by Irene Carr
Peter knew him as landlord of some of the houses in the streets around, and as a bookie. He came over from the table where the fire irons were laid on sheets of newspaper. ‘I’m Peter Robinson.’
Fannon asked, ‘Can we have a talk?’ He jerked his head at the empty passage behind him.
Peter pushed Billy gently towards the table and the fire irons. ‘You get on wi’ that lot. I’ll only be a minute or two.’ He stepped out into the passage and shut the door behind him. ‘Now, what did you want me for?’ He eyed Fannon with dislike.
Fannon’s eyes flickered away from Peter’s gaze. ‘The feller that ran the boxing booth – the one in the Garrison Field – told me about a Peter Robinson that beat one of his lads. Was that you?’
Peter nodded. ‘It was. What about it?’
‘Ah! Well.’ The fat man licked lips already wet. ‘I could put you in the way of making some money.’ A door opened on the floor above and a neighbour came out on to the landing and peered curiously at the two men below. Fannon muttered, ‘Tell you what: if you’re interested, come to the Frigate and have a drink. I’ll tell you all about it there.’
Peter was interested. His labourer’s pay from the shipyard was barely enough to keep the three of them, and now Margaret Hackett needed a more expensive diet. He said, ‘I’ll get my coat.’ As he took his jacket from a hook on the back of the door he ruffled Billy’s hair. ‘You can knock off now. I’m going out for a bit but I’ll finish it when I get back.’ Then he warned his mother with mock severity, ‘You stay in that chair. Billy will tell me if you get out of it.’
Later, in the Frigate, he told Fannon, I’ll do it.’
Three weeks later, hidden away in a dark gully between two deserted engine sheds down by the river, he fought his first bloody and bruising bare-knuckle contest by the light of two paraffin lanterns. His opponent was a seasoned fighter from Hartlepool called Brannigan. At the end Peter could see the other man was out on his feet, so he stood back and looked appealingly at the referee, who waved impatiently at Peter to fight on. Peter hit Brannigan again, more a shove than a punch, but it laid him on his back and he was counted out.
As Peter pulled on his shirt he saw Gallagher and McNally standing by Fannon, who – so Peter understood – had set up the fight. Peter faced the three of them but addressed the bookie: ‘You didn’t tell me these two were in this with you.’
‘They aren’t in it with me,’ Fannon replied. ‘Except that I need them on account o’ carrying a lot o’ money about, like I do at these fights. They work for me just the same as you do, that’s all.’
Peter answered, eyeing the two, ‘Just you keep them away from me.’
Now McNally jeered, ‘You should ha’ finished him quick instead o’ waiting for the ref.’ Peter ignored that and McNally got Gallagher’s elbow jammed in his ribs.
Fannon said with an oily smirk, ‘Here y’are, lad.’ He gave Peter a pound note, his payment for winning the bout.
‘Thanks.’ Peter tucked it into his trousers pocket, shrugged into his jacket and walked away.
When he was out of earshot McNally complained, ‘What was that dig in the ribs for? He should ha’ laid Brannigan out when he was wide open, but he hasn’t got the belly for the job.’
‘You’re too soon,’ Gallagher told him. ‘I’m going to want you to get him riled, but not yet. He needs a few more wins under his belt first so he’ll have plenty o’ fellers willing to back him when the time comes – plenty o’ backers, plenty o’ money.’
‘Ah!’ Now McNally saw the point. The three grinned at each other.
Gallagher said, ‘You’ll get your chance at him soon enough.’
McNally gloated, ‘I’m looking forward to knocking his head off.’ So they left him alone.
Peter fought every two or three weeks after that, and every time Gallagher and McNally were there, and acting as if they were no more than the employees Fannon claimed they were, serving as bodyguards and helping to organise the clandestine fights. In fact Gallagher was the moving spirit, but he never spoke to Peter. Fannon was Gallagher’s mouthpiece.
Pamela Ogilvy led Matt, hand clutching hand, into the summer house. There was a moon, and by its light Matt spread his raincoat over the couch made of cushions. Pamela whispered, ‘I expect you’ll be starting at the yard soon.’
