It’s like the mania she’s got for China. Fuck, if she likes China so much, why doesn’t she go there by herself? She’s decided we must go whether we like it or not, so this summer, instead of going to Cadaqués as we do every year, we’re going to spend August tramping around China on one of those package deals that only rich pensioners or couples who spend the whole time with their tongues down each other’s throats go on. And not just two or three weeks, but the whole damned month! You can imagine how thrilled I am! Especially since this year Claudia and Martina and I were intending to go to Ibiza for a week and we’d planned every detail. Where we would sleep (on the beach, to save money, though we weren’t going to tell our parents that), the discos we’d go to, the clothes we’d take … Right, if Mummy wants to have family holidays, as she puts it, she might have listened to me a teeny bit and organized a trip to the States, for example, as that’s somewhere I’m keen to visit. I’d even sketched out a route that went via New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles and included a visit to an Indian reservation (I’m sure you shouldn’t say that, but, for heaven’s sake …), thinking that would convince her … But no chance. We must go to China, she says, so I can be in touch with my origins. As if at this point in my life I give a shit about all that … Sure, I know she’s doing this with the best of intentions, and I’m not saying that later on, when I’m older, I won’t want to know more about the country where I was born and all that jazz … But hell, right now I couldn’t care less about China! How should I put that to her? In Chinese? I’m even allergic to MSG and don’t like Chinese food …! I’ve got other priorities right now, and, to be honest, I must say that I’m not all that keen on the Chinese. Yes, I know that doesn’t sound very nice (God help me if Mummy heard me say that), but it’s out of my hands. I mean, those guys (that is, my biological parents) left me in a basket on the steps of an orphanage knowing full well how lousy those institutions are in China. And if they already had a son and couldn’t have any more, given that the law ruled that out, as Mummy says, they could have fucking well used a condom, right? Or were condoms banned in China at the time? Give me a break …
The policeman says I look as if my mind is on other things and that I should concentrate. But how on earth can I concentrate if all the faces look the same? All I can think about is that it’s only two hours till the concert and I’m wasting my time here. Fucking hell, why do I always have to be so unlucky? Of course, I don’t want to seem insensitive, I know a human being has died, etc., but what about me? This Biel business is more complicated than you’d think, and it wasn’t easy setting it up so I could go to see Beyoncé and go home with him afterwards. And he’s so good-looking! Fair hair, green eyes and tanned skin (his parents own a yacht in the port of Llavaneres and he’s got that seaside dark tone that’s a bit like the colour of Beyoncé’s skin, not flesh-flesh but nor would you call it black-black; caramel, more like). And, by the way, I’m quite a looker too. Maybe my tits let me down – they’re on the small side – but unlike Claudia (who’s always on a diet, poor thing), I’m svelte, clothes always look good on me and I can wear leggings with short, tight-fitting tops that don’t ever reveal any bulges. I’d bought the prettiest black T-shirt for the concert, the kind that shows off your navel, with a plunging neckline and sequinned straps. The advantage of having small tits is that I don’t need to wear a bra and can make my nipples stick out; at least one thing compensates for the other. Not at school, where they’ve hauled me up a couple of times on account of my nipples being on display, which I think is quite unfair. I mean, what about the girls who’ve got big tits? Don’t the guys’ eyes swallow them whole? Like Neus, who wears the tightest jerseys in summer and the teachers never say a word. And you watch how she’ll come on to Biel tonight if I’m not there! Knowing Biel, he’ll go along with her, because Neus is pretty and she knows how to hook a guy. What a pile of shit this is!
And, for Christ’s sake, these fellows look so evil! Their faces say it all! I don’t know, perhaps I should pick out a couple and wind this farce up for good. After all, you bet they’re guilty of something, otherwise the police wouldn’t have them on file. Besides, the mossos will investigate whether they really are the men who tried to hold up the pharmacy, won’t they? Because what’s going to happen to them? They’ll only arrest them for a few hours, while they check out their alibis. And if I have any regrets, I can always return to the station and retract what I said. I was in a state of shock and confused, I’d not had anything to eat and my sugar count was low … You know, the typical excuses people make in these situations. If we leave now, and I can persuade Daddy to drive me, I can still get to the Palau Sant Jordi before the concert starts. I don’t think I’ve got time to go home and change my clothes. Or shave my legs, but I can always do that on the sly in Claudia’s bathroom if in the end Biel and I get together (Claudia’s parents are away and we were intending to sleep at her place). The trousers and T-shirt I’m wearing are pretty tatty, that’s true (the trousers have got the odd bloodstain at the bottom, although you’d hardly notice), but that would be better than missing the concert. What a drag! The outfit I’d selected for tonight was such a good fit …
Now I just have to decide which of these fellows will pick up the tab for what happened at the chemist’s. Ugh, who should I choose? They’ve all got criminal mugs … And not because they are Orientals, but you tell me if they don’t look as if they’ve just done their grandmother in … Obviously it’s quite a big deal to accuse someone like this. Because what if I’m to blame for them putting someone inside the slammer who turns out to be innocent? You know, the remorse might go to my head and do my brain in. These things do happen … Fuck, I don’t know what I should do … Perhaps I should stop playing games and tell the police the truth. And confess that, even though I might have Chinese origins, I’m totally unable to tell one Oriental from another and that all this is one big waste of time. And I need to leave right now, because I’ve got tickets for the Beyoncé concert and I’d like to go home, change my clothes and make myself up a bit …
Though I’m feeling quite exhausted, as if I’d run the marathon. I don’t know what’s coming over me all of a sudden … I reckon I’m going to spew up and I feel dodgy. That’s all I needed, I don’t know what’s wrong … Now I really do feel like a good cry. And what about these flashes … And the whistling in my ears and that …
The Second Mrs Appleton
There wasn’t a day in the last eighteen months when Mr Appleton hadn’t rued divorcing the first Mrs Appleton in order to marry the second Mrs Appleton, who rejoiced in the first name of Paige. Mr Appleton was a career diplomat and had met his second wife in the offices of the British Embassy in Rome when he was the ambassador and she had been a part-time, low-level temp. Mr Appleton was fifty-six when he made the acquaintance of the second Mrs Appleton, who was twenty-five.
