Fearless

by Jessie Keane

  She knew Josh hated the fuss and would have been happier with a simple register office do, but all the graft was done now.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ said Claire, eyeing herself in the full-length mirror. Soon, she and Josh would be man and wife. She couldn’t wait.

  Her big day was coming at last.

  Then her smile faded. Since that scrap with Shauna, she’d been troubled by dark dreams – almost like premonitions. Maybe she did have the Sight, just a bit. She hoped not. Because the dreams all seemed to involve horror and pain, and finding her dear old dog Blue dead.

  ‘You OK, lovey?’ asked Eva, watching Claire’s face.

  ‘Fine!’ It was nothing. They were just silly dreams. Nothing more.

  Josh had the new van on order and everyone had cleared some space on the site ready for its arrival, so that was sorted too. Claire was so happy she felt she was going to burst.

  Later on, she met up with Josh on the steps of her folks’ trailer. Night was drawing in, and Pally had set a cheery fire going in the middle of the clearing. By the light of that and the tilley lamps, Josh thought that Claire looked lovelier than ever. Blue was tucked in under the trailer steps, on guard, and the stars were bright in the heavens.

  ‘Not long to go now ’til the wedding,’ said Josh, kissing her.

  ‘I love you, Josh.’

  ‘I know. I love you too.’

  The kiss deepened, grew passionate. Claire pulled away, smiling. ‘Not until the wedding, though. We agreed.’

  ‘Christ, you’re a hard taskmaster,’ said Josh, but he was smiling too. He could wait. He’d found the perfect girl; he wasn’t going to spoil things by rushing at her. He hated all this bloody wedding claptrap, but it was her day, so he was going along with it. His smile faded. He had to say this now. ‘You know the fight, on Saturday?’

  Claire’s eyes grew serious as they gazed into his. ‘Yeah. I know.’

  ‘Matty O’Connor. That man’s a legend,’ said Josh.

  And not long after that, they’d be married. Ever since she’d got wind of the upcoming fight, she’d had nightmare visions of Josh being carried up the aisle to her on a blood-soaked stretcher. Josh never won. She couldn’t figure it out, but it was a fact. He always lost. So how the hell could he stand against a beast like Matty?

  ‘He’s the champion,’ said Claire. ‘I know that. The king of the fighters.’

  ‘Well then?’

  ‘Well . . . what?’ She felt her stomach clench with dread. Knew what was coming.

  ‘I’d like you to be there, ringside. I know you’ve never been before, but this is going to be different. And it’s time you were there, supporting me, or what will everyone think?’

  Claire looked troubled. ‘I don’t care what anyone thinks, Josh. I just don’t want to see you getting hit, that’s all. And how the hell can it be different?’

  ‘Claire . . .’ Josh stood up, paced around a bit.

  ‘No, Josh. It can’t be, can it? You’re fooling yourself. And against Matty? It’s time someone spoke some sense around here. He’ll knock you to hell and you know it.’

  ‘No, he won’t.’

  Matty was a huge raging bull of a man, a cousin of the Cleaver family, and there were rumours that he’d actually killed a man in the bare-knuckle ring with his ferocious right hook. The community had hushed it up, seen the widow right, made sure the muskras – the police – were none the wiser. But to Claire it was terrifying to think of it.

  Christ, she hated the very idea of Josh coming up against that brute. She was so scared for him. After a fight like that, maybe he wouldn’t make it up the aisle at all. Maybe he’d be dead.

  ‘How is this time going to be different? How can it be?’ she asked, her eyes filling with tears.

  Josh put his arm around her shoulders.

  ‘You don’t know the fight game, do you,’ he sighed. ‘Listen. Here’s what’s been happening. I’ve been throwing fights because Cloudy’s told me to.’

  ‘Throwing . . . ?’

  ‘Losing them. Deliberately. People have been betting on me to lose.’

  Claire stared at Josh.

  ‘I get paid well. So long as I lose.’

  ‘So . . .’

  ‘I’m sick of it. This time I’m not losing. I’m going in there to win.’

  ‘But these people who are betting – do they still expect you to lose?’

  ‘Who gives a shit? I’ve had it with the whole thing. I’m kicking Cloudy into touch and I’m winning, and then we’ll see who’s king of the gypsy fighters.’

