Of wee sweetie mice and men

by Colin Bateman

  'And he's fought no one.. .'

  'The important thing is, Starkey, he knows he's different, he knows what he's capable of. He had no ambition before. He strolled the Irish title. It gave him a bit of a kick. Then we had six months to work on him before the European fight. We deliberately kept him out of the spotlight during that time. We deliberately kept him away from other heavyweights, kept him in with middles to build up his speed. We know what we're doing. You think I would waste my money getting him the European title fight if I thought I was sticking a big barrel of lard in there? No chance. You any idea how many heads I had to stand on to get that fight? I'm talking real money. But he was ready for it. Was it my fault they clashed heads in the second round? He never had the chance to show what he could do, Starkey. But he's the European champ, he deserves it, and he deserves his shot at the world title.'

  You hear so much crap before a fight, before any fight of any importance. He's a real contender. He's in perfect shape. He has a puncher's chance. I don't care about the money, I care about him. He's like a second son to me. Yeah.

  I left McClean in his office after shaking hands. He wished me luck with the book and promised to be cooperative. I wished him luck with the fight and promised not to get in the way. I didn't believe him and he didn't believe me, but we respected each other's lies.

  Outside I met Cameron. He was chomping on a Paris bun and leaning across the bonnet of his BMW. 'Well?' I shrugged.

  'How's McClean?'

  'He thinks that fat shite can take the title.'

  Cameron took me for a drink. There was a pub about a hundred yards up from the gym. Sixty yards away he would have been in trouble over his accent. Belfast's funny that way. Dead funny. I had a pint of Harp and he got a bottle of Corona with a slice of lemon wedged in the top. I tried not to look too embarrassed.

  We spent a while discussing money for the book. I told him what I wanted and he told me what he was prepared to give me. We settled somewhere in the middle. After six Coronas I got him to admit that McMaster didn't have a chance and I was halfway to talking him out of doing the book at all before I realized I was cutting my own throat. I re-sold it to him as a study in failure. The English would be sure to go for it. I think he fell for it. He didn't ask for his cash advance back. At least I think it was an advance. He could have been leaving a tip for the barman. At about four Cameron stood and lifted his keys from the table.

  'I'm due back in Dublin,' he slurred.

  'You're not driving, are you?'

  'Only till I'm stopped.'

  'You'll kill yourself.'

  'Possibly.'

  We shook hands like adults and he left. I got another pint and sat back. I wanted to think about the book. No - I wanted to drink. Thinking about the book was a good cover. I had no shifts on the paper, there was no Patricia to go home and annoy, and it was too early in the week to entice any of my friends out for a binge. Sad, really.

  For a moment I didn't recognize Bobby McMaster with his clothes on. The bar door swung inwards, McMaster stuck his head in, peered round the mostly empty lounge, and then nodded behind him to a smaller, dumpier guy. They came in and sat at the end of the bar. McMaster caught my eye, but there was no hint of recognition. I could put bad eyesight with all the other advantages he would carry into the ring with Tyson.

  There was no doubting he was a big fella. He wore a zipped-up leather jacket, stretched tight across his chest, and black jeans. His companion had cropped hair, verging on a skinhead, looked a bit of a fighter too but without much of a notion of the Queensberry rules. He had a flat nose, was pink round the eyes, big hands. It wasn't till he went to the toilet after his second pint, then stopped at my table on the way back, that I recognized him. McMaster remained at the bar, sipping at an orange juice and studying the racing form in a paper.

  'Hello, Stanley,' I said.

  'Thought I recognized your ugly bake, Starkey.'

  'I must admit I had to give you a second glance, Stanley. I thought you were in the Crum.'

  'Finger on the pulse as ever, Starkey.'

  'At least I have one.'

  'Very funny. Use that in your column, son, it could do with brightening up.'

  I raised my glass to him. 'I write better than you sail, Stanley.'

  He shook his head slowly. 'Wanker,' he said quietly and went back to McMaster. They exchanged a few words and then Stanley turned for the door. As he passed my table he winked.

  I finished what was left of my pint and approached McMaster. 'Mind if I join you?'

