The Soulmate Agency

by Ivan B

  She jumped in again, “Before you ask the answer’s no. Men don’t tend to go for the permanent drunk, they initially find them amusing, but soon view them as a liability.”

  She thrust her hands in her waistband and slumped her shoulders. “There was this one guy in rehab, but he just wanted to use me to get dry.”

  She turned and looked him in the eyes, “I suppose you had a pair of loving parents?”

  He looked away, “They were, but I never thought about it until they were dead. And before you ask I’m 35.”

  She idly wiggled her toes, “27, so I’m still in the breeding zone and therefore marketable as far as my parents are concerned.”

  She raised her head slightly, “Brothers?”

  “One brother, William, and one sister, Daisy. We used to be called Bill and Ben and Little Weed.”

  The joke was lost on her. She sighed, “Just me.”

  She looked so forlorn Ben asked gently, “Ever considered suicide?”

  She nodded, “When I was depressed, slit my wrist twice and tried drinking two bottles of vodka in one go; neither worked.” Her voice conveyed that this was just another failure to add to a litany of failures.

  She looked at him again, “You?”

  The question affronted him, how could she possibly think that he’d do such a thing? He tried to hide his irritation. “No, life’s too good.”

  He decided to change the subject. “You never said what you do for a living?”

  She gave an enormous shoulder raising shrug, “I read crime novels. I started reading to try and improve my concentration. At first reading a book was really difficult; I almost had to start at the first chapter each day. Now I read a book a day and send off small résumés to a book publishing company for their publicity material, they buy about one in six. It’s peanuts really, but it’s kept me in gin.”

  He shot in another question, “Do you believe in God?”

  “Of course, but I’m not sure he believes in me.”

  Ben went to open his mouth, she interrupted, “Just don’t give me all that loving Father crap. Father’s don’t love, least not in my book. They manipulate, cajole, expect you to keep your toys stowed neatly and beat the hell out of you if you step out of line.”

  She brooded in silence till Ben said quietly, “Do you really want to stop drinking? I don’t mean stop to make the next drink taste better, I mean stop as in leave it behind.”

  He thought that she wasn’t going to answer as she just stared straight ahead while slumped down in the seat with her shoulders hunched and her head down. She closed her eyes before she answered soulfully. “What’s the expression? The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak? I want to stop drinking, but I need a reason to stop drinking and an arranged marriage to some berk who only wants me to help his promotion opportunities isn’t a good enough incentive.”

  They sat in a not too brooding silence until Ben stood up. “Look, it’s a lovely day out there, why don’t we walk down that grass slope out there and see the river?”

  He thought that she wasn’t going to answer, then she slowly stood up and followed him out of the door.

  The first part of the walk down the hill was by a small path that was too narrow to walk side-by-side so Ben followed her. As they walked he surveyed her back. She walked with a characteristic swing of the hips and an economy of movement that was devoid of any lightness of step, rather she walked as if she was trudging on a forced march towards some sort of dismal gallows. Even in her flat sandals she was a good half a head taller than him. Once they reached the river bank, waiting for them in isolated splendour was a wooden bench. Roberta paused and read the inscription embedded in the seat back. “In memory of Gladys and Sid Berkshaw, who loved this place, donated by their daughter Barbara who was undoubtedly conceived here.”

  She promptly sat down and Ben sat next to her. They both wordlessly looked at the view, like her it was stunning. The distant fields were a patchwork of endless shades of green, the sky was a cloudless summer blue and the animals in the far fields tiny animated dots. She suddenly turned to him, “What’s so bad about being single and being a vicar?”

