Get Inspired

High-Intensity Interval Training

1. Warm Up

Both new to the area, they join the gym at the same time. It’s June. He prefers the running machine, while she wants to work with the weights.

As they are shown round, they share jokes about medicine balls and groin strains and afterwards they swap a ‘Nice to meet you’ and mean it.

 In the following weeks, their sessions often coincide. While pounding the treadmill, he watches her lift the barbells, hears her grunt.

He likes the way she shouts encouragement to her lifting partner. ‘You can do it! Don’t give up on me now!’ How wonderful it would be, he thinks, to have that kind of positivity shouted in your ear.

She sees the sweat pour off him and thinks surely there’s no way those knobbly knees will hold him up. But he keeps going.

She’s never seen such endurance, such determination. And on the days when she doesn’t see him, she feels a pang of something she can’t put her finger on. 

One day they meet outside the changing rooms.

‘Good session?’ he asks. Maybe it’s just the exercise that’s got his heart thumping.

‘A weight off my shoulders,’ she says, blushing with the heat of her workout.

Both are exhausted, but a sudden burst of adrenaline surges through them. 

2. Plank

Dinner’s at the only restaurant she knows in town. It has candles, but they aren’t lit. The tablecloth has a smudge of something red on it. Lipstick? Ketchup? Blood? He places the salt cellar over it and takes a big gulp of water. 

The waiter mixes up their order, giving her steak to him and his lentil bake to her. They laugh about it and in doing so pass through the date’s pain barrier.

She saws at the steak, which is the most delicious she has ever tasted. She looks across the table and likes the way he’s so controlled in the way he eats. Small mouthfuls, little dabs at the plate. Everything neat and contained.

He tells her he has left his home town behind, all his friends and family, to find a fresh start. His life has not gone according to plan.

‘Snap,’ she says. ‘Maybe it would be good to plan something together?’

‘Maybe,’ he replies, grinning.

He really wants to pinch one of her chips, one that hasn’t touched the meat. They are long and thin, like big wriggly worms. His fingers drum the table, then he dives in. Her fork stabs at him, and he draws back, wounded.

‘I’m kidding!’ she says. ‘Help yourself.’

Later, in his bedroom, he challenges her. She lifts him above her head and thinks, I could slam-dunk him on the bed right now and throw myself on top.

Cradled by her hands, horizontal in the air, he thinks, I hope she slam-dunks me on the bed right now and throws herself on top.

3. Mountain Climbers

Come February, she carries the heaviest of his boxes up the five flights of stairs to her flat. She never thought she would share the space, but likes the fact it feels less empty. 

He has brought the bare minimum. He doesn’t own much anyway and was glad to get rid of things he felt were weighing him down, burdens from his old life.

She tells him to make himself at home, but he isn’t sure what home means. He has lived in flats, in houses, and he has lived in a home, but none of them felt like home. 

He is hopeful, though. His favourite room in the flat is the kitchen, where the window looks out onto acres of sky. He decides he will stand there every morning, spooning his cereal and watching the clouds race.

A Russian doll sits on the sill. He unscrews it and takes out the doll inside. Unscrews that to get to the next. And on and on until they are all lined up, big to small. So brightly coloured, so intricate, the littlest no bigger than his index finger. 

The matryoshka doll is the only thing she inherited from her grandmother, her beloved Bushka. It’s meant to represent family, each doll giving birth to the next inside its nest. But for her the dolls are the different selves she has been over the years, right back to when she was a child. Each one is like a shell, a carapace, growing over the smaller ones. They are all still there, somewhere inside her, but they are hidden away.

After they have finished moving him in, she eases the cork slowly up the bottle’s neck. They both cringe, expecting a loud bang and maybe some damage to the flat’s interior. But the moment of release is more plop than pop.

Never mind – the champagne tastes giggly. 

4. Star Jumps

Each evening he half runs, half skips to the flat. If he’s first to arrive, he starts on the chopping for dinner, humming or singing all the while. He wants to open the kitchen window to let out the smells, but it appears to be stuck.

When she comes in, she likes to dump her stuff just inside the door, as if it’s a decontamination zone. 

She’s told him she wants to get rid of the outside world as soon as possible. 

