by Ben Foster
That feeling of low self-esteem was something I had suffered all through my childhood. When I was eight, my father was dragged overboard by the nets and drowned before the rest of the crew could pull him back on board the boat. When I returned to school in September, I found it hard to concentrate and was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. It was fashionable to label kids with ADHD at the time. It marked me like a tattoo in school and still, at the age of thirty, one particular incident continued to come back into my mind.
Miss Pelham was our class mistress, as well as our arts and crafts teacher. She was a middle-aged lady with small bright eyes behind rimless glasses. She wore a cameo brooch to fasten her high-necked blouses and her hair was always tied back with a tartan ribbon that matched her tartan skirt. She liked girls because they were neat and polite. She didn’t like little boys because we were noisy and clumsy with scabby knees and shirts hanging out of our trousers. I was the biggest boy in the class, gangly and awkward. I had started to stammer and Miss Pelham seemed to delight in asking me confusing questions so that she could then lean forward with her two hands cupping her ears as if in an attempt to gather in the words spluttering from my mouth.
At the end of the year, we were introduced to sculpting clay and made ceramic figures for Christmas presents. Most of the children made angels, shepherds, the Virgin Mary or Father Christmas. I decided to make a fisherman for my mum. I’m not sure what went wrong. My hulking creation was grand and ambitious, the largest by far. I was the last to finish and the clay figure was still moist when it went into the kiln. When our precious objects came back shiny with glaze, my fisherman was hunched forward with long arms and a small head. Miss Pelham took it from the tray and balanced it in her palms for everyone to see.
‘What’s this?’ she asked.
‘It’s a, it’s a fish, fish, fish, fisherman,’ I stuttered.
‘I thought it was a monkey,’ she said.
All the children in the class laughed.
‘You’d better not take it home, Ben, it will frighten the life out of your poor mother.’
She opened her palms and let my figurine fall to the floor where it broke into countless pieces.
I had told mum I was making her a fisherman in the arts and craft class, but I never told her what had happened to it. It was too ashamed. The experience was humiliating and long lasting. It killed what little confidence I had and shaped my understanding of how the world works.
It was years later when I started my first massage course that I discovered that I had never had ADHD. Like many children of eight, I only concentrated when I had a teacher who made the subject interesting and inspired the class. Many people ask themselves when they look back why they didn’t work harder at school, why they didn’t do the homework and pass the exams. They blame themselves, when it is not their fault. You don’t make these life-changing decisions when you are eight.
Children are wet clay and it is up to teachers and parents to show them what they can make of themselves. In underfunded and failing schools with underpaid, overburdened teachers, opportunity is in short supply. No one was going to inspire my children except Kelly and me. Whatever potential Ollie, George and Claire had, I intended to do everything I could to encourage them to reach that potential.
Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.
As I arrived home, a blue Mercedes van pulled away from outside the house and I slipped straight into the vacant spot. That’s what positive thinking does for you. I let myself in and found Kelly and the kids standing in the living room gazing at the piles of boxes filling every space. The children were teary-eyed and it broke my heart to see their sad little faces. It was like Christmas except every present in the room was for me.
‘You’re not serious, are you?’ Kelly said.
‘What?’
‘Hugo Boss. Tom Ford. Giorgio Armani. Only the best for Ben?’
‘That’s just the labels. They’re all fakes.’
‘I didn’t know fakes came in boxes and suit bags.’ She shook her head. ‘Why did you get so much?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know?’
‘The image I convey is the image customers take away from Southley.’ It was something Bethany had said. ‘I have to look the biz.’
‘Why all the suits?’ She counted. ‘Men buy one suit. There are six here. Look at these shirts. I’ve never seen anything like it. And the ties.’
‘I’m going to have to go to receptions, that sort of thing. All the people are rich. They expect it.’
‘Yeah, but you’re not rich. Bloody hell, Ben, what’s wrong with you?’
‘Nothing’s wrong with me . . . ’
Her eyes swooped down on the Curry’s bag I was carrying.
