The Stars and Cinderella

There wasn't much to do in the office - apart from wages once a month and the occasional cash-flow crisis, there rarely is - so I picked up one of the girls’ magazines and my attention was drawn to the astrology column. I found my sign, Cancer, read the prognostication and initially dismissed it as readily as I always had done until that particular day.

‘A bright day for Romance,’ it assured me, over-capitalising on the point, ‘with the Moon and Venus in your birth-sign, this promises to be one of the most favourable times for affairs of the heart that you have had for a year.’

What had happened to me a year ago, I wondered. A brief but delightful encounter with Angela Carter in Packaging, that's what. My interest was aroused.

There's a woman called Delia Morris who works for a firm of fabric importers with whom I had struck up a friendship the week before - a friendship which I felt had some potential in matters romantic. I had already arranged to meet her after work that very day. The Fates, if not the planets, seemed to be looking upon me with favour.

That lunch-time I went into town and bought all the necessary ammunition for a romantic evening - red roses, Merlot, smoked salmon, candles - all the usual trappings, plus a couple of those pan-pipes with genuine Brazilian rainforest sounds romantic CDs. It took most of my lunch-break and a bit more, so I missed her phone call but Terry the spotty youth had left a message for me.

‘Delia says she's sorry that she can't make it tonite’ - I despise people who spell it that way - ‘but she's going to Scotland for a few days.’

Spotty Terry grinned at me and shrugged his skinny shoulders, which hadn't quite grown into his suit. It's difficult to describe the expression I returned but he looked away quickly as I picked up the newspaper again.

Delia of course was a Taurean. She had informed me of the fact a few days earlier and had added with a knowing smile that Taurus and Cancer made a good match. At the time I had laughed, while being pleased that she had said so. According to her horoscope that day it was a good one for promotional prospects in work. Romantic passages blocked by default, I assumed.

Not wishing to waste a perfectly good and fairly expensive set-up in the carrier bag I scanned through all the other signs. No-one was going to cop any sort of romantic liaison except us Cancerians. The answer was therefore to find a female crab before the salmon went off.

During the course of the afternoon I discovered that my office contained two Pisceans who weren't interested - one of which looked like a haddock anyway, another Taurean who was going to evening classes and an Aquarian who was staring dreamily out of the window and waiting for something. I was beginning to go right off the whole business when I walked into photocopying and discovered Roger Finance and Rosie Graphics if not fully in flagrante then certainly close to delicto. As they stood stiffly I asked them when their birthdays were - late June and early July. Cancerian dammit! Funny - she'd always struck me as a Virgo before that.

Something cracked in me and I picked up my bag of potential aphrodisiacs, told my secretary Jane, the Aquarian, that I wasn't feeling very well and was going home. She smiled dreamily at me as I left.

Although I had never really taken it seriously before, I knew what a Cancerian was supposed to be like; moon-faced, home-loving, sensitive, artistic and a tendency towards a weak stomach. Armed with this information I set about spotting them in the coffee shop and then the pub until the situation began to strike me as ludicrous, so I finished the gin and tonic and caught the train back to Sevenoaks.

She asked me whether the seat opposite me was taken and when I had removed the carrier bag from it, she sat down with a pleasant smile at me and took out a copy of Good Housekeeping which she began to read. A rounded face - moon-like if any face ever was, obviously home-loving and nice legs.

‘Do you believe in Fate?’ I asked her.

‘To some extent,’ she replied with a delightful smile accentuated by the sunlight flickering through the rail-side silver birches before it fell upon her face.

Her name was Susan and she was indeed a Cancerian. Another characteristic that we have is an interest in the Occult and therefore she was intrigued when I told her about our horoscope for that day and remained so when I showed her the contents of the carrier bag. There was caution in her voice however when I asked her if she fancied joining me in the disposal thereof.

‘I'll have to go home first - I could perhaps come round later.’

My eyes drifted slowly down her body and rested upon the third finger of her left hand. Susan laughed and held the ringless hand up in front of my face.

‘That isn't the problem.’

‘Oh good,’ I said somewhat stupidly in my sense of relief.

‘I'll give you a ring,’ she said as we left the station and laughed at the unintentional pun.

I thought about her laughing face and her nice legs all the way back to my house.

Mrs. Mallory, my housekeeper, had tidied the house that day, so apart from dusting behind the clock, which she’d missed yet again, I didn't need to worry about that end of things. All I had to do was to create the ambience. I arranged the roses in a vase, set the light dimmers, turned on the hi-fi and tried the first of the new CDs on it. Personally, I find such semi-musical ambience irritating but one has to make sacrifices, like wearing uncomfortable trousers and holding one's stomach in whenever the opposition is likely to see one in profile.