  He grimaced. “You’ve no idea what it’s like. I always believed in the glory of a celibate priesthood, but we’re not made that way, least I’m not. My congregation think it’s sweet that I’m single, but are seriously questioning whether or not I’m a homosexual, and what would it matter if I was? The local school took two governor’s meetings over discussing whether or not I should be allowed to take assemblies and teach the occasional RE lesson. I’ve got two ladies who are making my life hell by means of amorous stalking and I’m lonely, I’m so damn lonely. It’s purgatory coming home to an empty house. When I was young I enjoyed the so called freedom of it, now I hate it. I want someone to share my day with, someone to talk to that doesn’t have hidden agendas or points to make or wedding bells in their ears. God was right, he usually is, man was not made to be alone. Perhaps some good will come out of this pornography fiasco and I’ll move on to a ministry without the overtones.”

  She raised an eyebrow; she had a way of doing it that was both attractive and questioning. “Don’t you like being a vicar? Is it that bad a job?”

  He gave another deep sigh, “It’s a vocation not a job and I love it. I know it’s what I should be doing, but my single status is getting in the way and this hard-drive porno affair has just confirmed it. If I had a wife people wouldn’t be asking so many questions about my orientation or wondering if I had repressed sexual desires or sitting through confirmation classes with their offspring just in case the vicar really is a pervert.”

  She suddenly thumped the bench with her hand and retaliated as if they were vying for who had the worst life. “And you’ve no idea what it’s like,” she stated firmly. “Having parents who watch every move, who spur you on to academic successes you will never reach, couple the size of your birthday present to your school report and try to manipulate your every move while telling you that you are a disappointment of the first order and saddling you with a emasculated name to prove their continual disappointment in you. They’ve always called me Bobbie, never Roberta just to rub the point in that I wasn’t the promised son.”

  He let her simmer for a few moments wondering if he preferred the angry Roberta to the disconsolate Bobbie. In the end he felt he had to say something that wasn’t a continuation of ‘my life is worse than yours’ competition. “Don’t you like the name Bobbie?”

  “I hate it,” she said vehemently, “in fact I hate all the wretched names they gave me?”

  “All the names?”

  “They prefer Bobbie, which makes me sound like some errant American teenager, but my real names are Roberta Ursula Paula Lowenna Isabella, makes me sound like an Italian soup.”

  He wondered, not for the first time, whether parents realised just what they were saddling their children with when they chose their names. “Can’t you get them to drop the Bobbie and revert to your given name?”

  She shrugged. “Perhaps, if they were reasonable people. I did suggest it once, just before I went to finishing school; mother went ballistic and it’s just not worth the effort.”

  She simmered on in silence for a moment before turning to Ben, “Did you really mean it? That you would have chosen me?”

  He paused before replying and hoped that, when it came, his reply wouldn’t sound like some insincere chat-up line. He moved forward to sit on the edge of the bench so that he could look round her mass of ringlets and see her eyes. He spoke softly and with passion. “There are some women you look at to admire their beauty and then look away; Angela’s like that. With others you look at them and notice the imperfections rather than any exquisite features; Willow falls into that category for me. There are others you look at and want to view them again and again because you can’t take in their whole beauty in one go, if ever. As far as I’m concerned you fall into the last category. Frankly I can’t keep my eyes off of you.”
>
  She swung her eyes on him, “Despite the lethargic eye?”

  “Maybe partially because of it, it makes you enigmatic.”

  He was rewarded with her face enhancing, eye sparkling wide smile. She reached out and felt his chin, “You need a neatly trimmed short beard, sort of overgrown designer stubble, and I could really fancy you.”

  “Then I’ll grow it tomorrow.”

  She laughed as Ben looked at his watch. “Blast it’s nearly four o’clock, how about we skip tea?”

  “That,” she said, “sounds like a very good idea.”

  Chapter 13

  Cameron and Riona

  Once outside the room Riona looked up and down the corridor. “Let’s explore as well,” she announced, marching off towards the entrance hall as if she owned the place.

  “Why this way?” Cameron enquired as he tagged along, uncertain as to just why he had agreed to go with her when he had been admiring Roberta’s beauty for most of the day.

  She grinned as she walked, “Brought up in a place like this, least I should have been. So I want to look at the basement, that’s where the interesting stuff will be, either there or in the attic.”

