by Glen Duncan
Then, at the beginning of his third year at St Aloysius, everything changed.
One Wednesday morning after mass Ross and twenty other boys, having most of them turned twelve years old, were lined up by the gymnasium’s weathered boxing ring. They’d all, in their first two PE years (limited to gymnastics, cricket, football, hockey, track and field), known this moment must come, had watched older pupils’ bouts, seen the burst noses, split lips, cracked teeth, black eyes, had accepted, some with hunger, some with dread, that legitimate masculinity, truth, life couldn’t really begin until they climbed between the ropes and let the ring show what they were made of.
When his turn came (paired with Tully, a thin but enrageable boy with a slight walleye) Ross stepped up with neither fear nor bravado. Until the moment his feet touched the canvas he was aware only of a strange, pleasurable tautening of his being, as if all the disparate flickering flames of his consciousness were drawing together into a single steady blaze. The damp heat and weight of the gloves felt familiar, though he’d never worn them before. Facing Tully, arms moving up into the guard position, he felt, suddenly, on the brink of an enormous, essential memory.
Then, at the command ‘Box!’ something extraordinary happened.
‘Bleddy hell, men, how did you do that?’ Gilbert wanted to know, having watched Ross knock down five opponents (the first three his own age, the fourth and fifth pulled from a group of fifteen-year-olds who were practising vaults at the other end of the gym) in as many rounds. The eldest Monroe boy, one of the vaulting group, had observed his brother’s performance with first astonishment, then creeping unease, lest he, Gilbert, be selected as Ross’s next victim. ‘I mean who the bleddy hell taught you to do that?’
Ross shrugged. The answer was: no one. Prodigious talent had sprung fully formed, like Athena from Zeus’s forehead, the minute he put the gloves on and climbed into the ring. His body knew what to do, that was all. Popping out his first three left jabs (each snapping Tully’s shocked head back on its neck) and stinging right cross (which floored Tully halfway through his hissed What the fu—) had been, as far as Ross was concerned, effortless. It was as if he had done it thousands of times before. The thought that he might get hit himself hadn’t entered his head, and in the contests that followed that day he took at most three or four blows.
Over the following weeks word of his impromptu masterclass spread through the school.
‘I’m telling you this, now, Monroe, because it’s the truth and as an educator I am in the service of the truth.’ This was Naughton, senior sports master, Rockballs Naughton, as he was known to the boys. His professional credentials were uncertain but under him the school had won the Catholic Cup (football; Ross had also distinguished himself on the soccer pitch as a suicidally committed centre half ) and the State Inter-Schools Cup (boxing) three years running. He was a tall, lean-muscled and incomprehensibly strong Britisher in his early forties, with faded nautical tattoos and a plump, nicotined moustache that looked too big for his face. See this? he would ask the terrified pupils, holding up his right fist. Most of the time this is flesh and blood and bone and nerves. When I hold a pen or stroke my cat, for example. (None of the boys liked this image of Rockballs stroking his cat, if such a creature even existed.) But when I throw it, when I really throw it at a fellow’s head in the ring because that fellow has had the effrontery, the impertinence, to come and fight me–to come and fight me, for God’s sake: what is he a mental defective?–then, then, this is not flesh and blood and bone and nerves. Then this is a lump of Cumbrian granite. Do you understand? Yes, sir. What is it? Cumbrian granite, sir. That’s right, you marionettes. Now, you, Wilson, and you, Tully, get in the ring. ‘I’m telling you, Monroe, you’ve got talent. Train hard, focus, you could fight for money. Go to America and get paid. Do you know how much they made on tickets when Dempsey fought Tunney the second time?’ Ross didn’t. ‘More than two million dollars,’ Rockballs said. ‘Think about it.’
Ross fought on. The ring was an arena of curious intimacy and beautiful mathematics: the molecular vividness of the other boy’s face just before your punch landed; the punch itself describing an arc that glowed like a suddenly visible detail of God’s original blueprint. Then the detonation, the bubble of stopped time like a glass ball surrounding you, silencing everything, leaving you perfected, angelic, stripped of need and desire, purely and absolutely yourself. He felt unfairly advantaged, as if he had come into an unearned inheritance. Gilbert’s question–‘How did you do that?’–remained unanswerable, at least by Ross. The ring–canvas-bounce, rosin scent, rope burn–was home; every step, duck and punch was casually inevitable. He found it difficult not to laugh, seeing the giant gaps in his opponents’ defences. At the same time he knew this was a grace period, the first rapturous statement of what he was: a fighter. God stamped the imprimatur of potential heavily at the outset so you wouldn’t be in any doubt. Then you must work to fulfil it. It would, he knew, get harder.
