The Boxer's Dreams of Love Read online

  Eddie was always behind her. That’s how she thought of him. If only he’d catch up with her one day. That’s all she wanted.

  The meeting was over, the coffee was cold, the day outside held little promise. Old people on the promenade, heading for the pier. There was nowhere else to go. She could sleep right here, at this table. The day yawned ahead of her. A few more days and they were heading for Edinburgh. To another place owned or run by Tommy, she wasn’t quite sure, never was about him, never asked.

  She sang a piece of a song. Softly. Closed her eyes.

  Get up, Edie. Get up or you’ll never get up again.

  CHAPTER 8

  Eddie has a strange encounter in Cork

  He almost forgot the letter. It had been there so long it had become a part of the furniture. And he wasn’t taking any of the furniture with him. Almost gone, heading out, up the stairs to the street, seeing the top of the letter box and then remembering it. On the sideboard gathering dust.

  Took it. Why? God knows.

  He walked past the tram on Harcourt Street, blowing its horn, asserting its dominance over everything. Eddie stopped, waiting to cross, saw the coffee shop, thought he should keep going. But he had to figure out where exactly he was going. It was funny, this paranoia of a nobody to think that he was somebody all of a sudden. To think that you were being followed at every turn was more frightening than he could have imagined. And yet, oddly. To think of not being followed, or noticed, or seen, invisible to everybody. That now seemed worse.

  He thought he saw Sarah behind the counter in the café. He was certain. But this girl’s face was clear and beautiful in its plainness. No bruises or other remnants of suffering and she moved with feline grace. He sat at the window and tasted tasteless coffee, sat on a high uncomfortable stool and leaned his arms on a narrow ledge. Who was this place designed for? Jesus. Little room for his bag on the floor beside, not without further discomforting others.

  ‘Eddie?’

  He turned to see a faceless balding little man with briefcases and laptops strewn across his body, across his ill-fitting suit, the anorak on top of that, mobile to his ear, pushing his glasses back with the other, talking to another Eddie on one of his phones.

  A crash against the window behind him, two kids laughing, squealing, cursing on the other side, here one second and then gone. Eddie’s heart pumping like an express train, slow down Eddie, it’s this fucking coffee, he looked around to see someone looking at his bag on the ground. A woman, thirty maybe, make-up to beat the band, a wedding ring that could cut through metal and clearly no manners.

  ‘Can I help you?’ said Eddie with all the sarcasm he could muster.

  She looked up, she seemed annoyed at Eddie’s tone. ‘Thought it was my bag.’ If there was any kind of apology in there it was very well hidden.

  Eddie looked around. Was someone playing a joke on him? Apart from his mind.

  ‘How could you think it was your bag? It’s right at my feet. You were sitting nowhere near to me. How could it be your bag?’

  His tone bounced right off her, back on him, almost throwing him off his feet. How could someone so wrong be that offended?

  ‘It looked like my bag. Is that okay? I made a mistake.’

  Eddie looked down at his own bag, nothing special, tried to remember where he got it, picked it up from someone at the gym, was that it?

  ‘I thought someone like you would have had a classier bag than this.’

  ‘Someone like me?’ In that second Eddie knew he’d lost, there was no chance of doing anything except retreating in abject defeat. Her glare was enough, it would have stopped a herd of elephants at a hundred yards.

  ‘Listen, lady, please go away.’

  ‘Lady?’ Was she offended by absolutely everything?

  ‘What the hell do you want me to call you?’

  ‘I don’t want you to call me anything.’

  Eddie would have preferred the wrath of Frankie to this, he would have welcomed the revenge of a vengeful Sarah, or even the jealous silences of Edie. He’d had enough. He leaned into make-up’s face.

  ‘Fuck off.’ Finally she backed down, turned on heels that didn’t normally turn that quickly. She found her own bag somewhere else and left the café.

  It left a bitter aftertaste. His head was swimming. He wanted to go back to the flat and lie down. But he couldn’t, could he? There was nowhere to lay his head down. All the money in the world.

  In the taxi he changed his mind. The driver swore and almost spat in Eddie’s face. Bit of a difference between a run to the airport and Heuston station.

  He was going alright, leaving just like Frankie said, just not the country. Not yet. He needed a little more time.

  Eddie ran as if his life depended on it, as if they were hot on his heels. The doors were closing, the inspector or whatever they called him had his whistle to his mouth, Eddie saw the drivers head out the window. Why the hell did these things have to be on time for once. He made it, just, thought he felt the ground moving beneath his feet as he leapt onto the train.

  Nothing but time. nothing but money. The train struggled to be heard above the clatter of the cattle herded inside. Where were they all going on a Wednesday morning? A mobile crèche, screams, abject almost absent mothers force feeding sugary food to howling children, ingredients guaranteed to make them howl even more.

