More to Life Than This

by Carole Matthews

  ‘I haven’t seen any little old Chinese men wandering around who look like they could be tutors,’ Sonia observed.

  ‘I’m sure they’ll be here somewhere.’ Kate scanned the sea of heads. ‘Anyway, I’ll see you shortly.’

  Ben caught her eye. He seemed warmer than she had first thought. ‘I’ll look forward to it,’ he said with a grin.

  chapter 8

  The T’ai Chi instructors weren’t Chinese. Or little. Or even old. They were big and young and looked as though they had recently starred in a Bruce Lee-type movie. They wore baggy black trousers and white T-shirts stretched over rippling broad chests. Red sashes bound their nipped-in waists, and their whole demeanour said, Don’t mess with me.

  ‘I expected Fu Manchu lookalikes, not Arnie and Sly.’ Sonia was exuberant.

  ‘Me, too.’ Kate looked worried.

  ‘I’m beginning to like T’ai Chi.’ Sonia grinned. ‘I could certainly do those two some damage.’

  The instructors stood at the front of the class flexing their muscles in a very athletic manner, stretching in places that even Jane Fonda would fear to access. Apprehension crawled through Kate’s body and she wished she had decided to ‘find herself’ while studying The Excitement of Stumpwork Embroidery instead. ‘I think they’re more likely to do us some damage.’

  ‘Just think,’ Sonia murmured under her breath, ‘by the end of the week I could look like that, too!’

  Kate was unconvinced. Despite her healthy diet, she knew the amount of slack muscle that had taken up residence on her thighs over the past few years. ‘It might take more than a week.’

  Ben was farther along the row in the class. He looked good in his Nike sweatshirt and joggers. Kate examined her leotard, which showed up every wrinkle, crinkle, fold and flabby bit that existed. Every stretchmark was pounced on and signposted. Perhaps she should have bought something new from the shop at the health club—the one that Sonia didn’t own—which had a big selection of brightly coloured wisps of material that purported to be exercise clothing. From tomorrow, her leggings and baggy T-shirt would reign, she decided.

  Sonia was resplendent in a fake Armani ensemble bought out of a suitcase from a dodgy trader at Camden Market. She looked as if she couldn’t make up her mind which one of the instructors she wanted to get her claws into first. Ben’s more subtle charms had clearly receded into the distance faced with this onslaught of beefcake.

  ‘Good afternoon, everyone,’ the dark-haired instructor addressed the class. ‘I’m Sam.’ He gave a low bow. ‘And this is Guy.’

  The taller blonde-haired one stepped forward and also bowed.

  ‘We’re here to introduce you to the Chinese art of T’ai Chi,’ Sam continued. ‘We hope we’re going to have an enjoyable week of exercise. Before we start, if anyone has any particular problems, please let us know and we’ll do all we can to help.’

  My thirty-eight-year-old husband is deliriously middle-aged, my children are perfect to the point of nausea, I’ve got cellulitic thighs despite working out twice a week, my days have no purpose and my floating candles always sink. Other than that, life’s a dream!

  ‘The Chinese believe that everything in the universe is made of energy,’ Sam explained. ‘This energy has two basic essences—yin and yang.’

  ‘Ying Tong Tiddle I Po!’ Sonia added tunefully.

  Kate kicked her in the leg.

  Sam carried on regardless. ‘When the body is out of order in any way, physically or emotionally, the yin and yang balance is upset.’

  Kate decided her body was so out of order that her yin and yang probably needed to go on vacation in Florida.

  ‘In practising T’ai Chi we’re trying to re-establish that harmony, so that there’s a better balance between the opposing aspects within ourselves—male and female, positive and negative, hard and soft, light and dark. Their characteristics complement one another, just as sunshine needs rain, and with a storm there is always a time of calm.’

  ‘Just as fries need ketchup and with Brad there is always Jen.’

  ‘You’re going to ruin this for me if you don’t shut up!’ Kate warned under her breath.

  ‘The T’ai Chi form will help the body to become light and agile. It promotes health and vitality,’ he promised. ‘So if you’ve come here feeling stressed out and jaded, we’ll soon have your energy levels topped up again.’

  ‘I’m feeling considerably more lively already.’ Sonia fluttered her eyelashes.

