The Black Boxer Tales Page 3

  During the interval Dutchy worked on his stomach and freshened him with the towel and urged the old advice upon him. He nodded vaguely. The whole pandemonium of the fair seemed to clamour in his head, the shouting of the crowd, the tunes of the hurdy-gurdy, the snap of rifle-shots, the thunder of switchbacks and the silly shrieking of young girls. He could not gather his thoughts.

  During the third round and again in the fourth Harrison knocked him down. Each time he took a count of nine, resting on his elbow. At every count the crowd shouted wildly. He knew that he was losing, and he knew that no one wanted him to win. After every punch he felt slower, and behind Harrison’s big menacing face the white faces of the crowd seemed to surge up to him and ebb away in a babbling tide.

  In the intervals his arms felt leaden, his legs fluttered with sickness, and his body felt old and sore. He knew that he was looked upon as beaten already. He could see the unpleasantness in Sullivan’s face as he leaned in the corner and noted the points on a scrap of paper.

  When the gong rang for the fifth round Harrison rushed across the ring and met him with a wild attack in his body. He was flushed and sweating, and his eyes were glowing with an eagerness to finish off the negro. He hooked wildly but the blow missed and the negro, full of a sudden despairing calmness, gathered himself and swung heavily at Harrison’s jaw. The punch connected, Harrison went down, and then leapt to his feet again before Sullivan had time to count. The crowd cheered him. He rushed at the negro madly again, without success. The negro felt strangely calm, his fears lessened. Harrison seemed suddenly baffled and angry. He repeated his attack and the crowd clamoured madly for the knockout. He came and attacked again, angry and distressed by his failure to hit the negro. The negro, for the first time impassive and unharassed, struck Harrison’s jaw with a short, straight punch. Harrison tottered and fell on one knee, hanging to the rope with his left hand. The booth was like a madhouse, the crowd yelling for Harrison to stand up. He rose slowly, holding to the ropes, panting heavily. The ropes were very loose and as he trusted his weight to them they sagged and he pitched forward drunkenly. The negro followed up with his right. Harrison gloved off the blow but staggered and pitched forward again, like a boomerang. Something like a primitive frenzy came over the negro. He leapt forward and hit Harrison madly as he was falling. The blow struck hard below the belt and Harrison quivered and pitched upward through the ropes and dropped heavily into the crowd.

  The negro stood utterly still in the ring. It was all over. He was conscious vaguely of Harrison being counted out and of the crowd yelling angrily for a foul. He knew that he had fouled Harrison, and he knew that the crowd hated him.

  Sullivan finished the count and seizing the negro’s arm held it above his head and shouted:

  ‘Pinto!’

  The crowd hooted the negro, who stood statuesque and bewildered, as though not understanding what had happened. His arm dropped listlessly. Dutchy came into the ring and flung the dressing-gown over his shoulders. Sullivan walked round the ring holding up his hands and trying to quieten the pandemonium, but the crowd called derisively ‘Go to Hell! Shut your bloody mouth!’ Harrison crawled back through the ropes, holding his stomach, dazed and reeling. The crowd cheered and clamoured for him. His seconds began a furious altercation with Sullivan, thrusting their faces close up to him, livid with temper. Flowers and Hack leapt into the ring and pushed away the seconds, elbowing them away like policemen. The booth was full of a shouting, quarrelling pandemonium.

  Dutchy kept close to the negro. ‘All right,’ he kept repeating. ‘All right. Didn’t I tell you you’d win?’

  The negro, dazed and despondent, never moved. He looked like a solemn black statue. He stared apathetically from the crowd to Harrison and from Harrison to Sullivan. He saw Sullivan waving some paper money in his hand and he saw Harrison take the money and count it. There were three pounds. After that he vaguely understood that Sullivan was appealing to the crowd, who were beginning to listen to his hoarse insinuating voice.

  ‘You know that in this show or any other show the referee’s word must stand. Ain’t that so? If the referee gives way to the crowd what happens? You know what happens! He’s no more good! He’s finished. He’s done. Napoo! I’ve refereed more fights than any man in this show has ever seen. And if any other man will come up here in my place I shall welcome him gladly! Gladly! Harrison’s a good fighter—a game feller—and when he was knocked out he was leading on points, let me tell you that. He’s a game feller.’

