“Thank you, baby, I was waiting for you to realise what was happening. Oatmeal for breakfast for you from now on, and no sugar, okay, sweetie? And no more fried breakfasts, sweets, and snacks; you’re going to eat healthily from now on.”
I stared at her. How the dickens did she know what I was thinking?
“Georgy, I…” I began, and she patted my chest.
“I heard Andy this evening, sweetheart; I loved you when you were so fit and trim, Will, and I love you to death now, but I wasn’t going to say anything, you had to see if for yourself; what kind of wife would I be if I shamed and belittled you, even in private? I wanted you to see it for yourself, I wanted the boys to tell you, they can say things to you I would never say in a million years, and now you know and you’re doing something about it. You and the boys go and do your thing, get yourself back in the shape you think you should be in, and I’ll feed you properly and wait for my fighting-fit Soldier-Man to show up again! How does that sound, babe?”
I hugged her tightly.
“I don’t deserve you, Georgy, and thank you for not saying anything!” I murmured. “Starting tomorrow, Andy and Rex are going to start putting me through my paces again; I let myself go, and that’s on me, so I have to fix it, and the boys will take me through it. Time to start walking the ramparts again, baby-girl, Andy woke me up just in time.”
Georgy looked worried.
“Why, what have you heard? Is everything…?” but I kissed her to calm her questions.
“No, nothing at all, it’s just we’ve kind of forgotten why we’re here in the first place; Andy reminded me that the world hasn’t gone away, and we need to keep our guard up; it’s all gone quiet, and they don’t know what that means. Whatever it is, I can’t protect you and the kids by being a fat, lazy, useless slob, so tomorrow, that ends.”
“Thank you, Will; knowing you’re back on-guard makes me feel really secure; only you do that to me, baby, not Andy, not Rex, not the whole British Army; only you. Nice and early, yes?”
“Up with the larks,” I promised her, and I meant it too; the coming days were going to see some serious changes around here.
*****
Getting back into shape was at least fifty times more strenuous than just staying in shape had been; muscles had softened, endurance had faded, my wind was blown, and anything like real effort brought me out in rivers of sweat. My first run with Andy, just a mile along the valley floor, felt like running the obstacle course at Bulford Camp with lead weights strapped to me; I could barely stagger back to the cottage at the end of it. I couldn’t believe I had made so much effort for so little gain; God, I was a mess! When the lads weren’t running me into a gasping, sweaty ruin, it was calisthenics, vigorous, high-impact, army-style calisthenics, no mercy, no respite.
Their schedule was simple, and punishing; twenty jump-squats then rest, then twenty more, then crunches, twenty-five at a time, and any complaints got me another twenty-five, burpees, ten at a time, steadily increasing push-ups, starting with ten, and gradually working up to tranches of twenty-five in between all the other exercises they had me doing.
It was way more intense than the Annual Fitness Test (or CFT, ‘combat fitness test’ as it was still called by the older squaddies) I’d been required to pass at Bulford, and I thought at the time that had been brutal enough; this was worse; that was just once a year, this torture was every day. I literally crawled into bed at night, and fell out of it in the mornings, my legs wobbling and throbbing with the effort of walking, because my thigh and calf-muscles were so stressed and sore, to go back out there and do it all again, and more.
The torture went on until it stopped being torture; muscles eventually hardened, endurance ramped up to nearly my pre lazing-around levels, and it became less like a chore and more like a vigorous daily workout, but it had taken two weeks of intense effort, all day every day. On the plus side, though, I had finally stopped limping and staggering around the house and found myself more energetic and not dragged out and dog-tired at the end of each day.
When Andy was satisfied that my endurance and muscle-tone were improved enough to take it was when the real torture started. Rex had pulled the ‘Clansman’ vehicle radio from his government-issue Discovery 4×4 back at the house and brought it along with him; it weighed twenty-five kilos (about fifty-five pounds, about the same as a fully-packed infantry Bergen backpack) and thoughtfully came with a backpack and webbing body-straps. Guess what he strapped on my back and made me take for a run?