  ‘The principles of T’ai Chi,’ Sam continued undaunted, ‘are very simple.’ He sounded so encouraging and sincere it made Kate want to weep. ‘Stay relaxed.’ Stay relaxed. Clenching your fists into tight little balls probably didn’t qualify for staying relaxed. She let her hands fall to her side.

  ‘Keep breathing,’ Sam said with a laugh. ‘I know it sounds silly, but you’d be surprised how people hold their breath when they’re feeling tense.’

  Breathing? Kate wasn’t sure she had taken a breath since the larger-than-life Natalie Lambert had first sauntered through her front door. She gave a heavy lingering sigh, which was the closest she could manage to a breath.

  ‘Work at your own level. Don’t compete,’ Sam told them all.

  Don’t compete. Kate looked nervously round at everyone else in the class. There were about twenty people there altogether and they all looked like serious competition. Even Sonia, who was totally weak-willed when it came to Hershey’s Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, knew no fear when it came to keeping up with extreme exercise guru Mr Motivator. Kate shrank inside.

  ‘Always keep your spine upright and the head suspended.’

  Spine upright. Head suspended. Kate’s head seemed locked to her shoulders in a way that was probably very seriously interfering with her yin and yang balance.

  ‘Your waist should be free.’ He circled his waist to demonstrate.

  Her friend stared lasciviously at him. ‘Just your waist, Sonia,’ Kate hissed. ‘Not the rest of your body, too.’

  ‘Watch the knees,’ he warned, patting his kneecaps with his huge muscle-bound hands.

  Your own knees or other people’s? She sincerely hoped no one was going to be watching her knees, which she’d had a complex about since the age of thirteen when they had started to creak and crack alarmingly.

  ‘And, finally,’ he said, ‘have fun!’

  ‘I intend to have great fun,’ Sonia whispered. She leaned closer. ‘I bet you, if I wanted, I could have one of those two by the end of the week.’

  Kate frowned her disbelief. ‘Which one?’

  ‘I don’t care. Either will do.’

  Kate tutted. ‘I bet even at school you weren’t known for being fussy.’

  Sonia drew her eyebrows together. ‘At least I wasn’t called iron drawers.’

  Kate had known that one day she would come to regret telling her that.

  ‘Shall we begin by doing some gentle warming-up exercises?’ Sam asked.

  No, thanks, Sam, I think I’ll go home now. Kate wished she had never started this. She wished she had been happy, at one with the world and content with her little lot as wife and mother. Why did she have to go stirring things up? A vision of the week stretched endlessly ahead of her. She wondered if Jeffrey was missing her or if Miss Bondi Beach had already turned him into a surf junkie.

  Across the room Ben looked suspiciously as though he wished he was opening a rather nice bottle of Château Grand Videau, instead of waving his arms around maniacally in an effort to loosen up. Kate caught his eye and he winked at her, taking her by surprise. How long was it since a man had winked at her? It wasn’t a leery sort of wink, it was a we’re-all-in-this-together wink, an I-am-on-your-wavelength wink.

  There was a sudden upsurge in voltage to her sadly depleted courage and she puffed out several sharp determined breaths like she’d seen American footballers do to psyche themselves up. I can do this, I can do this, she chanted to herself, I can do this! Ben grinned at her and she wondered, for a mome
nt, whether she had said it out loud.

  Feeling self-conscious, she turned her attention back to Sam and Guy, who were being terribly enthusiastic in their efforts to get the rest of them moving with some semblance of co-ordination. They swung their arms and circled their hips and Kate followed obligingly. They swooped towards the ceiling. Kate followed. They dipped to the ground. Kate followed. An awful cracking sound like the fire of gunshot ricocheted round the room, followed by a deathly silence. Even the lovely Sam and Guy stopped swinging. Kate felt every last drop of blood in her veins rush headlong towards her face and, to her abject humiliation, twenty pairs of eyes simultaneously swivelled to look in horror at her knees. She was right. It was going to be a very long week.

  chapter 9

  The familiar theme tune for the start of BBC golf programmes blasted out in the lounge.

  Tim accompanied it, tunelessly and with a wiggle of his hips. ‘Da, Da, Da!’

  He kicked off his shoes and flopped down onto the sofa with a contented sigh.

