Getting Home Page 5

  Five minutes into the running, whatever was left in his stomach started a break for freedom, but he held it down. The Cappuccino Crew were flying, endorphin high, even Stripes was smiling. They noticed nothing.

  Rod taught at another gym in Helford, another world where the floor was dirty, the class smelt of stale sweat and talcum powder, and they took twice as long to learn new moves, and twice as long to start smiling. Here the floor was sprung maple, cleaned twice a day. He had to ask them not to polish it. The Cappuccino Crew smelt like a first-night bouquet. They had the things only wealth-in-depth could buy: the nose jobs done just right, the posture from ballet lessons since infancy, the serenity created by never in their lives looking at a bill that would not receive the immediate application of the family gold card.

  Some of them worked hard, the fast-track women who refused to slow down, concentrating all their high-percentile IQs on keeping beautiful. The rest just cheated, knowing they could buy it all whenever they wanted, flat gut, bouncing hair, peachy skin. They got blow-dried and made-up for class, got sweaty, got showered got blow-dried and made-up again. They sat around the terrace with their coffee, bored to their bone-marrow and looking for trouble. He found them spooky. Perhaps that was why he was the way he was these days.

  At the first break he begged some water off Arty T-shirt; did she actually blush? She looked a mite strange this morning, red-eyed and messed-up in some way, but who was he to talk, with his two pissholes in the mud.

  His gut heaved again when he went down for the press-ups so he let them off with ten and walked around correcting positions during the floor work. Did his breath smell? Another reason not to talk. Blubberlugs giggled when he showed her how to hold her pelvis right for abductor raises. Mistake, mistake.

  Arty T-shirt got up and ran out halfway through the abs. Instructors’guidelines said to check her out. ‘I’m OK,’ she said, wiping her face with her towel. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just personal. Don’t worry.’

  Blubberlugs filled him in, lying on her mat propped on her elbows like a little cow walrus. ‘You heard the goss about her? Her husband’s gone missing somewhere out East. You’ve lucked in, Rod.’

  ‘Keep working,’ he told her, trying to find the stretch tape in his bag. The music master tape for the whole class, he had to get it done. One day. One day he would never have another drink. One day he’d have to make a decision about his wife. One day he’d find Sweetheart a new mummy. One day, one day.

  ‘No shit, he was kidnapped by terrorists.’

  His right Achilles was burning as if someone had scraped it with glowing charcoal.

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Was this for real? True, there was something in the Zeitgeist today, some bizarre buzz in the air, be could sense it even through the insulating fog of alcohol. ‘I said, keep working, don’t stop now.’

  ‘You’re a sadist.’ Blubberlugs was trying to catch his eye.

  ‘You’re lazy.’ Had he actually said that or just thought it? His brain was so scrambled he couldn’t tell. She was grinning, anyway, thank God.

  ‘It’s true, it’s not a joke,’ Stripes dragged herself to sitting, for once moved to contribute; this must be serious. ‘He was in Russia on business and the whole delegation got kidnapped. She just heard yesterday.’

  ‘That’s bad.’

  ‘So now’s your chance,’ Blubberlugs suggested, flopping on her back and rolling her eyes at him.

  ‘Another two sets,’ he ordered, getting on the podium for the authority. He heard groans. ‘Come on, hit the floor. Ten weeks to the beach, team. You’ll thank me then.’

  ‘Couldn’t I thank you earlier?’ Blubberlugs suggested, lubriciously eyeing his shorts.

  Dear lady, he thought, if only you knew. ‘Keep it smooth, don’t jerk it, not too high, work the abs not the hip flexors. Try and pull your belly-button to your backbone, flatten out the stomach, no tension in the shoulders, keep the chest open, don’t forget to breathe.’ Forgetting to breathe, now that was a temptation. He saw Sweetheart in his mind’s eye, the perfect joy of being five years old, streaking into school, waving over her shoulder. My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, and I must pause till it come back to me. ‘And eight,’ he counted, ‘and seven …’

  ‘You just hate rich women,’ Blubberlugs taunted, fingers straining half-heartedly towards her thighs.

  ‘Not especially,’ he answered, and wondered what he had said, and why.

