by Ned Beauman
(This, anyway, is how I’m almost sure it must have happened.)
Even Frink, veteran of a hundred Spitalfields street brawls, winced and clenched his teeth then, but Sinner, who’d actually taken the punch, merely grunted. Rage did come to his eyes, but that was nothing to do with pain: Sinner and pain were long estranged. Instead, Frink thought to himself, it was Sinner’s realisation that he might be about to be cheated out of his knock-out. As the crowd jeered, delighted with this bit of slapstick, Frink looked down at the referee (who in those days stood outside the ring, surrounded by a mob of gamblers determined to make his decisions for him), hoping Mottle would have that brittle squint of a referee who knows he’s missed something important but is too stubborn to admit his error – two times out of three you could stick a thumb in the other man’s eye and not get caught – but to Frink’s dismay Mottle was barking, ‘Foul! Foul!’
‘Nah, piss off,’ said Sinner. ‘That weren’t a foul. It didn’t hurt. Fight’s still on.’
‘Below the belt,’ insisted Mottle. There was already a scuffle starting among the gamblers behind him. Pock flung his hands in the air and shook his head as if to protest his innocence.
‘It didn’t even hurt,’ said Sinner, glaring down at Mottle. ‘Prick couldn’t hurt me. Put a cobblestone in his glove and he couldn’t hurt me.’
‘We won’t have any cheating here.’ Mottle looked over to the judges’ table for confirmation.
‘I want to fucking fight. They all want me to fight.’ Sinner turned to shout at his trainer. ‘Frink, tell him! This is a piss-take!’
‘You’ve won, son. Rules is rules.’
‘Bollocks to this.’
Mottle nodded to the announcer. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Seth “Sinner” Roach!’ There was a sarcastic, resentful cheer from a few of the crowd, and then they went back to hooting and booing, even louder now, no longer in mockery but in anger. They’d been cheated, just like Sinner, and before long an itchy discordant drone would start to rise up to the ceiling of Premierland, a threat you didn’t hear with your ears but with your stomach and fists. Tonight there would be knives out all the way down Commercial Road, Pock thought, not just the gamblers but everyone who’d lost out on what they’d paid for. It didn’t matter how good the first three fights were if someone spoiled the fourth – even worse than when you let a girl change her mind before you finished with her. He began to wonder if he’d made a mistake, but then he spotted Myrna in the third row, putting on lipstick with a compact mirror. He’d tell her that he’d been winning, that he’d been unlucky. Barnaby Pock, still technically unbeaten after nineteen matches, he thought. His head hurt.
‘Hold on, hold on,’ said Frink, hurrying over to where Mottle stood, pulling along with him a gangly fellow with a moustache who tonight was Premierland’s house physician (a modest improvement over the days when the best you could hope for was a sticking plaster in the pocket of the referee). ‘Let the doctor look at him. If the doctor says he’s all right, then you have to let him fight.’
‘I do not,’ said Mottle.
‘He wants to fight.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t possibly conduct a proper examination out here,’ said the doctor.
‘Have a feel!’ shouted one of the gamblers.
‘Are you wearing any sort of protective apparatus, Mr Roach?’ said the doctor.
‘He wears a strap,’ said Frink.
‘Only a strap! Perhaps you or your trainer are acquainted with my own line of Fistic Armatures? No? Because I assure you, gentlemen, if all pugilists were to be supplied with this inexpensive invention, there would be no question of halting a match simply because a blow had gone astray. They are impregnable.’
‘Just have a look at the boy,’ said Frink.
‘It won’t make any difference, Mel,’ said Mottle.
‘Quite comfortable, too,’ said the doctor. ‘Mr Roach, I dare say you would take a – my goodness – well, I dare say a size ten. And you, Mr Pock … I estimate a size four. Or perhaps a three.’
‘Do you want a fucking knock?’ said Pock.
‘That is a very felicitous offer, sir, since I happen to be wearing one of my Fistic Armatures at this very moment. In fact, I challenge any one of you gentlemen to strike me in that region. Like St Stephen, I shall feel no pain.’
