Bucket Nut (26 page)

She knew how to fall. She wasn't hurt. But she was shaken up, and she was a bit narked. She wouldn't let me help her to her feet.

She said, ‘Don't get too cocky with me, baby. I'll spank and you won't like that.'

I put a finger in her face. I said, ‘I'll have you,
baby.
I'll have you for my tea.'

She tossed that bleeding red hair. ‘You'll have rusks and warm milk in a bottle as usual. That's what you'll have, baby.'

The ref pushed us apart. ‘Break it up, girls. Great round,
great
round. Now pack it in.'

She turned her back on me and went to her corner. After the fall she just took, it was a nice swagger.

I stood in the middle of the ring like it was mine. ‘Don't you turn your back on me,' I shouted at the top of my voice. ‘It'll be the last thing you do,
flower!'

‘Boo,' went the crowd.

‘Roo-ro-ro,' went Ramses, like he was booing me too.

‘Nice work,' said the ref. ‘Now fuck off back to your corner.'

In this game it's sometimes hard to tell what's real and what isn't.

Harry climbed up into my corner and gave me a towel.

‘Don't get ideas, Eva,' he said. ‘I been watchin' and I can see you gettin' ideas.'

‘No ideas, Harry,' I said. ‘I know my place.'

‘One thing you don't know, Eva, that's your place. Save your strength. You goin' to need it soon.'

Then I remembered. You wouldn't think I could forget, would you. But I'd been concentrating, and all that shit with the Chengs, and the bastards with the razor, and Goldie had gone clean out of my head.

‘Where are they, Harry?' I asked. I tried to squint up into the crowd, but you can't see more than the first couple of rows because the lights get in your eyes and all the rest is a dark heaving mass.

‘They all around you, Eva,' Harry said. ‘Maybe you better fight slow. You safer up here than you is down there.'

I looked over at Sherry-Lee Lewis. She was leaning back with her arms outstretched against the corner post. She seemed completely relaxed, but when she looked at me her eyes narrowed. I looked at her mam, and she looked at me with the exact same expression. Even Ramses looked at me like I was dog meat.

‘I don't know about that, Harry,' I said. ‘It don't look too safe up here either.'

‘How you do it, Eva?' Harry asked sadly. ‘You make enemies everywhere. Why you do it? It ain't a good life with only enemies wishing you evil.'

I wiped the sweat off my face and hands. I didn't know what to say, he made me feel so sad.

‘I'm a villain, Harry.'

‘So why you not a good villain?' Harry said. ‘It ain't God's wish you be a bad villain.'

‘I'm just me, Harry. It ain't me. It's all these other bastards. I got to be bad or I'll be trod on.'

I thought about the bastard with the razor. And I thought about how Ramses sprang up at him when he came through my dressing-room door.

‘That dog knows something,' I thought. The bastard with the razor was the one who hung Ramses up by his neck. Lineker too. Only
Lineker was too dumb to remember and want revenge. But I wasn't. And Ramses wasn't. Ramses wouldn't even forgive me for letting it happen. Me. Me who fed him and took him to the vet.

Ramses would rather die than forgive and forget. And so would I.

While I was thinking about this, the bell rang for the second round, and someone in the middle of the hall shouted, ‘I hope she kills you, you ugly great drong. If she don't, I will.'

‘You and who's army?' I yelled back, because suddenly, even with the crowd, I didn't know what was real and what wasn't.

And then Sherry-Lee Lewis hit me in the back. She'd come out of her corner like a ball off a bat and hit me square in the back sending me half way across the ropes. She knocked the breath out of me. Crash, whoosh.

She yanked me off the ropes by my hair and the seat of my pants and slammed me into the corner post.

She grabbed me by the arm, ran me to the centre of the ring and flicked me over using my arm like the handle of a whip. I went cartwheeling.

It's a great move if you time it right. She kept hold of my wrist just a second too long and she nearly tore my arm off. I couldn't get my feet down in time so I landed hard on my back. She came in as fast as an inter-city train and threw my legs over my head. She folded me up like an empty shirt and nailed my shoulders to the boards.

Ten seconds. It was as quick as that.

‘One …' yelled the ref.

