Ruby and the Stone Age Diet (7 page)

My foot still hurts from kicking the door, in fact it hurts worse than before. My knee seems to be better. Ruby’s idea about writing stories seems quite good to me.

It is March. My cactus shows no sign of flowering. The spot on the side has disappeared. Ruby’s is barren as well. Perhaps they only flower in the summer. Although if they come from a desert in the southern hemisphere this might be their summer. I don’t know if this matters. Do the months change round for a cactus when it is transported to another hemisphere?

Months later we are still flying through space.

The Captain comes to see me.

‘Why are you not doing any scientific experiments?’ he demands.

‘I am busy writing a new song.’

‘You are meant to be doing experiments.’

‘I’m bored with them. Anyway, when we reach a new planet it will probably be full of primitives. They will not care at all that we have discovered new scientific data. But if I play them a few songs it is bound to get us off to a good start.’

The Captain leaves in disgust. I can tell he hates me.

When my fingers are sore from playing the guitar I ask the computer to give me something to read. It puts a file on the screen called ancient myths.

Ascanazl
, I read.
The ancient Inca Spirit Friend of Lonely
People. He would appear to anyone who was lonely and talk to them
.

That would be nice.

Another crew member comes into my cabin and I play her my new song. She says she likes it because the guitar notes remind her of rain on Earth, and she misses the rain. She forgives me for almost getting us all killed in the meteor storm.

She even asks me if I would like to come through to her cabin and lift some weights together, but I decline the offer. I have no enthusiasm for exercise.

And I am very sad, because I left my girlfriend back on Earth and I know I will never see her again.

I call up the book of myths and legends on the computer screen again.
Ascanazl’s mother
, it says,
was well known for her friendly manners. She lived quietly at the end of the rainbow, but every so often she would go round villages bringing food and medicine to poor peasants
.

On one occasion she was bathing naked in the woods when a mortal hunter came across her by chance
.

‘
It is forbidden for mortals to see the unclothed form of a goddess,’ she said. ‘But never mind. Just go on your way and we’ll forget all about it
.’

Ruby sends me out to steal some more magazines. On the way to the shop I pass the flower stall and I stare at the daffodils for a while.

A large jet flies overhead and I stare at it as well, but I am surprised and perturbed to see five small fighters fly over and start attacking it with rockets and lines of tracer fire.

The airliner does its best to fight off the unexpected attack but as its only armament is a small machine-gun that the navigator pokes out the door it has little chance. Soon a rocket blows its tail off and it hurtles to the ground. More pieces break off before it hits, scattering the area with burning debris that starts fires in all the houses.

Luckily the paper shop is unaffected and I quickly pocket a few magazines while the assistant is still stunned by the explosion following the crash.

At Ruby’s suggestion I am wearing my army trousers with big pockets specially for the occasion.

Loaded down with dubious magazines, I hurry home.

After the young girl’s body was found outside my Battersea squat the police asked me some questions. Not very many questions, really. A few days later I saw four men in a car in the street who looked like policemen. That was all.

I got a temporary job helping in a chemical factory somewhere near Chiswick, and carried drums of chemicals around and mixed them in huge metal vats. The person who worked with me was a fifty-year-old Kenyan who read Latin at tea break and classical Greek at lunch. He had studied for a law degree but switched halfway through to mathematics. Then he had some personal problems and was unable to finish his degree. Now he just read Latin and Greek in his breaks at the chemical factory.

The third member of the shift was heavily tattooed with
blood-dripping roses crawling down his arms and he told me he never went out with his wife anymore because she had put on too much weight.

Every morning, because of the times of the trains I could catch to work, I was three minutes late arriving and for this I would be docked fifteen minutes’ pay. But as the alternative was arriving twenty-seven minutes early this seemed like the best thing to do.

The foreman thought I was a good worker and encouraged me to take the job permanently, but after a few weeks some chemicals splashed out of a drum and burned my eyes.

My burning eyes were the most painful thing I have ever experienced, by a long way.