  He looked at me, head down, eyes up, as if he was peering over a pair of bifocals. He shook his head slightly. It was an ambiguous shake, I thought, so I sat down and ordered a drink.

  'You're off the drink, I presume,' I said. I thought it would be a nice, light opening.

  'Of course I'm off the drink,' he said dryly. I nodded. 'An orange?'

  'An orange what?'

  'You want another orange juice?'

  He shook his head and returned his attention to the paper. 'You won't need to do that much longer,' I said. 'Do what?' He didn't bother looking up.

  'The gee-gees. What you'll be earning, you'll be able to buy your own bloody horse.'

  'I don't want my own horse.'

  I nodded and took a sip of my beer. 'You looked pretty sharp in the ring today.'

  His head moved slowly towards me. Blue eyes, very blue, sea blue and sea cold, bore into me. Menacing. He maybe wouldn't become world champion, but he could punch my lights out in his sleep.

  'Explain to me,' he said quietly, 'the difference between cynicism and sarcasm, Starkey.'

  'I wasn't...'

  'Explain to me...'

  'I'd rather explain to you why I don't think you should take this fight.'

  He pulled himself up to his full height in the chair, his back ramrod straight. Now, here, there, inches from my face, I couldn't see any fat on his body at all.

  'You know, I could pull your head off right here and eat the insides out with a spoon if I wanted to. What do you think of that?'

  'That's neither sarcasm nor cynicism, that's a threat.'

  'I could give you a cynical hook to the ribs, Starkey, a sarcastic crack to the nose.'

  'Someone's beaten you to the nose.'

  'So I see. You must make friends everywhere, you go.'

  I thought about taking a drink, but I wasn't sure if my hand would be shaking. Besides, he'd probably think I was going to whack him with the glass and kill me as a precaution. I tried the appeasement line. It worked wonderfully for Chamberlain. 'Have I done something to annoy you, Bobby? I mean, I'm supposed to be writing a book about you.' .

  'Stan says you're a wanker. Are you a wanker, Starkey?'

  'Metaphorically or literally?' It was a desperate attempt to blind him with a lot of syllables.

  'Both,' he said.

  I gave the question due consideration. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the barman hovering nervously by the phone. The door was about ten yards away. After seven pints it might as well have been a mile, with hurdles.

  'Well, yes, I suppose I am then.'

  Abruptly he laughed. A big hearty laugh. It warmed my heart. 'You are a sketch, Starkey. You know, the wife's a big fan of your column.'

  Gulp. Metaphorically and physically. I eased up on the stool. 'Really?'

  'Yeah. Loves it.'

  'What about you?'

  'Oh, I like it too, but I wouldn't tell you that. You want another drink?'

  'If you insist.'

  The barman, all smiles, brought me another pint. 'It was only my say that got you doing the book, y'know? McClean wasn't the least interested really, but I thought it would be good to have something solid to remember it all by, y'know? And something funny as well.'

  'You want something funny?'

  'How else would you approach it? I've never seen you write a serious thing yet. Besides, there's something intrinsically funny about a fat bastard like me going for the wor
ld title, isn't there?'

  Later he told me how he'd come to know Stanley Matchitt, or Matchitt the Hatchet as he'd been known for many years, or Snatchit Matchitt as he was now known on a hundred graffitied walls around the city.

  'We both grew up in Crossmaheart, y'know?'

  'Jesus, that must have been fun.'

  'What is it they say about Tyson? You can take the man out of the ghetto, but you can't take the ghetto out of the man.'

  'You think that applies to you?'

  'A bit of it, maybe. Crossmaheart's not Butlin's, put it that way.'

  'There've been more liberal concentration camps.'

  'When I was growing up I thought concentration camps were, like, places intellectuals went to think about things.'

  'I don't see much of the ghetto in you, maybe in your friend, Snatchit, but not you. How come you hang about with him?'

  'I don't. Not much anyway. I can't say I agree with everything he does, but we've been through a lot together. A lot of fights when we were growing up. But we both got out. I met a girl, graduated to Belfast. Stanley never met a girl. He learnt how to use a gun.'

  'And a hatchet.'

