Frank (formerly Franz) Friedel worked as an accountant for Huntingdons, the great furniture firm, who have their headquarters in Croydon. He was not the chief accountant, and many people had felt – and said – that he could easily have bettered himself by taking work in London. But he had a sense of loyalty to the firm and a sense of belonging to the district in which for thirty years he had made his home. He prized this, this sense of having a root and a home, he who had been rootless under the shadow of Hitler during the formative years of his life. And anyway no one in his home ever lacked for the necessities.
Pearl’s own mother had died when she was eight – she came from Nottingham – and her father had married Rachel a couple of years later and they had two boys and a girl. Rachel was Austrian like Frank, but unlike him her attitudes had been formed before she left. Frank had been careful to adapt, so that his speech was almost accentless and without foreign syntax. The boys, Leslie and Gustave, grew noisier every year and Julia, aged five, was going to be a little tyrant. If Pearl had been the bossy type she could have used her age superiority to keep on top, but somehow it never seemed worth the nagging and the disguised bullying.
A lot of things to Pearl didn’t seem worth the effort. She was not lazy but she was placid. She lived a lot of the time in a quiet private world of her own, and this earned her a reputation for dignity and reserve. But she wasn’t really shy; only a little slow-spoken and latent. She didn’t much care what people thought – or if she did she never said so. She was ill at ease with children because they demanded too much of her. She liked cats but not dogs. She had herself a cat-like love of comfort and of being on her own.
She had joined the D. H. Evans’ rota training scheme at seventeen, so that she could be earning her own keep and be out of the way, but went on living at home because her father would not let her leave. An intelligent man within narrow limits, his liberal English views did not extend to giving girls their freedom while they were still under age. Besides, a certain strictness towards Pearl was evidence of their special relationship: she was the surviving reminder of his first and English wife; more was expected of her than of the others. Pearl got on well enough with Rachel but often wondered why the marriage had happened – not because Rachel was not a good wife but because she did not measure up to his standards.
In spite of Pearl’s being the odd one out, they were a fairly close-knit family, and on Sunday morning she was asked about the dance and had to tell a few lies and hope Hazel and Chris would back her up if need be. Pearl was never very happy at the sun going down on anyone’s wrath, so she made an effort to call and see Hazel that afternoon. It was a frosty meeting to begin, but after a bit they turned to talk of Chris, and Hazel unthawed. The last thing Pearl wanted was a blight over the start of their holiday. But she didn’t mention her date with Godfrey on the Wednesday. Although she longed to talk to somebody about him, afterwards she was glad.
So it was Wednesday, and coming home she had the usual fight to get on a 25 bus, and she just caught the 6.14 from Victoria, and another bus from the station and was in by seven. It didn’t give her much time, but Rachel was busy with her own brood and her father wasn’t back yet, so she just called she would be out to supper and pretended not to hear Rachel’s ‘Where are you going?’
Working at a shop and living at home, she had made enough money to spend what Rachel called ‘ a fortune’ on clothes, and her narrow oak wardrobe overflowed beneath a rail and curtain. She hadn’t an idea what the done thing was at a boxing match, but Walworth sounded pretty sordid. After a lot of lip biting she put on a strawberry pink number of fine wool with a square neck line and a flared short skirt, and took her second best coat.
She had told him not to ring but to wait on the other side of the road, and sure enough by 7.25 the great green car was there, looking a monster among the shabby saloons and the family runabouts. She grabbed her bag and was going to leave, but suddenly remembered his size and kicked off her ordinary shoes and pulled on a pair of black patent leather with flat heels.
‘’Lo, Oyster,’ he said. ‘Wow, you look good. Smashing. Hop in. That’s what I’m going to do tonight.’
‘What?’
‘Smash someone’s face in.’ He laughed. A harsh gasping sound, breath escaping. No mirth. ‘O.K.? Let’s go.’ He started the car and they slid off.
He was in a polo-necked sweater and track trousers. There was a smell in the car of lotion or embrocation. He really was handsome in profile, and you could see a lot of girls would fall for him, and you could see he was used to it.