  He bought some food, drank more coffee, tried to sleep, had to stop staring at a beautiful young woman across the carriage. So he looked at her one last time, watched her pen floating in thought above her page and he suffered a moment of terrible regret. If he could only go back, do what he should have done, been her age on a train like and met someone like that. The glimpse of what he might have had was so overwhelming he felt tears streaming in his eyes. So he closed them, leaned against the window and thought of sleep.

  His head bobbed with the train along the tracks, little blows to the head. Not much in each alone but together they stung like a thousand jabs to the ribs. Jolted awake, coming into Kent station, people in a panic, bags falling, kids still crying. Eddie couldn’t find his bag for a second, it was lodged at the back of the recess above the seat. Last on the train, last off.

  Cork was an old friend, so familiar that it held no wonder for him anymore. But that’s what he wanted. He was sweating by the time he reached the hotel on the hill at the other end of the town. They had a room, and he realized when he saw it that he could have asked for one twice as big. But that wasn’t him. He still felt uneasy paying for it in cash, as if the blood was still visible on the notes. But the guy didn’t mind, these days it was different, they’d almost gone back to the old days. Maybe they’d look funny at you if you actually had a credit card.

  The diner was still there, although not quite the way he remembered it. It had been washed clean and then made to look even older, if that was possible. Old American music played from a jukebox, the waitresses wore the harridan looks of tired whores, tired of playing the same tricks. The place was so dark Eddie could hardly see his food and thought afterwards that wasn’t such a bad thing.

  The pub off Patrick Street had the smell of stale arguments long since lost. He went for one, stayed for two then met a fellow boxer with a nose broken so often it had gone back straight. They traded drinks and almost blows and when Eddie had to remind him for the seventeenth time that he too had been a boxer he knew he had to leave. Across the narrow street a club, some neon horror that beat the drums of war way down in its bowels. Looked like Paul on the door. Why did they all look alike these days? Tall, muscled, bald, goatee, chips on both heaving shoulders, soldiers without guns, haters without reason to hate. Eddie must have looked at him too long because this once caught his eye.

  ‘You ain’t coming in, grandpa.’ Scottish, maybe he really was or maybe that was just the hard accent of the day.

  ‘No wish to,’ joked Eddie and he wandered off.

  He sat up on the bed, cup of tea in his lap, a complimentary bisc
uit spreading crumbs on the sheets, his eyes glued on Robert Mitchum on TV, wearily wandering through dark city streets. Eddie wanted to sleep but he thought of it as lost time. He felt no danger from anywhere, no mention of the girl or the assault in any of the papers. Assault. That what it was? She was fine, well, she was okay as far as he knew. He could ask Frankie, find out, settle his mind. He checked his phone, thought he had the number. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. Frankie wouldn’t want to hear his voice.

  Baby I don’t care, Mitchum drawled and Eddie slid back on the pillow in creeping tiredness, cup turning over and burning his hand. He pushed the sheets off as if snakes were crawling and scrambled from bed. The noise of the TV burning in his head. He hurried to the bathroom, buried his hand under the tap and waited for the pain to go. Wasn’t much pain but his head was spinning from being dragged from sleep.

  Settled, lights off, head down and his mind wouldn’t rest now. The girl on the train. Gone, past. nothing to be done. Late night revellers sweeping past his room, their voices elevated somehow, he hated them in that moment and then they were gone.

  Gone.

  Everything, everybody was gone. The red dials of the clock growled in anger and read 3.52 am. Didn’t matter anyway. Not that he had to get up.

  7.00 am and he was already on the street, heading across the river, past the swathes of worker ants on their merry speedy way to dead offices. He looked down on them, envied them, hated them, cried for them. It was like the middle of the day. Was there ever a time when the place, the world, was ever allowed to rest? In the English Market he downed all the food they had. He sat on the balcony and saw Manny Redmond buying oranges at a stall below. More grease on his hair than on Eddie’s breakfast. More slither in his thoughts, more patter than a door to door bible salesman. He used to whisper in your ear when you were pummelling him in the ring (and one of the few that Eddie could actually beat). And dancing feet, dancing his way out of trouble. He took his fruit with gnarled hands, started eating one immediately, sucking the peel like he needed fuel. Eddie thought he was dead. But then the world thought Eddie was dead.

