by Stephen May
Tough had been very insistent she come over and see him. In daily letters he told her she’d love the people, the landscape, the language. He also said she’d hate the city, that a combination of earthquakes and Soviet planning had done for it, but they could get out of the capital and walk and talk and catch up properly. She was sure he was behind the job she was doing out there, otherwise it was a bit of a coincidence – a contract comes through for a thing in Abkhazia just as her old friend Tough moves out there.
He’d sent her a book called the Nart sagas about mythical heroes of the region, translated into English from the work of a guy called Bagrat Shinkuba and a DVD of the local martial art, a vicious scrappy version of wrestling with few discernible rules. You like fighting, come and learn this he’d written on the card that came with the package. Eleven years and he still doesn’t get it. She doesn’t like fighting. She hates fighting. Hand-to-hand fighting of any kind is primitive and ugly. She never fights unless she has to. She just thinks it’s important to be prepared, because you do have to fight in the end. Everyone does sometimes. And if you are small, if you are a woman, then you need to be able to fight harder and dirtier than everyone else.
She likes arguing with Tough. She doesn’t really win against him – he’s read so damn much – but he is always interested in what she’s saying. And he always stays calm. Always stays dry and amusing actually, and this is probably because not a whole lot means anything to Tough. Not really. For Tough everything is interesting but everything is meaningless. He should be a guest on Thought For The bloody Day.
And now that trip is in danger of being messed up by this Russell Knox and his failure to adhere to a routine, by his inability to ever be on his own. It is beyond irritating, it really is.
Nineteen
NICKY
And now we are into our Grand Design weeks. The weeks where I’m at the mercy of the man we come to call the architect. Because, yes, it was indeed true that Russell had kept himself in good nick right up until the end, and that meant problems to solve. Risks to assess and then to mitigate. More milestones to negotiate.
When we settle our account with the undertaker, he tells us that the pathologist had commented on the fine figure of a corpse Nicholas Fisher was. How he was a real good ad for that British NHS. Said he had been won over to the whole idea of socialised medicine as a result of dissecting this Fisher guy. The pathologist told him that for a guy that was meant to be more or less broke he had great teeth, great skin, great hair, great muscle tone. He even had great nails.
‘Hell, he told me this Nicky Fisher even smelt good when he was first brought in. Now that’s rare in his line of work. Mine too.’
This admiration has made its mark on the undertaker so that’s two potential new votes for pro-universal healthcare democrats. And the undertaker, like nearly all his profession, had been solidly Republican up to that point. Was it Mark Twain who said there’s nothing certain in life except for death and taxes? Well, undertakers as a profession are unsurprisingly OK with death. They are, after all, sitting pretty. Death is one of the few businesses that can’t migrate to the internet. It’s not like books or music or matchmaking. Death demands a physical presence on the high street. You can’t do the death business via a portal. Undertakers are far less sanguine about taxes than they are about the web.
It’s all an early vindication of our Robin Hood theory. Through our plan – through what we’ve taken to calling our new business model – we’re not just helping ourselves, we’re already helping the powerless, the dispossessed. The poor huddled masses of the near future might have cause to celebrate us. Maybe we really could be heroes. It’s heartwarming really. Right from the very first moment of his death Russell finds himself taking the opportunities to do good with his wedge that he has so rigorously spurned in life. It’s like something out of Dickens, and it is a truth universally acknowledged that there is nothing more heartwarming than that. Unless it’s Toy Story 2.
It’ll all look good in the dock of the future.
But Russell’s self-absorption in life has given us a set of problems which definitely need some of Sarah’s SMART solutions. How are we going to make me – an averagely crumbling middle-aged wreck – pass for an expensively maintained global oligarch? It’s a big ask. This can’t be a mere makeover project. This absolutely has to be a Grand Design. You’ll remember Grand Designs. It was that architectural TV programme where couples would take some public toilet, some church, some water-cooled nuclear reactor or whatever and – after a rollercoaster ride of adventures involving cowboy builders and dodgy plumbers – turn it into a modernist palace.
