‘A paper, is it?’
‘Right. Well, the Boxing News publishes ratings. Your lad appeared in them for the first time this week, because he beat Goodfellow. He’s rated seventh in British featherweights and Goodfellow is now rated eighth. Well, Jude Davis’s next job is to get him matched with the next above him – or the next one above that. That’s the sort of match he’ll expect – and everyone else will expect him to have – next. Even if Davis could get a matchmaker to line him up against Boy Anderson, who rates top in England, I doubt if Anderson could be persuaded to sign! And if they did fight, and your lad got badly beaten – which isn’t such a foregone conclusion after his bout with Goodfellow – it would be a bad mark against Davis, who would be blamed for spoiling a good fighter by pushing him on too fast.’
Silence fell. Angell still tapped his teeth. ‘ It could spoil him, such a match?’
‘Oh, it does indeed sometimes. Even a hard slogging fight can take something out of a fighter that he never gets back. It doesn’t end his career, but he starts going downhill instead of going up … It’s a question of degree, of course. Being beaten a few times in a normal way does no one any harm. Maybe it even helps if it cures a swelled head … Goodfellow, for instance, came to no physical harm for being beaten by Brown. But it did underline his lack of stamina. What a wonderful boxer! If he only had stamina he’d be world champion in eighteen months …’
Angell was not interested in Goodfellow. ‘ Our client instructs us.’ He put his hand on two volumes of the Law Reports for 1936, seeking extra authority. ‘He instructs us. We only interpret his instructions.’
Vincent Birman lit a cigarette. ‘Well, I can try. But I could only try by the direct approach and by talking big money. A thousand in cash, say.’
‘As much as that? …’ Angell rubbed startled fingers. ‘Oh, I don’t think that. It could surely … be done for much less.’
‘Have you your client’s sanction to talk in those terms?’
‘No, no. Impossible! It’s a monstrous cost.’
‘It’s a monstrous thing you’re asking. Frankly with less than a thousand to offer I don’t think I’m prepared to make the approach.’
The telephone buzzed. Angell picked it up and after a moment snapped: ‘Tell him I’ll ring him back,’ and slammed down the receiver. ‘Well?’
‘Well, you heard what I said, old man.’
‘Could you not try someone higher up?’
‘You’d be wasting your time. Who is there? Eli Margam? He wouldn’t raise a finger. Boxing has its crooks but they’re not crooks in this way.’
Silence fell. It was the more noticeable for Angell’s sudden violence over the telephone.
‘You’ll of course exercise every discretion,’ he said. ‘This firm, the name of this firm, mustn’t be mentioned.’
‘D’you think you’d like to sleep on this for a day or two more?’ Birman flicked ash off his MCC tie. ‘Maybe some other idea …’
Angell shifted his legs where his trousers were tight. ‘The thing – it’s been looked at all round. For more than a week. My client is not in a, well, a charitable frame of mind. Of course if you’re unable to do anything …’
‘It wouldn’t be sense to go with a smaller offer.’
‘If you’re unable to do anything I shall tell him so and that will finish it. His other business – extensive – we might lose it. But, well. If you see Davis, see what his reaction is. If it is entirely negative that will end it.’
Jude Davis said: ‘Look, Mr Birman, if that’s your name, I suppose you know that by rights I should have you thrown out of this office.’
Birman’s bright blue eyes were slightly bloodshot, like stained innocence. ‘Much what I’ve been thinking myself. But few things go by rights these days, Mr Davis. Don’t be offended, please. Y’see I’m only the go-between and I put a proposition to you that was put to me. Frankly I only saw this lad box for the first time at the N.S.C. last week and I don’t know how you rate him. It’s really whether you rate him worth a thousand pounds.’
‘It’s also how I rate my licence with the British Boxing Board of Control.’
‘Well, I don’t know. Is it? Of course, if it ever came out. But it never could. Could it? You’re Brown’s manager. You match him as best you can. If you match him too high it’s an error of judgment. How good is he, by the way?’
‘What’s it to you?’
‘Well, I only asked.’