  She led the way wondering what had possessed her to seek out Cameron rather than wait for a man to approach her. This was part of her problem and she knew it, she was too independent. All those boarding schools and time away from her parents had made both her self-reliant and self-confident. Well she’d had to be hadn’t she? She also supposed that her choice of Cameron was a reaction to being manipulated. Her feedback form from the agency had indicated that she would make a good vicar’s wife; she had the Christian faith, the social capability and an appropriate education. And lo and behold there was a vicar sitting in the little circle looking for a wife. She didn’t buy the last minute application and, besides, Ben looked about as inviting as a dead fish. She paused when they reached the stairs, pushed aside a little barrier and clattered down the wooden stairs, her Cuban heeled sandals thumping on the woodwork. Cameron hesitated. He was not the sort of person who walked through barriers in someone else’s house. However, curiosity, and the desire to find out more about Riona, drove him on after her.

  At the foot of the stairs Riona felt about until she found a light-switch. She flicked it and a few dim bulbs, spread irregularly down the corridor, lit up. She licked her gold teeth. “This looks promising; this is a real basement, not just a wine cellar and a couple of damp rooms. They passed a few rooms filled with stacked tables and chairs before Riona stopped and let out a sharp bark of a laugh that totally startled Cameron. “Look at the names, “she said pointing to a door lintel, “we’ve gone over to weeds, at least someone somewhere has a sense of humour.”

  Cameron checked, Riona was right, the room labels in sight proclaimed they were called, Chickweed, Cocklebur, Crabgrass, and Darnel. He smiled at the eccentricity of naming rooms after weeds and started to enjoy the exploration. The next six rooms were empty, then they came across ‘Nipplewort,’ which seemed to be stuffed with bric-a-brac; ‘Ragwort,’ that was full of what looked like tent canvass and ‘Spurrey,’ that contained two small armchairs facing each other over what looked like a small pool table with a glass top. Riona clapped her hands like a small girl, “It’s a tennis machine designed like a bar-table, they were popular in the 70s.”

  She marched in and examined the machine, which from a top view showed the distinctive lines of a tennis court drawn on some sort of screen that lay below the glass table-top. She picked up the electric cable connected to the machine and her face temporarily showed disappointment as it ended in bare wires, not a plug. Her eyes cast around the room while Cameron investigated the pile of odds and ends stashed against the far wall. He picked up a small wooden box, shook it, wound a handle on the side and turned a couple of knobs. Within a few seconds the sound of gentle classical music filled the room. He turned another pair of knobs, to no effect. “Wind up radio,” he announced, “stuck on Radio 3 by the looks of it.”

  Riona nodded absently, as she poked the bare wires straight into an old-fashioned two-pin socket and them pushed them home with a couple of slivers of wood. The tennis machine suddenly lit up. They both wandered over and peered at it. “One of the first computer games, she announced, “All you’ve got is this wheel to move the white bar to and fro across the base-line and a button to fire the ball back and forth.”

  By some unseen wish they sat in opposite armchairs and played a game. Riona won. She won the next four games and halfway through the fifth game suddenly sniffed. “Can you small something?”

  Cameron sniffed and nodded, “Something’s overheating, probably a transformer.”

  With one deft movement she grabbed the power cable and yanked the wires out of the socket. She sat back in the armchair, “Bit different from the computers you work on I guess?”

  He ran his fingers round the edge of the table to see if he could detect a hot spot. “Too true, it’s amazing how far they’ve progressed in just over thirty odd years.”

  “Does it worry you,” she asked, “machines taking over the world and all that?”

  He laughed a gentle highland chuckle, “Believe me if they’re taking over the world then we’re in big trouble”

  She stuffed her hands in her pockets and looked at him with apprehensive eyes, “What do you think of the others?”

