by Saurav Dutt
*
The wind began to batter the window panes at the foot of the corridor. As Billy snaked his way through the dimly lit hall, side stepping empty wrappers, ripped pizza cartons and half empty liquor bottles he sensed something was wrong. As he approached the door to his flat, he noticed a low sound tearing through the drone of noise emanating from the other flats. Somewhere buried underneath the muffled sounds of loud hip hop music, yells from neighbours and the cackles of the kids prancing around in the stairways was the unmistakable echo of a man crying. He knew it was his father.
He turned the key in the lock, gently prodding the door forward as he leant inside. He saw the flicker of the television screen cast a bright white haze across the walls of the drawing room and could see his father hunched against the sofa chair, a pair of boxing gloves hugged closely against his chest and a photo frame tucked between them. He knew it was the picture of his mother Terry kept in his room. As he slinked into the apartment, Billy straightened up on his toes and carefully made his way towards his room, listening to the stifled sobs and drunken rasps he had heard all too many times before.
“..You’d ‘av thought better of me then eh?” Terry growled, wiping tears away from his face as he snatched up the bottle of Courvoisier he had leant up against his knee “if I had just fuckin’ won it, brought home enough to make you all happy, live the way you wanted to..what about me? What the fuck about me? I thought I mattered”
Maybe it was the spite in his voice, or the way he paused in between his stuttering sobs, but Billy could tell this time was different. As he leant against the frame of his bedroom door listening in, he thought about marching into the room, smashing the bottle into smithereens, but what would he do then?
“You don’t know nothin’..” Terry groaned, taking a prolonged swig as he tossed the boxing gloves aside, staring long and hard at the photograph “..I could have gone all the way..what the fuck do you know, everything woulda changed.. They laughed at me the bastards, but I gave it up for ya ‘cause I loved you, what did that do for me?”
Billy lay down on his bed and closed his eyes, the thud of the bottle hitting the carpet in the adjoining room prickled his ear drum as he heard Terry choke back his tears, his sobs stifled as the sound of the television quietened. He could hear Terry rise to his feet, stumbling in the dark as he paused to light a cigarette, cursing under his breath as he mumbled to himself.
Just at that moment he remembered the last time he saw his father fight. It was October 21 1996, Birmingham NEC. Terry’s gloves were smeared with the blood of the Irishman he was fighting. His lightning left hook followed by a right cross had landed with pinpoint accuracy. The Irishman stumbled backwards and then lunged forward with an explosive haymaker that connected with Terry’s temple. The crowd roared as his father crashed to the centre of the ring like a fallen oak. The ref shouted the ten count with his arms flailing. Terry’s chin reverberated off the canvas as the Irishman stood in his corner smiling sardonically with his bloodstained mouthpiece. Billy never forgot that smile, and he never forgot the look of disappointment and disgust on his father’s face when he realised he had lost his belt.
“You didn’t lose dad” Billy said to his father as he saw him sitting in the corner of the changing room, his head hung low as he let out whimpers and choked sobs “you just came second dad, you came second”
Terry stared up at him, his eyes glazed with tears and sweat, and a look of disgust came over his beaten, bruised face. “Second?” he spat “remember one thing in life son, coming second means you were the first loser…coming second in life, in boxing, means nothing…don’t you ever talk to me about coming fucking second. Nobody in the Hope family ever comes second”