Odd though: she leaves her coat and bag on the floor when surely it would be easier to hang them on the hook that’s right there? And her shoes in the middle of the floor – a trip hazard, no? But he says nothing, and anyway forgives everything when she envelops him in a bear hug which leaves him breathless.

The first time she hugged him like that, she said it was how her grandmother did it. It’s a sign of love, though she hasn’t said the word to him yet, not out loud anyway.

It was Bushka who instilled in her the importance of a fitness regime.

When Bushka was young, in Russia, everyone was encouraged to join in with the zaryadka exercises broadcast each morning on the radio. And even after she’d left the mother country, Bushka never lost the habit of early-morning callisthenics.

She could still do star jumps in her eighties. ‘Jump to the stars, little one!’ she would say to her granddaughter, who loved to join in. ‘You can do it! Don’t give up on me now!’

5. Burpees

In March they are told – everyone is told – not to go out. The gym is closed and nobody has any idea when it will re-open. He sits with his laptop at one end of the small dining table, she with hers at the other. 

‘Our muscles are going to waste away,’ she says.

That makes him think of his birth mother, who just after they were finally reconciled spent the last few months of her life lying in bed, becoming smaller and smaller.

She was only in her fifties and ever since then he has tried to exercise his way out of his apparent genetic destiny.

 ‘We could do Joe Wicks,’ he suggests.

 ‘Isn’t it for kids?’

They give it a go anyway, working through the online HIIT sessions together, getting used to the strange vocabulary of burpees and inchworms and figure skaters. There’s not much space and they keep bumping into each other, but keeping fit has never been such fun.

One session features the whole Wicks family – his wife and two small children – and he can’t stop thinking about how wonderful it is to see them all together, a real family.

Something he has never had himself. He thinks too of her Russian doll, and how it seems so perfect, all those different generations right down to the baby.

That night, as they lie in bed, he says, ‘I’d like a big family. Four or five kids.’

 She struggles free of him, sits up and says, ‘What?’

‘I don’t mean now,’ he says. ‘But some day. Wouldn’t it be great?’

After he’s goes to sleep, she has visions of a baby hooked over her shoulder, a dead weight. She’d be constantly jigging it around to get the wind out. Or to try and stop the crying – hers and the baby’s. 

6. Low Row

His books are perfectly aligned; her clothes are dumped wherever. The bristles on his toothbrush are firm, whereas hers are splayed. When he opens the bin and sees leftover chicken bones, he can’t help gagging. The smoothies he blends each morning – luminescent green – make her screw up her face in disgust. 

‘Can you not leave your toenail clippings in the bath,’ he says.

‘Please stop tidying away my clothes,’ she says. ‘I can’t find anything.’

They spend their days saying sorry to each other. 

They have make-up sex. At first she was delighted to finally find a man who didn’t see sex as a sprint, all over in ten seconds flat. Instead, he treats it like a marathon, pacing himself, and she decides that’s worse. 

At first he liked the sound of it – bubbled up, as if they were protected from the outside world by a membrane. But now it seems too thin, too porous.

7. Reverse Crunch

He receives a letter. An actual letter, the envelope handwritten, forwarded from his previous address. 

He recognises the handwriting immediately and his heart starts racing.

 She sees him holding the letter at arm’s length as if he can’t bear to hold it too close. He looks like he’s shaking.

 ‘Who’s it from?’ she asks.

 ‘Nobody.’

Where can he go to read it? There’s no privacy here – even the bathroom has no lock.

But they are allowed outside for exercise once a day, so he goes for a run, stuffing the letter into the pocket of his shorts. He stops a mile or so from the flat. The letter is pages and pages, and exactly what he’s been expecting. He’s only surprised it’s taken this long.

Full of recriminations from his ex about the way he left town, left her, running away from everything; but also hoping he’s well, and saying he can get in touch at any time.

Back at the flat, she waits for him to come home, unease running through her whole body. When, finally, he returns, she can see there’s no letter in his pocket. 

8. Russian Twist

The May sunshine is fiercely bright and the flat is a cauldron. Sweat slides off both of them. An electric fan provides temporary relief if they stand close, but each accuses the other of hogging it.

Through the kitchen window he sees no clouds, only different shades of blue. He wiggles the casement catch, hits it, strains against it. Maybe he’s too weak.

