The Black Prince

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I was lying on my back with my right leg up in the air, trying to get my hands to reach to my ankle. They wouldn’t do it. Mid-calf at best.

‘I call those executive hamstrings,’ Wesley Scott said. ‘Do you play any sport, Mr Hardy?’

‘Cliff,’ I said, still trying and failing. I switched legs. Worse. ‘I play a bit of tennis.’

‘How often? Ease up, Cliff, you’ll hurt yourself.’

I relaxed. ‘About once a month.’

‘Warm up? Stretch before and after?’

‘No.’

‘Like I say, executive hamstrings. Get up and let’s look this over.’

I got up creakingly. Wesley Scott was the proprietor and trainer at the Redgum Gymnasium and Fitness Centre in Norton Street, Leichhardt. He was a West Indian who’d been British and European body-building champion in the 1970s before marrying an Australian Woman and migrating. He had African features, ebony skin, a shaved head and a body of iron.

Lately, my own body had been letting me down. I was tired at night and in a recent tussle with a thug who was trying to maim the man I was protecting, I had to resort to very dirty tactics to subdue him. He was getting the better of me before I eye-gouged him. I didn’t like either feeling and I decided that I needed some toning up. Hence the visit to the gym for a ‘fitness assessment’.

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