Prime Time

by Jane Wenham-Jones

  I’d tried not having any in the house but Stanley had been mutinous and Charlotte, upon finding the cupboard was bare, simply turned straight round again and went out and bought some.

  This afternoon she’d brought them with her, not trusting me to have a decent supply, and was morosely eating her seventh garibaldi, while I stared into middle distance, reliving the delicious conversation I’d just had with Cal.

  ‘Things are really tough out there,’ she was saying. ‘I mean, I know there’s a bloody credit crunch on but I was still sure I’d sell that place in Harbour Street quickly. It is seriously fabulous inside and he’s knocked almost a hundred grand off the price. I’d bloody buy it myself if I had the money. I even asked Roger if we could get a loan. But he’s still being very peculiar of course. Wouldn’t even discuss it!’

  She looked at me expectantly and I dragged myself back to the present. ‘I didn’t think there were any loans,’ I said vaguely. Cal’s coming down tomorrow to do some more filming. He said he’s really looking forward to it …

  ‘I’m sure there are if you know where to go,’ said Charlotte crossly. ‘I’ve decided it’s definitely a mid-life crisis. You know, he’s reading some very odd books at the moment …’

  He’s been thinking about me a lot and there’s something special he wants to discuss with me …

  ‘Like what?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know what it was called but I read the back cover, and it was some poncy-sounding “relationships” effort. You know the sort of thing–’ She pulled a comic face and adopted a faux intellectual tone. ‘This deeply complex novel examines the frailty of modern liaisons, challenging at the deepest levels our common perceptions of love and marriage with a unique insight into the human psyche that is both uplifting and disturbing …’ Charlotte gave a loud and magnificent snort. ‘This is a man who reads wall-to-wall Jeffery Archer or James Patterson and used to take the piss out of me for liking Joanna Trollope. He said someone at work recommended it.’

  I snapped out of the daydream where the “something special” was Cal’s overwhelming desire to take me away to a deserted island in the Bahamas for two weeks, and gaped at her. ‘Really? Who?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Charlotte impatiently. ‘You know how weird they all are. Well, you don’t, but you’ll see for yourself next week.’ She suddenly looked at me hard. ‘It’s not just Roger – there’s something funny about you too. You’ve got a really odd expression on your face – and it’s not just because your eyebrows are three inches too high. Have you shagged this Cal bloke and neglected to tell me?’

  I gave myself a shake. ‘No, of course I haven’t. I wouldn’t mind though …’ I said, in a lame attempt at humour. ‘But as I‘ve told you before, I’m old enough to be his mother. Well, not quite …’

  Charlotte was still scrutinising me keenly. ‘So how old is he again?’

  ‘Twenty-eight.’

  ‘Oh well, that’s OK, then. Older women are all the rage now – I was reading about it. He should be bloody grateful a gorgeous woman like you might want to teach him a thing or two.’ She wasn’t smiling.

  ‘Come off it,’ I said, embarrassed.

  ‘But,’ said Charlotte, with sudden fervour, ‘you can do better than some shallow youth from a TV company. Bet he spends more time looking at himself in the mirror than at you.’

  ‘No,’ I said at once. ‘He’s not like that at all. He’s really sweet and not shallow either – he’s terribly clever. He was telling me on the phone this afternoon about this production of King Lear he worked on when he was a student and how it totally turned all the preconceptions about false love and vanity on their heads and made him realise that, in fact –’

  I stopped as Charlotte put down her coffee cup and stood up. ‘Hmm, very interesting I’m sure.’

  ‘Anyway,’ I burbled, ‘they’re coming to do the next lot of filming tomorrow and I’m supposed to have lost weight. Do you think my arms look better?’ I held them up for her inspection.

  Charlotte picked up her handbag. ‘Sorry, love, they just look like arms to me.’

  Clara understood.

  ‘Ha! Another pound gone,’ I cried triumphantly, as I jumped off the gym scales and braced myself for what we now termed “the nasty steps”.

  ‘I’m not weighing myself till the weekend,’ said Clara, wiping at her face with a towel. ‘And it had better be good when I do. I haven’t had any alcohol for ten days, no biscuits, no chocolate, no cocktail pork pies. If I haven’t lost at least half a stone, I am going to seriously consider killing myself.’