  ‘Won’t there be trouble?’

  ‘There might be. Who bloody cares? But this once, I need you there.’

  ‘Oh Christ,’ moaned Claire.

  ‘Please.’

  ‘All right. I’ll be there.’

  But as soon as she’d said it, she wished she could snatch the words back. The thought of the fight dimmed the pleasure of the upcoming wedding festivities and wearing that fantastic dress, being queen for the day.

  I’ll just have to get through it, she thought. Grit my teeth and do it.

  There was nothing else she could do. She kissed Josh goodnight and went back into the trailer. Neither she nor Josh saw Shauna loitering near the end of the van. Blue did. He crouched ready to pounce, hackles rising, lips pulled back in a snarl. But Shauna vanished into the shadows and was gone.

  6

  It was the night of the big fight. Matty O’Connor, the long-standing legend, against Josh Flynn, an upstart youngster who lost far more often than he won. Everyone had come to see it, because Matty always drew a crowd. No one thought it would be a decent contest, but what the hell, this was Matty O’Connor. Everyone knew he would see Josh off in the first round.

  The crowd inside the barn was going crazy, cheering ‘MATTY, MATTY, MATTY!’ over and over again until Shauna Everett felt that her head was going to burst wide open with the noise of it.

  Thirty-five-year-old Matty O’Connor, who had been the all-round reigning bare-knuckle boxing champ for five years, the undisputed king of all he surveyed, was – as predicted – hammering the crap out of young Josh Flynn, Claire Milo’s fiancé, in the makeshift ring.

  It wasn’t anything fancy, this ring; the corners were marked out with gas bottles and they’d strung lengths of rope between them so that it looked right, even if they were fighting on a dirt floor. Spectators were standing on hay bales, and lights had been slung up on extension leads that trailed out from the farmer’s house to this big oak barn.

  The heat inside the barn tonight was nearly unbearable. This summer the sun – ‘Phoebe’, Claire’s mum called it – had burned down on the country without end, wilting plants and trees, drying streams to nothing, yellowing the grass. There seemed to be no relief anywhere from the heat.

  ‘MATTY!’ everyone around Shauna was bellowing.

  Fuck Matty, she thought.

  Shauna Everett’s eyes were glued to Josh. She still couldn’t believe a man who looked like him could be intending to chuck his life away on Claire Milo. She, Shauna, was the woman he deserved, not that gutless little blonde cow. Shauna could see Claire standing across the ring with her sister, Trace. Claire was white-faced and cowering as Matty and Josh fought. Shauna could see how sick Claire was feeling. Whereas Shauna herself felt quite turned on by it all, quite excited. Who wouldn’t be, watching Josh? He was gorgeous – a real hunk of a man.

  Win, Josh! Come on then, win! she thought, willing him to do it.

  She’d passed word along to the Cleavers of Josh and Claire’s little chat. The boys were pissed off, but forewarned was forearmed so they wouldn’t make a loss on it. They thought it was unlikely that anyone could stand against Matty, anyway.

  But Shauna wondered. If Josh did win – by some miracle – then things would change for him. Wild men and suicide fighters would seek him out, because he would be king of the gypsies, the strongest, the toughest man going. Pro boxers would fight him, too, and that was where the
money was; if he was clever, he could be made for life.

  Shauna didn’t think Josh was that clever. His impending marriage to Claire, for instance – what the fuck was that all about? She knew Josh and Claire had been together as kids, but for God’s sake! Claire was not a woman whose stature would complement Josh. And that fucker Cloudy, that so-called ‘manager’ of his. She knew that Cloudy had been – mostly at the Cleavers’ instigation – setting Josh up for the past few years to always be the fall guy.

  But big handsome Josh himself had impressed her when she’d listened in the other night. He was determined to win this time and make a name for himself. She didn’t see why he couldn’t, if he set his mind to it. He was as fit as a butcher’s dog and he was a southpaw, a leftie, and that made him difficult to fight. Yes, Josh had possibilities.