  'And a hatchet.'

  Stanley had been a high-up in the Red Hand Commandos, a Loyalist terror group with a penchant for hacking up innocent Catholics. Of course they didn't think there were any innocent Catholics. A messy business. Everyone knew he was involved, but nobody could pin it on him. The IRA, the INLA, even the UDA, had made a couple of attempts on him, but he always managed to keep one step ahead of them.

  Then he took a job as a bouncer in a pub down the coast and kept out of view for a year or two. One memorable night he got plastered, recruited a crew of equally inebriated locals and stole the Golden Hind.

  The Hind, a full-scale replica of Drake's ship, had been on a round-the-world trip and stopped off overnight in the harbour as the top attraction at an annual festival. ,At least one member of Stanley's crew had once been on a yacht and managed to pilot it out into Belfast Lough, but that was about the extent of the seafaring. By the time the coastguard and police caught up with them, dawn was coming and so was a mighty swell. A police photographer captured Stanley being sick over the side seconds before he was arrested, and released it to the papers. From that day on the fearsome monster that was Matchitt the Hatchet was dead and Snatchit Matchitt was born. He wasn't too pleased. He wasn't too pleased about going to prison either.

  'You visit him in the Crum, Bobby?'

  McMaster shook his head. 'Nah,' he added.

  'Any reason?'

  'The wife.'

  I nodded. I'd been there.

  'I mean,' he continued, leaning closer, voice low, 'she's ... well, she's not Protestant.'

  'You tell Stanley?'

  He shook his head. 'But he's probably guessed. With a name like Mary Mairaid Muldoon she's hardly likely to be donning an accordion for the Twelfth.'

  He laughed, took a sip of his orange. 'Y'know, I grew up hating Catholics, fighting them, beating them, being beaten up by them. I never really knew why. When I was about six my dad tried to explain to me the difference between us and them. I remember I kept asking, why, why, why? In the end he just said, son, it's as simple as this: we're the goodies and they're the baddies. That's the sort of B-movie Western philosophy a six-year-old can really get a grasp of.'

  He stood up and drained his glass. 'I must go.'

  'Walking?'

  He nodded.

  'Mind if I walk with you?'

  He shrugged. 'I'm only round the corner. Stagger along if you can.'

  Outside it was cool and apres-bar bright. We walked in silence for a while, McMaster occasionally nodding at people who nodded at him. We began to crisscross alleys as he took me on a shortcut to his home. In one I stopped to relieve myself up against a bin.

  'Do you ever worry about getting killed?' I asked.

  'I worry more about getting caught up an alley with a man with his balls out,' he said, and when I looked round his head was darting nervously this way and that.

  I finished off and he marched quickly ahead. 'I mean in the ring.'

  'Not so far.'

  'But against Tyson.'

  'Not especially.'

  'But why not?'

  He stopped. Pushed a finger into my chest. 'Because,' he said, and walked on.

  Britannia Avenue. A small terraced house. He showed me into a compact front room. A small set of pristine dumbbells in the corner were the only concession to sport. There was a framed poster of pre-army Elvis on the wall. A video and TV. Three untidy piles of CDs, two of them topped by Elvis, one by Shakin' Stevens. Two out of three ain't bad. A battered acoustic guitar. A small library of books in a wooden case - paperbacks of Hemingway, Steinbeck, Bukowski and Dickens.

  'Read these?' I asked, running my fingers down the spines.

  He nodded.

  I smiled by accident.

  'What?'

  'Nothing.'

  'What?'

  I shook my head. He shook his.

  'Starkey, your problem is you go round with too many preconceptions in your head. You're presuming that because I beat people up I can't read. You're a mind bigot, Starkey, bad as any other kind.'

  'Sorry,' I said.

  'Okay.'

  For a couple of hours we sat and watched videos of Tyson in action. McMaster pointed out weaknesses in his defence I couldn't see. 'All there is of me on video is two rounds for the European belt. I'd like to see Tyson suss me out from that,' he said.

  He made coffee, some sandwiches, strummed a bit on the guitar.

  I nodded politely, though it sounded like he was still wearing his boxing gloves.

