Leon didn’t see it either. He wondered if he’d somehow missed an important part of the conversation. ‘Beryl? I’m sorry, Ted. I don’t quite understand.’
Ted gave a glimmer of a smile. ‘He and Beryl are apparently smitten with each other,’ he said wryly. ‘The minute she heard he was stepping into the ring tonight instead of Big Jumbo, she said that he was doing it on her account. She’s been in a terrible state ever since her mum was . . . was . . .’ He couldn’t bring himself to say the word ‘glassed’. Instead he said, ‘She’s up at Guy’s now. The Ward Sister is good about visiting. She lets Billy and Beryl see Mavis no matter what time of day it is.’
‘Good.’ Leon meant it. It certainly wasn’t so easy getting in to see Jack outside of visiting hours. The only person able to manage it was Danny, presumably because, with his face a sea of stitches, Jack’s Ward Sister thought he was a patient, not a visitor.
‘Give Mavis my best,’ he said, glad to know he’d eased Ted’s mind a little.
‘And give Zac Hemingway my best.’ Ted was all fierce grimness again. ‘Tell him I’ll be at the ringside tonight. He’ll know just where, because he’ll be able to hear me. By hell he’ll be able to hear me!’
It was early afternoon and Kate was standing on her back step, watching her laundry fluttering in the breeze. Christina had left an hour or so ago, hurrying down into Greenwich to meet Judith before taking the child with her up to St Thomas’s. She also intended doing some hospital visiting later on in the afternoon. She had already been up to Guy’s once to see Mavis, and Mavis had asked her, on her next visit, to take her in a bottle of fire-engine red nail varnish. Despite the agonizing heaviness of her heart, a shadow of a smile touched the corners of Kate’s full-lipped mouth. In boxing terms, Mavis was down, but she was very far from being out. Jack was handing The 21 over to her lock, stock and barrel and it was a business opportunity Mavis was quite determined to seize with both hands.
‘The make-up will be a bit heavier in the future, Kate,’ she had said, managing a defiant wink despite the horrendous soreness of her bruised and battered face, ‘but the style will still be the same!’
Kate’s admiration for her was boundless. Mavis would never let things get her down. No matter what life threw at her, she would survive – and would survive with panache.
From where she was standing, she could see that Nibbo had tied clusters of red, white and blue balloons to his magnolia tree. The slight smile that had touched her mouth died. There were red, white and blue trimmings everywhere one looked. Lewisham clock-tower was decked out like a Christmas tree, and the narrow streets of Blackheath Village were a riot of flags and bunting.
Nibbo was sheepish about his own efforts to get into the coronation spirit. ‘It isn’t that I’ve forgotten Matthew is still missing,’ he said to her and Leon before putting the balloons in his tree. ‘It’s just that, as Charlie says, if Matthew were to be found and returned home and there were no decorations up, well, it would be a sorry state of affairs, wouldn’t it?’
Nibbo wasn’t the only person who seemed to think that Matthew would have to be found by Coronation Day morning. Harriet said much the same thing, as did Hettie. Was it because, in some strange way, they saw the coronation as a dividing line? That Matthew would either be found by the time it took place, or would never be found?
At the thought of Matthew never being found, Kate felt as if she were going to die. She loved all her children, but Matthew held a very special place in her heart. She had given birth to him months after his father was killed, flying a Spitfire over the beaches of Dunkirk. He was the child she had carried through months of agonizing heartache, the child who bonded her not only to her first love, but also to Leon, for it was Leon, in the chaotic aftermath of an air-raid, who had delivered him.
The balloons continued to toss gaily in the summer breeze. Nibbo had put them up in the hope Matthew would be home to see them. Suddenly she knew what it was she was going to do. She was going to behave exactly as if it were a certainty that Matthew would be home for the coronation. She was going to bake his favourite cake, make his favourite trifle. She was going to will Matthew home!
‘So how are we going to get to the warehouse where the fight’s being held?’ Hettie asked Miriam as the latter, aware that it was nearly four-thirty and that Rose would soon be calling in on her way home from school, spread mashed sardine onto great slabs of bread. ‘It’s down near the docks, isn’t it?’
