The Triple Goddess

by Ashly Graham

  ‘Sorry I forgot. Overdid it a bit at the gathering afterwards and don’t remember much.

  ‘I am sorely missed, apparently. The feeling isn’t mutual, whether I liked ’em or not, ’cos most of ’em are ’ere.’

  ‘So you’re all right, then.’

  ‘Sure, I’m looking on the bright side, feeling no pain. The Big C’s no picnic, but hey, if it isn’t one thing it’s another. Anyway, I’m only slightly dead. Got the best of both worlds. Dare say I feel a lot better than some of the old blokes and biddies here who are just walking around saving funeral expenses.’

  ‘Oh, hello Alfred old cock, speak of the devil...sorry, insensitive, you with your Big Audit pending. Hey, listen, here’s a joke to cheer you up—Knock knock.’

  Alfred looked morose. ‘“Who’s there i’the name of Belzebub?”’

  ‘Alf! Careful! “Knock knock.”’

  ‘“Who’s there i’the other devil’s name?”’

  ‘Alf! Blast, now I’ve forgotten how it goes.’

  ‘Porter’s scene in Macbeth: ‘“The bell has tolled that summons me to heaven or to hell.”’

  ‘Don’t fancy your chances much now, you lummox. What you got, a death wish?’

  ‘Hello Cyril, how’s you? I s’pose you’re aware that your wife’s been having a fling with Randy Andy, and you only gone three months. By the way, I heard the first cuckoo of spring this morning, which is weird, given we’re still in March. Fancy, Randy Andy, and him just turned eighty-six. There’s blood in the old bugger yet, seemingly, or parts thereof.’

  ‘Breean, fatheaded brother of mine, alive alive-o though still you be, when you going to assert your miserable greedy self over that ditto wife of yours and your stupid lazy moneygrubbing social-climbing lying cheating stealing chips off the old block daughters and their do-nothing husbands and their hobbledehoy spoiled spendthrift broods to turn your shares over to my boys and their boys? Your lot are doing their best to run their side of the business—my business—into the ground. I was the one brought you in, I would remind you, three-quarters of a century ago when you couldn’t find a job or your buttocks with both hands.’

  ‘Keep your hair on, Godfrey.’

  ‘Very funny. Breean, we’ve both been as bald as coots since we were twenty.’

  ‘Okay, Godfrey. Okay. I’ll get things under way tomorrow with the lawyers, tear up the will, start again and get it sorted. So you married my childhood sweetheart, what’s our feud matter now? Time to bury the hatchet. Bygones is bygones, and we’ll make no more of our bones about it. Arter all, I’ve probably only a few years left myself and it’s time to brush up my resum-ay. So, cross my heart and hope to die. Shake on it, Godfrey. And Godfrey?’

  ‘There. Yes, Breean?’

  ‘You know, when I join you, you and I should put our heads together. We’d make a perfect arse of ourselves. See you around, old boy. Take care.’

  ‘Uncle George! How are you this week?

  ‘Good, thanks, sonny. I’ve possessed that weirdo Jack, you know, the blighter who’s on the same stool in the pub every night. It was easy, he never knew what got into him. Boy drinks like a fish, even more now I’ve got my hooks in him. They can’t serve him fast enough, all power to his elbow, and he can afford it thanks to his inheritance. Think of it: free beer, all night, every night. It was a choice between him and that old soak Pissproud, at least I had things in common with him. But Pissy’s still drinking that vile home-brew of his in his kitchen, to save money, won’t go out, even though it means being around that bitch wife of his, and I can’t stand listening to her whining. No wonder he knocks it back like he does.’

  ‘Not so loud, Uncle George. Mrs P’s in the row in front of us.’

  ‘Loud? You should hear her when she gets going, the baggage. She doesn’t hear anything ’cept the sound of her own voice.’

  ‘Uncle George, you should be preparing to go to the Light, not hanging around in the pub possessing people. You’re dead, face it, nothing’s going to change. Jack’s not a bad lad, really. He’s always been able to hold his drink, but you’re pushing him over the edge. He might get in his car and kill himself, and you wouldn’t want that on your record. The Day of Judgement is yet to come.’

  ‘Don’t worry, son, I’m enjoying myself too much to let Jack do anything stupid. Nor do I want him joining me on the Other Side, he’s a silly gubbins, tells the worst shaggy-dog stories.’