  For want of anything better, Eddie followed him. It wasn’t difficult as Manny moved like a sloth, and clearly had few pressing engagements. Maybe, a crazy thought, he’d worked for Frankie too and this was where all rejects were sent. Casual looks in random shop windows, brushing the hair back, greasing the hands, Eddie was enjoying the detective work, not sure what the hell he was doing, all the time, all the money, in the world. Manny led him down vague streets that conjured faint memories like juggling balls. There was something, something, about Manny though, wasn’t there? Where the fuck had this guy been for all those years? He’d heard no stories. The last time he’d seen him he was lying in a pool of his own vomit of the floor of a shed that had served as a dressing room. That had been in Cork, not in the city, where? He tried, tried, saw the place, the makeshift ring, the spitting rain, the spitting teeth, money floating around like soft weightless snow. A bare-knuckle fight, no rules, no barriers except the tired rope that separated fighters from voyeurs, gladiators from speculators. The lowest rung of them all, even Eddie had never fallen that far down. He had been there to watch, keeping far back in case something, somebody might try tempt him inside the ring. Never, never. He’d promised himself, one promise he kept. There were no rules, no dignity, no winners except the one that could walk home without crutches. He remembered the ring, the fight, the desperation, the fall of Manny, but not the exact location. Near here. So what was it about Manny now? The fact that he was here, alive, looking healthy? Eddie should have been glad, was glad that the man was still living. Manny walked slow, contented, nothing seemingly too serious on his mind. And he was dressed well, tan leather new shoes, not cheap, jeans but clean, ironed, and a leather jacket. And no leather jacket was cheap. Shoes, they told a lot about a man. Manny looked too well almost. Came into money? Fair fucking play to him. And here am I, thought Eddie, following him around Cork city.

  11.00 am. The Porter House, down by the docks, the kind of place that the light never entered. Wire mesh on the windows. Eddie walked in too late, it was too small, too local to hide, no tourist ever came in here. Eddie wasn’t afraid, this was Disneyland compared to some he’d seen. Everyone else looked at him the minute he strolled in, maybe six or seven, regulars would be an understatement. The silence even went down a notch or two. All looked his way, all except Manny who sat at the bar, cigarette dangling, the ash falling in his pint. Eddie had no real choice. Well, he could have just turned around. What the hell was he worried about anyway?

  ‘I thought it was you,’ Eddie said to Manny, who turned his head in the same way he walked.

  Eddie took a seat beside him, looked at the vampire barman, a man of indeterminate age.

  ‘Guinness,’ said Eddie, sounding like a tourist. Manny finally extended the hand of friendship and told the barman this was on him.

  ‘Eddie, my man.’ Then nothing, for several minutes while he lit another cigarette and moved seamlessly from one drink to another.

  4.00 pm.

  Still there. Jesus, Eddie, get the fuck out of here. Get up, Eddie.

  Manny was no wreck of a ship, that was the thing of it. This was no pugilist tugboat rusted and moored in the harbour until the seas froze over. He had the stories alright, had it all down, as if he’d learnt it, the rosy reminiscences, the fights, the fights, scratched records played over and over. Eddie had heard all these stories before, different faces, different bars. Fuck, he’d lived most of them. But…

  What was it about Manny that he didn’t believe? The shoes, too shiny, too new, resting on the metal bar, glinting almost in the semi-dark. Manny was here, he said, by the grace of God who’d rescued him from certain obsolescence in the moon glow of the freight yards late one night when he’d been sleeping rough. Blankets giving no warmth, flies on his face, rats at his feet, spiders on his face, searching for his mouth. In that moment, as low as low could get, Manny said he looked up at the moon and saw something, a face, but not just any face. He saw Him. And something made Manny get up, rise on bruised legs and shattered spirit and get out of that hole. He made it to a shelter, he said, and finally asked for help. And here he was. Here, money in his pocket, able to enjoy a quiet drink.

  And what exactly do you do, Eddie asked him. Manny told him a lot of things, telling him nothing at all. He worked doors at clubs, bars. Security at warehouses, that kind of thing. Manny said all this without once looking Eddie in the eye. Hardly asked Eddie a question. So Manny had done all the jobs Eddie worked, all the kind of jobs that people like them always did. And that was it really, the constant running theme through all of Manny’s ramblings. That he was just like Eddie, still. That they were what they’d always been, would always be. Part of a tribe, take you out of the tribe but can’t ever take the tribe out of you.

  ‘Ever wish you could go back, Eddie?’ Manny was actually looking at him, straight in the eye and Eddie thought there was a flicker of truth in there.

  ‘And do it differently?’ said Eddie.

  Manny frowned, surprised. ‘No. No, I mean to have those days back again. They were the fucking days, weren’t day? Heard a song recently, not sure who by, anyway, it was called Kingdom of Days. I heard it and thought that was it. They were our kingdom of days. Didn’t appreciate it at the time. If only we’d known. Maybe we would have, I don’t know, planned everything a little better.’ Were those tears in his eyes, Eddie thought. Or just devil’s dust planted there, planted just for Eddie, for this moment?

  ‘You’d want to go through all that pain again. All those fucking mornings waking up in your own dried spit and vomit? Fighting, knowing you’d lose. Taking the hit, the dive for a few hundred. That blow beneath the stomach, fuck, there was nothing worse than that. Other than maybe a broken rib. You remember them fucking laughing, Manny? That’s what I remember about the dressing room afterwards. Lying there, seeing nothing but blood in my eyes and I could still hear
them laughing. