Peerless Jim

by Alexander Cordell

Genres: General Fiction; Historical Fiction; Sagas

Synopsis

Jim Driscoll, adopted Welshman, one of the greatest boxers who ever lived. Robust, hot-headed, a born fighter - and a legend in his own lifetime. Moving between South Wales, London and America in the early years of the twentieth century, this is the dramatic story of a true-life sporting hero - a story of fierce pride and burning ambition, but also of human weakness and a love that survives against all odds.

Release date: August 21, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 368

Sample

Chapter 1

My mother told me that on the night I was born, the moon was like a quarter Dutch cheese lying on its back over Cardiff Bay, and the dawn rose in a marmalade sky; that the day was filled with the flying of coloured birds and the tolling of bells.

‘Is that right, Carrie?’ I asked our lodger, when we got up.

‘Ach no,’ she replied, ‘your ma’s having you on. It was December, mun; snow was falling and bells were ringing a warning to the rest of mankind.’

A word about Carrie O’Shea, our lodger.

Most of the houses in Newtown had lodgers; the families took in dockers to make ends meet, but my mother took in Carrie because she was on the Irish potato boat when my family came over to Wales from Ireland. Tall and dark was she, coming from Drogheda, and she had a fierce way with her and a blazing gipsy temper, being of tinker stock. She had a bosom that cavorted and cuddled, and hips that drove the men demented; see her clip-clopping past the Duke of Edinburgh, for instance, which my Uncle Patsy kept; half the customers, on tiptoe, were cutting their throats for a look as she went past, her bonnet streamers fluttering, but she’d never spare them a glance.

‘Men?’ she would say. ‘Ach, ye can keep ’em!’

‘Me, too?’

‘For you, me sweet fella, I’ve got the ears of a brown mouse, so just keep talkin’, Driscoll, while I brush my hair,’ and she kissed me.

 

There was six of us in our family when I was coming up for six years old – my mother, my big brother Flurrie, my two sisters Martha and Mary Ann, and me and Carrie. We lived with Grandma Burns, a little tooty who kept a shop with my Aunt Emily in Twelve Ellen Street. And the bay-window bell was always going with bullseyes being lifted out of glass jars and the place jam-packed with women down from Pendoylan and Rosemary; like an Irish parliament it is in the shop, Carrie used to say, everybody talking, nobody listening. ‘Are ye there, Driscoll?’

‘Ay ay, coming now just,’ I called back.

‘Downstairs quick, Ma’s shouting for breakfast.’

Hop into my trews, pull the shirt tail between my legs, on with the boots and I combed my hair with my fingers as I ran downstairs.

‘Have you washed your hands?’ My mother now, swishing the kettle off the hob.

‘No, Ma.’ I was sitting there with me legs crossed.

‘Sharp to the bosh, then. Have you?’ She eyed my sister Mary Ann; aged eight, this one, two years older than me, and if you got the wrong side of her she’d land ye.

‘Yes, Ma,’ said she, and she gave me a toothless grin for her teeth were missing in front – knocked out fighting boys on the Bobtail. I washed my hands and scrambled up to the table.

Martha my big sister was eleven, three years older than Mary Ann: Flurrie my big brother was thirteen, and he came in from the back, bare-chested from washing out in the tub, and he looked as big as a man.

‘Shirt on and come to table, Flurrie,’ commanded my mother, and she poured a cup of tea and took it to Gran who was sitting in my father’s chair by the grate: not more than five foot up, this one; she ruled the house with her quick Italian blood.

Grace it was then, hands together, eyes downcast, and we finished up by blessing the Pope and then we were into it; bread and dripping mostly, toast for some, with Martha rushing about with the toasting fork and my big brother Flurrie into porridge, for he was starting work on Atlantic Wharf that day humping flour.

Quiet and gentle was Flurrie, speaking with his eyes, which were large and dark and filled with shadow; the image of my dead father whose picture stood beside the tea caddy where we kept the rent, and he was so handsome, said Carrie, that the men called him Pug-Ugly.

‘Don’t bolt your food, Driscoll!’