  Money crusted over The Cedars like clotted cream coagulated over the surface of the bowl. Every vehicle in the car park was brand new, top of the range, accessorised and alarmed to the roof. Rolex watches were found in the lost property basket and they were never claimed. Every child in the tennis squads had orthodontics worth a socialite’s champagne bill. Every palm in the gym had its leaves wiped by hand every week. The Cappuccino Crew bought the new shoes as soon as his sponsor issued them. His sponsors were impressed with The Cedars, more impressed than with his silver for the single men’s event in the World Aerobic Championships the year before last.

  ‘Rod – you lucky boy, another private client.’ As he checked out, the receptionist handed him the appointment card.

  The card read: 4pm, Mrs E Parsons, 4 Church Vale, Maple Grove, Westwick. There was no telephone number. One private session paid enough for one week’s groceries, or a new pair of jeans, or a party dress for Sweetheart, or one twenty-sixth of one term’s fees at The Magpies. He liked training women, too. They were harder to motivate, but easier to pace; he could usually save his legs. His schedule was getting packed, two classes a day, four days a week and the private clients on top.

  ‘She’s a big TV star,’ the receptionist assured him vaguely, too young to be aware of the universe of daytime television. ‘She comes in sometimes but she’s more of a social member. Play your cards right we’ll be seeing you on TV.’

  ‘Yup,’ he agreed. Just five more years.

  3. Weekly Lectures

  ‘That’s it? That’s the saddest-looking fish you could find?’ Allie Parsons had an indefinable accent, the faintest clip on her words; it could have been Scottish and it gave a patina of sense to whatever she said.

  She prodded the trout’s speckled back with a finger whose nail felt annoyingly unstable. Eleven people cringed back from the Channel Ten conference table, leaving the fish exposed to the storm of her wrath on a tin foil catering platter.

  ‘We thought he definitely looked the most unhappy. I mean, his mouth turned down more than the others.’ Speaking alone in the trout’s defence was Daniel Flynn, also known as The Himbo, co-host of Family First. His eyes almost crossed with the effort of composing his pleading. ‘I mean, all fish look kind of miserable, don’t they? Like they know they’re dead and they’re going to be eaten or something.’

  ‘Precisely – they all look pissed off.’ Allie glared at The Himbo as if he were a new wrinkle in her mirror. ‘On behalf of our viewers – our three and a half million viewers, Daniel – we are testing the pledge made by Magno Hypermarkets to replace any unsatisfactory item purchased in the store unconditionally, however wacky or deranged or psychopathic the reason the customer gives for bringing it back – yes?’ She was exasperated to see Maria, the stand-in weather girl, nod brightly.

  ‘So,’ she proceeded at a sarcastic pitch, ‘we decide to buy a fish and return for the most ridiculous reason we can think of: we’re going to take it back because it looks unhappy. And all you had to do, Daniel, was to pick the most pissed-off looking fish in the store – and you’re telling me that’s it?’

  ‘I thought his eyes looked so sad,’ the trout’s advocate argued wretchedly. ‘If you take a look at him,’ and he reached out for the fish and bent its head around to stare his accuser plaintively in the face, ‘his eyes are almost mournful. Haunted. Like he was going to cry any minute. I mean, he’s really quite tragic. None of the others had sad eyes.’

  ‘And you expect me to go out there in front of millions of viewers and tell them that this, this, is a
sad-looking fish?’ She poked the trout again, the loose nail snagging on a fin. ‘The saddest-looking fish they’ve ever seen? I mean, yes, it looks sad. Absolutely, this is a sad piece of merchandise.’ Between finger and thumb, she picked up the fish and exhibited it to the room. ‘It’s just not sad in the way we need it to be sad, is it Daniel? And who has to make this sad fish work? Who always gets to make the story work around here? Me.’

  She threw the trout back on the platter, sending it skidding down the table to collide with the coffee pot. The team arranged their feces in expressions of contrition, sharing covert eye-rolls as they did it. The weather girl, catching on, buried her nose in her chart folder.

  Eviscerating The Himbo was a ritual. Allie did not work with competition; the only woman on the Family First team was her secretary, and if she could she would have hired a male for that job. Her preferred co-host was a dumb but nice-looking heterosexual boy, emasculated in a style-free hand-knit.