  ‘That’s very selfish of you, Uncle George. How can you keep coming to church with a clear conscience when you’re behaving like this?’

  ‘I come to see you. No children of my own.’

  ‘As I said, Uncle George, it’s time for you to clean up your act or you won’t ever get to the Light. When the bar comes down you’ll be sent south to You-Know-Where, where there’s no beer and skittles. Ophelia won’t be able to help you then and I’d never see you again.’

  ‘Yeah, well…I think about it, son. Cheers for now.’

  ‘Oi, mush!—yeah, you with the stupid tie—what have you done to my house? Ruined it, that’s what you’ve been and gone and done. Ruined it.’

  ‘Say what? You talking to me, squire?’

  ‘I am. You’re Nobby, Nobby Numbnuts. You and your missis, you’re ripping the guts out of the house I lived in fifty years, and you’re planning to rip out my wife’s cottage garden out the front as well so you can have off-street parking for your vanity-plated flash motors. Adding a fancy extension at the back and yet another of those effing-awful conservatories. Swimming pool, tennis court. I hate conservatories and swimming pools and tennis courts. Why? Because I hate conservation and I detest swimming and playing tennis. That house was good enough for Dot and me for half a century, and so it should be for you, Sunshine, except you’ll probably move on in a couple of years. It’s got indoor plumbing, what more do you want? Never needed nothing doing to it while we were there, so leave well enough alone, tosh, you hear me? Tossers like you never put down roots, just ruin a place, sell it, and move on and so-called up.’

  ‘Why, you…you must be the old fart we bought the place from.’

  ‘Name’s Vosper Jones, and, yes, my wife and I used to live in that house you’re trying to turn into the Taj Mahal.’

  ‘Why, Jones, of course, I didn’t recognize you at first, you look…different. Horrible condition it was in, but then there’s no point in paying for someone else’s taste, is there? ’Specially yours. And I’m Robin. Not Nobby.’

  ‘Robin. Pansy name. I know you’ve got a mortgage, Nobby, a jumbo one. You should watch out, the market’s gonna crash, mark my words, and then you’ll have to sell at a loss when the bank forecloses and go back to renting a semi or living with your mother-in-law like you used to, you bozo. I’m looking forward to that. I may come visit.’

  ‘Nonsense. We stitched you up, Jones, on the price, I can tell you that now. I fixed the survey and the appraisal. The house swap, cutting out the estate agent’s commission, that was my idea and you went for it. You were so desperate to move somewhere smaller where there weren’t any stairs. Pity, you were only there a year, weren’t you? You both had strokes and had to go into a nursing home.’

  ‘What was, was. Now, I got my eyes on you, matey. I saw you dropping that Irish coin in the collection bag, and last week you only pretended to put money in. Oh, by the way: I’m dead. Don’t believe me? Shake hands, if you can.’

  ‘Shake hands with you after you’ve just insulted me, you plug-ugly bugger?’

  De mortuis nil nisi bonum, Nobby: “Don’t speak ill of the dead.” More precisely, “Of the dead, nothing but good.” I’ve been boning up on my Latin, Nobby, it’s the lingua franca in the afterlife.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about? And it’s Robin I told you.’

  ‘I’m not in Hell, Nobby. Not yet, least-wise.’

  ‘I’ve had enough of this. I’d rather give you a good shove than a handshake, Jonesy, like…oop…wha…. Why you’re, you’re…’

  ‘Sur
e, I’m dead, Nobby. Said as much. Dead but not forgotten and never by you.’

  ‘Eeargh! Get away from me!’

  ‘Now you listen to me, cully, and listen good. I’m gonna move back in and throw china about day and night, night and day. I’m gonna wail like a banshee. I’m gonna make you and that partner of yours so miserable you’ll both be nervous wrecks. I’m gonna scare you into putting the place back on the market. No one’ll buy it. Estate agents are required to declare hauntings. No more house swaps for you, old cock, only the funny farm. Get my drift?’

  ‘Yis. I’m going to use the toilet.’

  ‘Not here you won’t, Nobby, not until Effie succeeds in getting the gardener’s shed turned into a brick shithouse. You’ll have to use the back of the churchyard like everyone else.’

  ‘Eargh!’

  ‘Flossie, you’re still with us! Isn’t it time you moved on, dear?’

