The Longest Fight (30 page)

‘Where’s the stuff you owe them?’

‘Not telling… nothing.’

Spider’s trouser leg was black, sticking to the floor. Jack took another step but held his foot in the air.

‘You’re going to want to tell me.’

‘Toss off.’

He lowered his foot down on to Spider’s knee – a deep howl filled the open space.

‘What you doing, Jack?’ Pearl flinched.

‘I need to make sure you get what you’re both owed, Pearl.’

He stamped his foot down again. Spider’s leg felt soft, as if all the stuffing had been pulled from the bag. His torso slumped in on itself, head nearly touching his knees; Jack’s heel sank lower. Spider’s head bobbed then jerked back as if he had fallen asleep on a bus. Jack raised his foot.

‘Under van seat… pull matting. Won’t be no use to you less you get me out. Get goods to Vincent.’

Jack rubbed the sole of his shoe on the floor. It left a stain; a rubbery string of bile rose up over his tongue.

‘I’ll do it. But you two have got to leave.’ Jack wiped his lips on his sleeve.

Pearl’s voice was almost a whisper. ‘What will they do to us?’

‘No one’s going to know you were here, Pearl.’

‘We got to call an ambulance.’ Her bottom lip hung low, the words falling out.

‘Say you heard shooting, but anonymous like. Promise me you’ll do it that way. Leave the van and take Cousin Alf’s car back – you’ll have to help Frank steer.’

She nodded. Spider’s breathing tripped over itself. Frank stepped towards the dark puddle seeping into the floorboards. ‘What about Spider? You’ll need help to get him out of here.’

Jack put his hand against Frank’s chest, felt the thud of his heartbeat, the familiar mustiness of his sweat. ‘You can’t afford to lose this one. Who’s your family, him or Pearl?’

‘I’ll call the ambulance. We’ll use the service lift, it’ll be quicker – looks chained up from the outside but we can squeeze through.’

‘Good, Frank, thinking for yourself. Always were good at the preparations.’

‘They’ll come looking for us, Jack.’

‘Then you best not be there. You two are going to get those tickets and get on a boat. This ain’t your fault, either of you. Remember that.’

He herded them towards the lift, blocking out the pool of blood crawling up the sheet around a display cabinet.

‘Don’t fucking leave,’ Spider screamed. ‘Bobbie Black’s – take me there.’

‘I’ll tell the police I done it, won’t even mention Vincent. I’m the one brought you here.’ Frank slid back the door of the lift, holding the gates as Pearl stepped inside.

‘With a broken right hand? Who’d believe that? I never did tell you about the real McCoy…’

Pearl clutched hold of the gate. ‘I’ll go, but you have to come with us. We can collect Georgie. We can all go. Please. Don’t stay here.’

Jack tucked away a strand of her hair, his fingertip slipping into the hollow behind her ear. The toes of her support shoes touched the edge of the lift; the platform dropped slightly with his weight. Jack wished Pearl were small enough to gather up in his arms, just once more. Time had passed but those debts still needed to be paid. Frank unlaced her fingers from the metal.

‘… best fighter there was in his day, used to send other fighters in his place – two or more McCoy fights taking place on one night. People started asking for the real McCoy. Understand me? I came out with Spider. It was my rob. Who wouldn’t believe me?’ Jack slammed the gate shut and thumped the button. ‘I’m the real McCoy.’

Pearl and Frank were segmented by the diamond-shaped gaps. She opened her mouth to speak but Jack cut her off.

‘This’ll be the only good thing I’ve ever done for you. Promise you won’t never speak about it. Won’t never ask no one about it. And you won’t never come back.’

Pearl nodded; the white parting of her hair disappeared as the lift clanked down. The chains vibrated.
Dad
, he was sure he heard that word. It was the only thing he could give her: a fighting chance.

Jack went over to the legs sticking out from behind a sheet.

‘Didn’t I say it’d all end in tears? I should have listened to myself.’

‘I ain’t crying…’

‘What’s your name, your real name?’ He crouched beside Spider. With only one torch, the department store was nothing but a small circle of yellow around them: a few nails, a paint lid, clumps of mink fur, the ripped handle of a bag.

‘Spider’s what they call me.’ Snot fizzed around his nose. ‘They’ll be calling you lot dead when Vincent finds out.’

‘No one knows Pearl was here except you. Vincent won’t care who takes the blame for this, long as it ain’t him.’