‘What’s that?’
‘A laptop.’
‘Is that for your image as well?’
‘As a matter of fact, it’s not for me. I only check emails. It’s for everyone. It’s so Ollie can learn . . . ’
‘Is it for me, dad?’
‘It’s for everyone,’ I told him.
‘You’re getting in over your neck,’ Kelly said. She had her hands on her hips. Her eyes narrowed. ‘We don’t want to lose the house, Ben. We’ve got three kids, for Christ sake.’
‘We’re not going to lose the house. I’ve got a new job, more money. Everything’s going great. Don’t ruin it.’
I must have raised my voice. Claire started crying. ‘No, no, no,’ she sobbed, and Kelly picked her up.
‘Pizza, dad,’ George reminded me, and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
I followed Kelly to the kitchen.
‘Don’t ruin it, Kells. Be positive. Everything’s all right. Everything. Just give me a chance.’
‘Don’t forget who you are, Ben.’
‘It’s not for me, it’s for us.’
Ollie and George were peeking around the door. We didn’t argue often but it upset them when we did.
‘I want the children to have a decent start. I want them to have all the things we didn’t have . . . ’
‘That’s why you need six suits, is it?’
‘Forget the damn suits. They’re just suits.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Look, I’m not going to argue. I’m going out for a run. Then we’re all going out for pizza.’
I winked at my boys and they punched the air.
15
WHAT CLOTHES SAY
There was a shift in Rufus’s attitude when I gave him his weekly massage on Friday. Was it my new clothes? Was I more confident? It was difficult to put my finger on it exactly, but something had changed, and for the better.
It was change, too, that was needed in Rufus’s treatment. I had meant to tell him for a long time that his back pain was caused in part by bad posture. But Rufus always kept a distance between us and I had never found a way to bridge the gap. He was sitting hunched over on the side of the massage table in his boxers.
‘Rufus, are you aware that you slouch?’
‘What?’
‘I saw you riding last week. You were leaning awkwardly to one side. You looked as if you were trying to keep balance.’
‘You don’t ride, so how would you know?’
‘That’s the whole point of massage, it’s to keep your body in balance. Your shoulders are hunched up even now.’
‘That’s just the way I’m sitting.’
‘It’s not the way you’re sitting. It’s your posture.’ I remembered something I had read. ‘Imagine there’s a piece of string hooked to the top of your skull being pulled up into the universe. It would hold you erect. That’s how you should be at all times.’
‘So what you’re saying is I need surgery to have a hook implant?’
‘No, you need a different treatment. I’m going to try Rolfing . . . ’
‘What?’
‘It’s a deep massage. Every time we have a session, I’ll work on a different set
of muscle groups.’
‘You’re the so-called expert.’
‘One more thing, no oil,’ I explained. ‘With oil it’s harder to penetrate beyond the surface. Today we’re going deeper.’
He gave me a long hard look. ‘It’s taken you long enough,’ he said, then rolled over.
‘Hold your breath for a count of ten.’
I flexed my fingers and began on Rufus’s lower back.
Rolfing literally takes the therapist under the skin of the patient by working the soft tissue that holds the muscles in place. The process was developed in the 1950s by Ida Rolf, who treated musicians and athletes suffering RSI, repetitive strain injury. Rufus did have back pain, but self-inflicted by a combination of bad posture and the RSI of lying about doing nothing. A course of Rolfing sessions would realign his muscles. Once his posture improved, the back pain would ease.
Another benefit of Rolfing, as with all massage, is once the body is in balance, you are less likely to become tight or tense from minor pressures, or injured through everyday activities like bending or turning from the front seat of a car to reach into the back, a major cause of neck and shoulder strains.
Rufus groaned in pain a few times during the session, but left the table without complaint and stepped straight into the shower when I had finished. I folded my kit and stared out at the grounds. I could see the horses in the field off to the left. A red BMW was parked behind my car on the drive, the gravel shiny as a streak of white paint across the green landscape. The Met Office had said it had been the hottest July on record and it didn’t look as if the heat wave was ever going to end.