  ‘Can’t find me pills to save me life, Ophelia. Har har. I’ve looked everywhere. I depends on those pills.’

  ‘Your daughter Joan threw them away, Flossie. You don’t need them any more, not now that you’re dead.’

  ‘I will admit, I ain’t got that turrible rheumatism no more. But ’ow’s Joanie goin’ to manage without me? Lawks-a-mussy, I need to watch over ’er.’

  ‘Joanie’s sixty-seven years old, Flossie, and she looked after you for thirty years, all the time you were ailing. Joan can manage on her own as you very well know.’

  ‘I don’t like that man she’s been seein’. ’E never dared come round when I was alive. She was never innerested in men, Joanie wasn’t.’

  ‘Don’t try and scare Jim off, Flossie, please, you mustn’t. Jim’s a lovely man, he and Joan were at primary school together, and later she used to ride on the back of his motorcycle. He lost his first wife. So let Joanie alone, dear, please, she deserves to have a life of her own. It would be selfish of you otherwise.’

  ‘She can’t cook, for example. She’d burn water. I cringes when I see some o’ the things she eats. All that fried and frozen food instead-a fresh meat and veg ain’t doin’ her no good.’

  ‘Joan looks fine, Flossie, better than I’ve ever seen her. Her blood pressure’s down and she’s off the anxiety pills. Jim’s a good cook, I can tell you, Effie says so. He’s very handy in the kitchen, and he grows vegetables. Jim may not have a garden where he lives, unlike Joanie, but he’s always worked an allotment. He wins prizes at the show, for his flowers, too.’

  ‘An’ anuvver fing. I’m ’avin a bit of fun, I am, list’nin’ to people’s conniversations, an’ lookin’ through windows. That Irene, you wouldn’t believe the things I ’ear cummin out of ’er mouf. I never liked that woman. She always ’ad it in for me, though there was nothin’ she could do, not while my Billy was alive. Billy’d ’ave given ’er what for if she tried anythin’’. She was jealous o’ me, ’o course, that was ’er problem, she thought my Billy was to be ’er catch.’

  ‘Have you seen Billy, Flossie?’

  ‘No. No I ain’t. Sumfing to do wiv…erf-ly ties, or some such—so I’m tole—is keepin’ us apart.’

  ‘Earthly ties. Flossie, you must go to Billy. Billy has waited a long time for you and you owe it to him to go. As well as to Joan. So, Flossie: I don’t want you coming to church any more. Joan won’t come until you’ve gone, and we want to see her more often amongst her friends here. She wants to come, I know that. We’ll look after Joan, Flossie, you have my word on it, and we will pray for you every week and more. Will you do as I ask? It’s for your own good. Please? Promise me.’

  ‘Oh, all right. All right den, I’ll go. TTFN. See you around some day, Ophelia, I ’ope.’

  ‘Not if I see you first, Flossie. Give my love to Billy and say hello from all of us. Goodbye, Flossie. Goodbye, dear.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Back at the Old Rectory the devil lady was taking afternoon tea in the drawing-room. It was a new habit of hers, one which she indulged with enthusiasm, and she insisted to her manservant that during the period there be no disturbances, particularly of the Effie kind. Had she been a religious woman, the DL would have regarded it as a sacrosanct time of day. The manservant, who did not usually mince his words or show a proper respect for his devil employer, poured silent scorn and boiling water upon on the Darjeeling leaves.

  But even worse than the tea-guzzling affectation, to his mind, and the little sandwiches that she insisted on having prepared in triangles with the crusts cut off, were the mephitic-smelling kippers. All spicy, smoked and heavily salted foods were popular among Plutonian prisoners, who found them helpful in soothing their digestions and performance anxiety. The kippers had been such a success with his mistress at breakfast that now he was required to serve them in the afternoons as well. Being house-proud, he did not miss an opportunity to express his indignation at the place being filled with the pong of herring; no matter how many windows were left open and scented candles burned, his clothes and hair were permeated with it. The wretched cats followed him about as if he were the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and he was always tripping over them.

  The DL ignored her man’s whingeing, commenting only that she found such sensitivity odd in one who was accustomed to inhaling sulphurous fumes round the clock at home. She recommended that he start eating kippers himself, on the same principle that eating garlic, in addition to keeping vampires at bay, inured one to the smell of it in others.

