Of wee sweetie mice and men

by Colin Bateman

  I ran a finger across my throat and she switched off the mike.

  'Thanks,' she said.

  'No problem.'

  'Any chance of a word with Bobby?'

  'Not yet. But hang around. I'll see what I can do.' I looked back up the drive. Zack, Jack and the cops had managed to lock the gate and were now walking back down towards the house. The top of the protesters' heads and the banners were visible above the gate, bobbing about like they were floating on an ocean of hate. 'They're in an ugly mood, aren't they?'

  Colette nodded. 'Could get nastier yet. What will he do now?'

  I shook my head. 'Well, if they don't accept his denial, he'll just have to come out and kiss and make up.'

  I smiled at her, then turned for the house. I had to find a septuagenarian with a colostomy bag called Jackie Campbell, then beat him up.

  35

  Jackie Campbell sulked in his locked room for forty-five minutes, and then only came out because someone threw a rock through his window which narrowly missed scalping him. He came flying out of his door with a torrent of vitriol and was only persuaded to shut up when Geordie McClean slapped him.

  I'd given off to him already about yakking to the Mirror. McMaster had given off to him. Even Matchitt had yelled at him. Yelling at an old man is like yelling at a child. It seldom works and it doesn't make you feel any better. Only violence makes you feel better, but guilt stops you hitting a child, and guilt usually stops you hitting an old man, especially an old man whose grip on life, or sanity, or both, is widely regarded as meagre and that only because of his passionate devotion to both Bobby McMaster and the possibility of a world title. So the slap, and it was a good slap, came as a bit of a shock to Jackie and to the assembled team. He shut up. Geordie looked shocked himself, and suddenly very embarrassed. Everyone felt embarrassed. There was silence for a few moments, relative silence, what with the blare of the TV and the fascist yells from outside. Jackie Campbell stood slopshouldered, hand to face, looking at his gutties.

  McClean stomped off out of the room. Then he stomped back in and stood before Campbell. 'You okay?' he asked.

  Campbell nodded. He didn't look up. 'They tried to kill me,' he said meekly.

  'I'm sorry,' said McClean. 'I shouldn't have done that.'

  'Don't matter,' said Campbell. 'They smashed the window.' McMaster came forward and put an arm round his trainer.

  'Hey, old man, you okay?'

  'Yeah. Sure,' Campbell said vaguely, then shuffled across the room towards the kitchen. 'I'll find a brush,' he said.

  We looked helplessly at each other as he left the lounge.

  Geordie McClean shook his head. 'Shit,' he said, and went after Campbell. 'The things I have to do,' he moaned.

  The police still wanted to interview McMaster about the shooting on the boat and had been growing increasingly impatient, so I finally got them into a bedroom with the contender and left them to it. Matchitt and Sissy sat side by side in the lounge, watching the TV and occasionally giggling in each other's ears. I got a cup of coffee for Colette, who'd remained impassive throughout the tantrums, although her sparkly darting eyes betrayed her profession and barely masked the fact that she was enjoying herself. The reporter accepted the coffee gladly, holding it in two hands, sipping with her head held low to the kitchen table.

  'Wonderful,' she said.

  I smiled. 'Thanks. First cup I ever made.'

  She grinned. Nice grin. Capped teeth. Fillings visible further back. 'Things seem quite tense round here.'

  'Never tense enough for coffee,' I said. 'Coke - now that would be a saviour. We could give it to Jackie Campbell. Apparently it adds life.'

  She grinned again, but it was a grin of perplexity. I let it ride. We chatted for a while. With my customary charm and guile I persuaded her to go outside and speak to the protesters, and she returned within ten minutes with their hastily elected representative. Name of Nathaniel Price. Tall bloke, cropped red hair and pale skin that would frazzle in summer. He wore a green parka, a short moustache and an expression of benign exasperation. Like, how dare we? But he didn't seem like a bad chap. Probably none of them were; individually, just dangerous in packs, like cigarettes. I made him a coffee too.

  'We seem to have a problem,' I said, handing the cup to him. He sat at the table beside Colette.

  Price nodded. 'Several.'

  I gave it to him straight. 'Look, I'm sorry any of this has happened. So's Bobby.'

