s cells in vain, and were denied access to the VIP lounge of his immune system.
The baron’s triple-strength influenza vaccine was always ready at least a month before it became generally available. Many were the chills, fevers, and internal disagreements that Stace had avoided, thanks to early warnings and the precautions he took. If an emergency were to be announced on the pink-spotted telephone in his office, his lordship would leave for the airport, where his custom-fitted mid-air refuellable AWACS plane, stocked with physic from the converted armoury that was her father’s medicine cabinet, was on permanent stand-by to whisk him away and fly round the world until it was safe to return. At especially hazardous times, Stace had access to a decommissioned NASA spacecraft in which he would orbit the earth.
In less severe situations, when there was only a low-grade alert, he would take a helicopter to his mountain-top retreat, and breathe the pure air there; or spend days submerged in a diving-bell on the Continental Shelf. Sometimes he operated from a Saharan compound amidst the Bedouin and caravanserais, striding up and down and bellowing instructions in the air-conditioned coolth under refractive tinted glass, or from a non-allergenic divan. The baron knew when to go north to the germ-free Arctic, where he had his own igloo, a grand and spacious affair, and south for warmth without humidity to dry his lungs.
At home, throughout Stace’s London headquarters, and even in his car, the air was filtered, frozen, and then reheated to the correct temperature with an infusion of cell-friendly antioxidants and nutrients. Consequently, amongst the domestic staff at Eaton Square either the cook or the housemaid always had a cold, which she was at great pains to conceal: one audible sternutation—there were sneeze and cough detectors throughout the house—god forbid that it should be near food or a toothbrush, and she would be at the Job Centre without a character reference.