The Post-Birthday World

“If Jude thought snooker was trivial,” Irina resumed, “why did she marry you?”

“I’d money and stroke, and she could hold my occupation in contempt. Best of both worlds, innit?”

“Didn’t she think it was nifty, you on TV, at least at first?”

“Yeah, no mistake. But it’s queer how the thing what attracted you to someone is the same as what you come to despise about them.”

Irina dangled a translucent slice of cucumber. “If Jude’s relationship to my illustrations is any guide, you’ve got a point. You do know what she said?”

Ramsey tapped a chopstick on the table. “I wager she wasn’t no diplomat. But you ever wonder if one or two of her observations weren’t spot on?”

“How could I think what she said was ‘spot on’ and still keep working at all?”

“She did think your composition was brilliant, and that your craftsmanship was class. But there was something, in them first few books, a wildness—it’s gone missing.”

“Well, you don’t just go put ‘wildness’ back. ‘Oh, I’ll add a little wildness!’ ”

He smiled, painfully. “Don’t get your nose in a sling. I was only trying to help. Making a hash of it as well. I don’t know your business. But I did think you was right talented.”

“Past tense?”

“What Jude was on about—it’s hard to put into words.”

“Jude didn’t have a hard time putting it into words,” Irina countered bitterly. “Adjectives like flat and lifeless are very evocative. She put her sniffy disapproval into action, too, and commissioned another illustrator for her preachy story line. I had to toss a year’s worth of work.”

“Sorry, love. And you was bang on—what we was talking about, it’s not something you can add like a pinch of salt. It’s not out there, it runs through you. Same as in snooker.”

“Well, I guess illustration isn’t as fun for me as it used to be. But what is?”

Her degenerative expectations seemed to sadden him. “You’re too young to talk like that.”

“I’m over forty, and can talk however I please.”

“Fair enough—you’re too beautiful to talk like that, then.”

Lawrence was wont to describe her as cute, and though Ramsey was a bit out of order the more serious adjective was refreshing. Self-conscious, Irina struggled with the oily strips of eel. “If I am, I didn’t used to be. I was a scrawny kid. Knobby, all knees.”

“What a load of waffle. Never met a bird what wasn’t proud of being skinny.”

“But I was also a klutz. Gawky, ungraceful. Do you think that’s boasting, too?”

“It’s hard to credit. Wasn’t your mum a ballerina?”

Irina was always amazed when anyone remembered biographical details mentioned years ago. “Well, not a performing one, after she had me. Which she never let me forget. Anyway, I disgusted her. I wasn’t limber. I couldn’t do splits or tuck my heels behind my head. I could barely touch my toes. I was constantly knocking things over.” Irina talked with her hands; with a smile, Ramsey moved her green tea out of reach.

“Oh, it was worse than that,” she went on. “I guess plenty of kids aren’t Anna Pavlova. But I had buck teeth.”

Ramsey angled his head. “Looks like a fine set of chops to me.”

“I don’t think my mother would have sprung for them, but luckily my father paid for braces. Really, my front teeth weren’t just a little crooked. They hung out of my mouth and rested on my lower lip.” Irina demonstrated, and Ramsey laughed.

“Well, you helped explain something,” he said. “You’re not—aware of yourself. You are beautiful, and I hope you don’t mind me saying so. But you don’t know it.”

Abashed, Irina reached for her sake cup only to discover that it was empty; she pretended to take a slug. “My mother’s much more beautiful than I am.”

“Even allowing that were ever true,” he said, signalling for another round of sake flagons, “you must mean she was.”

“No, is. At sixty-three. In comparison to my mother, I’m a schlub. She still works out on a bar, for hours. All on three sticks of celery and a leaf of lettuce. Sorry—half a leaf.”

“She sounds a right pain in the arse.”

“She is—a right pain in the arse.”

Their sashimi platters arrived, and the chef was such an artist—the spicy tuna was bound with edible gold leaf—that eating his creation seemed like vandalism.

“Me,” said Ramsey, surveying his platter with the same respectful look-don’t-touch expression with which he’d met Irina by his car, “I watch buff birds strut the pavement, first thing goes through my head ain’t, ‘Blimey, love a bit o’ that, ’ey!’ but, ‘Bloody hell, she must spend all day in the gym.’ I don’t see beauty; all I see is vanity.”

“Great excuse for skipping sit-ups: oh, I wouldn’t want to look ‘vain.’ ”

“No chance of that, pet.”

Irina frowned. “You know, something changed when that tin came off my teeth. Too much changed. It was sort of horrifying.”

“How’s that?”

“Everyone treated me like a completely different person. Not just boys, but girls. You’ve probably been good-looking all your life, so you have no idea.”

“Am I?”

“Don’t be coy. It’s like me pretending to be ashamed of having been skinny.” Worried that she was encouraging something that she shouldn’t, she added, “I only mean, you have regular features.”

“Grand,” he said dryly. “I’m overcome.”

“I’m convinced that decent-looking people—”

“I fancy good-looking better.”

“—All right, then, good-looking people. They haven’t a clue that how they’re treated—how much it has to do with their appearance. I even bet that attractive people have a higher opinion of humanity. Since everybody’s always nice to them, they think everybody’s nice. But everybody’s not nice. And they’re superficial beyond belief. It’s depressing, when you’ve been on the other side. You get treated like gum on somebody’s shoe, or worse, like nothing. As if you’re not just unsightly, you’re unseeable. Ugly people, fat people, even people who just aren’t anything special? They have to work harder to please. They have to do something to prove out, whereas when you’re pretty to look at you don’t have to do anything but sit there and everybody is plumb delighted.”

Irina wasn’t accustomed to talking so much. Early in that speech Lawrence would have interrupted that she had made her point, so enough already. When Ramsey said nothing to shut her up, he induced the little falling sensation of anticipating resistance and meeting none, like unexpectedly stepping off a kerb.

“Having buck teeth in junior high,” she rounded up unsteadily, “must be ideal preparation for getting old. For pretty people, aging is a dumb shock. It’s like, what’s going on? Why doesn’t anyone smile at me at checkout anymore? But it won’t be a shock for me. It’ll be, oh that. That again. Teeth.”

“Rubbish. You’ll still be ravishing at seventy-five.”

“Dream on, buddy,” she said with a smile. “But you—you have that telltale face of a boy all the girls were a-swoon over in high school. Grammar school,” she corrected.

“Hate to disappoint you, sunshine, but I didn’t go to grammar school. Secondary modern. I failed the eleven-plus.”