All in the stars
Jeremy Clarke
My date from the Heavenly Bodies agency certainly looks all right. The combination of protuberances and concavities isn’t half bad, in fact. But when I go up and introduce myself, it’s perfectly obvious that she doesn’t like what she sees. She pulls this face as if she’s the first character in the movie to catch sight of the creature from the black lagoon.
Her profile said she’s a 35-year-old accountant. Divorced. One kid. Likes to read self-improvement books. Goes to the cinema occasionally, ‘when there is something I wish to see in particular’. Her goals in life are ‘to develop healing abilities and find my soul mate in a relationship’. Currently studying astrology. Her idea of an enjoyable weekend is ‘being with friends and visiting New Age exhibitions’. Her ‘pet hates’ include smoking in public places and people being late. ‘Rochelle,’ it concluded, ‘is a typical Scorpio.’ I apologise for being late, stand on my cigarette and ask her which dog she fancies in the first race. I’m going for Mr Tumnus, I tell her, and hold open my race card for her to choose one. She flicks an indifferent finger at Herbie’s Squeaker. I walk over to the Tote to place our bets.
On the way back to our seats, I remember that Rochelle drinks alcohol ‘sometimes socially but not habitually’, so I get half a lager for her and a pint for myself from the bar.
When I get back to her with drinks, betting slips clenched between my teeth and renewed hope in my heart, she’s sitting there like the Deputy Prime Minister on the front bench after a long lunch. Maybe Rochelle’s pet hates also include going to the dogs with middle-aged men wearing replica football shirts, but there wasn’t room on the form to get it all in.
‘So what are Scorpios like?’ I say. Not that I believe in any of that rubbish. When it comes to astrology, I’m with Edmund and his ‘This is the excellent foppery of the world’ speech in King Lear. If you ask me, all that New Age stuff is for the ill and the insecure. For people with no commitment and too much money. But I might as well try to get a line of communication open.
I’ve forked out nearly half a large one to join the Heavenly Bodies dating agency and have my astrological profile fed into the computer database of Heavenly Body astrological profiles and matched with the most cosmically compatible one. In theory, Rochelle and I are such a perfect astrolog ical pairing we should have been arm in arm and making for the nearest registry office before the dogs were out of the traps for the first race.
I must say, however, I’m surprised that I’ve been matched with a Scorpio. I’ve always been under the impression that, of all the star signs, Scorpio is the one we Aquarians get on with least well. A suspicion occurs to me. Maybe the Heavenly Bodies computer database is in fact a pocket address book and Rochelle the only female under 60 on the books at the moment.
The start of the first race spares Rochelle the indignity of answering my banal question about Scorpios. As the dogs sprint round the track, rather than betray an interest, she keeps her head still and follows them with her eyeballs.
It’s a close-run thing. Herbie’s Squeaker squeaks it by a distended nostril. (Mr Tumnus was, I think, arrested by the White Witch halfway round.) I collect 35 quid from the Tote and hand it over. ‘What’s this for?’ she snarls. Herbie’s Squeaker was eight to one, I tell her. She’s won it on the first race. She is so astonished by this she looks me in the face.
For the next race she admits to a liking for a dog called Go On Holly and that wins as well. When I come back with more winnings, she’s literally bouncing up and down with excitement. I’ve put £45 in her lap and all of a sudden she’s happy to be where she is and she likes me. I’m glad she’s happy, but I can’t resist asking her why £45 should make such a difference to her attitude. ‘I’m a typical Scorpio, darling!’ she says, snatching the race card out of my hand. ‘We’re slags! Two-faced slags, the lot of us!’
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