  ‘You look visibly smaller to me,’ I said encouragingly. ‘You really do – that T-shirt is much looser than it was when I first met you.’

  ‘You look thinner too,’ said Clara. ‘Especially on your upper arms.’

  We both examined them. ‘After all the bloody weights I’ve lifted I should think so.’

  I turned sideways so she could assess how much my stomach was sticking out. ‘I’m still not what you would call skinny, am I?’

  ‘No,’ admitted Clara, ‘but would you really want to be? Do you want to look like that?’ We both turned to gaze at the now really skinny woman, running as usual on the treadmill, who Clara had found out was called Annabel. ‘She’s getting that lollipop look,’ said Clara. ‘I’m sure she’s anorexic.’ We both sniffed.

  ‘Do I really look a bit thinner all over, though?’ I said anxiously. ‘They’re filming me here again tonight and I’m supposed to look as though “the regime” has started to work.’

  ‘Yes, you do and ooh, what time? Perhaps I can pop in on my way to work.’ Clara beamed. ‘I want to see this sexy young director of yours.’

  I shook my head, trying to pretend I wasn’t longing to as well. ‘He’s not mine, unfortunately. Though he is lovely.’

  ‘Well, get in there, then.’

  I laughed a bit too loudly. ‘He’s a bit young …’ I pushed away the memory of his smile, and the way he’d called me “babe”.

  ‘It’s all the rage to have a toy boy,’ said Clara.

  ‘I don’t think he sees me like that,’ I said firmly. ‘It’s purely professional.’

  Though, if anything, Cal seemed even more affectionate this time – he gave me a big hug when he arrived and draped an arm around my shoulders as we went up the stairs to the studios.

  ‘I’ve had a word with them at reception,’ he said, ‘and they’re happy for us to film you doing a little bit of each class. There’s yoga at six, and a step class at the same time and then afterwards there’s “On the Ball” and a dance group. So if you can join in for about 15 or 20 minutes of each – and change your top in between? Did you remember to bring some different gym clothes?’

  I nodded, and he squeezed my shoulder. ‘Well done. You’re so great to work with. And later,’ he added, with a melting smile. ‘I’m taking you out to dinner.’

  A collection of women in leotards and yoga trousers looked at me curiously as the cameras were set up around my mat. Cal smiled at them all. ‘Thank you so much, ladies, and my apologies for any disturbance. Please try to ignore us and enjoy your class.’

  I watched them wilt under his charms as we waited for the instructor to arrive. He was small and dark with a soft, sing-song voice that I could barely hear.

  As we all lay down and began waving our arms around, I kept my eyes firmly on the woman next to me, so I could see what I was supposed to be doing, trying to ignore the fact that there was a large microphone by my left ear and a camera hovering above me.

  ‘Lift your left leg uuuuppppp …’

  The small man’s own limbs looked as though they were made of rubber. He sat in a lotus position in front of us, his feet curled in impossible balls, while instructing us how to breathe deeply with one finger against the side of our nose.

  I was beginning to feel a bit twitchy, rather than chilled out and relaxed. The bloke’s voice was getting on my nerves and breathing through only one nostril w
as making me tense. ‘And-the-other-oooonnnneee …’

  I closed the other nostril and breathed a bit more.

  ‘Now put your fingers in both ears, and …’

  I took my fingers out again. What?

  ‘Buzz like a bee,’ hissed the woman next to me. I looked about. All around me the women were making a strange humming sound deep in their throats. Our bendy little instructor was the loudest of them all.

  I closed my eyes and made a noise too – it resonated around my head and vibrated down my neck in a not unpleasant way. After a while I stopped and opened my eyes. Everyone else was still going.

  The room was full of droning hums. The woman next to me was rocking and buzzing, her eyes screwed tight shut, her head rolling – obviously well into whatever it was supposed to be doing for her.

