Mad About the Boy Page 8

  I looked at him in amazement, I was desperately hurt, but I also knew he was right. I had been stuffing myself ever since Hugo had made his announcement and even more so since the incident at Suzy’s party. Sitting at home, night after night, eating ice cream straight from the tubs that I kidded myself I bought for Tom. Sometimes I scooped it out with a ginger nut.

  It was almost as though I were deliberately sabotaging myself. I always ordered full-cream lattes and then heaped sugar into them. I had cocoa for breakfast and ate crisps straight from the packet, while making dinner. Tom and I had fish and chips at least once a week, which I always told myself was a treat for him. I usually ended up finishing his off too.

  I stood up and looked at myself in a pretty full-length cheval mirror I had found in a junk shop in Newtown, painted matt white, and priced at fifteen times what I paid for it. I realized it was the first time I had looked at my reflection properly below the neck for quite a while. Percy was right. I was enormous.

  Even in my new linen skirt – Tom’s blood stains carefully soaked out by Percy using some alchemical mixture of baking soda and lemon juice – and a silk knit v-neck top, which had seemed so flattering when I’d bought them (because nothing else fitted), I looked seriously chunky. Not just chubby, or sweetly plump, as I had looked for a while after Tom was born, but actually fat.

  I turned my stricken face to Percy.

  ‘I’m the elephant woman,’ I wailed at him.

  He nodded happily.

  ‘I’m sorry to be so hard, darling heart,’ he said. ‘But you’ve got enough to deal with, without being the fat girl on Bondi Beach this summer.’

  ‘But what can I do? I’ve never been fat before.’

  ‘I know, it’s awful. From the moment your puppy fat drops off at seventeen, you don’t have to think about it and suddenly you’re thirty and you develop all these new fatty pads in places where you never even used to have places. But take my advice, get rid of it now, because when you hit forty, it gets much harder to shift.’

  ‘So how do you stay so trim, Percy?’ I asked him. ‘You’re a bit older than forty, I think, and you’re positively lissom.’

  ‘I’m fifty-nine, darling. Fifty-nine and proud of it. My secret is yoga. I’ve been doing it for nearly forty years and my metabolism is like a finely tuned instrument. And I walk miles. You just blob around in the car and stuff yourself. You’ll have to change your diet and go and suffer in a gym. It’s the only way. I’ve got this leaflet for you.’

  He rummaged around in the large Kashmiri embroidered holdall he always carried and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. I looked at it: ‘The Carlton Spa – Sydney’s Premiere Fitness and Leisure Complex’.

  ‘Oh that place,’ I said, pulling a face. ‘Hugo has membership to that as part of his work package. He went once and told me it was awful, all smoked glass and pert older women in Jane Fonda leotards.’

  ‘Well, according to my enquiries you are still included on Hugo’s “platinum membership”, whatever that is, and that entitles you to five free sessions with a personal trainer, so you might as well go and take advantage of it. I’ll look after this place for two hours a day and you can go off and get yourself gorgeous again.’

  He picked up his plate and headed off to the kitchen. As he passed me, still standing transfixed by my horrifying reflection, he stopped and whispered in my right ear.

  ‘I’ve made an appointment for your fitness assessment at two o’clock on Thursday, so you’d better go and get yourself some pastel legwarmers.’

  Then he whacked me on my fat bottom and flounced off.

  7

  Percy’s frankness shocked me into action and I dutifully went off to the Carlton Spa and had my fitness check. ‘Nightmare’ does not begin to describe the experience. Not only did the place look like an Atlantic City casino circa 1985, it was full of people I totally did not want to see me in gym gear. And they were playing Enya over the PA.

  The first person I saw as I peeped out of the changing rooms, feeling horribly self-conscious in some old leggings, a baggy T-shirt and a pair of startlingly white new trainers, was Caroline French.

  She was wearing a matching ensemble of pale pink leotard, tights and jazz shoes – oh, and the leotard was belted. Finishing her look she had her usual peanut-sized diamonds in each ear and the olive-sized one on her ring finger. Her other accessory, I suddenly realized, was a textbook perfect figure – big firm boobs, tiny waist, the lot. I’d never really noticed it before, because she was always togged out in Chanel suits. I wondered why she didn’t wear leotards all the time. She looked like Mature Workout Barbie.