  Jeffrey passed his friend a beer and a long-stemmed glass.

  ‘This is the life,’ Tim gloated. He looked approvingly at the can of Coors Light in his hand. ‘Beer and golf on the telly. What more can a man want?’

  Jeffrey sat down next to him. ‘Quite a lot, actually,’ he said.

  The room was looking spic and span, as always. Kate had polished every ornament they possessed to within an inch of its life before she left, and there was a waft of lavender room spray in the air, complementing the ubiquitous bowls of pot-pourri that graced every surface in the house. She was a wonderful wife and homemaker, and wasn’t content unless everywhere smelled of something floral. The place seemed empty without her; he hadn’t realised before how much he missed her pleasant chatter that was constantly in the background, even when he was trying to watch something really interesting on television.

  Tim ripped the ring pull off his can and slurped the froth from the lid. ‘Bliss!’ He nestled the can in his lap and rubbed his hands together in anticipation. ‘Now then, me beauties,’ he said to the golfers quietly milling about on the television. ‘Show Uncle Tim exactly what you can do with a little white ball and forty-four inches of graphite!’ He swung his feet onto the coffee table and wriggled down in the cushions. ‘Watch and learn, Jeffrey,’ he advised. ‘Watch and learn.’

  Jeffrey tipped his glass sideways and poured his beer carefully into it. ‘Who’ s got the boys?’

  Tim waved his hand. ‘They’re staying with a friend round the corner. His mum’s going to take them all to school in the morning. One night down, only five more to go!’ He took another swig of his beer. ‘The kids are sick to death already. Do you know, all Sonia’s left is twenty-four boxes of frozen fish fingers, a mountain of oven chips and two cartons of vanilla ice cream. Correction—’ he waved his can ‘—fat-free vanilla ice cream. I ask you, how can you have ice cream without fat? That’s like asking Pamela Anderson to look good in a polo neck.’

  Jeffrey smiled. ‘Kate’s left a barrage of margarine cartons in the freezer containing a variety of wholesome meals all neatly labelled with the day of the week.’

  ‘She is a fine woman, Jeffrey,’ Tim said solemnly. ‘You should look after her.’

  ‘I do look after her.’ Even he thought he sounded defensive.

  Tim stared at him directly—or as directly as he could while keeping one eye on the progress of Ernie Els as he teed up his ball. ‘Sonia said Kate’s been a bit depressed lately.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘Tell me to mind my own business, my friend. But I know what these women are like.’

  Jeffrey folded his arms across his chest and stared at the ceiling, even the paternal voice of the sports commentator failing to soothe him. ‘I’m not sure what’s wrong,’ he admitted. ‘Recently she’s become so restless. She’s talking about rollerblading and rock climbing.’

  Tim pulled a sympathetic face that said, At her age?

  ‘I feel she’s looking for something I can’t provide,’ Jeffrey said wistfully. ‘And I’m not sure that a week’s T’ai Chi will provide it either.’

  ‘She’ll be all right,’ Tim assured him. ‘Do up the house a bit, buy her a few pretty frocks, tell her that her bum’s not fat. They love that sort of thing.’

  ‘We’ve already parted with a small fortune to make the kitchen look worse than it did before we started. Now she says she wants new bedroom fittings. The trouble is, I think that includes me, too.’

  ‘All middle-aged women start hankering after younger men, it’s part of life. They get to a certain age, their boobs start to connect with their knees and their hormones go completely to pot and suddenly the acne-ridden paperboy is looking very attractive. Trust your Uncle Tim. You just have to let her ride it out.’

  ‘So where does ageing crooner Tom Jones fit into this equation? He hardly counts as young and spotty, yet women of all ages still rip their knickers off whenever he gyrates his pelvis.’

  ‘A one-off, matey. Universal appeal. Very few people have it.’

  ‘Anyway, Kate’s not like that,’ Jeffrey said. ‘She never looks at other men, however young. All she needs is a bit of excitement in her life. Something to make her day buzz. It must be very dull staying at home all the time.’ But then it was very dull going to work all day. Wasn’t life generally like this? Long periods of dullness, enlivened by the odd barn dance or a holiday in Majorca? It was how the vast majority of people lived without complaint.

