The Longest Fight (14 page)

‘Can’t stop, Newton.’ Jack tried to step around but the open cellar stopped him, black as inky canal water. The propped doors trembled in the growing wind, a chain rattled and the ropes swayed. Newton staggered backwards to the mouth of the delivery hatch, clutching Jack’s arm for balance.
He let the wall take the weight off his tin leg, his foot touching the edge of the hole.

‘Coming this way always makes me remember your poor old dad and his snapped neck at the bottom of them steps. I used to raise a glass with him on his way back from the factory. The Lord takes the good ones young. John Munday was no exception.’

‘He should have outlived us all, then.’

But Jack couldn’t stop himself from glancing down again. After all those years he still expected to see that small brass cup glinting up at him; perhaps it was down there, hidden behind an old oak barrel, blocking up the drains.

Newton shook his head. ‘Crying shame it was, too. Religion, science, they all say the same – everything happens for a reason, even if we can’t understand the pattern. The book my uncle wrote talks about the patterns in boxing, you know. I ever tell you about that book, Jack?’ He let go of Jack’s arm and tried to straighten the lapels of his janitor’s jacket. ‘Well, I’m off to fetch a couple of fish suppers. Jimmy’s popping round.’

Newton tipped his cap at them and stumbled towards the orange glow of the street, the drag of his tin foot echoing across the flagstones. The trip out to the new flats seemed like a lifetime ago, not hours. Somehow Jack always ended up back in that pit. He glanced over at Camberwell Road, a trailing line of headlights and shop fronts; he caught the salty whiff of chips. He took hold of Georgie’s arm, stepping away from the edge: nothing but the deep blackness of the cellar down there.

R
osie wraps her arm around his, their hands slipping together. Jackie smells the fusty sweat of Brixton Boys’ Club trapped on his skin and in the wool of her cardigan. He isn’t sure when the evenings started to need another layer, summer short sleeves not enough. Rosie knocks his elbow.

‘Jackie, let’s get fish and chips.’

‘We had Chelsea buns after the fight.’

‘But I’ve been worrying about your poorly thumb. Worrying makes me hungry.’

‘I’ve been in the ring and you’re only worried about my thumb?’

‘That other boy never landed a proper hit because you were too quick. The winner’s cup proves it.’ She pats the brass base peeking from his pocket.

‘If it’ll stop you from fretting, I suppose I could let you kiss it better.’

He holds up his missing thumbnail; the raw bed still throbs but what stings more is the lie he told her: an accident at the Bible Factory. She kisses it, gently nudging her nose against his palm. ‘I’m still starved though, unless you want me to eat what’s left of your thumb?’

‘Let’s just get back to the fair.’

He smiles and can’t understand why she is always hungry lately, always something sweet and sticky between her fingers. She walks next to him but drags her feet, the clumpy boots thumping up dust. It is too dark on the street to see her frown but he feels it like a tightening hatband around his head. Jackie wants to lift her up again.

‘There’s a chippie up on the road.’

Her pace quickens, and he is glad. The alley is alongside the Man of the World, too close to the house; his breath catches at the thought. The summer will be over soon and the fair moving on; he could go with Rosie, up and disappear. She hasn’t asked him yet but he knows she’d want to. The pub creeps up on his right; Jackie grips Rosie’s hand as the doors swing open and suck shut again. But he doesn’t recognise the woman or the tap of high heels. Jackie breathes in the smell of malt and sawdust. It is dark in the alley but he doesn’t care; he knows his way through these streets and he will keep Rosie from stumbling. The only light comes from the open cellar doors: a pale yellow triangle like a scraping of butter. Their steps have an echo, but they are nearly out on the road.

‘What’s wrong?’ Rosie’s lips trace the shape of the words on his neck.

The mortar between the bricks glows white like exposed bones, but corners and kerbstones are absorbed in the gloom.

‘Sound made me jump, that’s all.’

Nearly there, the rumble of a bus, he can almost smell smoking batter. But now footsteps are coming up too quickly. Jackie recognises the long stride, a delay between each firmly planted step. If those footsteps catch up with them she will realise what he really is. Nothing but John:
stupid… sneaky… thieving… scheming… shitting… waste of Munday blood.
His balls squeeze tight up against his leg. He is running now and she lurches to keep up, the darkness towing him under. Her broken soles flap against the stone slabs.

‘Boy, come here. I saw you walk by. Show us what you’ve got there.
Boy
!’ The last word screamed out.

‘Don’t look back, Rosie.’

They keep running, feet smacking the pavement. Out on to the street: blinking against the lamps, flying headlights, shop fronts splashed in yellows and whites. They collide up
against the arch of the railway bridge. Jackie grips the bricks, red dust crumbling beneath his nails.

‘Who was that?’ Rosie pants.

‘Some old drunk.’

‘We didn’t need to run. You’re a boxing champion, the cup says so.’

