Push Hands

by Michael Graeme

  "It must be. You've been there for ever! I bet you don't go moaning to Sally about it though."

  "I don't want to add to her problems, Richie. Anyway, look I came to ask you if you knew anything about Tai Chi."

  Richie stroked his beard thoughtfully. "Curiouser and curiouser," he said. "First you tell me you're having acupuncture, and now you want to know about Tai Chi. What does Sally think of all this?"

  "I don't know. I've not told her about the Tai Chi yet. As for the acupuncture, she just says it's expensive and I'll have to stop going soon."

  "But is it working?"

  Phil sighed. "Not yet. But I'm feeling better in other ways - more relaxed and not as tired all the time. The kids don't wind me up like they used to do either. I'd really like to keep going - it's not that we can't afford it, it's just that Sal doesn't believe in that sort of thing. So far as she's concerned it can't possibly be working and it's a complete waste of money. But what about this Tai Chi thing, Richie? Have you heard of it?"

  "Well, it's like slow motion exercises, a martial art sort of thing. You see people doing it in China in the parks of a morning. Something to do with Chi."

  "Chi? Doctor Lin mentioned Chi, but I don't get it."

  "It's like a life force, vital energy - it doesn't exist as far as us rational westerners are concerned, but it must exist really, otherwise your acupuncture wouldn't be working."

  "I'm not sure it is working. I've only had one session. The other times it's been herbs and massage."

  "Well something's changed. I've never seen you looking so well. Last time I saw you I thought Sally wasn't feeding you or something."

  "You really think I look okay? I do feel better. So you think I should do it, this Tai Chi?"

  "Why not? If nothing else it'll get you out of the house."

  "I don't know what to tell Sally, though."

  "Tell Sally it will save you some money on the acupuncture - that you won't need as many sessions. Put it like that and she can't refuse."

  "I don't know. That sounds a bit deceitful."

  "What's deceitful about it? Anyway, I thought that's what marriage was all about: deceit. Otherwise you'd never get along."

  "As if you'd know, never having been married."

  "And looking at you creeping around on eggshells all the time, I know why not. Seriously, Phil, you both seem afraid of being who you really are in case the other person doesn't like it - both of you afraid to change in case it rocks the boat too much, so you're both trapped into being something you're not, and all because you imagine the other person prefers you that way."

  Phil nodded. His brother looked ridiculous, and let's face it, he enjoyed looking ridiculous, enjoyed playing up to the stereotype, enjoyed being childish. But he was wise, and relaxed and cool in his own way, and Phil had always admired him for it. Except Richie wasn't happy. Sure he was relaxed and cool - but he was also lonely. But then wasn't Phil lonely too?

  "So what's a bloke to do then, Rich? Leave as soon as the going gets tough. Hurt three people for the sake of making your own life a little easier?"

  "People say its better for the kids in the long term if you cut and run early on."

  "They do say that don't they? But it's bollocks. Okay, it's not going to do a child any good if he sees his parents slagging each other off all the time or beating each other black and blue - but those are extreme cases. Sally and I aren't like that. We're terribly polite about it and we don't air our differences in front of them,… or much in private for that matter either. Sally's anger is always more subtle."

  Richie listened. He knew Phil was in the thick of life, while he'd spent his whole life dodging it, trying to freeze time some time in the latter part of his teens. "But what about your anger? Does she ever see your anger? I mean even subtly? I doubt it. You just swallow it and say, thank you very much dear."

  "No I don't! I get angry sometimes."

  "But do you show it, Phil? Listen, this is me you're talking to. Remember that time when we were lads and we were bickering about something, and I pushed you into the canal?"

  Phil laughed. "Do I!"

  "You should have kicked my head in for that, but you just swallowed your anger - along with half the canal."

  "I couldn't be angry, Richie. I saw the expression on your face as you pulled me out. You were horrified at what you'd done. "

  "I know. I'm still sorry I did it."

  "And you've been apologising for it for thirty years."

  He smiled. "Have I? You probably deserved it. You were teasing me about going out with Rachel Green as I recall."

  "Was I? That's because I fancied her as well."

