Ruby & the Stone Age Diet

by Martin Millar

  ‘Your flat is cold.’

  ‘We’re having problems with our bills. How is Izzy?’

  ‘Stuffing herself with steak to help her muscles grow. And depressed about Dean, and her pregnancy.’

  Ruby and Marilyn disappear and Cis is there in their place. She is wearing a lilac T-shirt I gave her with a cloud on the back and a rainbow on the front.

  ‘I have wandered in here by mistake,’ she says. ‘I was on my way to spend my Giro at the pub.’

  ‘Right,’ I say. ‘Perhaps I’ll run into you there.’

  ‘Nothing would induce me to eat a steak,’ says Ruby. ‘I hate steaks.’

  Three bailiffs in suits arrived and shouted at us to come out.

  ‘We have nowhere to live!’

  They did not seem inclined to discuss it. But before we could throw anything at them they went away. Inside the house we were shivering with cold.

  Some hours later still nothing had happened and the pickets from other areas began to drift away. By midafter-noon it seemed certain that the bailiffs must have abandoned their efforts for the day and would not be coming back till the next day. We were tired, having been awake all night, so all three of us left to get some sleep while another member of the group climbed the ladder to keep look-out, just in case.

  I was very relieved not to have been arrested by the Special Patrol Group, although I knew that after a break of a few hours I would have to go back.

  But I didn’t have to go back. Half an hour after we left to go round the corner to our squats, the bailiffs returned with some police and the look-out immediately fled out over the roof and down into the back alley. The bailiffs repossessed the house without any difficulty.

  As an act of resistance it was a pathetic failure. And it ended the Squatters’ Association because while previously we had been negotiating with the council for possible rehousing, the council was now extremely irate at all the damage we had caused to the house in fortifying it.

  ‘What about our rehousing negotiations?’

  ‘Pay us twenty thousand pounds for the damage you did to the house and we’ll think about it.’

  We were all evicted soon after and no one made much fuss. The local news programme showed pictures of the inside of the house, all cemented and barbed wired and no longer habitable. This is what these vandals do when they squat, they said.

  This all sticks in my mind very clearly. I’m not sure why.

  I moved to Brixton with Ruby and we still could never manage to find a secure place to live.

  Cis had a nice council flat in her own name. I liked sleeping there. But she argued too much with her sister and moved back in with her mother. I don’t know what the arguments were about. I suppose there was lots of Cis’s life I didn’t know anything about.

  Maybe it sticks in my mind because it was all so futile. But it wasn’t a ridiculous effort. There shouldn’t be empty houses when people have nowhere to live.

  Possibly removing the floor and the ceiling was a tactical error.

  Cynthia looks for a leather jacket and eats another lover

  ‘I suffer from terrible claustrophobia,’ says Marion, a very agreeable young woman who sells clothes in Kensington Market.

  Cynthia has gone there looking for a cheap leather jacket.

  The jackets are all too expensive but she is pleased to meet Marion.

  They eat carrot cake and arrange a date.

  Out at a disco they have a happy time together. Cynthia thinks that if she can’t be with Paris, being with someone else she likes is bound to make her feel better. And she is determined not to eat Marion, no matter what happens.

  ‘Would you like a snack?’ says Marion, back at her flat.

  ‘Yes please,’ says Cynthia, and eats her without thinking.

  She goes back to her rubbish tip to cry. Her psychic appetite seems to have left her with no control whatsoever. It only needs someone she likes to offer her food and she will eat them.

  Why oh why was I born with such terrible problems, she thinks. And where oh where is Paris, the great love of my life?

  Some council workers arrive to clear away the rubbish. Cynthia is forced to move on. A homeless refugee and the unhappiest of werewolves, she skulks around in alleyways, rummaging for food in dustbins.

  Afterwards she notices that she has started to suffer from claustrophobia.

  I wonder about Izzy’s pregnancy.

  ‘If we sell enough stories we can lend Izzy the money for an abortion,’ says Ruby, telepathically.

