Quintin Jardine
Unnatural Justice
Do I have your attention?
Good.
Are you prepared to hear me out, without making any judgements until my story is finished?
Even better.
Do you have everything you need? Tea? Coffee? Or perhaps something stronger? (Before I'm finished you may wish for it.) You're ready? Fine, then come close, for this story of mine isn't something I'd want anyone overhearing.
The world is populated by spirits, you know, and some of them aren't very nice at all. The fact is, they can be downright evil…
One.
"Nobody's perfect. Still, I've always thought of myself as a nice guy at heart."
He was smiling when he said it, that same old all-gathering smile of his; all teeth and glisten at first glance, but look really close and you may see the maw of the beast. His eyes had that shine beyond twinkle; they dazzled like the sun, a journalist once wrote, but she'd have been nearer the mark if she'd said they were as bright as the flames of hell, yet as hard as the stone that builds a city.
I looked at him and felt nothing, no emotion. Or did I? Was I simply masking my loathing? After all, that reviewer in the New York Times did say I had become a consummate actor. How was it put again? (As if I didn't know.) "Plucked from the relative obscurity of an announcer slot in a wrestling circus, Oz Blackstone's instinctive but consummate touch somehow manages to steal the movie out from under his more illustrious co-stars and sometime in-laws Miles Grayson and Dawn Phillips. Skinner's Festival is Blackstone 's breakout, his one-way ticket to the A list."
And anyway, what's nice got to do with it, as Tina Turner almost sang?
Isn't it said to carry with it the certainty of finishing last?
There was a time, around ten years ago, maybe, when I was a nice guy … or so I thought I overhead someone say at a party back in life. (Looking back on it, I'm pretty sure she was actually talking about my Dad.) I wasn't, though, not really. Truth be told, if I consider objectively the way Osbert Blackstone behaved towards most of the people who cared for him, he didn't come even close to niceness. If I was forced to come up with an excuse for my attitude, I suppose I'd say that I reacted badly to my mother's shockingly early death. I took it out on my lifelong girlfriend Jan more cruelly than on anyone else. Just when everyone assumed we'd be heading for the altar, I gave her the 'let's always be loving friends' routine… at which I was to become a master … and set off on a determined campaign to shag my way through as much of Edinburgh's available female population as I could.
Eventually, though, the Prince of Darkness put me in my place. A door opened, and Primavera Phillips stepped into my life. A simple entrance, but she might as well have been a bolt of lightning hitting me between the eyes.
I thought she was wonderful. For the first few months after we met, when our thing was all hot and steamy, I just wanted to eat her. (Now I wish I had. Life's full of irony, eh.) I didn't question my attraction then, or try to analyse it… even though inside, I knew that I still loved Jan, who was in a new relationship of her own by that time. I reckon I understand now, though, what it was that blinded me to everything but Prim for that period.
Cupid, that fat flying archer and model for a few million tattoos, gets much of the credit for bringing people together, but, in my humble view, almost all of it is misplaced. The real villain of the peace is the boy Narcissus.
Remember him from your classical studies, that idiotic Greek lad who fell in love with his own reflection? Well, I reckon that's what most of us do: we are attracted essentially to ourselves. We tend to fall for people who are in our own image, physically, emotionally, and in several other ways ending in 'y'. If there were more real blondes around, in my opinion the only gentlemen who would prefer them would be naturally fair-haired themselves. As it is, however good the dye job, instinctively, we can see the roots. (I'm not being sexist here, honest. Given modern man's hair fashions, my theory cuts both ways.) Primavera is tasty, no doubt about that. She's an even better looker than her actress sister, she has a body that's as finely tuned as a Ferrari, and she has big, rarely blinking eyes, which, when they take on a bedroom look, are always backed up by action. In the instant that we met, I saw her as open, direct and lustful… just like me.
What followed was inevitable, and I'd be lying if I said that I didn't enjoy it.
But she has other qualities too; they live on her dangerous side.
Behind that sensual facade, she is ambitious, scheming and manipulative. The concept of self-denial is unknown to her; her desires, carnal and material, exist only to be fulfilled, and almost invariably, they are. She isn't a bad person; I've never thought that.
It's just that she has certain weaknesses and the insight to know, most of the time, that she lacks the moral fibre to overcome them.
In other words, in that respect, she's just like me.
Before we finally split, one thing that Prim and I did give each other, though, in addition to a large measure of grief, was luck. We both enjoyed comfortable family backgrounds, but separately neither of us was on track for the glamorous life, or to amass material wealth. But since our paths crossed, well, it's all just gone crazy. The luck of the devil, they say. In our cases, that is undoubtedly, and maybe even literally, true. Our first few months together saw us involved in separate escapades in Scotland, Switzerland and Spain, from which we emerged with our lives… just… and with a very significant sum of money.
I was edging into my thirties before I took a partial tumble to myself, and before Jan tempted fate too far by taking me back. Her love, and my first awakening to the real Primavera (although sometimes I wonder whether such a person actually exists), finally drew us back together.
Looking back, it's interesting to me that during that brief blessed period, my luck didn't change: at first. If anything it got even better, magnified by the sheer happiness of our life together. I used to wake in the morning, look at Jan's face on the pillow next to me, often smiling at whatever dream she was having, and think, "This is all too good to be true."
I was right; we didn't know it, thank God, but our lease on bliss was very short. When I lost her and our unborn child, killed in our kitchen by a lethal washing machine, I lost something else too. It took another Janet to help me find some of it again, but that was in the future; in the immediate thereafter I was lost, angry inside, and looking for someone to take it out on. I found him to an extent, but it wasn't enough. There was nothing for me to do, it seemed, but to go back to Prim… actually I should have done anything but that, but what the hell.
We took up more or less where we'd left off, only this time we were more overtly ambitious, and avaricious. Our luck went on; we amassed money, and in my case a public profile, without even seeming to try. My wrestling announcer job, into which I'd stumbled, led on to bigger things, and eventually encouraged Miles Grayson, Prim's actor brother-in-law, to cast me in a movie project. Naturally, I was a success, and more bookings followed; I found to my surprise that I really am an instinctive actor.
In material terms and in career terms I couldn't do anything but win. I decided that Prim was the lucky charm from which it all flowed, so we embarked on marriage. And that was as good as it got.
Because you see, I never loved Prim, any more than she ever loved me.
Fairly early in our relationship we had got into the habit of deceiving each other; she was probably better at it than I was. When I eventually found out how many lovers she'd had, I was astonished… she'd had even more than me! But honestly, I can't say I was ever angry. The fact was, in emotional terms, I was as dead as my first wife. I gathered wealth, I used people, I had brief flings on movie projects and on wrestling trips that were forgotten about next day, but none of it excited me. None of it could extinguish the cold flame of bitterness that Jan's passing had lit in me.