‘I want to fight,’ said Sinner in a voice like steel handcuffs. ‘They’re waiting. They didn’t come to see a fucking pantomime.’
‘Anyone?’ said the doctor.
‘Come on, mate, you’ve won,’ said Pock.
‘Surely you will be good enough to test out my invention, sir?’ the doctor said, gesturing to the boy from Boxing, who had pushed his way through the gamblers with his notebook held over his head like a lantern.
Frink studied Sinner’s face, hoping the boy’s rage might scuttle back into the gloom behind his eyes. But Sinner was still angry – he hadn’t given up yet.
‘Do you think Mr Roach was winning, Mr Pock?’ stuttered the reporter.
‘I beseech you,’ said the doctor.
‘Come on, now, Seth,’ said Frink. ‘Next time.’
‘What do you say, Mr Roach?’ said the reporter.
‘Let’s all go home,’ said Pock.
‘Will no man here assault my testicles?’ shouted the doctor. And that was when Sinner turned and smacked Pock in the face so hard that he tumbled backwards over the ropes and crashed into the gamblers like a bad idea into a hungry nation.
Frink had never seen such a punch, or heard such a cheer. As the boy from Boxing wiped a spray of blood from his glasses and his notebook, the crowd squealed and cackled and howled Sinner’s name like a lover’s, smashing beer bottles and flinging their hats in the air.
‘You ought to be locked up!’ said Mottle to Sinner, hardly able to make himself heard. He turned to Frink. ‘Are you going to let him walk out of here after that?’ Frink shrugged, and handed Sinner his robe as he climbed down from the ring. The doctor was trying to persuade some of the gamblers to help him carry Pock outside.
‘Mr Roach, did he get what was coming to him?’ said the reporter.
‘We all get what’s coming to us, son,’ said Frink.
Dozens of men and women and children got up from their seats as Sinner pushed through towards the corridor that led to the dressing rooms, hoping to shake his hand or kiss his cheek or pat his back or pass him a cigar, but he just looked straight ahead, swearing under his breath. Although he would never have admitted it, even to himself, he liked having fans, and he really liked ignoring his fans, and he’d learnt that ignoring them just made them even more loyal, especially the women. Tonight, most of them were content to pay tribute to Frink instead. The only concession Sinner made was to put his fists up quickly for a photographer.
‘You could have done him afterwards, Seth, if you had to do that,’ muttered Frink.
‘He hit me in the eggs.’
‘Yeah, but you said it didn’t hurt.’
No one remembered how a huge green leather armchair had found its way into the biggest of Premierland’s dressing rooms, but by now it stank of sweat and resin and was vomiting stuffing from its cracks. Sinner sat down and picked up a bottle of gin. ‘You can fuck off, I think, if you’re going to moan like you always do.’
‘You know I am,’ said Frink. He tried to remember a time when the boy wouldn’t have talked to his trainer like that. He could, but only if he remembered so selectively that it became a sort of fantasy. For a while, he’d worried that Sinner’s growing local celebrity might make him harder to control, but in fact Sinner seemed to be almost immune to fame. Not, of course, because of any inner humility – exactly the opposite. The boy had an arrogance so unshakeable that any outside stimulation was basically redundant, a kick up the arse of a speeding train. If Sinner slipped further out of his grasp it wouldn’t be because of fame, but because of a much more banal intoxicant. ‘I need to talk to Pock’s man anyway,’ Frink added as he bent down to tidy awa
y a skipping rope. His forehead and eyelids and the tip of his nose were always very pink, as if he’d once fallen asleep on a stove.
‘Why?’
‘He might try and get you banned.’
‘I won’t get banned.’
‘No, not this time, and not next time, but the time after that you might.’
‘Bye, then.’
‘Don’t finish that too fast.’
Frink went out. Seth sucked on the bottle of gin and then coughed and closed his eyes.
