The Triple Goddess (145 page)

“Oi oi you lot,” said Emilia Fitzlady, grabbing a glass from a passing tray, “and thanks a bunch for coming. Welcome to me ’umble abode. Nah then. I ’ave reason to believe that all of us today are suffering from a common haffliction.

“But ’ere’s the good news: I have consulted with my physician, Mr Teal, who has assured me that the condition is temp’r...of short durashion. It is caused by the ingestion of bile contained in the liver of a certain o’strep’rous bird called a pittar…a marm…a garmitt…p-p...tar-mee-gan, which is indig’nous to the Sco’sh ’Ighlands.

“And that is where, so far as I’m concerned, this pt...this blasted affront to the avian species ought to stay, right up there in the bleedin’ ’Ighlands where it can’t do no one no trouble, and stands the greatest chance of being shot to bleedin’ pieces by sportsmen along with the pheasants, harbluddyhar.

“Now, FYI, Mr Teeheeheal also informs
moi
that a swift and efficacious remedy for the shellacular mutation induced by the pernicious secretion of this odious creature’s hepatic organ—’owabout
that
eh?—is the internal application of Aphidia mixed with gin, a surplus quannity of which I just ’appen to ’ave lyin’ in cases under these ’ere tables. Where I sloe-ly but surely intend to be joinin’ ’em.

“But until then, me gorgeouses, ladies and gennlemen...oh, ’allo there ’Arrison me old darlin’, ’oo’s the lucky bird?...and since I am the ’ostess of this hoccasion, I feel it is my duty to lead by example. Surprisingly, like Mother’s Ruin the cocktail slips dahn a treat, ’specially arter yer’ve ’ad a few. So farewell Savoy Tango—that’s sloe gin with Calvados...farewell Ping-Pong—same but with
crème de violette
. Cheerio! Bums up!”.

Lady Fitzlady drained her glass, tossed it in the air over her shoulder, and called for another. Ruby stepped aside to avoid the glass as it fell.

After that the party went with a real swing. Every ladybird took off the coat that concealed her own twenty-two spots, and trampled on it, and swore never to wear fur again either in coldness or in heat. People chattered and laughed the afternoon away, most loudly when they admitted to each other how they’d been shopping for the same preposterous things, to the extent that a certain yokel had given up selling goats’ milk, and opened a cheese shop on the High Street.

In the evening, there was dancing and supper laid on by Lady Fitzlady; or rather laid over her, since Emilia had long since retired beneath the tables, having told the servants that she was not to be disturbed until the following week.

At which time it was confirmed that, like those of everyone else, Lady Fitzlady’s twenty-two small spots had disappeared, and been replaced by the same two large ones that she had borne all her life, from the day she was born a commoner.

As for Ruby, she did not participate in the entertainment: she’d had her fill of so much over the last few days that there was no room left inside her for Aphidia, let alone sloe gin. So she returned to her Rolls-Royce, woke up Bentley, and told him to take her home.

On the way a plan occurred to her, which perked her up considerably. It had nothing to do with writing articles for Harrison. On the contrary, it concerned starting a new magazine called
Aphidia
, which would advertise so many products, and offer so many opportunities for ladybirds to buy everything under the sun for their beautification and comfort, that it would run its cheerful trendy competitor,
The New Lady Bird
, into the ground.

Darling Harrison and his family would be ruined, and Harrison would weep so many tears of anger and frustration and grief, instead of laughter and joy, into his colourful assortment of silk handkerchiefs, and blow his nose so often, that he would exhaust his collection of fancy snot-rags and be compelled, in order to staunch the flow, to buy first Kleenex for Men, and then soft toilet paper, and then hard toilet paper, of the sort that schoolboys wrap around their combs to blow tunes on them.

With any luck—and Ruby felt lucky—to complete his fall from grace, His Grace, Harrison’s ducal father, before he died would disinherit Harrison for lousing up.

“In case you were in any doubt, Bentley,” Ruby informed her chauffeur from the back of the Rolls-Royce, “Ruby knows what ladybirds want, she always has. Am I right, or am I right?”

To which Bentley, who was aware that many chauffeurs were at present seeking employment around town, nodded assent.

’

Chapter Twenty-One

‘D’Oyly is a spider,’ began Stitch,

‘

and an artist. Her designs are wonderful to look at, and she can make a whole web, complete with the warps and woofs done to perfection, during the night while everyone is asleep except for the foxes and badgers, the owls and flittermice and moths...but they all have their own lives to lead and never bother her.

The dreams the dreamers have, the good ones, D’Oyly weaves into her webs.

Most spiders disappear at the end of the autumn when the cold weather sets in, but not D’Oyly: she carries on year round, through wind and wet, through frost and snow and sleet.

D’Oyly’s webs mean everything to her; she constructs one every night, she has to, and in the mornings, before she goes to sleep herself to dream about the web she’ll make the following night, she filigrees the threads with raindrops or dew as a finishing touch, or spangles them with frost.

Nobody gets tangled in D’Oyly’s webs, except for the flies. She hates flies, and unlike other spiders she does not wish to catch them in her web, for her to wrap and save to eat at a later date. D’Oyly does not eat, and her webs are not larders but works of art, spun visions that the flies ruin by blundering into them, and getting their ugly bodies stuck in the filament that D’Oyly has run with such precision from her spinnerets, and hung in the night air.

The webs cannot be repaired, and all D’Oyly can do is start another one the following night, and hope that nothing will fly into it.