  'So are we. But it's not the sort of thing we can ignore. Not on home turf.'

  'Sure. I understand that. But let me assure you, Bobby didn't make any of those comments. They were made by his trainer. He shouldn't have made them. He wasn't speaking on anyone's behalf. He's an old man, he has an old man's prejudices. The Daily Mirror decided to run them as Bobby's comments. There's not much we can do about it, 'cept apologize, and sue their asses off. That's how simple it all is.'

  He looked at Colette. 'You believe him?'

  She looked at me. Sucked at her lower lip for a second. 'Yeah. I think I do. They gave the old man a roasting. He admitted it. Stormed off, locked himself in his room. Yeah, I believe him.'

  'Can you call the protest off ?' I asked. 'We only have one more day here before the fight. Bobby needs all the peace and quiet he can get.'

  Price stood up. 'Okay. I'll see what I can do. Maybe some tickets to the fight might help.'

  'Wouldn't that seem like we were trying to buy you off ?'

  'Yes.'

  I shrugged. 'I'll see what I can do.'

  We shook hands and I walked him to the door. I returned to

  Colette. 'Are negotiations meant to be this simple?'

  She lifted her empty cup and put it in the sink. 'No,' she said. 'No demands. No threats. You think maybe they have a hidden agenda?'

  'I think maybe they're cold.'

  An hour later things were looking a little better. Three-quarters of the protesters had accepted our explanation and gone home. The rest hung around outside, occasionally mustering a halfhearted chant between them that didn't carry much further than the front yard. Sissy took several flasks of coffee out to them and got chatting and before long they were all getting on famously, though they were still reluctant to move on. When Sissy came back in she reckoned they'd be no further threat and went on to bed. Matchitt went to bed too, though I didn't see which door he went in. Zack and Jack made themselves a belated supper in the kitchen. I stood talking to McMaster for a while, then stood on the verandah while he went out front by himself, opened the gate and walked across the road to the protesters. When he rejoined me twenty minutes later, they had started to move off.

  'Why, you old charmer,' I said.

  He shrugged. 'They didn't expect me to come out in person. You don't get to meet a star of my magnitude every day, y'know. We had a chat. I asked them to move on. Was friendly. Was natural. They appreciated that. There's still a few militant ones. Maybe when they go home and think about it they'll decide I am anti-gay and come back with a vengeance.'

  'And are you anti-gay?'

  'No, I'm Auntie Lily.'

  'Could you explain that one?'

  'It would take too long.'

  'I'm sure it means something.'

  'It does.' He smiled and clapped an arm round my shoulder. 'You think Jackie's okay?'

  'As ever he will be.'

  'That was quite a whack Geordie gave him.'

  'Yeah. Surprised me.'

  'Surprised Jackie.' McMaster examined his fingernails on my shoulder. I looked too. Short-short. 'The pressure's getting to Geordie,' he said quietly. 'He still wants to go home. Today didn't help much.'

  'Yeah. I know. Still, if we survived today, we can survive anything, can't we?'

  'You'd think that,' he said, then gave a slight shake of his head. His voice faltered. 'I was out enjoying myself with the whales, and Mary's still being held.'

  'I would hardly call it enjoyment, Bobby.' I punched him lightly on the shoulder and gav
e him my best reassuring smile. 'Don't worry, mate, she'll be okay. All you have to do is betray Ireland again and beat Tyson.'

  McMaster sniggered. 'I've stopped thinking about it, Dan, because it's all so crazy. I mean, you couldn't invent something like this, could you?'

  'I could.'

  'I know I'll wake up on the morning and there'll be a school of dolphins outside protesting about Stanley shooting at the whales.' I nodded. There probably would be.

  In the morning, standing by the kitchen window, I said to McMaster: 'Hey, Bobby, there's a whole pile of dolphins outside with placards.'

  'Fuck off, Starkey,' he said and prowled off towards the marquee. He wasn't always in good form in the morning. Maybe he was missing his guitar.

  'Positively Wildean this morning, cont,' I shouted after him, but he ignored me, as all good men do. I'd driven into Princetown first thing and bought a crate of Coke. I felt great.