‘Bury her,' yelled the crowd. ‘Bucket Nut, Bucket Nut.'

Ten seconds! What the fuck did she think she was playing at? Well, I knew what she was playing at. She was teaching baby a lesson. And she'd done it in style. The bitch.

But ten seconds! I heaved one shoulder an inch off the canvas.

She banged me down square.

‘One …' yelled the ref again.

I had nowhere to go. I was tied up like a kipper with her full weight on me. I could hardly draw breath let alone escape.

But ten bleeding seconds! It was so awful I could hardly believe it.
‘Two …' said the ref. ‘You sure about this, Miss Lewis? It's a bit quick.'

‘Sure I'm sure,' Sherry-Lee Lewis said. She wasn't even breathing heavy.

‘Make her suffer,' screamed the crowd.

‘Three!' shouted the ref.

Sherry-Lee Lewis got off.

I rolled over and crawled to my knees. Ten seconds was all it took. She held out her hand. I looked at her hand. It was so white and the nails were all pink and shiny. I thought about it.

‘Don't even think it,' she said, and helped me up.

‘I've seen better things than you in me boyfriend's condom,' some woman yelled. They were really celebrating in the front rows.

‘Classy fans you've got, pet,' Sherry-Lee said. ‘Cheer up. You're going to be good. Really good. Don't try to make a fool of me and we'll get along just fine.'

‘Okay, okay,' the ref said. ‘You showed her, Miss Lewis. Now can we get on? We got a gig to do.'

‘There now, there now, Eva,' Harry said. ‘Wasn't nothin' you could do about it. Don't waste yourself frettin'. You gotta be a pro like old Harry.'

He was right. But ten manky seconds. At the Ladywell Baths. In front of all those people. I felt so little and wobbly I could've sat down and died.

And the crowd was screaming itself silly.

‘What you going to do about
that,
Bucket Nut? Can't take it! Yooo-waaay, boo!'

But she said I was going to be good. Really good. Maybe she meant it.

I looked down at Ramses with his bit of white bandage round his neck. It must've hurt him, what with his choke-chain and all, but he was ignoring it.

‘I wouldn't take it from anyone but her, Harry,' I said.

‘You wouldn't have to,' he said.

‘You're a nice old bird, Harry,' I said.

And then we began again. We began crouching and circling like the
first time. Only now I knew what she could do, and I knew what she weighed and how much power she had.

She knew things about me too, and after a bit I saw she wasn't going to take any more liberties. She was just going to do the job. And I thought, all right, I'll do the job too.

She pulled some magic moves, and now she wasn't trying to mash me down so she timed them perfectly, and I never got hurt once. And this time she went with some of my moves so there was a bit more give and take.

After a while I forgot about my back and my teeth and I got into the act. And I did some lovely dirty stuff, kicking her in the guts and looking like I was splitting her legs apart – the stuff that makes the crowd go blind with rage.

She worked the crowd too. It was an education to see how she worked on their sympathy and how she presented herself as noble but suffering.

It takes a really good heroine to make a really bad villain.

True, but don't forget the villain. The badder I was the nobler she looked.

I know we were doing good. You only had to listen to the crowd.

It was about the time the ref and the MC start looking at their watches. Time to wind up. Time for me to take the upper hand.

‘When you're ready,' the ref said. Because he has to watch the time in case we go on too long.

And I started really scurfing her. I threw her to all four corners of the ring, and I smashed her face and I put the boot in her ribs, and I knee-dropped on her tits and I did every filthy trick I could think of.

I flattened her in the middle of the ring and then I climbed up the corner post. I was going to do a flying slam. One last spectacular stunt before she turned the fight around.

I bunched myself up to take the leap.

And then someone in the crowd threw a bottle.

It missed me, but it shattered on the canvas. Shining shards of broken glass spread around just where I was going to land. Well, I was going to land on Sherry-Lee Lewis, but I had to take my own weight on my hands and knees or I would've broken her back.

I was all bunched ready to jump, feet balanced on the ropes on either side of the post. But I couldn't jump.

‘Hold up, hold up,' said the ref. ‘Glass.'

Sherry-Lee rolled away and stood up.

