Mad About the Boy

by Maggie Alderson

‘Well, isn’t that lovely?’ I said, looking at Percy, who I could see was trying not to laugh.

  ‘Ouch,’ he said. ‘Stop twiddling with that, Tom, it does hurt. I was only pretending when I said it didn’t. Now run along and play with your buggery.’

  Tom bounded out of the room surprisingly willingly and Percy made us some tea. He looked even more incongruous sitting there like Marilyn Manson’s grandad, sipping lapsang souchong from the mauve Limoges cup and saucer I had bought him for Christmas to match his hair, but now I was getting used to it, I could see that this punk-rock-pensioner look really rather suited him.

  ‘I’m not so sure about the piercings,’ I said, ‘although I know they are all the rage these days, but I really do like your hair like that. Who did it for you?’

  ‘Greg,’ he said, looking me right in the eye.

  ‘Greg?’ I squealed. ‘The horrible home-wrecking, husband-stealing, hairdressing bastard?’

  ‘That would be the one.’ He sipped his tea and carried on looking at me, one of his new black eyebrows slightly raised, as if to ask me what I was going to do about it.

  ‘And his friend, Paul, did the piercings,’ he continued. ‘He used to work at a tattoo and piercing parlour and he has all the gear. He’s going to do a Maori symbol of strength around my left bicep next week.’

  I just looked at him in amazement.

  ‘Don’t look all betrayed, Antonia,’ he said.

  ‘But I …’ I started, but he held up his palm to stop me.

  ‘Before you get upset, hear me out. I wouldn’t want to go on a villa holiday with Greg and Paul any more than you would, but after giving it some serious thought, I think it would be better for us all if we could effect some kind of rapprochement between you and Greg. Amazing though it seems to us, Hugo seems to be stuck on him, so we are stuck with him. I didn’t think it would last this long, but it has, so we have to change our tack. He has been with Hugo – officially – for over a year now and that makes him, in a way, part of the family. My family.’

  I opened my mouth to protest, but he held up his hand again.

  ‘As someone who was welcomed to the Heaveringham hearth despite my own difficult start in life,’ he explained, ‘and who has remained welcome at it, despite my little ways, I have to honour that family code and do my best to make Greg fit into it too. I hope he won’t be with us for the long haul because, frankly, I don’t think even I could put him over with Margot the moron, but I think we have to act as though he will be. You know I adore you, Antonia, but you must understand – Hugo is my favourite nephew and I want him to be happy.’

  He stopped to have a sip of tea. I was still too shocked to speak.

  ‘Now,’ he went on, ‘Greg has already shown a reluctance to accept your very noble overtures of friendship, probably because, deep down, he feels so guilty – he’s a good Greek Orthodox boy, I have discovered from my new best friend, Paul.’

  He raised his eyebrow again, to underline the irony and continued.

  ‘So, I shall be the one to act as an emotional bridge, to bring this very modern little corner of the Heaveringham clan together.’

  Another pause, another sip, while I sat and tried to take it all in.

  ‘And above all, in this, Antonia, my concern is for darling Tom. Although he is a very good little boy about not showing you how upset he is, I know he misses his father dreadfully. But the problem is he feels guilty going round to see him at his new house, because he knows how much you hate Greg. Tom feels disloyal to you being polite to Greg and disloyal to his father if he’s rude to him. It’s tearing him in two, Antonia. So, there is nothing he would like more than a family dinner, with all of you there, at least appearing to get on, once a week, or so. Tom needs you and Greg at least to make a show of being friends.’

  I hated the thought of it, but I knew Percy was right. I felt ill to think Tom had been unhappy and I had been oblivious to it, numbed as I was by my own pain.

  ‘How do you know Tom feels this way about it?’ I asked him. ‘I thought he was over the worst of it.’ I had really thought he was coping. Fooling myself, I realized, because I had wanted him to be, so badly.

  ‘I eavesdrop on him and little Ms Vita when they are playing together. They play very elaborate games with a large cast of Barbies, Action Men and GI Joes, which are very amusing and heartbreakingly revealing.’