  The crowd began to cheer again.

  ‘But he was knocked out! Knocked out! And fair. And no man in this crowd will make me change my opinion that he was knocked out! But to show that I think he’s a game feller and a good fighter—’

  The negro saw Sullivan flourish another pound note in the air. He saw Harrison come forward and accept the money while Sullivan patted his back. The crowd cheered and clapped and stamped its feet for Harrison.

  Sullivan held up his hands and quietened the crowd.

  ‘And now give the coloured man a clap,’ he shouted; ‘and now give the coloured man a clap!’

  The crowd gave the negro a round of applause.

  The negro knotted the cord of his dressing-gown. He saw Sullivan looking at him closely, his shifty eyes filled with impatience and contempt. He felt humiliated and dazed, and he hated Sullivan bitterly for awarding him the fight. He climbed under the ropes and leapt softly down on the grass and began to elbow his way through the crowd, back to the dressing-room. Dutchy, following him, threw a towel about his neck. The crowd murmured a little as it parted to let him through.

  He went into the dressing-van and sat down on a box. There was an odour of sweat and liniment and the oil from the lamp burning on the table. He stared vaguely at the flame burning steady and yellow behind the smoky lamp-glass, and then at the rows of boxing photographs lit up by the orange light of the lamp. His legs were unsteady and fluttering, as though he had been running very hard and for a long time. His stomach and his ribs were bruised and sore. His arms seemed heavy and wooden and his whole body felt old and feeble and empty, like the husk of something.

  ‘Christ! You won,’ said Dutchy. ‘Didn’t I tell you you’d win?’

  The negro lifted his hands listlessly for Dutchy to take off the gloves. He was thinking of Sullivan, the foul, and the way the crowd had hooted him. The mad frenzy in which he had fouled Harrison had left him tired and stupefied and ashamed.

  Dutchy slipped off first one glove and then the other. The negro opened his hot damp hands and was too listless to shut them again.

  Dutchy unknotted the cord of his dressing-gown and threw the gown back over the black shoulders, warm and shining dark with sweat, and began to rub the shoulders gently. The negro slowly stood up. His dressing-gown slipped to the floor and he stood motionless, solemn and mute, staring straight at the boxing pictures pinned on the wall before him.

  ‘Feeling all right?’ Dutchy asked. ‘Didn’t I tell you you’d win? You’ll be all right. Didn’t I tell you? Easy! You’ll be all right.’

  He threw the towel aside and drew the flesh gloves on his hands. The negro slowly bent his back. There was a strange expression of sadness on his face and an air of weariness about his whole body, and he was not listening to Dutchy’s words.

  ‘Easy,’ said Dutchy. ‘You’ll be all right. Didn’t I tell you?’

  On the Road

  The wood was flooded with April sunlight, but shallow pools of rain lay wherever there were hollows in the black earth under the oak trees. Black rings of ashes were dotted about the ground where tramps had made their fires and rested, and primroses were blooming everywhere at the feet of young hazel trees. The wind that blew the hazels with a soft sound one against another was sweet and warm and laden with the scent of the primroses. It was like the breath of a new life.

  A man came into the wood from the road and strode a hundred paces into it at random among the hazel trees. He was tall and black-haired and p
owerfully broad at the shoulders; except when he stooped beneath the undergrowth. He carried himself superbly, with a slight swagger of his hips, holding his head high up, and sometimes throwing it slightly backward, with unconscious motions of arrogance and pride. He looked less like a tramp than a fighter but less like a fighter than some proud sardonic Indian. His face was muscular and powerful; the skin was burnt tough and dry by the sun, and there was a glimpse of a tattoo mark of a purple and crimson flower on his naked chest. He was dressed in light brown trousers, a black jacket slung over his shoulder, a soft grey hat, and a blue shirt faded and washed to the colour of the sky. He stooped and nicked off a primrose with a finger-nail and put the flower in his mouth. He was looking for a place to rest.

