by Alexei Sayle
‘Of course.’
‘Does your husband have a toolbox?’
‘A what?’
‘A toolbox. Well, not necessarily a toolbox but does he have some tools, a selection of screwdrivers and what do they call them, llaves Ingles — Allen keys — does he have a few of those with a rusty saw perhaps and a hammer in a carrier bag?’
‘Why do you ask?’ she said. ‘Do you want Toby to do some repairs for you?’
‘Oh no, it’s just that there is a certain type of man who has a toolbox, perhaps nothing fancy, with different compartments for screws and nails but at least he has some tools in a drawer or on a shelf and he is a man who can do things, change a plug, put up a picture, fix a leaky hose on the dishwasher perhaps, a man who thinks a little about the world outside himself, a man who can help others. Then there is another type, a certain type who doesn’t have these things, who cannot do these things, often a weak creature suffering from allergies and intolerances, who only thinks about the world inside themselves, who works in an office perhaps or a limp creature reading the news on the radio. I’m not sure this is truly a man.’
‘Do you have a toolkit, Julio?’
‘Of course I do, I told you, a complete set in its own box, over one hundred and. fifty different tools, ratchet heads, socket sets, screwdrivers, craft knife, so many things for so little money. So does he, your husband?’
Helen tried to think whether Toby had a toolkit or not; certainly she couldn’t recall him ever .doing any repairs. ‘Yes, I’m certain he does,’ she said, then changed her mind to speak the truth, ‘No, he doesn’t, I’m pretty certain he doesn’t, no, but he does play football every Thursday.’
‘That is something but not enough,’ the Argentinian replied like a High Court judge summing up in a murder case. ‘You are married to a weak man and a woman who marries a weak man is … a woman who likes weak men. Goodnight, Helen.’
Then he turned into the flats, leaving her alone on the pavement.
‘Why does your handbag smell of meat?’ Toby asked groggily as Helen came to bed.
She said, ‘I do love you, you know, Toby.’
Coming slightly more awake he said, ‘I’ve booked on to the Papua New Guinea trip. I spoke to your boss today and he said it’d be fine. I know you don’t want me to do it but it’s something I have to do to test myself.’
‘Well, I was against it but I don’t know now,’ Helen said. She didn’t add that she didn’t know about anything any more.
Every year there was held in and around the wooden hut and. the playground in the park what Toby referred to as ‘The Pointless Park County Show’ and what the council called a Community Sharing Experience. On a hot ‘summer Saturday under the spreading sycamore and horse chestnut trees small, dark, silent men and women from the local Colombian population manned a pasting-table stall serving maize buns and stews of chicken simmered with plantain; the Turks and Kurds sold grilled meat and fluffy bread studded with caraway seeds cooked on smoking charcoal grills; Punjabi women produced polystyrene tubs of dhal and thick vegetable curries; and the elderly, shrivelled, little white men and women of the local Communist Party Branch stood behind a stall that offered spindly, unwell-looking house plants and the works of Joseph Stalin.
Mr Iqubal Fitzherbert De Castro and his group of young associates had mounted a splendid stall supposedly representing something called the Namibian Disaster Relief Fund Steering Committee, which everybody steered well clear of.
‘Which particular disaster would that be?’ Harriet asked Mr Iqubal Fitzherbert De Castro.
‘Well, there’s always some bloody disaster happening somewhere over there,’ he replied, then added in immigrant-speak ‘innit?’ making her laugh.
On a small stage with a howling sound system, between the compulsory Caribbean steel band and a samba school of overweight social workers led by Oscar and Katya’s builder (who had turned up for work at their house one day offering no explanation for his abrupt disappearance and who was dressed today in a sparkling yellow bra/thong combination, glistening yellow gossamer wings rippling behind him topped off with a towering green and black feathered headdress), the regulars at the dojo were scheduled to give a demonstration of the deadly martial art of Li Kuan Yu.
‘The pale creepy one’s looking sick with worry!’ Harriet heard the Tin Can Man, hidden in the undergrowth, shout into his phone.