  I sat and thought for a few moments.

  ‘I did agree to start having Hugo here for family dinners before Christmas,’ I admitted. ‘But I always managed to put him off, because I didn’t want to broach the Greg issue. I just couldn’t stand the thought of him here, in our house, where Hugo and I had lived together.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Percy. ‘Hugo mentioned the phantom dinners. So how about this? I will speak to Greg and persuade him it is in his interest to be nice to you and we’ll have the first dinner out, so you don’t have to worry about having Greg in your home just yet. OK?’

  I nodded.

  ‘OK.’

  And then Tom walked back into the kitchen. He’d spiked his hair up like a porcupine with copious amounts of gel that Hugo had left behind and he was wearing one of my clip-on earrings on the side of one ear, another on his nostril. He’d even inked in his eyebrows with a black marker pen. He struck a pose. Percy and I laughed until we cried.

  Meanwhile, the midnight gym thing was working brilliantly. With Percy taking Tom to school in the morning, I could stay in bed until nearly ten o’clock and still have the shop open by eleven, which was plenty early enough for the kind of business it was.

  Falling into bed exhausted after my workout at 2 or 3 a.m., I was actually starting to have seven or eight hours sleep again, for the first time for over a year. It was bliss and I realized quite how wrung out I’d been from zeds deprivation. It had been worse even than when Tom was tiny, because there was no compensating bundle of joy to make up for it – just sad memories and fears for the future.

  Some time in the third week of my night-time regime, James was back on the reception desk.

  ‘So, how’s it going, night owl?’ he asked me, as he swiped my card. ‘It seems the midnight shift suits you. This is your twelfth late night visit.’

  He looked up at my surprised face.

  ‘It’s all on the monitor,’ he said. ‘I had a look when I came back from holiday tonight. I wanted to see if you’d taken my advice.’

  ‘Well, I have,’ I said. ‘Thank you very much for the suggestion, James. It really works for me.’

  After that, he seemed to be on reception most nights when I got there and when he wasn’t, I found I rather missed him. Despite the cap and glasses that obscured his face, there was something straightforward about James that was very refreshing after all the layers of complications that seemed to accompany all my other human relations.

  One night, when I was fully into the swing of driving over to East Sydney in the early hours, I didn’t get there until 3 a.m. Percy had been out until after two thirty and I’d lain awake since midnight feeling annoyed that I was going to miss a session, so as soon as he’d got in, I’d jumped into my workout gear and headed for Muscle City. James was on the desk.

  ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘This is late, Antonia, even for you. Welcome to your private gym.’

  He nodded over his shoulder. There was no one in there at all, which was a first.

  ‘Couldn’t get here any earlier tonight,’ I said.

  ‘And couldn’t bear to miss one?’ he asked.

  I nodded.

  ‘You’ve got the bug, Antonia,’ he said. ‘You’re a fully-fledged Muscle City workout junkie.’

  My face must have dropped.

  ‘It’s not such a bad thing to be,’ he continued. ‘If you’re going to be addicted about something, better it’s exercise than drink or gambling – or work.’

  He grinned and I hoped he was right as I went off to the treadmills.

  Working-out in a completely empty gym had an interesting effect on me. I fou
nd it strangely hard to keep up my enthusiasm with no one else there to ‘beat’.

  Even if there were just a few other people, all usually hugely fitter than me, I felt a sense of unspoken competition, which kept me lifting, pushing, running, pulling, or whatever it was, slightly longer and harder than I really wanted to. With no one else there, I was just going through the motions.

  I was lying on my back on the hip extension machine gazing cross-eyed at the ceiling and on the verge of nodding off, when James appeared at my side.

  ‘Want me to spot you?’ he asked.

  ‘That would be great,’ I said, spurred back into activity.

  After he’d put me through my paces there we moved on to the other machines, with James counting me down on my repetitions. It made an enormous difference. He kept one eye on the front desk and had to go over to check in a couple of wired-looking fellows, but he came straight back to me afterwards.