It was like a signal. More bottles fell into the ring. One hit me in the back. It didn't hurt, but I dropped down onto the canvas. Up on the ropes I was like an Aunt Sally in a fairground.

There was a sort of roar and heave in the crowd. People from the back were surging forwards over the backs of the seats and down the aisles. People in the front were pressing towards the ring to get out the way. Women and kids were screaming.

‘What the fuck's going on?' Sherry-Lee said.

‘This is dangerous,' the ref said, trying to kick the glass away. ‘Shit, I knew something was up. This is down to you, Eva. Isn't it?'

There was stuff flying in from all directions and it was all coming at me.

‘Get out,' I shouted to Sherry-Lee and the ref. ‘They'll let you go.'

‘Fuck it,' Sherry-Lee said. ‘Keep fighting. Come and get me.'

So I went for her. It was all part of the mess.

‘Cut her,' Sherry-Lee said to the ref. ‘Pick up some of that glass and cut her.'

‘What?' said the ref.

‘Cut her! Do it quick.'

We grappled in the middle, dancing out the way of the bottles and bricks. And then she hauled off and hit me with a series of forearm smashes to the face.

The crowd was screaming. I didn't know what they were screaming at. I don't think they knew either. Half of it was at us in the ring – Sherry-Lee coming in with such force. Half of it was because of the surge and mayhem and glass out there.

‘Protect your head,' Sherry-Lee said.

I got both arms up. Which was a bit late because I'd just been cracked by a can of 7-up.

The ref stepped in, all official, to look at my face. I felt his hands on my head but I never felt the cut. He was so quick I never felt it. And anyway that was about the time I took a brick on the back of my knee.

‘Go down,' yelled Sherry-Lee, and she hit me one more time.

So I went down, ker-rash.

‘Stop the fight!' the ref screamed. ‘Stop the fight!'

He stood over me on one side. Sherry-Lee stood over me on the other. I could feel blood and sweat pouring down my face.

The bell went and kept on going. Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong.

A sort of hush fell over the crowd. Everything went quiet. Things stopped raining in on me. Blood poured from my scalp and eyebrow – drip, drip, drip onto the canvas. I lay doggo.

Then I heard Sherry-Lee Lewis shout, ‘Is there a doctor out there?'

And the ref took it up – ‘A doctor. There's been a serious injury. We need medical help immediately. A doctor
please.'

‘Ro-ro-ro,' went Ramses.

‘Yak-yak-yak,' went Lineker.

The crowd was shifting and whispering.

Then the MC got himself together on the loudspeaker. About time too.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,' he said. ‘Please calm down and take your seats in an orderly manner. There are children in the audience. Please return to your seats quietly and calmly.' He paused, and then said, ‘Doctor Foster to the ringside, please. Doctor Foster to the ringside.'

In case you don't know, Doctor Foster is a code word. It means there's trouble and all the Deeds Promotion people hustle into action and sort things out.

I don't know because I couldn't see, stuck there in the middle of the ring playing dead, but everything had been so shambolic I shouldn't think there was even one person backstage who didn't know there had been a ruck. So what the Doctor Foster's message was all about, I've no idea.

I lay there pole-axed, dripping blood. It's wonderful how much gore you can squeeze out of a little scalp wound. And Sherry-Lee Lewis came back to do her Florence Nightingale act. A really concerned, terrific woman. She smeared the blood all over my face and neck.

‘You're a star,' I said. ‘Bleeding mastermind, you are.'

‘Shut up and be dead.'

‘How's your mam and the dogs?'

‘Shut up!' she said. ‘They'll see your lips move.'

She tried to help me sit up so that everyone could see the blood.

‘Oooh,' went the crowd. ‘Oh my God! Look at that.'

I flopped back down again. Murdered. Horribly murdered.

‘Me mam's okay,' said Sherry-Lee Lewis. ‘It's a good thing she had your dogs, petal. She's not so quick on her pins these days, but with those two barkers no one laid a finger on her. Let's get a little blood on your tits – that always goes down well.'

‘The cavalry's coming,' the ref said. ‘They're sorting the crowd out now, but there's still some fighting at the back.'

I felt the stage shake as people climbed up through the ropes.