Jude Davis scowled. ‘He enjoys fighting. He’s a natural. May go a long way.’
‘So will a thousand pounds.’
‘The door’s behind you, Mr Birman.’
‘You think he may go a long way but you won’t back your fancy, is that it?’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Suppose you could match him with Flodden. He’s number two, isn’t he? Flodden might knock your lad out in three rounds. But on the other hand he might not. That’s what I call backing one’s fancy. After all, if you take this offer you can’t guarantee that Brown will be beaten. You only guarantee to match him out of his class. I would call it easy money looked at that way.’
Jude Davis said wearily, ‘Look, Mr Birman do me a favour and go away. I’m being very patient with you. I’m a manager. Does that mean anything to you? I look after my boys and Brown is one of them – now, thanks to you or your client. What’s got into him, your client? You acting for a lunatic?’
‘No, just someone who’s changed his mind and has money to waste.’
‘Well, tell him to go waste it somewhere else. Tell him to go jump in the river. What sort of a reputation does he think I have, eh! What sort? Who was it coached Llewellyn Thomas all the way from a butcher’s shop to European Light Heavy-weight Champion? D’you think I did that by selling him down the line to the first crooked punter who came along? And I’ve got a good group of boys now. Tom Bushey is the best spade in England: in two years he’ll be challenging for the title. Tabard’s another. Little God might be a third. I don’t know yet. I don’t know.’
‘I thought the other night he was more a fighter than a boxer.’
‘He’s a natural fighter but he boxes too. He’s uppish and he’s got too much spunk, but if I bring him on right a thousand pounds may be nothing to what he’ll earn me. What sort of a manager d’you suppose I am to arrange that he shall be hammered by one of the top boys?’
‘So you think he might be British champion?’
‘I think he just might be British champion. It depends how he develops, whether he’s quick enough and ready enough to learn.’
‘My friend might go up to two thousand pounds.’
‘What’s got into him? He ought to be certified. Why this vendetta? You’re a man of the world, Birman,’ Davis said petulantly. ‘ Maybe you know some of the snakes wriggling in the undergrowth. For two thousand pounds you don’t need to arrange a hammering in the ring. For that kind of money you can hire a couple of thugs from Birmingham or Liverpool who’ll come down and knock Brown off and drop his body in the river. You don’t want me to tell you that.’
‘I know. It just happens that my friend is a respectable citizen and—’
‘Respectable?’
‘Very, but losing out … Anyway, dear boy, he’s not looking for that sort of blood. He’s a law-abiding citizen, too cautious to step far off the track but wanting to see Brown defeated for personal reasons of his own.’
Jude Davis twisted with his little finger at the wax in his ear. ‘He’d not make anything out of this, you know, however it was planned. However you fixed it, the other fellow would be so much the favourite that you wouldn’t get any odds at all. He’d never get back two thousand pounds, not in this world. He needs to go to a skullscraper.’
Birman rubbed his hand along the threadbare arm of the chair. He detected the first weakening of Jude Davis’s completely adamant attitude. A move from hostility to curiosity, the way temptation comes.
‘Shall I leave the suggestion with you f
or a day or two?’
‘You can leave it where you want – put it where you want.’
‘Really it’s a question of rationalizing it, Mr Davis, isn’t it? Look at it from my point of view. I think my friend is nuts wanting to spend his money this way. But it’s his money and why should I refuse to let him spend it? Why should you?’
‘Because I have to do a lot more for it.’
‘Well you get paid a lot more for it.’
Their eyes met and Jude Davis shook his head. ‘It certainly takes all sorts.’
‘Let me give you my card,’ said Birman.
‘Drop it in the waste-paper basket.’
‘No, no, certainly not.’ Birman got up, and the unshaded light glinted on his hairless head as if it had a laminated cover. ‘I’ll leave it here. Think it over. Just think it over, Mr Davis. It’s a big sum. You can’t lose.’
‘Brown can,’ said Davis.