Sarah has always been a fan of these shows and even a casual study reveals that the switchback of triumph and disaster – the sense of jeopardy and threat essential for ratings – is caused by the hubris of the participants who don’t take the advice of the expert presenter. It’s clear the producers deliberately select the psychotically headstrong over the sensibly amenable. Sensibly amenable butters few parsnips in the world of reality TV.
But we are neither of us suicidally stubborn, so we are going to follow to the slavish letter the advice of our chosen experts. We are going to demolish the derelict shed that is Nicky Fisher and remake it as a cathedral. I’m going to get reshaped into the image of the man whose passport is essential to our new lives.
To accomplish this we need a skilled and accredited practitioner of the arts of renovation, preservation and tasteful alteration. We need an architect, in other words. A drawer-up of plans, a supervisor of the building process.
And because the final programmes of works are so radical, Sarah also talks of hiring a support team of counsellors, shrinks, lifestyle gurus – what you might call architects of the head – to sandblast my brain. To supervise the repointing and replastering of the cracks in my psyche. To damp-proof my very soul and guard it against rot and worms. But it turns out that because I have Linwood I don’t need most of these others. Like pretty much everything else in our new lives we find him through Jesus.
‘Linwood is the best trainer on the West Coast. Well, the Bay Area anyway. Everyone knows this.’
‘Expensive?’
Jesus shrugs and smiles. ‘He is the best.’
And he certainly looks the part. Peak period Denzel Washington in looks, with the grave manner of a Harvard maths professor. A man you can tell it will be hard to say no to.
Nevertheless, I think Sarah’s surprised at how compliant I am. I’m not resistant in the way I’m sure she expected me to be. I submit to all the tests, all the treadmills and the charts. And then, when all the assessments have been done I just get on with it. I do the laps, the squats, the lunge-walks, the bench-presses, the pull-ups, the press-ups and all the cardiovascular stuff. I do the yoga – Ashtanga and Hatha – I do the Pilates and eat up my Alexander technique like a good boy. Quite unexpected really, willpower never having been my thing up to that point.
I do the full range of workouts more usually associated with suburban ladies. I do step aerobics, skipping, spinning. I do bloody Zumba for chrissake.
Of course, by necessity, I’m often in a class of one. It’s usually just me working out to the sound of Tom Waits rather than a class of sweating MILFs wobbling to glossy, high-BPM pop. This is my only small rebellion and it causes a satisfying amount of pain to Linwood. He’s a big Katy Perry fan. Sporty types always have terrible taste in music. This is an iron law.
However, sometimes, to keep things interesting, he allows me to do games too. Squash, badminton, tennis with country-club coaches. Basketball on floodlit courts specially kept open late at night just for me where Linwood teaches me the arcane mysteries of the dunk.
I grapple with Brazilian ju-jitsu masters, chase the ping-pong balls of ex-pat ex-North Korean ex-Olympians who came to the 1996 games just to defect. I scramble over the assault courses of the Navy Seals, play carefully supervised beach volleyball with college girls – all in the cause of keeping the regimen s
timulating, to avoid the dreaded plateau – which, according to every single architect whatever their discipline, is the very last place you want to be. In the world of the sports coach a plateau is a kind of hell.
And I give up sugar and dairy and alcohol. Replace them with raw carrots, leafy veg and thin lentil soups. I allow my carbs to be weighed, my every wild rice grain counted. And if ever I feel like I’m going to crack then I have Linwood’s soothing tones on speed dial, always ready to talk me down from ordering something dangerous like a pizza, or a fajita. Meanwhile genuinely Scandinavian masseuses – the best, not the cheapest obviously – stretch and sooth mutinous hamstrings and tortured calves, necks, shoulders, ribs.
What anyone who is serious about self-improvement learns is that if it works it hurts. If you’re serious about losing flab and gaining muscle then you will always be hungry and you will always be hurting.