‘Ought you to have come for me?’ she asked. ‘I mean, shouldn’t you be getting ready or something before …’
‘Oh, definitely. Robins is working up a head of steam because I’m not waiting around. But I’ve checked in, so what? I’ll be back in time.’
‘Who’s Robins?’
‘My manager. He’s a wet fish, a fold, a drop out.’
‘Why do you let him manage you if you think he isn’t good—’
‘Chance is a fine thing, lady. There’s a lot to be learned in the boxing world; and three-fourths of it isn’t to do with boxing at all. Someday I’ll put you hip.’
They talked on the way in, but you could see that half his attention was lacking and that he was tense inside. Not surprising. Fighting and winning was his living, and he obviously made a lot of money out of it and couldn’t afford to slip up.
‘Is feather-weight the lightest weight?’ she asked.
‘Jees, no. There’s bantam and there’s fly. Light-weight’s the next above me. I sometimes take on light-weights. That’s the only time I got stopped.’
‘Stopped?’
‘I’ll tell you all about it someday. Here we are. Just in time.’
They parked the car among a lot of others in the street and walked across to an odd town-hall-like building called Manor Place Baths.
‘I got to leave you now, Oyster. Here’s your ticket. I’ll come and sit next to you soon as I’m through.’
‘Why do you call me Oyster?’
‘Can’t you guess?’ His hand on her elbow was as hard as iron. ‘Here, Terry, look after my girl, will you. I got to buzz. See she’s looked after.’
This big man with great ham hands and a bent nose showed her to her seat, which was three rows from the front. She felt conspicuous, out of her element. It would have been all right with Hazel there or someone to talk to. A biggish hall with seats like cinema seats, but otherwise very bare. In the entrance were tiled corridors and various notices about the baths.
It wasn’t really as sordid as she had expected; the people were fairly ordinary, working class and some better, a sprinkling of ex-pugilists with their profession on their faces. There was one fabulously striking but fabulously common girl with platinum hair and imitation spectacles and a tiny skirt and great boots. Pearl decided to keep her coat on.
The thing started with two bantam-weights who lashed into each other for a couple of rounds and then one went down and was counted out. It was much like you saw on T.V. except that being live it was suddenly real and not on a tube in a box, and therefore different. Godfrey was third on the list. ‘6 (3 min.) rounds Feather-weight Contest at 9 st. between Godfrey Vosper, Kensington and Ed Hertz, Liverpool.’ She was surprised this was in smaller print than two of the others. She wondered if it was anything to do with the weight of the fighters.
But it didn’t seem so because the second contest, which was in even smaller print, was between two heavy-weights who scrambled and mauled for the full eight rounds before the black one won on points.
Then Godfrey came in in a red dressing gown with Little God printed across the middle of the back. He grinned at Pearl and climbed into the ring. The young man he was going to fight had a round pasty face and long fair hair. The M.C. announced the fight, the referee had them together in the middle of the ring and then they both went back to their corners and took off their robes. Because she was below the level of the ring,
they did not look particularly small, and Godfrey had a beautiful physique, a creamy olive skin, dark soft hair on his legs, muscles that only showed as he moved. By contrast Hertz looked white and bow legged, squatter, more bunched up.
At the bell they began to go round each other, sparring for an opening; and suddenly one thought he’d found it: there was an explosion of gloves: thump, thump, thump, hands going too fast to see; then it was over and they were circling round each other again. This went on all through the first two rounds: great flurries of violence mixed with sparring and weaving and circling. She couldn’t for the life of her believe that she had anything to do with the small, beautiful, violent young man in the ring, that he had brought her here, or that she’d ever agreed to come. She was excited by it all but not thrilled. She noticed that Godfrey’s left hand kept going out like a piston, and once in every two or three times it caught Hertz on the face, and Hertz’s face was turning red and his nose had a smear of blood at the corner; but it was Hertz who was doing most of the rushing in, and several times he got Godfrey in a corner and there was a set-to before he got out of it.
