The Perfect 10 (33 page)

‘Well, don’t beat yourself up about any of it. Some people never realise that, and they spend their whole lives trying to look perfect.’ Christian examines the lines under his eyes, then gives up dramatically with a sigh.

‘You don’t have to make me feel better,’ I say, shifting in my seat, turning left onto the A3.

‘I’m not just saying it, it’s true. Some people are no more than the sum of their appearance.’

‘Well … it’s an easy trap to fall into, when it seems that’s all anybody is interested in these days.’

‘Cagney hates “these days”,’ Christian says quietly.

‘
C’est vrai
,’ I concur.

‘
Oui
,’ Christian says as he puts his Aviators back on.

As we drive along the motorway, hurtling towards Portsmouth at an illegal speed, banked by swathes of conifer trees slanting up towards acres of cloudy grey-blue skies above us, I wonder if it is just the easiest mistake to make, judging the whole world on its appearance. It’s the laws of nature – flowers bloom and attract the bees, peacocks preen and attract … other peacocks. It’s the quickest way to impress.

After twenty minutes of comfortable silence, as we draw ever closer to Portsmouth, and Christian salutes a sign for a naval academy and asks if we can drop in, I ask what I’ve been wanting to ask all along.

‘Tell me about his wives, Christian.’ I stare straight ahead. It’s not a question, it’s a quiet demand. It’s necessary information that I am missing.

‘I don’t think that’s healthy,’ he says, and I can feel his eyes burrowing into me.

I turn to look at him, back to the road, at him, back to the road, at him, and smile. ‘Christian, tell me about his wives.’

He gives me a disappointed glance. ‘OK, but I don’t really know much about the first two, other than one was younger, one was older, and they both screwed him like a cheap nail into plywood about a week after their nuptials.’

‘How?’ I ask, pressing hard on my brake as the traffic starts to slow. I glance at my watch. It is four o’clock already; we are running out of time.

‘I think one was unfaithful … and one, well, it had something to do with her parents not liking him, or something. She was loaded,’ he says as explanation, as if being wealthy is an excuse for anything.

‘So what about the other one?’ I ask evenly. We are shunting along in first gear, I am riding my clutch, and
Christian checks out everybody else around us – passengers, dogs with their tongues sticking out, drivers on mobile phones, kids with their tongues sticking out, as he talks.

‘Lydia,’ he says.

‘What about her?’ I ask.

‘Well, Lydia I met,’ he says, sounding impressed with himself, to be able to truthfully relay that kind of information.

‘No, you didn’t,’ I say, shaking my head in disbelief. It’s not so shocking; I don’t know why I am so incredulous. These women exist – they aren’t just myths, like mermaids, or witches. There isn’t a fairy tale entitled ‘Cagney’s Three Wicked Wives’, so far as I am aware.

‘I met her,’ he says again, nodding his head, no need for lies.

‘But how? I thought you didn’t know him, before he moved to Kew? And I thought you said that he moved here after he had split up with …’

‘Lydia. Yes, he had been in Kew for about six months. I remember because it was July, hot as Jamaica that summer. I wore shorts most days and not much else.’

‘And Lydia?’ I ask, because I see him on a route to distraction.

‘She showed up one day in July. I literally felt an icy gust when she walked into the shop and asked if I knew where he was, as she was getting no answer from his office. Cagney was still really raw, but he’d turned a corner, I think. He had started to put things back together, he seemed busy with work. And he was quiet, and some days he said little more than hello, but his face was opening up. You could see his mind was slowly clearing, and the hurt was falling away. But then the witch waltzed in.’

Christian sighs again. ‘I utterly believe, Sunny, that she hammered the final nail into his emotional coffin, and I
think she did it without a second thought. They invented the concept of self-obsession because they knew one day she’d show up and need describing. Believe me when I say that I cursed that woman for years.’

‘So … ?’ All these details are great, and atmospheric, and Christian loves to tell his tales, but I need to cut to the chase.

‘So?’ he replies, shaking his head, not knowing where I am going.

