Fair Fight (4 page)

‘But, why?’ I said. ‘What in all the hells would you seek me out for?’

He didn’t flicker at my language.

‘I’d like to talk to you,’ he said, ‘and see you home safe.’

I laughed at him and put all the scorn I had into it. It was a whore’s laugh.

‘I’ll be safe enough,’ I said, ‘and if I’m not, why, it’s nothing I’m not used to.’

If he’d continued to look soft I believe I’d have been off then, but he laughed instead.

‘Then, I hope we’ll be robbed, and I’ll watch you chase off the footpads.’

‘No one’ll rob you when you’re with me,’ I said.

‘Then you’ll let me walk with you,’ Tom said, and it wasn’t a question.

Tom was from Coalpit Heath. He told me it was a tiny place where all in the village worked in the colliery and black dust covered everything. He might’ve had the voice of a farmer but his family were all miners. He said he was grown too big to be any use down a mine, though he’d tried to keep at it. I thought he walked as though he were down there still, hunched over and sorry, keeping his arms close.

He’d been sent to Bristol to look for work on the docks and was lodging with a lady in St Thomas, who’d thought him a negro when first he’d arrived, he said.

‘At home we’re all black as Turks, with the coal-dust. I never realised how filthy dark I was, till I came here and saw how many colours of skin there are to see.’ He threw out his arm as though we were still in The Hatchet yard. In The Hatchet black men, mulattos, Jews and gypsies were all as welcome as a white man, if they’d coins in their pockets. It was that variety of tavern. Tom’s arm wasn’t black any longer.

‘I scrubbed myself raw,’ he said, ‘and the lady I rent from wasn’t any too pleased when she saw the state of the bathwater. She made me tip it out and fetch another tubful from the pump, it was so black. It wasn’t fit for a pig to get in after me, she said. The pump’s three streets distant. It took me half the day, back and forth with buckets.’

I laughed. I still recall how sharp and strange it was when he looked at me. I couldn’t help but feel he was mocking me – he must’ve been – and yet, and yet, there he was, walking beside me and telling me about his home.

As we drew near to the convent, which wasn’t far, not far enough, I made him stop. I leaned against a wall. From where I stood I could see the dark bulk of Sam leaning up against the door and the lamplight coming pink through the silk shades at Ma’s window. It didn’t look like a good Christian home.

‘Why d’you stop?’ Tom asked.

I didn’t know how to answer. He looked awkward and unhappy suddenly and I thought,
Perhaps he thinks I’ve stopped so that he’ll kiss me and he’s looking at my gap-toothed chops and casting his mind about for escape
. I couldn’t let him think that.

‘I wish you’d go now,’ I said.

Now he looked even more miserable.

‘Have I offended you, Miss Matchet?’

‘No,’ I said, and because he looked so downcast still, ‘my name’s Ruth Downs.’

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I knew Ruth, but I thought you were Miss Ruth Matchet.’

I laughed then and Tom smiled too, a little ashamedly.

‘I suppose I should’ve guessed it. Miss Matchet from The Hatchet. It’s too neat to be true.’

I stopped laughing and then I didn’t know what to do.

At last he said, ‘If you don’t want that fellow to mark me, mayn’t I just stand here and watch you go in?’ He nodded toward the convent door.

My head swam strangely as I walked toward the house. I could feel Tom’s eyes upon my back and I was suddenly conscious of my walk, too wide, too swaggering for a lady. As I reached the door Sam tipped me a wink, having spied Tom, and was about to speak when behind him the door opened. Ma was standing in the doorway, an unlit lamp in her hand and a look of fury well enough known to me upon her face. She stepped forward and with her free hand grasped me roughly by the shoulder.

‘What’s this?’ She was loud enough for the whole street to wake. ‘You, out with young men without my leave? You, who has to save her strength for the ring?’ She began to drag me up the step. The fat from the lamp splashed out upon my neck; it was still warm.

If Tom hadn’t been across the street I’d have gone mildly enough, as I always did. This one day, mind, I wrested my shoulder from her. We both stumbled. I was burning with the shame.

I screamed out, ‘I did nothing but talk!’

Ma slapped me across the chops so hard that I staggered to one side. I heard Sam suck in a breath but he didn’t stir to help me. Tom came across the street so fast that I could hear the slops in the gutter splash up around his ankles. We all of us turned to watch him puff up.