Before she knows it the sun is rising, and the newspaper boy is cycling past and saying, “Wot’s this, then?”, and the milkman is clinking his bottles and chaffing her by shouting, “One pint or two today, young lady?”, even though he knows that D’Oyly drinks nothing more than tiny sips of dew.

She gets particularly annoyed at the policeman, who comes and sticks his nose too close to her web and says, “’Ere! This has got to go. You ain’t got no permit for it and it’s causing an obstruction. You’re a public menace, you are. One more time and I’ll run you in.”

But it is the flies that give D’Oyly her worst headaches, by obtruding on her daytime rest, as she sits, exact and still, in the unique web that she finished as the first notes of birdsong sounded; and in which, after tying off the last thread, she begins to dream about what shall go into her next web, the one that will possibly be the best she’s ever done.

“Ars brevis, vita longa,” thinks D’Oyly wearily. “‘The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne’? Nay, the life endures, the skill it goes to waste.”

During a particularly bad day’s ravaging by the flies, D’Oyly was upset, because she had been pleased with the night before’s work; and when Twig was flying past he saw that she was awake, and stopped.

Twig, as you’ve heard, is a boy fairy who lives in an apple tree, the sort that grows green apples. He wears a black brimmed hat and black velveteen breeches with satin bows at the knees, colour black.

“Good morning, D’Oyly,” said Twig; “what keeps you up so late? Why aren’t you asleep?”

“Asleep, asleep,” groaned D’Oyly, “I wish I were asleep. That policeman has just left, and he said that tomorrow he’s going to take me into custody. How could I web in prison? Some might be able to, but not me; it’s not natural.”

Twig was sympathetic, and asked if he might come and sit in D’Oyly’s web. The request was a courtesy: were Twig to come onto the strings it would not harm it, because fairies weigh nothing and can do no damage.

D’Oyly said, “Of course,” and Twig joined her.

As they both looked at a jagged hole that the flies had made, Twig said, “I’ll tell you what, D’Oyly: if you like, you could make your web in my apple tree tonight. It’ll be safe there. No one and nothing can come into my tree without my allowing it.”

D’Oyly considered the offer; it was her practice always to choose her own spaces, for the selection of a location was part of the artistic process.

But then it was a fairy tree, she thought; a fairy tree can be wherever you imagine it to be.

So she said, “Thank you, Twig, I’d like that. It’s most generous of you.”

Twig left, and D’Oyly, greatly relieved, fell fast asleep and dreamed all day, and when she awoke at midnight she felt refreshed and ready to go to work.

Twig came to fetch her and carried her on his back to his tree, and that night D’Oyly constructed an enormous web, the biggest she’d ever designed, using only the very thinnest of threads.

In the centre, she complimented Twig with a fairy swing for the breeze to set in motion.

At first light, Twig got up from where he’d been resting on a branch—for fairies don’t sleep during night or day—and looked at D’Oyly’s latest creation.

“Well, D’Oyly,” he said; “I’ve admired much of your work, but I think this is the finest that you’ve done. I would like it to stay here forever, if that’s all right with you, on permanent loan.”

D’Oyly wove her signature in spidery writing in the bottom right corner, and curled off the thread.

“Thank you, Twig,” she said; “coming from a fairy that means a lot. And now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to sleep. I’ve already had an idea for tonight.”

“One last thing,” said Twig.

“Ah yes,” said D’Oyly; “I’d be honoured.”

As Twig touched the web with his wand, the lines were strung with translucent pearls, a fairy’s kiss, and the freshening sun shone its light through each of them in many colours.

Into Twig’s apple tree where only green apples grow, no flies came.

And an old lady, who was out for an early walk, passed nearby. She was drawn to look up, and when she saw D’Oyly’s web she stopped in amazement, and said, “Oh my!”

Then the old lady, who had once been young, went home and wrote a poem, thus:

She never webbed like this

Until the fairies came.

There was one like her once,

I called her Penelope. She began under

Contract to produce silken strings for fairy violins,

Yarn for cat’s cradle, thread to repair their clothes,

And hammock rope for their repose.

But as she grew wiser in the company of the fairies,

She came to understand that her abilities stretched

Much further than manufacturing;

And they, in turn, saw that she

Deserved a space to call her own.

So they released her from her contract,

And gave her a special place amongst them.

The other spiders aspired to Penny’s privilege;

But so long as she was pre-eminent

They must string their rigging in lesser places,

In deference to her art.

For fairies are the most rewarding

As well as demanding of creatures,

And those they choose to favour, they protect.

’

Chapter Twenty-Two

‘One sunny day,’ resumed Stent, ‘inside a hive of humble-bees, or dumbledores, or bumblebees, which are a larger species of bee than that which Humbert belonged to, one that wore uniforms rather than jerseys, a baby bee wrapped in a little pink jacket was delivered at a worker family’s front door in a carry-cot, along with that morning’s
The Bee Times
.

‘

None of the family knew who’d put her there—for a “she” she was—there wasn’t even a note to say where the baby had come from, or politely asking, as one might expect in such a situation, that whoever lived there would take her in and give her a good and happy home.

But that was the way of the hive, where baby bees were distributed anonymously to designated parents, who were charged with educating them in the customs and practices of the apian community.

So the family members took in the little bee, and called her Clarissa, because, unusually, the name was already embroidered in an elegant italic purple silk stitch on her jacket. They gathered round, and fed her, and cooed over her, and called in their neighbours to make
ooh
ing and
aah
ing noises as they admired her. Then they put her down again in her cot for a nap; and, as soon as she was asleep, whispered at each other about how, when Clarissa grew up, she’d become a legendary worker bee, famous for the excellence of the nectar she’d bring to the hive to be turned into honey.