  ‘Antonia,’ she said, her botoxed face assuming a form of frozen smile. I was slightly cheered that at least she had decided not to ignore me, but the way her eyes went up and down my body was anything but friendly. ‘Haven’t seen you down here before,’ she said, smugly. ‘Are you coming to Jazz Step? We all do it. Troy’s wonderful.’

  She laughed coquettishly and put her arm round the man who was standing next to her. He was a ridiculous-looking creature, like an oversized Action Man, with bright orange plastic skin, in a supertight wrestler’s unitard and workout shoes the dimensions of small tractors. His face snapped into a rictus grin as dazzlingly white as my brand new Nikes.

  ‘You should come, Antonia’ he said, in a voice that sounded like Caroline had just pulled a string in his back. ‘We have a great time. You’d love it.’

  If it gave me a figure like Caroline’s I thought I might risk it, but first I had to be assessed by personal trainer Trent, who was bearing down on me at that moment in preposterously small nylon shorts, carrying a clipboard and a stop watch. His legs were so muscle bound he walked as though he was trying to keep a ping-pong ball between his buttocks.

  The assessment wasn’t too bad actually – well, not at first. After weighing and measuring me, pinching my skin with strange callipers and making me go like the clappers on an exercise bike, Trent announced that I was about twelve kilos overweight, which sounded like nothing. I was quite cheered. It wasn’t until he got out his calculator and told me that in ‘my lingo’ it was actually close to two stone, I realized how desperate my situation was.

  He said my flexibility was average and my aerobic fitness just slightly below desirable for my age, which sounded like a fairly good description of me in general, I thought.

  Trent reckoned if I radically changed my eating habits, gave up alcohol, power walked every morning, came to the gym for a session with him five times a week and did regular power yoga, he could have me sorted out in just nine months.

  ‘Nine months!’ I squealed. The longest I’d ever been on a diet before was twenty-four hours, when I’d wanted to fit into a really small dress for a really big party. I hadn’t realized I was embarking on another pregnancy.

  I was so terrified by Trent’s findings I decided I was going to go all out and take a class straightaway. And Troy gave me such a friendly wave through the window of the workout dance studio, I thought, what the heck? Why not give it a go? I loved dancing, Jazz Step couldn’t be that hard.

  I regretted my decision the minute I entered the studio and saw Nikki Maier standing next to Caroline, wearing a turquoise all-in-one that described her every luscious curve. Then I realized I recognized ninety per cent of the rest of the class from meetings across canapé trays in Point Piper. They all looked as though they’d had their hair done especially to come to the gym. But it was too late to back out, Troy was already welcoming me over his Madonna headset.

  ‘And today we have a new Jazz Stepper, let’s give a big Carlton Club welcome for Antonia!’

  The whole class turned and looked and smirked and clapped weakly, as Troy set up a small podium in front of me that looked like something from an Olympics awards ceremony. I had no idea what I was supposed to do with it.

  As he fiddled with the sound system I saw Nikki lean over and say something to Caroline. They both perceptibly turned in my direction and
laughed. Not in a nice way.

  Then as hideous jazz funk blared over the speakers the class began. I didn’t have a clue what was going on. Troy was barking commands over his headset in a foreign language that everyone else in the room seemed to understand.

  ‘Grapevine! Mine all mine!’ chorused Troy, like it was the wittiest remark of the century and all the trim little bodies bounced on and off their podia like jumping beans on speed.

  ‘Figure of eight! Don’t wait! Down the line! One mo’ time!’ carolled Troy and off they went, hopping up and down and turning and bobbing and worst of all – clapping.

  I can honestly say, as I clapped a split second behind the rest of the class for about the twentieth time, before actually tripping over my podium and landing on my arse, that I have never felt so humiliated in my life. I got straight back up again – but not before Nikki had seen me – only to hear Troy calling out my name.

  ‘That’s the spirit, Antonia. Get straight back on that horse and … Corkscrew! Why don’t you?’