He shrugs. Jackie won’t ever let his dad near Rosie; how can he even let those two things live in the same world? Rosie is right: he doesn’t need to run. He is a boxing champion. He squeezes some coins into her hand. ‘Get the chips for us, won’t you?’

‘Where you off to?’

‘Just remembered, I promised to let them know at the gym how I got on.’ Jackie focuses on his boots to avoid this second lie.

Her face tightens into an angry point. ‘But we’re set for the swings tonight. My sister fixed it with the lad running it and everything.’

‘I’ll wave the cup around then come and find you. Won’t take me long.’

‘Don’t expect me to be waiting.’

She bounces the ha’pennies in her hand, crosses the road to the chippie. Jackie knows she will be standing at the gates looking out for him and he watches her stomp away, the silky swaying of her dress familiar as the feel of his own clothes. Her dark hair absorbs the sparks from the trams. A train rattles overhead; the bricks tremble against his back. Jackie levers himself away from the solid safety of the archway; he slinks back around the corner.

The drunk is weaving along the road, silhouetted against the light from the open cellar. No one else around: only him and his dad. Jackie goes towards him, fists clenched in his pockets; the brass cup knocks against his knuckles. His dad isn’t a happy drunk, isn’t even an angry drunk – he is as much himself as ever. Shirt neatly buttoned, cuffs starched, hair slicked. Appearance is everything:
Church and state
never fingered a clean collar,
that’s what he says. He lurches forward and the words topple out.

‘I knew you’d come back to me, boy. Where’s that little titbit you had with you?’

‘None of your stinking business.’

His dad laughs. The smell of beer leaches into the cool night, fermenting the air around them. And even half-cut his dad is still taller and straighter, eyes focused, not even a touch of grey to his hair, as if he isn’t ever going to get old.

‘Ain’t we the big man? Be signing up for the Army like your brothers, will you? Don’t make me laugh. She’s leading you like a donkey. What a surprise – tarts like that are no good for you.’ A pointed finger jabs at each word.

‘What do you care?’

Jackie scratches his thumb, and it starts to bleed again. The open cellar grins between them, lighting his dad under the chin and making his face a mask. His dad presses a hand on the upright flap, fingers gripping the wood.

‘Make a fool of yourself and you make a fool of all of us with tat like that. People will talk. Notice you haven’t brought her over to the house, like any respectable son.’

‘I’m not having you anywhere near her.’ Jackie says it slowly, wants to make sure his dad hears him right.

‘I can smell cheap scent a mile off. She’d probably be helping herself to the silver soon as she stepped in the door.’

His dad’s shadow wobbles and disappears inside the cellar before he rights himself again. There is nothing of value in that house, probably never will be.

‘Bring her back to the house, boy. Do things proper for your old mum’s sake, be a good son.’ The soft lisp of the
s
as he tries to drag up a smile.

Jackie almost believes him, the wheedling, the sweet lies; it is worse than any fist in the face. He bends his knees slightly, ready to bounce forward on the balls of his feet just as they taught him at the gym.

‘Go to hell.’

It comes out louder than he expects, rumbling over the bricks and the stone.

‘I’ll have you for that, boy.’

His dad reaches across the gap, snatches at the front of Jackie’s shirt. The top buttons spin and rattle down the steps. He wants those hands off him, wants those fingers never to grab anything again. Thin yellow light from the cellar doors makes his shadow tower over Jackie. His dad yanks the hand back, high into the air. Jackie sees the palm coming but he can’t duck out of the way; his body sets hard. The open slap knocks him off balance. He drops to his knees, bites down on his tongue. Tastes blood. He sees laced boots in front of him. For a moment he is back at the gym: he can get up off the ropes; he can stand tall and land a punch to finish the fight. But something else is in front of him; it catches the light. Jackie grips the metal cup in his clammy hand.

‘What you going to do with that, boy? You haven’t got the spine to make a fist at me, couldn’t even fix that damn parrot right. Weak little bastard – you’ll never be a Nipper Pat Daly or Tommy Farr. Looks like they didn’t even bother to engrave that thing. Go put it with your collection of second-place certificates.’

His dad grins, opens his black mouth wide to let out the laughter. He pats Jackie twice on the cheek, soft and flat. And he is right: one day even Rosie will find out. The cup falls from Jackie’s hand.
Bang, bang, bang
as it jumps down the cellar steps. His dad watches it, then those pin eyes are back on him. Jackie holds his breath. He won’t cry no matter how much it hurts. He can’t close his fist, gripped into a claw where it held the cup. His dad’s face hovers above the hatch doors.

‘If you want to finish me, boy, here I am. Fetch up that scrap metal and do it.’ Whispery sour breath. ‘But, so you know, I always thought it’d be one of your brothers, Tommy or Bill, coming after me. They’re real men now, trained to kill.’ He winks. ‘No? Ain’t got enough hair on your balls to finish
me? Then think back on this night. The night you had your chance to be a big man but you were too much of a coward to take it. Run, boy. That’s all you’ll ever be able to do.’

