Fair Fight (24 page)

Once he had it going, I drew the stools up and we sat, our plates upon our knees, both of us turning to marvel at the rest of the room and then turning back to each other, and then again, we’d turn to look about ourselves. Neither of us thought to sup at the little table. Perhaps that was too great an act of ownership.

The stools beneath us were so newly carved and pegged together that they smelled still of green sap. Beside the fire a brass bowl was filled with coal so nicely that there wasn’t a speck of black dust upon it. The convent could never have been so nice, not if an army of misses had scrubbed it from dawn to dusk. It was too old, the dirt become part of the beams and corners, the boards holding the memory of too many pairs of sailor’s feet. No miss had ever lifted her skirt for a sailor in this cottage. Perhaps a pretty, unspoiled maid could kiss her sweetheart here. I wasn’t pretty, I could never be called unspoiled, and nor did I feel clean. I felt as awkward as a maid that night and Tom wasn’t much better. When at last we got up courage to find the bed and climb into it we were too shy to do more than hold onto each other.

That first morning Mr Dryer came with the dawn while we still lay in bed, too full of the strangeness of the house to rise. He came and sent a boy to knock upon the door and what else could Tom do but go, and leave me there alone? I spent the day pacing about the house, still too afraid to touch anything, my hand too sore to sew. It was one of the longest days of my life.

When at last Tom came back he was in a queer humour and I was no better; I felt weak, suddenly, as though the dress I wore, the blue sprigged that Dora had given me, had turned my heart womanish. I wanted to run to him and have him hold me but I’d not let myself. He came in and stamped his boots harder than he need.

‘What do you think he had me do today, Ruth?’

‘I’m sure I don’t know.’

‘You don’t, indeed. He had me stand before his friends so that they might squeeze my arm and say how thick it was.’

I put my hands before my mouth, but looking at Tom’s face, I began to laugh into them. After a moment he joined in laughing and then he did come to me. I sank into his arms like a weary man to a bed. I put my hand upon his arm where it came across my body.

‘How thick your arm is,’ I said, in the best swell’s voice I could.

‘Oh, God, Ruthie, they had me standing there like a noddy.’

‘A fine kind of training I call it, posing you like a bitch before a cully.’ I meant it as a joke but somehow it stopped us laughing. We were both thinking the same thing: we’d come to Mr Dryer’s house and now we were in service to him. I’d not seen it so before. I was cursing myself for a fool, I couldn’t say if Tom was. His disposition was so much the sunnier he mayn’t have felt it cut him as it did me.

We were indeed in service. Our days became odd ones, even less our own to shape than if Ma had had the running of them. Our food came on a cart, carried into the pantry by a boy in livery, quantities of beefsteak and fresh milk. This boy goggle-eyed Tom like he thought him a hero, and every word from Tom’s mouth put him to the blush. Blushing Henry was far more welcome to me than Old Pious of the dogcart, but still I found it strange to be served so, and hear Tom’s voice grow ever heartier, at seeing how the lad panted after him.

Tom was under orders to eat meat at every meal, and train hard all the while that he wasn’t pushing beef over his tongue. Each morning began with the yolk of an egg mixed with a spoonful of rum, and his face as he swallowed the mixture made me laugh aloud. I took to swilling it with him, so that we could laugh at each other. I made a good play of hating it, but really, it wasn’t so very nasty. I came to look forward to it, when once I’d grown used to the feel of the yolk.

Mr Dryer sent a leather dummy, just like the one in the convent yard, and had him set up on a pole behind the cottage. It pained me that my mauler wasn’t healed enough that I could spar, but I trained beside Tom in all I could do, bouncing up and down upon bent legs and fibbing at the air, first left, then right, to keep balance. I couldn’t join him in the press-ups – my hand wouldn’t take my weight so long – but I sometimes sat upon his back to give him a load to push against, patting him and calling him my mule. We practised sparring, our fists stopping in the air, so that Tom might practise attack and riposte. Beside the fire, in the evenings, we pickled his knuckles in brine, till the skin was like leather.

I grew near as lean as Tom. I tried not to dwell upon how useless it was to be training myself up, with no fight to be had. It wasn’t in my nature to sit quietly, watching my husband. I’d even have taken a beating, just to set my blood pumping again. I tried to be cheerful but I could feel the low spirits, always on the edge of my mind, waiting. At night I dreamed of walking up to scratch, the crowd howling.

