The Triple Goddess (59 page)

The devil lady was a handsome woman despite her enbonpoint; she took pride in her appearance and, now that she was a country squiress, was keen to show herself off in the neighbourhood and meet the locals. Although she was disappointed that her city wardrobe would go to waste in the sticks, where everyone dressed in sensible, unfashionable garb, she was determined not to let her standards slip.

In preparation for her first outing, the DL checked with the HQ Infocentre and was advised to gen up on conversational etiquette regarding the state of the weather, exchanges about which here began every social encounter, and the local dialect. Not being computer literate, she had her man research the matter on the HQ Internet. Information about climatic conditions was downloadable from a Hell-Wide Web site, “hww.666.relocations.org/weather.html”. All he had to do was enter the post code and there it was. Whereas in London meteorological conditions were of no interest to anyone, in the country things were different. One could gossip, and one did, extensively about matters in general.

But the weather was the only reliable topic because it was so unreliable, and up close and personal and in-your-face, and directly associated with whether the heating and light were working and adequate and on and the integrity of the roof and the number of layers of clothing one had to wear and whether the roads were passable; and it therefore afforded level and easy common ground upon which everyone had an immediate and incontrovertible consensus of opinion. Because observations about the state of the weather were a topic of mutual rather than partial interest, the natural elements’ manifestations and miscellaneous exudations provided the ideal subject for meaningless conversation and to acknowledge equally friends, acquaintances and strangers irrespective of class without appearing threatening, inquisitive or controversial, or being expected to talk about anything personal.

The DL, therefore, would be expected to practise the noble art of weather-speak, as a prelude to broaching whatever might be on her mind. Intrigued, she instructed her man send an E-thing red-flagged Urgent—a fat lot of good that would do in prompting a speedy response, but he did it anyway as soon as the slowest of slow Servers was up—to the dim bureaucrats in Hell. Using the e-mail system, when it was not on the fritz, was still preferable to dialling the telephone, only to be disconnected or put on hold and having to listen to recipes for fire-and-brimstone punch, and Old Nick’s Gnocchi, and the number of calories and amounts of fat and sodium in a Sisyphus Sandwich.

That was what Sisyphus did these days, make take-out sandwiches for twenty-four-seven devils, after it had been decided that he could be put to better use than rolling a boulder up a hill. His triple-decker club baguette was good, and filling; but it was best to say away from the curried egg, which could put one over the top, body-temperature-wise, at HQ where the ambient heat was kept at four hundred and fifty-one degrees Fahrenheit.

Regarding making initial social contact in public, it was stipulated that one should never inquire as to the state of a person’s health beyond a cursory How-are-You?. In reply to the same question, one defined one’s own general level of well-being indirectly, with licence to be untruthful, and metaphorically in terms of what the weather was indisputably doing that day, or might be expected to do tomorrow or next week, and/or as compared to what it had been doing at the same time last year to the best of one’s recollection.

Beginners were warned about getting carried away. Analysis of the long-range forecast and global weather patterns were complex topics, conveying nuances of mood and outlook and philosophy, and only the experienced could tackle them with confidence. Instead, for the comfort of both parties, one was only expected to indicate whether one was feeling well or ill, cheerful or depressed, by employing…after an initial Fine, or All Right, or Pretty Good, or OK, or So-So…such generic observations as, “Pretty warm, considering,”; “What a lovely sunset there was last night,”; “Nasty turn it’s taking,”; “Never seen such rain this time o’ year,”; or “There’s talk of snow”.

Eye contact was frowned upon, for there were cloud formations to be scrutinized, and levels of precipitation and wind-speed to be assessed, and to ignore those was evidence of laziness or a reprehensible lack of interest. It was important to avoid hyperbole: any person who said that one had never felt better in one’s life, or that the world was a wonderful place in which to be alive, was considered uppity or a phoney or from Essex.