Mr Appleton was born in Woodstock, a small town located next to Blenheim Palace, the country residence of the Duke of Marlborough, and privileged to be one of the cohort of distant relatives of the first duke of the tribe – the famous “Marlborough’s gone to war” – and the illustrious Winston Churchill. He had been a contemporary of Violet, the first Mrs Appleton, at Oxford where they were both students, and had married her shortly before taking up what was to be his first diplomatic posting abroad and packing their cases to go to Kampala.
Mr Appleton had come to the embassy in Rome thirty years after beginning that life as a vagabond bureaucrat in the capital of Uganda, heralded by a vaunted series of successes and a marriage that had lasted thirty years and given him two children. Little did Mr Appleton imagine his life would be turned upside down in the Italian capital, that he’d divorce and remarry, let alone that he’d soon be regretting replacing the competent, discreet first Mrs Appleton with the young, scatty Paige.
As he was a man of austere character and rigid persuasions, Mr Appleton disapproved of extramarital entanglements, which he criticized in private. Nevertheless, the
arrival on the scene in Rome of the second Mrs Appleton caught him at a moment in his life when the past seemed to stretch out like a piece of chewing gum and the future was shortening like the days of winter, and he decided to make an exception. He liked the exception so much that what was meant simply as a weekend fling – a weekend when the first Mrs Appleton was visiting their children in London – finally turned into a torrid affair that would lead him back to the altar.
The second Mrs Appleton liked to tell people it had been love at first sight, and though he wasn’t so happy to recall the memory – the moment the spark ignited, he had still been married to the first Mrs Appleton, and their audience would compare dates – the fact was that Mr Appleton had suffered a coup de foudre in the Italian capital and had been knocked for six.
The lack of an attractive physique wasn’t among the second Mrs Appleton’s defects, and that was a decisive factor in triggering their affair. The second Mrs Appleton was a freckled Englishwoman with wild, blonde hair, a green-eyed lioness with a come-on smile and moist lips and the necessary curves and bra size to make headway in life without needing to nurture any other talents. Mr Appleton’s sex life, it has to be said, had never been characterized by fireworks, but the first Mrs Appleton’s encounter with the menopause had reduced it to the category of a damp squib he was hard pressed to ignite half a dozen times a year. Unlike Violet, the second Mrs Appleton possessed all the splendour of the best pyrotechnics on New Year’s Eve, and the diplomat was so dazzled by her exhibition of rockets, bangers, Bengal candles, crackers, yellow rain and multicoloured fountains that, when the first Mrs Appleton returned from London, he quickly gave her a new credit card and sent her to holiday by herself in New York.
For a couple of weeks while the first Mrs Appleton went to concerts and emptied the shops in Manhattan, Mr Appleton and the second Mrs Appleton had a ball filling embassy annexes and Rome’s hotels with a fug of pheromones. However, the second Mrs Appleton, unwilling to play a secondary role in that ménage à trois, wasn’t slow in confronting Mr Appleton with the dilemma of whether to transform the first Mrs Appleton into an ex-Mrs Appleton or to return to a diet of damp squibs. Overwhelmed by a second rush of adolescence to his groin that only lacked a spate of acne, Mr Appleton didn’t think twice: he asked Violet for a divorce and regaled the future second Mrs Appleton with a diamond and emerald ring to put a seal on their betrothal.
Shortly after marrying the second Mrs Appleton in a discreet ceremony in Rome, Mr Appleton was appointed ambassador to Washington and the couple began experiencing problems. The second Mrs Appleton had always looked forward to living in the United States, but her enthusiasm soon waned when she discovered that Washington wasn’t as entertaining as Rome and Americans weren’t as dishy as Italians. Unlike the first Mrs Appleton, the second Mrs Appleton wasn’t used to the slavish restrictions of protocol and soon tired of performing like a dummy at banquets and interminable receptions. Her ignorance of any area of knowledge that wasn’t covered by the glossies made her stick out like a sore thumb, and forced her to remain silent most of the time: she was bored stiff. Tedium led her to chase the waiters and seek refuge in champagne, and champagne liberated her tongue and encouraged her to say the first thing that entered her head.