  "I know you did. We were both lucky there. The woman would have destroyed us both. Go and try your Tai Chi, Phil. Sally can't exactly say you're never in, or always down the pub or something. And it's not like the kids can't wipe their own arses these days."

  Phil recalled the excrement and urine smeared all over the toilet seat the last time he'd gone in, and longed for the days when he had wiped the kids arses for them.

  Chapter 7

  Sunday mornings were usually non-existent, both Phil and Sally lying in until eleven if they could manage it, while the kids played in their rooms. Phil didn't see the problem then, since the Tai Chi began at nine, and he'd be back for ten thirty anyway so he would hardly be missed. As for the lie in - it was well it worth sacrificing it, if it would help to ease the hissing and jangling in his ear. But Sally wasn't sure. Phil have never been a "joiner", she reminded him, and of course she asked how much it was all going to cost, but couldn't really put up much of a fight over a fiver, so she shrugged in that way that made Phil feel like piece of gum stuck to the bottom of her shoe. He wished she'd take more of an interest in him. She complained all the time that she didn't know what he was thinking or feeling, but whenever he tried to speak about such things, he had the impression he was boring her. She'd look away mid-sentence, or cut in and start to tell him about something that had happened at the Library, as if she'd forgotten he was speaking at all.

  "So it's okay if I go then?"

  "Suit yourself, but don't expect me to get up with you."

  Phil had expected no such thing. Why would she have got up with him anyway? She never got up early with him. What was she on about?

  The Community Centre on Robin Hill was a hundred years old, dimly lit and had the damp and musty smell of church halls and scout huts everywhere. Doctor Lin greeted him with a girlish smile that settled him at once. It was silly, he was a mature man, but he'd been nervous about coming, feeling like a little boy on his first day at school. She was wearing what appeared to be a pair of yellow silk pyjamas. There was Chinese music playing, the scales unfamiliar, almost alien to him, but somehow calming and curiously emotive.

  "Mr. Markham. You came."

  "I'm a little early." She's definitely not a Caroline, he kept thinking. She couldn't be - Caroline would not have known his name.

  "Ears still ringing?"

  "Yes, I'm afraid so."

  She frowned. "Give it time. I'm sure it will get better."

  Others began to arrive - an elderly lady smiled sweetly at Phil and introduced herself very politely as Lara Walters. Phil was taken aback by her almost old-world gentility and her easy charm. Then came a bear of a man with a beard hanging down his chest and a pony tail. He didn't offer his name. He avoided eye contact and took up a position far away from everyone. Others turned up, a mixed bag, mostly middle aged, one very senior gentleman in his eighties dressed in silk pyjamas, like Doctor Lin's, and Phil hoped he would not be expected to wear them as well. silk pyjama's seemed a bit,… feminine, a bit kinky to him, or was that just his dirty mind and a hidden complex about cross-dressing? As he scanned the crowd, he relaxed, but then to his dismay a prospective Caroline came in towards the end, rather a severe looking woman with the most impressive derriere Phil had seen for a long, long time.

  Recognising Carolines had become second nature to h
im now. For a long time he'd thought these women were all different, and it was only recently he'd worked out that, since he didn't know their real selves, this feeling he got was for something in himself that he projected onto them. It hadn't made the stupid infatuations any easier to bear, or indeed to escape, that is until he'd begun calling these projections Caroline. That usually did the trick, and once identified, Caroline would slip away somewhere quietly for a while and leave him alone.

  As for him leaving Caroline alone, that wasn't usually a problem. In his pre-marriage days, he knew that if you loitered, waiting for a Caroline who passed by the same spot every day, the day you purposely waited was the day she would not turn up. If you chose a seat on the bus behind the one that a Caroline always rode, that day she would miss the bus. Carolines were not to be pinned down or approached. They were merely an instrument of self-inflicted torture, and his only defence was vigilance, as well as being able to recognise her through her various cunning disguises. He'd been lucky with Doctor Lin, and Caroline had ducked out of there pretty quick.

  Phil averted his eyes from the woman's derriere. "Nice one, Caroline," he said to himself, almost smiling at her ingenuity - the female derriere was his particular weakness - then he took up a position as far away from her as possible and he thought: "I've spotted you, so now you might as well just clear off now and leave me alone!"

