Ruby and the Stone Age Diet

by Millar, Martin

  A strange accusation, it seems to me. Everyone knows that if you can’t find somewhere to live it is because you have offended Ixanbarg, the Bad Housing Demon. I’m sure the government is doing its best.

  Some people in the government introduce a bill to restrict abortion rights. Ruby, outraged, decides to join the local campaign against this bill and I join along with her. Every Tuesday we go to a meeting in the Town Hall and every Saturday we hand out leaflets in the street and get people to sign our petition.

  I am good in this campaign because I am a reliable person for handing out leaflets and I never try to make any decisions or decide policy.

  Ruby is slightly more vocal but I am happier just being told where I have to go and what leaflets I have to hand out.

  At the same time the government introduces more legislation which is anti-homosexual and there is a large campaign against this and sometimes our whole pro-abortion group goes on demonstrations for gay rights. I help carry our banner.

  My cactus is in full flower and the gig is next week. John finds a PA. I can play all our songs. Ruby stops sleeping with John and finds us a place to live, a council flat that we can stay in for three months till the tenant comes back from her holiday in Vietnam.

  ‘Will we say a prayer to Tilka?’ I ask, when all our belongings are moved in.

  ‘Tilka only looks after squatters,’ Ruby tells me.

  ‘Who is the god of council tenants?’

  ‘There is no god for council tenants.’

  It is December and I hand out leaflets in the snow. Ruby strides through the snow barefoot and still wears her sunglasses and we live on chocolate biscuits and bananas, which is a satisfying diet. I worry about her feet but they seem to be tough enough for any weather conditions. She does put a donkey jacket over her dress, though, and sometimes she has to stop and wipe the snow off her sunglasses.

  In the dole office I take hundreds of fresh claims every day and sometimes people ask me when they will get their first Giro because they are desperate for money. I tell them that it will probably be soon even though I know that it won’t be. If I don’t say this they will shout and argue at me and I am just the lowest clerk and I can’t do anything about it. I don’t even want to be here.

  When anyone needs to find the papers relating to a client they are always missing. The dole office has clerks whose only job is to try and link up missing papers. Sometimes among the long depressing queues there is shouting and scuffling and angry people pleading for money, and when a middle-aged man bursts into tears in front of me because he has forgotten to bring his P45 I start to think that maybe it is all my fault after all.

  Cynthia makes a commendable vow, and fails to keep it

  Cynthia, free from the worry of pursuit by Lupus, has no idea what to do with herself.

  Where oh where is my Paris, she thinks sadly. And will I ever see him again?

  Penniless, she eats the new door off the second-hand music shop in Brixton and makes off with another guitar and a portable cassette player. Being a powerful werewolf has its compensations. She gets back to busking and listening to country music. Ruby is very keen on country music.

  Cynthia decides to go through the rest of her life never harming anyone.

  Cheered by this thought, she strums her guitar as she walks along the street.

  Hungry, she is going to use her day’s taking from busking to buy a vegetarian pizza.

  The full moon shines weakly through the dusk. Cynthia momentarily mistakes a young girl for a pizza and snaps at her throat.

  Oh fuck it, she thinks. Another one gone. I will never learn any self-control.

  She drags the young girl’s body into a small patch of scrubby grass in front of a desolate-looking Army Careers Office. She stares morosely at the dead face for a few minutes, then leaves.

  In the snow I hand an abortion leaflet to Cis.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘I have never seen you do anything useful before.’

  Ruby and I have been petitioning for two hours and we are frozen.

  Izzy sees us in the street and she signs our petition and then brings us some pizza from the market and cups of coffee in polystyrene beakers.

  ‘I do not feel the cold so much anymore,’ she says, ‘because I am more muscular than I used to be. Do you want to see my biceps?’

  ‘Not right now,’ says Ruby, a little harshly.

