Free Bodies by Robert Barnard Page A

concern.
    â€œAwkward it is, sometimes,” Mrs. Crabtree went on, fussing around the table. “Any little thing may go—strain a muscle or a ligament, put a joint out, graze the skin. And it shows when you’re posing. I can see it myself when I go to watch and cheer ’im on. Denny has to be very, very careful. And I’m careful for ’im.”
    She bustled off to the kitchen and came back with two cups of tea. Then she hopped through the blouses again and returned after a minute with the front page of Fitness Monthly for December the previous year. She put it down reverently on the table between us.
    â€œThat’s my Denzil, o’ course. I’n’t it a lovely body, eh?”
    Denzil, in briefs, was posing with a busty female model over a piece of gymnastic equipment. There seemed to be a total lack of erotic charge between them, considering the acres of bare flesh, but that was no doubt part of the clean image that the body-builders promoted. Denny, in fact, looked about as living as a Fascist war memorial. I looked from his body to his mother’s: she was resting heavy breasts on the table, having tucked her stumpy legs under it. Her face was puffy and veined from drink, but there was a mad sparkle in her eyes. When all was said and done, hers was the body with force and personality.
    She misunderstood my gaze.
    â€œWondering where ’e gets it from, are you?” she cackled. “I don’t wonder! Mind you, I ’ad a good enough body in my time. You lose it though, don’t you? I know I ’ave. But it was ’is father, really, made Denzil the man ’e is. Lovely body, ’is father ’ad. Fine figure of a man, everybody said so. An out an out rotter, mind you, but a fine figure of a man.”
    â€œWhat did he do?”
    â€œArmy. Regimental Sergeant Major. ’Oly terror on the parade ground. And orf, come to that. Couldn’t keep ’is ’ands orf the girlies. I got ’im because I was preggers with Denzil, and ’e couldn’t wriggle out of it, once I’d gorn to ’is commanding officer. ’E’d wriggled out from under scores o’ times, but ’e didn’t get away from me. Mind you, ’e got his own back, over the years, one way or another.”
    â€œI suppose Denzil admired him?”
    â€œWell, ’e was still quite young when ’e died. I’ve bin a widow now nigh on twenty years, praise the Lord. It’s my belief it was the girlieswas ’is undoing. Shot, ’e was, in Cyprus. But all that trouble was dying down by then, an’ it’s my belief it was a husband or a boyfriend or a father wot did it. I always told ’im ’e’d get ’is fingers burnt one day, but I didn’t anticipate that big a cornflagration.”
    She roared with laughter at what was obviously a repertory joke.
    I put a step wrong with my next question.
    â€œDoes Denny take after his father like that?”
    She choked her laughter back, looked daggers at me, and puffed out her cheeks indignantly.
    â€œÂ â€™E does not . ’E’s the cleanest-living boy you could ever imagine. Pure, I’d call ’im. ’E could ’ave ’is pick, o’ course: they’d come running the moment ’e snapped ’is fingers, if I know women. But ’e don’t snap them.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œBecause ’e’s not like ’is dad. ’E was a real leering satire, was my Bert, by the end. But my Denzil’s got other things on ’is mind. A body like ’is is a precious gift. A terrible responsibility, like owning a piece of fine furniture. You got to live up to a body like that.”
    She talked of it as if it were a vocation. Maybe she was right. Maybe it was Denzil’s substitute for faith.
    â€œSo what Denzil spends most of his time at is keeping in shape, I suppose?”
    â€œÂ â€™Course ’e does. ’E