Out Late with Friends and Regrets (53 page)

The polite sounds of sympathy took her by surprise, and made her embarrassed.

“I’ve got a small shop selling leisurewear and T-shirts-” oh, how boring it sounded.
 
She didn’t mention Patrick and Anna.
 
A few of the girls had reeled off the names and ages of all their children, with doting pride.
 
Who could possibly not be interested? Well, Fin, for one.
 
Until the thought that these were mothers who would be at every shool concert, every parents’ evening. And she was ashamed. But in any case, if she could avoid giving away clues to her age, so much the better.

“-but I’ve reached a point in life where I want to do something more...
 
meaningful.”

“Meaningful in what way, Fin?”

Nicky hadn’t queried the statements of any of the others.
 
Damn.

“Ah, well, I mean, er, taking contact with the public to, er, another level.”

Stupid answer.
 
Cheeks hot, skin clammy.
 
Her intention to come across as self-effacing but poised had foundered rather badly; she had hoped to draw as little attention as possible to herself.
 
There would undoubtedly be plenty of humiliations to come, and a low profile from the start might have been helpful.

“Good.
 
Anything else you’d like to say, Fin? Right, and next we have? Julie, OK, and your last name, please? Yes, thank you Julie, go ahead, then.”

The hot potato passed from one student to the next, and Fin no longer enjoyed the horrid little game of offering a silent critique on the performance of each one.
 
If this were the first test of communications skills, she would certainly be in the bottom four or five.
 
With only one more to go, two latecomers entered, all rucksacks and excuses, and flopped down in two of the remaining chairs.
 
As they sorted themselves out Nicky explained what was happening, face and voice neutral, but Fin was glad not to be on the receiving end.
 
Their very impromptu self-introductions were hurried and awkward, and Fin promoted herself up the league table a little.

When all were done, Nicky finished jotting on the folder, and smiled at her new intake.

“Right!” she said, “That’s everyone except one; she’s got a virus and may be with us later in the course.
 
What we’re going to do now is go down to the big hall and I’m going to give you a class – a bit of masterclass, in fact, to show you a taste of what a full-on session is all about.
 
Then we’ll have a half-hour break in the cafeteria – it will usually be quarter of an hour, by the way, but as this is your first day I’m going to be kind – followed by some physiology until lunch at twelve thirty, after which we’ll have an hour or so on musical analysis, a bit about health and safety and then we’ll go downstairs again for your first practical teaching.
 
You’ll get a full timetable after lunch.”

Wow.
 
Fin had known it wasn’t going to be a cruise, but Day One sounded pretty hectic.

The class was certainly a shock to the system.
 
The sound of Nicky’s voice pierced the throbbing bass and howling guitars of the instrumentals, controlling the fifteen beginners with an iron dominance, demonstrating moves and directing the way they were performed, even managing to crack jokes, smiling all the time as she was doing it. She turned them, time after time, the fastest routine Fin had ever experienced, incorporating more jumps, jacks, hops and changes than anything she had known before.
 
Dizzy with the repeated spins and reverse turns, and her eyes beginning to see the overhead lighting flashing from the bare brick walls, she was running short of will-power. The awful thought of showing weakness and having to drop out made her grit her teeth and carry on, but the session took everything she had.

Then, mercifully, the music changed, and the moves slowed; the class cooled down through a more melodic track and Nicky finally took them through a stretching sequence.

“Well done, guys, how did you enjoy that?”

Fin leaned against the wall, her sports kit stuck to her skin with sweat, trickles running freely down her body.
 
It had been a daft idea after all.
 
She was much too old.
 
She could never do what Nicky had just done.
 

“What
about
that?” said a pinched-faced girl at her side, “I didn’t think I could go on by about halfway through!”

“Glad I wasn’t the only one,” said Fin.

“You weren’t,” said Gary, one of the three male students, who had dimples and a receding hairline.

Oh well, at least I’m not the only old crock, thought Fin, at least these two must be pushing forty as well.
 
But as they climbed the stairs to the cafeteria, the groans and complaints from all sides were a comfort; the burnup had taken its toll on them all.

She sat at a table with Pinchface and Gary, and two others.
 
Her first instinct had been to sit at an outer table on her own, to digest and analyse proceedings so far, but she spotted Nicky watching from the doorway.
 
Outgoing, gregarious people good, loners bad.
 

In fact Gary had a quirky, self-deprecating sense of humour, and Audrey, the pinch-faced girl, came over as warm and witty, though she struck Fin as someone who had probably had to struggle hard to get on in life, mentioning three children being looked after by her mum while she took the course.
 
The coffee was nectar after their labours, and Fin bought a banana to eat rather than the crisps and muffins chosen by some of the others.
 
A few of the class had even slipped away for a cigarette.
 
What would Nicky make of it? Probably philosophical; she would have seen it all before.

If that was half an hour, a quarter hour break was going to seem like no time at all.
 
Fin’s legs still felt shaky.
 
At least they would be sitting down for whatever came next, she thought, but in fact this brought its own discomforts.
 
The students were divided into groups of three, with each individual taking a turn at testing the other two on bones of the skeleton, after they had spent five minutes studying the diagram in the manual.
 
No hiding place.
 