I added a dash of sandalwood oil to the sofa and a little patchouli to the curtains. I might be middle-aged now but I can still remember the Sixties, Man - if slightly hazily these days. Susan had been wearing a Paisley patterned scarf, so I felt that she would appreciate such things.

Stick with the pipey rainforest and see how things go, I decided. It could always be a good talking point if I tell her quite truthfully that I only bought the CDs because I thought that it was the sort of thing that women find romantic...No, perhaps I'd better not say that - she might be a feminist.

It was half-past eight and she still hadn't phoned. Washing and blow-drying my hair took up another quarter of an hour. Having read in some magazine somewhere that women don't like men to wear too much aftershave I just put the odd dab on here and there and then sat by the phone.

Then I sat by the hi-fi.

Then I sat in front of the T.V. and watched the tail-end of something house make-overish with beautiful young people behind perfect white teeth in purple living rooms, almost hidden behind those curly bamboo sticks with a leaf at the top in the foreground of every camera shot, so that they looked as if they were the size of telegraph poles. When did that trend sneak in? I hadn’t noticed it slip into the mainstream. Just as the passing of the years swamped me and my ills-that-flesh-is heir-to mood took over, the door-bell rang.

It was Susan.

‘I rang earlier but got no reply, so I came round on the off-chance anyway,’ she greeted me.

‘Oh I'm sorry - come in,’ I said and took her coat, ‘it must have been when I was washing my hair.’

She looked around at my house and said that she liked the smell in the room.

‘Patchouli and sandalwood,’ I told her.

‘I thought they smelled familiar - I used to wear them all the time when I was a teenager.’

‘How about Sergeant Pepper?’ I ventured.

‘That must be my favourite album.’

With a certain sense of relief, I changed the CD to Sergeant Pepper. The constant nagging sound of pan pipes and trickling water was starting to have an adverse effect upon – well, I expect you catch my drift. Sergeant Pepper was succeeded by Pet Sounds. Candle-light, salmon, and good conversation about times past - the Troggs, Ready Steady Go, kaftans, Oxfam shops and C.N.D. rallies.

It was one of those evenings that just couldn't have gone better or more quickly. My guardian angel or rather the planets in the heavens were pulling for both of us.

‘I've got my mojo working,’ I whispered in her ear when after our first lingering kiss I buried my face in her flowing golden hair.

‘I bet you have too,’ she replied suggestively and began loosening my tie.

I took her hand and stood up.

‘The bedroom is this way,’ I told her, trying not to sound crude about it.

Susan stood up slowly, looking into my eyes all the while, and pressed her body close to mine. She didn't say anything but followed me towards the door.

Two paces and I tripped over the coffee table, spilling the remains of the Merlot over my teal carpet.

‘Damn!’ I cursed involuntarily and rushed into the kitchen for something to soak it up. I tore off half the kitchen roll, ran quickly back to the offending stain and began dabbing at it before it got a grip on my carpet. Susan went over to the wall and switched on the main lights so that I could see what I was doing.

Once I'd got the worst of it up I turned to look at her and tried to smile.

In the relatively harsh light she looked somehow different, bearing a strange resemblance to Mickey Rooney wearing a long dress - so that there wasn't even the sight of her legs to mitigate the effect. I stood up slowly and realised that as I was looking at her craggy features, so she was looking at my waist-line. The evening had been going so well that I had relaxed. Without my jacket and with my shirt buttons undone, I was spilling out over my belt. Cancerian - weak stomach you see.

The whole bridge that we had built between us had collapsed like a pack of soggy cards and we were left on opposite sides of an uncrossable divide. Something made me look at the clock. It was three minutes past twelve. Venus and the moon were no longer favourable and on the stroke of midnight my stomach had returned to looking like a pumpkin.

She left after she had shown me how to absorb the stain with salt - a house-keeping trick that I hadn't come across, even though I'm quite knowledgeable in such matters.

‘See you again,’ she said softly as she went. She was probably as disappointed as I was.

I shut the door and returned to sit on the sofa and watch the stain being absorbed by the salt.

As I mused over events, a glimmer of hope sprang. I realised that my mistake had been to start working on the advice of the horoscope too late in the day. Given just one more hour Susan and I might have consummated all sorts of things. That was the answer - read the horoscope column first thing in the morning!

Since that day I have religiously done so. Today's wasn't very promising, neither was yesterday's but you never can tell. Venus and the moon may have moved on but they're bound to end up back in my sign one day and so I've started to do sit-ups in anticipation.