  ‘Are you happy, Tim?’

  ‘Delirious.’

  ‘No, seriously.’

  ‘Good grief, Jeffrey, we’re not nearly drunk enough to be having this type of conversation.’ He shook his empty can and Jeffrey passed him another one.

  ‘But are you?’

  ‘There are one or two things that would improve my lot in life,’ he confessed.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘A twenty-five-year-old, sex-starved blonde would do for a start.’ He gave a leering grin.

  ‘Would that really make you happy?’

  ‘It hasn’t done Warren Beatty any harm. He’s slept with Brigitte Bardot, Julie Christie, Joan Collins, Jane Fonda, Bianca Jagger and Madonna—to name but a few.’

  ‘Yes, but is he really happy?’

  ‘If he’s not, it sounds a damn fine way to be miserable.’

  Jeffrey cuddled a cushion to his chest. ‘Kate says I’m not romantic any more.’

  They paused to watch Tiger Woods tee off, a majestic swish of his driver sending the ball hurtling into the wide blue yonder, and grimaced at each other in awe.

  ‘I’m very romantic,’ Jeffrey insisted. He took a drink of his beer and pointed his glass at the screen. ‘That is a swing to die for.’ He shook his head. ‘Particularly when there isn’t any golf on the television.’

  ‘I know what you mean, Jeffrey. I know exactly what you mean.’

  ‘I did feel old the other day, when I was watching Diane Keaton on the box and thought, now there’s a babe.’

  ‘Diane Keaton?’ Tim looked appalled. ‘Sad.’

  The sports commentator explained the principles of getting out of a bunker in fewer than twenty shots. Something that they had both failed to do on many occasions.

  ‘While we’re on the subject of babes,’ Tim said when there was a lull in the proceedings, ‘how’s the blonde with build working out?’

  ‘Natalie? She’s a very nice girl.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ Tim spread his hands. ‘I can’t believe Kate has trusted you in a house alone with her for one whole week.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You’re a free agent—the possibilities are limitless!’

  ‘So are you,’ Jeffrey pointed out. ‘And you’re sitting round here watching golf with me on the telly.’

  Tim looked crestfallen. ‘How very fucking depressing,’ he muttered.

  ‘I took her out to lunch today,’ Jeffrey said as casually as possible, given the fact his heart had started
racing at the mere mention of her name. He loved the feel of it on his tongue. Natalie Lambert. Natalie. Nat. ‘To the Bridgeman’s Arms.’

  Tim looked impressed.

  ‘And then we went for a walk in Ashridge Forest.’

  ‘There may be trouble ahead…’ Tim sang, using his beer can as a microphone.

  ‘Not alone,’ Jeffrey interrupted tersely. ‘With the kids. There was nothing in it.’

  ‘Yeah, and the band played “Believe It If You Like.”’

  ‘She’s nice. Just a nice girl, that’s all,’ Jeffrey snapped. ‘I’ve never been unfaithful to Kate. She’s a fabulous wife, a wonderful mother. She’s all I’ve ever wanted.’ Until now? a tiny insistent voice prompted inside him.

  ‘You’re being a bit touchy, old chum.’ They both oooed appreciatively as Tiger Woods’s ball landed six feet away from the hole and rolled sedately in with a satisfying plop.

  ‘Sorry,’ Jeffrey said. ‘I’m just a bit edgy. I’ve got a lot on at work at the moment.’

  His friend flicked an eyebrow at him. ‘I thought it might be another type of figure that was keeping your mind whirling.’

  Jeffrey passed Tim another beer.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, with a slurp and a stifled belch. ‘Did you know, Jeffrey, that men are genetically programmed to fall in love with somebody who’ s half their age plus seven?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘How old’ s the nubile Natalie?’

  Jeffrey shrugged. ‘I think Kate said she was twenty-eight, but she doesn’t look it.’

  ‘It’s downright impossible to tell the ages of women between nineteen and twenty-nine. Those that are twenty-nine are still trying to make themselves look nineteen, and those that are nineteen are trying to make themselves look twenty-nine. What’s a bloke supposed to do?’ Tim examined the contents of his beer can in his search for the answer. ‘In reality, by my scientifically proven theory, Natalie is, in fact, too old for you. And that is a particularly sobering thought.’