The Longest Fight (7 page)

Pearl came in behind them. ‘The best.’

‘See him… take those hits? I landed some good… but he didn’t want to go down. I weren’t… expecting that.’

Frank tried to lift his hands to demonstrate but they sagged straight back on to his knees. Blood from the cut under his eye dripped down his cheek.

‘Stay still, get your breath back.’ Pearl stood in front of him.

‘I could see… everyone cheering… standing up… but I didn’t want to believe… until the ref lifted my arm.’

Jack paced the narrow space between the benches. ‘Make yourself useful, Pearl. Clean up that cut and check him over.’

Pearl hung up the fur coat and stacked the coins next to Frank. ‘You could’ve got a fractured rib or muscle sprain when you were fighting. Probably not a dislocated shoulder or your arm would be hanging strangely. Don’t worry, I’ve had them before, I know what I’m looking for. Stand up.’

He did as she said. Pearl was taller than Jack remembered; still growing, probably. Her chin level with Frank’s neck. She tapped her fingertips along his collarbones, and patted the palm of her hand down his calves. Jack pulled at his collar. Georgie had said she was coming, but no sign of her yet. Frank didn’t move, obedient as ever, his face turned down to stare at the top of Pearl’s head. The sounds of cheering, high-pitched whistles, the scraping of benches and fading bursts of laughter were muted behind the wooden swing-doors.

‘Get a shift on, Pearl. The boy’s dying of boredom standing around.’

‘All done.’ She snatched her hands away. ‘But hands and feet are the most likely places for damage.’

She twisted the end of the bandage covering her palm. Frank prodded under his eye with his glove. ‘You couldn’t sort out… this cut, could you?’

‘Course she can, she carries a whole kit around. Never know when you’re going to come undone, do you, Pearl?’

Jack opened the bottle of whisky and took a long draught; the fiery taste grounded him in his body again. Pearl didn’t answer but she pulled the small Altoids tin out of her cardigan and set to work.

‘Any of that left for me?’ Georgie’s voice echoed against the tiles as she closed the back door.

‘I knew you’d show up.’ Jack offered her the bottle.

‘I missed your fight.’ She took a swig and coughed.

‘We won, that’s all that matters.’ Jack took back the bottle. ‘Can’t you smell it?’

Pearl tilted Frank’s head as she swabbed the cut with iodine. Jack saw Georgie pushing her gloves into her pocket, itching to touch the sweat running down Frank’s back. Pearl interrupted him again.

‘I’ll use the money I collected up to get some more food in, shall I, Jack?’

‘What?’

‘Frank can move in now, can’t he?’

‘Just help him get packed up here. Get some beer and I’ll see you back at the house. I want to show Georgie around the place first. We’ve got some celebrating to do.’

He swiped the damp towel off his shoulder and threw it at Pearl, shook his head as she missed the catch; it hit her face before slipping to the floor. With the bottle in one hand, Georgie’s wrist tightly gripped in the other, Jack left them to it.

He took her through the changing rooms, giving her a grand tour of the place. The warm feel of the wooden lockers, the crisp lines of the tiles, and the long shadows washing across the floor: familiar smells and sights. But he didn’t tell Georgie that, just kept her close and let her see how tall he stood, how easily his dark hair and skin blended into the place. Georgie’s fingers sought out his and soon they were firmly latched together. He pulled her around another corner; the door slammed behind them; they were on their own at last.

‘Ain’t you in a hurry. Anyone’d think you’re the one been prancing around in that ring.’

‘Last contest will be over soon. But I leave the fighting to Frank. I like to get rid of my energy other ways.’

‘I’m glad your fighter won.’ Georgie’s breath was sticky like the whisky.

Jack stopped to take another drink. ‘I said we would.’

‘That’s quite a talent you’ve got, predicting the future.’

She draped herself against the wall. Jack moved a finger to push back a curl resting on her forehead. ‘Shall I tell you what’s coming up next, Georgie?’

‘So, now you want to tell me things. Go ahead if you like, tell me.’

‘Maybe you ain’t ready for it. Have another drink and I’ll think about it. I wouldn’t want to scare you away with my rare gift.’

She held back a laugh. ‘Rare gift?’

‘Telling the future. Have another?’ Jack waved the bottle in front of her face.

‘People have been telling me a lot about you and your sparkly eyes.’

‘All the good stuff’s true. Stay around and I’ll show you. Look, my hands are clean.’ He held them up for inspection.