  ‘OK, that’s seven on the third set, just three to go,’ he was saying to me on the kneeling chin-up thing, my absolutely worst machine. ‘You don’t like this one, do you?’

  I pulled a face. ‘I hate it.’

  ‘Come on, it’s just two more now, don’t give up. Try to do it in one smooth move, rather than starting and stopping in the middle, that takes more energy.’

  He watched me for a moment and then spoke again, softly.

  ‘Why do you think you hate this machine particularly?’ he asked.

  ‘I find it hard to know where the muscles are to do this at all,’ I said. ‘It makes me feel all small and vulnerable.’

  ‘Well, that’s a good start – it’s good that you can analyse what you don’t like about it. That’s half the battle. Do you want to try something that might help?’

  ‘Haven’t I just finished my reps on here?’ I whined, sounding just like Tom trying to get out of piano practice.

  ‘Only if you want to,’ said James. ‘But if you can stand to do ten more I might be able to help you get over your emotional block about this machine.’

  ‘Oh, all right then.’

  ‘OK,’ he said, briskly. ‘Get off for a minute, I’m going to show you something.’

  I clambered off the machine and after adjusting the bench height James got on. He knelt on the pad and reached up for the crossbar. I could see now what Tristan had been going on about, when he was always trying to make me place myself symmetrically on the machines. I could see that James had automatically put himself in the perfect position.

  ‘Put ten more weights on it will you, Antonia?’ he said.

  I quite liked him taking charge and hopped over to do as he asked.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘It’s all in the breathing. Breathe in before you start and make the effort on the out breath. I’m sure Tristan told you all that, right?’

  ‘Yes, he did,’ I said. ‘But I didn’t realize it was so important.’

  ‘The breath is everything,’ said James. ‘But it’s not just when you breathe, it’s how you breathe. Watch.’

  He inhaled really slowly through his nose and his chest lifted up like a giant soufflé. I couldn’t believe how much it expanded up and out and to the sides. I could almost see the air travelling down into his lungs and filling his whole torso. He held it for a few moments, with his eyes closed and then breathed out even more slowly, until gradually his chest returned to where it had started from.

  ‘That’s breathing properly,’ he said. ‘When we’re anxious most of us take shallow little breaths that just make us more jittery and nervous. Breathe like that a few times before you start this exercise and you will feel much more in charge of all your muscles, even the ones you think you aren’t aware of. Stay conscious of your breathing the whole time while you’re working-out and always make the effort on the out breath.’

  I was nodding, trying to take it all in. Then he took another of his mighty breaths and as he exhaled he lifted himself up until his chin was high above the bar. The weights, which were practically on maximum, went up too, like they were cottonwool balls, with perfect control, no surges and judders like when I did it.

  He lowered himself and the weights back down without making a sound – they crashed down like cymbals when I was on this machine – and got off.

  ‘OK,’ he said, smiling encouragingly. ‘Your go.’

  I adjusted the bench and got back on it, trying to picture my body from above so I was symmetrical. Then I closed my eyes and took the slowest, deepest breath I could manage. I held it and let it go.

  ‘I feel dizzy,’ I told him.

  ‘Don’t worry, your body’s just not used to having so much oxygen in one hit. Don’t try to breathe as deeply as I did at first, you’ll get stoned. Work up to it gradually.’

  I took another few breaths and then tried the movement again. I couldn’t lift myself at all.

  ‘Oops,’ said James. ‘We forgot to change the weights. I’ll just do that. OK, now try it.’

  It was so much easier, I couldn’t believe it. Using my breath to steady myself I could do the movement completely smoothly. I finished the ten without feeling vulnerable at all.

  ‘That’s really great, James,’ I said. ‘I can’t believe the difference it makes.’

  ‘Breathing is the most fundamental thing any of us do,’ he said. ‘It is the defining difference between life and death, yet we seem to give it less thought than anything. It’s amazing when you think about it. All the ancient practices – yoga, tai chi, chi gong, all kinds of meditation – are based on the breath yet most people never even think about it. But then I’m obsessed with all that stuff, so don’t start me, or I’ll bore you to death with it. OK, how about getting on to that triceps extension, while I check this bloke in?’

