Second Intention (3 page)

Yes, coincidences
do
happen, and that’s precisely what this was.

All the same, the business with the car was a pain in the backside because it would affect my position in the national rankings. By not competing today I would drop down the order, since I would automatically lose all the ranking points I had got at Cheltenham the previous year (thanks to our wonderful
“rolling rankings” system) but had no chance to replace them with an equal, or greater, number of points this time.

How many points had I lost?

I fixed myself a scotch and soda then plodded quietly through to the study and switched on the computer. The British Fencing Association has a very good website which makes it easy to see how you are doing in the rankings. I logged on, clicked on the appropriate links, and saw the national ranking list for men’s epee appear on the screen. Last year’s Cheltenham results were still listed, and by scrolling back I could see exactly how many points I had got then.

Damn. Three hundred and eighty-
one. It had, I remembered, been a pretty good performance, and it was a lot to discard with no replacement of points today.

I went back to the main list and tried to work out how much I would drop down the rankings. Quite a lot, it seemed. If everybody else had done about the same as last year then I would lose about thirty places, which would put me well outside the top hundred, nationally.

Then I saw it. There, about twelve places below me in the current list, a name jumped out at me.

Toby
Rutherford.

Bugger. Unless I really outperformed him at the City of
Oxford Open the following weekend, which was the only competition left before the list was updated at the end of the month, he was going to overtake me in the national rankings.

He would never let me hear the end of it, I knew, if he managed to edge ahead of me by even one place. I know I shouldn
’t let something like that get to me, but I
really
didn’t want it to happen.

He had done very well out of me having two flat tyres that morning …

I poured myself another glass of whisky, then spent some time just surfing around the various fencing sites. I was still in two minds about whether to enter the international in Denmark, which would be happening two weeks after Oxford. Being a ‘B’ grade competition I didn’t need to make it through the national team selection progress, and could take part as long as I paid for it all myself and arranged my own transport and accommodation. It was very tempting, and Sue and I could enjoy a bit of pre-Christmas shopping in Copenhagen after I got knocked out of the direct elimination. I’d have to ask her whether she fancied it.

I logged off, aware that I had been sucked into the internet trap of just flicking through the sites for no real purpose. Almost immediately the telephone rang again.

‘Hello. Richard Teasdale.’ I said.

Again, nothing. Just that faint hiss of a connection to somebody else, who was saying nothing.

‘Hello?’

Click.

I dialled 1471 again, which, as expected, gave me the same story as before.

I didn
’t like this. There was something rather creepy about it, and while I like to think I can take care of myself, I hated the thought of whoever it was doing it while Sue was here on her own and scaring her.

It rang again and I snatched it up.

‘Look,’ I snapped, ‘whoever this i …’

‘
Hey, hey,’ Phil cut in. ‘Calm down, laddie. It’s only me.’

‘
Oh,’ I felt a little foolish. ‘Sorry, mate. We’ve had a bit of trouble with kids ‘phoning up and fooling about.’

‘
Mmmm. I thought you were going to call me.’ He sounded none too pleased. I glanced at my watch, and was amazed to see that it was getting on for eleven. Damn. He had every right to be hacked off. I had completely forgotten.

I gave him the full story, which didn
’t take long. I could hardly tell him about what had or hadn’t worked, technique-wise, since I hadn’t even picked up an epee that day. He said he understood, although deep down I could tell he was unimpressed. He also said he had an idea for an exercise he wanted to try on Tuesday at the club, which I took some comfort from, since at least he wasn’t so hacked off that he wanted to give up coaching me completely. I apologised again, and he told me to stop drinking and go to bed. Yeah, thanks, coach, I thought.

Before heading up to bed I went around and checked that all the doors and windows were locked. It
’s a routine which I always go through, but on this occasion, don’t ask me why, I felt an urge to go out and just take a quick look at the cars. As you might expect, there was absolutely nothing wrong with them, sitting there quietly in the moonlight.

I sighed. Was I letting what had happened get to me?

Three

I drove to work the next morning under leaden skies. The cold was biting and it was clear that winter had arrived big time.

I had wanted to get in early so that I could have a good look at all the stuff
Douglas had given to me. It wasn’t to be, however, as Keith, our warehouse manager, nabbed me on the way in and wanted to talk about stock levels. By the time I got up to my office it was gone nine, and I barely had time to settle before the inevitable knock came at my door.

‘
Is now a convenient time?’ Douglas began, striding straight in.

‘
Of course,’ I said gesturing to a seat facing my desk, knowing better than to tell my M.D. that it wasn’t convenient.

‘
Well now,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Good weekend?’

‘
Yes thanks. How about you?’

‘
Oh, not too bad. Spent most of the time on the boat. Just cleaning things up, you understand. No actual sailing. Got to get everything sorted for the winter.’

‘
Mmmm.’ I nodded.

“
The boat” was his pride and joy, a thirty-six foot Sadler Bermudan sloop. It was common knowledge at Medicom that if Jean, his long suffering wife, hadn’t been a keen sailor herself she would never have got to see him at all.