And it’s because of this that we are required to have Linwood or Jesus or both around more or less 24/7 to prevent me from leaving the house on my own. They accompany me on my runs to ensure there are no opportunities to score illicit Oreos or Hershey bars. And sometimes Linwood makes me sit down with him to watch uplifting movies. The kind of movies I’ve put on for Scarlett in the past, to give myself a respite from childcare. The kind I’ve never actually watched properly before.
This is how come I see Watership Down, The Sound of Music. All the Back To The Futures and all the Toy Storys. Fables of evil overcome. Tales of grace under pressure. Parables of the little guy made great, the nice guy finishing first, ordinary heroes fulfilling their potential. Stories that should be banned for giving average chumps impossible dreams. God, I can’t believe we’ve been filling Scarlett’s head with this stuff. Thank fuck the agency doesn’t allow Mary to let kids watch DVDs. Not even Pixar ones. It’s not part of the Second-Best Kind of Love method.
But I am not a child. I am a grown-up and I think I should be allowed to watch old-school pornography too. Porn is motivational as long as it’s not too weird. At least as inspiring as anything from Disney anyway. Modern porn can be scary and odd, but classic is a different story. Classic. Vintage. Retro. These styles in porn – as in clothes, cars, and music – are uplifting.
A buffed youngish teacher gives extra tuition to an entire sorority. A buffed youngish pilot takes care of all the flight attendants while the plane flies itself to Stockholm. A buffed youngish plumber services the needs of a whole gated community of bored housewives.
The moral of your classic porno is broadly the same as Watership Down. Follow your dream, stick at it whatever the obstacles, and you’ll end up with loads of bunnies. You’ll become Bigwig. That sad sack Nicky Fisher wouldn’t ever get to share a hot tub with Shyla, Shannon, Shanta, and all their pneumatic friends – but a fully operational lean, clean, sex machine like the all-new Russell Knox surely would. As I say, motivational. Uplifting. Keeps your eye on the prize.
There is a Martin Luther King element to classic porn without a shadow.
But I somehow sense that saying this to Linwood or to Jesus would be to court their disapproval. Conservative sexually as well as tin-eared, that’s your average jock for you.
And when I’m not running, wrestling, lifting, stretching, sharing my hurt, then I’m in a clinic being worked over with retinol to peel away the dry tundra of my skin. I’m having vitamin-X enriched unguents worked deep into the baby-soft vulnerabilities revealed beneath the dead surface. Or I’m having my teeth underpinned and then bleached to an unearthly electric white. Oh I’m a Grand Design and no mistake. Not half.
And Linwood never questions why a faceless guy like me might suddenly want to turn myself into a kind of Jimmy Dean at fifty. But I guess part of being the best in any business is knowing when to shut up and simply trouser the fee.
And talking of trousers . . .
One of the things that keeps me going is that of how great I’ll look in my suits. Because from now on, or when I’ve finished this programme anyway, I’m only going to wear handmade bespoke clothes. I’m going to have a suit for every day of the week and a real bobby dazzler for high days and holidays.
Jesus has found me a guy. An old Chinese tailor called Jimmy. The one everyone uses. By everyone I mean those who can afford him. Everyone in this context means about fifty blokes in the whole world. New threads to go with my new architect-designed body.
Almost as tricky to sort as the body, and certainly trickier than the tailoring, are the tattoos. It isn’t the pain – I turn out to be more stoic about that than I had expected – no, it’s what they say and how they say it. No illuminated Latin tags or beautifully worked copies of great works of art for me to wear. No, when he was fourteen Russell had tattooed himself with Ozzy on the knuckles of both hands. Over the years this leads to dozens of illiterates in bars hassling him in the mistaken belief he is Australian.
He also had a wobbly home-made LUFC on his shoulder. Having these done really hurt my sense of aesthetics – not least because I had mocked Russell for having them for over thirty-five years, even though I’d encouraged him to have them done in the first place. Back in 1978 it was me who had actually inked the first O and the first Z, before being unable to carry on because of the blood.
I do it though. Get the tats. Hate it but do it and just get over it. Hey, imagine if I’d been like that at school, at work, or in relationships? Imagine what I might have achieved. Funny that it takes the exigencies of committing a major fraud to give me the kind of work ethic and capacity for self-sacrifice that I have never shown before.