‘Oh yes, that’s the point, isn’t it. Brown can. But what can he lose? A single fight? I’ve no doubt my friend would like to see him really punched up, but who is to say it would happen? No one can predict exactly what is going to take place in any ring once the gong goes. What are good referees for but to stop a contest when one boy is getting the worst of it, before he gets too badly hurt. My friend is in no position to stipulate what has to happen. He can only pay for a set of circumstances and then watch them work out. You would get well paid for providing the circumstances, that’s all. If they don’t work out as he wants them to he can only complain. If he complains you don’t have to listen.’
Jude Davis took off his gold-rimmed glasses. ‘ Whose side are you on Birman?’
‘Nobody’s, my dear chap. I only do the job of work that is put before me.’
‘I’m in the ratings now,’ Godfrey said, ‘that means something. It means I’m on the ladder! It means I’m one of the named ones. One of the feathers in this country! I’d have been kicking my heels for another year with Rob Robins and nothing like this. I’m on the way up, Oyster. Don’t make no mistake.’
‘Godfrey,’ she said. ‘Godfrey, I don’t think we can go on meeting like this.’
‘What? Why not?’
‘It’s not safe. I’m scared.’
‘Scared of Wilfred? Oh, come off it!’
‘No, it’s true. You think he’s nothing to be afraid of and maybe he isn’t, physically. But I’m his wife. He’s my husband. I don’t want him to find out, at least not yet, not this way. I couldn’t bear it if he came back for something one afternoon and found us. I hate the feeling of betraying him. All the time. Truly.’
‘But you don’t hate being with me.’
‘Of course I don’t hate it. Not now. I don’t know what’s happened to me. Not now. You ought to know …’
‘Yes, I know. I know. So that’s the important thing, isn’t it?’
‘Well, yes. But is there nothing – no other place safer than this? You did say about taking a room somewhere.’
‘I been thinking.’ Godfrey ran a hand restlessly all over his head so that when it was done his hair stood up like the crest of a cockatoo. ‘How would it be if you came round to our place?’
‘What, Wilton Crescent? Lady Vosper is there.’
‘I know that. As if I didn’t know that. But she never gets out of bed now. Not except to go to the bathroom. We’d be safe enough in my room. She’s never been in there in six months.’
‘I couldn’t! I couldn’t begin to relax, to enjoy anything.’
‘I’d make you relax. You know that.’
‘No. Not ever. Even if I could, I wouldn’t. It would be far worse even than here. I don’t know how you can suggest it!’
‘O.K., O. K., it was just a thought. Forget it. Not to worry.’
‘What’s the time?’
‘Only just four. There’s plenty of time. Slip that pillow from under your head.’
Presently the telephone began to ring in the next room. They lay in silence while it went on and on. Pearl made a movement to get up but he gripped her and held her down.
‘You’re hurting me.’
‘Relax. You went to the post at four. Remember? Pity you was out.’
‘You see what I mean,’ she said. ‘Now I’m all tensed up; I can’t go on like this.’
‘Well, we’re going on like this now.’
At half past four he got up to go, pulled back a curtain and peered at himself in the mirror. ‘My lip’s still swelled at the side. It’s taken a long time this time. Kissing doesn’t help, mind.’
She lifted herself on her elbow, stared at the young man she had thought she hated. Even now she could not understand. It was as if for months she had been shoring up a dam, patching the tiny leaks, dreading the menace on the other side. Now it had happened, she was swept away, sometimes swimming ecstatically, sometimes drowning.
‘Your next fight doesn’t have to be for a long time yet, does it?’
‘Nothing’s lined up, but I’ve got to keep in trim. I want one more fight this year. I’d like to meet Pat O’Hare. One fight before Christmas and three after, I’d like. That’d put me one off the top before next summer.’
‘D’you never think of being beaten, Godfrey? Doesn’t it – don’t you ever consider it at all?’
‘Oh, I could maybe have bad luck, slip at the wrong moment, or get a bad decision. But not else. I know I’m good, see. That makes all the difference.’
‘And the week we never saw each other – it was just because of your face that you didn’t come?’