Patrick told himself he should be reasonably confident over how their Li Kuan Yu demonstration would go. He knew you wouldn’t have seen such a thing in Martin’s time but then Martin hadn’t faced the problems he had to face. Patrick had asked the community centre people if they could perform at the community fair knowing, since he’d been attending it from childhood himself, that they’d be grateful for anything to break the usual tedious parade of well-meaning multi-ethnic crap. The reason he’d decided they should perform was to instil a greater sense of solidarity at the dojo. Recently there had come a number of threats from outside: a bloke purporting to be a genuine Shaolin monk had opened a dojo in ‘Wood Green teaching Southern Crane kung fu and since then three members of his dojo had stopped coming. Patrick didn’t think it was a coincidence. Jack reported that this man — the monk in Wood Green — had stated in an internet chat room that as a fighting style Li Kuan Yu was ‘monkey poo’. ‘That’s very nice language for a man of the cloth to use,’ was all that Patrick said to Jack.
He went round to the houses of the people who’d dropped out, trying to persuade them to come back, but they either said point-blank that they wouldn’t return or hid behind their curtains and refused to answer the doorbell. Patrick made disparaging comments about them to the other students but inside he felt like his authority was being undermined. Perhaps Jack sensed this too — the old man being the only one who had also been taught by Martin Po, Patrick had often suspected he’d always been resentful that the sifu had appointed Patrick his successor rather than Jack. Of course maybe, Patrick thought, if he told him about the huge amount of money that he’d handed over for the privilege of being made new sifu he might shut up about it. Perhaps he’d stop contradicting Patrick at practice, constantly suggesting that the Founder would not have done certain things as Patrick said they should be done.
If he was honest Patrick had to admit that he didn’t like Jack, he was one of those people who could instantly sense the weaknesses and insecurities of others. He’d sidled up to the younger man one evening after practice at the dojo.
“Arriet’s doin’ well, ain’t she?’ he said, which was odd for a start, since he didn’t usually praise anyone. ‘Surprisin’ considerin’.’
‘Considerin’ what?’ Patrick asked.
‘Well, I was walkin’ Rufus,’ (that was his dog) ‘round the park, about four in the mornin’ it was. Me insomnia’s been playin’ me up lately and 1 saw your ‘Arriet comin’ out of ‘er neighbour’s flat all dressed up like a tart. You know, those neighbours.’
He wasn’t entirely surprised to hear that Harriet hadn’t been telling him the truth about what she got up to when she wasn’t training, knowing already that she was disobeying his orders on whom she socialised with. OK, you could understand why she kept on seeing her sister and her brother-in-law, people said family bonds were strong. What was unacceptable was her not dropping those two awful women she hung around with, who smoked and drank and whose internal chi must be all over the place, even though he’d more or less ordered her to stop seeing them. Now to discover that she was staying up all night with a gang of … well, whatever they were. He found that hard to bear.
He supposed she would have to be disciplined but he had no idea how to go about it. A wave of bitterness swept over him at the unfairness of it all: he practised all the time and had dedicated his life to living as the sifu said he had to, he had given up everything, practised and trained and thought about Li Kuan Yu every single minute, did not spill his fluids, didn’t mix with anyone outside the dojo and yet Harriet’s behaviour didn’t seem to
be affecting her development as a fighter in any way. Even if she was leading a dissolute life, went to places like the pub and all-night parties where she did God knows what with those people, her fitness, speed, flexibility and determination just seemed to keep on getting better — in some ways he was forced to admit she was becoming his equal. There were times when they fought that she moved faster and punched and kicked with more ferocity and accuracy than him and managed to land some quite hard blows to the side of his head. One day he’d have to sort it all out but not right now, there was another matter he wanted to talk to her about first.