Spider dragged himself sideways with one hand, heading towards the steps. But it was a long way; he stopped, coughing for air. Jack stayed low, slid up next to him. Spider kept one hand clutched to his leg, tried to hold Jack back with the other.

‘When’s help…?’ His voice broke around the words, tears blocking the corner of one eye.

‘I’ll help you.’

Spider’s shirt was streaked with dirt, his hair flattened at the back as if he had just woken up. Jack pressed his knees against Spider’s back and the boy shifted slightly, their bodies in a clinch. He moved his hand to Spider’s forehead; the boy was cold as the floorboards.

‘It’s going to be all right.’ Jack stroked the spiky hair, but he wasn’t talking to Spider.

He wrapped his other arm around Spider’s boxy chest, pinning the boy’s arms; the blood pumping faster now, nothing to stop the flow. Spider’s body heaved for breath, struggling to be let loose, but there was no referee to make Jack step away; he swarmed the boy. Jack’s hand slipped from the hair down to Spider’s face, pointed eyebrow hairs pricking his palm, fingers gripping the boy’s lips shut. No room for the mumbled words to get out or the air to get in. Jack held him tight; felt like a lifetime until the squirming stopped. But he had to be sure. One, two, three… he closed his
eyes and kept count. On eight, Spider’s head lolled forward, all the fight gone. Nine. Ten.

Jack loosened his fingers; no movement. He lowered his face to the boy’s, catching the smell of cigarettes and buttered toast still on Spider’s lips, but no breath. Jack had seen dead people before, laid out and stiff in their coffins, but not like this, not when he could still hear their voices ringing in his ears, still smell the soap flakes on their clothes and hair cream on their heads, the skin heavy and spongy like clay. Blood stuck between the cracks of Jack’s fingers. He let go of the body, the dead weight toppling it to the side. No one left to call him a liar now.

Jack took the cigar from his top pocket. He smoked and waited. His legs cramped in the cold, but he stayed close to the body. Halfway through he heard them: the rattle of bells sliding off the street and into the building, running feet on the stairs.

‘Stay where you are,’ a voice shouted.

It was all Jack had ever heard:
keep your place, don’t do that, remember who you are.
But for once he was going to do what he knew was right. Light was cutting between the cabinets; it nearly had him. Jack turned the Luger in his hand, the metal grown cold.

‘Put the weapon down,’ another command.

A second beam settled on Jack, and he was sure they could see him clearly now. The coppers would get their man, and Vincent would have his silence. He waved the gun in his right hand.

‘I done it.’

He knew why Rosie did it too, why her body had curled around Pearl’s like a spring dropping back into place then pushed the baby out into his arms. He was doing the same for Pearl this time round. Jack had carried that night with him: the crushing fear that he wouldn’t find Rosie; but he had forgotten the most important thing. He remembered now, because for a moment, this night, he felt it again. Pearl
saying his name:
Dad
; and earlier too, standing in front of the oven: Georgie bending over and lifting her head to half-smile, absent-mindedly pulling out a rack of pies. Sharp moments of happiness like illuminated silhouettes caught by a struck match. More torchlight spiralled up the stairs. Jack pointed the gun out at arm’s length for them all to see then dropped it to the floor. The cigar was nearly out; he wanted one more taste before he was down for the count. Footsteps thundering towards him. Jack slid out the paper book of matches; the pages caught between his bloody fingers but he kept his grip. Smelling-salt rush of sulphur, sparking orange: he finally saw it again – turning the corner into Albany Basin and Rosie standing there.

‘T
ook your time.’ Rosie steps out from under the footbridge. ‘I’ve been waiting for you, Jackie.’

The match fizzles and falls to the floor at his feet, the air smells of washed-out bonfires. She leaves the dampness of the tunnel, battered laundry box hanging from her hand. Drops of rain shine silver in her hair; pale light from a barge on the other side of the Basin lengthens her shadow. Jackie clutches the yellow wool of Pearl’s blanket. He swallows down cold air as he tries to bring up the words.

‘Mum said you’d gone.’

He presses one hand to his side; a sharp pain like a kidney punch kicks inside him. Pearl moans, twisting her body, straightening her shoulders, all jangled from the running. Rosie drops the strap of the cardboard case and plants her hands on her hips.

‘And you believed your mum over me? You thought I’d do that?’

‘No, but I checked the tram stop and the buses, then I remembered here. Was under that bridge where you told me you was expecting Pearl. But Mum’s all wrong about that family ring…’

‘Jackie, I don’t need no ring from some dead relative. But we could have been in that house forever. We needed money for rent up front, that’s why I took her train fare.’

