The Longest Fight (24 page)

‘It’s all going to work out fine. Ain’t it, Pearl?’ Jack took a mouthful of bitter.

‘It’s up to Frank if he wants to throw the fight.’ She turned his hand over in hers, running her finger across the bruised knuckles.

‘Jack wants this for us, Pearl. We need money.’ Frank’s eyes reflected the light from the lamps. ‘I’ll do it.’

Pearl shook her head. ‘He’ll mess it up, Frank. He always does.’

‘If Jack says it’s sorted, then it is.’ Georgie sat down next to him.

‘Happens all the time. Why shouldn’t we have some of the payoff from that?’ He shrugged.

‘What if it goes wrong? You could get hurt, Frank.’

‘If he plays it right, and you all keep your mouths shut, nothing goes wrong.’

‘Is that what you said to Mum? Don’t worry, no one’ll ever find out…’

Georgie reached over the table and put a hand on Pearl’s shoulder. ‘Things were different during the war, Pearl. No one knew if they were going to make it through. Jack and his mum must’ve thought they was doing the right thing.’

‘Jack thinks whatever he decides is the right thing.’

‘Frank wants to do it, he said so. Come home when you’ve finished those drinks. I’ve got to get to a meeting but I’ll bring us back some pie and mash. You set for money?’ He didn’t wait for an answer, emptied the coins out of his pocket. ‘Frank, you look like a mushy peas type to me. Pearl, you’ll have yours without the liquor and a ginger beer to go with it, won’t you?’

She nodded.

‘See, I got that right. I can put this all right. Give me this last chance.’

Frank raised his eyebrows at Pearl. ‘We ain’t going to get a better offer. We need this, don’t we?’

She nodded again. ‘I’ll eat the food. I’ll even hear you out, Jack. But you don’t deserve no promises from me about last chances.’

‘That’s sorted, then. I’ll see you all back at the house.’

Jack got up; Georgie went with him. They stood outside the pub, his hands jumping as he tried to light her cigarette. She cupped her palms around the match.

‘Is this fight really the best thing?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ He stuffed the cigarette between his lips.

‘It’s just a question…’ The fog swallowed up the rest of her words.

‘The money’ll give them a start in life.’ Jack watched shapes shifting in the gloom, re-forming into cars or people as they went past the lights of the pub. ‘She might not think it, but she still needs looking after.’

‘Why you? Why not Frank? You give him a job, enough to support them both.’ She took the cigarette and inhaled. ‘Think keeping her around’s going to keep part of her mother in that house too?’

‘Jealous, are you?’

‘Maybe I am, though I’m not stupid enough to try and compete with a ghost. But we had an agreement, rules of fair play, Jack. Sure there’s nothing else you’re not telling me?’

‘I had two brothers meant less than nothing to me. They’re dead too, as it happens.’

‘Come up with something better. It’s dark out and no one else can hear you. Say something truthful. I dare you.’

Breath and fog and smoke – all blended together. He couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began; he used to feel like that lying with Rosie. He closed his eyes, took a step towards Georgie until her blouse brushed his wrist. He wanted to feel blended again.

‘She drowned in Albany Basin. You can smell the canal from here. I reached for her but grabbed Pearl instead, then I dropped her too.’ His hands shook and the cigarette fell, he ground it out under his foot. ‘I’ve got to make it up to her.’

‘Sounds to me like you saved Pearl’s life.’

‘I never got Rosie out. Two bargemen dragged me up. Why didn’t they save her? After it happened, Pearl never woke in the nights, never even made a noise if she cut herself. That’s down to me too. Sooner or later every debt’s got to be paid.’

Georgie reached around his neck, put her lips to his ear. ‘Didn’t you learn nothing in six years of war? There’s no higher being, no fate, no grand plan. Guilt’s the only thing will burn you up, Jack.’ She slid another cigarette from the packet in his pocket and fitted it between his fingers. ‘Pearl’s your daughter. I don’t need to hear it, but you’re going to have to say it to her soon. Tell her you love her.’

Her heels snapped back down on to the paving stones. She struck a match and lit his cigarette. He wanted the smog to cover him up.

‘I’m late.’

Jack reached the corner but couldn’t help glancing back. His heart stumbled a step when he saw the outline of Georgie watching him. He tipped his hat, turned and walked away.

Rich moved around the ring, driving his sparring partner back on to the single rope. The boy was good – couldn’t really call him a boy, though. The walls of the basement sweated, salty streaks staining the exposed bricks. Jack sat on the stool. Rich’s trainer stood behind, coughing with his mouth shut each time Rich ducked a blow. Jack wasn’t sure how the trainer hadn’t passed out through lack of air. Rich dodged another, drove up under the other bloke’s guard with one to the chin. But it wasn’t the hit Jack was expecting. He stood up, holding on to the corner pole to get a better look.