  The rest of the session went really smoothly. Concentrating on the breathing took my mind off the dull reality of lifting weights and made it all go much more quickly. Plus, having someone else there, when James came back again, made me try much harder than I ever did on my own. I was really hot by the time I finished.

  ‘Thank you so much, James,’ I said at the end, wiping my face with a towel. ‘I was getting nowhere until you came over.’

  ‘It’s very hard to work-out completely alone,’ he said. ‘That competition effect is much more pervasive than we realize. That’s why I go back to the dojo in Hong Kong as often as I can. I need to be pushed by being surrounded by people who are better than me.’

  ‘Isn’t there anyone better than you in Sydney?’ I asked playfully, not really having a clue what he was talking about and wondering what on earth dojos were.

  ‘Not really,’ he said, and then, with no warning, he jumped into the air, spinning round as he went, his right leg shooting out at a perfect 90 degrees, his arms slicing back and forth like pistons. It must have been over in a millisecond, but it had looked almost as though he paused in mid air, before landing back on the ground without making a sound.

  ‘Bloody Nora,’ I said, without thinking, I was so surprised. ‘Bruce Lee in specs.’

  I felt mortified as it came out of my mouth, but James just laughed.

  ‘Close your mouth, Grasshopper,’ he said, smiling his mysterious smile, his eyes hidden by the glinting glasses. ‘A tiger might jump into it.’

  That evening – and his extraordinary display – seemed to take our rather strange friendship on to another level and after that, as long as there weren’t too many other people in the gym, James would always come over and spot me through my routine.

  I also started hanging out for a little while after I’d finished my workout, having a bottle of water with him at the reception desk and continuing whatever conversation we’d started on the machines. He turned out to be an interesting fellow.

  He’d studied martial arts in Hong Kong for several years and with the Shaolin monks in China’s Henan Province. He spoke passable Cantonese and Mandarin. He worked at night, he told me, because his body was so finely tuned from the years of rigorous practice that he hardly neede
d any sleep. He just got bored if he stayed at home.

  ‘You’ll find you need less sleep as you get fitter, Antonia,’ he told me. ‘Fitness has so many benefits that people don’t understand, way beyond a flat stomach and a tight butt.’

  I instantly held both mine in.

  ‘Physical fitness will make you more efficient physically and mentally,’ he was saying. ‘You won’t get colds, you won’t get those stupid little depressions, and you won’t forget stuff. Already the discipline that brings you here each night is mental, Antonia, not physical. It’s your mind that gets you through that door, not your legs. Carry on working-out like you are and you’ll be amazed at the changes in every part of your life.’

  I already was. I didn’t know about the mental stuff yet, but I was definitely looking better. I had also lost the compulsion to stuff myself all the time. Now I was getting enough sleep, I didn’t need to use sugar for energy hits to keep myself going through the day. And the less I pigged out, the less I wanted to pig out, until I began to slide in the other direction and it became almost a game to see just how little food I could get by on, without feeling faint.

  After a couple of months, there was no doubt that the hard-core weight loss combination of eating less and exercising a lot, was working miracles. I was back into all my old clothes and some of them were even getting a little big. My legs, which had always been quite good, or so I’d been told, had a new definition in the thigh area and my upper arms were no longer shameful catastrophes to hide inside cardigans. Percy was thrilled with me.

  ‘Oh my darling girl,’ he said one day, when I was modelling a summer dress I’d bought in an end-of-season sale – white broderie anglaise with a handkerchief hem, rather like an old nightie – for him and Tom.

  ‘You look like my own little Tess of the D’Urbervilles again,’ said Percy, clapping his hands with delight. ‘The Nastassja Kinski Tess, of course. Oh yes, once again I can see the fragile young thing who so enchanted me when I first saw her sitting terrified in the corner of the yellow drawing room at Willington. You were wearing petticoats then too, I remember. I was so taken with you. Isn’t Mummy pretty, Tomety?’