A Kid for Two Farthings (7 page)

10

In the Whitechapel Road it was all bright lights and crowds of people, smart as paint, taking a Saturday night stroll after working the week as machinists and under-pressers and cabinet-makers.

Joe strode ahead of his mother, who chatted with Mr Kandinsky, while Sonia dawdled talking to a girl with heavy pencilled eyebrows and glossy silk stockings, out with her new fiancé, a bookie’s runner and flash with wide padded shoulders to his blue double-breasted suit. Joe took giant strides past Russian Peter with his crooked beard and Russian peaked cap. Russian Peter usually had wreaths of garlic cloves and pyramids of home-pickled cucumbers on his barrow, a large box with handles mounted on two wheels, but now he had a tray with packets of sweets and chewing-gum and toffee apples. Instead of calling out, ‘Cumber, knobbel, cumber, knobbel,’ as he usually did, he said, ‘Taffee eppls, taffee eppls,’ in the same high voice. Russian Peter’s cucumbers were pickled by a special recipe he brought with him from Russia, with his peaked cap. Joe went back to ask his mother for a toffee apple. Sure enough, it had a special taste, strange, black glistening treacle.

They allowed plenty of time for the walk to the baths, which was just as well, because what with Sonia saying hello to all her friends and their new fiancés, and Mr Kandinsky talking to this one and that, and different people asking Joe’s mother how was his father, they would be lucky to get there at all. As it was, when they arrived at the baths, Joe heard a great roar from inside, and thought, that’s it, that’s the end of the fight; we’ve missed it. But they hadn’t. It was still the last round of the fight before.

For the wrestling season, the swimming-baths were boarded over, a relief to Joe who had been wondering how they could wrestle in baths. There were big lights over a ring in the middle, and you could make out the diving boards at one end, dim in the darkness, with canvas sheets hanging over them. There was no water beneath the boards though, because Joe dropped a small stone through them and there was no splash. It was like the railings over the pavements in the streets. If you made up your mind they were fixed, it was all right. People sat in rows, on seats in front and benches behind, while further back still they stood on wide steps, sitting on the floor in the intervals.

Men went round with trays selling hokey-pokey ice-creams, roasted peanuts, and cold drinks, and there was a great hum of noise, which, during the fights, quietened down so that only one or two voices would be heard over the grunting of the wrestlers. Two wrestlers were tied up together on the floor of the ring, one of them grunting as he pressed down harder and harder, the other shouting out ‘Oh, oh, oh, oh!’ every time he was pressed. He wore a red mask but he was losing all the same.

Someone called out ‘Wheel ’em out,’ and someone else shouted ‘Carve-up,’ and a red-headed woman screamed ‘Tear his arms off, Mask.’ All around people munched peanuts and drank ice-cold drinks out of bottles. As Joe sat down a man in a big coat started to eat a sandwich and a pickled yellow cucumber at once. At the end of the row where they were sitting, Joe saw Madame Rita and Lady R. Madame Rita had his arm round Lady R. He shouted ‘Chuck ’em out, they’re empty,’ waving a cigar in his other hand. Lady R watched the wrestlers closely. Her eyes stared and her lips moved in a small tight smile, and when one threw the other, she clasped her hands together, breathing out hard between her teeth. Then, when they finished, she sank back in her seat and looked round with shining eyes at Madame Rita, who squeezed her shoulder in case she was frightened.

The end of the fight came while Mr Kandinsky was buying them roasted peanuts. The bell rang, and one of the wrestlers, puffing and blowing, had his arm held up by the referee, while the other one still writhed on the floor. Half the people cheered, and the other half booed. The two wrestlers left the ring, sweating hard, their dressing-gowns draped over their shoulders. One of them tripped on the ropes.

There was a good echo in the baths, although with all the shouting and laughing it was difficult to hear it, but sometimes there was a gap in the noise, people were suddenly quiet, as if getting their wind, and then one voice would ring out and the echo pick the words up and throw them back into the smoke and the smell of ozone. Joe would have liked to shout for the echo, but while it was all right under the arches, you didn’t like to in front of so many people, and anyhow as soon as you decided to try it, the noise started again. ‘Wheel ’em in,’ they shouted. ‘Money back, get on with it.’ But nothing happened because it was the interval.

At the ends of the aisles St John’s men in uniforms with polished peaks and white bands sat looking out for people to faint, but no one did. Programme-sellers went up and down, shouting out that the lucky programme number got two ringsides for next week. Madame Rita had two, but bought two more, just to show off. The hokey-pokey men in white jackets did very well, and almost everyone was sucking orange and pink ice-creams or drinking from bottles or eating peanuts, crunching the shells under their feet.

A lot more pennies were thrown, then someone shouted, ‘We want Python,’ and a whole crowd took it up. Another crowd answered ‘We want Hammer,’ and soon you couldn’t hear Sam playing at all. He stopped and looked down at the M.C.’s seat with a worried expression on his face. The M.C. came up and thanked Sam, who was picking up his pennies. He spread out a big poster on the floor and started to read out the programme for next week, but the noise was so great he gave up. He beckoned towards the dark door through which the other wrestlers had passed after their fight. A little wiry man in shirt sleeves and blue braces came bounding up the aisle, and leaped into the ring. After him marched the wrestlers.

First Shmule, in a crimson dressing-gown gleaming in the light, with Blackie and Oliver bustling round him. A man leaned over to pat his back as he passed, and when he sprang into the ring there was quite a big cheer. Shmule bowed towards the cheers and looked proudly at the small group who booed. He waved to Joe, and Joe waved back. Sonia blew kisses and Mr Kandinsky said, ‘A fine boy; good luck to him.’ Then Shmule started stretching himself, so as not to lose a moment’s development.