There was no doctor in the factory and nothing in the medical supply box but bandages, so I went to the toilet and washed and washed them with water, hoping that I would not lose my sight. Then I went home on the bus with my eyes burning under a bandage, lifted at one corner to let me see, and lay around crying and burning for a while.

I gave up the job. The Social Security suspended my benefit for leaving work without good grounds.

My eyes got better. My next job was the one laying cement, which was horrible as well. I didn’t get my eyes burned but it ruined my boots. After every shift I would shake with exertion and if it rained on the way home my feet would ooze with mud and cement.

*

All the buildings in the street are burning after the fight in the sky, but I make it home safely through the police and fire engines and ambulances screaming this way and that.

Back home Ruby is in her bedroom, listening to music.

‘There were some aeroplanes fighting in the sky,’ I tell her. ‘But I managed to get some magazines.’

Ruby goes and puts the kettle on. She says that she is hungry and wishes we had some food.

She gets her typewriter out and we start copying some stories.

I read out some stories and Ruby types them out, changing them a little. It takes longer than we think it will and after making up a karate story and a doctor-nurse romance I am bored with the whole thing because as far as I can see the stories we are copying already say everything there is to say about karate tournaments and doctor-nurse romances. But Ruby wants to do some more because she is convinced we can earn money and Ruby and me both need money. Sometimes I have jobs but Ruby never works. I think she is becoming more and more disinclined to leave the house. Everything we need, I bring in.

Ruby hunts out another magazine from our bundle. It is called
Blow
and is composed entirely of photographs of men spanking women or hitting them with canes.

‘One of Danny’s,’ she says. ‘We are bound to get published in it.’

Danny, the person whose door I ripped off in frustration
some years ago in Battersea, is now a sex magazine editor. We still know him.

‘But it is total nonsense,’ I protest. ‘And objectionable in every way.’

‘No one will ever know. And these specialist sex magazines are sure to pay well.’

I read out the story and Ruby puts it down, changing it round a little.

There is a knock on the door. When I answer it I find Cis outside, delivering our new telephone directory.

‘Cis has just brought us a new telephone directory, Ruby.’

‘Stop being foolish and get on with the story,’ demands Ruby.

I have no idea why she says this. It is true, I have the telephone directory as proof.

When we have a break for a cup of tea we go and look at the cactuses.

No flowers, and it is the beginning of April. Ruby, however, is getting on well with Domino and does not seem too worried. She sympathises with me.

‘It will flower soon. Probably Cis knew that it was a sacred Aphrodite Cactus and gave it to you deliberately.’

Ruby tells me that we have to move next week.

‘Why?’

‘Pauline is coming back.’

It is Pauline’s flat. We are only living there temporarily. I forgot all about it. We can never find anywhere proper to live.

‘What will we do?’

‘I’ll find us somewhere,’ says Ruby, matter-of-factly.

In the Battersea Squatters’ Association we planned to defend a house against Wandsworth Council after they gave the tenant notice of eviction. The Squatters’ Association was determined to resist this eviction because everywhere there were homeless people and everywhere there were empty houses.

We formed a defence committee and appointed one person in charge of the physical defence and one person in charge of publicity and made ready to resist the eviction. ‘I met Izzy today,’ continues Ruby. ‘She was buying some new weights. Well, actually she was standing on a corner about to burst into tears because she’s pregnant and Dean doesn’t want to see her anymore because he has a new girlfriend. But after that she was going to buy some new weights.’

‘Was she looking any more muscly?’

‘No. Izzy is one of the least muscly people I’ve ever seen. But it keeps her happy.’

We have a break from writing.

‘Relationships are terrible,’ I say, and Ruby agrees. I ask her if she thinks it would be a good idea for me to go and visit Cis but she says probably it wouldn’t be.

‘How about if I phoned?’

‘That might be better.’

‘Will you phone for me?’

‘What good will that do?’

‘I don’t know. But I’m terrible on the phone.’

‘I bought some new earrings when I was out,’ says Ruby. ‘Look, little rainbows. One for you and one for me.’