He
’s a funny bloke, Douglas. Difficult to get to know. Amiable enough, most of the time, but a little guarded overall, as though he never really wants to give away too much. He had been very good for the company, though, and had turned its fortunes around considerably since arriving there fourteen years before.

I also think he genuinely has the best interests of his employees at heart, which was, no doubt, why he was there now.

‘So, the I.P.S. bumph,’ he went on. ‘You’ve had a look at it?’

‘
Er … yes,’ I half-lied. I had, indeed, looked at it, but only for about ten minutes after he had handed it to me on Friday afternoon.

‘
And what are your thoughts …?’

‘
Well … I haven’t made up my mind one way or the other, as yet. I’d like to give it a little more thought, and maybe talk it through with Sue a little more. I didn’t really get much chance at the weekend.’

‘
Mmmm, of course,’ he nodded, knowing that her condition meant I might not have seen much of her at all. ‘How is she, by the way?’

‘
Oh, she’s okay. Keeping herself too busy, as always. You know how it is.’

‘
Yes,’ he said, a little more slowly than I would have liked. ‘Well, be sure to give her my love, won’t you?’

‘
Yes, I will. Thanks.’

I thought that was it, and that he would be heaving his bulk out of the seat and heading for the door, but he just sat there a moment longer. He took off hi
s glasses and wiped them absent-mindedly. It was a mannerism that I had seen a hundred times before. One which he used when he was trying to think through exactly how to phrase his next comment.

‘
You know, Richard,’ he said, after a few seconds, ‘I know it means a lot to you, but you need to keep this fencing thing in perspective.’

Ah. So that was how he was going to play it.

‘I know you’re very good at it,’ he went on, ‘and I recognise that it’s important for a man to have a hobby, a
passion
if you like, but we need to keep things manageable. I’d hate to think you were letting it make you miss out on other opportunities.’

‘
Oh, absolutely,’ I said, in an agreeable tone. I was actually bloody cross that he should be saying this, but I couldn’t afford to let it show. It wouldn’t get me anywhere, and I honestly think he thought he knew best, and was doing me a favour by pointing it out.

‘
And let’s face it,’ he made a little gesture with his right hand, ‘you won’t be able to keep it up much longer. I mean, what are you now – thirty-seven?’

‘
Thirty-nine,’ I corrected.

‘
Well, there you are, you see. Nothing to be ashamed of. Happens to all of us eventually. Time to slow down a bit and look to other things.’

He was completely wrong, of course, although I couldn
’t see any real point in trying to explain. Because it’s so tactical, and doesn’t call for the explosive power in the legs which the other two weapons require, fencing with the epee allows for greater longevity. Some epeeists have even held their places on the national squad into their fifties. Besides, when I turned forty I would then be eligible for the veterans category, and that would open up a whole new field of competition.

‘
Well,’ I said, glancing down at the I.P.S. brochure on my desk, ‘Like I said, I’ll give it a bit more thought.’

‘
Mmmm. Good, good.’ He hauled himself up at last. ‘I just want what’s best for you, Richard. You know that, don’t you?’

‘
Sure.’ I walked across to the door and held it open for him, and he strode out.

After he had gone I thought about it some more. Maybe he was right, and that I shouldn
’t be devoting so much time and energy to it. I had to think about Sue, and our future, and we sure as hell would be a whole lot more secure with a director’s salary rather than a manager’s.

One thing was sure, though. There was absolutely no possibility of me winding down my fencing just a little. If I
was
going to fence at all, then I was damn well going to do it to the best of my abilities.

*                  *                  *                  *

I honestly believe that Philip McAlister is the best fencing coach to be found outside London, and we’re bloody lucky to have him in Ely.

It
’s really
his
efforts over the last five years which have turned us from just another bunch of provincial swordsmen, going through the motions and playing at it, into serious competitors. Thanks to him we have three foilists ranked in the top hundred, one junior international foilist, and five epeeists who can hold their own with the best of them. I have no illusions about the part he played in my development, either. Without him I would still just be a journeyman, hauling myself around the country to opens so that I could get soundly beaten by vastly superior fencers before heading home.

The club, which has grown to around twenty active competitors since his arrival from
Glasgow back in the late noughties, has a lot to thank him for, and so do I.

He says that he gets a lot out of it, and I guess it must be pretty satisfying to see one
’s protégés develop and blossom on the tournament circuit, as is the kudos which comes his way as yet another of his stable claim a scalp from one of the big London clubs. I’m glad he finds it rewarding, as it was probably that which enabled him to maintain his patience with me during my lesson on the Tuesday evening after Cheltenham. I don’t know what it was. Most days everything just clicks and I can do the exercises effortlessly, without even thinking about them, but in that particular lesson I was all over the place. My timing was out, my footwork was clumsy, and my point never seemed to be where it should be. Phil could obviously see that something was wrong.