‘What happened to your thumbnail – does it hurt much?’

‘Been gone for years.’ He shrugged. ‘One less to scrub.’

She smiled as he touched the neck of the bottle to her shoulder. She took it. She had to stop talking now. He wanted to hear that ringing in his ears again, the heat of skin. She took a snifter then pushed the bottle into his pocket. He dropped his shoulder against her chest and wrapped his arms around her – an underhand move in the ring, but she laughed as he manoeuvred her into the bath area. The tiles were scratched, greased yellow with use, and the copper piping was mottled green in patches. Her high heels skidded beneath her but without them she was too small to reach. Jack steadied her against the wall, pressed closer. He bit the edge of her pink coral necklace: salty as a turning tide. He wanted to breathe her in, to have her smell rub off until he didn’t recognise himself. He pushed his fingers into her hair and prised apart the tightly set curls. She pulled his hand away.

‘Mind. It took me an age to do that.’

But Jack didn’t mind. Her hair was loose enough to nuzzle his face into, searching for the scent of grass and toffee apples. All he found was the chemical smell of permanent wave lotion and the flowery sweetness of Georgie’s perfume. But she ran her hands down to the small of his back, tugged him towards her, and it didn’t matter any more that she was only Georgie. He just wanted someone. Jack’s ribs slotted up against her breasts. He had to bend his knees to get his hand up under her skirt. The material rucked in his fist and his nails caught on the string holding up her stockings. He heard her laugh and slipped his tongue into her mouth to keep her quiet. His fingers eased apart the simmering folds of her camiknickers.

‘Rosie…’ His voice smothered by her hair.

‘What?’ Her breath was beating against his chest.

‘I said you’re rosy.’ Jack kissed her again to cover the lie. ‘Say my name.’

‘Jack.’ She jutted out her hipbones, harder against him.

‘Jackie. Call me Jackie,’ he breathed into her ear.

She murmured the name back to him as she jerked at the buttons on his trousers. He could close his eyes, remember how it should have been. She opened up for him, planting her legs a little wider. He pushed deeper, sucked at the skin around her neck. But that name was still beating in his ears as the blood thudded through him. Felt his back tighten, his legs go stiff. He wanted to return to the first day that his life began: warm blue-sky hours, lying on the hard grass, young enough to think summer lasted forever.
Please, please.
He begged himself not to come before he pictured Rosie’s face again.

S
omeone thumps on the door; John’s shins hit the wooden toilet. His trousers drop to his knees. The parrot squawks, woken from sleep, battering its wings against the bars. He bites his lip, flexes his left hand against the back wall. The door is locked; he hopes it is Tommy, that he will get bored and walk away.

‘What you doing in there?’ His dad thumps the cracked wood.

‘I’m done.’ John’s voice sounds high and tight. He tries to reach his belt, lying across his foot, without making a sound. A grey feather floats in under the gap between the door and the cobbles. His dad paces. John stuffs himself back inside his trousers, gym sub money jingling in his pocket. He rubs his hand down the back of his shirt as he scans the toilet: nothing to give him away. He opens the door.

‘Disgusting.’ His dad shoves past him. ‘You’ll go blind, boy.’

John stares at the red bricks of the outhouse but his cheeks smoulder from the inside, heat flushing down his neck.
Look out, look out,
the parrot cries from the cage by the back door. It extends a claw through the bars, but John doesn’t have any scraps for it this morning.

‘Think I don’t know why you get up early before work? No point practising. Who’d ever want you?’ His dad stretches his arms against the doorframe, leans out towards John.

The boys’ bedroom window creaks open, the scrape of wood echoing in the yard. Tommy, his eldest brother, home on leave, is probably hanging out, trying to eavesdrop for ammunition to use against him.

‘God landed me with three boys and not one of them can catch a girl. What a waste of Munday blood. At least Bill doesn’t bother turning up here for his leave, getting under our feet,’ his dad calls up to the window; the sash drops shut again.

John is glad the morning sun never reaches the yard: it would burn him right up. His dad doesn’t bother to close the door, just coughs and shuffles his feet.

‘Wait till I tell the men down the factory what I caught you doing.’ His dad’s laugh is drowned out by a rush of piss hitting the bowl.