  Phil enjoyed the class, ignoring everyone except Doctor Lin, on whose voice he found he had to concentrate really hard in order to understand her idiosyncratic grammar. He understood she had come from China only a year ago with no English at all, and though he struggled to understand, he admired her for her pluck. Each time he saw her though, he felt her English was improving and he marvelled that anyone could be so intelligent.

  She seemed less formal in front of the class than she did when sticking pins into him, even attempting a joke now and then. Doctor Lin demonstrated the Tai Chi form with a lithe and supple body that was the envy of all the women there. With the exception of Caroline they were all wooden and stiff with age. Phil managed better than he'd thought he would - even bending forward and reaching his toes during the warm-up, for which Doctor Lin complemented him and made him blush.

  For an hour, they breathed and bent, and twisted their limbs gently to the strains of a cheap music player, and afterwards, Doctor Lin invited them to share tea. Lara was looking a little flushed and Phil asked if he could bring her a cup. She thanked him, and he sat down with her, one wary eye on Caroline, who was trying, unsuccessfully, to engage the hairy bear of a man in conversation.

  "That's very kind of you, Mr Markham."

  "Phil, please. Its no bother. Is this your first time, Mrs Walters?"

  "Lara. No, I've been coming for a few weeks now. It gets me ever so warm, but I do enjoy the serene feeling afterwards. Do you feel it?"

  Phil thought for a moment. He felt warm too, and there was a soothing tingle in his bones, but his mind was already haunted by the image of Sally looking at her watch and tut-tutting. Then no doubt there would be the fiasco of the keys. Oh, crap - don't think about it Phil - not yet. "Calm, yes," he said. "I suppose I do."

  "You must practice every day," she said. "Like Doctor Lin says. You'll feel the benefit of it very quickly, I assure you."

  "I'll try. Tell me are you a patient of Doctor Lin's? No,… forgive me,… that's none of my business."

  "Nonsense. I was a patient for a while, but I couldn't afford to keep seeing her every week. It's rather expensive, but she's such a lovely woman and I didn't want to offend her, so when she suggested the class I decided to come along, as it was the cheaper option, and it gets me out of the house. What about you?"

  "Yes, the same really, though I'm still seeing her. But you're right: it is expensive, and I'm not sure if it's working."

  "If she's told you she can cure you, then it will work, I'm sure."

  "Yes,… I just have to give it time."

  "It's nothing,… serious, I hope,… "

  "Oh,… no, just a ringing ear. Annoying though."

  "How distressing for you! I do hope it gets better soon."

  "Thank you. Anyway, I'd better get back to my wife."

  Lara Walters misunderstood and began to scan the remaining students for the woman who might be Phil's wife.

  "No, no," said Phil. "My wife's at home. This isn't really her sort of thing at all."

  "Ah,… you came alone?"

  "Yes,… well. See you next week perhaps, Lara."

  "I do hope so, Philip."

  Caroline had given up on the hairy bear man and decided to go home. Her Corsa was parked next to Phil's Mondeo and he hung back when he saw her because if he wasn't careful he'd be on top of her and there'd be an awkward moment as they each tried to squeeze into their cars and he might even end up having to speak to her. Funny though: her car being parked right next to his like that. If he'd wanted it to be, she would have parked around the corner or come on the bus or something. Now that was weird!

  Sally didn't mention the Tai Chi. He arrived home, showered and settled down with his paper, feeling calm and relaxed, even managing to laugh good-naturedly when Marty came to him with a month long project on glacial systems that he'd not started yet and required handing in tomorrow morning.

  "Can't you just say the dog ate it?"

  Marty looked at him as if he'd gone mad, then slunk away.

  Sally was staring at him.

  "What?"

  "I told him you'd help him out when you came back from your hippy-dippy class."

  "My what? Well,… what can I do? Does he expect me to write it out for him? It's about a hundred years since I last did any geography. He's better qualified to do it than I am,… I mean, having had the advantage of actually attending the class - or does he want me to do that for him as well? Perhaps I should suggest he stays at home tomorrow and I'll go to school for him instead? I don't think I'd mind actually - make a change from going to work."