‘He switched. Which is he? Left or right?’

Rich led with right jabs again, following through with a left cross before stepping off and throwing a right hook. His trainer grinned, lifting up his long chin.

‘Yanks call it southpaw. You wouldn’t know it, though. Neither do his opponents usually until it’s too late.’

Rich held up his arms and stepped back.

‘Why don’t he follow that shot up?’

‘He’s only got one spar partner, Big Roberts here. Can’t keep any others. They don’t like to get knocked around by his sort, and I’m not talking about him being a leftie.’

He blinked twice when he finished speaking, sniffing like a rabbit. Rich picked up a tattered towel from his corner. His skin didn’t have the red, blotched look of other fighters, didn’t show up the marks the same. He looked untouched, indestructible, to a punter anyway. Jack bet his eyes and lips would swell up same as white fighters, though. Rich held the rope up as Big Roberts toppled under and the trainer helped him to a stool.

Jack held out a clean towel to Rich. ‘Who you going to knock around with now?’

‘He’ll come round in a minute. I didn’t even hit him hard. Think he just likes the buzz from the salts.’ Rich’s words were smothered as he scrubbed his face.

The trainer opened up a bottle of smelling salts, waved it under the balloon red nose.

‘I told you I’d show you something special. The southpaw.’ Rich jumped his arms up in the air, towel waving like a flag. ‘States is where it’s at, Jack. That’s where we’re heading one day.’

His trainer nodded. Jack stepped away from the dry taste of the chemical fumes.

‘What do you fight under?’

‘Here it comes, telling me to change my name. Some rubbish like Jungle Johnny. That was Vincent’s idea.’

Rich loosened up his arms, holding each under the elbow and drawing it across his chest, steam rising off him.

‘He don’t know what the punters want. Surname?’

‘Ellery.’

‘Rich Ellery. Well, I never thought the day would come, but we should stick with that.’ Jack slapped him on the back.

‘Got a certain ring to it, don’t it?’

‘Who don’t want to be Rich?’ Jack turned to the trainer who was still knelt by Big Roberts, flapping a damp flannel in front of his face. ‘So, why no manager?’

‘Had a spot of bother with the last one, got a bit loose-lipped and odds for Rich’s fights went down. That were three months past.’

‘I’m ready for it.’ Rich held out his hand. ‘Been waiting long enough. Well, seems to me we’ve got to make this arrangement work. Treat me right and you won’t get no trouble from me.’

‘I’ve plenty riding on this too. Seems to me that makes us a perfect arrangement.’ Jack shook with him.

He let go and paced around to the other side of the room, taking in the crumbling ceiling, beetles scuttling back under the boards. He prodded the blown plaster on the back wall; his finger left an imprint, sucking against his skin, pulling him down into that place. The river was rising up beneath the floor, the Central Line eating away at the walls.

Rich dipped his hands into a bucket of water by the ring. ‘Penny for them, Jack? Better not be thinking about how to scam me.’

‘I’m thinking business.’ He extracted his finger, wiping it clean on his sleeve.

‘I’ve got business. Twins need taking care of. And a wife who won’t speak to me for a week every time I got to lose a fight.’

‘Ever think you’d be better off without them?’

‘Every time someone needs a new pair of shoes, or they wake me on my morning off from the railway yard.’ He laughed but shook his head. ‘Lucky they stick by me, Jack.’

Rich moved about the small space, keeping warm, waiting for his partner to sober up. Jack scooped some of the water out of the bucket and scrubbed it across the back of his neck; he shivered. Rich pulled the towel from under his armpit and flicked it outwards.

‘Someone walk over your grave?’

Jack ducked and sidestepped on the balls of his feet. ‘They’ll never hustle me into a churchyard. I’m too fast. But I’ve seen nicer-looking cemeteries than this place. We need to think about setting you up somewhere better.’

The lights dimmed as a Tube train vibrated on the other side of the wall. The room slipped into darkness for a moment before the yellow electric bulb surged back to life.

‘T
urn the lamp higher, son. It’s dark in here.’

Jack puts the mug down on the bedside table, walks towards the glowing light around the thick drapes. He peers out of the crack; the sun is low, snagging on the roofs opposite, sickly-looking.

‘Let me open the curtains, Mum.’

‘No, son. They’re spying on us.’

A black dog runs after the rag-and-bone cart. Jack wipes sweat from his forehead. He only manages to get the windows open for a few hours a day, after his mum has drifted off. He sits back on the edge of the bed and shivers as a trickle runs down his spine. She pats the woollen cover, asking him to move nearer. ‘They should be walking over my grave, not yours.’