Ok, it was a walk at first, albeit a brisk one; no-one, unless they’re some kind of super-fit gym-rat or Gurkha (and believe me, I’d trained with them, they were made of spring steel and whalebone, no-one in their right mind can do what they do, it’s just freaky…) is going to take off from a standing start with that much weight strapped to their back. The run was coming later; all he was doing was getting me used to the weight again. I’d had to do this every year as part of the required fitness regime, it was just a case of letting my body remember and acclimatise all over again to the weight and what it did to my balance.
Andy galvanised me by reminding me that all those empty, battered old suits of armour standing around my home like weird, extra-large umbrella stands weighed fifty pounds or more each, and yet my ancestors, who were obviously much shorter and slighter built than me going, by the size of their armour, walked around in them for days on end, ran, jumped, and climbed on horseback wearing them, and fought hand-to-hand battles swinging a four-pound sword for hours in one hand and holding a ten-pound solid steel shield in the other; if they could do that then so could I and not make such a bloody song and dance about it!
Walking the three miles to the other end of the valley and back again with that weight on my back was tiring, but I was surprised that I wasn’t drop-dead exhausted; two weeks earlier they’d have had to bring me back on a wheelbarrow, that was how far out of condition I’d let myself become. Now, I was tired, yes, and a hot soak would have been welcome, but I certainly wasn’t feeling like I was at death’s door. Andy grinned as he helped me unload the backpack.
“Take a rest, LT, fifteen minutes, then ten Burpees, full pack, five minutes, and ten more, you know the drill. Don’t look at me like that; be grateful it’s not twenty-five push-ups with Jamie on your back as well! Believe it or not, you’ll thank me one day for all this. Tomorrow we’re jogging up to the ridge and back, same order, let’s see how well you do running uphill in a debris field with that weight on your back, so when you’re done grab a hot soak, get a good meal, carbs, you’re going to need them, and hit your pit, early start tomorrow!”
I couldn’t quite resent his sadism in working me so hard; once upon a time, just a few short weeks ago, astonishingly enough, I would have taken all he could throw at me and just shrugged it off; that it was such hard work was entirely my own fault, so I bit my tongue and got on with it.
The fact I was no longer an exhausted wreck pleased Georgy no end; she wasn’t crass enough to snark at me because of the lack of “horizontal discussions” in the bedroom, she knew I was trying to regain what I’d lost through my own slothfulness and letting my guard down. She saw day after a day how wrecked I was after being put through my paces over and over again; most nights I could barely raise a weak grin, let alone anything else!
However, as exhaustion tailed off, other things began to make themselves felt again; night after night Georgy massaged my aching muscles and joints, she could see that the old me was returning, and I could feel her massages and rubdowns becoming less therapeutic and more personal; my obviously increased fitness and trimmed-down body was getting to her, and not at all in a bad way!
Believe me, I hadn’t lost any desire for her; quite the opposite, in fact. Georgy occupies my mind roughly 100% of the time, and the fact I wasn’t making any kind of moves on her wasn’t down to anything except sheer exhaustion, but as the workouts and running became less exhausting my mind and body started to feel other, more primal urges. Georgy still looked like the sexy, horse-riding university graduate I’d fallen in love with, marriage and three children had left no evidence of anything other than that a seriously hot girl had turned into a seriously hot ‘yummy-mummy’. Climbing into bed with her night after night too physically tired to do anything except cuddle down and pass out was taking its toll on me too.
However, things DO change, and my changed fitness and lack of tiredness left me room to ponder other things, and so it was that one night, after lights-out, I reached for her, and it wasn’t to check if she was still breathing, if you get my drift.
“No baby, rest, poor you, you were so tired earlier…” she demurred, so I pulled her close and kissed her meaningfully. Holding Georgy close always generates a welter of emotions and urges within me and colour my perception of her; wife, mother of my children, lover, partner, best friend, and, something I tend to let drop into the background hum of other feelings and emotions she arouses in me, baby sister I’ve loved totally and unreservedly since earliest days. I’ve never felt any conflict in me between all the many things she is to me, because Georgy is my all, she’s everything to me and all I need to sustain me; she’s my soul’s deepest need, and the basis of all life as I understand it.