  It was all I could do not to call back: ‘Fuck you! Why don’t you?’, but I stuck it to the end. I had to. I couldn’t bear to walk out, even though for the last twenty minutes I was just plodding through the ‘moves’ (as I imagined they were called) like Herman Munster, praying for the whole terrible thing to be over.

  Catching sight of myself in the mirror, I could see my ‘baggy’ T-shirt clinging to every roll of fat, glued to my frame with sweat. Meanwhile, Nikki’s ponytail was swinging perkily from side to side as she cruised effortlessly through the routine, throwing in a few optional high kicks for good measure.

  Then at last, it was over. They all clapped themselves. I couldn’t make my hands meet, I was so cross-eyed with exhaustion.

  ‘Great class, girls!’ cried Troy.

  ‘Great class, Troy!’ chorused the girls. I thought I was going to vomit.

  Taking advantage of Nikki and Caroline’s post-class Troy love-in moment, I staggered off to the changing room and slumped onto the bench by my locker, too exhausted even to think about getting dressed.

  Through my curtain of troglodyte hair, I saw Nikki and Caroline come skipping gaily in with towels over their shoulders and heard them laughing and chatting in the communal shower. I distinctly heard the words, ‘How about when she fell over?’ followed by hysterics and then Caroline saying, ‘If I hadn’t been so careful with my pelvic floor exercises, I think I would have pissed myself.’ More coarse laughter.

  I was almost – almost – too knackered to care, but I started caring a few minutes later when Nikki came bouncing into my section of lockers, stark naked, perfect fake breasts defying Newtonian laws, brown body still wet from the shower.

  Seeing me slumped there, she made no attempt to cover herself, but stood in a pose guaranteed to show off the curve of her waist and the ripe slope of her peach-half buttocks. She had no pubic hair, except a tiny tuft, carefully trimmed into a heart shape. I tried not to stare, while wondering if she was planning to knife me. But she seemed to be trying another tactic. I was so exhausted, I just sat there and waited for it to happen.

  ‘Hello, Antonia,’ she said, with fake sincerity. ‘Weren’t you brave to do Troy’s class? Very daring to go straight into the advanced group.’

  Then she turned round and bent over. More information than necessary, is all I can say and she treated me to a lot more porn-show moves as she dried herself luxuriously and rubbed cream into her body with one foot up on the bench. I could have given a gynaecology lecture by the time she had her G-string on.

  Even in my fug, it struck me that there was something really peculiar about the way she was carrying on. Obviously she wanted to make sure I noticed quite how much better than mine her body was, but a couple of times I noticed her glance upwards as she slowly rubbed the body lotion over her breasts and buttocks. I followed her gaze and saw she was looking straight at a security camera. Most odd.

  Swathing myself in towels I trudged off for a shower. When I came back, Nikki was dressed, fully made-up and clearly waiting for me.

  ‘I’m glad I bumped into you, Antonia,’ she said, green contact lenses glinting. ‘It will save me posting your invitation to my shop opening next week.’ She smiled sweetly. As sweet as a sewer rat. Then she thrust a large cream envelope at me. I opened it to see the words:

  ‘Nikki’s Knacks – Homewares of Charm and Chic Ironique for the Discerning Decorator’.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes. ‘Chic ironique’ was Hugo’s phrase. She’d even used my typeface.

  ‘It’s in Queen Street,’ she said brightly. ‘You know, the main shopping street in Woollahra, around the corner from where you are, back there near the fish and chip shop?’

  I just looked at her. I knew exactly which shop she was in. The one on the corner I’d told her I’d really wanted, the one I had recently noticed was being painted my particular shade of Gustavian grey and which was double the rent of my place.

  ‘That’s lovely, Nikki,’ I said, summoning up my best Lady Heaveringham voice. ‘I’d be delighted to come – and I’ll bring my friend Percy. He’s Hugo’s uncle.’

  Her acquisitive little eyes narrowed, no doubt imagining a dashing Duke of Devonshire type she could flirt into submission, so she could achieve her aim of swanning around an English stately home, like an Australian Raine Spencer.