  ‘Maybe she will build huge muscles and win a bodybuilding competition.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ says Ruby. ‘Not in the next month, anyway.’

  I am helping her with her hair. She has a mass of matted dreadlocks and ties thin colourful ribbons into it. I like helping with it.

  ‘I will post the stories,’ says Ruby, ‘because I don’t trust you not to lose them.’

  She takes the bundle in a large brown envelope and I wander out to see what I can find.

  Down in Brixton market I meet Rosaline from the Dead City Dykes and she tells me to come to their gig next week and I say I will although every day someone tells me to come to their gig; the place is full of people putting on small gigs for their bands and telling me to come to them.

  ‘I just wrote a new song,’ she tells me. ‘It’s called “My Spaceship is Full of Plastic Daffodils.”‘

  Next I meet an actress called Kath I know slightly. She tells me she is going to be in a play and I should come and see it because it will be a good play. It is about gypsies having problems living their life and always being moved on because no one wants them living next door.

  I used to be an acting student, that’s how I met Cis, we were acting students together. Our class was being taught by a famous director from Poland and Cis and I were playing the parts of lovers.

  After having a drink in the pub with Kath I find myself being tattooed. I am shocked at this because I never really wanted a tattoo. It hurts. The needle looks like a dentist’s drill and where it pierces the ink into my flesh the skin bleeds. Blood and ink run down my arm over the muscle and onto the hand of the tattooist, a fat man covered in tattoos who grips my arm tightly so the skin doesn’t move.

  Behind him is his assistant, a young skinhead only half-covered in tattoos but catching up fast. His jeans are ripped to show off a tattoo over his knee. Today my knee has been hurting a lot.

  ‘What your studio needs is a nice bunch of flowers,’ I say, trying to make conversation. They are not great talkers.

  Outside it is raining hard and two gypsies offer to sell me some sprigs of heather.

  Back home I am very annoyed.

  ‘Ruby, this has got to stop. I keep having these terrible hallucinations. I just imagined I was being tattooed, it was dreadful.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  She pulls up my sleeve.

  ‘Nice tattoo.’

  I look at it. It is a nice tattoo, under the matted blood. The blood is dark red going brown, just like the base of my cactus, which is dark underneath the green on top.

  I apologise to Ruby.

  ‘Did you post the stories?’

  ‘No. I left them on the bus.’

  ‘What?’

  She left them on the bus. Somewhere in London bus drivers are sitting at their tea break poring over sex and karate stories with our address at the bottom.

  ‘Unless of course someone else picks them up on the bus.’

  We look out the window to see if there is an angry group of feminists preparing to storm the flat, outraged at our not-very-liberating sex stories.

  The coast seems to be clear. We decide to go out for a while, just in case.

  ‘I brought you a sprig of heather.’

  ‘Thank you,’ says Ruby. ‘It is a nice sprig of heather. It matches my dress. I met a drummer yesterday who is looking for a band. I gave him our phone number.’

  I show everyone my new tattoo and th
ey all seem to like it.

  The director from Poland told us we had to start living our parts more fully and made Cis and me become lovers right then, so we made love onstage in rehearsal with the other students watching and learning their lines. When we were acting in a bodybuilding play we lifted weights all day together.

  Cynthia goes home to visit her mother, who gives her a useful present

  Cynthia’s problems increase. Not only can she only eat nice people, but she is starting to take on their attributes as well. After devouring Marion she is claustrophobic for a month.

  Still, she is pleased to know how to ride a motorbike.

  Where oh where is Paris, she thinks, staring up at the moon. I will die if I don’t see him. On the other hand, if I do, he might well die. My appetite seems to be beyond my control. What is to be done?

  Risking an attack of claustrophobia, she jumps on a train and goes to see her mother on the croft in Scotland.

  ‘Mother, you have to help me. How can I have a love affair without it turning into a tragedy?’

  Her mother is not pleased to see her.