Sixteen years old; seven professional matches (unbeaten); nine toes; four foot, eleven inches tall. These were the numbers that made Seth ‘Sinner’ Roach, all of them pretty low, but what did that matter? Today – 18 August 1934 – he was already the best new boxer in London. To his opponents a fight with Sinner was like an interrogation, every punch a question they could not possibly answer, an accusation they could not possibly deny.
His nickname, like the armchair, was of mysterious origin. ‘Jews don’t have sinners, Seth,’ Rabbi Brasch used to say, ‘we just have idiots.’ When Sinner was sober, there was an intensity to his expression so fixed that, if you gazed at it for too long (which a lot of people did, trying to understand how such a stunted, thuggish physique could be so beautiful), it began to seem not intense but, on the contrary, blank and inert, as when you repeat a harsh word too many times and it loses its meaning; and this changeless quality seemed to deny even the possibility of sin. But everyone called him Sinner none the less. He had oily black hair and thin eyebrows and long eyelashes and small nipples and slightly protruding ears and still, improbably, a full set of teeth.
There was a quiet knock at the door. ‘Fuck off,’ said Sinner. But the door opened, and into the dressing room stepped a tall blond man in a black overcoat. ‘Mr Roach,’ he said, extending a hand. He wore calfskin gloves with pearl buttons and had a neat moustache that did not make up for a weak chin. He carried himself as if he thought he might at any moment have to dive out of the way of a galloping horse.
‘My name is Philip Erskine,’ he said.
‘Enchanted,’ replied Sinner, without moving.
‘I very much enjoyed your performance tonight.’
‘Brought me some flowers, have you?’
‘I’m sorry to intrude like this, Mr Roach, but I didn’t know otherwise when I might have a chance to speak to you.’ While Sinner’s accent was east London with just a trace of his parents’ Yiddish, Erskine’s was the poshest Sinner had ever heard, with the exception of Danny Gaster’s manager – supposedly a disinherited aristocrat – and announcers on the wireless. Seeing he wasn’t going to get a handshake, Erskine withdrew his hand in a way that seemed intended to give the impression he had never really wanted one in the first place. ‘I’d like to make you an offer.’
‘Pretty sister you’d like me to meet?’
‘Actually, I—’
‘Oh, no, should have known. I’m looking at a hardened gangster. You want me to throw a fight.’
‘No, it’s—’
‘I get it,’ said Sinner, taking a swig of gin. ‘You’re going to be a heavyweight. Need me to find you a good trainer.’
‘In fact I know nothing about boxing, Mr Roach. I am a scientist.’
‘How fascinating,’ said Sinner.
‘May I explain?’ The boy did not immediately respond, so Erskine continued: ‘It’s very kind of you to hear me out. I’ll be extremely brief. For the last four years I’ve been busy with the study of insects. There is very little I don’t know about beetles. But I’ve had enough of beetles now. I want to study human beings. And you are the human being I have most wished to study, ever since I first learnt of your very unusual physiology.’
‘You mean I’m a short-arse?’
‘Yet by all accounts a combatant of remarkable strength and skill. And your father, they say, is equally diminutive, and his father before him?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And only nine toes, if I’m not mistaken?’
‘What’s your “offer”?’
‘May I sit down?’
‘No.’
‘Mr Roach, I would like to give you fifty pounds in exchange for permission to conduct a thorough medical examination and interview every month for a period of five or six months. After that, you would never have to see me again, and you would be kept anonymous in any resultant literature.’
‘Fifty quid to prod me like one of your earwigs?’
‘I can assure you that the examinations would not be unpleasant.’
‘What the fuck is this?’ said Sinner, raising his voice for the first time. ‘You think I need your fucking fifty quid? I’m going to be flyweight champion of the world. I’m not on the fucking dole.’
‘A hundred pounds, then.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Two hundred. Mr Roach, you do not realise how perfectly you. … No one can take your place, sir. Wouldn’t you like to accompany your sporting triumph with a scientific one? I hope that my humble work will make at least some tiny contribution to a project which will, without a doubt, be of wonderful lasting benefit to our whole race. The finest minds of Europe and the United States are coming together to—’
‘What are you going on about?’