  ‘Yes, Hugo’s Uncle Percy,’ I said, laying it on as much as I could. ‘Lovely man. Gorgeous. Single. You’ll find him very interesting.’

  *

  Percy laughed so hard when I told him the story of my trip to the gym – complete with demonstrations, using phone books as my podium – he set off a fit of giggle hysterics in Tom, who ended up jumping up and down on the sofa shouting: ‘Grapevine! Mine all mine!’ I had to give him some warm milk with cinnamon to calm him down.

  Percy was still wiping tears from his eyes half an hour later.

  ‘Oh, Antonia, you poor child,’ he said, between shaky breaths as he regained his composure. ‘How absolutely awful, when you had been so brave to go … but do tell me again about the outfits.’

  Percy was just like Tom when it came to stories. When you told him one he liked, he wanted to hear it over and over again and would stop you if missed out the tiniest detail. (‘The belt! The belt! You’ve forgotten the belt. That’s my favourite bit.’)

  While he agreed that the Carlton Spa was not for me, Percy was not about to let up on my fitness programme. The next morning he woke me up at six o’clock, made me drink hot water with a slice of lemon – yuk – then forced me to go on a very long walk round Centennial Park, while he got Tom ready for school.

  ‘Don’t come back for at least an hour,’ he ordered. ‘And keep moving.’

  When I trudged back in he had me performing yoga moves in the early morning sun, which Tom found nearly as funny as ‘Grapevine! Mine all mine!’, his new favourite catchphrase, before I sat down to a breakfast of tropical fruits, cut and placed so beautifully the plate looked like a Japanese flower arrangement.

  ‘Heaveringham’s Home Spa,’ he announced. ‘It will do until we can find a gym you can stand.’

  Then he forced me to take about twenty enormous vitamin pills, which he said he took every morning as part of his own regime. After all that he told me I had to walk to the shop every day. No car for anything less than four miles, was the new rule.

  By 11 a.m. I was so knackered I could have lain on the floor behind the counter and slept. Plus the vitamin pills were repeating on me something chronic and I was ravenous, desperate for my usual morning snack of a creamy latte and a toasted ham and cheese sandwich – all forbidden. Instead I gagged on a cup of vile green tea and nibbled on the raw carrot sticks Percy had packed up for me.

  It was quiet for a Friday morning so I worked on my needlepoint. I was trying out a new cushion for a little girl’s room that said ‘Mummy’s little angel’ on one side and ‘Devil spawn brat’ on the other. Judging by the children of the people I had met rece
ntly, I thought there would be a large market for it in Woollahra.

  I was soon in the calm, almost trance-like state that only the repetitive concentration of needlepoint can induce, but after a while I became aware of a lot more human traffic than usual going up and down my end of Moncur Street. That was good, I thought, maybe I’d get a few more drop-in customers.

  I looked out to see if they were likely types and saw that it was the same two people walking slowly up and down on the other side of the street, peering intently across at my windows, but trying to look as though they weren’t. The man was writing in a notebook.

  It was bloody Nikki Maier – with a particularly nasty piece of work called Paul, who was the best buddy and former flatmate of Hugo’s ghastly Greg. Oh, they would be chums, wouldn’t they, I thought bitterly, but what were they doing? Then I realized – they were making notes about my windows.

  Rage rose in my stomach like a cyclone. I wanted to go and shoo them off my territory like feral dogs. I certainly wasn’t just going to sit there and let them rip me off, so I went to the shop doorway and waved cheerily at them. I really was glad of all the little tricks I had learned from Hugo’s mother. There’s a lot you can do with icy politeness.

  ‘Hi there, Nikki,’ I called brightly. ‘Hello, Paul. Isn’t it a lovely day? Getting some fresh air? Always good for inspiration, isn’t it? Clears the head. How’s the shop going? Can’t wait to see it on Tuesday. Bye.’

  I went back inside, before either of them could reply. Had she no shame?

  Percy was just as excited about Nikki’s shop opening as she probably was about meeting him. I’d sent him on a reconnaissance mission of my own, strolling casually past her windows on Queen Street, but she had paper over the glass, so he couldn’t see in.