‘What did she look like?’ I ask flatly, a little ashamed.

Christian shakes his head and makes a tutting sound with his tongue. ‘Looks, Sunny, do not make the woman, as you yourself have said so very clearly in this car, this very afternoon.’

‘Stop it and tell me,’ I say, as we pull away from the car crash that has caused the delays. Christian peers into the mangled car for details but I look away.

‘Well, she was blonde, of course.’ Christian is still looking in the car, and talks distractedly.

‘Why “of course”?’ I ask, indignant.

‘They are always blonde,’ he says simply, as if it is one of the commandments, written on tablets of stone and passed to Moses on top of Sinai.

‘Oh,’ I say, crestfallen.

‘And she was pale.’

‘Oh,’ I say, glancing down at my hands, which are more cream than pale. I have always found pale thoroughly uninteresting, another way of saying washed out.

‘You sure you want to hear this, Sunbeam?’ he asks, noticing me noticing me.

‘Yes! Why wouldn’t I? Go on.’ I rush my words out in a fluster.

‘Pale but bright blue eyes,’ he says, almost dreamily.

‘OK, I get it, Christian, she was some kind of Swedish
Miss World – can we move on now? I mean, was she very much older than him?’ I ask tight-lipped, gripping the steering wheel a little too hard.

‘No, no, not this time. They were exactly the same age. I mean exactly. They were born on the same day. That’s how they met, in a pub, drowning their sorrows, separately, on the thirtieth of December. It was their twenty-ninth birthdays. Both of them.’

‘Why was she drowning her sorrows?’ I cross a roundabout and follow the sign that directs me towards Portsmouth town centre. I check my watch: we may still make it.

‘She had just passed her final counselling exam, apparently, and realised, a little late, it would seem, that her job would now be to sit around and listen to the whingeing moans of people she didn’t care about. Cagney said that the first thing he noticed – after the way that she looked, of course –’

‘Of course!’ I say, and raise my eyes.

‘– was that she kept muttering, “What the fuck was I thinking? What the fuck was I thinking?” over and over to herself as she sat in some old pub on Brighton seafront, downing her way through a bottle of bourbon. She wasn’t a regular, but it was Cagney’s local. I’ve seen a photo, Sunny, it was a hellish place – brown cracked wallpaper like a dried-up desert oasis, and battered and ripped leather chairs that look like your skin would stick to them if you came into contact with them by accident, and the fire brigade would have to be called out to break you free.’

‘So they each propped up one end of a dirty bar.

‘Lydia.’ I repeat her name, trying to place her, thinking that somehow I might know her.

‘Was she Irish?’

‘Yes. But you could barely tell, she had the faintest accent.
I have to say it, Sunny, she was beautiful, but like a painting of the Alps, or the lake at Geneva, or a photo of an Edwardian chair that you can only see face on. Her beauty was two-dimensional – she just didn’t … fill it out.’

‘Do you mean she was dull?’ I ask hopefully.

‘No, not dull,’ Christian says thoughtfully. ‘It was worse than that: she was cold. She looked untouched, like if you held her hand you’d leave fingerprints all over her and the police would catch you in minutes.’

‘She looked cold,’ I repeat to myself, taking some solace.

‘Yes. She was like a beautifully sculpted vodka luge – if you hugged her, she’d melt.’

‘And that’s what attracted Cagney, is it? That she was a challenge or something?’ I ask, perplexed.

‘No, darling; she was in a pub getting drunk on her own, and swearing a lot. He thought he’d found his soulmate! And it just so happened that she was blonde and beautiful.’

‘But you said she was a counsellor?’

‘Aha,’ Christian nods dramatically, pretending to chew gum so he resembles a bitchy teenage princess hanging out by the waltzers, hoping to score with one of the workers at a cheap travelling fair.

‘But Cagney would hate that!’ I exclaim with disbelief. ‘What was he thinking?’