‘Eugenics, Mr Roach. Have you heard of it?’
‘Is this cunt boring you, Seth? Pardon me, I mean “this gentleman”.’ Kölmel chuckled. He stood in the doorway holding a cigar. Like Frink, Kölmel was stocky and flat-nosed, but fatter and balder than his cousin. ‘That was a hint, mate,’ he added.
‘Is there any chance you might reconsider?’ said Erskine quietly to Sinner.
‘Fuck off back to your beetles.’
‘Very well. None the less, I shall leave my card on the table, in case you should have a change of heart. Goodbye, gentlemen,’ said Erskine, and went out.
‘Why are you wearing a fucking overcoat on a day like this?’ Kölmel shouted after him, but there was no reply. Kölmel turned back to Sinner. ‘Who was that?’
‘Some fucking bum-boy toff.’
‘What did he want?’
‘Put me in a freak show.’
‘You should have someone on the door here, Sinner.’
Sinner shrugged.
‘Anyway, came to give my congratulations.’
‘You taking the piss?’
‘You were murdering him, son. You could see his knees tremble. That’s what counts. Pock joking about at the end like that, that don’t come into it. You know Joe Schmeling actually won a title claiming a foul? They say his trainer had a cup with a big dent in it, kept it in his pocket every day just in case. Came good that time – slipped it in the cunt’s shorts like a conjurer.’
Sinner was seven years old when he first met Albert Kölmel, helping his father pack up the vegetable stall on a Saturday night in February. Until 1927 Kölmel still made his rounds personally, but even back then he behaved as if Spitalfields Market was his alone, strolling around like a factory owner inspecting his machines. One hand held a cigar and the other was permanently clenched into a fist, and the young Sinner was thrilled to think that Kölmel was always so close to knocking someone’s lights out that it wasn’t even worth uncurling his fingers. Only later did he realise that inside the fist was hidden, implied, Kölmel’s weapon of choice: a razor blade stuck into a wine cork, about an eighth of an inch of steel protruding, a sharp tongue, enough to scar a man’s face but not enough to kill him. A man like Kölmel would be an idiot to carry a knife or a gun or anything else that could get you caught and hanged if something went wrong – better, if you really had to punish a man, to hold him down and cut deep into his upper lip, so that later, when the scar tissue formed and pulled the lip upward, his mouth would be permanently twisted open. Or there were other pranks, without the blade. Once Bryan Harding had tried to make Kölmel pay full price for his portion of fish and chips, so Kölmel picked up Harding’s cat and threw her into his deep fat fryer.
‘This your boy?’ K�
�lmel had said on that February evening.
‘Here,’ said Sinner’s father, passing Kölmel five shillings without meeting his eye.
‘What’s your name, son?’ Kölmel said to Sinner, who was sorting mouldy turnips from good ones. Around them were the scavengers: first the very poor, the very mean and the very old, who would wait until the end of the day to get the unwanted produce for the lowest prices, and then the homeless, the crippled and the mad, who would scurry along to gather up the detritus on the ground, looking for squashed fruit and vegetables, cardboard for bedding, and bits of broken wooden boxes that would help to make a fire. To Sinner, a market like this was just a ceaseless battle against decay, a mere waiting room for the huge rubbish dump on Back Church Lane: squint for long enough against that high wind of putrefaction, and surely before long it would begin to blow years from your own life, so you’d start to smell rotten yourself; better to work in a chemist’s or a sweet shop, where the shiny pellets in the glass jars could be nine centuries old for all anyone knew. At the same time, there was something lovely about the market in the early mornings, when he was rarely here: everything ablaze with freshness but nobody much around, like the beginning of creation. Except that, at the beginning of creation, God had not yet even conceived of a creature like Albert Minyo, who could shout nothing but ‘Saveloys! Saveloys! Saveloys! Saveloys! Saveloys! Saveloys! Saveloys! Saveloys! Saveloys! Saveloys! Saveloys!’ eight hours a day for thirty years.