She smiles, beckons him closer; her coat snaps against her legs as the wind rises and circles off the black water. He kisses her, Pearl sandwiched between them.

‘Christ but you had me scared.’

Pressed against Rosie now, smelling her chilled skin, creamy like morning milk, he doesn’t understand how those doubts fingered their way inside him. He breathes her in: the grass of Peckham Rye, sweet fermenting apples.

‘I’ve got us a place in the flats beside Camberwell Green. The man says if I bring my
husband
by later we can have it. If he likes the look of you.’

She wrinkles her nose and grins.

‘Who wouldn’t?’

‘You charmed me – must be there’s something a little bit magic about you, Jackie.’ She kisses him again, breathing into his mouth between the flicks of her tongue. Pearl lets out a cry, a low-pitched warning.

‘She’s getting too big to be carried around.’ Jackie shifts her weight higher up against his chest.

‘She’ll start crawling in her own sweet time. Don’t like it when you bang down on your backside, do you, poppet? She must be freezing, give her here.’

Rosie scoops the yellow bundle out of his arms, opening her cardigan to fit Pearl inside. Jackie wants to curl up and mould himself against Rosie’s ribs too. She stamps her feet on the muddy cobbles.

‘So, what was it took you so long to come after me? I’m half frozen out here.’

‘I had to pick something up after work.’

And this is the moment; he knows he can’t wait any longer. Jackie kneels, because he has heard this is how it should be done. He sinks into a puddle; grit and stones poke into his shin, and the sticking discomfort helps him keep the tears from filling up his eyes.

‘Dropped something by the looks of it… what you doing, Jackie?’

‘Marry me forever?’

She laughs, hand covering her mouth. Those fingers of doubt are crawling back, pinching at his cold skin. ‘Did I get it wrong?’

‘The
marry me
bit was good…’ She gets down on her knees too, steadying herself with one hand on his shoulder, Pearl slipping to her other hip. ‘Forever goes without saying.’

His hands are level with her face; he closes his fingers around her iced cheeks.

‘Yes.’ They say it together.

The lights from the barge go out, coughing and spitting from onboard; the back of the warehouses block out moonlight and city light.

‘Bloody hell, I nearly forgot.’ He digs in his pocket and comes out with the jewellery box. ‘It’s not tin, look.’

He strikes a match on the sole of his shoe and holds it to the ring; the flame brightens the gold plating. Her breath comes in short gasps. ‘It’s beautiful. Put it on me.’

‘Its bad luck, ain’t it?’ He rubs the top of the green leather with his thumb.

‘That’s old wives’ stuff. What happens happens.’

She presents her hand. The ring fits perfectly, gliding over her blue-tinged knuckle. Jackie rubs her skin between his palms to warm up the flow of blood. The wedding band throbs with friction. Breath steams and condenses on their eyelashes; Pearl sighs.

‘There’s a boiler on the landing outside the flat. Hot water when we want it. The bedroom’s a bit damp but the old woman lived there before probably never cracked a window. It’ll clear up.’

He drops the match; down to the last one in the book now. He lights it and holds it high.

‘How much?’

‘We can get by, with your money from the factory. I can take in some work. And it’s closer to the gym. Trust me.’

‘I do. Mum’s going to be angry as a mad dog.’

‘Let her huff and puff – what do we care? Ain’t that right, little one?’ Rosie nuzzles her forehead against Pearl’s.

The flame starts to flutter, striking their shadows down on to the wet path. The water in Albany Basin laps behind
them as a rat squeaks and splashes into the water. The cardboard case tilts slightly against Rosie’s thigh; her coat pokes outwards, and her feet are too close to the mossy edge. If the match were to fall now they would try to stand, brushing the spark from her blue flowered dress, feet catching in the case handle – falling – the iron mooring ring cracking apart the back of her skull, blood and mud and hair, before the Basin would swallow her down and only release her a week later. But it isn’t that time yet. The surface of the greasy water isn’t ruptured into purple and silver streaks; Pearl snores quietly, yellow wool tucked in the warm folds of Rosie’s arms; the bargemen are settling down for a good night’s sleep; the metal hook used to fish overboard cargo still rests on deck. Only the stem of the match is hot as hell, sizzling closer to the tip of his missing thumbnail. Jackie will have to let go soon. The silhouette of his wife and child burn into him; and, in that moment, he feels himself the luckiest man alive.