  Allie graciously allowed The Himbo to report the poodle grooming classes, the phallic potatoes, the European Commissioner for women and the environmental stuff. For herself she reserved the bleeding hearts, the transplant babies and the miracle makeovers. Politicians and film stars were shared, but Allie asked the questions and The Himbo reacted. She hired a new Himbo on a year’s contract every September; by March his agent would be snarling like a stoat in a gin-trap. In July The Himbo would leave, usually without trace, although one of them had actually made good in a cable kids show.

  The producer cleared his throat to summon courage. ‘I think on camera, Allie …’

  ‘You’re telling me it’ll work on camera? That fish will look sad on camera?’ Now the finger of damnation was pointing at her producer’s heart. ‘Is that what you’re trying to say?’

  ‘Not exactly, Allie, but I think you’ll find …’ He was a grey, thin, untidy man and it was ten years since he had won an award for investigating the child sex gangs staking out the city train stations. His star withered him with a flick of her wrist, as if she were throwing him bodily away, casting him on the scrap heap already piled high with ex-producers of Family First. Par for this post was eighteen months. Producers were not like Himbos, producers were dangerous, and so Allie’s producers were fired in fusillades of writs and left to weep in the smouldering debris of their careers. If he was lucky, an ex-producer of Family First could end his days in radio. Small-town radio.

  ‘What you’re telling me is that it’ll work on camera because I can make it work, is that right?’

  ‘Allie, you’re—’

  ‘Don’t tell me what I am.’ She had the bee-stung lips of Manet’s ‘Girl at the Bar of the Folies Bergère’, and they surged back into a snarl. She began stalking around the edge of the room. ‘I know what I am, thank you. I am not whatever the tabloids call me. I am not what people in this industry think I am. I am not a star, I am not a prima donna, I am not a superwoman, I am not a killer bimbo on speed, I am not Joan Crawford on a bad hair day, I am not an armour-plated, nut-crushing bitch.’ One by one as she approached them, the nine men and two women sentenced to contracts on Family First turned around, kept their faces blank and said inwardly: oh, yes, you are. ‘Yes! I may have a few awards on the office wall. Yes – this show has topped the ratings every year since I took it over. But all I am is a broadcaster,’ she proceeded in a calmer tone. ‘A trained, experienced broadcaster, a professional. That’s all that I am, and because I’m a goddamn professional …’ At the end of the table was an unoccupied space and she turned to grip the table edge and glare around the room. ‘I’m carrying you guys. I carry you, every day. Every day somebody in urgent need of a brain transplant screws up and every day you all look at me and expect me to ride up like the Seventh Cavalry and save the show. Well, I won’t do it. Not this time. You screwed up, you sort it.’

  ‘Hey, Allie …’ The Himbo had a good nature, but not the ability to understand that this was not a universal blessing. ‘Allie, hey – it’s only a fish. If it’s a problem …’ The group winced as she turned her eyes on him.

  ‘The fish is not the problem, Daniel.’ Stalking back towards him on her stilettoes, she pushed up her jacket sleeves, getting down to work. Today’s colour was pro-consumer cerise. ‘No, the fish is not the problem, Daniel. You’re the problem. You’re a problem because you have lower intelligence than vegetable life. You’re a problem because you are a complete dickhead and I am stuck with you until the end of the series.’

  Papers were strewn over the head of the table, and from among them Allie seized a sheaf of newly opened mail, letting a couple of slit envelopes fall as she did so. ‘You know what this is? All of you, you know what this is? This is my personal mail, and today – let’s see …’ She made a show of scanning the letters. ‘Today, apart from the fan stuff and the woman complaining about the dog story, I got twenty-eight applications for your jobs and of those …’ Theatrically, she began picking out individual sheets of paper and tossing them into a pile beside the trout. ‘Seventeen were for your job, Daniel. Seventeen guys out there want your job today. Maybe eighty or ninety want your job this week. It would be a safe bet that at least eighty men will beg me for your job this week, Daniel, they will beg. And you can’t find me a sad-looking fish.’