But even as he thinks that, even as he considers giving up, the window finally gives, and he is so surprised he jolts forward and grabs for something, anything, and his hand knocks the Russian doll.

It wobbles and shifts and after a couple of seconds teetering on the edge, over it goes. 

Seconds later, it smacks against the pavement. 

She runs downstairs and finds the outer shell cracked open, spilling its insides. Each doll is broken, except for the baby.

He says he will buy her a new set, but of course it’s not the same. From now on her grandmother will be only a set of memories, intangible.

And memories have a habit of becoming skewed, rewritten, or fading before disappearing altogether. 

9. Butt Kicks

Whenever she goes into the kitchen, he’s there. 

When she wants to watch telly, he’s sitting on the sofa. Desperate for a wee? She can guarantee he’ll be in the bathroom, shaving or whatever.

He suggests they go outside together for their one excursion a day and she says, ‘No, no, no!’

He can’t help picking her clothes up off the floor, even though he knows it drives her insane. She accuses him of doing it because he knows it drives her insane, which he denies.

In bed they keep their distance. It’s like there’s an invisible wall straight down the middle of the mattress – well, not exactly down the middle, as she always takes up more space than him. He is confined to a thin strip of the bed and often has to cling on to the headboard to stop himself falling. 

Soon he starts sleeping on the sofa and she doesn’t object. He remembers their first date, the way she stabbed at him with her fork. She said it was a joke, but what if it wasn’t? Her strength, which was one of the first things he found attractive in her, has now become a source of fear.

She seems tightly wound all the time, like a snake waiting to pounce.

His phone keeps pinging, and when she accidentally on purpose picks it up from the kitchen table one morning while he is in the bathroom she sees the whole conversation between him and his ex.

He’s made a mistake, she reads. He wishes they were still together. His current situation is a total nightmare. 

When he comes into the room and sees her holding the phone, he knows. What he isn’t sure about, though, is what she will do next.

They stare at each other, tensed. He feels like he is on the starting line, waiting for the pistol. For her, it’s as if she is feeling for a grip on the barbells, preparing for the snatch, clean and jerk.

And then she charges him, and he tries to run to the door, but the floor is covered in her things and he stumbles over them.

She catches him, grabbing his arm and his leg and starting to lift him. But either she has lost strength these past few months, or he has gained weight, or both – whatever the case, she strains, grimaces and buckles, and they collapse to the ground, both winded, their limbs entwined.

They disentangle and move apart, their breath and heartrate slowly returning to normal, all adrenaline spent. 

10. Cool Down

June. An anniversary, of sorts.

She carries the heaviest of his boxes down the five flights of stairs from the flat to the van.

He stacks them all neatly. They make a good team, they think, but that’s not enough.

‘See you in the gym,’ he says when they are done. ‘Maybe.’

‘Maybe,’ she says.

As he walks to the van, he feels like he does when he’s right in the heat of running, as if he’s not touching the ground.

She doesn’t watch him go. As she climbs the stairs back to her flat, she feels unencumbered. Weightless.

There is a room, a baby, a snake.

And you. You are asleep, having one of those early morning dreams. It is always of the same place – your friend’s garden. The apple tree is in full pink-and-white bloom. You are sitting on a wooden bench in the afternoon sun. Soon your friend will appear, walking across the daisy-speckled lawn. You will drink tea together, and talk for hours, watching the colours soften in the sky.

 Something wakes you – something always does. Usually it is Bea, in the crib on the other side of the small room, moaning to be released from her prison. But this morning it is something else.

 You open your eyes, scan the room. Something does not feel right. At first, you do not see it. A movement, a momentary flicker, causes you to focus on the doormat. It’s the only place where the cold tiled floor is covered by a scrap of rug. You look, without changing your position.

 He is coiled up there, next to the crib.

 Your first terrible thought is that he has bitten the baby.

 You look across to where she lies. You watch the ribcage rise and fall. You look at Bea’s face, her arms: they are not swollen or discoloured. 

If she had been bitten, she would have cried out. If she had been bitten, the snake would still be in the crib with her, enjoying the left-over warmth of her body.