‘Madam, I’ll swear it, I didn’t lay a finger on her,’ he said.

‘You may touch her all you like, for four shillings,’ Ma said, over my head, ‘but none of my girls visits with young fellows just to talk.’

Tom fumbled in his pocket.

‘I’ll give you two shillings now, to talk to her,’ he said, ‘and so you shan’t beat her. I’d give you four, if I had it.’

Ma took the coins from his outstretched hand and peered at them in the half-light. Then she simply stepped back and closed the door, leaving Tom, Sam and me standing on the step.

Sam shook his head, though what he meant by it I didn’t know. I couldn’t speak, even to thank Tom. We all three of us stood there like noddies.

At last I said, ‘I’ll give you two shillings back,’ though I didn’t know how I’d manage it.

‘You gave me those two,’ Tom said, ‘I won, betting on you tonight.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

He was standing on the street, just looking at me. His eyes were very dark; I couldn’t see what look they held.

At last Sam said, ‘Ain’t you going to kiss the lad a thank you?’

‘She needn’t do that,’ Tom said, so quick it was near all one word.

I was more fuddled in that moment than I’d been my life long.

‘Goodnight, then,’ I said at last, and I went inside, just so that I could stop thinking about it.

Before I closed the door I heard Sam laugh and I saw Tom’s dark shape turn away, his head lowered as it always was.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it after all. I couldn’t stop thinking about it for days.

When next I fought I looked for Tom the moment I took the ring. When I saw him sitting on the rail I couldn’t help but smile at him. He smiled back and I found myself so flustered it took a hard fib upon the cheek from my opponent to bring me round and have me straight again.

When I came down from the ring that day I took the ale from his hands and some of the culls called out, ‘Oh, she favours you now, lad!’ and the like.

Tom and I blushed together.

After that, it was accepted in The Hatchet that Tom would hand my ale to me and not a word more was said about it. When Mr Dryer called out for anyone willing to be my second and bottle-holder, Tom would sometimes raise his hand and I’d feel my belly shift and not be sure if I hoped he’d be chosen or passed over. I knew that if he were too near to me I’d be too flustered to fight well. Mr Dryer never did turn his finger to beckon Tom, so I can’t say how well my nerves would’ve fared. Mr Dryer seemed never to see Tom’s raised hand at all. When I came out of the ring, mind, whether victorious or defeated, before long there he was at my side, looking at me again. I couldn’t believe he’d choose to do so, and yet I must believe it.

One day he brought me feathers, bright yellow and blue, won from a sailor just off a ship. I kept them in an old cigar box, which I’d hidden up the chimney breast. In a house as loose as ours it was hard to keep hold of anything as being truly your own, and I guarded that box as though it were filled with jewels – though it held nothing much besides a few broken beads I’d had from one miss or another, and a silver button from a gent’s coat that Ma never knew I found. Now I pushed all that to the side and laid the feathers in careful as anything, and stroked them till they were flat. No one had ever given me any kind of present before.

Tom walked with me only a very little way now; I couldn’t let Ma catch him again. Every time we parted I felt my belly swoop, unsure if he’d kiss me at last. He never did try. He always stood watching me, his hands in his pockets, till I turned the corner.

Ma never said a word, but she knew too many folks with flapping chops and I could be sure she’d heard enough. Sometimes I thought she was watching me with new eyes, the way she watched the new misses. I’d become an uncertain creature in her mind and I found I liked it; she couldn’t fathom what else I might be doing when her eyes weren’t on me, and more than that – someone had thought it worth a whole two shillings just to talk to me. No man had ever paid two shillings for Dora’s conversation.

I’d taken to going to The Hatchet even when Mr Dryer didn’t come to fetch me. Ma never spoke against that, either; I suppose by then I was earning enough, or she was biding her time. Perhaps she was run mad enough by then that she didn’t think of me unless I was in front of her. She was certainly grown forgetful.

One evening I was waiting at the door to the Hatchet yard, watching two lads about to fight upon the stage, stretching themselves and jumping about, when up came a sailor. This was a cull fresh off a boat, all full of ginger and half-soused already. He came over beside me and touched my face, where I’d a bruise or two, as I near always did.

‘Ain’t you all scuffed up,’ he said. ‘How’d you like a little ointment for that?’ His face made it clear enough what he meant by that.

