England and Other Stories Read Free Page B

selection process, so that in the end he’d pick out a real star—well, Wanda was nothing special.
    I even felt, which doesn’t put me in a good light either, I did better with Patti.
    I didn’t share this thought with Patti, but I could feel her tuning in to it and relaxing. It put me in a good light with her. I think Patti’s fear was that we were about to meet some woman who’d have me, in spite of myself, spending the whole weekend with my tongue hanging out. That this might have been the real purpose of the exercise. Aaron just wanted to show off his trophy.
    To be honest, it was my fear too.
    Wanda was built along pretty pared-down lines, which wasn’t, as I recall, how Aaron had liked them. She wasn’t skinny, but she was, well, wiry, with a tough little pair of shoulders. And her face, though it had a cheeky way of making you feel good and want to laugh, wasn’t a face that would stop you in your tracks. It could even sometimes look a bit hard and locked up.
    She wasn’t a beauty, but she had a way of carrying herself, of moving, an energy, an intensity. I liked her. I was glad I didn’t fancy her. And pretty soon I twigged it.
    I found a moment to say in private to Aaron, ‘She’s a runner, isn’t she?’ This was barely an hour after the two of them had become Mr and Mrs.
    ‘I hope she’s not running anywhere, man, after what we’ve just done.’
    ‘You know what I mean.’
    ‘I know what you mean.’ In fact a glint had come into his eyes. We were at a bar, fetching drinks.
    ‘Yep,’ he said. ‘Four hundred. Eight hundred maybe.’ He gave me a quick stare. ‘Maybe hurdles. She has to find where it really is for her.’ Then he said, with a certain pride in his voice, and he even looked across the crowded room to exchange a wink with his new wife, ‘Yep, a runner. She’s going places. Same again, man?’
    As for Aaron himself, how did he look? Well, he looked good—right then he looked very good—but I could see how the years had affected him. They’d blunted and blurred him a bit, taken off some shine. Enough to make me think: How will he look in another five years? And to make me think: He’ll be having the same thoughts about me.
    Except I didn’t kid myself and I hadn’t just got married and I was a father of two. And my viewpoint had perhaps been different all along. I keep people fit for a living, so I keep fit myself, but there are limits, and no one gets any younger. That’s why these days I spend a good deal of time with a man called Jarvis who’s starting up a sportswear company. It’s why I enrolled not long ago on a business course. It’s my plan B. For the boys’ and Patti’s sake. For my own sake.
    I could have been a hurdler? Maybe. But, as I said once to Patti a long time ago, I saw the hurdles.
    All the same, people reach their peaks, I believe this. They come into their best. There’s the book with the chapters, but there’s something else. We reach our peaks and we pass them. There’s nothing to be done about it, but it’s a sad thing if you never even knew the peak you had it in you to reach. In the world of physical fitness you see a lot of this. You see the chances and you see a lot of missed ones.
    What I’m really saying is that you might have thought that for Aaron and Wanda their wedding day wasn’t their moment of coming into their best. It was important, but their best was somewhere else. Maybe Aaron knew that his had already gone.
    Anyhow, after a few drinks—it was a three o’clock wedding—they took us back to their place before we went out again for dinner. It was a top flat, on two floors, and our room was a tiny little spare room under the roof, but I was relieved we wouldn’t be sleeping just the other side of a wall from them.
    More than relieved. As we went upstairs Patti was ahead. She was wearing a nice outfit for the occasion (maybe for Aaron too, but I’ll let that pass). I was carrying our overnight bag, but I couldn’t keep