‘Your problem is focus, Monroe,’ Rockballs told him. ‘I know you. You want an easy life. You’re distracted by pleasure.’ This was true. Childhood as his mother’s favourite had left him lazily expectant of the world’s sensuous wealth. ‘Three things wreck a boxer: booze, gambling and skirt. Skirt, understand?’ Ross was fourteen. During cricket, of late, the thing had been to hit the ball over the wall, across the street, over the opposite wall and into the compound of St Joseph’s Convent School for Girls. Once every three or four overs bowler would give batsman the wink. The girls would be ready with their giggles and whispers and billets doux. Skirt. Ross understood. ‘But you focus,’ Rockballs said, ‘no booze, no gambling, skirt only when strictly necessary, and you can go anywhere. Olympics. England. America. You’re laughing. Retire at thirty-five and have all the sweet pussy you want. Don’t repeat that.’
Ross, by seventeen a confirmed Bantamweight, trained hard (but not as hard as he might), captained the boxing team in his final year, won all his bouts and carried the school to a record eighth consecutive victory in the Inters. When he left St Aloysius Rockballs gave him a frown and a handshake that was a single ferocious squeeze. ‘Focus, Monroe,’ he repeated. ‘Never forget. Focus.’
The bloodstone was not, as Ross had half expected it would be, presented to him when he finished school and went home to Bhusawal. He had passed his Senior Cambridge Certificate and made an Aloysian legend of himself in the ring. ‘A good lad, who has worked diligently and been a sporting credit to the school. He has a great boxing career ahead of him, if he wants it!’ The testimonial was recited with manifest pride by his father at dinner, but Beatrice was quiet, depressed, clipped with the servants, elaborately barely touching her food. Ross went to her later in her room, where she sat unpinning the coils of her thin grey bun. ‘What’s wrong, Mumma?’ he asked, putting his hand on her shoulder, shocked, rather, at its boniness; was she ill? It had never occurred to him that his parents would one day die; the thought sent an effervescence of excitement and panic through him. Beatrice’s eyes were moist, her mouth a quivering pout. She looked old; the skin of her broad-boned little face had loosened and begun to shrivel. For a few moments she said nothing. Then put her left hand up to cover his. Squeezed.
‘You grew up so fast, my son,’ she said. ‘To your mother it seems like only yesterday you were…you were just…’ She closed her eyes and bowed her head. A tear or two fell on to her blouse. Ross swallowed, shocked again, this time by the realization that while there was no doubt a kernel of sadness in her she was exaggerating it for her own gratification. Suddenly he saw she’d always been this way, genuine feelings wrapped in layers of ungenuine performance, saw too that his older siblings had all, in their own ways, made the same discovery and drawn away from her into privacy. Not very long ago he would have dropped to his knees and put his head in her lap. Now he felt the thrilling, cold power of disinterested analysis. This, presumably, was coming of age: even your mother was revealed as just another person, riddled with
flaws. He bent and gave the top of her skull a kiss, smelling the frail, waxy skin of her scalp. Beatrice, well aware of the discrepancy between this gesture and the one she wanted, sniffed, mightily, and wiped her nose with a hanky. ‘Next thing you know,’ she said, ‘you’ll be finding some girl and getting married.’
Ross forced a laugh. ‘Don’t be crazy,’ he said. ‘I’m going to fight. I’ve got no time for all that rubbish.’
Beatrice smiled and shook her head, as with torturous wisdom. ‘You say that, my son, but always the sword of sorrow pierces the mother’s heart. I know. I know how it is. They all leave. They must. It’s the way of the world.’
The bloodstone remained unmentioned.