After him came the dreaded Python with his manager, a man with a square blue jaw, like polished rock. The Python wore a black silk dressing-gown and a white towel round his neck, and he towered above the seconds dancing round him. He climbed into the ring, not so full of spring as Shmule, but with one powerful hitch of his arm. There was, true, a bigger cheer for Python, but Shmule’s friends booed hard, Joe hissed like a goose, Sonia shouted out ‘Carcase meat,’ and Mr Kandinsky said ‘What a bull.’

The M.C. introduced Shmule first. He called him the white hope of Aldgate, the sensational young former amateur championship contender, a clean-fighting local boy, and so on and so forth. All the while the Python was baring his teeth and growling and shaking his fist at Shmule’s supporters. Shmule slipped out of his crimson dressing-gown and now his muscles rippled in the ring lights, his spotless white hammer shining like a star against the crimson briefs. Oliver and Blackie clustered round his corner with towels and pails and a chair for him to sit on between rounds. They looked worried, although after all that saying he was a gonner, Shmule looked as if nothing could ever frighten him. There was a fresh feeling about him, as if he felt there were so many tailors expecting him to make a good fight, especially with the trade being so up and down, and so much unemployment, they lent him the strength they had been saving for work.

The dreaded Python Macklin was very angry. He strained like a fierce bulldog at the rope, just waiting for the bell to sound to throw himself on Shmule, tearing him limb from limb like the Christian martyrs, just as Mavis said. The black hair on the Python stood up in fury and he ground his teeth together. When the M.C. pointed in his direction and called out his name, famous contender for the championship of the world, and veteran of the ring all over Europe, the Python drew himself up and the muscles on his chest and back were swollen with pride and power. He grinned, his teeth clamped tight together, and when the red-haired woman screamed out, ‘Murder him, Py,’ he stared at her as if he was hungry and she was a juicy steak.

‘A forty-minute contest,’ the M.C. shouted through his megaphone, ‘of eight five-minute rounds, for a purse of not ten, not twenty, but twenty-five pounds.’

He drew the two men together and whispered to them, the Python sneering, Shmule looking serious. Mr Kandinsky said again, ‘Good luck,’ and then the bell rang. In the sudden silence it echoed well.

Joe sat with his seat tipped up to see over the head of the man in front. This man had a head like a smooth water-melon with a bit of hair round the edges, pasted down with oil as if painted. As soon as the bell rang he started to talk slowly in a gruff voice like a gate swinging on rusty hinges in the wind. The woman next to him had grey hair permanently waved and never spoke, except to say, ‘Have a nut.’ The man was very helpful to Joe because he was an expert and explained the whole fight, hold by hold.

At first the wrestlers circled watchfully round one another looking for an opening. The man with the painted head said, ‘You watch, Em; he’ll be on to him; just give him that opening; watch, it’s coming – no, hold it, now – no, he missed it, he’s waiting to put the scissors on him.’

The Python prepared to spring on Shmule, who stood quite still waiting. Then, as the Python bent his legs to jump, Shmule stepped aside and Python fell on his face with a heavy slap.

‘He missed him,’ said the man with painted hair, and even as he spoke Shmule leapt on to the Python, catching both legs below knee level in the crook of his arm, and pulling sharply.

‘Ouch!’ shouted Python.

‘Ouff !’ said the man with painted hair. ‘He got the old calf-lock on him.’

The Python shook himself like an alligator, and one of his knees slipped free and bowled Shmule over. The Python caught hold of Shmule by the foot and thigh and prepared to throw him, but Shmule pressed into the canvas with both hands, and heaved his body into the Python’s ribs like a battering-ram. The Python reeled into the ropes, and the bell rang.

Shmule turned to his corner, but the Python came after him. The crowd roared with one voice, ‘Look behind you!’ Shmule turned sharply, and the referee jumped in front of Python, and forced him to his corner. The Python was furious and, pushing his seconds off the ring, he picked up his chair and punched his fist through the seat.

‘Phoo,’ said the man with painted hair, ‘what a round, the dirty bastard turning on him like that after the bell, the dirty great bleeder.’

‘Have some nuts, Fred?’ the permanently waved woman said.

‘The swine,’ said Sonia with tears in her eyes; ‘did you see that?’

The seconds rubbed them down and waved towels while the wrestlers spat into pails, and breathed deep and even, glaring at one another across the ring, listening to their managers’ advice. The crowd wasn’t shouting, ‘Carve up,’ any more. They could see it was serious. The bell rang for the second round.

The Python at once shot from his corner, his fingers crooked to seize Shmule, his face rigid, calling the muscles of his body to attention. Shmule crouched like a panther, waiting.

‘He’s giving him half a stone,’ the man with the painted head said. ‘He’s got to play a waiting game; let the Python use hisself up, then come in quick. Ahh!’

The Python had his arms about Shmule and was hugging him like a bear. Shmule’s arms were pinned to his sides, and he couldn’t move. He twisted to one side, then to the other, but the Python shortened the hug, working the grip of one hand upon the other wrist slowly up his arm. Shmule’s face twisted with pain.

‘Let him get out of that one,’ the man said. Sonia clenched and unclenched her hands, and Joe’s mother looked away. Mr Kandinsky was breathing hard, but Joe just stared, wondering what Shmule would do now. The crowd was shouting, ‘Finish him, Python!’