‘Hey, hold on, what’s all this “ just because” of my face. I’m attached to my face. I got to take care of it. I don’t like it when it’s mussed up. And I don’t like you to see it either. Maybe you’d go cold on me. Maybe you’d start handing me off again. Like before.’
‘You know that won’t happen.’
He pulled on his jacket, zipped it up.
‘Godfrey. It can’t go on like this for ever, can it. Between us, I mean.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s too sordid. You coming to see me in the afternoons or when Wilfred’s away. Meeting at the movies. Hole in corner arrangements. You must see it can’t go on like this.’
‘You just said you didn’t want Wilfred to find out.’
‘I don’t, this way. I’d hate it. If he has to know then I want to tell him, not any other way. So that it could be a complete break. So that I could give him back his money, as much as I have left.’
‘What money?’
‘He made me a settlement when we married. Dad insisted on it.’
‘Good for him. How much?’
‘How much? It was £5,000. I’ve spent about a thousand of it – or nearly that.’
Godfrey came across and patted her cheek. ‘You’d be strictly birds to give him any of that back. Why, stone me, an old gent like that’s already had his money’s worth. You keep it, Oyster. Keep it for a rainy day.’
‘And us?’
‘Give it a bit of time. We’re all snarled up right now. Look, I’ve got Flora on my plate still. She’s had her chips – it’s only a question of time. But I’ve got to stay with her. As for me – I’m on the up and up. Give me another six months and who knows where I’ll be. Let’s float around like we are for the present, eh?’
‘Have you got to stay with her?’
He wrinkled his scarred eyebrow, observing his own expression in the mirror. ‘ When an old girl like that is dying, there’s always pickings to be had. Why should I push off now and leave it to her daughter or some toffee-nosed nurse?’
Pearl shivered. ‘I don’t want you to talk that way …’
‘Can’t please you anyhow, can I?’
‘Are you by any chance fond of her?’
‘God Almighty, haven’t you seen her?’
‘Yes. Yes, I have.’
‘She’s nearly old enough to be my grandmother, and she was no oil painting to begin. But she’s a poor old wreck now. Dead but won’t lie do
wn. So Little God stays on to see what he can get. I’m not pinching what don’t belong to me. I’m just staying around and seeing her off. When she’s gone maybe we can start thinking again, eh? How’s that? That please you?’
‘I never know,’ she said. ‘I never know if you mean what you say.’
‘Where the hell have you been, you bloody little twerp?’ Lady Vosper demanded.
‘Oh, flip off. You can’t have me hanging around your neck twenty-four hours a day. For crying out loud! Chauffeurs’ Union won’t allow it anyway. What’s wrong with you? What’s biting you?’
‘Twenty-four hours a day! You dirty little undersized jerk! I’ve not seen you since eight this morning. It’s five now! Nine blasted bloody hours! What d’you think you are, little Lord Fauntleroy parading up and down Piccadilly in a frock coat and spats? Jesus wept! You’re my chauffeur, my servant, you insolent conceited little runt! Nothing else! A paid employee, nothing else! You strut off like a bantam cock at eight in the morning, spend nine hours crowing on some stinking dung-hill and then come strutting back expecting welcome written on the mat! Well, this is the last time. I tell you, it’s the last time!’
‘Oh, go chase yourself! I’m not a flaming nurse-maid. What d’you want me to do, hold your hand all day long? I don’t owe you nothing. And that’s what you’ll get if you go on like this, nothing from me!’
‘It wouldn’t be any less than I’ve had! And you pretend you don’t owe me anything, when every last thing you stand up in has been bought by me over and above your wages. And you drive about in my car as if it belonged to you! Half the time you don’t bother to ask. You just take it. You’ve lived a soft comfortable life with me for upwards of eighteen months and nothing’s been denied you. Bloody nothing! And you know it. You’ve had a nice easy berth, but now because I’m dying you think you can throw your weight about just as you like! I’ll bet you’ve been off with some tart this afternoon! Some tart with a blonde rinse and three-inch heels and a roll of fat flopping over the top of her girdle. Some blowsy big-breasted bird-brained tart that you fancy you can prove you’re a man with …’
Angell, Pearl and Little God Page 27