The gas lamp only touches light on one side of her face, the left eaten up by shadows.

‘Just a bit close in here, Mum, ain’t it?’

She is disappearing under the heavy mound of blankets; hasn’t left the room for three weeks. He empties her pans, Pearl washes her down, and they both try to make her eat.

‘The doctor says it’ll make you feel better if you get up.’

He blows air across the Bovril, touching the side to make sure it is cool enough to drink. She clasps the sheets to her chest, left hand clawing at the crocheted blanket on top.

‘They don’t know nothing. The forces are everywhere. Doctors can’t control things like that.’

‘Nothing can get you while I’m around.’

He boxes the shadows, one hand still around the mug. The brown liquid sloshes against the sides; the salty heat makes his eyes smart.

‘Some things even you aren’t strong enough to hold back, son. I know you think you can stop this, but my time’s coming.’

Her skin is wrinkled as thrown-away paper. Jack can’t look into those watery eyes; he feels as if he might topple too. For all these years he has been fighting against her, watching from the corner as she raised Pearl.

‘I’ve brought you something light. Broth and a slice.’ He looks at the jug of water. ‘You ain’t even had a glass. They’ll make you go to hospital soon. I won’t be able to stop them.’

‘This is my home. They can’t make me leave.’ Her fists bounce on the covers.

‘We want you to get better, Mum. Pearl needs you – she’s only twelve.’ He tries to soothe her with his voice. ‘Why don’t you let her sit with you this afternoon?’
Don’t make me do this on my own,
is what he doesn’t say.

‘Is she keeping the place clean? Dusting the family photographs?’

He nods. She flicks her tongue across her flaking top lip. ‘That’s something Pearl got from me, because that girl never did no housework.’

His arms tense and squeeze tight against his ribs. Since she took to her bed, time hasn’t just stopped, it is running backwards.

‘She’s still here, you know. That girl. I see her standing in doorways, watching me from corners.’

She leans forward, and her nightgown sags open; Jack turns his face away from the deflated body visible underneath. The whiff of sour sweat is strong as at the gym.

‘Pearl just wants to see you, Mum.’

‘Not her, the other one. Rosie.’

He catches sight of something over his shoulder but it is just a shadow from the chair, draped in worn underclothes –
nothing there. It isn’t fair that his mum sees Rosie when that is all Jack has wanted for years.

‘I wish your father was here. I never imagined I’d live so long without him.’

‘Be thankful he didn’t outlive us all.’

‘He was a good husband.’ Her head tilts with the weight of the words.

‘If you say so.’

He presses her shoulder to get her to lean back on the pillows. Her scalp shows through the thinning hair on top of her head. She grasps his arm.

‘Don’t speak like that, not about the dead.’

Her fingers burn into him. For someone who has given up, she clings on tight; his pulse beats against her fingertips. Jack prises her hand away. It floats back on to the bedclothes. She is smiling again, staring at the ceiling as if it opens on to another world.

‘Remember the night Colonial Wharf burned? He woke me and he had two bikes. We cycled all the way. He slowed at each junction for me to catch up. Calling me on all the time.
Come on, Ada, pretend we’re sixteen again,
that’s what he kept saying.’ She smiles and makes a gurgling noise low down in her throat.

‘I don’t remember that.’

‘You slept through it, son. We were back by the time you got up next morning, only just.’ She smiles and rubs her thumb down her throat as if she is easing up the words. ‘The most beautiful thing I ever seen. Fire like water, kept rolling in waves. John held my hand, kept the bikes upright with his other hand. He was so strong.’

‘All those flames, all that noise. He must have been in his element.’

‘Wait until you raise children, John. They change things, bring a responsibility even a good man can drown under.’

He listens for the sound of Pearl down in the kitchen; nothing.

‘Don’t you remember when you had ’flu that time? No, you were probably only about four. He stayed up all week with you, washed you with a cloth, mushed up your food.’

‘I do remember playing horses, climbing over his back. He just didn’t like it once we started having thoughts of our own. He could play all day, long as we never said a word.’

What does he care if his mum chooses to wash down all those memories, clean them up with sweet-smelling lies? She reaches for her wedding band on the bedside table; it doesn’t fit any more.

‘He was my husband too, not just your father.’

‘If you get up today, Mum, I’ll take the ring to a jeweller’s. Get it made smaller for you.’ He holds out his hand but she doesn’t give it up.

‘No need, John. We’re tied by something greater than that piece of metal.’ Her false teeth don’t fit either, clopping inside her mouth. ‘I don’t know why you want me to get up. I could fall down them stairs. One of them new buses could run me down. Normal folk feel pain, don’t forget that. It’s safer up here.’