Speech-related matters, citing a variety of sources, were also addressed, and the devil lady perused a version of the
Song of Solomon
, which had been rendered into dialect by a Roman-sounding fellow called Mark Antony Lower; most likely, she surmised, as an address to some peasant Cleopatra:

“Lookee, you be purty, my love, lookee, you be purty…Yer teeth be lik a flock of ship [sheep] just shared [sheared], dat come up from the ship-wash…”

The devil lady read, learned, and digested this, and other articles the Infocentre directed her to about the village’s origins, until she felt equal to venturing out in public. Using her newfound knowledge to predict that pleasant weather would be more conducive to productive conversation than bad, and introduce her to the community in an unthreatening way, rather than as the storm crow that she was soon to be.

And then one fine day…it took a while coming, but then that was the point, wasn’t it?, for if it hadn’t, there would be nothing to complain about, which might be enough to keep people indoors, except for the necessity of bewailing to others the lack of rain that was not good for the garden; unless it had been raining, in which case one must mourn the absence of good weather, and grumble at the excitation of weeds…the DL ordered her manservant to saddle her eighteen-hand-tall stallion, Elagabalus, sired by Varius out of Soaemias—known to the stable lads at HQ whence he had been transported as the Black Bastard—so that she might sally forth to practise her newly acquired talent.

The DL hated horses and was an indifferent equestrian, having taken only a few lessons at an indoor riding academy, and at HQ hell dollars were riding easily on how soon she would fall or be tossed off. Elagabalus had a wild and ruby eye, and was far too big and ornery for a beginner to handle.

On the plus side, the devil lady considered that she and the animal made an appealing fashion statement: for the occasion she had donned a black shad-bellied, or swallowtailed, redingote to match the ebony colour of the beast and his heart.

Telling her man to hold the leathern red bridle, the DL clambered aboard the already fractious animal from the stone mounting-block in the yard at the back of the Old Rectory; and, as soon as she was up, she dug her new spurred De Niro Cesare dress riding boot heels into her horse’s ribs, causing a startled Elagabalus to set off down the Street...there was only one of them, so it was accorded a capital
S
...at a side-stepping canter.

With the beast’s silver hooves striking sparks from the road, the devil lady made it without incident to the middle of her domain, a ride of about half a mile. There her eye alighted on a gormless-looking man who was lounging on his own by the village pump adjacent to the chalk-stream that gushed out of the side of the downs, and ran alongside the Street. He was wearing a dark smock-frock with pleating at the shoulders, knee breeches, leather gaiters, and nail-shod boots…as he did every day of the week except Sunday, when the smock was exchanged for a white frock.

If he had had any business, and he did not, this individual might have been said to be minding it.

The individual’s name was Hob, known to all as The Local Yokel to distinguish him from The Village Idiot, a position that was voted on every four years on the same electoral ballot that determined who should represent the village on the Parish Council. The only difference was that nominations for the position of village idiot were submitted anonymously, and one year the person elected had been the former two-term chairman of the Parish Council, who had decided not to run again after undistinguishing himself on a couple of key, to the village, issues.

The devil lady, malice aforethought, dismounted stiffly and a bit breathlessly but triumphant and led Elagabalus, who was still surprised enough and smarting from the digging of spurs into his flanks to misbehave, by the halter towards the Local Yokel, Hob. Hob was staring at the stream bubbling at his feet, as if he had never seen it before, and was about to make the momentous decision to commemorate the day by picking his nose. But when he heard the clatter of hooves, and saw a severe-looking woman approaching beside a mountain of bleeding horseflesh with a determined expression on her face, he postponed the initiative.

The DL smiled. ‘A wise decision.
Good day
to you, churl...and a very
pleasant
one it is too
for the time of year
, what?’

The object of her climatic greeting, startled, looked over his shoulder hoping that this eyeful of a woman was addressing somebody important behind him. The corners of his mouth turned down when he saw this was not the case, and that he had no choice but to confront the situation as best he could.

‘Ah yis, ’tis dat, mum, sartin sure,’ said Harrumphshire Man, reprogramming his thick dirty fingers to remove his cap and tug his forelock. Then he scratched his head and shuffled his feet in the dust, making a mental note to resume his nasal excavations later when he was less in demand. A man could not whistle and drink at the same time.

