The Boxer's Dreams of Love Page 3

  ‘That’s what you’re doing here with me? Hiding?’ The ability to hurt with words was always a surprise. More infinite than the closed bruised fists hurled in anger. That comfortable silence was now sharp to the touch. They were now the couple they had mocked, the space between them growing.

  He hadn’t asked. Didn’t want to know.

  She had told him anyway.

  CHAPTER 5

  Eddie throws a punch Eddie broke up a fight in the club and as the kid stared in drunken pleading apologies, Eddie raised his fist, raised that right arm with the fervour and energy of old, he held it high and in that moment his mind was clear of any rational thought. There was no purpose other than what a raised fist was designed for. He saw the utter terror in the boy’s eyes. The screams and cries of the others were but a blurred distant hum to a man in the zone, in the moment of rage.

  Frozen. What was it that stopped him? Old age, old body, slow muscle reaction or something else? And in that hesitation Paul was there, pulling him away, then pushing him away. Eddie sank back, out onto the stairs, then up onto the street for air, for breath, waiting for his heart to slow down. He hadn’t done it, that was the main thing, he hadn’t. Frankie was away so Eddie escaped at least that. The boy and his friends would drift away and in the cold sober light they would, hopefully, think again about their threats issued in the immediate aftermath. Anyway he hadn’t thrown the punch. Pushed the kid a little. Threatened more than he’d actually done.

  Eddie was away down the street, a hundred yards from the club when he heard the steps behind him. Turned and saw Paul bearing down on him.

  ‘What is it with you?’

  ‘What did I do?’

  ‘You were gonna kill him!’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Only because I stopped you.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘No? That’s not the way you saw it? Know what I saw?’

  Calm, serene against the ropes. Don’t fight this one, Eddie, there’s nothing to win here.

  ‘What do you see, Paul ‘Maisie’ Lynch? What the fuck is that all about? ‘Maisie’? That’s a girl’s name, isn’t it?’ Stood his ground, don’t move back. He saw the other man hesitate, flinch, Paul was surprised, then he smiled, grinned, too late, his moment was gone. He wasn’t going to do anything to Eddie, wasn’t even going to try. This time at least.

  Paul turned, shook his head as if it had meant nothing, no hurt, no insult, kept shaking the head as he walked away. Eddie stood his ground, still, taking deep breaths, suddenly feeling cold, feeling hungry, starving. Wanted Edie, now, here, in this deserted street.

  But she was gone. Yesterday only, was it? She had sat on the edge of the bed, her hand on his forehead as if he had a fever. She urged him to wake, to look at her, just that, look at her, say that it was alright, please, Jesus just look at me, would it kill you to do that? So he looked at her as she requested. She lowered her mouth to his but he wouldn’t respond. She lowered her hand to his body and he wouldn’t respond.

  ‘Come on, don’t be like this.’ ‘Like this? What? You’re the one hiding in this dismal place as you called it.’

  ‘That’s not what I said. It’s what you wanted me to say.’

  He relented, slightly. He touched the tiny fragment of bare skin that had escaped from the blouse that had come loose around her waist.

  ‘I’m tired, that’s all.’

  ‘Of me?’

  Was that only yesterday? Eddie searched in vain for food on his way home, a hunger deep down. And there he found it, at last, when the night was starting to turn, the shadows lightening, he saw the woman struggle with the key in the door of the take-away.

  ‘You closed?’ he asked stupidly. She turned her pretty face and glared apathy born of utter fatigue.

  ‘What does it look like?’

  ‘I was hungry. Am still hungry.’

  ‘It’s nearly two in the morning.’

  She still struggled to lock the door. He watched her without reason, perhaps out of nothing more than the tiredness in himself, the disorientation that comes in these unnatural hours when the mind plays tricks and the world is upside down. She finally got it closed. Stood up straight and fixed her hair, tied it in a band at the back, arching her back in the process, and he was drawn to her, her body, to that moment when she was unaware. She suddenly became aware and shot him daggers in return.

  ‘Fuck off.’