  I shut my eyes again and buzzed a bit more. The noise filled my head and was strangely relaxing. I felt my shoulders drop, as the noise rose up from my chest in soothing waves. I wondered where Cal and I would go for dinner. Did he mean just me and him or would everyone come? Matt and Russ were here, of course. And Tanya. Being her usual cheery self …

  Buzzzzzzzzzzz . I could almost curl up on this mat and go to sleep now but it was probably time to open my eyes again –

  I looked up. Everyone else had stopped and was sitting on their mat, watching me. There was a camera about six inches from my nose – Matt grinning behind it. I gazed wildly around the room at a series of amused expressions. Oh God, how long had I been buzzing on my own?

  As I sat there, scarlet, our teacher went into a set of praying, bowing movements and they all began flapping their arms up and down. Cal nodded at me to do it too so I stretched my arms out until my forehead was on the floor, glad to hide my hot face.

  He put an arm around my shoulders once I’d got up. ‘That was great,’ he said, obviously struggling to keep his features under control, while Russ and Matt stood openly grinning. ‘Very good.’

  I cringed. ‘I feel a complete prune.’

  ‘You were fine.’

  ‘What, buzzing away on my own like a demented wasp?’

  Cal smiled. ‘We probably won’t use it – we do all this filming but only a tiny proportion actually ends up in the programme. And it doesn’t matter – shows how you were really receptive to what you were doing. It was great – honestly. ‘Now, the step class is full, so have a breather and we’ll go into “On the Ball”. Looks like fun. You don’t have to do all of it,’ he said soothingly as I groaned. ‘Just give us a taste.’

  The class was run by Marlena, a dramatic-looking 40-year old with a tight Lycra top, bright red lipstick, and very shiny black hair. ‘Are we ready to have fun?’ she cried through her microphone, nearly taking my ear drums out. ‘Are we ready to work?’ She darted across the room and hit a switch on the CD player. ‘We’re going to work!

  ‘Grab those balls, ladies,’ she yelled like a manic redcoat. ‘And gentleman,’ she added with a high, cackling laugh in the direction of the lone man in the room – a round faced bloke in his 50s with thinning hair and a T-shirt saying Not Out, Still Scoring.

  Most of the big, squashy balls were blue. I took the only orange one. ‘Beryl usually has that,’ said a voice in my ear. Beryl also clearly had the place in the middle of the room right in front of Marlena, with her two blonde-rinsed, pearl-earringed, neat-tracksuited friends either side. The three of them – looking like the Broadstairs answer to the Golden Girls – glared when Cal directed me into a similar position. And exchanged nods of satisfaction when I sat on my ball and promptly fell off it.

  Sitting was the easy bit. By the time we’d bounced up and down on the ball, laid on the floor and pushed it up and down between our legs, done press-ups, sit-ups and something excruciating involving one of the Beryls squatting on my ankles, I was unable to move, let alone speak.

  Cal seemed to have disappeared. Matt and Russ were packing up all the camera gear.

  The music was still blaring. ‘On your feet,’ cried Marlena. ‘And it’s jack jumps!’ As the room propelled themselves upwards, arms flailing, I hobbled toward the door, glancing at myself in the mirrored wall as I went.

  My hair was flattened to my head. The make-up I’d carefully layered on earlier in order to look cool and alluring was smudged and streaked. I was red, sweaty, and exhausted.

  Outside in the corridor, Tanya had arrived and was on the phone. She nodded hello, giving me an amused look. ‘Yeah, doing this gym stuff,’ I heard her say to whoever was on the line. ‘It’s hysterical.’

  Glad you find it so entertaining, I thought sourly, as I sat in the changing room, towel wrapped round me, trying to do something with the gym hairdryer and without Antonio’s magic clay stuff that I’d forgotten. I wondered what Tanya actually did to contribute to anything – so far all I’d ever seen her do was make phone calls and drink Diet Coke.

  She was nowhere to be seen when I’d finally changed into jeans and my most slimming stretchy black top and joined Cal and the others in the café area for the “feedback” session.

  ‘We just want you to talk about how you’re feeling about your new exercise plan,’ said Cal. ‘And then we’d like some extra shots of you speaking to your personal coach about it.’