Every day Mr Dryer came and took Tom away. He was kept nervous by never knowing what use Mr Dryer would put him to; sometimes he only wanted to take Tom around to taverns and gentlemen’s clubs to show him off. On other days Mr Dryer had him run beside his horse for miles at a time, and on still others carried him off in the carriage, to pit him against some young bully he fancied as likely. I couldn’t swallow my envy on those days, but neither could I admit to its taste in my mouth. I wished it was I sweating there with my fives up, I wished my own knuckles filthy with blood instead of grease from the pans in the scullery. More, I must wave Tom off and wait to hear all he’d done when at last he came home. This I found most trying of all; I’d always been scornful of those wives who did no more than wait for their cullies, and jumped at every sound of boots on the road. Now I found myself straining my ears for Tom’s homecoming worse than any soaker’s wife – I was a lapdog, with nothing else to hang my day upon. Besides this, I longed to watch, to learn what I could from standing beside the ring. I wanted to hold the bottle and sponge Tom’s brow. I wanted to see the maulers flying. By all accounts the training Tom was receiving was nothing more than sparring for the pleasure of the swell and his friends, but I’d have done it gladly. Mr Dryer had promised my husband a man of experience to have the training of him, and daily Tom expected this prize to appear. I doubted it. Mr Dryer seemed only playing at training; how could he expect to make a Champion, the way he was going on? It was only the happiness in Tom’s voice that held my tongue still; I couldn’t stand to sour him.

Mr Dryer came at all hours, just as he had at the convent; we could be taking breakfast, or readying ourselves for sleep, and here would come the sound of horses, and ‘Ho, Tom!’ and Tom’s head would pop up as quick as an old goat called up the convent stairs. His tongue would near hang out with eagerness, on would go his boots and I’d be suddenly alone.

We’d been turned to animals in a cage, fed by Mr Dryer’s hand and Tom borne off whenever the fancy struck him. I was left useless, slowly turning in an empty room. I knew I should be seeing to my wifely duties, and it was plain that the cottage wasn’t kept as nice as it’d been when first we came there, but I’d never had the running of a nice home before. I’d decide upon a task, some simple thing that I was used to doing at the convent, the scrubbing of the flags, perhaps, and then become distracted in the kitchen, and begin instead scouring a pan to scald the milk, only to forget what I’d meant to do after the pan was cleaned and begin blacking the grate. On other days I’d wash the floor alright, but spend the whole day at it, which might’ve been done in an hour, for fear of stopping and having to find out what else might be done. I crawled about on knees grown numb, scrubbing over and over ground that had already been scrubbed.

I didn’t cook much; the meat and bread being brought to us, I preferred to serve up cold rather than cook a dinner for which Tom might never arrive. I’ve never been one to court disappointment, and there was no telling how late Mr Dryer might keep him.

Tom, being an obliging fellow always, never complained but only ate his cold meat and through every mouthful told me of the hits he’d made, and the promises of glory Mr Dryer had repaid him with. For the most part he’d come back in only because the cull was grown weary of his toy.

‘Oh, he’s tired of me for today,’ he’d say, ‘unless he rolls back up to the door at midnight.’

Tom thought as I did, that we must take what we could and be done when once we’d taken it. Where our thoughts ran different was that Tom was sure that this moment would come when he raised his arm as England’s Champion, where I didn’t trust Mr Dryer had a serious intention that way, nor that his ideas of training were good enough.

One night Tom didn’t come home for supper, nor after that. I spent a lonely evening, my hand still too clumsy to make good work of my mending, and nothing else to do but watch the fire, my cloak about my shoulders for comfort, and whittle a stick. I didn’t carve anything of it, only shaved it to a sharp point and then kept the knife at it, peeling it ever sharper, round and round, till it was little more than a pointed stub. Then I swept the sawdust up with my hands as best I could and threw both that and the tiny spear I’d made onto the fire. The sawdust caught while it was still in the air and became a shower of sparks. Then I took up another stick and began again, and thus passed the dullest night imaginable. I could feel the emptiness beyond the cottage walls and I didn’t like it at all. I didn’t like to sit there and feel all that countryside pressing in, but neither could I bear to leave the hearth and go up the little staircase to that cold bed.

