The Triple Goddess

by Ashly Graham

  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-w
ater 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.

  For such as Ruby, whose discernment was a byword in good society, to take up arms against so hitherto unimpeachable an authority as The Lady Bird would come as a major disappointment to its readers. Like her, they’d been raised accustomed to hearing their parents assuring friends in the course of conversation, if there were ever some doubt on a point of fact, ‘I can assure you it’s true, for I read it in the Lady Bird.’ And there would be nothing more to say on the matter.

  The campaign that Ruby would launch against The Lady Bird would cause subscriptions to fall off so badly that the magazine might even find itself in danger of going out of business.

  Ruby’s determination to air her grievance in public was short-lived. Were she to write such a letter, she realized, she’d be revealed to all and sundry as a woman who was so vain and shallow, that she was prepared to experiment with untested and unproven methods of cosmetic alteration; to falsify her appearance, and endeavour to render herself by artificial means more beautiful than she was. She’d never be able to show her face, let alone her back, again. She might as well have Nethersole give all her shoes to the gardener to add to the bonfire, and what a mighty conflagration that would be.

  But in a tragic irony, if she said nothing, and didn’t attend Lady Fitzlady’s garden party, people would nod, and comment, ‘I knew it when I saw her the other day, traipsing around town buying all those bizarre things and gallons of gin. Ruby’s fallen on hard times, make no mistake, and is too embarrassed to come.’ Even if she wrote to tell Lady Fitzlady that she was indisposed, nobody would believe her; everyone knew that Ruby wouldn’t miss this party for the world, even if she’d fallen downstairs and broken all her legs and had to be carried there on a stretcher.

  Caught between a rock and a hard place, Ruby decided that she must have made a mistake in following the directions of the treatment. Either that, or the delicatessen had kept the pheasant eggs out after their sell-by date, which wouldn’t surprise her, given that the owner was a Russian-speaking Latvian.

  Well, in for a penny, in for a pound, she thought. Now that there were only a few days remaining before Lady Fitzlady’s garden party, drastic action was called for.

  So the next morning, just as the shops were opening, Ruby put on a housecoat and her second darkest pair of sunglasses, the ones she’d got for a holiday in Portugal. And because footwear is the first thing to give one away, when Nethersole was elsewhere she took out a pair of her oldest pumps and trod on them until they bore no resemblance to the designer shoes that they were. Doing this was as painful as having someone stamp on all her corns and bunions at once, but she had no choice.

  “There,” said Ruby to herself; “the real me wouldn’t be seen dead in these.” Then it struck her that, were she rumbled again it would be taken as conclusive evidence of how down at heel she was. “Can’t be helped,” she grimaced, squeezing into the broken pumps. But how shoddy they looked, and how awful it would be to have to wear them all the time! She was living a nightmare.

  In town she bought more clotted cream...which she couldn’t imagine ever wanting to eat again on a scone…which would be a pity, though beneficial to her diet...and the detested goats’ milk from the malodorous yokel down the lane, who had the temerity to ask if she’d like to place a regular order; and everything else that was on the list.

  When she went into Wine Rack to buy the sloe gin, the man shook his head in amazement. “That must have been some party,” he said; “nobody could drink that much on their own. Or could they...Ruby?” The way he leered at her, leaning across the counter, made her want to crack one of the bottles over his skull, and she would have done so if she could have spared it.

  “You’re in luck,” said the man, “there are just three bottles left. Must be the ‘in’ drink these days. Don’t understand it myself, I tried it and it tastes filthy. Now crème de menthe, there’s a drink. Are you sure you wouldn’t fancy some nice crème de menthe? There’s nothing like it to cheer you up when you’re down, and make you feel...newly minted. Heh heh.”

  Receiving no reply, he wrapped the bottles, and was about to put them in a plastic carrier with the off-licence’s name on it, when Ruby passed over the old straw bucket bag she’d brought with her. As the man laid them inside, he said that he must have misfiled her account, and would she mind paying in cash?.

  Ruby bit her tongue and handed over the money, took back her bag, and scuttled round the corner to where her chauffeur, Bentley, was waiting in an alley with the Rolls-Royce’s engine running. She couldn’t endure another taxi, and had thrown caution to the winds, so desperate was she to get home as quickly as possible.

  ’

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘

  This time, when Ruby had mixed everything up in the bath and stirred it for two hours, she decided to be reckless. To heck with the rubber gloves and spatula and mas
k: she got into the iron tub, which was now bare of enamel, sloshed the cream all over herself and rubbed it in with her feet. That Ruby’s legs were double-jointed, so that she could manage this, was known only to her doctor, who had been informed by his patient that Ruby would take steps to have him struck off the medical register if he told anyone. There were a lot of doctors in this town.

  She did everything except drink it; though she did take several lengthy pulls of the sloe gin, which she agreed with the off-licence man tasted disgusting.

  Ruby lay in the tub for the rest of the day, and all night too, unable to sleep for fear that she would drown in the liquid, or suffer the same fate as the two rubber ducks, which had melted, that she used to play with in the bath. If the lotion had such an effect on them, she thought, surely it could handle a bunch of stupid spots.

  In the morning when it was light, it was a while before Ruby dared to get out of the bath and look at herself in the cracked mirror. And when she did...oh, calamity of calamities! Instead of ten spots there were now—she counted and counted again—TWENTY-TWO. Not two, not ten, not eleven or twelve, but twenty-two! What had she done to deserve such a thing? And the spots were now even blacker than the blacker they’d been the day before, and bigger than bigger, on a shell that was redder than redder.

  It was an hour before Ruby stopped pacing up and down the bathroom, pausing to shudder in front of the glass. The only ladybirds she knew of with twenty-two spots were her peasant country cousins, who farmed aphids to produce the juices that went into such drinks as Aphidia. Ruby’s cousins didn’t wear even broken-down pumps: the only pumps in their lives were the ones they used to draw water. They walked around in bare feet by choice, and thought a chiropodist was someone who taught martial arts.