  In as far as a man can when he has benefitted from multiple applications of self-tanning gel, The Himbo’s face turned grey. ‘I … do you … are you …’

  ‘I’m asking for a better fish, Daniel.’ Now the voice, was pitched low, grinding like a glacier. ‘Just get me a better fish. You’ve got half an hour.’ She turned and left the room. Her secretary, well rehearsed, shovelled the papers into her briefcase and followed. The smell of make-up lingered in general reproach.

  ‘Whew.’ All around the table, people stretched, sighed and loosed their collars. Daniel got up and went to the window for the illusion of fresh air; there were no opening windows in the Channel Ten building. ‘Wow. I never thought she’d chuck an eppy over the fish.’

  ‘Does she often behave like that?’ The weather girl felt like going over to lay a comforting hand on one of the rumpsteak-like protrusions under The Himbo’s shirt but hesitated, uncertain if that would be politically wise and not willing to consult her copy of Machiavelli For Women in public.

  ‘Krakatoa’s always smoking round here. You never know what’ll set her off.’ The senior researcher was already reaching for the telephone. ‘Only that something will. That one was off the scale. Wowee.’

  ‘I couldn’t believe her language.’

  ‘Well, my dear, you’d better starting expanding your understanding of the universe right now because the truth is out there and it’s worse than that. Is that Magno Hypermarkets? This is Family First at Channel Ten, put me through to your public relations office, it’s urgent.’

  ‘My-name-is-Maria,’ the weather girl catechised, blinking hard. ‘Do-you-feel-terms-of-affection-are-appropriate-in-the-workplace?’

  The secretary returned. ‘Allie says get a selection in and she’ll choose the one she wants herself.’

  In her dressing room, Allie sat uncomfortably on the edge of a chair with her hands spread on board. ‘You’ve got an hour,’ she told the waiting make-up artist.

  ‘It’s more like two to strip and reapply,’ the cosmetician ventured.

  ‘Then hurry,’ was her reply.

  Fumes of solvent filled the room. Allie crossed her legs, wriggled in her seat, twisted one ankle behind the other, and sighed. She was used to suffering for her profession. Taking off the jacket meant the risk of ruining the manicure when it was resumed, so she had to keep it on and sit upright to stop it creasing and hold her arms right away from her body in case of accidents.

  Her vacant eyes were turned up to the monitor showing Israeli bombing-raid debris on CNN but her mind was running on Stephanie Sands. On hearing from Lauren Pike that Stewart Sands was a kidnap victim, Allie had gone directly to New Farm Rise with a bouquet of Casablanca lilies, anticipating an e
xclusive for Family First. Instead, her Westwick friend had pulled the delicate flower number, the fluttery fingers and the wispy hair. ‘I couldn’t, Allie, how could I? Go on TV and talk about Stewart? I’d die before I got two words out. Besides, the Foreign Office wouldn‘t like it, I know they wouldn’t.’

  Allie retired, offended. What right had Stephanie to be drifting tearily around after that chubby kid of hers when she was a kidnap wife and belonged on TV? She imagined Stephanie on the studio sofa, dabbing tears off the end of her nose. So demure, so big-eyed and soft-voiced and … decent. Boss would eat her up – maybe literally, she must be gagging for sex by now. How long had it been, two weeks? There was something wrong with her, there had to be. She really should get that nose done. The fucking woman could weep over a dead daisy, so what was her problem with Family First?

  Allie chewed her top lip. Other people’s stupidity offended her. Didn’t the dear girl realise that this was it, her Andy Warhol portion? Gardens for kiddies, who’d remember that? Kidnap victim husband, now that was cool, that was great. She could not turn this down. She was holding out, that was all. Money. Money or spite. Allie never understood it, but sometimes this thing happened and people got malicious or perverse and just refused to give her what she wanted. But she’d keep working on it. Geography was destiny. A story that big just a short spit from her own doorstep – it had to be.

  An hour and a half later, two crates of assorted fish packed in ice were carried into the studio kitchen under the supervision of the senior wet fish buyer and the public relations director for the south-eastern division of Magno. Allie Parsons was invited to leave her dressing room, where the manicurist had just completed the operation of stripping off, reapplying and revarnishing her acrylic nails in cerise to tone with the jacket, and select the fish with which she wished to appear.