Ruby and the Stone Age Diet (5 page)

The old woman is still waiting on her balcony. I wish she had someone to talk to. She reminds me of a woman called Sylvia I used to see in Battersea. Sylvia was around sixty and her Spanish accent was too thick for anyone to ever understand what she said. She lived with a man called Victor who had a cleft palate and no one could understand him either. They could understand each other.

No one ever wanted to see them because they were so filthy and shabby and difficult to understand. Sometimes, for companionship, they would hang around with the local Socialist Workers Party and sell papers for them.

No one cared anything about them and no one ever visited although they lived in a squat in a street full of squats. Just them, sick and old, and a horrible sick dog and not a visitor for months and months. I used to wish that someone would go and visit them.

‘Did you ever?’ asks Ruby.

‘No. I could never understand what they were saying.’

It rains outside and the little balcony floods and we have
to bail it out with a bucket and a pot and this is quite fun because we can pretend we are pirates. Ruby would be a good pirate captain, I think, because she would never have to leave the ship and she could just order the crew about all the time.

Ruby goes to lie down after her exertions and I go downstairs where I meet the postman, the woman from the ground floor and Ascanazl, an ancient and powerful Inca spirit who looks after lonely people. He is drying his feathers after the rain. His feathers are magnificent.

I tell him about Cis leaving me. Almost immediately he makes a polite excuse and flies off.

‘You are in a sorry state,’ says the woman downstairs. ‘Even the powerful Inca spirit dedicated to looking after lonely people is bored with your company.’

I ask the postman if he has any letters for us. We hardly ever get letters. Ruby emerges from her room flushed and annoyed.

‘Help me with my diaphragm,’ she says.

‘What sort of help do you need?’

‘I can’t fit it. I am going to see Domino tonight and I have this diaphragm from a doctor because I don’t want to take the pill anymore but I can’t get it fitted right.’

Ruby brings out a tube of spermicide and squeezes some onto her finger, then rubs it all over the round piece of plastic.

‘I’ll have one last try.’

She lifts up her dress and squats on the floor and
squeezes the diaphragm in halfway and tries to fit it but somehow she can’t. It keeps slipping out.

‘Stupid fucking thing,’ she rages.

I try and help. Ruby lies on the floor and opens her legs wide and I insert it.

‘Make sure it is stationed securely behind the pubic bone.’

Her vagina is slippery from spermicide but when I fit it, it stays inside.

‘There,’ I say, always pleased to do Ruby a favour.

‘It’s not right.’

‘How not?’

‘It’s not covering my cervix,’ says Ruby, glowering, feeling inside her with her fingers. ‘Do you have any cigarettes?’

I light some cigarettes although this takes several tries as the matchbox also becomes slippery with spermicide.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure. Don’t you think I know when my cervix is covered?’

She takes my hand and puts my fingers up her vagina.

‘See?’

‘Not really.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, I’m not really sure what a cervix is.’

‘You must know what a cervix is.’

‘Well I do, in general terms. Just not exactly.’

Ruby frowns some more and removes the diaphragm, then she shows me exactly which bit is the cervix.

‘This little bit in here that sticks out.’

Ruby tells me it moves around. I am fascinated.

‘Does it move around fast? I mean, do you have to wait till it stays still for a minute, then try and get the diaphragm over it quickly?’

Apparently it doesn’t. I try again and this time I am successful.

‘Thank you,’ says Ruby, standing up and adjusting her dress.

The room is covered in spermicide. Any sperm that comes in will have no chance of survival whatsoever.

I tell Ruby that I like her new sunglasses and remind her that my band is looking for a new drummer, just in case she comes across one on her travels. She leaves to visit Domino.

Sometimes I work for an industrial agency that gets me casual work in factories.

Ruby phones them up for me because I am not very coherent on the phone. When she does this she tells them she is my wife.

I get a job cleaning in a huge industrial garage in Gunnersbury. The floor is black with oil and I have to clean it till it is white. It takes me around a day to clean a space the size of a car, grinding away at years of grease and filth with a scrubbing brush and a mop and a bucket. Also I have to clean the toilets.

The first day I make the mistake of cleaning the toilets too early and at the end of the shift all the workers come in and make everything dirty again. So after that I leave cleaning the toilets till last.

The company tells the agency that I am a good worker and the man in the agency is pleased and says that it is very rare for one of their clients to pay a compliment to one of their workers.

At lunchtime I sit on my own in the canteen and listen
to everyone talking about what they saw on television the night before.

One day a white worker calls out, ‘Hey, Mandela!’ to a black worker and there is a big argument because the black worker says he is not called Mandela, he has a name of his own.

I do not mind this cleaning work as everybody just leaves me alone to get on with it because I am obviously a good cleaner, but after about a month I don’t go in one day because I wake up with the sure knowledge that Cis will call round and visit me.

‘Not working today?’ asks Ruby.

‘No. Cis is going to visit.’

I spend the day thinking what I will say to Cis when she calls and rushing to the window at the slightest sound outside. I make up all sorts of speeches in my head, but eventually I decide that I will just tell her how pleased I am to see her again.

Ruby appears at around two in the morning with wet feet and sunglasses.

‘She didn’t call?’

I shake my head.

‘Don’t worry,’ says Ruby. ‘She might call tomorrow.’

I don’t feel like cleaning any more floors or toilets so I don’t go back to the garage and afterwards I have trouble even remembering where Gunnersbury is, although I miss the meals in the canteen because they had good pies and I used to enjoy sitting there eating them.

*

Marilyn and Izzy live in a housing co-op flat with three tiny rooms and red curtains. I wonder about visiting them. This is always a slight problem because I am friends with Izzy but I don’t know Marilyn so well and if I visit and only Marilyn is in then I feel awkward. I decide to go anyway.

They are on the first floor with no bell so I have to throw stones at the window and I am careful not to throw anything too big because Marilyn gets really fucked off if she’s watching TV and a big rock crashes into the window.

She gives me a friendly smile at the door. Upstairs Izzy smiles at me as well, and this is not so bad, two smiles in one day.

There is an advert for pensions lying on the floor. It shows a happy couple on a yacht, drinking wine.

I have no idea why people pay for pensions when you don’t get the money back for more years than you can think about. I have no idea how people get enough money to buy yachts. I have no idea why yachts cost so much money. I have no idea why I spend even a second thinking about yachts.

‘What are you thinking about?’ says Marilyn.

‘Pensions and yachts.’

‘So you are still feeling bad about Cis leaving you?’

‘Yes.’

Izzy has put up a poster in the hallway of a female bodybuilder. She is wearing a purple leotard that shows off most of her body. Her back is V-shaped, muscular and strong.

Marilyn and Izzy both play in a band and so do I so we talk about how difficult it is to get gigs and how appalling all other bands are and how much we detest all the other bands in the area.

‘How is the weightlifting going?’

‘Very well,’ says Izzy. ‘I am twice as strong as I was two months ago. I’m on a special healthy diet and I’m thinking of joining a club. Except I can’t find a good club. There was a women-only bodybuilding class at the local institute but they closed it down. And I don’t want to go somewhere where men will laugh at me.’

‘They wouldn’t laugh if you were serious about it.’

‘Yes they would. Dean thinks it’s hilarious.’

‘How is Dean?’

‘I haven’t seen him for a week. Do you think I’m looking stronger?’

‘Yes,’ I lie.

‘Say hello to Ruby for us,’ they say, as I head off home.