  Possibilities interested Shauna. Her own family were travellers from way back, just like Josh’s and Claire’s. Now they were settled, but it was in the blood, what they were. You couldn’t escape it, everyone said that and it annoyed the hell out of her. Shauna wanted to try and make the break from this life. She wanted to aim big, to reach the top or die trying. No measly two-up-two-down in Where-the-Fuck would ever do for her. That wasn’t enough. She wanted it all: a massive house, a fancy car, holidays in Mustique like Princess Margaret took. And a boat moored up somewhere, a proper gin palace with two fucking great outboards, not one of those stick-and-hankie sailboats. She wanted power, she wanted speed. And she was going to get it. Tonight, things were going to change. She’d already made sure of that.

  The crowd were shouting louder and louder as punch upon punch landed on Josh. The heat and the bloodlust and the stench of sweat was almost choking in here.

  ‘MATTY! MATTY! MATTY!’ they roared.

  ‘Come on, Josh! Hit him back!’ yelled Shauna. He was supposed to win, wasn’t he?

  Josh was faltering on his feet, shaking his head. There was blood coming from a cut on his brow, and his knuckles were red. Matty closed in.

  Fuck, thought Shauna. He was fading.

  ‘COME ON, JOSH!’ she screamed.

  7

  Blood spattered Claire Milo’s face and she winced with revulsion and looked away. Fuck this for a game. She was never, ever going to come ringside again. She vowed that on her mother Eva’s life. She heard punch after sickening punch landing on flesh, like someone pounding a piece of meat. She couldn’t watch; she had to keep her eyes down. All around her, the crowd roared its encouragement, even her dad was shouting like a lunatic, but she seemed to be on an island, removed from it all.

  ‘Look, Claire, look!’ screamed her sister, nudging her hard in the ribs.

  Claire raised her eyes and forced herself to look.

  Inside the ring, Matty and Josh were still knocking lumps off each other. They were both stripped to the waist, drenched in sweat and soaked with blood, their own and each other’s. Josh was tall and muscular but he looked like a no-hoper beside the champ; Matty was squat, solid as an oak door, his red hair plastered to his head as he moved quickly around the ring with Josh dodging blow after punishing blow. Josh was kidding himself, she could see that now. Matty would win. Matty was a legend, he always won.

  ‘Oh shit,’ moaned Claire, thinking that she was making an awful, awful mistake.

  Nanny Irene said she was. Nanny Irene had the Sight; she’d predicted all sorts, deaths and births and all manner of shit. She had it, in spades. Mum had it too, she’d seen Grandad’s death in a dream. Claire was so fucking glad she didn’t have it: the Sight was a curse.

  When Claire had said she was going to marry Josh, Nanny Irene had straightaway insisted on a full reading. Nanny was almost the last of the gypsy wise women, regularly prescribing a Traveller’s Joy infusion for rheumatics, henbane for gallstones, belladonna and warty caps for other ailments. She still bound open wounds with cobwebs, and never left a single scar.

  The old woman had got out the tarot cards, dimmed the lights. She told Claire to shuffle the pack, then she had stared with her bootblack eyes at her granddaughter. They’d been sitting at the table inside Nanny’s bow-top wagon, which was parked up behind Mum and Dad’s big trailer.

  ‘Pain, that’s what I see,’ Nanny Irene had said, turning over cards, shaking her grey head. ‘Pain and suffering, girl, you mark my words. Don’t do it.’

  Now, almost drowned out by the baying crowds though they were, Nanny Irene’s words clanged around in Claire’s head like death bells. Her mum and dad had laughed it off, of course. But standing ringside, watching the man she was about to marry getting himself beaten in the ring despite all his assurances to the contrary, she could see that Nanny Irene was right. She was marrying a bare-knuckle fighter from a long line of them. This would be her life now, if she went through with the wedding. A life of pain and suffering.

  Ah God, the wedding.

  It should all be so perfect.

  But it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. She could see that now. This was what she had to look forward to. A lifetime of living with crippling anxiety every time he stepped into the ring, and then bathing his wounds after fights, or shipping him off to hospital if it was really bad.

  ‘Come on, our Josh!’ shouted Sam, Josh’s mate who was in his corner, acting as his second. ‘Finish him!’

  Claire’s attention returned to the fight and she cringed with revulsion. This was the way Josh earned a crust, the way his dad had, and his grandfather too. Since way back, the Flynns had been doing this, setting up illicit matches in farmers’ barns and at horse fairs and funfairs. This was the way Romanies settled their differences, too; they fought. They didn’t call the muskras or whine to the courts. They went head to head, bare-knuckle, and the winner won the argument.

