‘This is the big one,’ Sam said, ‘the big fight,’ and Joe caught the excitement.
Jackie Tempest of Lancaster was the first to walk towards the ring. He punched the air and as he jigged down the aisle the crowd in Carlisle’s Covered Market, oiled in the sweat of August heat, gave him a sporting hand. Cheering was reserved for their own, the local light-heavyweight hope, Jackie Moran. Sam knew him and Joe’s baying was proportional. It was the main and final bout of the evening.
Sam had picked the back row so that Joe could stand on his seat. They were near enough to the ring.
Everyone agreed with the report in the Cumberland News that Moran versus Tempest ‘was one of the most terrific fights ever delivered in Covered Market Tournaments’.
Joe could not remember hearing his daddy shout so much, not even at football. ‘Come on, Moran!’ ‘That’s the way!’ ‘Come on, Moran!’
Both men flew into it as if a first-round knockout were the only acceptable result. More like Freddie Mills than Joe Louis, Sam said, as the game pale-skinned northern lads stood up to each other in the middle of the ring and traded punches like bare-knuckle boxers on the scratchline a hundred and fifty years back. Defence was flimsy and all but disregarded. To land the haymaker was the sole purpose. The crowd jelled into a blood growl of contentment, which crested into loud delight when Moran floored Tempest in the second round. ‘What a bat!’ Sam turned to look up at Joe, his eyes glittering. ‘What a bat that was, eh?’ Joe nodded, letting his father speak for him, almost stifled with the strange pleasure of seeing Jackie Tempest on his knees, listening to the count, getting up on eight and being allowed to wade into more haymakers from Moran.
The third round was so vicious that the crowd winced, there were moments of intaken breath, a comma of quiet, then the guttural sound swelled up again and Joe was in some deep cave, torchlit, jaws masticating grunt words, fists flailing at the call of the crowd. The clear slap-slap of leather on skin, the pillowed impact crunch of a punch aimed to stun, entwined him in the fight and he swayed and ducked and jabbed and swung with the fighters, who ended the round so exhausted by their aggression that they slumped against each other like Saturday drunks. When the bell went they wandered unevenly to their corners. The crowd applauded, the Covered Market boomed with the sound - like the swimming baths, Joe noticed, the same echoing boom.
The boy had put his hand on Sam’s shoulder to steady himself and he kept it there between the rounds.
Like most men watching the bout, Sam lit up while the boxers rested. ‘Good fight, Joe!’ The statement needed no response.
The warmth and comradeship in those three syllables made Joe feel proudly older, an accomplice in men’s matters, men’s sport, men’s ways.
In the next round, Tempest hurled himself on the Carlisle man from the opening bell and floored him. Moran was hurt. The crowd, his supporters, his well-wishers, rolled in tides of noise as if noise alone, their well-wishing supportive noise, would in itself lift him, unbeach him, raise him up to face again the Lancastrian, now scenting a famous victory, pacing alongside the ropes, ready for the kill.
The noise worked. Moran scraped himself off the floor by the count of seven, somehow muffled the impact of his opponent’s charge for victory, steadied himself and then, with the desperation of those who know that glory is such a long shot, that fame is not really for them despite the dreams by day in the bleak pub back-room gym, but with the hope that with one punch, one glint of fortune, a life of bare pickings could change utterly, the local lad called on every available resource. Buoyed up on the ocean of support surging in his ears, sounding all around the darkened Covered Market, he went for his man and put him down, and only the bell saved Tempest and the crowd went berserk.
Joe looked at his father whose grin of intense pleasure mirrored and electrified his own.
In the fifth they were tired but, Sam observed, it was Tempest who looked weaker. Look at how often he’s missing with those big punches, Joe, that takes the energy out of him. Joe did not understand that, but it was not the time to ask questions. It’s all about getting your strength back. And Moran had to nurse that cut eye. Sam tapped Joe’s Elastoplast. Cut eyes were in fashion, he said.
It happened in the sixth.
Moran the local hero was on top, no doubt. Even now. So punished, neither man had much of a defence. But Tempest suddenly hit home with one of his right swinging punches and Moran stopped, stock still, and as his supporters held their breath, Tempest landed what was later described as a ‘sledgehammer blow’, which caught the local man on the right temple and shuddered his skull, blanked his brain, his body keeled, no brake, slam into the canvas, he did not hear the count, he did not know that even now the crowd, his crowd, tried to lift him, he had to be carried to his corner while a jubilant Tempest, energised by triumph, saluted them.
‘Pity,’ said Sam, as they moved along the aisle. ‘And I’d put a few bob on him. But he was game, eh, Joe?’
The hubbub of excitement followed them out into the balmy summer street, still light. Sam had intended to take Joe round to see Joe Moran in his dressing room but the sight of the poor lad being carried to his corner had made him think again. It would be too humiliating for the man, especially in front of a boy, Sam thought, although, as they sought out the fish and chip shop on the way back to the bus station, he could be mistaken: perhaps poor Moran would be grateful for a friendly face. On the other hand, Sam was not in any way a close friend, just that Moran followed the hound-dogs and would sometimes place a bet on Henry’s board at an evening meeting. Henry had not been best pleased when Sam had insisted on taking the evening off for the fight: the hound-trailing season was at its height and you could also chalk up the odds for the evening’s horse meetings, bring in more business that way. But since Leonard’s warning, Sam found that he tested Henry now and then, always confirming Leonard’s words.
‘Sam! You old bugger!’
Dougie was leaning against the wall scooping pawfuls of chips from the greasy cone. Joe noted that the swear word was not noticed. Not here.
‘This your boy?’
Sam nodded.
‘Been in a fight?’
Joe fingered the Elastoplast rather proudly. In this world it was without any doubt a mark of honour. But he looked at his father for the answer.
‘Bit of a battle,’ Sam said.
‘A hard man, your father,’ Dougie said, gaping open his mouth, full of half-chewed chips and stumpy discoloured teeth. ‘Him and me was in the war, eh, Sam?’ The drink ponged at three yards. ‘Bloody great times, eh?’
‘How’s life treating you?’
‘Just now and then, Sam. Just now and then.’
The small half-drunk ex-soldier, who had found the truth of his life as a licensed, righteous killer in Burma and since his return found those talents obstructing his admittedly reluctant attempts to lead a peaceful existence, took a last gulp of chips, scrunched up the paper, chucked it in the gutter, slid his hands into his pockets and took aim for the nearest pub. ‘Fancy a pint?’
‘The boy, Dougie.’
‘He could sit on the steps.’
Sam was tempted. Doug lived north of Carlisle in a grim little border town; the odds against seeing him again were high. And here was someone with whom, literally, he had been through the jungle and seen and done things unimaginable to the raw young man he had been at the outset of the war, and in the brief companionship of a drink something would be said that would raise up that unreal violent time of his life.
But one drink would not be enough with Dougie. It never had been. And with Joe there, it was not the time to take on that past. Nor, he realised, did he ever want such a time.
‘Another night, Dougie.’
Dougie waved and rolled away.
On the bus, they talked in detail about the fight and brought in Joe Louis and Freddie Mills. Their talk put the boy in a whirlpool of blows and punches and brave blood.
‘Dougie was the real hard man in the section,’ Sam confided, as they got off the bus opposite Greenacres and walked across the road to the lighted house. ‘Dougie was as hard a little man as I’ve ever met.’
There was admiration in Sam’s tone and Joe understood.