  When it was time to go I said: 'It's time to go.'

  'You're not staying to see the wife?'

  'Things to do.'

  'She'll be sorry to have missed you. Still, plenty of time for that in the States.'

  'She's coming as well?'

  'Of course.'

  'I thought wives were always banned..

  'Where I go, she goes.'

  I shrugged. 'Yeah, just right.'

  At the door I turned to him and said, 'Bobby, I'm sorry about the books. I expected you to be as thick as champ. I must admit I'm pleasantly surprised.'

  I put my hand out and we shook.

  'Maybe you'll be pleasantly surprised by my boxing.'

  'I doubt it.'

  He laughed.

  5

  Seven am. Mary McMaster set the plate in front of me and smiled. 'Enjoy,' she said.

  It was a good kitchen, clean, lived in, old but well maintained. A nice house, bearing in mind the neighbourhood. The house said, we care about this place, even if we haven't the money to do much with it.

  'He's not an early riser then?'

  'Not for training, no.' I just caught a wicked glint in her eye before she darted from the kitchen and hollered for Bobby from the bottom of the stairs. A muffled groan came in reply. She re-entered, shaking her head. 'He's getting worse.'

  She was nice. Petite. Blonde hair, dyed, pulled back, the roots just showing, no make-up, sharp face, baby crow's. feet, teeth slightly spaced, ready smile, educated accent. Even on a damp winter morning she was bird-chirpy, polite, inquisitive, chatty, but not flirty.

  I'm not really a breakfast man, but it seemed impolite to refuse. I picked up the knife and fork. 'Should I start without him?'

  'God, yes. You wouldn't get him eating a chicken omelette anyway. First and last time I made it for him he took one look at it and said it was the only time he'd ever been asked to eat a mother and child in one meal. Culinary incest, he called it. I'll join you though. Gets you going for the day.' She brought hers over from the cooker and sat opposite me. 'He'll eat when he gets back from his run. Doesn't take much though. A bowl of Rice Krispies usually.'

  'It's hardly straight from the training manual.'

  'It's not, but it's what he likes, and he says that's what's important. Jesus, it's not lon
g since I got him to cut out the Opal Fruits for breakfast. He took a lot of convincing that they weren't really concentrated fruit juice.'

  'Seriously?'

  'What do you think?'

  'I think not.'

  'No, well, maybe not.'

  'But he is a little weird, like, for a fighter.'

  'I wouldn't know.'

  'What do you know?'

  'That I love him.'

  'That's sweet.'

  'That's true.'

  'And you're not worried about this fight?'

  'Of course I'm worried.'

  'But you won't talk him out of it?'

  'Why should I?'

  'Because of what might happen to him.'

  'His decision.'

  'But if you love...'

  'I do love . . .'

  'Yes, of course, but. . .'

  'But nothing. He happens to think he can do it, and that's what's important. Not what journalists think. Not what McClean thinks. Not what Tyson thinks.'

  'Fair enough.'

  'Is this an interview?'

  'No. Yes. Not really. Background stuff.'

  'Are you recording it?'

  'No. Of course not.'

  I was, in fact, but the tape recorder was small enough not to bulge anywhere. It wasn't subterfuge, as such, I just have a memory like a sieve and notebooks make me lose concentration. Visible tape recorders make other people lose concentration.

  'You don't mind me asking you some questions?'

  'Not at all. I suppose in the end we're profiting from the book.

  And, like, well, I'm proud of him. Whatever happens.'

  I'd brought the morning papers with me. They lay folded beside my plate. I'd glanced at them on the way from the shop. The headlines said it all. Predictable really.

  I nodded at them. 'I didn't know whether to bring them or not,' I said.

  Mary shrugged. 'Might as well.'

  'How does he cope with negative press?'

  'I don't know. He hasn't really had any.'

  'He'll have to get used to it.'

  'I suppose so.'

  She set her knife and fork down. 'You want some tea?'

  'No. Thanks. I don't.'

  'Mormon?'

  'Coke addict.'

  'Bit early for that.'

  'Never too early.'

  'That tracksuit looks like it's seen better days.'