  Phil rewound all of this in his head while Sally gawked at him, speechless. Had he really said all of that? No, surely not! He was not cross at all, still quite relaxed and the words had tripped out smoothly and easily, like a reasonable answer to a reasonable question.

  "He forgot to do it," said Sally. "You could help him out this once. Save him getting into trouble."

  "The best thing we could do to help is write his teacher a note saying he forgot, accidentally on purpose, and to give him a roasting with our blessing."

  "But he's only twelve!"

  "And in a few months he'll be thirteen. I never bothered my parents with my homework. I just got on and did it, because I knew I'd get told off if I didn't."

  "But it's different now,.."

  "No it's not. The only thing that's different is that nowadays we take it personally if our kids screw up. What's the diameter of the earth Elspeth?"

  "How should I know, Daddy?"

  "Good girl,… why bother learning rubbish like that when you can always get someone else to look it up for you?"

  It was building to a climax and Phil seemed to be watching from somewhere inside himself while he steered his relationship into unknown territory.

  "Well if you won't help, I'll ring my dad and see if he'll come and do it."

  Phil winced. Ooh, nice one, Sal, he thought. Straight for the jugular. Beat him over the head with his own ego. Except Phil's ego, ever-ready to flare up into troublesome proportions at the merest mention of Sally's father, was curiously absent. "Well, I still think Marty should get himself out of this one but, if you insist, be my guest. And while you're on the phone you could ask your dad if he's finished with my hedge clippers. He could bring them with him when he comes."

  "If you're going to be funny about it. I'll go round to his house."

  "Okay,… but Trevor's not got the Internet - no access to Wikipedia, you see?"

  "I'm sure we'll manage. You're all right getting your own lunch are you?"

  "Sure."

  "I mean, I
don't want the kitchen looking like a bomb site when we come back."

  Phil nodded, his heart sinking. He'd driven home feeling so calm, so blessed. Now he felt cursed and frayed around the edges again. And all he had to do was blag a few pictures from the Internet and splatter some plagiarised paragraphs around them, make it look like it had taken him a month, then add a touch of authenticity by subtly sabotaging the grammar and spelling, and sprinkling "innit" around at random intervals.

  That's all it would have taken to restore calm, and ease the burning in his gut. But then he heard the roar of a virtual racing car coming from Marty's room and suspected the project didn't need handing in tomorrow at all, that Marty had only been trying to spur his parents into action by exaggerating the urgency of the situation.

  "That's fine," he said, picturing Marty's face when he was dragged from his Gamestation to go and visit his grandfather to work on glacial systems. "I have to mow anyway; the front garden's looking a bit shaggy. Have you seen my hat, Elspeth?"

  As he clipped round the front lawn, he began to feel the guilt settling in. They'd been away an hour now, and the house felt empty without them. He still felt he'd been right, and was upset that Sally hadn't seen things his way. But he'd been wrong to rub it in with that parting gesture about the hat. He'd even waved it at them as they'd sped away, Sally's mouth set, and Marty with a face that would have soured milk.

  Phil thought back on all of this as he sat at his computer rattling off e-mails the next morning. It was a pity much of the worlds business was like this nowadays, and he missed the times when they'd spent more time actually making things. But if this was the way of the world, then he had to accept it, he thought - accept also the possibility that he was becoming as obsolete as the machine tools he worked with. He was feeling unusually magnanimous that morning - also exceptionally energetic, exceptionally sharp.

  He was also plotting an elaborate revenge.

  Monday was when Mrs Nosy Parker came to clean. Phil had laid the usual markers on his private drawers - his bedside and his study desk - bits of matchstick, that he usually found on the carpet when he came home. Mrs Nosy Parker would be in his drawers now, he thought, counting his condoms, and riffling through his bank statements. There was a limit to what he could do about this, as Sally was always willing to give the woman the benefit of the doubt - even when Phil pointed out that Mrs Nosy Parker had also been rooting through her underwear drawer. Checking for what, he wondered? Anything too racy? Too revealing? Christ, that would be the day!