Laughing so hard those eyes flip back into his head. His dad’s hands rattle the cellar door; one side drops flat on the cobbles with a smack. The laughter stops; his dad reaches out. Jackie takes a step back. Nothing for his dad to hold on to: he goes head-first. His dad falling through the light of the steps, disappearing into the blackness beneath; feet follow, twisting in mid-air. The crack is more of a vibration than a sound, but it makes Jackie’s knees shake. The other hatch bangs down – the light slammed out.

The alley is black. The sound of scraping chairs and raised voices pulses through the walls of the pub. Jackie presses his hands and forehead to the warm wood.

‘Dad?’

Nothing. But Jackie can’t bring himself to open the cellar. Whatever is down there will drag him under too; he feels it tugging on his bottom lip like a snagged fishing line. The doors of the pub swing open; the clattering of shoes spills over the cobbles.

Jackie runs. A salty taste fills his throat, and the welt on his cheek throbs. If they find out what Jackie has done they will hang him for it. The cup is down there too; maybe they will believe it didn’t happen that way. But it is his fault, he wished it into being:
let him be dead, let him be stone dead.
He runs all the way to the fairground, throws up beside a lamp-post and dries his mouth on his sleeve before he goes through the gates; dredges up a smile as Rosie jumps out from behind the rose bushes – boo. His stomach slithers down into his boots; he feels it sloshing. The press of Rosie’s body against him doesn’t feel the same; she leads him through a pulsing stream of crowds. Why are they all staring at him? Doesn’t she pull away just a little too quickly? Doesn’t she look at the swing-man just a little too long? What if she already knows what he is?

Jackie squeezes her hand tight as they get on to the chairs and she kisses his sore thumb again. She asks to hold his winning cup but he tells her they put it on display at the gym. They ride higher and higher. He shouts, not words, not anything but noise, until his jaw feels as if it has been pummelled by a thousand fists. Rosie laughs beside him. He wants to scream until his lungs explode but every time the swing dips back to earth he feels his innards dropping out of his body. For all the things his dad has done, Jackie hates him for this hollowed-out sickness the most. He has no right to make Jackie feel this way: empty as the cellar before the doors banged shut. He yanks on the rope until it scorches his palms; he wants them to fly above the Common, over the whole of London. Rosie screams with laughter as the swing travels up, up, up. The wind whips around him. Eyes dry and filled with grit, he won’t cry. He won’t. The world disappears beneath Jackie’s feet, a puddle of coloured dots: purple, silver, melting into black.

The body is buried: mourners gone, cloths taken down from pictures and mirrors. The Winnies are back in Mitcham, but the brothers’ black-edged telegram of condolence still perches on the mantel (must have saved at least a thrupenny bit by sending one together). Jackie sits in his dad’s chair. No one to tip him out of the seat and make him crouch on the rug now; no one to laugh with as Mrs Bell’s fat rolls out of her dress when she tries to reach the washing line each Monday. Jackie sniffs and stretches his legs. It really is the best spot at the table: he can see the street outside, and is close enough to smell ashes in the grate. He hears his mum in the kitchen, banging cupboard doors, rattling cups. Rosie sits opposite him, tracing the grain of the table with her fingernail.

‘What’s your mum up to out there?’

‘Letting us know she’s none too pleased.’

Jackie let Rosie in the front door and his mum is making a point of staying in the kitchen. He picks up his cold mug of tea and searches the greasy film of milk for a way to start the conversation. Rosie is kicking his ankles under the table, but he doesn’t look at her; he needs to think. The summer is over and the day is cold enough for a fire but the coal bucket is empty. The framed picture of his dad stares down from the mantel. Jackie thinks he hears the old man cackling like a magpie.

His mum comes into the room with the tea tray in her hands. She looks older than he remembers, another woman returning from the kitchen. A streak of grey runs from her brow down the back of her head and twists itself into her bun. She closes the door quietly, pressing it with her hip; his dad hated banging doors, and it is as if she still thinks he is in the house. Sometimes when he is alone Jackie tries to imagine what it would have felt like to hold those thin bits of shattered skull together – to bring him back. But today isn’t about that.

He helps his mum with the tray; it delays having to speak for another few seconds. He knows there is bread and jam in the larder but none has found its way on to the table. Rosie releases a scent of fresh air and grass as she tilts across. He wants it to be over as soon as possible so they can get back to the Common. She reaches out, squeezes his hand, and for the first time Jackie sees new walls being built in that house: it is him and Rosie together now. She is wearing the same blue flowered dress but there is a bright red ribbon in her hair and a large silver brooch at her chest. Her curls are brushed into one thick wave. Jackie runs his fingers through his hair and puts his jacket back on. His mum picks up the pot to pour more tea, and the rattling of the lid breaks the stillness.