The Longest Fight (23 page)

T
he smog swallowed up Jack’s hand, but he reached the lamp-post with his fingertips then two steps further and he was at the kerb. It wasn’t so much pea-soup as mustard, and it burned the back of his tongue as if someone had left the top off the smelling salts. No sound, not even the echo of his footsteps. If he got lost he could end up anywhere: the railway tracks, the canal. Someone brushed against his elbow but they weren’t close enough to see. Jack kept the kerb on his right side, walking towards the junction. All he had to do was cross over and go straight down to reach the Man of the World.

An orange circle of light hovered in front of him; as it grew closer the colour leaked out like melted margarine. A conductor marched slowly, torch flare burning, the bus right behind. Jack doubled back twice before he found the pub. The fog seeped in with him, grey shapes like hanging bags at the gym positioned around the tables. It took him a second to see them: pushed up close together on a bench away from the door, waiting as Georgie had promised him they would be. They didn’t look the same – older somehow, Pearl’s forehead lined as she spoke to Frank, leaning in against him. The pub was busy: staying at home with smog bumping against the windows was like being suffocated.

Jack’s knees banged against the table as he sat down opposite them; the glasses of squash, orange as the fog, rippled.

‘You’re sat here waiting for an apology, suppose.’

‘Is that all you’ve got to say to me?’ Pearl straightened up.

It wasn’t going the way he’d thought it would, the way he had played it in his head. Jack took his hat off and dropped it on to his leg.

‘What do you want me to say, Pearl?’

‘What do I want you to say?’

She unbuttoned her coat, shrinking out of it. Jack rubbed his head; it was going to take some time.

‘Can I get you a drink, Jack?’ Frank stood up.

Pearl took hold of his wrist. ‘No, stay here.’

‘This is family stuff, Pearl.’ Frank twitched his nose, glancing at the bar.

‘Frank’s right.’ Jack nodded. ‘I’ll have a pint.’

‘Stay. You’re part of my family.’ Pearl pulled Frank back down. ‘Seems we’re allowed to call people whatever we like now. How about we call him a cousin, Jack? That suit you?’

But she wasn’t looking at Jack; her face was turned aside. Frank stroked her hand. They sat in silence for a minute that felt like a full thirteen rounds. Jack watched her chewing on her lip, trying to form words. If he didn’t speak now she would walk out of the pub, maybe for good, and take Frank with her. No fight, no big future for Jack then: nothing. He ran the rim of the hat between his fingers, spinning it on his knee.

‘I was just a kid. Mum sort of took over. You seemed happy together.’

‘We were.’ Pearl kept her eyes focused on Newton at the bar.

‘Then it was for the best, weren’t it?’

‘All Newton ever talks about is his Jimmy, his son the chaplain.’ She nodded in his direction. ‘When I was small she used to say
my Pearl.
I won’t let you blame Mum for this.’

‘We can’t all lead a charmed life like his son.’

Newton kept his hands wrapped around his pint, sinking mouthful after mouthful – drinking his way through Jack’s paint money. Frank kept still, like a referee in the corner.

‘Where is she, Jack? Why didn’t she take me with her?’

The cold air crawled around him; he pulled his arms against his sides, held himself still.

‘She died. Never would have left you otherwise.’

Pearl tilted her head back, taking him in. ‘Supposed to be grateful for that, am I?’

Jack had let Pearl have his mum, and he had seen for himself how happy they were: the way Pearl would sit so close, her knees on his mum’s lap; the chatting that would stop when he walked into a room, and the laughing that would start when he left again. And towards the end, when his mum was ill, he’d stopped her from ruining it for Pearl then. He smeared a speck of soot across the back of his hand. Pearl stared at him, waiting. He was the only one left who could give her any answers.

Pearl squeezed the coat on her lap; trapped fog seemed to trickle out of it. ‘So, she died and you forgot to mention it? Or maybe she never meant that much to you in the first place?’

Frank stood up. ‘I know you’re hurting, Pearl. But you can’t expect Jack to tell me these things too.’ He walked over to the bar.

Jack gripped his hat tighter; it smelt like damp fur. The ginger tom must have been sleeping under the stairs again. He settled the hat on the empty seat next to him, taking a moment to sweep the dust and dirt from its rim. He took a deep breath.

‘She was the best thing ever happened to me.’