  ‘What sort of shade of purple is that for a werewolf to dye her hair?’ she demands. ‘And how often have I told you, you have to wear shoes? You’re not in the forest now, you know.’

  ‘Right,’ says Cynthia. ‘I can see you don’t want me here. I’ll leave.’

  Moved by some remnants of parental affection, Cynthia’s mother fetches a necklace from her jewellery box.

  ‘Take this. It is the family’s hereditary werewolf soul jewel. Give it to the one you love and you will never want to eat them. Now, get out of here before I phone Lupus. You disgust me.’

  Cynthia leaves.

  ‘No real daughter of mine would put seven earrings through each ear,’ her mother shouts after her.

  When I wake up the cactus is in full bloom. Its flowers, yellow, lilac and mostly beautiful, exceed everything I have dreamed of.

  Cis shouts my name through the letterbox and I run down the hallway to open the door.

  There is no one there. I have imagined it all.

  ‘Why are you wandering naked in the hall?’ asks Ruby, her lilac dress crumpled from sleeping in it.

  ‘No reason.’

  ‘Make me some tea.’

  I put on a pot of water. We have an electric kettle but we are having trouble paying our last electricity bill.

  The God of Foolish People Who Walk Around Naked in the Hallway Thinking Their Lover Is Shouting Through the Letterbox is called Alexander and really there is nothing good to say about him at all. He is more of a demon than a god.

  His brother is called Philip the Terrible and he is responsible for delaying people’s Giro cheques in the post and sending out electricity bills that no one can afford.

  Yesterday Ruby and I spent four hours wandering Brixton trying to accidentally bump into our lovers but my plan was a failure. We met neither Cis nor Domino, despite calling into every place we could think of where they might be.

  ‘Sometimes it’s difficult to manufacture coincidences,’ says Ruby, sharing a drink with me before closing time. ‘A pity. I would have liked to fuck Domino right this minute.’

  ‘We could try again tomorrow.’

  ‘It won’t do any good,’ says Ruby, morosely. ‘Nothing does any good. You fall in love with someone and they leave you and you feel like dying. You meet their friends in the street and you tell them how unhappy you are and you hope this news will get back to your ex-lover and they’ll take pity on you. Or else you meet their friends in the street and you tell them you’re having a great time and you hope this news will get back to your ex-lover and make them jealous. You think about things you could have done and what you would do differently if you had the chance, you wait for the phone or the doorbell to ring, you hang around the fringe of conversations hoping to hear some snippet of information about how they are.

  ‘You can write poems and send them or not send them, you can turn up drunk at their house and plead with them to come back or turn up drunk and pretend you don’t give a damn, you can send flowers or love notes or a few intellectual books, you can discuss it endlessly with your friends till they’re sick of the sight of you, you can think about it all day and all night, imagining that somehow your mental power will win them back, you can sit on your own and cry or go out and make yourself frantically busy. You can think about killing yourself and warmly imagine how sorry they’ll be after you do it, you can think about going on a trip round the world and probably when you got back you’d still hope to run into them on the street. You can do anything at all and none of it is any good. It is completely pointless. Lovers never come back. You can’t influence them to do it and you would realise this if only you weren’t so dementedly unhappy all the time.’

  The pub is noisy with little room to move, and we have to guard our drink against a marauding barman who keeps trying to snatch it off the table even though there is a good half inch left at the bottom.

  ‘So we won’t try again tomorrow?’

  ‘We might as well. What else is there to do?’

  ‘Write poems?’

  ‘What was it like in bed with Cis?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘That’s a pity. If you could remember it it might cheer you up.’

  The rain beats on my bedroom window and seeps through the warps in the frame to make small puddles on the window-sill. With my finger I draw the puddles into little shapes like spaceships and pretend they are flying free through the sky.

  The drummer that Ruby gave my phone number to has joined the band and we are already planning to play our much-delayed gig. I am writing a new song. It is about Cis. It will be wonderful. We will make a record out of it and it will be a success. Cis will hear it, realise she really does love me and come back. I think this sort of thing all the time.