  I was by now an old hand. As the camera was set up around one of the tables I held forth about my new-found enthusiasm for the cross-trainer, listened to some advice from Nicola about increasing the amount of time I spent in cardio-vascular activity to enhance fat-burning and then engaged in some fervent “noddies” – the extra bits of film they used for cutaways, whereby I nodded at Nicola as if she were talking to me and then she did the same to me, feeling suitably proud and film star-like as various gym-goers watched from afar. I was now able to look dismayed/fascinated/disbelieving/joyful on cue.

  ‘I really can feel a difference,’ I proclaimed for the third time, sounding like a TV ad.

  ‘OK, we’re done!’ Cal kissed me on both cheeks. ‘You’re a natural.’

  I went to collect my stuff from the changing room and put some more make-up on. When I came back, Tanya, Russ, and Matt were outside smoking. I could see the glow of their cigarette ends in the darkness. Cal was waiting for me inside the glass doors, wearing a soft grey jacket over his open-necked white shirt and jeans. His hair was a bit longer than last time, I noticed now. It curled against his collar.

  He gave me a big smile. ‘So can you recommend somewhere good to eat?’

  Tanya came back through the doors as he said it. ‘You coming with us?’ he asked her.

  She ran a hand through her spiky hair and shook her head. ‘I’m going back to town with the guys,’ she said sharply. ‘I’m hitting Kay’s party later with Len.’

  For a moment I thought Cal looked irritated then he shrugged. ‘OK. Have a good time.’

  Tanya turned on her heel and strode back outside again.

  ‘Is she OK?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, she’s fine.’ Cal smiled again. ‘Just having one of her strops.’

  Probably because she never ate anything, I thought, as I got into Cal’s dark blue BMW. Low blood sugar could make you bad-tempered. Stanley was the same – when he was a small child I’d carried biscuits in my handbag in case he threw a tantrum and I needed to get him in a half-nelson and ram one of them into his mouth. I grinned at the memory of how he would be instantly wreathed in smiles.

  ‘You look happy.’ Cal swung out of the gym car park. ‘And I must say you look amazing too. I can’t believe how much weight you’ve lost.’

  ‘It’s only a few pounds,’ I said self-consciously.

  ‘Well, the effect’s terrific.’

  I might lose even more at this rate. I was strangely un-hungry myself despite not having eaten for hours. Finally being all alone with Cal had left my stomach ridiculously fluttery and I couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

  Fortunately, he talked. By the time we reached the bottom of Broadstairs High Street I knew he’d read English with Fil
m Studies at Warwick, had a garden flat in Clapham and an older brother who was a photographer. He’d briefly worked as a production assistant on Big Brother but found it “very manipulative” and had high hopes of our film giving him a name in the industry and leading on to greater things.

  ‘Who knows, maybe we’ll do something together again one day.’ he said casually, as we turned into Albion Street. ‘Where do I park?’

  I’d suggested we went to Greens because it was the first place that came into my head and because at least I could just have something snacky like hummus and pitta bread – except that I’d have to demonstrate my eschewal of all things carbohydrate so it would be hummus and hummus – and the wine bar was friendly and relaxed and a bit more trendy than some of the other proper restaurants and, if I was totally honest, I wanted to show Cal off to Sarah.

  She didn’t disappoint me. ‘Mmm,’ she said under her breath as I went to the bar for menus, leaving Cal at the table in the window. ‘Where did you get him from?’ I told her about the documentary and she raised her eyebrows in admiration. ‘Lucky you! I must say you’re looking ever so well – I love your hair – and very slim!’

  I patted my stomach. ‘I’m wearing those jeans that hold it all in. But yes, I have lost a bit – been sweating it out in the gym.’

  ‘I keep thinking I should do that,’ said Sarah. ‘But then I get all the exercise I need in this place running up and down the bloody stairs to the kitchen.’ She laughed. ‘You could crack nuts between my thighs!’

  There was a pop as she uncorked a bottle of Macon Blanc Villages.

  ‘How’s Stanley now?’ said Sarah, putting two glasses in front of me. ‘Has he settled down?’

  ‘I think so,’ I said. ‘Although he does get anxious – especially about his weight. I mean he is a bit chubby I suppose, but he’s hardly obese …’

  Sarah shook her head. ‘You really shouldn’t worry. He’s only 11 isn’t he?’