‘No, Ma.’

‘And stop licking your fingers,’ added Mary Ann.

‘It’s his fingers, leave him alone,’ said Carrie.

I love it when the family is together at table and the doors are shut and you can’t hear what’s going on in Ellen Street – the cries of kids, neighbours quarrelling, the shouts of hawkers, oil-men and knife-grinders. And my old gran sits there dozing with her boots up, seeing everything.

‘You looking forward to starting on the flour?’ asked Martha, and Flurrie grunted some reply: the hurt was in her, I could see it in her eyes, but she smiled sweet and sad at him as he got up and she followed him with her eyes as he went to the fire, warming his hands.

With her toast finished, she sits with her hands in her lap, this Martha, like a nun at prayer, her dark eyes watching Flurrie. Spare time she scrubbed up at Nazareth House, this one; three times to Church on Sunday was she, saying her rosary, once a week to Confession – we’ll have a nun in the house before we’re finished, my mother used to say – a contrast to my sister Mary Ann: I used to think she was a limb of Satan; Martha I thought of as the Virgin Mary.

‘Have you been out the back, Driscoll?’ asked Gran, still dozing.

‘No, Gran.’

‘Outside and do it, you know ye take a week.’

I mooched outside to the seat in the little house. They’ve only got one gaffer down on the potato boats but I reckon I’ve got five.

Chapter 10

There was a girl I’d been sizing up; had Carrie not been about I’d have had this one in a cross-buttock come summer. Her name was Edith Wiltshire, a dark peach of a thing who served behind the bar of her father’s pub, the Cambrian in St Mary Street, next door to the Garrick.

‘English,’ said Tim, Boyo’s elder brother; I was hitting it thick with Tim about then; he was a compositor’s apprentice; a tough lad this one; he played for a rugby club. What I missed in guile he made up for in sense, and I liked him.

‘English?’ I echoed. ‘Not her fault.’

‘Anyway, she’s a gentry piece – and as frigid as a penn’orth o’ starch.’

 

‘Another pig’s trotter,’ I said, in her pub. ‘A little less old tongue, Tim – the kid’s all right,’ and she gave me the trotter with mustard, which I liked, and her eyes, large and shining in her high-boned face, drifted over me as I gave her the wink. But I hadn’t bargained for her pa, Bob Wiltshire, who later put his head in a lion’s mouth for a bet; he came the length of the bar, crying:

‘I’ll halve your skull for you, ye young scut, if you wink at my daughter like that!’

I cried: ‘Ach, I never did, sir. I’ve got somethin’ in me eye.’

‘Excuse me, please, I’m off,’ said Tim, and went fast.

He was as big as James J. Jeffries, and if I’d laid him out I’d not have courted his daughter: he was a hard, fierce man for his girls, for he’d got another three of them chained to the bed upstairs.

But Edie Wiltshire smiled at me, and her lips were charitable.

‘Did you like that pig’s trotter, Jim Driscoll?’ she asked, and she fluttered a dark eye.

‘You’d best get goin’, ye Irish yob, before I come round the bar to ye,’ said the landlord.

He came from Shepton Mallet.

Not much of a courtship this one, with folks threatening violence.

I soon forgot about Edie, for next day was the Leckwith Fair, and there was money to be earned hitting out the pugilists, said Boyo, if the buggers don’t get you first.

 

In the old days the June Fair used to be held up Gallows Field, where the victims paid a penny for their own rope, but a lot had happened to Cardiff since then.

Boyo came down from near the Prison and we went full pelt along Tyndall.

Kids were kicking a pig’s bladder over the Bobtail. Mrs Enock Williams, the new soprano in the Cardiff Orpheus, was giving ‘Blessed are the Pure in Heart’ an outing near Murphy’s store, with Alwyn Talfarn, the Temperance counter-tenor, stretching his breeches on the harmonium. Ma O’Rourke, the lady boxer, was handing the copper stick to her chap for spending the rent money in the Cambridge, and from Tyndall to Ellen and back return journey via North William, the carters and hawkers were at it.