Ross’s plan wasn’t a plan but the default for any educated Anglo-Indian boy: to follow in his father’s footsteps. Railways, Post and Telegraph Office, Civil Service, arenas in which His Majesty’s Government had found employees who were neither British nor Indian indispensible. Louis Archibald Monroe was a mail driver, therefore Ross went up to the GIPR driver training school in Bombay. Boxing was the big picture but the railways were a natural way in; the industry was obsessed with inter-divisional sport. A good fighter, cricketer, hockey-player or footballer could spend half his working year away on full salary in the annual tournaments. Ross had been too young (and not ready, not ready, you glistening pup, Rockballs had said) for the Berlin Games in ’36, and now there was a war on; but it wouldn’t last for ever. The Olympic Selection Committees (it had been made clear to him he could box for India; less clear whether he was–what? fair enough?–to box for Britain) had two reservoirs of talent to draw from: the military and the railways. Since Ross had no desire to spend his days having orders barked at him, the choice was no choice at all.
Or so he thought.
‘Driver training’ was a euphemism. All new candidates started as apprentice firemen, and Ross’s superior in his first weeks was Mr Goodrich, a fair-skinned chain-smoking Anglo-Indian in his late forties with oiled wavy hair and a permanent sneer on his moist, pockmarked face. All his actions, the rolling of a cigarette, the scratching of an eyebrow, the tapping of a pressure gauge, languidly expressed contempt.
‘Too bleddy slow, you fuckwit,’ he said, no matter Ross’s work rate with the shovel. ‘Speed you’re going you wouldn’t get a wheelbarrow moving.’
After the first few days Ross understood. His boxing prowess had reached Goodrich through the grapevine (courtesy of boastful Monroe senior, no doubt); therefore the Goodrich agenda was to provoke him into violence. Initially the insight enlarged Ross’s tolerance; he hates me, he thought, because he knows I’m better than him. He’s a bitter man whose life has disappointed him, abuses me because he’s weak and filled with self-loathing. There was comfort in it, a dim intimation of the Christly heights such understanding might allow one to scale. Less dim and considerably more satisfying was the knowledge that in keeping his temper he was driving Goodrich crazy, though Goodrich showed it only by wiping his hands very slowly or rolling a cigarette with particular meticulousness. ‘You’re a fucking weakling, Monroe. What are you?’
‘A fucking weakling, sir.’
It might have lasted had it not been for a simple accident. The night before it happened Ross and another trainee, Lenny O’Gorman, got drunk and in the small hours went idiotically to the training school’s gym to settle a slurred bet over who could bench-press the greater weight. Lenny left a loose clip on the end of the bar and at the third or fourth changeover a 15lb iron slipped free and crashed on to Ross’s left foot. Grog-anaesthetized, Ross hobbled back to the dorms, laughing, one arm over Lenny’s shoulder, but the following morning woke to nauseous pain. ‘If you’re walking on it it’s not broken,’ the doctor told him. ‘Most likely a chipped bone. You can go for an X-ray tomorrow if you want, but they won’t thank me for it. Up to you.’
Disgusted with the doctor and himself, Ross reported to Goodrich later that day. Goodrich looked hungover too. ‘Well, look who it is,’ he said. ‘So pleased you could drop by. Would you like to do any work today or shall we sit down and have bleddy tea and crumpets instead?’
As the afternoon wore on Ross felt his reservoir of tolerance emptying. He tried (surprised at his Christian willing and depth) to keep in mind the image of Christ staggering up the road to Calvary, flogged, spat on, buckling under the weight of the Cross; to, as Beatrice was always suggesting, offer up his suffering to God. But in Ross’s version Christ kept stopping in His tracks, turning and smashing the Cross into the nearest centurion’s head.
When the crisis came, it was a relief. Ross was exhausted. His wrecked foot throbbed. The engine’s heat was a soft, murderous bulk on him.
‘No no no no no no,’ Goodrich said, ‘the gauge on the left, you stupid sonofabitch.’ He’d never touched Ross, had known it would constitute a failure. But in that moment (curiously, Ross had an acute sense of some particular new misery in the instructor’s scheme of things, as if perhaps his wife had left him or he’d been cut out of a will) an occult mental line was crossed. Goodrich stepped up to his apprentice and gave him a demeaning knuckle-tap on the back of the head.
Which insult alone might have sufficed even if he hadn’t trodden on Ross’s bad foot.