 Your eyes move back to the snake. He is an urutu, the most common ones here, up in the mountains at the edge of the jungle. He is not the biggest one you have ever seen – that one was just coming out of the river, skin glinting in the sun, sidling over the stones. That one was at least six feet long, and as big around as your biceps. He saw you, but did not increase his speed. Why should he? 

 This one is maybe only two inches thick, maybe only four feet long. It’s hard to be sure about these things, the way he is coiled. The coiling, you know, means that he can lift his head and strike. 

Because he is small, he will be fast.

How did he get into the room? Where the walls meet the ceiling there are gaps at each curve of the corrugated roof, but you do not think that a snake, not even an urutu, could climb up the wall of the one-room shack. He must have come in when the door was open, sometime yesterday, when you were outside. He must have been in here all night. It’s a miracle you did not step on him when you were up feeding Bea by candlelight. 

 You wonder what to do. The only window is swollen shut. The snake lies in front of the door. You need to come up with some kind of plan. Somehow you need to save Bea’s life. And this will mean saving your own.

 Eventually you decide three things. These are:

1. You need to get over to Bea before she wakes.

2. It is not safe to put your feet on the floor.

3. You need to empty your bladder. This is a problem, because the toilet is outside, in the porch.

You sit up. The snake watches, ready. Each movement needs to be calm and slow, the way a large snake moves, so that the urutu does not become startled. You crouch, creeping from the bed to the low table in the middle of the room, which brings you closer to the snake. He lifts his head. You speak, softly, the way you do when Bea needs to be soothed. The snake is still, receiving vibrations through the air. You keep talking as you step up onto the tiled counter which holds the tanque, a deep concrete sink where you wash clothes. 

I don’t want to hurt you, little snake. 

I just want to get to my daughter. 

The counter is higher, safer, and Bea’s cot is jammed up against it, so that now you can get to your daughter. But first, you squat with one foot each side of the sink to have a wee. The urine—is it the sound, the heat, the smell?—causes the snake to flick his long forked tongue. 

 Strangely, the sound of urination does not wake the baby. This gives you time to study the snake. He is dark, with a repeating pattern down his sides, of plump, rounded gateways. It could almost be something William Morris designed. You notice the length of the body, which lacks any tell-tale bulge. So the creature has not eaten, and will be hungry.

 Neither you nor Bea would serve as breakfast – he needs something he can swallow whole to digest at leisure. He will only strike if you disturb him. 

 And you will have to disturb him.

Your eyes stray from the snake to a statue of the Madonna, which stands in a high alcove by the door. She is known as the Black Madonna, and you bought her as a curiosity. Perhaps after all Maria did come from Africa. She is about 18 inches tall, made from something so heavy that it might be cement. Her long robes are lapis blue, and the barefoot Madonna holds an ebony-coloured son. Down in the city, servants, bus drivers, lottery ticket sellers all pray to the Black Madonna, because she is like them – poor, powerless, and holding the world together with their sweat. Help me, you say to her silently, even though you don’t believe.

 Bea stirs. You whisper, hoping to get her to crawl to you without disturbing the snake. Your breasts are full and aching—you need her suckling in order to ease the pain.

 Bea giggles, pleased to see you so close at hand. You scoop up the smiling little girl and, as you squat on the counter, you plug her onto a nipple. 

She sucks, the snake observes. 

Feeding Bea helps you think. Paulo is away. He might be back that evening, driving up the long unpaved road through the mountains, but only if he’s found a way to get money. Otherwise he will stay in the city to look for work. In England, where you met, he was charming. Like the Garden of Eden, he said. So you came. Now everything has fallen to pieces. The banks have all shut down. No one has any cash. It’s hard to buy food, except on the first of the month, when the prices are allowed to double. After that, the shelves are empty. Ants have stripped your orange trees; weasels have killed your chickens. Sometimes you crave a piece of fruit. If you can get out of here and over to the wooden shack that is your kitchen, there are black beans, polenta, and some greens – enough food for a few more days. 

 Bea kicks as she drinks. The snake raises his head. 

