Page 10 of Hard Tail
Chapter Four
After I’d braved the local Asda—it was a lot larger, busier and generally less user-friendly than the Waitrose I usually shopped at, but it was also cheaper, which, given my straitened circumstances, was a good thing—and cleaned it out of coffee, tea and microwaveable ready meals, I went to see Jay. Obviously, the universe agreed with me that I was due a bit of karmic payback, as Mum was there. She was putting all the get-well cards into a carrier bag and generally looking like she was preparing to re-enact the evacuation of Dunkirk, only on a slightly larger scale.
“Mum?” I said, giving Jay a distracted wave. “Is Jay going home already?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, darling. James is far too ill for that. No, the doctors here have admitted he’s going to need a further operation, which clearly means the first one wasn’t done properly, and I don’t think it’s good enough. We’re having him transferred to the Spire.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Jay, you can’t afford a private hospital!” Not on the profits of 87p pump adaptors, he couldn’t.
“Don’t be silly, dear,” Mum said. “He’s got insurance.”
“He has?” I said stupidly.
“Yeah.” Jay finally took part in the conversation. “Mum pays for it.”
I stared at her. “What? You’ve never said anything about getting us private cover.”
“Well, I don’t, for you, Timothy. There’s never seemed to be any need. After all, you don’tdoanything.”
“What about the karate?” I sputtered, wounded by her dismissive tone.
“Oh, Timothy.” She made a tutting sound with her tongue. “Everyone knows it’s all noncontact these days. You’re only pretending to hit people. It’s not as if it’sproperfighting.”
Way to make me feel good about my shiny new black belt, Mum. “One of the guys at my club broke his wrist a few weeks ago,” I pointed out, possibly a little defensively.
“Well, I hardly see howthatis anything to boast about. Now, mind out, Timothy, I need to carry on packing things up. James, darling, are you sure you’re up to the move?”
I didn’t stay much longer.
It was only when I got back home to find Wolverine glaring pointedly at the empty food bowl that I realised I’d forgotten to ask Jay if he owned a cat.
***
It looked like I was going to be down in Totton for a while. Fortunately, I’d packed mygi, so all I had to do now was find a karate club to train with. It’d be good to find some new sparring partners, anyway. If you’ve sparred with the same guys for a while, you get to know how they fight, and you can predict their attacks. Swapping things around a bit would help keep me on my toes.
I did a quick Google search on Jay’s computer and came up with a club that met in Totton Sports Centre. They met on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings—both times I’d be able to make, with the added bonus I could go along tonight. Cheered by the prospect of an actual social life, even if it was only one predicated on a mutual love of physical violence, I whistled as I shut down the computer.
A quick microwave curry later, I changed into my gi and made my way down to the sports centre, which was a bright, modern building in a quiet cul-de-sac just off the Ringwood Road. As I parked my car, I thought a bit guiltily I probably shouldn’t be using it for a journey of only a couple of miles. Maybe I should do what Matt had suggested and take a closer look at the stock tomorrow. After all, if trade was always as slow as today’s had been, we could do with the custom.
I negotiated with the chirpy young woman behind the desk until she agreed to let me through the turnstile, then made my way up to what was encouragingly billed as the combat room. The class hadn’t started yet, and brown and black belts were milling around, chatting and laughing. I introduced myself to them—figured I might as well get in a plug for Jay’s shop while I was there—and they pointed out the Sensei to me.
Sensei Ray Cole was a 5th Dan black guy with a cockney accent and a wide smile, who pumped my hand with so much enthusiasm I was worried it might fall off. “Good to have you here, mate. Just fall in line and give us a shout if you’re not sure about anything.” He turned away to give a sergeant major’s bellow to the class. “Right you lot—line up!”
As I bowed at the entrance of the dojo, the familiar smell of rubber mats and sweat in all degrees of freshness hit my nostrils like a back fist strike. I breathed in deeply. It was good to be home. The remaining tension rolled away from my shoulders as we went through the warm-up before moving on to basics. I suppose it’s a bit like meditation, in a way. You’re completely focussed on the techniques you’re practicing, and it clears your mind like nothing else can. I could feel myself gradually chilling out about the situation with my job, Jay, Kate and—yes—Matt. The problems didn’t disappear, but my sense of perspective reasserted itself. Jay would be fine. I’d get another job. Kate and I were never meant to be. Matt…
Okay. That one was a little trickier, and I hadn’t quite sorted it all out in my head by the time we moved on to kata, which takes a whole different kind of concentration. Kata, if you’re not familiar with the term, is a sequence of around twenty or so predetermined martial arts moves, based on the concept of fighting off a series of attackers. It’s a little like a dance, if your idea of dancing involves kicks to the head and strikes to the gonads, which, for all I know, it does—it’s not like I’ve been clubbing much in the last few years.
And then we went on to sparring, at which point a meaty hand descended on my back with bruising force and landed me with the partner from hell.
My local sports centre back in London has a sign up saying “Martial Arts for All”. Which is all very well in principle, but in practice, in my considered opinion, there are certain people who shouldn’t be allowed within a hundred yards of anything that’ll show them how to beat the crap out of people even more effectively. And the bloke I ended up fighting with that night was definitely one of those people.
You can tell them a mile off. They’re the ones who, when they go through their basics, give it 100 per cent powerall the time. They punch the air like it just mugged their granny, and when theykiaiyou need earplugs to avoid permanent damage to your hearing. Their gis are stained with sweat and pulling at the seams over steroid-enhanced muscles. They tend not to be black belts, because a key requirement for passing your black belt is the possession of control.
And you do not want to be stuck with these guys when it comes to sparring. I soon found out my new partner was a vicious bastard, to put it mildly. He might be good-looking and have shoulders half as broad as he was long, but he had a chip on those shoulders the size of the New Forest and a natural ability to channel his fury through his fists and feet. He was supple too, as I found out when he set my head ringing with a snap kick to the left ear. There’s not many people who can get their feet up to my six foot two, but we were fairly evenly matched for height. He was half my weight again, though, with legs roughly the girth and weight of tree trunks.
As the pins-and-needles numbness in my ear settled into a dull pain, I backed off a bit, hopping lightly on the balls of my feet. “How about we take it a bit easier?” I suggested without taking my eyes off him for a minute. His hair was thinning noticeably on top, probably a result of all that raging testosterone. He looked a bit like a young Bruce Willis, if Bruce had spent his formative years chomping on steroids and then got really angry about something.
“Not going to learn anything that way, are we?” Bruce countered and lunged in with a jab punch to the solar plexus with his left fist that would have taken out several internal organs if I hadn’t managed to block it. I’d swear I felt the bones in my arm vibrate from the impact—I’d have a bruise there tomorrow. I just hoped he wouldn’t go for the face, as two members of staff with black eyes wouldn’t do the reputation of Jay’s bike shop any good at all.