Near Grangetown Bridge, with every kid in Newtown going head down full pelt, stood the ancient figure of Mr Maldwyn Thomas Rugby, his hand up like a copper, halting us.

‘Wait!’ he boomed.

‘We’re off to Leckwith Fair, Mr Maldwyn Thomas . . .’

‘Wait you!’ and he fetched out his ref’s whistle and blew it to shatter eardrums, then gripped us by the collars and held us up for a pig-sticking; mind, he could be a bugger when he got outside the Allsop’s.

In full rugby kit was he; red jersey and socks, white shorts of Wales, with a rugby ball under his arm, waiting for the call from the Welsh selectors, poor sod. In treble cleff he shrieked:

‘Were ye there in 1890 when Wales beat England up in Dewsbury?’

‘Jawch, no Mr Thomas,’ cried Boyo, shivering. ‘I ain’t never been to Dewsbury, Mr Thomas,’ and he wriggled beside me in the grip of iron.

‘Then your education’s neglected, ye beasts. Were you the two I saw kicking a round ball over the Bobtail a week last Friday?’

‘Good God, no!’ I shouted, shocked.

‘But I saw ye, you hear me?’ and he howled at the sky and shook us to rattle. ‘I tell you I saw ye, ye little sods! Don’t you demons know that all balls in this world are oval, including yours?’

‘It were only a pig’s bladder, mind,’ whimpered Boyo, losing touch.

‘Nefoedd! Did ye hear that?’ And he added, broken: ‘A pig’s bladder! They kick pigs’ bladders – and there’s me tryin’ to teach them the greatest game in the world! O God, have pity!’ and he held us at arm’s length and booted our backsides. ‘Listen, you limbs of Satan. Didn’t ye know that God invented rugby? That he’s got a Great White Fifteen up in the sky hitting Hell out of Beelzebub’s sooty varmints? I seen Judas tackle high, with St Peter at stand-off and the Angel Gabriel playing hooker. While you, ye blutty Philistines!’ and he landed one in the arse of Boyo’s trews that shot him past me like a bloody rocket.

‘Away! Away! Never let me set eyes on your like again, or I’ll punt the pair of you into touch! Go, go, go!’

And he took one last swing at our rears, tucked the ball under his arm and went like Risca for the Green Fields of Erin to kill another quart.

 

It were a glorious June day, with lovely green and yellow birds playing chase-me-do-me over the golden fields and sheep boasting about the willows down the Taff. Breathless, we ran, furious at the time we’d wasted with Maldwyn Thomas Rugby.

‘Jesus alive and reigning!’ exclaimed Boyo, ‘look at that!’ and pointed, for tents and marquees had made shape against the giant of Leckwith Hill.

In my mind I saw Carrie’s Smiling Land above . . .

Incoming crowds from Canton were thronging about us, acrobats handspringing and cartwheeling, jugglers throwing up coloured balls and snatching them out of the sun; magicians and pickpockets were doing disappearing acts. Irish fiddles were shrieking, brass bands blaring, roundabouts with kids squealing were whirring in discordant noise traction engines trundling in billows of smoke and a Marenghi pipe organ from Italy playing ‘Rule Britannia’. You had to see Leckwith Fair to believe it.

And best of all was the big Jack Scarrott boxing booth, decorated with muscled chaps taking stances and insulting the crowd. Around it surged the colliers and miners of the valley towns from Merthyr, Tredegar, Blaenafon and a dozen more; hundreds were already seated on forms surrounding the square ring, hundreds more, their back teeth already awash, were crow-calling and jeering, making challenges.

‘This is us, Boyo, come on in,’ I whispered, and we barged into them, head down, and fought our way to the apron of the ring. All was sun and tumult; I shall never forget it.

‘Here comes the barker!’ shouted Boyo, elbowing me.

‘Ay ay,’ I went on tiptoe. ‘And here comes Redmond Coleman!’

It was strange, but I’d always felt that my destiny, in some obscure way, was linked with this man.

 

Lowering my hands, I watched him, for into the field came in showman splendour a carriage drawn by two white horses; and standing within the open landau, already stripped to the waist for battle, was Redmond Coleman, the Emperor of Merthyr’s ‘China’.