  It took him a few seconds to realise that she’d changed subjects. He shrugged, “Not sure. Feel sorry for Ben, that’s a case of ‘there by for the grace of God.’ I recently bought an old computer at a charity shop to run as a printer server. I must confess I never checked the hard disc, though I will when I get home.”

  She rolled her attractive eyes, “Why ever do you need a printer server, bit over the top for home computing isn’t it?”

  He gave a sheepish smile, “Edit the church magazine and produce it in a standard word-processor. Once I feed it to the printer server it changes the format for me into A5 booklet form and then makes sure that the pages are printed in the correct order so that I don’t have to do any collating. I suppose I’m just lazy.”

  She immediately knew that she wouldn’t know where to start with such a project, but she suppose computers were his specialism. “What sort of church?”

  “Local Parish, I believe in going to the nearest church.”

  She nodded again, “Same here, though I don’t have anything to do with the church magazine, I look after the cleaning rota.”

  Cameron blinked, he couldn’t imagine Riona cleaning anything. “You do the cleaning?” He asked in sheer amazement.

  She bit her bottom lip, “I can do it without offending anybody. ‘Fraid I tend to be a bit bossy and sometimes that’s not welcome or wanted.”

  Cameron stretched his bony legs out, “Nothing wrong in knowing what you want. My problem is the opposite. I tend to drift with the tide.” He looked at her straight in the eyes, “I don’t mean I run with the crowd, to be honest I’m a bit of a loner. I just mean that I haven’t got some sort of road-map for my life. I drifted into software because I was good at it, then I drifted towards anti-virus work because it was a challenge and good fun.”

  She gazed straight back at him, “So did you drift here?”

  He wasn’t sure whether she meant here as in dating agency or here with her, so he answered both. “No, it was a conscious decision to come here. I went to the baptism of a friend’s daughter, realised how happy he was with his wife and how all of my work mates were either married or dating, and realised how lonely I really was.”

  He lowered his voice slightly, “As for being here with you, I’m not sure how it happened, but I’m glad it has.”

  She started to scrunch up the front part of her skirt and wring it as if in internal anguish, while turning her eyes to study her toenails. “Friend of mine once said that some people are destined to never find a partner. She’s a physicist and said that realistically there must always be a few loose particles around to excite the more st
atic ones.”

  She licked her lips and her gold teeth, “And to be honest most of the marriages I’ve seen are not good role models. My father’s second marriage to try and get a son from good aristocratic breeding stock should never have got off the ground. He has suffered from her acerbic tongue and manipulative ways ever since, so much so he’s had a mistress for years. My uncle married for love and she left him when she found out that his house was like a Victorian slum on three floors and with thirty rooms. My cousin married a man with whom she lived in fear for two years before he divorced her and tried to claim half her fortune.”

  She shrugged, “I supposed there are happy marriages, but I only know of one, that’s my friend Harriet, and that’s a happy marriage only because the two of them tour with different orchestras and meet for only about four months of the year.”

  This was a different Riona, not a self-confident independent Riona, but an unsure and hesitant Riona. Cameron was amazed at the sudden, and unexpected, transformation. He leant forward, “Marriages I’ve seen aren’t all like that. Sure I’ve seen one or two bad eggs, but the majority of the people I know, and certainly in my family, the marriages work well. I guess it’s a matter of trust and,” he hesitated, “love.”

  She squeezed the life out of her skirt, “Do you believe in love at first sight?”

  He shrugged, “No experience, so I can’t say. I do believe that love can grow. After all most boys who ask a girl out aren’t thinking about love per se, it sort of catches them unawares. My friend Bill said that all of a sudden he realised that Margarita, that’s his wife, meant more to him than anything else in the world and that he thought about her all the time. It definitely wasn’t love at first sight, she’s about as attractive as a dinosaur and believe me he’s no knight in shining armour, but love grew.”

  Her eyes cast around the room, “I’m not looking for a knight in shining armour, just someone who doesn’t see my titled parents, a small fortune in the offing and a mistress over the horizon.”