Jack puts his arms under her shoulders to haul her into a sitting position. She must weigh less than a flyweight but she makes his muscles ache: leaden. She keeps the ring gripped in her hand.

‘Have some Bovril at least, Mum. Pearl made it for you.’

She spits, and spots of brown stain the front of her nightgown. ‘It tastes funny – maybe it’s poisoned.’

‘No one’s trying to poison you. Look.’ He takes a sip of the dark drink. ‘Lovely.’

‘Always was a good liar.’ She smiles, but shakes her head when he holds up the mug to her mouth. ‘I won’t do it.’

‘Mum, you got to get your strength back. Think about Pearl.’

‘That’s all I’ve ever done. Thought if I raised her, loved her, then that Rosie wouldn’t have no claim.’ She holds the ruffled front of her brown spotted nightdress. ‘Pearl don’t
want me no more. I’ve seen the way she follows you about like a dog. Heard her calling you Jack too. My time’s done. No one needs me here now.’

‘It ain’t true. Sit and let her have a chat with you. I can’t keep making excuses.’

‘You can’t bring Pearl in here. I don’t want those eyes to be the last thing I see before I pass over. Rosie’s eyes. Judging me and what we done.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with you, the doctor’s said so.’

‘Feel my heart, son. There’s not much left in it. I want you to bury me next to my husband.’

She makes a grab for his hand but he is too quick. Jack moves away an inch, and the springs jangle.

‘I ain’t going to talk about it.’

‘You’re the only one stayed with me, John. I always knew you were different from the others, so like your father.’ She reaches out. ‘John?’ She topples against him. ‘John, my love, I’ve always been your Ada. I love the children because they are part of you, not that they replace you.’

Jack jumps away, his ears burning up. His mum folds forward, hands keeping her face from sinking into the covers. Pearl knocks at the door. ‘Mum, let me in, won’t you?’

‘All the lies, son. I can’t face them no more.’ She rolls back against the headboard. ‘Promise me something. There’s money in the dresser drawer for the funeral. I don’t want much, but lay me with him.’

He stands on the rug, caught between the bed and the door. ‘You got to see her.’

‘No. When are my Winnies coming? I need to say goodbye to my girls.’

Jack goes to the door, opens it a crack. Pearl stands there with her socks falling around her ankles. ‘Please, let us in, Jack.’

‘Just give Mum a minute to finish her drink.’

‘Good, she’s taking something.’ Pearl’s smile bounces into place.

Jack closes the door again. He downs the Bovril, swallows back the acid rising into his mouth. He presses his hands on top of the headboard and brings his face down to hers; wood knocks against the wall.

‘Mum, if you don’t see Pearl…’

She tries to answer but he presses a finger to her mouth.

‘… I swear to Christ, I’ll let them burn you up and put your ashes out with the bins. You’ll never be with Dad again.’

He takes the damp washcloth from the bowl and presses it to his own eyes before wiping it across her forehead.

‘I can’t do it no more. I got to go clean. That Rosie ruined everything. She was cursed. First your dad dying, then how she turned you. I tried to block it out, tried to do my best for Pearl, but Rosie was always there. It’s all poisoned,’ she snarls; her false teeth drop together.

‘You’re everything to Pearl. I won’t have you ruining her memories, making her think she’s done something wrong. Do you want to be buried with him or not?’

He picks up the ring from the blanket, picks off a fleck of lilac wool, places it on the bedside cabinet.

‘What do I tell her?’ Her breath whistles between her teeth.

His fist clenches, water drips from the cloth warm as piss. He throws it to the floor.

‘Tell her you love her, that you’re proud to have been her mother.’

He realises too late that he has used the past tense, as if those forces his mum is always talking of have already carried her away.

‘John.’ A tear swells at the corner of her eye.

He brushes it aside with his knuckle. ‘I’ll keep my bloody fingers crossed, if that’ll keep you happy, Mum?’

She nods.

‘Get in here,’ Jack calls out.

Pearl trips across the room, buries her face against his mum’s starched nightgown. He stands at the end of the bed.

‘Jack, let’s show Mum how we’ve been training.’ Pearl sits up and rolls her sleeve above her elbow – a row of red dots fading into white lumps near the crook of her arm. Jack takes a cigarette, lights it, sucking down to inhale the smoke. He dabs the glowing end of the fag on to her forearm, pulls it away quickly. His mum studies Pearl’s face, expectant.

‘I did feel it a bit more that time. I really think the practice is helping. We’ll get better together, Mum.’ Pearl lies down alongside her.

‘God forgive us.’ His mum strokes Pearl’s hair but stares straight at him.

He doesn’t care if she thinks he is the one who will burn; it couldn’t be any worse than the suffocating staleness of that closed-up bedroom, and the ashen colour of her dried-up skin.