It was 13 June 1990 and a game of football played in Italy between two foreign nations in the World Cup was a turning point for us, not just for my best friends and me but for the whole country of Ireland. We needed the Soviet Union to lose to Argentina. The Soviet Union’s loss was Ireland’s gain, and we advanced to the knockout stage of the World Cup and it was A VERY BIG DEAL. We were high on life, my friends and me. Anything seemed possible. I guess that’s how the whole thing started.
So there we were, in the park, getting ready for a boxing match. We had just finished our very last day of primary school and we were looking forward to a whole summer of fun before heading off to our new secondary schools in September. Kids were everywhere and everyone was buzzing, still singing football chants and talking excitedly about football and how Ireland was IN THE WORLD CUP!
Johnny J was jumping up and down on the spot, his corkscrew curls bouncing in my face as I tried to glove him up. He was about to box against a boy called Fitzer. He was a right bruiser, bigger than Johnny J and a bully. He had a deep voice, greasy hair that just kind of dripped from his head and a faint dark moustache that stopped halfway across his top lip and just looked weird. Freaky Fitzer fancied himself as fast, strong and tough as nails.fn1 Of all the lads who agreed to fight Johnny J, I figured he’d be the easiest to beat.
We charged one pound per kid to watch the fight, and one hundred and twenty-five kids turned up. Once we’d paid Fitzer the tenner we’d promised him and bought him a Mars bar (which we’d also promised him), our profit was one hundred and fourteen pounds and fifty-one pence, whether our boy won or lost. It was a good thing too because Johnny J was no fighter. He just really needed the money for his mam.
Nobody named it back then, but we all knew that Mrs Tulsi had been battling cancer for a few years. It was obvious she wasn’t getting any better. Johnny J was desperate. It was Walker who first mentioned that if she lived in America she’d be fine. The Americans were really medically advanced. At least that’s what he said, and because he had won Young Scientist of the Year for his older sister Aprilfn2 and he was the only person we knew with a computer, we believed him.
‘Mrs Tulsi needs to go to America. Fact,’ he said. He convinced us that all we had to do was buy Mrs Tulsi a plane ticket and taxi fare and she could just walk into any hospital in America and they would welcome her in and fix her up in no time at all. Without the benefit of Google we believed him. We were naive, but if we didn’t believe Walker, then what? Mrs Tulsi couldn’t die! Johnny J left in this world with no parents at all?! Nah, I wasn’t having that. We were going to save her. We were going to save him. FACT!
I spent a lot of time worrying about Johnny J and his mam and his poor Uncle Ted, his dead father’s brother. Uncle Ted was a really nice man who was always there for Johnny J and his mother. Every time he saw me he winked and told me I was a good kid, which was nice. No one else in my life did that. Uncle Ted was browner than Johnny J and had dark curly hair and wore cool clothes, like leather trousers and T-shirts with rock bands on them. He played the guitar and taught Johnny J to play when he was little. Johnny J said he could have been a rock star but he gave up music to take over running the family garage after Johnny J’s father died. When Uncle Ted walked, he had a bounce to his step. I spent a lot of my early years trying to walk like Ted Tulsi, but it never happened. I just wasn’t cool enough.
After Walker told us about America I’d lie awake in my bed thinking about all the things I could and couldn’t do to raise money. Sometimes all that thinking made my stomach hurt. I was cursed with a nervous stomach. My mam said I took after my dad’s mother, Nanna Finn, who spent so much time in her toilet she had a bookshelf and plants and pruning shears in there. It was during one marathon cramp-fuelled thinking toilet session that I came up with the idea to start the boxing matches for money. Flights to America were really expensive back then, over a thousand pounds. That’s a lot of fights for a boy who didn’t really like to fight, but it was the only idea I had.
So there we were in the park. Freaky Fitzer and Johnny J danced and bounced around for a bit. Some of the crowd cheered. Some jeered.
‘Go on, Johnny J. You can do it.’
‘Smash his face in, Fitzer.’
‘Get a move on, grannies.’
‘Punch each other, muppets!’
The ring was just an area marked out by four coats, one in each corner. Sumo stood on guard, with his massive arms crossed and his legs spread wide apart and his chest sticking out. He looked like the bouncer who stood outside Barry’s Betting Shop. It was Sumo’s job to make sure the audience didn’t push into the ring, and he took it seriously.
‘All right, fellas, calm it down. Come on now. Give the fighters some space.’
Everyone shuffled back, and Sumo nodded to himself and took out a Spam sandwich from his pocket, dusted it for fluff and demolished it in two bites. Walker sat at the picnic table, holding his big glasses against his face with one hand and counting out the money with the other. I stood in Johnny J’s corner, hoping he wouldn’t get killed, shouting words of encouragement while he bounced about on his tippy-toes. He bobbed and weaved and tired himself out before one punch was even thrown. I heard Charlie before I saw her. She was shouting down from somewhere in the sky.
‘Keep your hands up. Come on, Johnny J, stop dancing, start hitting.’
It was my job to say encouraging stuff. Annoying! I looked up and there she was, sitting like Marvel Comic’s Black Widow, spying on everyone with her flaming-red hair in two bunches either side of her head and her eyes flashing down at me from the highest tree. Show-off! Hollering away, Oh look at me. I’m a girl and I can climb a tree! Big deal. Not helpful at all. I was sick she was there because lately she was everywhere. Like a bad smell, she lingered and was hard to get rid of. I tried to nickname her Bad Smell but it didn’t catch on the way Sumo or Freaky Fitzer had. Disappointing.
It was while Charlie was distracting Johnny J with her unhelpful comments that Freaky Fitzer let fly with his first punch. His right fist connected with Johnny J’s left eye and it was game over as Johnny J hit the deck. Freaky Fitzer grabbed his tenner and Mars bar and was out of there before Sumo got Johnny J to his feet. The fight was over before it had begun.