The Triple Goddess (142 page)

On no account was any surplus mixture to be re-used, or poured down the drain; nor was it to be taken internally, allowed to come into contact with the feelers, or left within reach of children.

Following another shower, the shell was to be brushed with extra-virgin olive oil, and buffed with an electric shell-polisher on the highest setting. For the next forty-eight hours one wasn’t to expose oneself to sunlight, bathe, take exercise, or be in the presence of babies. Upon any sign of bubbling or cracking of the shell, one was advised to consult immediately with a dermatologist and plastic surgeon.

Ruby decided not to trust her chemist with making up the prescription. He was a well-known retailer of the
on dit
amongst Ruby’s acquaintance, along with the funny and happy pills and aphid homebrew that he dispensed under the counter and sold out of his back room to his favourite customers. No, she would make the stuff herself; it shouldn’t be too difficult, for everything she required with the perplexing exception of the powdered ptarmigan liver was more or less readily available.

So Ruby tied on the drabbest headscarf that she could find, a bottle-green one, and put on her third darkest sunglasses, the ones she’d got for a holiday in Prague, and went in search of the ingredients. Her theory was that, if she purchased them at a number of different shops, even if she was ‘spotted’, nobody would be curious about what she might want such an unusual variety and quantity of items for.

People weren’t fooled: Ruby’s figure and voice were instantly recognizable, and the eyebrows of others like her who patronized the upper-class establishments, which were already pencilled fashionably high, were raised even farther. The fact that Ruby had taken to doing her own household shopping, rather than sending one or other of her servants, and that she wasn’t being chauffeured in her Rolls-Royce—a taxi was detected kerb-crawling behind her as she darted from place to place—attracted attention.

Usually Ruby only appeared in shops to dither in front of the assistants while she tried to decide between the suede and crocodile-skin shoes, or the hat with the ostrich plume and the blue pillbox; before buying them both and ordering her long-suffering driver, Bentley, invisible under the teetering stack of boxes in his arms, to carry her purchases to the car where it was idling on the double yellow line outside.

Ruby’s ploy of going to several places for lesser quantities of clotted cream and goats’ milk than she needed was also unsuccessful, because everyone compared notes as to where they’d seen her last, and what she had bought. As their enthusiasm mounted to find out what she was up to, several of the other shoppers tipped a couple of urchins to follow her about and report on her movements.

Nothing she did went unnoticed. Had Ruby started doing the cooking herself? her observers asked each other. Had she gone back to her former weird dietary experiments?—the rise and fall and rise of Ruby’s
embonpoint
was a perennial topic of conversation. Had she fallen on hard times and been forced to get rid of her domestic staff? Had she taken to the bottle?

What a come-down that would be for a woman like Ruby! It would explain the sudden desire for sloe gin; but goats’ milk? Some of the milder cheeses were acceptable, if one had a taste for them, but only in moderation. And why so much clotted cream? Unless she was planning to open a tea-room in order to make ends meet, the consequences would shortly speak for themselves.

Ruby was soon aware that her attempt to remain incognito had failed, and that she was the subject of covert glances and whispered speculation, but she remained determined to carry her plan through.

Nothing went smoothly. For the bulk of the goats’ milk—the delicatessen only had a few half pints—she had to walk down a muddy lane to some ghastly organic outlet in a barn, and pay the yokel to accompany her back with it and put it in the taxi; which earned Ruby, the yokel, and the milk quizzical looks from the driver.

At least the delicatessen had pheasant eggs.

She was winked at by the proprietor of the first of the three off-licences where she went for the sloe gin, as he wrapped up the bottle in tissue paper and put it at the bottom of one of her shopping bags; the second advised her not drink it all at once; the third offered to come round and help her drink it.

Ruby hoped that would be the final indignity; but it was not to be, as she found out when she told the chemist that there was no one else she could think to go to for ptarmigan liver, powdered or fresh.

“I tried the butcher,” she said, talking very fast through part of her scarf that she was holding over her nose and mouth; “he told me there was no call for it these days, but he’d a nice piece of brisket that had just come in. I don’t want brisket, I want ptarmigan liver and it ought to be powdered. Do you keep such a...whatever it is...in stock? I want four ounces and I want it now.”