‘Darling, you don’t have to tell me. I mean, obviously he wasn’t always as bad as he is now … but he has never been a talker. And by that point, after two failed marriages, and not making it into the police –’

‘He wanted to be in the police?’ I ask, not sure if I can take any more information in one car journey. ‘Seriously, Christian, we need to road trip again!’

‘I told you,’ he says, nodding at me and smiling benignly, like some old Chinese kung fu guru.

‘So … what happened?’ I ask.

‘With the police? Or Lydia?’ Christian needs qualification.

‘Both! Either!’

‘Lydia was into psychobabble and celibacy,’ Christian answers seriously.

‘Jesus Christ,’ I whisper, horrified.

‘I know. She’d read it in some book on her course, that promised if she made a man wait for her, they’d reach some spiritual mountain top and be happy for ever. It was her new thing. And Cagney just showed up at the wrong time. She always had a new thing, apparently. So she kissed him and told him she’d let him inside when he really deserved it. And for whatever reason, he chose to hang around.’

‘Why? Why would you let somebody else dictate so utterly how it’s going to be?’ I ask in shock. Then I remember that Adrian has done almost exactly the same thing to me, so I stop thinking about that.

‘I think the idea, that this one might last because she promised it would, when they hit this spiritual high, appealed to him more than anything. He was so bruised. It was his last big effort, to do it right, not to rush it. So she wrung him out for a year. Questioned him daily on what he felt for her, how he felt about himself, why he said what he said, why he did what he did, until he was exhausted and confused and tongue-tied. And she threw theories at him, hundreds of theories, on Freud and Jung and Kant, Descartes and Socrates, but all straight from the book, not really understanding any of them, until they drove him quietly mad. She told him he needed to improve himself, dig deeper, give her more, let her access his soul, and, God love him, he tried. But she didn’t listen when he spoke, so it was never enough. She opened him right up, made him dedicate himself to her, and then she left him … but just for extra sport, and knowing his history, she suggested that they got married first. She talked him into it on the first day of Advent, the
licence came, and on Christmas Eve, nearly a year after they had met, Cagney found himself in another registry office, with another blonde.’

‘What happened?’ I ask aghast. I turn off the engine, and we sit in the car park behind a warehouse in Portsmouth Docks, opposite a huge sign that reads ‘Customs and Excise, Holding Depot’.

‘She left him on Boxing Day.’

‘Oh my God, why?’ I ask, with tears in my eyes.

‘For the barmaid at the shitty old pub.’

I stare at him in shocked awe.

‘No … she … didn’t.’ I say each word slowly and deliberately.

‘Said she had to explore other parts of her character, said she had made a mistake. Said she realised on their wedding night that she was a lesbian.’

‘No.’ I sit and shake my head. ‘Poor Cagney, what did he do?’

‘Got drunk, for a week, didn’t come up for air, just carried on drinking, but in another pub, of course.’

‘Of course,’ I say. ‘How awful.’

‘And he’s been single ever since,’ Christian says sadly.

‘Who can blame him! But why did she come back, six months later?’

‘Well, that’s what did it. She needed a divorce.’

‘So she could marry her girlfriend?’ I ask sincerely.

‘No, she’d left Ruth. Now she was marrying a car trader, worth millions. Big in Fiestas.’

Christian turns to face me, and takes my hand. ‘He was twenty-nine, Sunny. And he waited a year for her. She told him it would all be worth it, and she would dedicate her life to him. But she was just another blonde. He goes silly around blondes.’ Christian sees my face fall. ‘But it’s not love, Sunny.’

‘OK,’ I say, and wipe my left eye quickly.

‘So!’ Cagney claps his hands quickly. ‘We’re here! What are we picking up?’

We both break out of our trance, and get out of the car, and the sea wind slaps our faces, and we both exclaim ‘Jesus Christ!’ simultaneously.

‘Well, there are four boxes,’ I say, digging my hands into my pockets as we walk towards the entrance.

‘Yes, but what’s in them and, more importantly, can I pretend to be your boyfriend and pretend they are all for us?’

‘Light bondage gear, very classy, silk, all ribbons, very sensual. And no.’