  ‘We were all arrested yesterday,’ Izzy tells us. ‘The police broke down the door of our new squat and took us to the police station. They kept us in overnight. We’ve been charged with stealing electricity and they’ve boarded up the house.’

  We sympathise with Izzy. She is having a hard time.

  Back home Ruby puts her feet in my lap to warm them. I massage her toes and rub her calves till the blood starts to flow again.

  We have chocolate biscuits and bananas and with my wages from the dole office we are well off for a while.

  Every day Cis and her new boyfriend drive past the window on their new motorbike, but I am not worried anymore now that my cactus has flowered.

  The cold weather makes my knee hurt. My knee is damaged and badly scarred from an inglorious motorbike accident. I fell off when I was learning to ride it. The scar looks like it has been sewed up with a fish-hook.

  ‘I think your stories are getting worse,’ says Ruby.

  ‘What stories?’

  ‘The ones where you are trapped on a foreign planet. The ones where you say you are resigned to walking round with a stupid robot and never having fun anymore.’

  ‘Ruby, I never told you any story like that.’

  ‘Yes you did and it is a very obvious image. You’ll have to start either living in the real world or writing better stories.’

  Ruby is slightly upset. I know why. Last week I could not get into work because I was waylaid by a pack of snow-wolves in Coldharbour Lane. When I went home Ruby had been crying because she had seen Domino walking along with another woman. Now she won’t eat.

  If any of Ruby’s friends stopped eating and acted sad because of a fool like Domino, Ruby would give them a severe talking to.

  I apologise to my supervisor about not coming in to work and tell her that I could not get past the pack of snow-wolves.

  ‘Werewolves? In Brixton?’

  ‘Not werewolves. Snow-wolves.’

  While I am working in the dole office the old woman who sits on the balcony throws a little party. She invites Ascanazl, Spirit Friend of Lonely People, Shamash the Sun God, Tilka the Goddess of Squatters, Jasmine the Divine Protectress of Broken Hearts, Daita, Vietnamese Tree Goddess and Friend of Poor Labourers everywhere, and a few others.

  They have a good time together. Helena, Goddess of Electric Guitarists, turns up. She is still upset about her girlfriend leaving her and Jasmine does her best to cheer her up. Helena tells everyone that she is keeping herself busy so as to not think about her personal problems. She has started lifting weights to improve her body and she has helped my band organise our gig at last.

  ‘Good,’ says Daita. ‘He needs some help, he is having a hard time. Last month I got him two days’ wages for only one day’s work.’

  ‘Good party,’ says Ascanazl. ‘Any more wine?’

  The day after I make the excuse about snow-wolves making me late for work my supervisor tells me that I will not be taken on as a permanent clerk at the dole office. This is such good news I feel like partying.

  One time I went to a sauna party where everyone took off their clothes and had saunas, then draped themselves in towels and drank wine. But on the wasted planet there are no good parties. There is not even anyone to talk to, now the robot has disappeared.

  People hammer on the door of the dole office but the door won’t open. We are on strike because one of the union representatives has been victimised.

  I hand out leaflets telling people what the strike is about. Many policemen come down to watch over our picket and they make most of us stand on the patch of g
rass on the other side of the road. One superintendent is particularly unfriendly and he tells us that anyone who even says the word scab will be arrested and charged with threatening behaviour.

  This strike covers my last few days at the dole office and I had already booked these last few days as holiday, so I get paid while everyone else doesn’t. I offer to give all my pay to the strike fund but the union representative says I should not because now I am unemployed again and will need the money myself. I keep my wages but I always feel guilty about it.

  The abortion bill is defeated so our campaign is a success and Ruby says that Domino is going to meet her at the gig tomorrow and this makes her happy. I am also happy. My cactus is in full flower. Cis is going to come and see me play my new song about her.

  ‘Things are looking good,’ I say to Ruby.

  It is bitterly cold outside and we have wrapped ourselves in one quilt in front of the fire to keep warm.

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘They always get better in time.’