Rufus returned, brushing his hair with his hands. He was casual in shorts, a shirt with bold blue stripes and old loafers with the backs pushed down.
I told him I was starting work at Southley. Naturally, he knew the spa and didn’t appear to mind that I would have to fit our sessions into my new schedule. Rufus had always behaved as if he was doing me a favour booking a massage. That day, for the first time, he said he really felt a difference from the treatment and placed the fee in my hand, not on the table.
‘Still £25?’ he said.
‘It’s going to have to go up soon,’ I replied with a surge of courage.
‘I’ll tell you what, Ben, next time we’ll make it £50. Is that all right?’
‘It’s a deal,’ I said, and he returned a rare smile.
All those months when I had spent two hours in the car and an hour bending over the massage table for £25, he probably couldn’t believe I had never asked for an increase. I had always felt victimized by Rufus. But it was my own deficiencies that had made me afraid to put up my prices. That and the fact that £25 had made a big difference to our weekly budget. It was my own fault.
Until you have formed the habit of looking for the good instead of the bad in others, you will be neither successful nor happy.
I followed Rufus downstairs, and was shocked to find Rudy Johnson waiting in the Great Hall. Not only that he was there, but the coincidence that I had just been thinking about Napoleon Hill.
Rudy was studying a red-coated general in a gold frame on the wall. He turned with a beaming smile and we shook hands.
‘Looking good, man,’ he said.
‘You’re looking even better,’ I replied, and we laughed.
Rudy looked you straight in the eye and you thought: I want to be friends with this man. He was dressed in a white shirt, blue chinos and slip-ons with buckles. I was six inches taller than Rudy, but the way he stood, shoulders back with his feet apart, I felt as if I was looking up at him. Something Rudy had said once had stuck in my mind: there is no such thing as lucky and unlucky people, only positive and negative people. It was Rudy who had given me the audio book I played every day in the car.
‘By the way, you remember that CD you gave me . . . ’
‘Napoleon Hill.’
‘I was thinking about something he said a moment ago. Then I walk in and here you are.’
‘Synchronicity? Serendipity? Collective consciousness?’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘There’s not more going on in here than we imagine. There’s more going on than we can imagine.’
‘Sometimes less than we imagine?’ Rufus said in his deep voice, and we laughed.
I usually watched myself and checked myself to make sure I didn’t do or say anything out of place. It makes you stilted, unnatural, a bore. It was either Rufus’s changed attitude towards me, or the epic energy created by Rudy, but for once I felt at ease in my own skin. After the hand shaking, it was clear that Rudy was there to talk business.
‘Good to see you again,’ I said. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’
‘Are you in a rush?’ he asked and I shrugged.
‘No, but you guys want to talk.’
Rudy shot Rufus one of his powerful stares. ‘Do you mind if Ben sits in on this? It might be useful.’
Rufus tensed up. Having money is one thing. Talking about it made him nervous. He twitched and ran his hand through his fine hair.
‘No, I suppose not.’
Rudy dropped down on the grey sofa facing the walk-in fireplace and we sat either side of him on wine red armchairs. The girl in pink gingham materialized with a pot of mint tea and a plate of ginger snaps. I had not seen Rufus ask for anything, but had a feeling that servants in great houses are all mind readers.
I poured the tea.
As a mortgage broker, Rudy acted as a middleman between the person needing credit and the bank or mortgage lender. He assembled the borrower’s financial and personal details and charged a fee for organizing the loan.
As they talked, a question welled up inside me and I couldn’t stop myself asking.
‘It’s obviously none of my business, Rufus,’ I said. ‘But why do you need to get a loan?’
The cup he was holding froze before it reached his lips. Rudy answered for him.
‘It’s what rich people do,’ he explained. ‘If you’ve got capital, you make it work for you. Capital’s hard to get. And harder to keep. Once you’ve got it, you don’t use it unless some amazing opportunity appears.’