  Pikeys, the gorgis or house-dwellers called them.

  But really they were the fearless ones, the people who lived life on their own terms and fuck what the rest of society said about them. Claire wished she was fearless, like Josh. Like that bitch Shauna was too. But she knew she wasn’t.

  ‘Come the fuck on, break!’ shouted the man in the white blood-spattered shirt and red braces who was trying to referee this whole damned thing and mostly failing.

  Claire looked around the crowds. She saw Cloudy there; he styled himself Josh’s ‘manager’, and was shouting louder than anyone. He was going to be furious if Josh did win. But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Then her eyes slipped onward and she saw dark-haired, flashing-eyed Shauna Everett standing in among the jostling throng of people, grinning straight at her. Smirking at her. Mocking her.

  Fucking Shauna.

  Claire forced herself to drag her eyes away from Shauna’s. She looked on, around the heaving, screaming crowds. The Cleavers were in, mob-handed. There was Bill, the father, who was shorter than his three sons but still huge, broad as an ox. Then Ciaran, the eldest boy, with that distinctive milk-white blind eye. Rowan the middle son, solidly fat and grinning as if at some private joke; and Jeb the youngest, who with his black hair and beard almost verged on handsome. Catching her eye, he winked at her. Claire looked away with a shudder.

  Whenever she passed the Cleaver place – and mostly she tried not to – Claire thought that it looked sinister, like an indication of the type of people living there. No one ever saw the boys’ mother. Rumour was she’d left, run off years ago, and good luck to her.

  Then Claire’s eyes drifted back to the ring and she got a shock.

  Matty was sagging against Josh, clinging up close so that Josh couldn’t punch. Josh shoved him back, away, and the crowd roared as Josh’s left fist smacked hard into Matty’s jaw. Matty reeled and then lurched back and swung a haymaker at Josh.

  The crowd went crazy. Josh’s mate Sam looked like his head was going to come off his shoulders; his face was beetroot-red as he yelled himself hoarse, urging Josh to finish him.

  Josh ducked. Matty charged in. Claire looked away again.

  This was the first time she’d been ringside, and it would be the last. She
was revolted, horrified, and filled with a fear so gripping that it churned her stomach and made her bowels clench. She was either going to mess herself or throw up, she didn’t know which.

  ‘He’s down, he’s down!’ screamed Trace, elbowing Claire in the ribs.

  Oh Christ, oh no, not Josh . . .

  Claire steeled herself to look. She couldn’t bear it, but she had to. She looked . . . and there he was, on the ground.

  Matty.

  Matty was down, not Josh. Josh stood over him, sweating, bloody, weaving on his feet, panting hard.

  ‘He’s won, he’s won it!’ yelled Trace.

  The man in the red braces counted down from ten and then he lifted Josh’s arm into the air. A thunderous roar went up. Sam ran in and lifted Josh clean off his feet in triumph, a grin as wide as a mile on his face.

  ‘You bastard, you done it, you done it!’ he was shouting over and over again.

  Someone dashed in and threw a bucket of water on to Matty, who stirred groggily but didn’t get up.

  ‘The winner!’ shouted the man with the braces, yanking Josh’s arm skywards again.

  All around Claire, people were now shouting fix, booing.

  ‘I lost a fucking monkey on this thing,’ growled a man by her ear.

  Josh stood there, exhausted. His ‘manager’ Cloudy was forcing a smile on to his face but not meaning it. Claire saw Shauna Everett break away from her place near the Cleaver lot. Jeb Cleaver was watching her boot-faced as she went shoving her way through the crowds. Shauna ran over to messy, sweaty, bloodstained Josh. She shoved Sam aside and planted a congratulatory kiss on Josh’s cheek.

  That cow.

  Shrugging off Trace’s clinging hands, Claire went in the other direction, fought her way out, through the crowds and out of the barn door and into the superheated air of the night. This summer had shaped up hotter than the devil’s handshake. The tarmac had bubbled up on the roads and people were having to queue at standpipes for water. Claire breathed in hard, feeling the air almost scorching her lungs. Above her, a million stars studded the heavens and she stared up at them, tears running down her face. She felt but did not see people surging past her and away.