  Ruby says that being wrapped up in a quilt like this reminds her of being a child. I see what she means, although I have no memories of being a child. Ruby claims that she can remember sitting in her pram but, no matter how I try, I cannot recall anything at all before I was sixteen.

  Cynthia does not find happiness

  Cynthia buys some flowers and takes them to the nearest graveyard. She distributes them randomly on the graves. This is her penance for killing so many innocent people.

  Sat down by the walls of the graveyard are five men, very shabby, very thirsty for some wine from the communal bottle. Their fingers are yellowed with nicotine and their trousers are filthy brown with excrement.

  The sight of their poverty depresses the young werewolf. Outside there are more derelicts hanging round aimlessly, waiting for the day to pass, begging money for drink and something to eat. Everywhere she looks there seems to be some poor person unable to cope with living. And even the prosperous passers-by don’t seem to be very happy.

  An ambulance wails its way past, trying to hurry but caught up in heavy traffic. Cynthia imagines that inside there is some person trying to fight off death, and losing.

  This is terrible, she thinks. Everything appears to be totally hopeless. I wonder where Paris is? I wonder why he let me down. All this successfully not eating anyone and not being pursued by any assailants has plunged Cynthia depressingly into the real world. She has no friends, her heart aches over Paris, and she is poor all the time.

  Sometimes whole days pass without her exchanging a word with another living being, so that even a shop assistant saying a cheery hello to her seems like a happy event.

  She buys a newspaper every day. Occasionally she reads the lonely hearts column, but has too much sense to think you could ever fall in love through a contact advert.

  Every day she goes for a long walk. Always she hopes to run into Paris, but she never does. The old vicarage he was living in is long since boarded-up, and she has no idea where he might be.

  ‘What a life,’ she mutters, trying to work her fingers round a difficult new chord. There is no happiness anywhere. It is a lousy world, in every respect. I will never see Paris again. I will never have any friends. I will always be poor and hungry. It would have been better if I had never been born, and if I had to be born, I wish I had never fallen in love, because being in love is a worse curse than being born a werewolf.

  She fingers her werewolf soul jewel, which she will never ever give to anyone else, and stares at the moon and howls for a while. But soon she gets tired even of howling, and tired of playing guitar, and tired of everything in the whole world, so she just sits and looks blankly in front of her, and wonders how long the average lifespan of a werewolf is, and if she might get lucky and die young.

  ‘Well?’ says Ruby. ‘What d’you think?’

  ‘I like it. What happens next?’

  ‘Nothing happens next. That’s the end.’

  I am shocked.

  ‘It can’t be. Where is the happy ending?’

  Ruby says she doesn’t believe in happy endings. I feel a huge depression creeping towards me.

  ‘Make a happy ending,’ I say, slightly desperate. ‘I’ll be depressed if Cynthia just sits there being sad for the rest of her life.’

  Ruby, however, will not relent, and there is no happy ending for Cynthia Werewolf.

  I dream about the old woman who I used to see on the balcony. I dream she is a goddess. She stands before me in the most resplendent jewelled robe that has ever been woven and tells me to stop being stupid and moaning and whining all the time about my girlfriend leaving me.

  Then she advises me not to do any more thirteen-hour night-shifts because it will be terrible for my health and I’m not getting any younger. She wishes me good luck for my gig.

  On the day of the gig it rains. This week has been continually wet and none of our posters are still on display. Those ones that haven’t slid off the walls or been ripped off the bus shelters have been covered by other posters advertising the meetings of the ever-active local revolutionary parties.

  Our friend Matthew arrives with the van and we load up, slightly anxious as always about carrying our instruments off the council estate, anxious as well that nothing should get wet.

  Ruby comes with us in the van and we arrive at the pub at six o’clock to wait for the PA to arrive.

  ‘Ruby, why do all these goddesses you tell me about wear flowing robes? Why don’t they wear trousers or dungarees?’

  ‘I haven’t been telling you about any goddesses.’