When at last Tom came in, so late it might best be called early, he looked as merry round the gills as if he’d just gone for a swill of ale an hour before. He saw me standing and put his arms out, smiling, before he saw how sullen I was. His smile dropped, but his arms stayed out.

‘What’s this,’ he said, ‘who took my wife and left this sour mopsey?’

‘You were gone so long,’ I said, in a sniveller’s voice so unlike my own that it surprised me into silence.

Tom didn’t seem to know how to take me, either. He dropped his arms and looked hard at me.

‘I had to stay, while Mr Dryer would have me there,’ he said. ‘You needn’t be out of temper; you must know I’d never stay away unless I must. You’ll be so glad when I tell you all I’ve been doing, Ruthie.’

I couldn’t speak, but only shook my head. Tom stepped across the room and drew me into his arms. I struggled only a little.

‘What ails you?’ he said, into my hair. ‘This ain’t like you, my fighting wife. When came you to be so weepish?’

I pushed away from him like a ship from dock, feeling the pain travel up my arms as I did. He let me go quick enough and I saw that he recognised me now, alright.

‘Since my husband turned into the quality’s cully. When came you to be so cheap?’ The spite in my own voice was like a surge of black liquor; my eyes turned from water to fire and seemed to burn in my head.

‘Your mind is filth.’ Tom rubbed at his eyes. ‘You’ve no idea what I’ve been doing.’

‘I know what things gentlemen do to those they have in their pockets, and I know what men do when they don’t come home to their wives.’

‘Noddy,’ Tom said, and turned his back on me.

I hated to be brushed off, as Tom well knew. He might’ve turned his back on purpose to make me leap upon him, which I did, for how could I have done differently? He turned back as he heard me move – my husband was far too fast these days to be taken unawares. He went to seize my wrist as I swung at him, and it was natural to me to use the move we called the Jew’s stop: as Tom made to grab my wrist I chopped his arm with the side of a flat hand, using all the power I had, careless of my own pain. His arm dropped, his eyes tightened and I knew I’d hit him well. When the Jew’s stop is done right, the chopping hand turns with all speed from the arm to strike at the enemy’s throat. His neck was unguarded; I could’ve dealt it a good fib and had him gasping, but some tenderness stayed my hand. Instead of chopping his windpipe closed, I found myself fibbing Tom’s chest closed-fisted, which never would hurt a cull as solid with beef as my Tom. We both of us knew then that I’d forgive him, and all the fight went out of us.

Tom reached out for my wrists again, and this time I let him take them. He held me there, my chest to his chest, and looked down into my face.

‘Mr Dryer would throw me off my training, Ruthie. No skirt, no drink, no nothing, almost, but beefsteak and sparring. Think you on that, even if you will take me for a cod’s-head. He’s got me tied up stricter than a monk.’

‘What does he have you at, then, that keeps you away all night?’

‘He took me to Bath, that I’d mill for some swells there. They stayed at their cards and dice, and left me to sleep in a chair by the fire. There was nothing you need feel ill over.’

‘I know it,’ I said, ‘I knew it really.’

‘I’ll not leave you so long again, Ruthie. I’ll tell him we can’t be parted.’

‘You needn’t,’ I said, against his chest.

‘I’ll always come home, Ruthie.’

‘This ain’t home. Tell me we’ll not stay here, Tommy.’

‘Here! Of course we won’t. We’ll go anywhere we please, when once I’m Champion. You and I together.’

I tilted up my face to him and he bent to kiss me.

‘And no man the master of us?’ I said, against his lips.

‘Nor woman, neither,’ he said, and the kiss was a promise.

A few days later, as I knelt sweeping out the grate so that I might have a fire when Tom came home, the hooves sounded on the lane and my husband burst into the room even as I was still getting to my feet, brushing the dust off my apron. His face was as flushed as if he’d been at the wet all day.

‘He’s taking me to London, to begin my training proper, at Fives Court,’ he cried, looking wildly all about him.

I said only, ‘What do you look for?’

‘Mr Dryer said I’m to fetch what things I need, but I can’t think what that might mean.’

‘Take your coat,’ I said. ‘Take your other shirt, take some bread.’

‘He’ll give me bread. My clothes, yes –’

Tom thundered up the stairs to fetch them and came straight down again, bringing only his coat and his razor.