This was the lightweight champion of Wales, beautifully muscled, and his brown skin gleamed in the sun. Around him, like decorating flowers, stood the molls and floozies of ‘China’, the little strumpet city within a town – sink-pit of thieves and prostitution, of which Redmond Coleman, successor to the great Shoni Sgubor Fawr, was king. Bowing and scraping to the crowd he came, his women waving their coloured parasols and pulling up their bright dresses to show their red garters.

‘Dear me,’ said Boyo, ‘that’s disgusting!’

‘Ay ay, let’s try to get nearer,’ I said, and we fought our way through beefy colliers right to the wheels of the landau.

They were gorgeous, those women! Rouged up and bustled, they clapped and cheered as Redmond, in the middle of them, did his contortions: hands linked behind his head, he rolled and rippled the muscles of his belly; a Hercules now, making a stance, swelling up his biceps, and the colliers cheered and bellowed at his women, loving it. And the way those gold-ankle ladies were bowing to show their deep divides was bringing me out into a sweat.

‘Away from here, for God’s sake,’ said Boyo, ‘or I won’t be able to fight anybody.’

‘Me, too,’ said I.

‘Right you, ladies and gentlemen!’ roared the barker, and I recognised him instantly; it was ‘Salem’ Sullivan, the boxing instructor down at the gentlemen’s Badminton Club: every Friday night he gave lads lessons over at Imperato’s place in Eisteddfod Street, by the station.

‘Ladies and gentlemen. As your barker this afternoon I introduce to you the great Redmond Coleman, Champion of Wales!’

Cheers and catcalls at this, with hats going up.

‘Further, Mr Coleman issues a challenge to any man here – irrespective of weight – to a twenty-round match against a side stake of a hundred guineas!’

Another great cheer, the idiots. ‘I’ve only got sixpence,’ said Boyo, glum. ‘Who’s got a hundred blutty guineas?’

‘He knows that,’ I replied, watching Redmond Coleman.

Men said he was a terror; he was doing all the right things now, of course, prancing prettily about, stabbing and hooking at nothing while his women watched with squeals of admiration. But once a gong went, he was a slasher, a two-fisted gutter fighter thumping and clubbing his opponent into submission. Talk had it that he’d killed two men in the ring – Knocker Daniels of Llandegi, somewhere up north, and Gipsy Smith down in Carmarthen.

‘What you staring at?’ asked Boyo.

‘Not much bigger’n me, really speaking . . .’

‘Too big for you, butty, he’s a man. Diawch! He eats the likes of us for dinner.’

‘He’s slow,’ I said, and he was; it could have been idleness, but there was a sloth-like dignity about his movements; handsome devil, too. No wonder the women were taking him on.

The barker was shouting again: ‘In the absence of a taker to a challenge fight, Mr Coleman will pay a golden guinea to any man here, under ten stone, who can stay vertical in this ring with him for a three-minute round!’

‘Be on his feet, you mean?’ This from a young collier, a lusty black-faced lad straight up from the pit; his tipsy pals heaved him up on their shoulders, and Redmond Coleman took one look through the gaggle of his chattering women.

‘Take him, Salem,’ he said.

‘Blutty hell,’ whispered Boyo, ‘rather him than me.’

Fascinated, I watched.

 

I loved the vulgarity and colour of it, the flouncy petticoats of the Merthyr mollies, who were all around the ring now, sitting on the knees of the customers; red-faced wives, brought by rumour, were getting into the seats and hauling husbands out of it. The crowd buzzed like excited bees as the young collier stood waiting in his corner, and its discordant song grew within me, stifling my breath.

Coleman was jigging; his slow, feline grace putting to shame the antics of his women; I judged his age at twenty, six years older than me. The sun flashed on the muscles of his fine body. Can the body of a woman compare with that of such a man? I wondered. The bell jangled at the ringside. Smiling, the boxer slid out, left hand forward like the tongue of a snake; the collier blinked at the sun; it was the old professional trick. Coleman moved so fast I scarcely saw it. A dig to the midriff brought the collier’s head down, a right uppercut brought it up, and a swinging left hit him flat: flat; out to the wide.