‘Albert’s givin’ you, me and Daniel a lift in the fruit and veg cart,’ Miriam said, slapping one slice of bread down on top of another. ‘It won’t be as uncomfy as it sounds, because he’s slung a couple of old armchairs on the back.’
‘And what about Nellie?’ Under other circumstances Hettie would have died rather than be seen sitting in an old armchair on the back of a fruit and vegetable cart. She couldn’t be fussy tonight, though. Not if she wanted to see Zac Hemingway give Mavis’s attacker a taste of his own medicine. ‘Nellie’ll need a lift and she can hardly walk, let alone climb onto the back of a lorry!’
‘Malcolm Lewis is takin’ ’er in ’is car.’
‘Crikey!’ The fake cherries on Hettie’s black straw hat wobbled alarmingly. ‘His scoutmaster days will be over if old Baden-Powell gets to hear he’s been giving old ladies lifts to dodgy boxing matches!’
‘Baden-what’s-is-name is dead,’ Miriam said, wiping her fingers on her floral, wrap-around pinafore. ‘An’ even if ’e wasn’t, I don’t expect ’e’d object to tonight’s fight. Not if he knew what that Arnie beast did to my Mavis.’
Hettie shuddered. She hadn’t seen Mavis’s face for herself, but if it was even an eighth as bad as her Danny’s, she didn’t need to. Danny’s scars were going to make him look like a south-London mobster for the rest of his life. What Mavis was going to look like didn’t bear thinking about.
‘What will we do when the fight’s over?’ she asked, hoping the smell of sardine wasn’t going to cling to her hair and her hat. ‘Go straight up to the Mall to stake out a place to watch things from tomorrow?’
Miriam nodded. ‘I’ve got a ground-sheet Malcolm’s lent me, and an old rug. Rose will be sleepin’ out on the pavement with us and she’s borrowed a couple of collapsible stools from ’er school’s Art department. They’ll be useful for tomorrow while we’re waiting for things to start. We’re going to need as many flasks of tea as we can carry. And sandwiches. We’re goin’ to need lots of sandwiches.’
‘Is your Carrie coming up with us?’ Hettie averted her eyes from the mammoth sardine doorsteps, determining to make plenty of civilized-sized sandwiches for herself and Daniel. ‘I’ve hardly seen your Carrie this last day or two, and when I have done she’s looked as if she was in another world.’
‘She’s taken what ’appened to Mavis very badly,’ Miriam said, not about to admit even to her best friend that Carrie was not so much in another world these days as on another planet. ‘She’s only got to think of what that Arnie bastard did to our Mavis’s face and she throws up somethin’ shockin’.’
Carrie rested her head in her hands, her elbows on the rim of the lavatory bowl. Why morning sickness was called morning sickness beat her. Where she was concerned, it went on all bloomin’ day.
‘Are you sure you ain’t expectin’ an ’appy event?’ a fellow market trader asked when, a few minutes later, they stood side by side at the wash-basins.
With immense effort, Carrie gave the woman a friendly grin and, letting it serve as a reply that could have meant anything, walked out of the public loos into welcoming fresh air. For the last couple of days, she’d spent far more time being sick than she had minding the stall. Today, being the day before the coronation, hadn’t mattered so much. Shoppers were more intent on buying in party food than they were on shopping for fresh fruit and veg.
‘You want to get whatever’s wrong with you seen to, love,’ the neighbouring stall-holder, who had been looking after things for her, said. ‘I’m spending more
time sellin’ your spuds and lettuces than I am my own!’
Again Carrie summoned up a smile, though the effort nearly killed her. How she was going through the motions of being normal to people, she couldn’t for the life of her imagine. Zac had been down at the stall an hour or so earlier, looking as relaxed and at ease as if he had no more on his mind than whether to opt for a couple of pounds of apples or oranges.
‘Just bring one bag with you tonight,’ he said, uncaring of the strange look the customer she was serving gave him. ‘It’ll be easier, travelling light.’ Then, his jacket held by his thumb and slung nonchalantly over his shoulder, he shot her a look that had nearly undone her there and then and strolled off, head and shoulders above the High Street crowds, heading back to the gym presumably.