And an incredible thing happens while the kid we’ve hired to scrawl this amateur graffito on my body is doing his thing. He’s definitely the cheapest, because for this job cheapest is perfect. And it turns out to be the best sixteen dollars I’ve ever spent.
He’s at OZ on my left hand when Scarlett lopes in wearing a pair of Mary’s old sneakers, carrying one of her ukuleles, and tossing her head in imitation of Mary’s carefree movement through the world. She canters up to me and stares hard at the blood and ink on my hand. She prods it.
‘Ouch,’ I say. She giggles.
‘Ouch,’ she says back. We’re gob-smacked. It’s a word. Or almost. And then, the unlooked-for miracle. She puts down her instrument and then pokes my gory fingers again with her own tiny hand.
‘Ouch,’ I say, not because it hurts – which it does – but to encourage her. Which it also does.
‘Awesome,’ she says. ‘Badass.’
Unbelievable. I think we all cry. And we laugh. Our baby can talk. And such a Mary thing to say. Especially as it really isn’t awesome. And in no way badass. But that’s the moment that makes everything worth it.
Of course, there are other good things. I’m also beginning to feel strong now too. I’m enjoying waking up and feeling alive. The old pains, the old twinges, the old spasms, they are all gone. And they are replaced by new pains, new twinges, new spasms, but the old pains felt like approaching death – these ones feel like life. These ones are accompanied by spontaneous erections. I think that’s the difference. That and being able to twist open the lids of jars with barely a flick of the wrist. I’m here to tell you it’s true what they say about vegetables, kids. The stuff Linwood calls sport candy.
Six weeks it takes. That’s all. Six weeks in which I lose a stone of flab and tighten everything that’s left. And in which our baby proves she knows the impact of a surprise announcement.
Twenty
POLLY
This is what Polly learns about sperm. She learns that with sperm – like with everything else – you get what you pay for. Pay a couple of million for your ten centilitres and you get the spunk of one of the better-looking former world leaders or that of a sprightly Nobel prize winner. A few hundred grand will put the juice of a top brain surgeon or an astrophysicist in your turkey baster. Lower down the scale you can expect to pay in the high tens of thousands for that of film directors, or games designers. A lower five-figure sum and you
are looking at your soap-opera actor, your retired pro-soccer player, your TV talent-show winner. Your Supreme Court judge.
As with thoroughbred horses, so with men.
And it is all carefully calibrated. Different nationalities attract different premiums and you can expect to pay more for looks too. Put it this way, the DNA of an athletic six-foot Ethiopian with a PhD is going to cost you way more than that of a Birmingham car mechanic. That should be obvious. What is more surprising is that an Ethiopian car mechanic might well cost you more than a Brummie PhD. It depends what you prioritise. Polly has spent a long time thinking about it and knows what she wants. She’s a focused and determined shopper. She wants fit, but not too fit. She doesn’t want to spend years in draughty sports centres watching her kid win the regional javelin cup or whatever. And she wants brainy but not too brainy. She doesn’t want her kid leaving her behind by going off to do something she doesn’t understand in a medieval university covered in ivy and privilege. In any case super-genius means super unhappy in Polly’s experience. No, Polly wants quite coordinated, quite clever, quite good-looking, a decent ear for music and languages. She wants OK-looking, averagely symmetrical. She’s not bothered about hair colour or height. As long as he or she is not a dwarf or a giant then that’ll do. And that’s another thing, she’s not bothered about the sex of the child. Or the colour. On balance she thinks boy babies are cuter than girl babies, black babies better looking than white ones, but they’re not deal breakers.
You have to shop around of course, look out for the best value. And these days there are so many flexible payment plans that it can all get very confusing. But Polly quite enjoys this sort of thing. It’s always Polly who books the holidays for her and her mum. It’s always Polly who gets the quotes on insurance. Polly can compare the market dot com. Polly is not daunted by terms and conditions. Polly is not afraid of small print.