The first Mrs Appleton had set very high standards, and Mr Appleton began to make comparisons. The first Mrs Appleton had a degree in French literature, was the cousin twice removed of the queen’s second cousin and had completely mastered the art of etiquette. In the case of the second Mrs Appleton, she had a degree in interior design from Buckinghamshire New University – a university that at the time enjoyed the dubious honour of hovering near the bottom of the British universities league table – and lacked the pedigree that equips one’s DNA with the ability to match flowers, tablecloths and cutlery. And, above all, she was unable to keep her mouth shut. If the first Mrs Appleton knew when to be quiet without Mr Appleton having to give her a wink or kick her under the table, the second Mrs Appleton was an expert at putting her foot in it at the most inglorious of moments.
Mr Appleton soon had to spend more time keeping an eye on his wife than on international politics. However, that didn’t curtail the second Mrs Appleton’s indiscretions or prevent the provocative dresses she wore – she’d begun to shorten the length of her skirts and lower her necklines dangerously – from becoming a matter of gossip in Washington, and the jokes about the ambassador’s ever-so-young wife’s lack of know-how soon crossed the pond and came to the attention of Downing Street. Realizing the risks his brand-new wife’s inexperience was exposing him to, Mr Appleton began to long for the professional savoir-faire of his first wife and to regret divorcing her.
Rock bottom was reached when they’d been in Washington for six months and the minister in charge asked him to organize a banquet to conclude a summit. Mr Appleton saw this as a test of his ability to represent Great Britain in the United States, and was conscious of what was at stake. He decided to take the bull by the horns and leave the second Mrs Appleton at the periphery of all the preparations.
With the subtlety that was the stock-in-trade of the profession he had chosen, Mr Appleton asked the second Mrs Appleton to offer her apologies on the day of the gala on the excuse that she had flu, and she readily agreed. However, she soon regretted acquiescing so meekly to her husband’s peculiar request, and on the day of the dinner she had second thoughts and asked the waiters to add another place to the top table. What sense did it make, she told herself, for Mr Appleton to have such a young, pretty, amusing wife and keep her under wraps?
While he was waiting for his guests to arrive at the embassy, Mr Appleton had to suppress a panic attack when he saw his wife slink into the reception room, where the aperitifs were being served, in a figure-hugging black satin dress that left little to the imagination. Intimidated by the sight of so many heads of state and stuck-up first ladies, the second Mrs Appleton managed to remain reasonably sober until the desserts, when the appearance of bottles of bubbly meant the lack of inhibition she had begun to feel with the cocktails transformed into out-and-out euphoria and she felt the need to share her extravagant excesses with all the other guests.
The less than appropriate comments made by the second Mrs Appleton on delicate issues of international politics led to Mr Appleton’s immediate dismissal the morning after and he was forced to return to London, where he had to choose between a small, windowless office in a Whitehall basement or early retirement. However, Mr Appleton still had friends in the British capital, and after knocking on lots of doors and recalling old favours, he managed a posting to Barcelona as a replacement for the outgoing consul. Everybody knew that to move from ambassador to consul was to plummet down the diplomatic ladder, but Mr Appleton explained it away by saying it was a personal favour he was doing the Prime Minister, who required someone she could trust in the Catalan capital to keep her informed about the manoeuvres of the independence-bound government and the strategies of the opposition.
The second Mrs Appleton was delighted by the idea of going to Barcelona. She’d never been there, but she had seen Woody Allen’s film and been bowled over by the colourful portrait the film-maker had painted of the city. The prospect of hobnobbing with toreros and bohemian artists and spending the day on the beach quaffing sangria translated into a temporary resurgence of her amatory habits that had recently gone into hibernation. Infected by his wife’s youthful ardour, Mr Appleton decided to give their marriage a second chance, trusting that Paige had learned her lesson.
Nonetheless, what promised to be a second honeymoon on the Med was short-lived. From the moment she arrived in Barcelona, the second Mrs Appleton busied herself redecorating the house they’d rented in Sarrià and shopping on the Passeig de Gràcia. She didn’t bother to read the memorandum they’d sent her from London and, inadvertently, during the ceremony to accredit the new consul at the Palau de la Generalitat, she put her foot in it yet again. She wondered out loud why the hell the Catalans had to
speak Catalan if they could already speak Spanish, which didn’t go down at all well, and a shamefaced Mr Appleton had to humiliate himself and offer all manner of apologies to avoid the autonomous government’s protests reaching the formal complaint stage and the Foreign Office in London. In the end, there was no such fallout, but Mr Appleton saw that the thread supporting the sword of Damocles hanging over his career was fraying by the second.
The First Prehistoric Serial Killer and Other Stories Page 8