  It will be a rush to get the song written and rehearsed in time for the gig, but it will be worth it.

  I shout to Ruby to come and listen and I play her the chords. She says she likes it.

  ‘Do you think it might touch Cis’s heart and make her want to see me again?’

  ‘It might.’

  ‘If I don’t see her again I’m going to commit suicide.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I thought I might carve my goodbye note on my chest with a kitchen knife, then go and die on her doorstep.’

  ‘Well at least she’d remember you. But don’t do it yet, I’ll miss you.’

  ‘OK, I’ll leave it awhile.’

  Nigel appears with a bundle of posters, drawn by us and photocopied at the cheap place in Coldharbour Lane. Tonight we will go and stick them up all over Brixton. I do not enjoy flyposting but I like seeing our name on walls. Also, if we don’t do it no one will know about the gig.

  Ruby says she will cook a meal so I can eat when I get back, but when I arrive home she claims that just looking at food made her feel sick so she had to throw it all down the toilet.

  ‘I spent the evening writing a story instead. It’s about you and Cis fucking. You want to hear it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Right. Sit down comfortably.’

  The lonely old lady on her balcony never looks as if she is sitting down comfortably. Maybe when you are old you can’t get comfortable if you are lonely, no matter how many well-made chairs you have saved up for your retirement.

  ‘It’s my period,’ said Cis, one day. ‘I love having sex when it’s my period. Let’s fuck till we’re swimming in blood.’

  So we do. Cis is wearing a tampon. I take it out for her and it is red with menstrual blood. Cis likes her menstrual blood. So do I. In the air it quickly dries and goes brown.

  I lick the blood from around the lips of her vagina. Cis likes this but the pressure of my tongue is often not quite enough to make her come so when she is excited I press harder on her clitoris with my finger and I slide another finger up her anus and then she comes quite quic
kly in a noisy flurry of blood and urine and some other liquid that I can’t put a name to.

  Next she sucks my penis. I like her doing this and when I come she keeps the sperm in her mouth and stretches up to kiss me quickly so she can spit some of it back into my mouth while it is still warm.

  After a little while we start fucking. First Cis lies on top of me, then I lie on top of her. She puts her legs around my neck and while she is doing this she rubs her clitoris with her fingers till she reaches orgasm. She turns over so I can fuck her from behind. Her vagina is very wet and when I glance down I see that my penis and the inside of her thighs are covered in her blood. After I come she sits up and sperm and blood and vaginal fluid dribble from between her legs and we stick our fingers in the liquid and paint it on each other’s bodies. I paint it round her nipples and she paints it round mine so when we next embrace both of our chests are smeared with a sort of brownish glue.

  We fall asleep for a while and when we wake Cis wants to lie on top of me while I suck her breasts and reach my hands between her legs. She trembles slightly when I do this and digs her nails into my skin. I can smell the stink of our sweat-covered bodies and it is the thickest smell of sex I have ever experienced. As Cis comes I again slide my finger up her anus. ‘Fuck me there,’ she says. Needing lubrication, I smear more of her menstrual blood onto me and mix it with saliva and she rubs some cream on my penis so that it slides easily into her. I fuck her like this from behind and then she turns over, telling me that we can fuck anally from in front as well, which we do, while she stretches her arm around me and inserts her finger in my anus and pushes it in and out fairly violently, and slightly painfully.

  After I come Cis wants me to lick her cunt again. Good. It takes around an hour for her to orgasm and she makes enough noise to wake the whole street. We fall asleep for a long time.

  Next morning our bodies are smeared with every human excretion. On our thighs and genitals, and on the sheets, is a hardening mixture of blood, sweat, semen, saliva, vaginal fluid, penis lubricant, shit, urine and the bright red lipstick Cis bought in the market last week.

  We wash our bodies but the sheet seems beyond help, so after a few days we throw it out.