Astonished, the crowd sat suspended in sun and silence; then lowed bassly, bulls at an empty stall.

Somebody dragged the collier away, somebody else threw water over him; eighteen seconds including the count.

‘Next, please, gentlemen,’ bawled Salem Sullivan.

‘Aye, me,’ I said, standing up.

‘Excuse me,’ said Boyo, ‘I am from here.’

‘You come back! I need a second.’

‘Not me, mun. The sight of that fella gives me pneumonia. Are ye daft, Driscoll? He’s the champion of Wales – you’ve just seen it.’

‘You, son?’ said Salem, bending down towards me.

‘Ay ay.’

I tried to vault up on to the apron, but the barker pushed me down, saying: ‘Now now, lad, it’s men we’re after, not boys.’

The colliers stood up on their forms, whooping and cheering, craning their necks for a look.

From here I could see the white canvas of the ring and its dull, black splashes of blood. The noise of the crowd was beating about me, snatching me up. Boyo was tugging at my sleeve and the barker walked away, but Redmond Coleman, seeing his women gesticulating, turned and saw me; wandering over the ring he leaned on the top rope, smiling down.

‘How old are you, lad?’ His accent was thick with Welsh, almost broken English.

‘Sixteen.’

‘He’s not fifteen,’ said Boyo, and I pushed him.

‘Fifteen, and you think you can take me?’ asked the boxer.

‘I can stay a three-minute round, mister.’

He straightened, turning away. ‘It can be a long three minutes, cariad,’ and bawled some unintelligible Welsh to his seconds. But the audience had seen it all, and began to chant and clap in rhythm. A collier shouted:

‘What’s wrong, Redmond? Cold feet?’

Coleman grinned over his shoulder. The man shouted: ‘I say pay the lad for his courage,’ and a woman’s voice pierced the bass shouts of the men. ‘Are ye feared of him because he’s Irish, Coleman?’

It was old Minnie Looney, and I loved her.

A lot of pushing and shoving in the ring and Salem Sullivan picked up his megaphone, and shouted: ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen, does the champion of Wales fight boys now? Do ye want a death on your hands?’

‘He don’t have to kill the lad – tell Red to pull his punches!’

‘Cut it to a minute, Slam – go on, give the boy a chance.’

‘You want your head read,’ said Boyo.

The bedlam subsided when Salem flung up his hands in the middle of the ring. He announced: ‘All right, all right, we’ll check the boy for courage, but not with the Welsh champion.’ He turned. ‘Badger!’

Up into Redmond’s corner scrambled a lad about my age, but half again as broad. Salem cried:

‘This boy’s an up-and-comer, if you can believe my judgment – a protégé of Mr Coleman’s circus. So young Badger O’Brien will take this lad on – Irish against Irish – and if he’s standing after sixty seconds – and I warrant that he isn’t – I’ll add this silver cup to his sovereign – does that suit you?’

The crowd bellowed agreement. Martial music beat about me as I climbed up through the ropes; the distant pipe organ pumped out ‘Scotland the Brave’ and people began to flock in from every corner of the field.

‘Jesus,’ said Boyo, up and beside me now. ‘Rather you than me, mun.’

They ordered him out, and when he jumped down it was nearly into the arms of Carys.

‘Good God,’ I whispered.

‘Ay, good God,’ said she, hitching up her skirts and trying to climb up. ‘The fella’s a professional and he’ll moider ye, so he will.’

‘I’ll be all right, Carrie,’ I shouted down. And as she pulled her hat down over her ears and tried to get me, the ringside bell gonged like the toll of doom.

Turning, I faced Badger O’Brien, bare-knuckle.