So far so good. ‘And what might you be doing on this
beautiful day
,’ the devil lady followed up, ‘in this…
elenge
spot?’ Elenge in the Harrumphshire dialect meant remote or solitary, and she felt as proud of working the word into her opening as if she had spouted Mandarin, sufficient of which she had never been able to master to qualify for a posting to the luxurious Orient, which she had hankered after at the time. It also asserted the condescending superiority of a city girl over such an obviously low-caste individual, in a public place where others might be within earshot. Though this spot did happen to be the hub of the village, she was mistaken in this.

The peasant Hob was courteous in steering his interlocutor back to the prefatorial meteorological subject. ‘Ah, but ’tis supposed to turn quizzby tomorrow, ma’am, as sure as there be meece in de ’ome, bees in heeve, birdies on nestses, and voilets on de ’ill.’ “Quizzby”, the DL knew, meant unsettled, and as to the rest she did not give a prayer. But that, she decided, was enough tap-dancing about the weather. She always on principle departed from protocol as soon as she could; it was her little rebellion, and besides, she was confident that conversational quadrilles, cotillions and gavottes had no place in this oaf’s repertoire. Indeed, he seemed to recognize that the game was up, and moreover he wanted to be polite after daring to controvert this lady’s presumption regarding the weather. ‘Howsumdever, ma’am, Oi was wund’rin’ as Oi allus do at all dis here wat’r wot is thrumbl’n’ out of the ’illside, unaccountable lik it’ll never stop, which it doan’t generally always niver. An’ it please you, mum.’

Hob was ashamed at being called upon to be so loquacious, since in truth he did not really know why he did what he was doing, except for the lack of an alternative; but he knew he always did it, in the same place at that time of day come rain or shine, and there was no point in trying to argufy the fact. He tugged his forelock again. ‘Yes, mum, dat’s wot Oi be doin’, purty much fair ’n’ square every day most-in-ginral.’ By explaining himself so succinctly he hoped to end the colloquy; but immediately his curiosity got the better of him. ‘But dat’s no poany you got dere, ma’am. Where d’you git a hoss lik dat? Dere bain’t no sich beast bin seen in dese parts afore, sartin sure.’

The devil lady detected a grin under the grime on the fellow’s face, and both she and the horse snorted together.

As to the question...she did not answer questions from the likes of him. ‘Now lookee, I’ll tell you what, chaw-bacon, let’s pretend you’re not as...
dinlow
as you seem. Seeing as how you like studying liquid motion so much, what would you think of my giving you a job pouring as much beer as you can all day long? Beer and more beer, and so long as you don’t touch a drop yourself while on duty, I’ll pay you a modest wage for doing it. But the day I find out you’re…concerned in liquor—
lapsy
or primed or curious or
crank
or tossicated—as I believe you say in dese…these parts, or fiddling the till, you’ll be doing duty of a very different kind. What d’ye say, clodpoll?’

Hob’s features froze for a moment before crinkling with merriment, and pink streaks appeared in the dirt of his face. He was flattered that so august a figure as her ladyship
¾
for the arrival of a newcomer had reached the lowest tendrils of the grapevine, now it dawned upon him, and this could be none other than she
¾
was disposed to linger and jest with him.

‘Aha ho ha, mum, but ’ow would dat be den?’ And he rallied his wits to remember the answer, so that he could pass it on later to his “kiddies”, or mates, verbatim over bren-cheese and ale.

The DL ground her teeth. ‘What I’m saying, you gummut, you Harrumphshire swede-gnawer, you
dead-alive chuckle-headed shooler
, is that against my worse judgement I’m going to make you the innkeeper of the village. My village. Henceforth, my serf, you’re responsible for selling as much beer as you’re capable of shifting, morning, noon and night. You’ll fill people up with the stuff until it’s coming out of their ears, if you know what’s good for you and bad for them, and account for every penny to my manservant. People will go in there and have a jolly old time drinking and telling lies, for as long as they want, as a reward for all the hard work they haven’t been doing.’