John tastes last night’s smoked kippers hitting the back of his teeth. He doesn’t want to face those eyes down the line of the Bible Factory – fingers pointing, mouths flapping. With the money in his pocket he could just keep riding the tram until he reached a place where no one knew who he was – further than Mitcham this time. His dad keeps talking as he shakes off the final drops. John wants to be somewhere that no one knows his business, no one listening outside doors waiting to pounce. He is fifteen now, as much of a man as he’ll ever be. John grasps the coins in his pocket and lifts his feet so as not to make a sound, shrinking backwards into the dark alleyway beside the house. The black eyes of the parrot watch him.

He makes it to the end of Lomond Grove; no one is following. The early morning air is thick as bath steam, a hats-tilted-against-the-sun kind of a day. It presses down on John, making him itchy in his skin. When his dad gets to the factory he will find out John has gone, then they’ll all be sorry. He stands in the shade under the trees and waits for a tram. He sticks an arm then a leg into the sun, testing the burning sensation on his skin. It is the kind of heat that boils up a storm. A tram pulls up, he climbs on board and the rush of air as it goes along lifts the sticky sweat from his neck. He even manages to read some of the paper the man in front is holding. Something about that German bloke they are always
ranting about, but John doesn’t really pay attention until the sports pages. Seemed as if Germany had something to celebrate: Louis versus Schmeling, knockout in round twelve – Joe Louis’ first defeat. He wants to read the rest of the fight reports, but doesn’t get the chance before the man folds up the pages and gets off at the next stop.

John kicks his feet up against the pole in front and settles on the view outside the window. He doesn’t care where he is going, as long as it’s away from Lomond Grove, and Waterloo Market, and Watkins Bible Factory: the whole stinking place. The only thing he will miss is the canal.

Brick and tarmac blend to green as they near the Common. The tram slows to round the corner at Peckham Rye, and that is when he sees her. A girl making her way along the path, arms full with boxes and kicking another one in front. Dark hair knotted around her head. She shouts something, craning her neck down towards the boxes; behind her on the Common, a red striped circus tent, a big wheel. The tram begins to pick up speed again. She is getting smaller. John hops over to the doors. If he gets off now it means there will be more days in that factory, smell of ink and burning grease, and his dad’s face at the end of the Bible line. Why can’t the print machine ram his dad’s head on to those blank pages, make him someone else’s story? But now he feels as if he could take the house and the factory as his life, because that girl is out there on the wilting grass. He will be docked a day’s wages but John doesn’t care about any of that; he wants to help her with the boxes. A fair is just sitting there on the Common; he wants to have some fun. John jumps off, the momentum sending him running towards the girl.

‘Need a hand with them?’

Her dark hair seems paler next to her dark skin, ripened like the apples she carries. She stares as if he has just sprouted up from the ground. He picks up the box by her feet.

‘You’ll need more than one hand.’ She tips the top box into his arms.

John braces the wooden slats against his chest, tries to pretend they aren’t heavy. ‘What you got all these apples for? They’ll give you gut rot, won’t they?’

‘You ask a lot of questions. Like a copper or something. No, you’re not old enough for that.’ She laughs.

John likes the way she does it, head thrown back and mouth wide open.

‘I work over at Watkins & Co. Bible Factory. Just thought you needed some help.’

‘They might give you the elbow, wasting time out here.’

Her hands are full; John wants to sway forward and kiss her plump on the lips before she has the chance to slap him away. But he doesn’t.

‘I’ll get another job – don’t like the factory anyhow. I’m going to be a boxer.’

If he can keep her talking, maybe she won’t notice that the top button on her dress is undone, that a piece of white lace nestles on her breast. She has to be sixteen at least: every bit of her pushing out against the sunlight. He smiles at her, walking backwards along the path.

‘I can sort you out all the fruit you need. Free. There’s farm buildings over Dulwich way store them up all year.’

‘That’s where I’ve come from. How do you think I tore my dress?’

‘I can jump that orchard wall, easy.’

‘Maybe I’ll take you with me some time, then.’

She peers over his head to the trees behind. His dad will know John is late by now; the foreman will have crossed out his name for the day.

‘We could go now. What about it?’

‘These apples will see us for a while, boy. Anyway, ain’t you already offered to help me carry this lot back?’

‘I can carry them far as you need. My boxing training makes me –’

‘I know all about you wanting to box, and being happy to carry a box, and we only just met. Your mum never tell you
not to play with gypsies in the wood?’ She steps up close, making him step backwards.

‘Maybe I want to run away and join the circus.’