“Good morning, Ruby,” said the chemist. He spoke too loudly for Ruby’s comfort, since she could see Tabitha Smith in the Cold Remedies section. “It is Ruby, isn’t it? Of course it is. You might as well hang a sign round your neck. Ptarmigan liver, eh? Well I never, wonders never cease.”

“I’ll trouble you to keep your voice down,” said Ruby. “I’ve a headache and an earache and you’re not improving either of them.”

The chemist grinned hugely. “Ptarmigan liver won’t cure a headache, Rube, nor an earache neither. The only ones who ask for ptarmigan liver are the likes of her,”—he nodded towards Cold Remedies—“who want to pep their hubbies up for a bit of slap and tickle and how’s your father of a Saturday night.” He winked, like the man at Threshers. “You know, nooky.”

“How dare you say such a thing to a respectable woman!” said Ruby; “and do you have a cold in your eye? If so perhaps you could make yourself up a prescription; they tell me curry powder works well, and I have some here that I can spare some of. Now, stop wasting my time: do you have ptarmigan liver or not?”

Ruby glanced over to Cold Remedies, and was happy to see that Tabitha had moved down to Feeler Curlers; which reminded her that she could use a new set herself.

“As it happens,” said the chemist, lowering his voice at last, “it being Thursday I still have some in the back. But don’t tell anyone, it’s hard stuff to come by and not altogether legal. Ptarmigan, you see, is on the conservation list. It’s a protected species.”

“And it’s on my shopping list,’ said Ruby; “four ounces, and be sharp about it. Wrap the box or bottle or whatever it comes in with brown paper. And if I find out you’ve mentioned it to anyone, I’ll tip off the police that you’re dealing in illicit substances. You’ll get hauled up in front of my friend Gail Clapham the magistrate, lose your licence, and never get work in this town again unless it’s picking up litter.”

The chemist knew better than to ignore the threat, and did as he was told.

Her shopping concluded, Ruby collapsed in the back of the taxi—amongst so many gallons of milk there was only just enough room for her to squeeze into—and slid down in the seat as she passed the block of flats where Amy May lived.

“Feelin’ all right, darlin’?” said the driver, looking in the mirror. “’Ad a bit of a turn, ’ave we? Shoppin’ can do that to yer, so my missus says, not that it stops ’er, but there’s no argufying wiv ’er. Always complainin’ ’bout it she is, says it fair wears ’er out.

“Try drivin’ a cab all day, I tells ’er, the silly moo, that’ll wear y’out. Wot? she says, sittin’ on your arse all day, ’scuse ’er French, chattin’ up the wimmin, you call that work? Wot makes you tired, says she, are the nights you spend in the Dewdrop Inn gettin’ soused wiv yer mates.

“Anyway, lady, we’re ’ere. My advice to you is put the kettle on, take a load off, an’ ’ave yerself a nice cup o’ tea. Nah then. There’s five shillin’s and sixpence on the meter includin’ waitin’ time, plus three bob for the extra luggage, so it’s eight and a tanner I’ll be troubling you for. I’ll give you an ’and with the parcels, no extra charge.”

“Don’t you touch those,” said Ruby, “if you value your arms for driving. My man will take them in.” Then she remembered that she had given Nethersole the day off, to keep her mission off the domestic radar, and she had no choice but to haul everything inside and up the stairs herself. “Just set it all on the pavement. And next time, not that there’ll be a next time, make sure you turn left on Folderol Street instead of going the long way round through Bideford Gardens. Here are three half-crowns and you can whistle for the tip.”

Equipped with oilskins, a face mask, a shower cap, thick elbow-length rubber gloves, and goggles from the storeroom, where all the unnecessary and unused items went that she ordered over the years from her catalogues…one never knew when such things might come in handy, especially since they never had until now…and locking herself in the bathroom, Ruby addressed the instructions in the
Lady Bird
woman’s list.

She followed the prescription to the letter. She poured and scraped the milk and cream into the bath: getting a vat upstairs on her own was out of the question, and she wasn’t going to climb into the water butt in the garden; of all the things that a lady did not do, one was stand in a barrel. She exactly measured each ingredient into the tub, and stirred it in with one of the large wooden spoons that the hardware shop sold to the lower classes for use when boiling laundry in a copper, pausing every now and then to lean out of the window, take off her goggles to de-fog them, and breathe without the mask.