‘Oh, really. Like what?’ Rufus asked him.
He sat back and crossed his legs. He was perfectly relaxed, totally undaunted by the generals with their swords surrounding us on the walls. Rudy didn’t have Rufus’s reluctance to talk about money, quite the contrary.
‘My first house in the country belonged to an Italian diplomat,’ Rudy answered. ‘There was some scandal or other. He was transferred and had to sell up and get out quick. He wanted seven-fifty. I’d built up some savings. I went to the bank for a bridging loan and offered the guy five hundred thousand. He took the cash. I flipped the property for seven hundred in two months and bought the place I’ve got now.’
Two hundred thousand pounds profit in two months. I swallowed hard as I thought about it. Rudy was smart. Now, I was determined to get smarter.
‘Opportunities are out there.’ He grabbed at the air. ‘You have to recognise chances when they appear.’
‘I’ve been waiting all my life and they still haven’t appeared,’ Rufus grumbled.
‘Ah, but you weren’t born with the advantage of my disadvantages.’
‘What?’
‘My black daddy left when I was three and went back to Jamaica. Mammy was an alcoholic. So was her new companion. Billy. He was a dustman, a really big guy with big hands. Every weekend, they’d drink away his wages. When they’d spent it all, every penny, he got mad because there was no more money for drink. Nothing for the bills. Nothing to buy food. We moved every three or four months because they never paid the rent. Those things made Billy angry, and when Billy got angry he swung his fists at anything that moved.’
‘He hit you?’
Rudy leaned forward. ‘Me. Mammy. The wall. If you got in the way when Billy was drunk, you got a hiding. I had to learn how to duck and dive. How to look after myself. Every adversity, every failure, and every heartache, carries
with it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit,’ he said, and looked at me.
‘Napoleon Hill?’
‘He’s the man.’ He grinned. ‘You have to learn how to turn life’s disadvantages into advantages. Once I realised no one was going to help me, it was liberating. The only path open to me was to help myself.’
‘Well, you’re doing bloody well at it,’ Rufus said.
We drank our tea and ate the ginger snaps.
‘Money’s flexible.’ Rudy demonstrated with his hands, moulding the air. ‘It’s like the tide. It comes and goes. It grows and shrinks. You think Harvey Weinstein uses his own money when he makes a film? He doesn’t. He uses the investors’ money. Rufus is buying another buy-to-let flat, the seventh isn’t it?’
‘Eighth,’ Rufus corrected.
‘The renters will pay off the loan and Rufus still has his capital for when the big chance comes along.’ He shot Rufus a beaming smile. ‘Keep your eyes wide, it’s out there.’
‘As long as you don’t grab it first.’
Rudy laughed. ‘I will if you let me,’ he said, and glanced back at me. ‘What’s needed is a long-term strategy and the ability to make decisions quickly. The poor are always spending their money enjoying themselves because they never know when they’re going to have full pockets again. What we have to do is learn to think like the rich. There’s a housing shortage. Prices are going up and they are going to keep on going up. If you don’t get on the ladder, you’ll be left hanging.’
Rudy Johnson gave me a look like a laser beam and then smiled. It was a great smile. He knew that and used it to make others feel good. His smile made you smile and all’s well with the world when everyone’s smiling.
‘I’d better leave you to it,’ I said, and stood.
Rudy jumped to his feet and gave me his business card.
‘You need anything, just give me a call.’
I left them to complete their business and drove back to Twickenham thinking about everything Rudy had said. I wondered if it had all just been a pitch to make sure I went to him if I ever needed a mortgage. Not that I imagined I ever would. But that was negative thinking – negative on both counts. You have to look for the best in people and you have to believe that, one day, you’re going to buy your own home. Rudy was giving me a life lesson because he knew I needed it. As to why Rufus required a mortgage to buy property, his money was probably locked away in an offshore trust.