‘It’s a fair, and I’m not a gypsy anyway.’ She turns off to the left and walks away. ‘Hope you find your circus.’

The grey eyes, the black hair, blue dress squeezing her hips. She is beautiful, like those pictures of ladies on biscuit tins at Woolworth’s. But those painted faces never grinned and showed their teeth the way she does.

‘I only said maybe. What’s the fair like, then?’

She looks back over her shoulder. ‘Ever had a toffee apple before?’

She balances the box on her hip, rubs a red apple on her front and bites into it. John shrugs again as if he is some sort of idiot that can’t do anything else.

‘Cat got your tongue? Where’ve all the questions gone? I liked the questions.’

He sees flashes of white apple flesh on her tongue as she speaks. He wants to hook a finger inside her mouth, fish out those chunks of sweet apple; teeth aching for it. Just one bite, that’s all he wants.

‘Come on, then, keep up. If you want to be a fighter you got to be quick on your feet.’

John sticks beside her, apples jiggling and pressing into his bladder.

‘What’s your name?’

‘John Munday.’

‘No one call you Jack?’

He shrugs again; he has to stop doing that. She comes up in front of him, so close he smells apple juice.

‘Jackie, that’s what I’ll call you, suits you better.’

He holds his breath, and this time he doesn’t back away. But she is off again. Sunshine splits between her legs and he can see her thighs through the papery thinness of the dress. He trots to catch up with her.

‘You know my name now. So, what’s yours, then?’

‘Rosie.’ She keeps the apple clamped between her small teeth.

‘That’s a pretty name.’ The words pop out before he can stop them. What a real pillock he is; his dad is right.

‘For a pretty girl?’ She grins at him, lips knocking up against the apple.

He gives one last shrug. Now they are both laughing. The trees are getting thicker, twisting shadows around them. He smells the sharp dryness of sap. The trams, and the people on their way to work, press around the edges of the Common. But he and Rosie are alone on the grass.

‘You’re the type my mum warns me to steer clear of.’

‘Your mum sounds like she’s got some sense, not like her son, offering to carry stuff for any old person.’ She shakes her head. But she is still smiling as their elbows brush together with each stride. She gnaws on the apple as she watches him. ‘I could have carried them on my own, you know.’

‘I know, and I could have stayed on the tram.’ He feels sick saying it out loud.

But it feels good, her looking at him. He doesn’t care about the loose threads on his shirt or the ink stains darkening the cuffs; doesn’t care that his boots are at least one size too big.

‘Bet you couldn’t carry all the boxes, Jackie. I’ll let you have a toffee apple – one of the broken ones but you won’t be able to taste no difference – if you can do it.’

‘Easy, Rosie.’

The boxing training is finally going to be of some use. He places his feet apart, locks his arms. She dumps the last box on top. He stands tall as the London plane trees, stronger even. Then her finger comes towards him. She wipes it under his nose: smell of apples, something musty like mud. But he holds strong. The finger moves under his arm, wriggling against the worn material of his jacket. He can withstand it all. That house taught him how to hold back a laugh, a cry, even a sneeze. But he doesn’t want to any more. She runs her finger down to his waist. This time he laughs, his tongue
rolling backwards with the force of it, and he doesn’t want to stop.

She stands back with her fists on her hips. ‘Knew you couldn’t do it, Jackie.’

‘Cheater.’ He lunges forward.

The boxes fall in a stack on the grass, apples flying and rolling to escape. She is off, shouting out insults; he screams back until his voice cracks. They run in and out of the trees. He chases her up to an oak; she stands behind its huge trunk catching her breath. Round and round they go until he is dizzy with it.

‘Jackie boy, Jackie boy.’

She chants his name until he can’t remember ever being called anything else. Her special name for him. He makes a grab for her, grazes his arm on the bark. John is still on that tram, at the printing press, stuck in that house. Jackie is free. She breaks away, legs pumping as she sprints across the grass. The sun roasting her cheeks to a bright red, a bird darting past her head, a horn blaring on the road and that is it: the moment. Clear and framed as a photograph on the wall. He knows he can keep running forever. Far, far away from the factory, the house. He is so hot he might explode like an overflowing boiler, but he doesn’t care. She is up ahead, circling back towards the boxes and the pool of red apples; he nearly has her. If he keeps going then he knows he’ll have the courage to spread his arms around her waist and squeeze her tight. He’ll be able to catch her at last. Rosie.