  Eddie shook his head in abject apology. ‘Sorry, sorry, didn’t mean. I’m goin’ I’m goin’.’

  They both started walking in the same direction on opposite sides of the street, at the same pace. They looked up at the same time and she couldn’t help laughing.

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘What?’ cried innocent Eddie, smiling himself. ‘This is the way home. Want me to go the other way? I will if it’ll take that look off your face.’

  ‘What look?’

  Even if you look right and left, several times, even then, it can hit you from behind, from in front of you and sometimes, just maybe, from above. He had held that punch earlier, pulled back because. Because of many things, some conscious, some not, for himself, for others, maybe for ‘Fair’ Frankie and the many favours bestowed, but mostly he thought, he knew, that it had been for her. For Edie. He had been able to look Paul in the eye, face that fucker down because he knew he’d held back.

  He crossed the street and walked beside her. They shook hands with a strange formality and Eddie knew where this was going.

  ‘Eddie.’

  ‘Sarah.’

  ‘You hungry, Sarah?’

  ‘Starving.’

  ‘You want to go back and open up again?’

  ‘No. Hate eating in my own place. Listen to me. ‘My own place.’ Fuck, I wish it was, although I do all the fucking work.’ She looked at and smiled an apology. ‘Excuse my language. Lovely for a lady.’

  ‘A lady? Where?’ Eddie joked and she tipped him gently on the back of the head.

  ‘Hey, watch it’

  There it begins, you push it to the back of your mind, rationalize it or not, that can wait. But mostly you don’t think at all, not till later when it’s far too late. He put a hand out without thinking, as she slipped on a step leading up to her house. He put a hand out and he found her. She took his hand then and led him inside. If she hadn’t slipped. If.

  This was the hunger, the starvation only a day after Edie had left. He tried to remember the last time he had slept with a woman apart from Edie. It didn’t happen to him. He wasn’t possessed of those attributes that allowed him to make it happen at will. As if that was some sort of reason why he was here, now, with this skinny, marked woman who screamed unnatural pleasure out of all context to what was happening, to what he was doing to her. He slept afterwards despite his best intentions. He woke to blinding light cutting through curtains that hung at an angle. Sarah was dead to the world beside him. Dead to him. It was a room best left in darkness, it made his own seem clean and righteous. A clock stuck in time on a dressing table where everything was piled on one side. He felt the aroma of something and it quelled whatever hunger he may have had. His left leg was sore, throbbing. He didn’t want to bring it down hard on the floor, sensing loose floorboards, sensing everything was a little loose in this house.

  He carried his clothes to the hall. Nothing to remark on there either, save for a coat stand without any coats and a phonebook still in its polythene wrapper. He knew what he was doing. Looking down on her. Searching for a reason to apportion all blame. Brewing the story that he would tell Edie. Yeah, he was going to tell her. Decided, right at that moment when he heard Sarah move in the other room.

  ‘Not saying goodbye?’

  She was behind him, in the doorway, naked, unaffected, the mark on her stomach clearer now, vivid, red. New.

  ‘Hungry?’

  What made him say yes was the same thing that made him want to say no. Anyway, he thought, the sin has been committed. Registered for all time.


  ‘Okay. I was trying not to wake you. Wasn’t sure what to do. I’m not really used to this.’ She was looking at him but not really hearing, as if she stood this way every morning in the doorway, looking, maybe waiting for something that never came. Then she re-assembled herself and smiled at him, aware of his embarrassment.

  ‘Jesus, look at me. Forget my own head sometimes.’

  Eddie forgot his own head. His only excuse. And something else. Always so blissfully grateful that any woman, let alone an attractive one, would give him the time of day or night, that he thought it made such behaviour forgivable. The scar on her stomach, clear and purple red in the harsh morning sun was displayed with disdain. Eddie wanted to help her cover that up and let out the pretty things hidden. That’s what he told himself. If he couldn’t do it for himself maybe he could do it for her.