She couldn’t see his face between rounds except when he turned to spit water into a bucket; but when the third round started there was a change in the tempo. There was less sparring, more toe-to-toe fighting, gloves flailing, and the crowd began to roar. It went on like that for a full minute, and then the man next to Pearl said: ‘’E’s ’ad it!’ Pearl couldn’t see what he meant because there was no change in either of the fighters. And then Godfrey stepped aside from one of Hertz’s rushes and just stood there, his hands half lowered, dancing on his toes, as it were tempting Hertz to come on. Hertz rushed again and Godfrey did just the same again: it must have been maddening, Pearl thought, to hit thin air again and again and just have your opponent dodging and weaving, always near yet always just out of reach. People shouted. Then the gong went and the two men went back to their corners. But the referee followed Hertz to his corner, and after peering at him, walked back to Godfrey and raised Godfrey’s hand. There was both cheering and booing at this. Then the M. C. came on and announced the winner, the referee having ‘stopped the fight at the end of the third round to save Hertz further punishment.’
Catcalls and cheers, and Godfrey raised his hands, while his second put the robe over his shoulders. He hardly looked out of breath.
After that she watched another bout, but near the end of it the big man with the bent nose came behind her and breathed beer on her with the news that Godfrey was waiting outside in the hall.
She slid out and there he was – hair still wet from a shower – in a smart brown leather jacket and a white collar and a maroon tie over a striped silk shirt, and sand-coloured tight line trousers. He took her by the arm – that hard hand again – and again she felt a twinge of disappointment at his smallness, when he had seemed quite big in the ring. Walking to the car he explained how mad he was about the fight. ‘ Ref stopped it when it was all wrapped up. Next round I’d have thrown the whole book at Hertz. Just ready, he was, to be sewn up.’
‘What does it matter?’ she said. ‘If you win, you win. It counts just the same, doesn’t it?’
He handed her in and then went round and slid in beside her. ‘You don’t get it, Oyster. Boxing’s not like needlework. It’s like bull-fighting. You weigh up a man in the first round, see what he’s made of, sum him up, if you’re smart you plan for the next rounds, see. Then you get to work on him like you’ve planned, and when he’s weakened, he’s ready for the kill.’ Godfrey put his hand palm upwards on the steering wheel and slowly clenched it. ‘But just then a lily-livered ref steps in and says, oh dear me no, he’s had quite enough and stops the fight just when you’re getting ready to put him away. Refs, they ruin your life!’
‘But couldn’t you have hit him more in the third round instead of dancing around him?’
‘Yes, yes, yes, yes, but it would have been the end of the round! I wanted another three whole minutes before I laid him out for keeps!’
Pearl shivered. He patted her hand. ‘Now, come on now, didn’t it give you a lift deep down? Didn’t it turn you on?’
‘Yes. Oh, yes. But it’s a bit brutal, isn’t it. I mean …’
‘Life is brutal. I’m brutal. So what?’ He dabbed at his lip. ‘ Is it swelling? Jees, I’m out of condition. I only did a week’s training for this one. But mind, I run a lot. Every morning you see me padding it round the squares.’
They went to an expensive restaurant in Chelsea, a better one than Pearl had been in before. She drank a glass of wine but he would only have Coca-Cola. He ate badly and while he ate his mop of black hair slowly dried and seemed to rise into a comb over his forehead of its own vitality. His handsome dark eyes were always admiring, and something more. She got a tingling feeling in her spine. When they had finished he pulled a crumpled wad of notes out of his pocket and signalled the moustached waiter to bring the bill. It was nearly six pounds, and he gave the waiter a pound tip.
‘Do you fight often?’ she asked.
‘Not like I want to. That’s my crummy manager’s fault: if he got around a bit more. Sometimes I do sparring as well; mind, punching up with a top notcher you learn things, but you only get two quid a round; it’s not cushy.’
‘But tonight.’ She pointed at the roll of crumpled notes he was stuffing in his back pocket. ‘Is that what you earned tonight?’
