Nicola Griffith - Always

“Done.” She watched Dornan pull himself into a ball, and then uncurl and haul himself to his feet.

Light glinted off the Perspex eye protection. I couldn’t see past it. I moved to one side, stepped closer. His eyes were a little wider than usual but didn’t seem panicky. I raised my eyebrows. He nodded, I nodded back. I had no idea what I would have done if his courage had failed him, or the padding.

“Next. Nina.”

Dornan was getting wilier, or perhaps Nina had been shaken by Sandra’s performance, but he managed to get his arms around her waist and lift her from the mat for a moment, “No,” she shouted. “No, no, no, no,” and struggled, futilely, until Pauletta yelled, “Three-year-old, three-year-old, ” and “No!” Nina said, with ragged gravitas, and made herself a dead weight until he sagged and she could get her feet on the ground and shove backwards with all her strength. They both went down, after which the usual panic blows followed in a hail of no, no, no’s and at some point he slapped out.

The rite of passage continued. One by one they stepped up, lashed out, and were led off the mat in a triumphant daze: Pauletta, who laughed maniacally through the whole thing; Jennifer, who cried before she’d even begun; Therese, who dispatched the lumbering Dornan with a neatly executed elbow to the side of the head, followed by a foot sweep, followed by a stamp on his knee: disabling, but not lethal. Katherine, of course, began and ended with kicks, and Kim was the only one who used a palm strike—which clearly took Dornan off guard. Christie, though, was the best of all. She let herself be grabbed by the shoulders, then simply fell backwards and hurled him over her head. He was patting his helmet before she even stood up. She stood up grinning. She knew she’d done well. She knew they all had.

Brief silence, then pandemonium: shrieking, laughing, more tears, hugs. On the other side of the room, Dornan lumbered to the bench, started to sit down, and changed his mind. He tugged at his helmet. I wandered over.

“All right?” I said.

He got the helmet off and held it under his arm, like a fencer. He breathed for a moment. “You owe me, but you know that.” Then he grinned. “Though it is nice to make so many women happy. If I’d known that all it took to worm my way into a woman’s heart was to let her beat the shit out of me, my early life would have been very different. Help me with all this nonsense.” As soon as his gloves were unstrapped, he yanked them off and tucked his hair behind his ears.

“That kick to your ribs didn’t hurt?”

“It’s nothing,” he said, then straightened suddenly, got a twinkle in his eye, and his brogue thickened, “nothing in service of helping these lovely ladies.”

They had regained their awareness of the room beyond their own triumph and had noticed that the evil space alien was a not-unattractive male.

“Oh, my goodness,” said Jennifer. “Are you all right?”

“Perfectly fine. In the peak of health.”

“Bet we scared you, hey?” Nina said.

"Absolutely. Terrifying.”

“Did we hurt you?” Therese wanted to know.

“My pride, possibly. I had no idea ladies could be so fearsome.” Brilliant smiles all around. “You astonished me.”

“We had a good teacher,” Christie said.

“Indeed?” Dornan gave me a wink, as if to say he saw I was glowing under a bit of flattery as much as anyone else in the room. “Oh, indeed. Yes.”

“And we really didn’t hurt you?” Kim seemed a little disappointed.

“I’d have to get out of all this padding to find out.”

“Did you like that palm strike I gave you?” she said.

“Blinded and surprised me,” Dornan said, though if I’d had to bet it would be to the effect that he couldn’t remember one blow from another. “Took me completely off guard.”

“And my knuckle strike?” Tonya said.

“Ah, now that I remember very clearly. Like a bolt from heaven. My life quite passed before my eyes.”

He was troweling it on. Any minute they’d realize that. “No doubt Dornan would really appreciate the opportunity to get out of that extremely uncomfortable suit.”

“Oh, my, yes indeed.” “Oh, you poor thing.” “We mustn’t keep you.” Good southern women, they said all the right things while still managing to look crushed: they had not yet had the chance to refight their battles.

“But no doubt he’d be willing to rejoin us for a debriefing?”

“No doubt, ladies, no doubt.”

It would give me the chance to debrief them properly, after which Dornan could twinkle at them and make them feel mighty. They’d done well. They deserved every ounce of their triumph. Meanwhile, though, it wouldn’t do any harm to lead them through another round at the punch bag, refining what they’d learnt in the heat of their personal battle.

ON SET KICK WAS ENTIRELY PROFESSIONAL AND IMPERSONAL. "THE FIRST STEPis to visually inspect the air bag, both before and after inflation.” I wondered if I hid my feelings so well when I was teaching.

She lifted this piece and that of the deflated bag, talking about the sensitivity of the plastic to temperature change and how it must always, always be checked. “One stunter died a few years back when they flew his air bag out to Portugal in an unpressurized cargo bay. The cold, high altitude changed the physical properties of the material and the vents didn’t hold. Dead as a stone.”

Then the compressor thudded for fifteen minutes and we walked solemnly around the Model Seventy once again. She moved smoothly.

“Now we test it from the tower. It’ll test the camera orientation, too.”

Again, there were three cameras. One to the side, one on top, one directly behind the bag to focus on the falling object as it fell. Once they were set up to Rusen’s satisfaction, she borrowed one of the props manager’s clothing dummies, carried it to the top of the tower. Then she came back down, handed me a very heavy grocery bag, and said, “Follow me.” Climbing the scaffolding steps with the bag made me aware of the pull of humerus from shoulder socket, the compression of cartilage in my knee and ankle joints, the smooth lubrication of synovial fluid around my hips. We are such delicate machines.

It was surprisingly crowded at the top with the two camera operators. Everyone but me was wearing a headset. I nodded. They nodded back.

Kick took several sets of ankle and wrist weights from the bags and wrapped them around the dummy’s limbs and waist. Some of them had been carefully sewn together to be long enough. Then she cinched me into a harness, standing close to check the fit—the impersonal touch was disorienting—clipped a line to the D-ring at my waist, jerked it to be sure, then did the same for herself. I eased one strap, tightened another.

We picked up the dummy, carried it to the edge of the platform.

“Clear,” she said conversationally, then, for the benefit of people on the set without earphones, she shouted, “Stand clear below.” Then she turned to me. “Follow my swing. Let go at the top, don’t try to push it.” She waited for my nod, and we began to swing. “On three. One”—swing—“two”— swing—“three”—release, and the dummy sailed up and out in a rapidly climbing curve, seemed to pause, then plummeted in an almost straight line to the bag, which hissed and sagged and caught the dummy safely in the center of its sweet spot. Whistles and general applause from below—I saw the flash of Dornan’s grin.

“Of course a body, a person, falls differently,” she said, and unhooked her safety line. “With an active leap and flailing arms it’s more of an overhand, egglike curve. It takes a little longer, and it’s easier for the camera operators to follow.”