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 my free hand to myself. I couldn’t help giving Patti a good goosing. And no sooner were we behind the door and supposed to be, according to Aaron, ‘sorting ourselves out’, than we were at it, quick and breathless and more or less still standing up. A chilly attic room in Birmingham, dark outside. Patti with her skirt up, holding on to the back of a chair. The kids off our hands. Two newly-weds below. Wonders will never cease.
We had a good time — I mean we had a good time, too, with Aaron and Wanda. Because of the head start we had, of having been married for five years already and having two kids, being with Aaron and Wanda was like being with a couple of kids. And, not having our own kids around, it was like being a couple of kids ourselves.
True, when we came back later that night — it was their wedding night — our top room, above theirs, might still have been a bit tricky. But we’d all been drinking and then Patti and me — well, we’d had our head start. All I remember is curling up with her, this time just for warmth, and crashing.
When I woke up I could hear a lot of scuffling below. I don’t mean bedroom noises. I mean scuffling, on the stairs and then in the hallway. The sound of people on their feet and busy about something — very early on a Sunday morning, in January. On the day after their wedding.
I heard muffled voices. I think I heard, ‘Okay, Wan? Keys?’ Then I heard the front door being shut with an effort to keep it quiet. Then I heard more voices below in the street. I wondered if Aaron and Wanda were still drunk. And I couldn’t help getting up to peep through the curtains of our little front window.
It made me think of getting up once when I’d heard strange noises at home. It was just two foxes, under the streetlamps, mucking around with an upended dustbin. I remember thinking that I wasn’t young any more — I was someone who worried about noises in the night.
What I saw this time, under the streetlamps, was Aaron and Wanda. To say they were mucking around wouldn’t have been quite right, but not quite wrong either. They were in tracksuits and trainers. On the morning after their wedding night — it was still dark and freezing — they were going for a run. But they were also mucking around as if they couldn’t yet get down to serious business. They were laughing. They were like two foxes in their own way. They more than once kissed and ran their hands over each other. I thought: They could be doing all that snuggled up in bed.
Nonetheless I saw Aaron had a stopwatch on a loop round his neck. They actually took up positions, side by side, in the middle of the road, half crouching, as if their toes were on a line. Aaron held the stopwatch, looking at it, then Wanda tensed and Aaron spoke. I’m sure I heard, ‘Set! Go!’ Wanda sped off and Aaron kept looking at the watch — maybe it was a ten-second handicap — then he sped off too.
His challenge to her, or hers to him? I’ll never know. Or what the distance was or the route. It was 6.30 a.m.
Wanda’s an eight-hundred-metre runner now. The real deal. It’s less than a year to the London Olympics. And she’s Aaron’s missis.
I turned from the window. Patti had woken up. She switched on a bedside light and stared at me. ‘What the hell are you doing? What’s going on?’
Well, the phrase came to me. I had to laugh. I said, ‘I’ve just seen Aaron chasing a woman.’
I explained. I explained what I’d heard and what I’d seen and I expected there’d now be some chuckling head-shaking discussion between us about this weird post-wedding behaviour. Or that this might be the time for our in-depth analysis of the whole Aaron-Wanda thing.
But Patti just said, ‘You mean they’re not here, they’re not right below us? We’ve got the place to ourselves?’
And she grabbed my wrist and yanked me back into bed.