  He took another twenty paces into the wood and saw the white smoke of a fire among the trees. He stopped and gazed at the smoke for one moment and then walked on. In another moment he came upon a woman and man sitting by the fire on a space of earth between a sallow bush and an oak tree. The man was asleep with his head against the oak tree and the woman was boiling a can of water on a heap of smoking wood. He saw a black bundle on the earth and an old perambulator pushed back against the sallow.

  He stood perfectly still and gazed at the woman without a flicker of his dark eyes. She was dressed in a short black skirt and an old stained orange-coloured jersey stretched as tight as skin over her big breasts and shoulders. Her hair was very thick and blonde and there was something about her that recalled a lioness: the tawny eyes sleepy and rich with changing lights, the lips ripe and heavy, the large, strong face superb with its passionate languor. She had a newspaper open on her knees but she put it down on the earth as he looked at her. Her hands were strong and handsome, and the skin was a beautiful golden colour, smooth and with tiny blonde hairs that gleamed in the sunshine.

  ‘Sit down,’ she said. She waved her hand. There were no rings on her fingers. Her voice was low, careless and husky.

  He looked at the man lying with his head against the oak tree. She half smiled.

  ‘He’s asleep,’ she said. ‘He’s all right. You won’t wake him.’

  He sat down on the black earth. He sat so that he could see both the man and the woman at one glance. In an instant he saw astounding differences between them. The man was haggard and white, and the bones of his cheeks stood out clear and sharp as knuckles under his dark eyes. His face was dirty and dissolute and strengthless, and he lay like a man who had received a stunning blow, his closed eyes dark as two deep bruises under his narrow brows. He looked as if he would never wake again, and the woman looked at him with one hasty glance of indifference, as if not caring whether he woke or not.

  The water in the can began to bubble, and the woman slipped a stick under the handle and took the can from the fire. The man leaned across without hesitation and quickly shook something brown from a packet into the water.

  ‘You’re very smart,’ she flashed, looking up. ‘What was that?’

  He leaned over and stirred the water with the stick, which he took from her own hands. ‘Coffee.’

  He had spoken all the time with the primrose in his mouth, and now he leaned back and took the flower from his mouth and spat away an inch of bitten stalk and put it back again. There was something about the paleness of the primrose against his dark face that made him doubly arresting.

  They stared at each other in silence, their eyes languid and bold and unflickering.

  ‘Where are you making for?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘Liverpool,’ she said.

  He looked at the perambulator. Then he glanced at her shoes. He noticed for the first time her blistered feet through the soles. He looked at her sharply.

  ‘You’re a hell of a way from Liverpool,’ he said. ‘A hell of a way.’

  She did not answer. The smell of the coffee was strong in the wood, and there was no sound except the whistling of a blackbird and of bees booming softly in the yellow-dusty sallow blooms. She reached over to the bundle and brought out two blue enamel cups and poured out the coffee and handed a cup to him.

  ‘No sugar,’ she said in a languid voice.

  He fumbled at his pocket and brought out a packet of yellow sugar and set it on the earth between them and nodded towards the sleeping man.

  ‘Going to wake him?’ he said.

  She shrugged her shoulders and tasted the coffee.

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ he said.

  She crooked her elbow and smiled ironically and took a deep drink of her coffee.

  ‘Like a fish,’ she said.

  He nodded and looked at the thin white face more closely. It seemed very young.

  ‘Twenty-five,’ she said. ‘And he was a fine kid. But now—’ she laid her two hands just above her breasts and shook her head.

  The man took the primrose from his mouth and threw it on the earth and began to drink his coffee. The sunshine came warmly down on his face, and as he tilted back his head he felt the intent and sleepy gaze of the woman on his face too.

  ‘Where are you going yourself?’ she said.

  He finished drinking and wiped his lips and stared at her boldly, admiring her.

  ‘I want to get to Bristol and find a ship and get to Valparaiso,’ he said. ‘I’m sick of this country. I used to know a man in Valparaiso. I made some money there at one time.’

  She nodded her head and took another drink of her coffee and repeated thoughtfully:

  ‘Valparaiso.’