  Breakfast finished, and the can thrown in the bin, I followed McMaster through to the marquee where Jackie Campbell was taping his hands. Overnight a dozen more reporters and a couple of camera crews had arrived and it was fairly buzzing at the ringside. The three recently imported sparring partners sat quietly at the back of the marquee.

  'Last few rounds till Tyson then, Bobby?' I said.

  McMaster nodded. Campbell looked up. 'He doesn't need them.'

  'Course I do.'

  'I'm the trainer. You don't need them.'

  'So stop me.'

  'That'll be the day.'

  'You don't think he needs them?' I asked.

  'He doesn't need them against yer man over there.'

  'Barkley,' said McMaster. He nodded back up the marquee.

  Barkley nodded back and slapped his gloves together. Then he stood and approached the ring. He bounded over the top rope, as before.

  Campbell finished his taping, then helped McMaster pull the gloves on. 'Thinks he has something to prove,' he said grimly.

  McMaster bent under the top rope and stood opposite Barkley. He slapped his gloves together too.

  'You could ask Geordie to stop him,' I said.

  Campbell shook his head. 'He might slap me again,' he said and turned quickly for the bell so that I couldn't see from his eyes whether he was being sarky or genuine. You couldn't tell from his voice. It was too age-gravelled to register nuance. I hoped he had sarky eyes.

  Campbell rang the bell and the boxers advanced. I stepped up to the side of the ring. Video cameras were snapped on. Photographers crowded up. Reporters loosened their ties. They'd been primed for some action. McMaster obliged early, a big haymaker with his right which grazed Barkley's ear; Barkley veered left and brought up his own right which McMaster blocked well, before jabbing into his sparring partner's face. Barkley grimaced and stepped back, but it was another of his fake steps and McMaster still wasn't wise to it and he caught a left uppercut as he moved in.

  Bernie Gold stepped up beside me as the boxers broke off and began to warily circle each other. He had a copy of his magazine, Boxing World, folded in a chubby left hand. He leant on the top rope and watched the fighters. 'Looking good,' he said after a little, the words escaping out of a gap in the side of his mouth which looked like it was waiting for a pipe. I nodded. 'Bobby's not bad either,' he added, and his mouth thinned out into a sly smile.

  'Not convinced yet, Bernie?' I asked.

  He shrugged. 'I was talking to Barkley last night,' he said, his eyes still fixed on the fighters.

  'You got him talking? Fancy himself now, does he?'

  'No. No, not really. He has the boxer's habitual self-confidence, of course, but he doesn't have any immediate plans to take on the world. Not until he gets the plaster off, anyways.'

  That brought my head round. 'Bernie,' I said, 'there's something you aren't telling me.'

  A grin swept his face. A scoop grin. A bad poker player's grin. 'Yup,' he said and stepped back from the ring. He waved a finger at me to follow him and led me to the back of the marquee. We sat down on a bench while Jackie Campbell screamed encouragement at his fighter.

  'Bernie,' I said, 'enlighten me.'

  Bernie pulled out a box of cigarettes and offered me one. I shook my head. He put one in his mouth and lit up and took a long drag, then breathed out through his nose. 'Timing,' he said, 'is what I haven't got. Me and your boxer, maybe. Anyways, I wanted to do a background piece on Barkley, 'cause he's a new one on me. But he wouldn't even tell me what gym he works out of in New Orleans. Still, it was simple enough to trace his registration back and I finally tracked him down to Buster Duva ... you hear of Buster?' I shook my head. 'Yeah. Buster - had three or four world champs back in the fifties, nothing much since, but still runs a good gym, though he's not as young as he was ... Anyways, I get him on the phone and I start enthusing about Barkley and he's surprised, seeing as Barkley's not only overweight, washed up and generally bad news, but that he busted a hand the week before in an undercard scrap in Chicago. That he's back in New Orleans and not likely to be near a ring for a few months ... He gave me his number, I called him up, and, true enough, he has bust a thumb and he's out of commission. He's eating pizza, enjoying a Bud and watching some baseball.'

  I looked back up to the ring. Barkley had McMaster in a corner, and was pounding in the shots.

  'Who he?' I asked.

  'Who indeed?' Bernie smiled again. 'You know, don't you?'

  'I can hazard a guess.' He unfolded his magazine and opened it to a centrespread. The pages were headed BOXING WORLD'S TOP TWENTY CONTENDERS and there were mug shots of that many fighters. Only one of them was white, and he wasn't Bobby

  McMaster. 'I was just mulling over it this morning. That guy in there's obviously a quality boxer, and despite Hollywood and St Patrick, they just don't come from nowheres. If you're any good, Boxing World's heard of you. Take a look at number eleven there, Dan.'

  I took a look. Number eleven was called Marcel Blackwood. I'd never heard of him, but then there were a lot of people I'd never heard of. I looked at his eyes, looked at his face.

  'This is going to sound awfully racist,' I began, and the ghost of Martin King swam over my grave, 'but...'

  'No, look - see that healthy head of hair?'

  'Yeah ... ?'

  Bernie moved his thumb and index finger down the page, n-shaped, and slotted them in around Blackwood's head. He looked up and smiled again. 'Now tell me that isn't Mo Barkley.'

  'That isn't Mo Barkley.'

  It wasn't, of course, it was Marcel Blackwood, and Marcel Blackwood, head shaved, moustache gone, was in the ring giving Bobby McMaster the hardest fight of his career just when he needed to be tapering off with some light sparring.

  I patted Bernie on the shoulder. 'Nice job, Bernie,' I said. 'You could have saved it for yourself.'

  He shook his head. 'We printed a week ago. Gotta get the sales in before the fight. No use to me - and I wouldn't give it to those other mothafuckas.' He nodded across at the rest of the pack. 'I'll maybe get some priority access to Bobby after this, eh?'

  'Absolutely,' I said, and made for the ring.

  They were into the second round now. Barkley had McMaster back in a corner again and was raining in blows. Three from Barkley, one from McMaster, three from Barkley, a scream from Jackie Campbell, one from McMaster, one from Barkley, a worried-sounding yell of encouragement from Geordie McClean and a camera flash, then one from McMaster and two more from Barkley.

  McMaster tied Barkley's hands up, Barkley stepped back, pulling his gloves away. McMaster lumbered forward, low, looking for the uppercut; Barkley took another step back, ready to plunge his right in above McMaster's suspect defence.

  'Nice going, Marcel,' I said quietly.

  If you weren't listening for it, you mightn't have heard, but there's something about hearing your own name which defies volume. If you weren't looking for it, you mightn't have noticed, but Blackwood froze.

  A slight stiffening of the limbs. A flutter of the eyelids. The merest
of glances away from his opponent. A slight lowering of the guard. But enough.

  Bobby McMaster fired up the sweetest left hook of his career. Blackwood's head shot back, sweat and blood sprayed across the ring, his legs buckled and he hit the deck.

  A whoop of delight went up from Jackie Campbell and he bustled in under the ring towards his fighter. The cameras flashed. The reporters buzzed. Bobby McMaster looked puzzled for a couple of seconds, then casually raised his arm and smiled for the pack.

  36

  Matchitt raised his glass and angled it towards me. 'To Bobby, may he win the title,' he said, with surprisingly little hint of malice.

  I raised mine somewhat reluctantly. 'To Bobby,' I said, 'may he live to tell the tale.'

  We clinked, he a little too hard. Most of the other customers looked round. Matchitt grinned beerily. 'To the Sons of Muhammad, fuck 'em, well and truly laid to rest.'

  'Fuck 'em,' I agreed and we clinked again. He a little too hard, again. He was probably trying to break the glass. He was in belligerent form. He wasn't entirely comfortable in the Lobsterolla restaurant either. Neither was I - with him, and to a lesser extent, with it. It was a pleasant enough little establishment, located several blocks from the wind-battered Main Street, but it seemed to wallow in its own pleasantness. It was the sort of self-confident eating establishment which knows that it's described in tourist books as a hidden treasure or as favoured by the locals. No frills. The year-round staff, instead of being money grabbing slumming students, had an air of self-importance out of proportion to the quality of the menu, and the food, while properly prepared instead of hurried through for the tourist crowds, was presented in such a dead-on way that it suggested that the chef had perfected a humane way of boiling lobster.