‘What? This? Yes. Fifty quid. It’s not bad for fifteen minutes, is it? Of course, there’s the real money higher up.’
She frowned her perplexity. ‘But you must fight quite often. Or else, how can you afford such a super car?’
He laughed that gasping, breath-escaping laugh. ‘Shall we go?’
‘Yes, yes, of course.’
They went out to the car.
‘Home now?’
‘Yes, please.’
It was a mild muggy night but she snuggled back pleasantly into the luxury interior.
‘Do you have some other job as well?’ she asked.
‘You got the idea. Bright girl.’
He switched on the light and twisted the mirror to look at himself. ‘ It is swelling a bit. Nothing else though, is there, wouldn’t know I’d been in a ring, would you. That’s the way of it: the real smart lads never even get marked.’
‘What else do you do, Godfrey?’
‘What’ll you give me if I tell you?’
‘Oh, that’s an old game.’
‘No worse for being old, is it?’
‘Is this your car?’ she asked. ‘ You know, I mean …’
‘What’s the odds if it wasn’t? I got it quite legit. It’s mine to use when I want to. Little God’s honour.’
‘Of course,’ she said quickly. ‘Sorry I asked. It’s not my business.’
‘Could be, Oyster. Leather pushing’s what I like doing and I promise you I’m on the up and up. Soon as I get a break I’ll be in the big money. A man can make fifteen, twenty thousand in no time. Since I saw you last Saturday I thought about you a lot.’
‘But you must be in the big money now in something. The way you dress, the way you spend …’
He said: ‘ I tell you I think a lot about you. That mean anything? How’d you like to be my regular girl?’
She opened the cubby hole, just for something to do, but the cigarettes weren’t there. ‘I’m not sure I want to be anyone’s regular girl yet.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Nearly twenty.’
‘I’m twenty-two. Why not? I mean, why don’t you want to be anybody’s regular girl?’
‘It’s just – well, it’s just the way I feel.’
‘Want a cigarette?’
‘I have one in my bag, thanks.’
‘You’re a bit special for me, Oyster. I could do things for you.’
She managed to get the cigar lighter to work. It glowed a red end and she tasted the cigarette smoke.
‘How about meeting next week?’
‘I’m going ski-ing.’
He blew out a breath of disgust. ‘Stone me. Going with that Ned McCrea, I suppose.’
‘No, I’m going with Hazel and Chris. We’re in a party.’
‘When you come back?’
‘Yes … Yes, thanks, I’d like to. But – you’re a mystery man.’
He sighed in resignation, switched off the light, drove away. They wandered for fifteen or twenty minutes through the lighted car-choked suburbs of south London. He drove in fits and starts, would overtake a bunch of cars and bully his way to the front, provoking headlamp flashings of protest, then dawdle along a piece of road as if he were killing time or did not know the way. All evening he had been more tensed up than at their first meeting; this tenseness had not evaporated with the fight. He was still a coiled spring, impressive, dangerous.
‘Mystery man,’ he said, ten minutes after she had used the phrase, as if it had been rankling all the time. ‘What’s the mystery except you don’t know where all the folding comes from? Typical woman. Don’t be a typical woman.’
‘Sorry.’
‘You’re not typical. You’re the tops. See? What d’you want to know that’ll make you happy?’
‘Nothing. Honestly. It doesn’t matter. I only thought you lived from boxing or something like that.’
‘Who does? Maybe the first two in any ranking list. The rest … well, the rest work part time. Anything wrong with that?’
‘No, nothing. Absolutely nothing.’
‘I’m not a jewel thief, if that’s what’s worrying you. Wish I was.’
‘Nothing’s worrying me, Godfrey.’ But that sort of thought had occurred to her.
They drove on a long way in silence.
‘I could do things with you as well,’ he said. ‘As well as for you. With you, see.’
They were going across some open country, almost the first country they had found.
‘What time is it?’
‘Half ten.’
‘Where are we?’
‘Near Keston. You’re nearly home. You don’t trust me far, do you?’
Angell, Pearl and Little God Page 6