The Perfect 10 (16 page)

Cagney stares at the photo again: there would be worse things than having her on a boat like that, in a place like that. He had been startled when Sheldon first passed him the photo, because she looked just like Gracie, and the boat and the vista – that was his dream. In three months’ time Cagney was headed for an ocean just like the one in the picture, and a yacht like the one the lovely Mrs Young was using to rest what looked like a great arse upon. He probably won’t be able to afford anything quite that special, but a one-berth is all he really needs. The sounds of the city will fade away, and finally he’ll know peace, with only the ocean lapping below him for a soundtrack. He would never be alone with the waves for company, friendly locals in every port who’d come to know him as the eccentric loner, the sole captain and crew of his tiny boat, who’d drink with them in their makeshift pubs, and toast the stars on seemingly limitless beaches. Cagney looks back down at the photo again – would it be so terrible to have somebody along for the ride? She has a touch of Alice around the eyes as well …

The phone rings and breaks his daydream. Cagney snatches at the receiver.

‘Cagney James.’

‘Boss, it’s Howard.’

‘How many bones did he break?’

‘Just the three.’

‘What did you guess?’

‘Five. I owe you a tenner.’

‘Wonderful.’

‘They’re putting on the cast now.’

Cagney rubs his eyes and thinks. Iuan finished his only current job yesterday, but Cagney planned to start him on another one tomorrow morning. It is a youngish girl admittedly, and he can feasibly give it to Howard instead, but when Iuan had shown Howard the photo yesterday he had screamed, and it made Cagney doubt his ability to ‘finish the job’. That was the way it worked – Howard took the young ones; Iuan took the ugly ones and without complaint, knowing as he did that all results had to be deemed objective by the agency’s punters: offering a handsome man to some of Iuan’s women would be like giving a peasant the keys to a palace, and then acting surprised when they tried to move in. Cagney took anyone over thirty. It had never failed them before, but then they had never been a man down before, and it is sensitive business. There is always the risk of trouble, and a fine line kept his licence most days – Howard and Iuan both know to play dumb in the right situations. Cagney can’t very well just put an advert in the Jobcentre. Both Iuan and Howard had come to him by chance, and it had worked out well.

Iuan arrived in Kew as a traffic warden nearly a year after Cagney moved in, promptly issuing Cagney with a parking ticket at least once a week for the following four months. Iuan had quickly become his nemesis, although Cagney was forced begrudgingly to admire how little Iuan seemed affected, or even cared, when Cagney got the white rage at another parking violation ticketed. The Welshman
was cheerful whatever the conditions, and he was funny-looking, both of which occurred to Cagney on the day that one of his clients refused to settle up, complaining that Cagney was too attractive for his wife, who was bound to be all over him like a cheap suit given the opportunity, invalidating Cagney’s results. Cagney promised Iuan the same money he got as a warden, plus the opportunity to kiss women for a living. Iuan didn’t finish writing his last parking ticket.

Similarly Howard was employed out of necessity six years later. Cagney had been nursing a whiskey and mulling over a conundrum one night, whilst waiting for a pizza to arrive. He had been working for a week on a job for Paul Taylor, a seventeen-year-old boy, suspicious that his seventeen-year-old girlfriend, Janine, might actually be the slapper everybody told him she was. Despite having completed all of the necessary observations, Cagney was reluctant to move in on Janine, and he knew why. Cagney was nearly thirty-seven, more than twice her age. Not only did he have no idea how to casually bump into Janine in her local Ritzy’s nightclub, he was scared of what people might think if he did. Then Cagney heard the doorbell ring, opening it to a large Hawaiian and a good-looking idiot. Cagney offered Howard more money and the chance to kiss women for a living. Howard delivered his three remaining pizzas to Cagney that night, and went to work for him the next day.

Cagney sighs: now, of course, there is his newest target, Sophia Young. Typically she should go to Howard, but if he is going to have to take Iuan’s quota, it throws the workload up in the air. Cagney will unfortunately have to do Sophia himself. He feels a rush of something down his spine, but ignores it.