How long you stay like this, perched on the sink, is impossible to say. Time has stopped. You know now that sometimes this happens: the rest of the world drops away and there is only one small space, and that space contains the universe. That’s how it was when Bea was born, here in this tiny room. There were candles, but no time. Just a body arching and breathing and splitting open. Thought was banished. Bea emerged, still in her shining sack, plopped like a glistening jewel down onto a pillow. Da luz, they call it here, when a baby is born: to give light. After that sacred moment, came the profane. Generally you and Paulo speak English to each other but the next day, after the birth, when he saw your body in the shower, he muttered what you guess is a colourful Brazilian insult, something about your belly sagging down to your knees. Since then Paulo has chosen to sleep in the kitchen. 

Your legs go numb. For a brief moment you imagine the apple tree, and your friend appearing, and you want to say: 

I never told you how it really was. I couldn’t, because he always reads each letter before it’s posted. There are moments when I look in the mirror and see nothing there.

Once Bea is full, you ease her into the sink. She stands, hands clutching the tap as she bounces. She is facing the wall and you imagine it is better this way, because Bea has not yet seen the urutu.

If I climb into the crib, you think, could I reach over and open the door?

It’s too risky, you decide, to reach with your hand. The fanged strike would come fast, faster than you could open the door. The nearest phone is five miles away, and you are half a mile from the nearest farm —the haemorrhagic poison from the bite would take over before you could walk that far. You know this because you once witnessed a snake-bitten dog. The muzzle grew to three times its normal size, gradually turning black. The whole thing took less than an hour.

You notice the broom propped up by the sink, and wonder about pulling the door handle open with this. You would need to push down, to draw the door inwards. You would have to be standing in the crib, but you are not sure it will take your weight. 

You start to sing. The song is Bea’s lullaby:

Are you going to Scarborough Fayre?

Parsley sage rosemary and thyme

The snake listens to the tonal vibrations through its tongue and its skull. It appears to like the song, so you keep going–

 Remember me to one who lives there

You place one foot in the crib.

 He once was a true love of mine.

You hold onto the wooden railings, so that all of your weight does not go down onto the flimsy springs.

 And tell him to make me a cambric shirt

You clasp the broom in one hand

 Parsley sage rosemary and thyme

You ease yourself closer to the door

 Without no seams

You reach out to the door handle with the broom

 Or needle-work

Try to push down

 Or ne’er he’ll be a true love of mine

But the snake, who was temporarily lulled by the music, sees the broom above his head and hisses.

 You have to be fast now. You have to get the door open, so that the outside is more attractive to the creature than coming after you. But the angle is wrong, the broom head is too thick, you can’t persuade the door handle to shift. The snake rises, swaying and eyeing his target. Before you can manoeuvre the door, the snake rears high, opens his pale pink mouth so wide it could swallow a mango, and sinks his curved fangs into the soft wooden head of the broom. 

 Now you and the snake are connected. There is only the length of the broom handle between you.

 You lift the broom up – the body of the snake dangles and writhes. You cannot believe how heavy he is, or how incensed. The snake twists and squirms and somehow manages to get first his tail up and around the broom handle, and then the whole of his body. The tail of the urutu is now only inches from your hands and worse, Bea has turned in the sink, sees what’s going on, and starts to howl.

 You crash the broom head down onto the tiles. This momentarily stuns the snake. His body slides down onto the floor. Deeply infuriated, he turns his gaze on you, planning his next attack. But his teeth are stuck in the wood of the broom, and he cannot get free. 

 You hold the broom upright, so that the snake’s head stays on the floor. His body dances around wildly, lashing and attempting to grip anything it can. You reach for the door handle, but you cannot manage without letting go of the broom. The snake struggles, determined to extract his fangs from the wood. He yanks hard, trying to pull the broom from your grasp. 

You push down through the broom as hard as you can. The lower jaw of the snake is pressed tight against the floor, but as soon you do this, you see that actually it is only giving him the leverage he needs to pull his upper teeth from the wood. If he manages this, your leg is within striking distance. 

Whatever I do, things get worse, you say out loud, and just as you speak, as though you have uttered an incantation, the urutu breaks free from the broom. One of his fangs has broken off, but the other one is intact. 

Now he has only one mission: to attack. 

Using your hands for support, you jump both feet up to the top railings of the crib. He, meanwhile, calculates the best way to come after you. Once you saw a local, just with his hoe, decapitate a large snake, but you have no hoe, and worse still, in climbing up higher onto the top of the crib, you have let go of the broom. 