Matt grumbled, ‘You’ve said that every week for the past month,’ but it was said mildly because he had fallen for Pamela since that first night in the summer house.
Pamela prattled on, ‘I’m sure you’ll like it after you’ve settled in. You’ll be an assistant manager for your father in no time.’ Mrs Pamela Ballantyne. She thought it had a ring to it. Or would it be Mrs Matthew Ballantyne? But no matter; one would do as well as another.
‘No, I won’t. I’m bloody sure I won’t,’ Matt said with some force.
It shocked Pamela into contradicting him: ‘My father says you will.’ He had delivered his judgment: ‘Young Matt will soon buckle down to it. He’ll see where his bread is buttered.’ Pamela bit her lip now but the words had been said.
Matt retorted, ‘He doesn’t know anything about it.’ Then it sank in what Pamela had let slip and he accused her, ‘But he does know, doesn’t he? When I told you what my father said – that I had a year to make good at the art college and if I didn’t then I would have to go into the yard – that was just between you and me, nobody else.’
They were still standing by the couch and now Pamela put her arm around him and tugged him towards it. ‘I only told my dad.’
Matt resisted and suggested astutely, ‘And your mother.’
Pamela admitted, failing to move him, ‘Well, yes, she was there. But I’m sure they wouldn’t tell anyone.’
‘I’m not.’
Pamela sighed, growing impatient. ‘What does it matter who knows? You’ll have to go into the yard anyway. All the other chaps we know are studying for careers or already working at them. And you say yourself that you won’t make an artist. Only last night you said, “I can’t do that for a living.”’
Matt might have said that a lot of ‘chaps’ they didn’t know, young men living in the narrow streets down by the river, did not have jobs, let alone a career. He knew this and was afraid he might become one of them, but still insisted, ‘I’m not spending my life in the yard, either.’
‘Then what are you going to do? I was talking to Charlie Baines and he said his dad had got him a job in the bank. He’ll be a manager one day.’ Matt voiced his opinion of Charlie Baines, a burly, hugely confident, fleshy-faced youth. Pamela said stiffly, ‘We can do without that language, thank you.’ But Matt only glowered mutinously, snatched up his raincoat and stalked out of the summer house.
‘Matt!’ Pamela called after him.
He only turned his head to answer, ‘I’ll be seeing you.’
Pamela started to run after him, then calculated that was the wrong tactic. ‘Suit yourself. You’ll be sorry.’
She was right and he was sorry already, but stubbornly tramped home. It was only when he went to hang up his raincoat in the hall that he realised his gloves were not in the pocket and that they must have fallen out in the summer house. He was not perturbed because it provided him with an excuse to go back to Pamela’s home.
He went there the next night after dinner, but hesitated before the front door. He wondered if Pamela would answer the bell when he rang it? Suppose her father came instead? Matt did not want to ask him for the gloves left in the summer house – or explain how they came to be there – so he decided to seek them himself and then try to see Pamela. He walked around the side of the house, careful to stay off the gravel and treading silently on the grass. He pushed the door wide and the moonlight entered ahead of him, shaped by the doorway into a long rectangle of pale light. It showed him Pamela’s face, eyes wide and lips parted. Then the head of the young man with her turned and Matt saw the broad face and thick lips of Charlie Baines.
Matt stood still on the threshold,
gaping and shocked. Then Charlie scrambled to his feet, fumbling at his clothing, and Matt’s shock turned to fury. It was a wild blow because he had only the training of a few hours with the games master at school and the experience of the usual playground fights, but he was enraged and Charlie was equally ignorant of defence. After only a few seconds he was lying on the cushions again with his face in his hands. Matt shouted at him, ‘Get up!’ Charlie did not move, too dazed to hear or understand. Pamela had screamed once and now was whimpering.
Matt blundered away. Now he knew how the cushions in the summer house happened to form a couch. He had not been the first. He knew he had hurt Charlie and terrified Pamela. He walked home exulting but went to bed heartbroken.
A few days later he saw Charlie, face bruised, with Pamela. They looked happy and did not see him. He remembered what Sophie had said long ago, that Pamela would put him ‘through the mangle’. He lost interest in the art college. Instead of attending he took to wandering about the town or along the sea front with a book in his pocket. He would find a sheltered spot and read to his heart’s content.