  After her work, after closing that shop night after night, Sarah sometimes went home but now and again she wandered down a different street. Like a stray dog, looking for trouble. Looking. And Eddie followed, thinking himself better than her, but there he was, always a few steps behind, being taken to places that he doubted actually existed outside these dark hours. In the daylight he thought they would be nothing more than deserted rooms, awaiting demolition. Sarah didn’t enjoy these clubs, she was sucked down into them and swallowed whole.

  He sat, waiting for her, on a low leather couch, while above the lights moved in a constant demonic stream. And the music, Christ. What the fuck was that? He was too old for this place. No, he was too normal for this place. Ten, twenty minutes, no sign of her, no drifting, draining Sarah with the wandering gait.

  He found her on her knees, swaying, the eyes turned around in the back of her head. On her knees in front of a Johnny caramel boy with frog tattoos on his muscled arms and an arrogant smile on his face that could cut cold steel.

  On her knees in the drizzling lane, in the alley at the back of the club. The ground was cobblestoned and wet. It took him too long to react, too long to understand what he was seeing, what was actually there in front of him, the boy’s now flaccid penis, for fuck’s sake. He was pushing it back in his trousers or trying to and he was laughing at the failure of it. Eddie hoped he cut the fucking thing off, wanted to see the blood fall in heavy drops to the ground. The boy left finally and Sarah rocked back and forth on her knees. She put her hand out, hoping to touch God knows what and what she found was Eddie’s face.

  ‘Get up!’ he screamed to no effect. She rocked and rolled, lost in her rock and roll dreams, a time before the scars. He pulled her up, shook her limp body.

  ‘Sarah, listen to me. What did you take? What the fuck did you take?’ Nothing. He let her go and she slumped to the ground. He knew what he had to do, what he should do. But… Get up, please, get up, you have to help yourself. Can’t just lie down. He reached inside his jacket for his phone. Knew what he should do. He had the phone to his ear. In front of him she was finally moving, trying to stand up. And she was laughing. He put the phone away and tried to help her. She looked into his eyes and just kept laughing.

  Eddie was tired. He had come from a long fractious night at the club. He had wanted to go home. To his own bed. Alone. But he had found his way to her again and here he was.

  He was fucking exhausted. He didn’t want this. Her

  ‘Hey, Ed. What are we doing out here?’ Then she looked down into her hand, as if something magic was about to appear.

  ‘No.’ What he should have said when he first met her. He started to move away from her.

  She clung to him like the rain. Cloying, digging deep into every pore, burrowing under the very soul.

  ‘I’m tired, I’m going home. You don’t even remember, do you? What you were doing out here.’ He looked into the vacant, plundered eyes. ‘Maybe you do remember but you just don’t give a fuck.’

  This time it was also because of Edie. The fervent regret. Only there was to be no last minute reprieve. This time when he raised his arm, when he clenched his fist there was no chance of reigning in its purpose.

  She just kept coming. What was he to do? There’s always a point when a man’s true nature comes into sharp final focus, when no other outcome is possible. All those years of pounding the streets, pounding, punching the body bags, pushing the body beyond, beyond pain, and all for the purpose, the sole unedifying purpose of pounding, punching, hurting another body. Protecting your own, by any means necessary.

  Eddie clenched his fist, raised his arm and pushed it out with all his force, pushed it against her.

  Sarah slumped to the ground once more. Only this time there was no getting up, no dreamy drunken lost smile. There was always that moment for Eddie after his few victories in the ring when the pumping arrogance died away and that bitter stare, that snarl over the opponent lying at his feet fell away and he felt a singular compassion. And how many times had Eddie been on the receiving end of that stare? Regret punched Eddie in the stomach until there was no breath left. He fell to his own knees beside her. Then something else took over and he stood up, stood back. Moved away. Further away, his eyes roving in every direction. Nothing, nobody in either direction. He waited for the door of the club to suddenly open and the boy wonder to re-appear, coming back to claim his prize, take her back.

  She groaned, moaned beneath him. Was that blood or just the neon reflection in the rain water pool on the cobbles beside her still head? Of course it was blood.

  Eddie did everything he shouldn’t have done. He ran, well, walked at first, then finding the open, broad street he increased his stride, drew deep breaths and welcomed the noise and chaos of taxis and the weary revellers winding their way back home.

  He hadn’t killed her, he knew that. Enough punches thrown in and out of the ring to know the difference. But she would remember then. She knew where he lived. Knew the secret eternal bruises on his tired body. His name, his fucking name. There would be cameras in the alleyway, there had to be. And even in the spitting dark rain there would be something clear to see.

  And the boy. The boy? The young man who had beamed in ecstasy while Sarah was on her knees in front of him. He would remember, even through the haze of drink and drugs.

  Go back. Go back, Eddie.

  He wanted nothing more than to talk to Edie. He would tell her everything, everything, and suffer the consequences gladly but at least she would know the right thing to do. And he would do it because of her. Eddie hardly closed his eyes through what remained of the night. The day dawned dank and dread filled his low spirit. He shuffled around the flat, every movement, every banal task weighing him down.

  He sat on the couch and looked across at his own reflection in the blank TV screen. And in that reflection, in his eye, in his mind, it played over and over. The crash of bone on bone, the crush, the crunch of cracking, breaking skin. The blood diluting in the rain.

  The sound of his own feet, moving further and faster away.

  He didn’t answer his phone all morning. Three calls, he didn’t even look at the screen. What purpose did he think it would serve? Ignore it and it won’t happen. Don’t answer the door and they won’t come in.

  Stay here, stay inside, and time will stand still.

  CHAPTER 6

  Eddie on the run He ventured out in the afternoon to buy some food. The heart had slowed, the mind had cleared a little although not the regret. He kept seeing her, dreaming her, standing naked in the hallway, new scars to go with the old, one eye closed he was sure. He thought, hoped, prayed she was as tough as he had first imagined. He stood outside the Spar shop, plastic bag in hand, and looked in the direction that could take him to her house. It was ten, fifteen minutes. Get to her first, before the pain receded enough and the anger took over. Take her something, what? Just go there, take care of her, for a couple of hours at least, he could do that. He knew her, didn’t he? Knew her type. His own kind. The mirror image of his own. In their world that mirror always gave back the distorted picture of the fairground freak.

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nbsp; He turned back home, and thought of every reason not to go there. Too late now anyway. Across the street, Frankie Noon smiled from the window of his black, black tinted Mercedes. Was it a smile of just happened to be passing by or something else? The myth was that Frankie only ever came out at night, that he hadn’t seen the daylight for about thirty years, that he would crumble to dust at the first ray of light. Why didn’t they call him Frankie Midnight then?

  He was real, obviously. And normally he was one of the few people that Eddie was glad to see. Proud to know if he was being honest. He liked being liked by Fair Frankie, being seen. It cast a kind of respect on you that you didn’t normally have. So, normally Eddie would have smiled back, run across the road, and taken a lift in the man’s pride and joy.

  Normally.

  ‘Get in.’ Not just passing then.

  This was something else, something new. Everything about the room, the house, made Eddie look at him in a different way. Everything was old, dark no matter how much light was turned on. Volumes lined every wall. The house of a solitary, cultured man. No sign of anyone else. Maybe they were out but Eddie doubted it. And yet Frankie seemed to belong. He sat in that worn chair on the mahogany floor and sank right down, like he had a thousand times before.

  ‘Sit back, Eddie. Relax. You’re with friends here.’ Friends, plural nor singular, odd choice of word. The next thing he’d say was that there was nothing to worry about.

  Minutes that seemed like hours passed and Frankie just sank deeper into his chair. Dark thoughts carrying him down. Eddie sat on the edge, hands clasped, tighter with each passing withering second.

  ‘You know why you’re here. Or maybe you don’t. Maybe what they said is true and you are that fucking stupid. I was warned. I warned myself, all the voices in my head that pound my fucking brain and give me no peace. They told me, all said the same thing. Not worth the trouble. He’ll only let you down. Because he always does. Age doesn’t make a man wiser at all, wider maybe. You get softer. I—’