  ‘Haven’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  I’m sure someone has.

  ‘Is Izzy coming tonight?’

  ‘I’m not sure. She told me yesterday she was depressed about being evicted and arrested and her parents nagging her and Dean moaning at her.’

  The PA is three minutes late which is three minutes of terrible anxiety. When it arrives I have to pay forty pounds.

  The God of Sound Engineers is called Manis. He is a very clever god, always fixing things, but he is also avaricious.

  ‘Hey,’ says Izzy, striding through the door. ‘You want a hand in with your equipment?’

  She takes off her leather jacket and flings it in a corner. The sound man stops connecting leads and stares at her. She is wearing a small vest and underneath her arms ripple with strength. She is burning with health and energy. Her shoulders are sculpted like an artist’s illustration of the perfect anatomy. Ruby and I are awestruck. Beside her we are as weak and sickly as broken twigs.

  ‘How are Dean and the parents?’ I ask, outside at the van.

  ‘Who cares?’ says Izzy, hoisting the mixing desk over her shoulder. ‘Who needs them?’

  We help carry all the equipment in, large speakers, a mixing desk, monitors, reels of wire, microphones, more stuff than we really need.

  It takes an hour to set up and meanwhile the support band arrives to do their sound-check.

  Ruby is on her own in the bar next door.

  ‘Where’s Domino?’

  She shrugs. ‘He hasn’t turned up.’

  We share a drink and I look outside for any sign of an audience, but all there is is rain.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ says Ruby, passing me our drink. ‘It’s early yet.’

  We lock one door and set up a table to collect money at the other and Ruby brings in an ashtray to keep it in. She has a rubber stamp to stamp people’s hands once they’ve paid.

  ‘Dear Helena, Goddess of Electric Guitarists. Please protect me from guitar thieves. Please do not let me forget any of our songs. Please prevent me from breaking a string, particularly in the first number. Please don’t let the lead come out of my guitar when I dance onstage. Please don’t let my fuzzbox become disconnected from my amplifier. Don’t let my amplifier stop working again. Don’t let Nigel cover up everything I’m playing because he has a better amplifier than me. Please distract everyone’s attention when I play some w
rong notes. Good luck with your girlfriend.’

  Nigel puts the lights down and gives a tape to the sound man to try and create some atmosphere in the empty room.

  Me and Nigel and John sit in a corner, making ourselves ready. Ruby sits at the door on her own, trying not to be sad that Domino has not turned up.

  I am nervous. Cis might be here. I told her sister about the gig.

  Some spacemen appear for a second but they disappear without talking to me. I haven’t talked to any spacemen since my cactus flowered.

  I look around, and I realise for the first time what a drab room this is. Drab and lifeless and totally dull. Too dull for anyone to enjoy themselves in.

  When the support band plays there is an audience of five. We wait as long as we can before going on in case more people turn up, but when we start playing there are eight people watching us.

  In the other bar there are many people but they are not interested in coming in to watch us play.

  During our set five more people come in and two leave. That makes an audience of eleven. All eleven clap.

  After a while I forget about my nerves. We finish our set and the eleven people drift away.

  We help the PA people out with their equipment. I have to give them another forty pounds, so on the night we have lost fifty-four pounds, and another ten for the posters plus five pounds to Matthew for driving us.

  Izzy wishes us a cheery goodbye and strides away confidently into the night, a very powerful presence. Every eye follows her as she leaves.

  As a gig it is a total failure and I am completely depressed. So are Nigel and John. We are all silent as Matthew drops us home.

  Enough human suffering

  Enough human suffering, I think, wandering aimlessly round my room. I hunt out some paper and a pencil.

  Cynthia Werewolf places an advert for musicians in a music paper. She is surprisingly successful with this advert because werewolves sometimes do get lucky breaks. A guitarist she likes answers right away and he knows a good bass guitarist. They have no trouble at all in finding a drummer, in fact they have several to choose from.