The usual routine was for Harriet to put on her martial arts pyjamas at home as there were no changing rooms in the community centre but for the big demonstration she instead chose to cross to the park in jeans and a T-shirt. Once there, undressing in the small office set aside on this one day for women to change in, she recalled all the times when she’d been fat, how at all times she’d hidden her body away from other women. Now she slipped out of her pants and, naked, put them into her sports bag, then sorted through it to bring out her fighting gear. All the time as she was bent over the desk she was aware of other women looking at her body, admiring and envying it and wishing it was theirs.
One night back when she’d been fat, Harriet remembered watching the evening show on ITN when they did one of those features they have on most weeks when there’s not much news, about the rising tide of obesity that threatens to kill us all. As usual there was a clip of enormous fat people waddling about the street but shot only from the neck down so they wouldn’t feel humiliated and sue. Suddenly she got a horrible sick feeling on seeing a gigantic blobby gut that she was almost certain was hers slithering past the camera in slow motion. Even that didn’t stop her eating. Harriet felt so bad about her weight being shown on television that she ate a whole bag of chocolate-covered mini muffins.
All around her while she was changing she could hear women moaning about different parts of their bodies that appeared absolutely fine to her: tits, arse, leg, neck, ankles, parts that she didn’t even think of as separate like the back of the forearm. Harriet congratulated herself that this body dysmorphic disorder was one female characteristic she didn’t possess. She thought, perhaps because her body had once been so absolutely out of control, that these days every single bit of it was a pure delight, a pure delight that she was happy to share with others of her sex.
Once dressed, Harriet made her way to the backstage area of the open-air platform where they were due to give their display. The others were already there, fidgeting and stretching nervously while she just stood still, calm and composed. That little shit Jack came up to her and said, ‘With all your gadding about you’re not too tired for this then, Harriet?’
‘Not too short and bald for this then, Jack?’ was her reply.
The steel band clanked to a ragged halt and took so long trooping off stage that by the time the dojo got into the light and lined up behind Patrick whatever atmosphere that might have existed had long dissipated into the warm air. Patrick tried ineffectually to corral the attention of the crowd over the howling, railway station-standard PA. As he haltingly and confusingly attempted to explain the basics of Li Kuan Yu, a gang of twelve-year-old boys began to laugh and jeer at him until Harriet saw Toby stalk across the grass and tell them to shut up. She tensed, seeing the boys considering whether to make something of it, but his bulk and demented expression caused them to think better of it. Harriet wasn’t certain but to her Toby seemed drunk.
Patrick had told them the night before at the dojo that he’d sent out invitations printed on his home computer to leading journalists on all the major newspapers, important magazines, radio and TV stations, but staring out from the stage at the few people scattered on the grass Harriet guessed that about a fifth of the audience were her friends and family and none of the rest looked like columnists on the Daily Telegraph or reporters from Sky News. From the stage she made a surreptitious little ‘calm down’ gesture to Rose and Lulu who were openly sniggering at poor Patrick as he stumbled through his opening remarks. Her sister and Toby sat way on the other side of the compound from her two friends and her eyes were drawn to a thin, shabby-looking man of sixty or so standing behind them who stared at the stage almost as intently as Toby.
Finally, once Patrick had ensured that almost nobody was watching, the demonstration began. The whole dojo did the opening form, then, with Patrick giving a commentary over the screaming microphone, they stepped forward to perform in pairs: when Harriet’s turn came she faultlessly exchanged elbow strikes and blocks with Jack. Holding her fists in front of her face, elbows akimbo, she blocked while he attempted to hit her cheekbones with his elbows, then they reversed and she struck out at the little man, rocking him back on his heels with the speed and violence of her blows. As Harriet did this Toby, Lulu and Rose whooped and hollered encouragement and the noise began to bring others towards the stage.
They all did Roll Eyes Fall on Enemy, with the whole dojo staggering around pretending to be drunk before falling on top of their imaginary enemies; Patrick couldn’t understand why the crowd all laughed at this but at least they were watching now. They only stopped when a little while later Harriet again came forward to demonstrate Passing Swoop Knee Grab, her speciality Broom Staff Pike Stance and Split Fingers Cobra Eyeball Strike. As she twisted and turned, even though it was on this stupid little stage doing this silly dance, she suddenly knew she was experiencing what great dancers feel when every move they make is exactly the right move and people stand and stare open-mouthed to see your body do these things.