Now, as she began making a start on packing up the stall, her stomach was knotted with nerves. As if the thought of the cargo boat – already, no doubt, at dock and waiting for them to board her – wasn’t enough to unhinge anyone’s mind, the fight between Zac and Arnie was all set to begin in just over two hours’ time. She would be at the ringside, of course. For Mavis’s sake alone, how could she not be? But she would be there for more reasons than the primeval desire to see Mavis’s sadistic attacker get his come-uppance. She would be there because Zac expected her to be there. She would be there because it would be the very last time she would ever be anywhere with Zac and with her family and friends as well.
‘’Ow are yer doin’ Blossom?’ her dad asked, his braces at full stretch over his paunch as he arrived to take over the task of dismantling the stall. ‘There’s no need to be lookin’ so peaky. Not when ternight’s goin’ to be so bloomin’ memorable!’
Chapter Twenty-One
Zac lay face down on the massage bench in the improvised dressing-room down at the warehouse where the fight was to take place. He was first on the card and, as there was only an hour and a half or so to go now, Leon was expertly kneading and pummelling his muscles in order to get them into a nicely loosened condition.
‘Word this is going to be a very special grudge match hasn’t reached Archie Duke’s lot, thank goodness,’ Leon said, a sheen of sweat on his own well-muscled arms and shoulders as he continued to give Zac the very best massage he was capable of. ‘There’s a squad of Archie’s boys here already and, according to Danny, they’re full of just what Arnie is going to do to the tiddler in Jack Robson’s pond.’
‘And they think I’m the tiddler?’ Zac asked with a wry grin.
‘You or Big Jumbo. Either way they don’t think Jack’s going to be putting up any fighter worth his salt tonight.’ This time it was Leon who grinned. Since Matthew’s disappearance it was something he did very rarely. ‘They’ve got a bit of a surprise coming to them, haven’t they? Shame is, it doesn’t look as if Archie’s going to be here to see it happen. Word is he’s been discharged from hospital but is lying low.’
‘His money won’t be.’ Zac was indifferent as to whether Archie Duke was at the ringside or not. His beef wasn’t with Archie. It was with Arnie. ‘You can bet your sweet life that Archie will have a packet of money riding on the outcome.’ He chuckled as Leon began hand-chopping the backs of his legs. ‘And he’s going to lose it all. Every last penny of it.’
Leon was glad Zac was so very confident, because there was one little thing that was worrying him – and that was that neither he, Danny nor Jack had actually seen Zac at full belt in a boxing ring. All they had seen were his fairly low-key workouts with Big Jumbo. What if Zac really wasn’t up to this Arnie bloke’s standard? How were Mavis’s family going to feel if, instead of meting out raw punishment to the sicko who had ruined Mavis’s face, he was, instead, on the receiving end of a thrashing?
‘Is Carrie here yet?’ Zac asked, breaking in on Leon’s anxious thoughts.
‘Not that I know of.’ Leon didn’t think it at all strange that Zac should be enquiring as to whether or not members of Mavis’s family had arrived.
Normally the vast majority of Magnolia Square’s womenfolk, apart from Mavis and, occasionally, Queenie Tillet, never turned up to watch fights, illegitimate or legitimate. Tonight, though, was going to be very different. Kate had told him that not only did Carrie intend coming to it, but that Miriam and Hettie and Nellie were coming as well. ‘And Ruth is going to go,’ she said, leaving him gasping for air with disbelief. ‘And so is Pru Lewis.’
He was left wondering whether, if it hadn’t been for her reluctance to leave the house in case there was word of Matthew, Kate wouldn’t have been at the ringside as well! Christina, of course, wouldn’t be there. He wasn’t sure, but he thought it highly likely that Christina was the only person in Magnolia Square unaware that a fight was taking place.
‘Billy is here, though,’ he said as Danny walked into the cramped little room, ‘And Elisha Deakin. Word has it he’s closed The Swan’s doors for the night.’
‘’E’s ’ad to as Lettie wouldn’t mind fings for ’im,’ Danny said, the knife-edge of tension he was on palpable. ‘She’s already nabbed one of the best ringside seats. The landlord from The ’Are and Billet is ’ere as well, though ’ow ’e got to ’ear about it, Gawd only knows.’
Leon gave Zac a light slap on his rump. ‘It’s time to have your hands wrapped. Who do you want to do it? Me or Danny?’