While she was waiting the requisite two hours for the mixture to cure, Ruby practised her technique for applying the cream with a rubber spatula, in front of her full-length bathroom mirror. She soon perfected it. Having six legs made it easy to reach every part of her shell from different angles with equal pressure, which would ensure that both her spots could be evenly coated, wiped, brushed, and buffed.

Every fifteen minutes she stopped her posturing to stir the bath’s contents. The way the lotion smoked and bubbled made her nervous, and it was disconcerting to see the enamel of the bath dissolve, and green spots appear on the taps where flecks of the mixture spattered.

Ruby steeled herself with the thought of how she would shortly be the envy of all, as she sported
le dernier cri
in shell design.

At last the two hours were up and the stuff was ready. After taking a shower and having at her shell with a loofah, Ruby dried herself vigorously with a rough towel. Then she got into the bath, and, using the spatula, covered herself with cream. She rubbed it into her spots so hard it made her sore, but was comforted to find that there was no unpleasantness; the only effects were a tingling sensation, and the onset of a sneezing fit that racked her body.

When a curl of one of her legs knocked a dozen scent and toilet-water bottles onto the marble floor, several of them broke, including one containing an expensive scent,
Mon Amie
, from Paris that Ruby had planned on wearing for Lady Fitzlady’s garden party.

The face mask wasn’t proof against a reaction of the scent with the smells of the smelling salts, vinegar, and gin, and Ruby felt a migraine coming on. She tried to ignore it, and when half an hour was up she repeated the application, and spent the critical last twenty minutes, while her shell absorbed more of the ointment, doing her nails as nonchalantly as she could.

Then she removed the excess with another towel, triple-bagged it in Hefty Cinch Saks and threw it out of the window onto the back lawn. She would have Nethersole instruct the gardener to put it on the bonfire next time he was burning leaves.

She got out of the tub, showered again, used her bath mitt to coat herself in extra-virgin olive oil, and buffed her shell. The high setting on Ruby’s polisher was enough to put a smile on the face of granite.

But woe and alas! Alas and woe! Although Ruby had followed the directions perfectly, to her greatest of great dismay when she looked at her back in the mirror, the spots were still there! In fact instead of having disappeared, or faded, they were even blacker than before.

If that was not bad enough, which it was, the worst thing was that, instead of two spots, there were now...TEN. Ruby counted them over and over: ten spots, ten, ten, ten. Why, she looked like a common footman or housemaid: only lower-class ladybirds had ten spots. Which is why, amongst Ruby’s set, they were known privately as Timesfivers.

“It must be the fumes,” gasped Ruby; “they have affected my brain.”

She went to the window and took in deep gulps of air; but when she looked again, nothing had changed and she was still seeing spots: ten of them, much smaller than the two had been, but ten nonetheless. And the red of the shell contrasted even more vividly with the black than before, so that the proliferation of spots was impossible not to notice, they stood out so distinctly. The best cover-up on the market, that made from a concentrate of betel-nut juice, wouldn’t conceal them, nor would pumicing remove them.

“It’s the mirror,” said Ruby, stamping all of her feet one after the other, first clockwise and then anti-clockwise; “mendacious mirror!”.

She threw the polisher at it, the mirror cracked, and the polisher fell on the floor and broke. Fortunately Ruby had a spare one to shine her shell with, but it was an old model that didn’t have a turbo setting for maximum sheen.

“Anyway,” groaned Ruby, “what’s the point? I’m never going out again.”

Ruby suspected that the writer of the article in the much-lauded multiple prize-winning
Lady Bird
was a mountebank, a charlatan, a fraud. She seethed with indignation, and considered writing a strongly worded letter to the magazine
,
complaining that its standards had fallen off most alarmingly, yes they had.
The Lady Bird
’s reputation as the epitome of journalistic integrity, she would say, was no longer warranted, no it wasn’t; it was sullied, tarnished, and blackened blacker than her spots. Ruby would sue the rag for false representation, by Jove, yes she would, or her name wasn’t Ruby, which it was.