‘Howard, make sure Iuan takes the crutches, even if they
won’t go with what he’s wearing, and tell him he’s going to have to recuperate in the office for however long it takes. We can be a man down in the field, but we’ll cope if we’ve got extra support at HQ.’

‘Love it, boss! Love the military talk, love it all! I’ll tell Iuan. We’ll be back in an hour.’

Cagney checks his watch – it is already half-past four.

‘Don’t bother, Howard. I’ll see you BOTH tomorrow morning at eight a.m.’

‘Great! You’re my dawg.’ Howard hangs up before Cagney changes his mind.

Cagney cradles the receiver in his hand for a while until an angry tone bleeps at him to hang up.

He sits in the shadows of early evening as the streetlights fire up outside. He doesn’t flick on the light, but instead reaches for his top drawer, and pulls out the bottle and the beaker.

Pouring himself a large measure, Cagney spins round and stares at the village as it darkens, as the commuters begin to spill out of the station, and shop lights come on. He turns and reaches for the photo from beneath a pile of papers where he has stuffed it. His feet rest on the windowsill, as two gulps demolish his whiskey. Pouring himself another one, Cagney looks out of the window with the photo in his hand, and acknowledges the thoughts that have been creeping up on him recently, the thoughts he has banished as best he can.

I can feel my libido again. Something has sparked it back in to life.

My bed is lonely. The pillows are a substitute, not a comfort.

I wake, at 3 a.m., every night, wide awake and with nothing to do and nothing to hold.

Something is missing …

He glances back down at the picture of Sophia Young. She resembles all the women he has loved: Gracie, and Lydia … but most obviously Alice. It is in the paleness of her eyes, and the fullness of her lower lip, and her youth.

Cagney was three months from twenty-five when he met an eighteen-year-old Alice, clinging to a life buoy in Lindos Bay. He had spent the year on his own, travelling Europe, contemplating mountains and oceans, guessing at his destiny. His first marriage had collapsed in swift disaster the previous year, and the naivety of his decision-making had shaken him to his core. While utterly blaming himself, he feared for his fate. Some crazy idealism had mismatched the notion of beauty with goodness in his young and foolish head. He had been hoodwinked, conned, led a merry dance, but by his own eyes. When he had married Gracie he had fallen for the curve of her back, a strand of her golden hair, and no more. He determined that when he married again, as he was sure that he would, his eyes would be wide open, and he would know without doubt that his new wife was beautiful on the inside as well as out.

Cagney swam out from the long beach, heading for the smaller beach on the other side of the bay, testing his youthful lung capacity, enjoying the heat of the beaming Greek sun as it shone on his back, and the clear blue water around him. He was two-thirds of the way across when a wedding boat set sail from the short pier, and circled the bay, so that the wedding party might wave to the tourists. And the tourists waved back smiling, thankful that they sat in shorts and bikinis, and were not sweating in suits and dresses on a wedding boat in the afternoon haze. Cagney waved his arms vigorously too, shouting ‘congratulations’ and ‘hurrah’ at the passengers, and they raised their champagne glasses in acknowledgement.

After treading water for ten minutes, and watching the boat disappear around the other side of the rocks, Cagney spotted a buoy fifty metres away, and front crawled at speed to hang on for a while, and give his legs a rest before swimming into shore. As he raised his head ten feet from the buoy he saw an arm clinging to one side, and he pushed on, pleased at the prospect of company. He hadn’t spoken to anybody that day, other than the lady who sold him bread and fruit at the supermarket on the way to the beach, and the idea of conversation appealed to him. He had felt a little lonely all week.

‘I know the captain,’ were her first words, popping her head round the buoy so that Cagney could see her. ‘He drinks ouzo with breakfast. I thought it wise to hold on to something large until he passed.’

Her eyes were two pale blue saucers, brighter than the sun above them and clearer than the water they swam in.