Once Harriet had gone to an air show with a guy who was disturbingly keen on these things and had seen a fighter jet take off. Once the plane was airborne the pilot had gone to ‘re-heat’, injecting raw aviation fuel into the flaming red-hot exhaust stream so that the fighter had shot straight up into the air with an unimaginable scream of power and was gone from sight in seconds. That was Harriet right then — a woman on re-heat.
The show ended with a mass demonstration of Anaconda Tree Jump Vine Strike, half the class pouncing from their wobbling stepladders on to the shoulders of the other half. The watching crowd had grown to over a hundred people by this time and the climax of the demonstration was greeted with enthusiastic clapping and whistling, though Harriet thought it was clear to all of them that this applause was mostly for her.
Lulu and Rose were sitting at a bench table: they had bought paper plates of food from every nationality and bottles of beer illegally sold by a stall of Kurdish separatists. ‘At these prices we can’t afford not to be sick and drunk,’ said Lulu.
Now changed back into her street clothes, Harriet skipped over the grass to them, glowing and happy.
‘Hey, look at you,’ Rose said, stroking her arm as she sat down.
‘Christ! You were incredible up there,’ Lulu added.
‘Oh well …‘
‘No, you got that quality, girl, people can’t take their eyes off you.
‘That is my feeling exactly.’ This last statement came from Mr Iqubal Fitzherbert De Castro who had silently appeared behind them.
‘Why thank you,’ Harriet said, smiling up at her new friend. ‘Mr Iqubal Fitzherbert De Castro, let me introduce you, these are my dear friends Lulu and Rose.’
‘Delighted to meet you.’ He took their hands in both of his and pressed down as if making hamburger but still he spoke of Harriet. ‘Isn’t she lovely? And now I know she can fight too, what a marvellous modern woman.’
‘Blimey, he’s even scarier than you let on,’ Rose said after Mr Iqubal Fitzherbert De Castro and his following pack of young men had left.
‘I never said he was scary.’
‘Ah, must have been a warning voice whispering in my ear.’
‘Don’t be like that, he’s … they’re exciting.’
‘Hello, Patrick,’ said Lulu, looking up from her plate of black beans.
‘Hello, Patrick,’ said Rose.
>
The two women knew they discomfited her teacher and liked to play on it.
‘Erm … yes, hello, erm …‘ He gave up trying to remember their names and instead asked, ‘Harriet, can I have a word with you?’
‘Sure.’
He led her away from the music and the press of people. They walked together in silence across the rolling grass until they stood hidden by clumps of pampas grass planted by the council when small but now grown tall and wild; the jangling noise of the fair seemed distant and muted. Harriet stiffened herself for praise concerning her performance on the stage, a small smile on her face, but Patrick never referred to it. Instead he said, ‘Why have you never asked me what happened to Martin Po?’
Even at the height of her belief in Li Kuan Yu she’d always had the most trouble with Martin Po, choosing in the end to see him as some sort of distant, possibly safely dead, saint-like figure who without being susceptible to human failings embodied all good things people should aspire to — sort of like Gandhi, Che Guevara or Freddy Mercury.
‘I kind of assumed you’d tell me when the time was right, when I was ready for the knowledge.’
‘Well, I can’t tell you where he is.’
‘Er … right, you can’t tell me where he is but …’
‘I can only say this. A few years ago we had many discussions. Martin had come to feel that he’d reached the end of what he could do in Britain. He had developed all these fighting skills but couldn’t use them outside the dojo unless he debased himself doing security work or something equally demeaning; he couldn’t kill anybody without risking getting locked up, no matter how much they deserved it. So he finally decided to go abroad, to find a wild place where he could teach fighting skills, the code of Bushido — the way of the warrior — to people who could put them into practice. Where people could use Li Kuan Yu in a real conflict situation.