‘Tom,’ a cully standing nearby called out, ‘here’s a noddy talking foul to your missus.’

‘He’d best shut his bonebox,’ Tom called out, walking toward us, ‘unless he wants it closed for him.’

The sailor called back, ‘No offence meant, son. Bruise the little bitch yourself, did you? I’ll warrant she keeps quiet enough, now.’

Tom kept coming through the crowd, who moved aside and, guessing what he was about, turned to watch. He stepped right up to that sailor, smiling, and struck him right in the chops, so hard that the cully’s head cracked against the door and bounced right off again. He slumped forward, and everyone about reached out to help him to the floor.

Tom turned to me and I could see he was anxious then, that I’d be vexed at him playing the knight.

I reached out and touched his big hand, just gently.

‘I knew you’d have a good fib on you,’ I said. ‘You’d have to with maulers like that. You should go up in the ring.’

Tom shook his head, but he looked pleased enough to piss. ‘I’d rather watch you,’ he said. ‘I should’ve let you fight for yourself, just now. I didn’t mean to take liberties.’

‘I’ve been waiting for you to take liberties,’ I said, just to see him blush.

And just like that, Tom seemed to grow bolder. Nothing much changed that you could see. He never asked me outright, but from that day he’d sometimes say of a stream he’d fished as a boy or the mine his father and brothers still worked, ‘I’ll take you there, when once we’re married.’

And this without once kissing me, or taking my swollen-up hands.

I sometimes told him, ‘Ma never will let me marry you, Tommy.’

He’d only smile then and say, ‘She will.’

But he knew nothing about it. He was too good to know.

When once I understood that he meant it, the agony of uncertainty was replaced by worse – I began to love him. I told myself I mustn’t – I forbade it. That was as much help as forbidding Ma to love money, or Mr Dryer to love boxing. I knew I’d never hold him; as soon as he knew me truly, he’d run, of course he’d run. Oh, he said he’d never known a girl like me; that he thought me brave and liked to see me carry myself so proud and spirited, but that wasn’t like to last, that wasn’t what lads looked for to marry. Surely, soon, he’d find some other girl, with curling hair and unmarked cheeks and I’d have to kill them both, or die of it. I thought about this and still I walked beside him. I laughed when he joked. I cast about for him when I took the ring and couldn’t be easy till I knew his eyes were on me, and then couldn’t be easy for the reason that they were.

Mr Dryer saw all this and said not a word to me. One day, mind, I came downstairs, meaning to go to The Hatchet, when Ma opened the parlour door and bid me step inside.

Mr Dryer was there, sitting neatly upon the overstuffed settee, his hands upon his knee and his back very straight. He looked soberly at me, though he didn’t catch my eye. Rather, he looked me over as though considering me for a mill. Beside him, perched on a stool too small for him and scarlet about the mug, sat Tom. He looked about to cry. My belly shrank to see him. He was too good and, though it sounds wrong of me to say it, not sharp enough to be there. Ma and Mr Dryer were like to eat him alive.

Ma stayed at the door so that I had to pass her too close and take in the sweet and rotten scent of her, grown stronger in recent days. She was still made up fine, with her dress cut low and her pearls – which I knew were paste – about her neck. Her face was painted as high as it always was. Below the paint the lumps were beginning then, one cheek pushing outward, her eye drawn out with it near to a slit and the white of it turned ruby. Her look was at its most stern and even I, who was so well used to it, had to grit my nerve to pass her. I suddenly saw how she must look to Tom. How brave and foolish he’d been to come there.

I sat in the chair Ma pointed out to me, facing Tom and Mr Dryer. She came in, closed the door and placed herself beside Mr Dryer upon the settee. Now I was facing them, all in a line. First Ma, stern and lumpen, then Mr Dryer, neat and serious, then Tom, all hunched shoulders and sorry eyes.

‘Now, Ruth, this young lad,’ Ma made the words ‘young lad’ sound like a shabby thing, ‘has come to ask me for your hand.’

I didn’t know what I’d expected to hear, but it wasn’t that. Tom looked as though he were regretting it. But oh, he’d come to ask for me. How silly he was, how simple! What kind of girl did he think he was asking for?

‘Of course,’ Ma was saying, ‘he wasn’t to know that the choice belongs to Mr Dryer as much as to myself. We’ve talked it over well, and we’re of a mind. He’s to have our blessing.’