‘I’m Cagney,’ he said. ‘It’s beautiful here.’

‘Yes it is, you’re quite right. I’m Alice. I’d shake your hand but I fear I’d fall.’

‘You’ll have to let go at some point, unless you plan on staying out here all night.’

‘Oh, no, I’ll go back eventually, when one of my friends pedals out from the beach to get me.’

‘What if nobody comes?’

‘Somebody always comes. They know I only have the strength to get out here, and not back. I’m not that strong a swimmer.’

‘Then why not swim half the distance, and back safely to shore?’ Cagney asked.

‘Because it’s nicer out here.’ Alice had smiled at him with her wide mouth, her impossibly full bottom lip rolling out across her face.

‘I suppose you know that you are very beautiful,’ he said.

‘Yes. I may cut my hair at Christmas, it’s all getting a little obvious.’

‘Are you still at school?’ Cagney approximated she was anywhere between sixteen and twenty, but with a wet face and hair it was truly hard to tell.

‘I’m eighteen. I have just finished secretarial college, although I don’t plan to work.’

‘What do you plan to do?’ Cagney had asked with a laugh.

‘Just not work really …’ Alice had replied with an honest shrug, and Cagney had laughed louder.

‘What do you do, Cagney?’

‘Not much at the moment. I was in the army, and I’ve been thinking about joining the police when I go home.’

‘How awful,’ she said, with a scolding look of concern.

‘Why?’ Cagney asked, afraid that he had upset her, that she was of better stock, and he had just ruined his chances.

‘The helmet wouldn’t suit your head at all!’ she had stated matter-of-factly, and Cagney had laughed again.

In spite of his worthiest intentions, he had fallen in love for a second time, and it had happened in minutes.

‘It doesn’t look like your friends are coming today,’ Cagney said, with his hand shading his eyes, looking towards the beach.

‘Maybe they have forgotten me,’ she said with a frown.

‘I’m sure that’s not true, but perhaps there aren’t any pedalos free. Shall I take you?’

‘I thought you might offer. Should I climb on your back? I am only light, thank goodness, or we should both drown. Although I doubt whether you would have been quite so kind if I were significantly bigger.’

‘What did you think of the wedding?’ Cagney asked, as he surged powerfully forwards through the water towards the beach.

‘I thought it was lovely. Of course it was. The beach is beautiful. It is perfect.’

‘So you’d like to marry that way?’

‘Absolutely, if only because my parents wouldn’t attend.’

‘Why don’t you want your parents at your wedding? I wish my mum was still alive to see me get married.’

‘When did she die?’

‘Six years ago.’

‘Were you close?’

‘Very.’

‘What a shame. I don’t like them, or rather, they don’t like each other. They keep threatening to disinherit me, and in a way I wish they would, because at least then I would have to focus on something, make a living. But I don’t believe they will ever really cut me off, they couldn’t fight over and about me if I was self-sufficient. They use me as a pawn. But then, I suppose I use them …’

‘Are they very wealthy?’ Cagney asked.

‘Very.’

‘And you don’t want their money any more?’

‘Of course I want it, it just makes life a little aimless, that’s all. I’m sure I’ll never settle on anyone or anything until I am forced to look after myself.’

‘It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,’ Cagney said, lowering his feet down to touch the ocean floor, standing waist-high in water, sliding Alice off his back.

She stood three feet away from him, in a white bikini, shielding her eyes from the sun, biting her lower lip, her long blonde hair tickling the water that lapped at her ribcage.

‘Shall we meet this evening?’ she asked, as Cagney’s heart leapt in his chest, causing tidal waves on a beach a thousand miles away.

‘I’d love to.’

‘How long were you planning to stay in Lindos?’ she asked him that evening, as they sat on the beach with a bottle of red wine that Cagney had bought from the woman in the supermarket, eating green grapes and feta cheese for dinner.

‘I had been planning to leave tomorrow.’

‘And how long will you stay now?’ she asked.