The lights in the pub seemed to burn a little brighter now that he had said those words out loud.

Pearl pointed at him. ‘It’s always about you, Jack. Always.’

‘Me? I could have given you up, could have passed you on after Mum died.’ He loosened the tie around his neck before it strangled him. ‘You had the picture of the old man, worshipped that enough. None of it was what I wanted.’

Pearl dug her elbows into the table, clenched her teeth. ‘I chose you every time, Jack. Stood up for you when people
talked bad about you. Came back from the Winnies’ after the funeral. Mum kept us together, then like an idiot I thought I had to do the same.’

‘I’m sorry, ain’t I? I don’t know how many times I can say it, Pearl.’

‘You ain’t ever said it me. It didn’t matter before because I knew… I knew you didn’t really want me around. I thought it was just a petty brother-sister thing. But now – I think, maybe, you wished I’d died too.’

‘That ain’t true.’ Jack hung his head lower; even when he’d thought those things, even when he’d hissed them at the sleeping baby –
I wish it’d been you
– he’d never really meant it. ‘I’m sorry, Pearl.’

‘You must have really hated me all those years to keep this from me…’

‘No, I never.’

‘… to let me feel sad at only having a picture of my dad, to let me think I was an orphan when our mum died…
Our mum
– I always called her that. Well, you must have been laughing at me all this time.’

‘Christ, Pearl. Nothing about it ever made me want to laugh.’

Jack tapped her arm, pointing at her mouth. She forced herself to loosen her teeth before she bit clean through her lip. He shifted in his seat. ‘Bet Frank’s loving it, having something to drive a wedge between me and you. Give him the excuse he wants just to walk away from our deal.’

‘He’s my family now, Jack. The only reason I’m sat here is because he begged me to see you. Whatever happened back then, you shouldn’t have lied to me, not about this.’

‘I never let you go without.’ Jack spread his hands out on the sticky table, covering the ghost prints of a hundred other drinkers. ‘I thought it was for the best.’

Frank came back, handed her the glass of squash; she gulped it down, wiping her lips clean with her thumb.

‘I see you’re both not done yet…’

‘Stay, Frank. Jack had his moment of privacy and he wasted it again. Sit down. There ain’t nothing to be embarrassed by, is there, Jack? No tears. No feeling.’

Frank sat down, took her hand in his. Jack wanted a drink, his throat scratchy and dry – all those answers stuck inside him. He licked his bottom lip. No one else in the pub even glanced over at them, not Newton at the bar, not the group playing dominoes, not the couple ordering Guinness; the fog kept them all cut off.

‘… and she was my mother.’ Pearl started speaking halfway through whatever conversation she was having in her head, her voice rising higher. ‘Why do you get to keep her to yourself?’

‘Because she’s
mine
!’

Heads finally turned in the pub, but there wasn’t enough money to waste on letting beer go flat, and they soon picked up their glasses again.

‘You said she were dead.’

‘Don’t mean I don’t carry her around with me.’

His hand rose up to his top pocket as if she really was in there. He took out his packet of cigarettes but left them on the table; no point raising his guard, it was a fixed fight – he wasn’t going to win this one. Jack glanced over to the bar, and would have done anything for a drop of what Newton was drinking.

‘She died, you washed your hands and Mum worked herself to the bone raising me. Tell me that ain’t the truth of it?’

He’d expected there to be tears, shouting – something, at least. But Pearl inspected him across the table like a cut that needed cleaning. Frank gently placed his hand on her back; she blinked twice, breaking her stare.

‘Pearl, it’s Jack. He’s looked out for me, and if he says he’s tried…’

She brushed Frank’s words away with a wave of her hand.

‘I did try, Pearl.’ Jack scratched his nail across the grain of the wood. ‘I kept a roof over your head. Fed you. Clothed you. It might not have been much but I’m coming into money now. Things are starting to look up for us.’

He smiled for a moment as she reached across to take his hand. She held on tight, tighter, digging her nails deep into his skin, but he wouldn’t make a sound.

‘You’re selfish, Jack. Keeping her all to yourself. It’s all been lies. Don’t suppose I should expect no different now. There can’t be nothing left between us.’

She threw his hands back. Frank pressed an arm around her shoulder. And Jack knew now why she had chosen the pub: not because she was afraid of him, but to control herself. He rubbed his chin, pointed at the end just like Pearl’s.