The snake hisses, pulling back the skin from his one good fang. He starts, quick with outrage, towards the crib. 

You grab the only heavy object nearby – the Black Madonna – and throw it down hard on the head of the snake. The noise startles Bea, who goes silent. For a moment you are both suspended, not even daring to breathe.

 The snake’s body is still thrashing about, but you think you can see blood in his mouth.  One of his eyes no longer moves. The urutu begins biting wildly, blindly, at the air, at the legs of the crib, at anything within range. 

 Fast as you can, you jump from the crib back onto the counter. Bea is desperate for comfort, but there is no time. You step over to the low table. The snake does not seem to be able to see you moving, but he senses something, through his tongue: he lifts and turns his head to work out what is going on.

 You shift quietly down to the floor. The blinded creature is struggling: in different circumstances, you might even feel sorry for him. You bend down, grab the Black Madonna by her head. You aim for the back of the urutu’s skull. The base of the statue slams down, once, twice, three times.

The snake’s movements become involuntary spasms. Bea is wailing now. You cannot go to her, not yet, because you need to know that you are both truly out of danger. 

So you sing to her, her favourite tune:

 Are you going to Scarborough Fair?

By the time you finish singing this question, the Urutu’s body lies still. His skull has been smashed, but the snake’s tooth is intact, and still full of poison. You reach for the broom and tentatively prod, half expecting him to come back to life and strike at your bare feet. It takes almost more courage than you have to step over the reptile and open the door.

Maintaining a careful distance, you sweep the snake outside. He leaves a trail of blood and pus and venom. You push his limp body off the edge of the porch and into the dust. 

Breathing deeply, a bit shaky, you look up. The early morning sun has begun to clear the monkey puzzle trees. The long valley is pierced with light. Below, you can see the stream, young and noisy, rushing, rushing. It does not care what comes next, the larger river that will swallow it up, or how it will become sluggish and polluted farther down, shanties perching haphazardly along its bank.  This wild land is a place of power, Paulo says. It is also a place of hookworm and scorpions. Often you rise before dawn to sit outside, mesmerised by the fierce intensity of all that lives. Huge beetles fly with green luminous headlights glowing above their eyes. Enormous toads sing deep harmonies at night. Once, when you were sleeping, a tree frog landed on your face. Here you have come to realise the competing complexities of the world: that a place can be enchanted and unbearable, all at the same moment; and that a man can loathe what he desires.

Bea’s anxious whimpering calls you back inside.  Still standing in the sink, she reaches out her chubby little hands towards the Black Madonna. The statue lies in the middle of a blood-streaked floor—her blue robe is chipped but otherwise, miraculously, she is intact. She’s a bit too heavy for you, you say. You lift Bea into the crib so that you can rinse the Madonna under the tap and place her back in her alcove. Her clear, fearless expression holds you for a moment. She did not choose, and yet, she did not dither. Yes, you say as you touch the Madonna’s bare toes, okay.

Once you and Bea are both clean and dressed, you fill a rucksack with nappies, clothes, what money you have (enough to get the bus to the next town), water, some bread, passports. 

You tie the sling onto the front of your body and ease Bea into it. She squirms and wriggles with joy. You kiss her head and stroke her baby-silk hair. Emerging together into the daylight, you pause to watch a flock of green parrots flutter and squawk as they land first in one tall tree, then another. Thank you, you say, as you step off the porch. You are speaking to the snake, which lies awkwardly in the dust like a bit of old rope. Muito obrigada. 

Nothing about what happens next is clear, except that it will not be happening here.

Take a single magpie feather. 

Burn it with a letter 

you penned to your younger self. 

Mix its ashes with a glass of Irish Sea. 

Sip the breeze’s brine, 

metallic as the signature of pregnancy. 

Soar high above the bay of froths, 

slicks, ribbons of grey. 

Call & sing to others on the wing 

those verses of freedom 

rehearsed in the gut. 

       Though you’ll plummet 

to your rented room, 

sky guano-white, toys bleating 

underfoot, those magic hours 

will fold you in their plumage. 

Ride their thermals, 

till your own dawns’ break 

in the beak of the alarm’s plea – 

kitt-ee-wake, kittiwake.

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