He was good. I knew it instantly. For all his bulk he moved like a ghost on silent feet, cornering me and bringing in an overarm right that would have killed me had it landed. Still cornered, I ducked and weaved, covering my body and letting the punches slide past my ears. Grabbing him, I took him into a clinch and used his weight to wheel clear. In the middle of the ring I awaited his rush, side-stepped, and he floundered past me into the ropes. I saw his face when he turned; it was bright-eyed and calm as he measured me, and he walked in slowly behind an avalanche of short, sharp punches as he tried to corner me again. Carrie shrieked – I heard her clearly – as I slipped to one knee on a patch of water, and Badger stepped back, waiting until I was up.

It was in that moment, I think, that friendship was born between us.

Perplexity was upon his face as I ducked and faded out of reach; exasperation followed as the seconds ticked away. Swinging wildly now, with his chin unguarded, he ran at me, and I saw that chin waiting for the cross; changing my mind, I side-stepped again, and poor Badger blundered past me, head first into the ropes; falling through them, he tumbled head down, suspended by his legs; willing hands pushed him back and the gong went for the end of the sixty seconds. It was the only fight I’d fought where not a blow was struck.

Bedlam. Half-soaked colliers were parading around the ring, bottles were being waved, Coleman’s mollies shrieking as they were lifted and passed over the heads of the mob. And the laughter and noise! I’ve never heard the like of it since.

Salem in the ring now, bawling through his megaphone:

‘Ladies and gentlemen. I have much pleasure . . .’

But I didn’t really hear him. I was looking towards Redmond’s corner where Badger was standing head bowed. I went to him and touched him, and he turned to me. Strangely, though, I found nothing to say, but Badger found words; he always did . . .

‘Ach, forget it, mun. It’s the luck o’ the Irish. But I’ll have ye next time for sure – I’ll do ye foine, so I will.’

‘Driscoll!’

Carrie again, belting a path through the customers, with the colliers barring her way; her hat was on sideways and her face was as red as a turkey’s wattle. Furious, she yelled: ‘Will ye step down here, Driscoll, while I hit ye a clout any minute? Arrah, I’ll mend you, be God, when I get you home!’

Badger said, grinning wide: ‘I bet you couldn’t handle her as easy as me, mun. She’d be a rough one in the clinches.’

‘You’d best get moving,’ I said.

Badger shrugged, nodding down at a man who had just joined Carrie; he was dressed in sailor blue and with scrambled egg on his cap, and his smile was wide and handsome.

‘Say if I’m wrong, but I reckon you’ve had it, Driscoll my son,’ said Boyo.

The tears of my throat threatened to choke me as I stood there in the crowd, and watched her leave me.

Chapter 11

The next three years went by in magnificent haste, as if anxious to get me over and done with, and a few things happened worth recording. My little half-brother Tommy was born, making eleven in our new house. Three Ellen Street, and that’s an unlucky number, said Carrie, no self-respecting woman can stop till a baker’s dozen.

Uncle Patsy and Aunt Bridget, after passing the Duke of Edinburgh over to my Uncle Ocker, took the Baroness of Windsor in Penarth Road: within a year or so Martha married Denis McCarthy and took him to live with Gran. But the family history wouldn’t be complete without a mention of Martha and Mary Ann, in spinsterhood.

I was in the scullery cleaning boots when my sisters came down to queue up at the mirror over the bosh.

There’s a pair of beauties for you; one fair, one dark.

It is something of a sadness, I think, when the crab-apple knees of a sister disappear and leave behind a round smoothness. The puppy fat is gone; Nature begins to inflate them to – the right proportions and in exactly the right places: two ducks who had grown into swans. Mary Ann’s freckles had gone; her snub nose had straightened, her carroty hair was replaced by long, fair tresses, her buck teeth had become pearls between cupid bows grown red for kissing. And to describe Martha these days, aged nineteen, would need the hand and eye of a London artist. To enhance this beauty she possessed the serenity and carriage of a nun.

‘And where might you two be off to?’ asked my father.

‘Nazareth House, Father,’ said Martha.

He examined his pipe. ‘And you?’

Mary Ann’s blue eyes opened wide in mock defiance. ‘Ach, to the Park Hall lantern show – what’s wrong wi’ that, for Heaven’s sake?’

Talk had it that the chaps were queueing up at the Park Hall and it wasn’t to look at magic lanterns.