Shelley and the dance school man both did better than Fin, causing her to curse her lack of preparation.
 
In fact, this was evidently intended to be a bit of fun before the main event, a tutorial on energy involving much sketching on the whiteboard, and strange technical terms.
 
Nicky had a tendency to say, “Now what do we think the connection is between...” or “What do we think happens when...” rather a lot, relying on the class to call out their deductions.
 
Teaching had certainly moved on since convent days.
 
At the end of the lesson Nicky gave them ten pages of the manual to learn and six to read for the following day, which caused sounds of consternation amongst the class, breezily ignored by their smiling instructor.

Lunch followed, and an hour spent breaking pop songs down into rows of little figure eights, then a session on all the appalling things that could go wrong in an aerobics class.
 
It was a wonder anybody got out alive, it would seem.
 
The afternoon coffee break was cut to ten minutes since they were running a bit late, and then there was a scramble down the stairs to The Dungeon for their first practical.
 
They were taught several basic moves, with which everybody was familiar; and then all the fine points of each which had to be emphasised and demonstrated to participants.
 
Fin certainly didn’t recall such detailed coaching in any of the classes she had ever attended.
 
Once again, they had to get into groups of three, and she hung back until only two spare people remained, the dance school couple, whom she joined with a faint smile.
 
The group members took turns at demonstrating and instructing the particular move that Nicky called out, to the strict tempo of Motown pops.
 
It was torture.
 
Fin’s voice faltered and mumbled, and Nicky had to correct her tentative movements several times on her tour around the threesomes.
 
It was made all the worse by the fact that her group mates, used to teaching, gave clear, unblushing instructions, even when incorrect.
 
If it wasn’t too late Fin would need to try and avoid these two in future.

She was back in her motel room at six with a tuna sandwich and a yoghurt from the snack bar, wondering whether the maelstrom in her brain could be ordered into any sort of calm and receptive state.
 
She awarded herself a hot bath, in which she briefly fell asleep, before washing her kit in it and hanging the wet clothing over the shower curtain.
 
It was a good job she had allowed three sets for the week.

The open manual lay in the pool of light cast by the desk lamp, white and uncompromising.
 
Time to get on with it.

The week had flown, a mixture of nightmare and elation, despair and dizzy optimism.
 
Not even the best of the students could afford to feel comfortable; the course drove along remorselessly, with frequent testing and refining, ensuring that even the less able could work on their weak points. Of which, for Fin, there were many.
 
Being good at doing exercise, she found, was a world away from being a good teacher.
 
She was used to focusing on one mental process at a time, compartmentalising peripheral concerns in order of importance, to receive attention each in turn, when she was ready.
 
The instructor in front of a class, however, would be memorising choreography and marrying it to the music, describing to the class what they would be doing in a few beats’ time whilst demonstrating the current move
and
advising on the recommended safe and effective way to perform it; signalling direction of travel and remembering to instruct on the basis that her own ‘left’ was ‘right’ as far as the participants were concerned; keeping an eye on the back row where the inept would lurk, possibly doing the moves incorrectly and potentially unsafely; signalling these individuals to correct them without drawing attention to the fact and embarrassing them...
 
And
smiling.

Frankly there hadn’t been time to dwell on Marie; there had been only work, and sleep.
 
But now it was six o’clock, Friday night.
 
She was on the road back home, and a picture of Marie’s dark little sitting room, the fire flickering and Comfy curled up on the chair – Fin’s chair - floated in her head. It was hard not to speed, but with the road surface glistening with treacherous reflections and sleet blowing in gusts across the windscreen, she forced herself to drive slowly. She wouldn’t be much good to Marie dead or injured.
 
It was half past ten by the time she reached the outskirts of Harford.
 
She had even stopped for a break in a lay-by; her eyes were taking longer to reopen when blinking than was safe, and a numbing fog of exhaustion hovered at the edge of her consciousness.
 
She got out into the freezing wind, and walked vigorously up and down, shivering inside her warm jacket. Then she did some running on the spot, and even a few jumping jacks, hoping that no passing motorists would see her in the dark outside the fan of their headlights.
 
It took a while before she felt ready to continue, wondering whether to go straight to Marie’s or to get a night’s sleep and put some decent clothes and a little make-up on.
 
Much as she was desperate to see Marie, Friday night was always a late one on the circuit.
 
Marie wouldn’t be back at the flat for hours.
 
Besides, Fin had left her flat key in the desk drawer at home so that there would be no chance of losing it while she was away, so she would have to go to the house first anyway.
 
Yes, that was the best plan of action.
 
Get some sleep, make herself look attractive – her gaunt, ratty appearance in the motel room mirror had quite shocked her – pick up some flowers, creep in and wake Marie gently, take her out for lunch, spend a blissful weekend together. It would certainly make the prospect of Week Two of the course more bearable.
 
Of course there was a lot of homework for the weekend, but sod it, she would stay up all Monday night, or something.
 
She would catch up somehow.

She lay in bed, mind cavorting with anticipation of the next day, just like when she had been four, seven, eight, and waiting for Father Christmas.
 
She giggled to herself, thinking of the recent Christmas Eve.
 
But this – tomorrow – would be her real Christmas.
 
It was going to be better than all the other Christmases put together.