Chapter 120: Lapel
Wednesday. Twenty past five.
I get there at ten to. The shutter takes two people.
We roll it up, put the bar in, switch the heaters on. For twenty minutes the room smells of cold concrete.
The mats are laid nine by six, edges taped, a red line down the far third.
I walk the whole surface before every session, heel to toe, feeling for a lifted seam. It takes ninety seconds.
Two seams lift. I know which two. I stand on them and press them down and they hold for the hour.
The children come in from twenty-five past.
Shoes off at the edge. Nobody on the mat with shoes, ever.
They learn it in one week and then they police each other, which is better than me policing them.
Sixteen tonight. Fourteen is normal. October and dark evenings always bring two extra.
Mrs Danvers-Iyer sits by the door with the register and a flask. She is my second adult on Wednesdays.
We start with running, then bear crawls, then the frog jumps they all hate.
Then breakfalls. Ten each side, from a squat, and four from standing for the ones who have earned standing.
Then grips.
Tonight is grips.
Tobias and I agreed in the summer that they were being taught to throw before they could hold on to anything, which is how a child learns to be dangerous.
I put them in pairs down the long axis of the mat, facing, a metre apart.
Esme Trelawny is at the near end, opposite a boy called Rafi who is a foot taller.
The jacket she wears is her cousin's and the sleeves are turned back twice.
I show it standing, once, slowly, so the back row can see.
Four fingers inside the cloth. Thumb outside. Knuckles turned in towards you, not flat.
The collar hand goes high, at the height of the collarbone, and it does not squeeze. It hangs.
The sleeve hand takes the cloth outside the elbow. That hand does squeeze, and it is the one nobody remembers.
Then I send them off to do it and I walk the line.
Rafi has it in the first attempt because Rafi is eleven and has long fingers.
Esme has the collar flat in her palm. She is holding the cloth the way you hold a rope.
It is the most common thing in the world and I did it myself at nine.
A flat palm feels stronger. It is not stronger. It comes off the moment anybody turns.
I go down at the edge of the mat beside her.
Knees together, sit back onto the heels, spine straight, hands flat on the thighs.
The tatami is cold through the trousers for about four seconds and then it is not.
From down there my eyes are level with her sternum. She does not have to look up at me, which is the entire reason for doing it.
“Show me the hand.”
She holds it out with the fingers straight.
“Now the cloth.”
She takes Rafi's lapel again, flat, in the palm, and looks at me, and knows before I say anything.
“Not wrong,” I say. “Just slow. Four fingers in first.”
I hold my own hand up beside hers so she can copy it rather than translate it.
Fingers in. Thumb out. Turn the knuckles.
She gets three fingers in and the little one stays outside and the grip is loose and she says, “It's too big.”
“It is too big. It's a grown man's jacket on a boy. So take it lower and take less of it.”
She moves her hand down two inches, to the seam, where the cloth doubles.
That is the right answer and she found it herself, and I say nothing, because saying it makes them do the next one for me instead of for the jacket.
Then I put my hand over the back of hers.
I move the fingers in one at a time, index first, and press the knuckles round until the cloth is inside them.
Her hand is about the size of my palm.
“Now pull, and tell me what your shoulder does.”
She pulls. Her elbow comes up and out.
“Down,” I say, and touch the point of the elbow with two fingers, and she brings it in against her ribs.
The grip holds. Rafi comes forward half a step, which is what is supposed to happen. He says sorry, which is not.
“Again. Both of you.”
She lets go, shakes the hand out, takes it again on her own, four fingers first.
Down the mat somebody falls badly and slaps late. I hear it and turn my head.
It is fine. Mrs Danvers-Iyer has already looked up and looked back down.
Twenty-five minutes left. Water at ten to.
I stay where I am, at the edge of the mat, knees together, back straight, hands flat on my thighs, and watch a nine-year-old take a grip on a lapel and set her feet.