‘You’ll be back at a decent hour, remember,’ said Ma, knitting. Morning, noon and night she knitted; washed, scrubbed, changed babies, bathed and polished toddlers; the place was a nursery of howling, squealing kids, and I was glad to be out of it at times.

‘And don’t talk like that to your feyther,’ added Ma.

‘You, Driscoll?’ Pa frowned at me over the top of his glasses. ‘What are you doing tonight?’

‘Boyo’s in the final of the Assault-at-Arms Competition at Imperato’s – I’m seconding.’ I went on polishing boots.

‘You didn’t enter?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because Boyo entered.’

He didn’t question it.

 

He was a well-made piece of upholstery these days, my friend Boyo; a sideboard on legs, Pa called him. Black was his hair and parted in the middle like Joe Choynski’s, his American idol; though quiet and happy-natured, in the ring he was a terror: at Imperato’s they said that over three rounds he was invincible at his age.

We used to enter for the boys’ boxing competitions up and down the valleys, mopping up the opposition, and my mother soon had a row of little tin cups either side of my real father’s portrait on the mantel. But, although we were about the same weight, we made sure that we never met, Boyo and me. I don’t know why this happened, it was something we arranged unspokenly.

Spare time after work – he was employed with fish on the Neale and West trawlers – we’d hang around Jack Imperato’s near the station in the hope of seeing the professionals; you can always tell them by their left ear – thickened by the right-hand smashes as they come into the attack, though you can collect them at rugby, too, of course: my Uncle Ocker got his in the scrum.

Bang bang on the back and Boyo stands there, his hair plastered down with water and a flower in his buttonhole big enough for a funeral.

‘Come in, lad, come in,’ says Pa.

‘Have a cup o’ tea, Boyo?’

‘No thanks, missus. Fightin’, I am, a couple of hours from now.’

‘The Chamber of Trade Competition?’ asks Pa.

‘Ay ay.’ Boyo dances on the balls of his feet, shy because Martha and Mary Ann are there; it could have had a bad effect on him, I reflected.

‘Nipper Pat Daley, isn’t it?’ asked Flurrie, from the fire.

‘Ay ay.’

Mary Ann fluttered an eye at Boyo and he visibly sagged; the trouble with him was that he did all his courting in phantasies: he’d have been head first through the window if she’d taken a step towards him.

‘You’re coming on fine, Boyo, fine,’ says Ma. ‘Ellen Street is proud of you.’

‘Ay ay, missus?’

I finished lacing my boots. ‘We’d best go, butty,’ I said. ‘He’s a terror is Nipper Pat, they tell me, best not keep him waiting lest he kills ye.’

‘Take him in two rounds,’ said Boyo, coming to life.

In the event he took Nipper in one.

 

I was fifteen when my Carrie left home.

It was nearly a year since I boxed Badger O’Brien at Leckwith Fair, and I was sure, then, that one chap at least was tugging her petticoats. But he went the same way as the rest of them, and the only one on the horizon these days was Big Billy O’Hara; summer and winter, rain or sun, snow or hail, he was mooching around on our doorstep and coughing to have his ribs out. But Carrie never spared him a glance.

It is strange to me how cruel women can be.

Autumn, you know, has got nothing on springtime when it comes to moonies, and Carrie was like the rest of them when it came to June.

Something was happening.

‘The Hildegarde’s in port again, remember,’ said Boyo.

There was talk of a steward, another man in blue; word had it that they sparked on Leckwith Hill; later, I saw them together, and I knew him for a woman-killer, and his name was Jack Dobbs.

‘Oh aye, and who’s askin’ you, for God’s sake?’ The same old Carys, sparring up like a bantam cock.

‘Got a wife in every port, Carrie, they all have.’

‘Then they’re lucky, for he’s a foine well-set-up fella.’ She flounced about, picking things up in the kitchen and smacking them down. ‘And who are you to stand there with a face as long as tomorrer? I suppose you’d have me stepping lively with the likes of that Billy O’Hara? Arrah! I’d rather be yoked to a pig. And you’re a foine one for your likes and dislikes,