  The devil lady also delighted in consuming another fish at teatime: the salmon that was most conveniently smoked at a local premises and purveyed either at the adjoining shop or for home delivery by van, by a stalwart family business only a few miles away. Served with lemon juice and brown bread and butter, the smoked salmon was quite delicious, and the DL had diaried a reminder to herself to find out if the company accepted export orders. When one day the DL’s serving-man, hoping to wean her off the kippers, brought in the tea trolley with the addition of some succulent pieces of chicken and duck that had been cured at the same place, the devil lady struck the table with an appreciative napkin and lowered her eyes to Hell in ecstasy.

  ‘Infernal smokes! How exceedingly fortunate I am to have been condemned to such luxury!’

  Her unmusical laughter at her little joke was accompanied only by a sneer from her manservant. ‘Who do you think you are, the Queen of Sheba? As if eating three square meals a day weren’t enough without wanting this…this stuff in between. You’re getting fat.’

  Appalled, the DL pushed back her chair and got up. She was very vain about her appearance. ‘Rubbish!’, she said, self-consciously smoothing her hips and thinking that there might be something in what her man said. ‘And don’t make personal remarks.’

  ‘Pah! The house smells like Billingsgate on a hot day.’ Her servant stared with loathing at two blistered items on a plate that had previously done business as members of the herring species.

  ‘How typical of the lower class,’ the DL murmured, sitting down and nibbling a piece of duck, her equanimity restored, ‘not to have an appreciation of the finer things in death. This stuff is a real devil-send to one in need of a bit of pampering. By the way, on the liquid front I note that you’ve been at the whisky decanter again. I know because I marked the level. I’ll thank you to remember that the drinks are for myself and our guests, should we ever have any. Really, it is so hard to get good help these days.’

  ‘Spare me the self-righteous twaddle. I’m sorry to interrupt your ladyship’s oh-so-refined enjoyment, but I am the bearer of bad news.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Effie’s begun a campaign to rouse people up against Father Fletcher. Piled on the make-up and paint and gone on the warpath.’

  ‘Warpath?’

  ‘That’s what I said. Calling door-to-door, bawling into a very unnecessary megaphone along the Street, starting a petition, organising a demonstration—the works, Harrumphshire-style. She’s demanding that everyone send letters of complaint, drafted by herself, to the B
ishop about you and the Darkster. The PCC’s up in arms and the churchwardens are taking the matter very seriously. Coffee-time after Ophelia’s services have turned into opposition rallies.’

  The manservant endeavoured to conceal his pleasure at having been able to make such an announcement, and it seemed to him that the eau de kipper may have receded somewhat. ‘There’s more. HQ wants a full report. How they found out I have no idea,’ he added, looking away; ‘but to say they’re irked would be an understatement. There’s a fax just came in and several e-mails, reminding you that we’ve never lost ground in this area before. Harrumphshire is regarded as a very safe constituency.’

  ‘Bloody Heaven.’

  ‘In other words you’ve been put on notice. They’ll be watching you closely from now on, and won’t hesitate to send in a Specialist if things don’t improve sharpish.’ The man gazed at the chandelier and decided to postpone dusting the crystal pendants.

  The duck turned from smoked to ashes in the devil lady’s mouth. Specialists were bad news, the very worst. She massaged her temples in an attempt to restore the flow of thought, then got up from the table and paced the hearth. One of the most terrible things about a devil’s lot was that HQ set no store by one’s recent commendable achievements. It was only interested in today’s results and the prospects for tomorrow. There were no laurels to rest on in Hell: the genus Laurus, family Lauraceae, was nowhere to be found in its purlieus.

  Suddenly she utterly lost her composure, which was something she had never before. ‘Woe, woe, woe!’ she wailed, flapping her hands as her man stiffened with surprise and concern. Whatever he might think of his mistress at any given moment or however much he might disapprove of anything she did, they stood or fell, further, together. ‘A Specialist? Is there to be no respite, nothing to relieve the endless grind and persecution?’

  This was a rhetorical question, of course, for the facts were stark: the DL’s career had not been prospering for most of the last century, and sometimes she felt as if she would be unable to bear up under the strain and stress of her responsibilities. Although sometimes cracks showed upon the veneer of her self-possession, the outburst was unprecedented: no such manifestation of a loss of confidence had ever occurred when she was not alone.