Writing for Fun
June 2018
An Inspiration - Anne Wilson
Wearing his customary track-suit he jogged through the streets, the sweat beginning to form on his forehead and his body beginning to feel uncomfortably damp from the effort. He knew it was his age and was always reluctant to reveal his year of birth to anyone – not that he ever exchanged confidences. He was that strange combination of affability and distance – approachability and wariness. Years ago he would have pounded around the same corners with ease – his limbs sinewy from spartan, healthy living and with no tell-tale sign of breathlessness or effort, but he knew time was creeping up on him.
Conscious of his image, he only stopped once he was sure he was out of anyone’s eyeline and stretched down to touch his knees, exhaling as he did so. He liked to feel that he was ageless – an eternal Peter Pan figure despite the lines on his face. He entertained the notion that his somewhat bizarre appearance had somehow perpetuated this myth – that and his cheery, laddish persona.
In the distance he saw a woman striding towards him, arm in arm with a younger woman, who he took to be her daughter. They were in animated conversation but the older one saw him and, waving excitedly, let go of the arm that clung to hers, running towards him as quickly as her middle aged legs would allow.
‘I thought it was you,’ she said excitedly as she reached her goal.
‘Unmistakeable, aren’t I?’ he said with his idiosyncratic speaking voice.
‘Saw you open that fete last week,’ she simpered. ‘So nice of you to give so much of your time in the way you do.’
He beamed with self-satisfaction. His charitable ventures were so plentiful that he scarcely remembered the event to which she referred, other than it had not been greatly publicised to the best of his recollection.
‘Well, I like to do what I can,’ he replied.
Her companion had caught her up quickly – her legs being much younger. She smiled shyly, flicking her blonde hair back as she did so.
‘Look who it is,’ said her mother knowingly, pushing her towards him as if she were a small child rather than a teenager. ‘This is Gemma, my daughter.’
‘Hello, young lady,’ he said jocularly, lifting his hand in greeting.
She looked down at her feet, somewhat embarrassedly and muttered a reciprocal greeting.
The older lady touched the rather damp tracksuit arm.
‘I think you’re an inspiration to us all,’ she said.
‘Well, nice to meet you both,’ he beamed, looking at the daughter appraisingly, not noticing the wariness in her reaction.
He drew himself up straight, willing his muscles into unconvincing flexibility and jogged off, hoping he looked the picture of youth.
Despite his loathing of intimacy, he enjoyed attention and the adulation that came with it. He paid a visit to the hospital with which he had a long-standing association a couple of weeks afterwards amidst a ballyhoo of publicity and attention. Relatives of patients gripped his hand in gratitude for his support and he wallowed in their praise.
‘I think you’re a marvellous man,’ chirped one. ‘You gave my husband the motivation he needed and now he’s walking again.’
‘All part of the service,’ he grinned.
‘He’s an inspiration, isn’t he?’ one admirer said to a nurse, who smiled enigmatically but didn’t reply and cast a furtive glance at a colleague, which went unnoticed to all but the very perceptive.
He was a man from an ordinary background and liked to promote the image that he was one of the people. In many ways he was, with an unostentatious lifestyle and a reluctance to indulge in many of life’s material pleasures. A source of great pleasure to him, though, was mingling with the rich and famous, whether it be royalty or prominent politicians of the day. Aware that these people (particularly royalty) offered friendliness rather than friendship, to paraphrase a colleague of his, he nevertheless basked in their superficially familiar treatment.
A dinner took place that week at which the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, was due to present him with a token of the nation’s esteem for his charitable work. With barely a nod to the formality of the occasion, he dressed in his usual unmistakeably casual fashion but he was deemed to be a ‘character’ so the lack of adherence to the dress code was overlooked. She was not a relaxing presence but he always managed to make her laugh with his audacious remarks – careful never to overstep the mark as he did so, lest she gave him the icy stare which had become a well known component of her persona.
At the end of the evening, after much back-slapping, she made her way over to him stared at him intently.
‘You know,’ she intoned in her slow, deliberate manner of speaking. ‘I think years from now – maybe in the twenty-first century we’ll both still be remembered. You with great affection, I think – although me maybe less so – although I do hope as a politician of conviction. After all, you’re an inspiration, Jimmy Savile.