‘
Do you want to leave it for tonight?’ he asked, pulling off his mask as I fluffed yet another counter disengage. ‘You don’t really seem to be enjoying yourself with this.’

‘
No, I’m fine. Really.’ I don’t think he was convinced. ‘I just need to settle into it a little.’

‘
Hmmm. Okay. Well, we’ll finish off with some straightforward stuff then. Direct attacks to forearm, first stepping then step lunge as I step backwards.’

He pulled his mask back down, and I came on guard. He was deliberately making it easy, and I soon found my point anchoring firmly in the thick black suede of his coaching sleeve. These were simple moves, moves I could do in my sleep, and it was just what I needed to salvage something, anything, from the lesson.

He picked up the change in me immediately, and began extending the exercise, bringing his blade across to close off my line of attack and forcing me to introduce disengages, dipping my blade to avoid his. All of a sudden it clicked. I relaxed. My footwork tidied itself up, and the fluency was back. It was a good way to finish.

He saluted and pulled off his mask, and I did the same. We shook hands and he looked at me earnestly.

‘You sure you’re okay, Richard?’ he asked. He knew, as well as I did, that after the disaster at Cheltenham this was not a good time for me to be off form. I needed to bag as many points as possible at Oxford, a mere five days away, to make up for it.

‘
Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.’ I didn’t meet his eye. ‘Just a little slow to get started, that’s all.’

‘
Ah, don’t worry about him, Phil,’ came a voice from behind me. ‘It’s probably just his hormones or something.’

I looked round to see Shirley standing by the wall, patiently waiting for her turn with Phil.

‘Yeah, right,’ I gave her a thin smile and she winked back.

She
’s quite a character, Shirley. A tall, wise-cracking, gum-chewing epeeist with spiky red hair, she is one of the club’s great success stories. Fed up with her husband’s unending obsession with football, she decided to take up a sport of her own as an alternative to sitting around in an empty house all the time. Having signed up for an evening class in fencing at the local college she discovered she was a natural, and has never looked back. Within five years she went from being just another bored housewife to representing her country as a senior international. She’s also got a colourful sense of humour, and is popular with just about everyone, including her rivals on the circuit.

I left them to their lesson, and decided it was time for a fight.

Out on the electric pistes several fights were in progress. Our little nucleus of foilists were hard at it at the far end of the hall, bouncing around and punching the air every time a hit had been awarded to them, whilst nearer to me the epeeists were doing their thing, just as dynamic but a little more restrained in their celebrations.

I gave my face a quick wipe, took a swig of water, and stepped onto the last available piste where Jack, one of our juniors, was already wired up and waiting for me.

I wired myself up, plugging the tail end of my body wire into the spool which would connect me to the electronic scoring box. I tested the epee, pressing the spring loaded tip into my foot and bringing up the red light on the box which showed I had scored a hit, then stepped forward to test it against Jack’s weapon.

In epee fencing a hit can land anywhere on your opponent, from the top of the head to the soles of the feet, but hits on the weapon don
’t count. For this reason the body wires we use actually have three cores - two which complete the circuit to activate the light and buzzer, and a third which earths out the epee itself, making sure that a hit on the guard of the weapon isn’t shown as a valid hit. It’s a good system, and one which has been in use for a fair few years now. It’s also very simple, and therefore easy to fix if you get a problem. Before a bout begins, we always hit our opponent’s epee on the guard as a check that the system is working properly.

I tapped Jack
’s guard which, as expected, produced no reaction from the box. He did the same to me.

‘
Bzzzzt.’ A green light appeared on the box.

‘
Do it again,’ I said, frowning.

‘
Bzzzzt.’ Another green light as he hit the guard of my epee.

‘
Maybe it’s a bit of dirt on your guard?’ He suggested. ‘Try your spare.’

I unplugged the offending weapon and swapped it for one of the two spares I had left by the side of the piste.

‘Bzzzzt.’ Green light.

‘
Hang on, let’s try the wire,’ I said, unplugging the epee. I held the tip of his sword against the earthing pin on the plug of my body wire, and was surprised to see that it brought up the green light again. So that was the culprit. Ah well, it happens.

‘
Sorry, Jack. Give me a moment.’

Body wires
do
fail sometimes, but it’s a nuisance when they do, as you have to wriggle out of your jacket to change it for a spare, which isn’t easy if you’re all sweaty. I walked over to my bag, dropped the failing wire into a side pocket, and took out one of the two spares I always carry. After getting it in place, zipping up the jacket, and pulling my glove back on, I wired up for a second time.

We went through the whole process again.

‘Bzzzzt.’ Green light.

What the hell was going on? Yes, body wires do fail sometimes, but twice in one evening? This just didn
’t happen.

The last time I had touched any of my kit had been on Saturday evening, the night before the competition at
Cheltenham. As always, I had meticulously gone through all of it and checked it thoroughly. I had cleaned it all, made sure that the travel and point pressure on the epee tips was legal, and ensured that the whole lot worked perfectly. How could two body wires, which hadn’t been used at all, both be failing now?