‘There’s Munday in you all right.’

‘Are you sure about that? Sure that there weren’t others?’ Her lip curled up into a one-sided smile.

‘You ain’t got the right to judge her. Call me what you like, but I ain’t going to hear nothing against her.’

‘I don’t even know
her
name. What could I say about
her
?’ She turned to Frank, expecting him to step in.

‘You’ve got to tell Pearl something, Jack.’

Rosie took salt in her porridge, always put her left boot on first, and made a clicking sound deep in her throat when she had a cold – none of those things was what Pearl wanted to hear. And the rest: the tiny dent above Rosie’s belly button, the way he liked to press his little finger against it and the way Rosie kept her eyes open when he did that and when he kissed her, when he was inside her, even when she panted, squeezed him closer, as if she never wanted to miss a thing he did and that perhaps it meant he really was worth looking at, worth something – none of
those
things could he ever share with Pearl. The spit dried in his mouth, but the facts wouldn’t take much breath; they would fit on the back of a boxing programme.

‘Her name was Rosie. She was the one wanted to call you Pearl. She said you glowed when you came out, all pink and white like a mother-of-pearl button. She was born in ’20 and died in ’38.’

It didn’t feel right reducing Rosie to those figures, as if somehow he was losing part of her, her face fading like newspaper left out in the rain.

‘Why don’t I remember?’ Pearl directed the question at Frank.

‘You must only have been a baby.’ Frank stroked the side of her face.

But it was the question Jack always wanted answered: how could Rosie have been in Pearl’s life and yet she didn’t remember?

‘What do you want me to say, Pearl?’

But this time he really meant it. She shrugged, and picked up her coat; she was going to leave him too.

‘I want to put this right, I do, honest. I can tell you more, I really can. Just give me a little bit of time, Pearl.’

Maybe he should let them both up and disappear, but he couldn’t imagine not seeing those grey eyes staring back at him. Jack knew what sort of world was out there perhaps that was why he never just opened the cage doors and let the parrot fly free. She didn’t want to listen to him but Frank just might.

Pearl buttoned herself up. ‘You’ve had more than your fair share of the count, Jack. There’s nothing you can do to prove to me you ain’t just a selfish –’

‘I read the letter Frank wrote me.’ Jack shifted his feet under the table; the paper padding was still there.

‘I told you he would.’ Frank grinned at Pearl.

‘I understand now. Frank needs a new start and I know you want one too, Pearl. But you’ll never have that unless you get some money together. This last fight means you can forget about Spider and that lot. Frank can come and work for me when he’s done in the ring.’

‘Doing what?’ Pearl stared at him.

Jack turned to face Frank. ‘I’m going to have backers this time, real money. Maybe even set up my own gym soon. I’ll need people I trust for that.’

‘Don’t listen, Frank. No one should trust no one like him.’

‘It’s not me walking away from a legally binding contract, Pearl.’

‘What do you call having a daughter? Lies are like breathing for you, ain’t they, Jack? Come on, Frank. Let’s go.’

‘I’ll tell you both something for nothing. Show how much I trust you.’ Jack reached up, hooked an arm around Frank’s neck. ‘It’s a fixed fight. All you got to do is go down in the right place, we’ll cash in big,’ he whispered.

‘That’s cheating.’ Frank reared away, dropping back into his chair, taking Pearl with him. Jack held up his hand for hush.

‘I didn’t have to tell you, Frank. I could’ve tipped the other fighter how to put you down and you’d never have known. But I want you to believe me, both of you. I’m doing this for us. So you two don’t make the mistakes I did.’

‘And you’re not making nothing out of it, course you’re not.’ Pearl puffed up a sharp little laugh.

‘I had plans before – me and Frank making it big. But if he don’t want to fight no more then I had to find another way. Don’t you want to get your own place, do things proper? Let me make it up to you.’

‘Frank don’t need that sort of help – we’ll do fine without you.’

‘Come home. I’ll tell you more about Rosie. I will.’

He sat back. Georgie came out from behind the bar with a tray of glasses, not a drop spilled as she swayed towards them. ‘I thought you might need top-ups.’ She put the drinks down. ‘Things not sorted out yet? Well, maybe I’ll come back later.’