Two weeks after breaking with Pamela he saw her again with a boy who was a stranger to him. This time he could grin.
Then he met Jimmy Younger. It was a meeting that changed the course of Matt’s life and almost ended it.
Jimmy Younger was ten years old and dreamed of being another Raich Carter, the Sunderland football star. He was kicking his ball about near the home of a schoolfriend in Charles Street, near the river. Jimmy’s own home was in a wealthier part of the town. This was a street where the long terraces of houses had steps up to their front doors like wedges of cheese – one end thicker than the other – because the street ran down steeply towards the river.
As Jimmy and his friend played, a lorry swung into the kerb and parked there. Its driver got down and headed for an office where he had business. Just then Jimmy booted the ball and held his breath as it missed the windscreen of the lorry by inches, then vanished through the open window of the driver’s door into the cab. Jimmy let out the held breath in a sigh of relief that no damage was done and called to the driver, ‘Can I have my ball back, please, mister?’
The driver, already late, threw him a harried glance and told him, ‘Aye. Get in and fetch it. And don’t put it in there again!’ Then he disappeared into the office.
Jimmy climbed on to the running board, opened the door of the lorry and stepped into the cab. The ball had fallen into the well on the passenger’s side and lay by the door. Jimmy trampled across the seats to get it and the door swung shut behind him with a solid clunk! Then as he stood on the handbrake he released it. He felt the lorry jerk but took no notice because he was intent on reaching down into the well and grabbing the ball. It was only when he straightened up and turned to tramp back across the seats that he realised the lorry was moving. Parked on the steep incline, once the handbrake was released it started to roll downhill.
His friend cried out, ‘Jimmy! Jimmy! It’s moving!’ The warning had come too late. Jimmy fell against the steering wheel and clung to it, terrified, the ball dropping into the well again, forgotten. His clinging to the wheel kept the lorry from swerving off the road and smashing into the houses that lined it, but did nothing to slow it down. It accelerated rapidly. Jimmy shrieked in panic and glimpsed a tall, thin youth with a mop of sandy hair gaping at him from the pavement. Then the lorry had flashed past and the youth was gone.
Matt had seen the big vehicle start to roll and stared in horrified disbelief as he realised there was only one small boy in the cab. The shriek and his brief sight of the boy’s face, open mouthed and wide eyed with fear, spurred him into action. He ran after the lorry and reached for the door handle but missed. Instead he caught hold of the steel framing of the open window. Pain tore at his fingers from a rough edge and he was forced to let go. He tried again and this time seized the handle and swung up on to the running board. As he yanked the door open he looked ahead and saw the street ran down to a T-junction and the lorry was headed for a brick wall.
He half fell into the cab and shoved in on top of the boy. He snatched at the wheel with one hand while he hauled on the handbrake with the other as the boy screamed and cried. That was nowhere near enough to halt the runaway but slowed it sufficiently to be able to swing around the corner at the bottom of the hill. The lorry rocked over on to the wheels on one side and for a second Matt thought it would capsize. He saw the wall frighteningly close as he and the boy were tossed about inside the cab. The boy clung to Matt, who hung on to the wheel. Then the lorry slammed down on to all four wheels again with a crash that shook the teeth in their heads.
It still careered on but Matt managed to shove the boy to one side so he could plant his boot on the footbrake. He stamped on it hard, long legs and long body rigid with strain. The lorry skidded, first one way then the other, then crashed broadside against a streetlamp and came to rest. For some seconds there was comparative silence. Matt and the boy sat in the cab, Matt pale as he suddenly realised how close he had come to death, and little Jimmy weeping. Then the street came to life.
Housewives ran out from their doors, and men, either old or unemployed, ran from the groups on the street corners. The first to arrive was the driver, his chest pumping from his run, white faced as Matt in his fear. He fell up against the side of the cab and gasped out, ‘Are ye hurt?’ He was reassured by Matt’s nod of the head, but seeing the boy, cursed him feebly: ‘Ye little bugger!’ Then he turned away and vomited from his reaction.