‘You might as well do it,’ Zac said easily, pushing himself up into a sitting position on the edge of the massage bench, not remotely embarrassed by Danny’s presence.
Danny, happily unaware that there were circumstances which made Zac’s manner towards him quite remarkable, threw the two rolls of gauze and the roll of tape he had been carrying across to Leon. ‘Money’s changin’ ’ands out there like it’s goin’ out of style. Even the Vicar’s scoutmaster is backin’ yer to the ’ilt.’
As Leon set to work bandaging his hands, devoting as much care to the task as a surgeon performing an operation, Zac grinned. He’d taken the fight on, not, as everyone assumed, for Mavis’s sake, but for Carrie’s. He’d known how much she would want Mavis’s attacker to be given the hiding of his life and so, despite the risk that the fight might be raided by the police and that, if it were, he’d be spending his last night in England dodging the law, he’d decided he was going to do his damnedest to give him it.
Now, however, as pre-fight adrenalin hit his system, he knew he was also fighting for the sheer hell of it. Big money bets were being made. In more ways than one, a lot was riding on the outcome. The knowledge gave him a high like no other; not even the high of robbing a bank. As Leon continued to take immense care with every turn of the adhesive white tape, transforming his hands into lethal weapons, he felt power surge into them. When it came to fighting he had the killer instinct – a fact he was well aware Leon and Danny could only trust he had.
He grinned reassuringly at them, the blonde stubble on his chin evidence that, as was traditional before a fight, he hadn’t shaved that day.
‘Stop looking so nervous, you two, and don’t hope for an early knockout. I’m going to batter this bastard through nine long rounds.’
‘I wish I ’ad the same ice-water in my veins you ’ave,’ Danny said, beads of sweat visible on his forehead. ‘Now remember, keep nice and tight for the opening rounds. Operate behind a solid left jab and focus it on ’is left shoulder as much as yer can. That way, ’is deltoid won’t ’ave the strength fer a knockout punch.’
Danny was so whole-heartedly for him that Zac experienced an emotion utterly foreign to him. A shaft of conscience. What was the poor bugger going to feel tomorrow when he realized that Carrie had left him, and that she’d left with him – Zac? He remembered a probation officer once saying about him that he was the most likeable, amoral young man he’d ever met. He’d never been quite sure what amoral meant, but if it meant breezing through life and not getting too upset about things, then he supposed the description was pretty apt. As a kid, he’d never had anything and he’d forced himself not to care too much. It was a habit that ha
d stuck.
‘How long have we got?’ Leon was asking. ‘Thirty minutes? Thirty-five?’
‘Thirty.’ Danny was as tense as a coiled spring. He wished Jack was in the building. The temporary seating that had been put up around the ring was, of necessity, limited. For the majority of the punters it was going to be standing room only, though the warehouse catwalk would give those with a head for heights a great bird’s-eye-view. Without Jack by his side he was acutely aware that crowd control was going to be more a matter of luck than management. The vast majority of the punters now surging into the makeshift venue were villains, or border-line villains. And seated in their midst, taking pride of place at the ringside, were his ma and pa, his ma-in-law and pa-in-law, his sister-in-law’s husband, his nephew and, very probably, his niece. Not to mention the fact that though she hadn’t said so – for she’d said hardly anything to him all day – his wife would probably be there as well. And he knew that Jack’s eighty-year-old dad was there, because he’d seen him shamble in, accompanied by Pru and Malcolm Lewis – and if that wasn’t enough, Nellie had been with them, as had the vicar’s wife!
‘Hell’s bells, Jack,’ he said beneath his breath as he checked that Zac was suitably oiled and greased and that his protective cup and boxing gloves were to hand. ‘I could do with yer ’ere tonight, mate. I really bleedin’ could!’
‘’Ere pet, ’ave an aniseed ball,’ Charlie, having to shout to make himself heard above the mayhem around them, proffered a paper sweetie bag in Ruth Giles’s direction.
Ruth, who was struggling hard to acclimatize herself to an atmosphere so alien she felt almost numbed by it, shook her head.
‘Robson’s fighter’s goin’ to be fuckin’ down in five fuckin’ minutes!’ a man somewhere to the rear of her shouted gleefully to his companion. ‘Arnie could knock a bleedin’ building down!’
Coronation Summer Page 30