When Beatrice tracked her son down two months later it was at the air force training base in Walton, just outside Lahore, a thousand miles north of where he should have been. He was in uniform, with a new severe haircut.
‘Always the favourite breaks the mother’s heart,’ Beatrice said, taking his hands in hers. ‘I deserve it, I know.’ They stood face to face in Reception. She was barely five feet tall. (Agnes’s green eyes were from her, as were the small, thin-lipped mouth and prominent brow. All the Monroe girls had inherited her broad face, high cheekbones and deep eye sockets; all of them, if they lost too much weight, were in danger of looking skullish.) Ross was surprised by how much his mother’s out-of-placeness here–Reception hung about with squadron photographs and Indian Air Force insignia, him shamefully in uniform–made him ache for home. A smell of burned engine oil came in through the open window. Visible beyond the window the concrete expanse where the recruits day in day out square-bashed, for Britain, for Democracy, for the War. (Oh aye, the Tommies ribbed them, we want all you black buggers fightin for freedom and democracy; just not your own.) Past that a half-mile of stony scrub dotted with banyan trees. Heat rippled the distance. At a desk across the room a British drill sergeant stood scrutinizing something on a clipboard while the Indian clerk stutteringly typed.
‘God punishes a mother for loving one child more than the rest,’ Beatrice said, delighted. ‘Oh, my son, how could you do a thing like that? Your father I could understand because of the violent streak, don’t I know. But you…’ Another version of the lowered mouth-corners, this time with eyes looking down and head shaking slowly no, no, no. He was crucifying her. He had Run Away And Joined The Forces. She was rosy with pleasure.
To buy time Ross went across to the canteen and returned with two cups of tea and a couple of buttered puris.
‘Tell me how you came to do such a thing?’
‘Mumma, I lost my temper. How did you know I was here?’
‘The letter, my son, the letter. Merciful God guides our hands.’ Beatrice closed her eyes, beatified: her will to martyrdom had been given this legitimacy; her favourite son had broken her heart. For this she had come hundreds of miles. ‘Tell me from the beginning,’ she said. ‘Come, sit next to me. Are these cups even clean my God? How your mother’s legs are paining after so long on the train. I had only one scrambled egg and toast but it wasn’t good. Now, tell me what happened.’
So, though manifestly she knew already, he told her. Beatrice nodded, slowly, with closed eyes and widened nostrils: Goodrich: The Villain. More deep satisfaction. Son and thereby mother had been brutalized by the forces of evil, driven to extremis, desperate flight, intrigue that had brought them back into precarious cahoots. The Beatrice universe was as it should be.
‘Anyway, I snapped,’ Ross said. ‘I don’t know why that day of all days’–he’d left out the boozing, the dropped weight, the hangover, the injured foot–‘but that was the moment. He gave me a tap on my head, you know, not a proper hit or anything but he shouldn’t have done it. My blood boiled and I just went for the bugger.’
‘How many times haven’t I told your father?’ Beatrice said. ‘Don’t tap on the head. It’s humiliating to a child.’
‘Anyway, I slogged him,’ Ross said; he was used to her dragging the old man into everything. ‘It was a split-second thing.’
He’d given Goodrich a hard straight left and followed it with a clean right hook. A euphoric little liberation. The instructor staggered, crashed to the engine floor, collapsed backwards and third-degree-burned his shoulders on the furnace door. His hair caught fire briefly. He screamed and flailed, spastically.
‘Shouting for the bleddy police and whatall,’ Ross said. ‘I panicked.’
More delighted shaking of the Beatrice head. ‘My son, my son.’ Her hand closed over his again. Tears of joy welled and fell.
‘So I took off for Richie’s place. I couldn’t think of anything except getting out of town.’ Richie Pinto was a school friend from St Aloysius who had failed his Senior Cambridge Certificate and gone back home to Bombay to work in his father’s photography business. ‘But when I got to Richie’s there was no one at home. What to do, Mumma?’
‘What to do, my son?’
At a pause in the clerk’s typing a bird went past the open window with a soft whirr. The British drill sergeant put the clipboard down on the desk, turned and walked out of the room. ‘So I packed my bag and cleared out,’ Ross said. ‘Went to the recruiting office and joined up. They sent me up here for basic.’