A woman, large but quick footed, in a flowered apron and ancient slippers, took the driver’s place and demanded of Matt, ‘Are ye all right, hinny?’
A neighbour of hers, thin as a rake with hair in curlers, accused Matt sourly, ‘Ye shouldn’t be driving this thing wi’ that bairn beside ye. Yer not much mair than a bairn yersel.’
The driver straightened up from his retching to say weakly, ‘Give over, woman. If it hadn’t been for that lad somebody wad ha’ been killed. He risked his life to turn that lorry away from the wall and stop it.’
A policeman had arrived, pacing steadily, and a shining black Morris 10 motor car had stopped and its driver had got out. He and the policeman both heard the lorry driver’s defence of Matt. They listened as he went on to tell how he had seen Matt leap aboard the runaway to prevent a fearful crash and to save the boy’s life. The policeman wrote it all down slowly in his notebook.
When the lorry driver finished there was a murmur of applause. Matt decided it was time he got away and started to climb down from the cab. The large woman peered past him at the boy and declared, ‘That lad should go to the hospital.’
The thin woman, with a sudden change of heart, put in, ‘And the young feller. He’s bleeding.’
Matt found it was true. He had torn his hand reaching for the door handle and now it dripped red. As he wrapped his handkerchief around it the driver of the Morris 10 volunteered, ‘I’ll take them to the hospital. I’m a commercial traveller and I have to make a call up that way.’
The policeman had finished writing down the lorry driver’s account, and now he said, ‘I’ll just have your names and addresses first.’
Matt murmured his details so only the policeman could hear. He glanced up from his notebook at the name ‘Ballantyne’ but made no comment. The boy said, ‘Jimmy Younger . . .’ Matt didn’t hear the rest because the commercial traveller urged him into the car. The boy’s name was familiar to Matt for some reason he could not remember, but then Jimmy, grimy face streaked with tears, joined him in the car and it pulled away.
At the hospital they took the boy away and a nurse cleaned and dressed Matt’s hand. As he was about to leave the swing doors of the casualty ward flapped open as a man in a suit and tie threw them wide and strode in. Matt stepped aside to let him pass. Matt saw the suit was well cut and from a good tailor – he had learnt that much from his father. The newcomer walked with his back very straight, the self-confident stride of a ma
n who has got on in the world, used to responsibility and organising. He glanced around, immediately singled out the sister in charge and headed for her. He asked, politely though brusque, ‘I hear you’ve got Jimmy Younger in here?’
Matt pushed at the still-flapping doors and passed through into the corridor outside. He was about to turn right towards the exit when he glanced to his left and hesitated. Was it? he wondered. The face was familiar, but the uniform and the girl inside it . . . He said tentatively, ‘Hello.’
Helen Diaz, in crisp blue dress, starched white apron and cap, stopped in her hurried walk and stared at him. ‘Matt! What are you doing here?’
He couldn’t take his eyes off her. ‘Oh, getting this dressed.’ He held up his hand in its new white bandage, but still looked at Helen. He realised he was not really surprised by the uniform. She looked the part, fitted in there, and gave off an impression of confidence and efficiency.
Helen said, ‘Good God! What have you done?’
He shrugged, dismissing the hand. ‘It’s just skinned. The nurse in there said I can take this lot off the day after tomorrow and it should be just about better.’ He thought that it was not the uniform, but Helen herself. She looked older, and it was going on for a year since he had seen her. She was no longer the skinny, pallid schoolgirl. This was an assured young woman.
Helen thought that Matt had changed, but searched for the reason. It was not just that he had grown taller still and now topped six feet, and was broader and heavier. Then it came to her that the change was in the way he looked at her and for a moment she glanced away. When her gaze returned to him she found his eyes waiting to meet hers, and they both laughed shyly.
They talked for a minute or two and she told him how her father and brother had left and so she had become a nurse. She did not tell him how she used her sister’s birth certificate to gain entry. As they chatted she cautiously kept watch on the corridor, because as a student nurse she was a dogsbody and very much on probation. She had been sent on an errand, so she said, I’ve got to get on.’