  He drained his coffee and spat the grounds from his mouth and leaned back on one elbow. The place where they were sitting was for a space of a foot or two without shadow, and the spring sunshine poured full on the woman’s head, so that her hair seemed more then ever golden and the strength and passion in her face finer in the yellow light. The old orange jersey had a row of buttons at her breast, but the first was missing and the second had slipped from its buttonhole. Her breast gleamed soft and fair against the dirty orange stuff, and half-unconsciously her hand moved and she did up the button afresh. But when her hand dropped back to her knees the swelling of her breast burst it apart again.

  ‘What’s it like in a place like Valparaiso?’ she said suddenly.

  ‘You know as well as I do.’

  She nodded.

  ‘If the good God just thinks fit it can be wonderful,’ he went on. ‘In one month in Valparaiso I made five hundred pounds. And easy too. I made it too easy. I wasn’t satisfied. I thought I could go down to Buenos Aires and make a lot more. I lost every penny in a fortnight. Then I went up to Panama and on to Cuba and over to San Francisco. I made a bit of money sometimes but I could never keep it long. Now I want to get back to Valparaiso. But if things go wrong I daresay I shall want to get back here again.’

  His voice was deep and easy and there was something nonchalant and ironical and dreamy about his words. The woman sat watching him with an expression of undisguised intensity, contemplating his dark face with a marvellous steadiness of her sleepy eyes, lost in thought. She seemed in that moment extraordinarily young, her face transformed by a moment of the strangest rapture. She looked at him candidly and enviously, and then suddenly with a glance of full-blooded passion too, her eyes wide and perfectly child-like, her bosom falling and heaving rapidly.

  They sat for a moment and watched each other again like two animals. His lips gradually assumed a little sardonic smile but she never changed her expression of marvellous intensity. The sun was warming the primroses and the sallow bloom, and the air was filled with the soft scents of them, the smell of wood smoke and the strong odour of earth.

  The man beneath the tree stirred suddenly in his sleep and began to breathe heavily, like someone drunk, without waking.

  The sound upset the woman. In a moment the fine expression on her face was lost. The sardonic, dreamy smile vanished from the lips of the man too. He stood up.

  ‘I’ll push on,’ he said.

  The woman rose to her feet also and stretched her arms over her head w
ith a motion of weariness. In the moment that the orange jersey and the black skirt were pulled skin-tight over her rigid body he saw that she was pregnant.

  She lowered her arms with a sigh, her magnificent body all languorous and heavy with its burden of strength and life. She yawned, and then smiled at him when she had finished the yawn.

  ‘You’re not so very old?’ he said.

  ‘Twenty-nine.’

  ‘And some,’ he guessed ironically.

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Twenty-nine.’

  ‘I believe you,’ he said.

  He looked straight into her eyes and nodded, thinking for one moment of the sleepy man, the perambulator, her shoes, her lacerated feet and her pregnancy. She returned his look with some of the old intensity, but now as though she were thinking of something else, very far away.

  ‘Well, I’ll get,’ he said. ‘What’ll you do if you get to Liverpool?’

  She lifted her face a fraction towards the sun and shook her head. Instantly he turned away his head, as if he regretted bitterly having spoken.

  ‘So long. Good luck for Valparaiso,’ she said.

  ‘So long,’ he said. ‘Good luck for Liverpool.’

  They looked at each other for a single instant, and something warm and tender flashed between them before he turned away and began to stride through the wood towards the road.

  The wands of the hazel trees kept whipping back as he passed and the pollen was shaken from the thick catkins, and a golden dust came falling through the beams of sunlight slanting between the trees. The sound of the swaying branches and cracking whips grew rapidly farther and farther away and the hazel trees trembled less and less and finally became still again. The woman sat down, rested her face in her hands and stared in thought at the primroses and the sleeping man. The last of the branches swayed to rest in its place again and the wood was silent.

  A Love Story

  Christina verney was seventeen when I fell in love with her. She used to live in those days with her parents at a small white dairy shaded by a tall, green sycamore that grew in the churchyard, and we used to go on long walks together to take butter to outlying cottages. She was a small, demure, delicate creature. She reminded one of a primrose, and she was so shy that for a long time I hesitated to tell her what I felt for her.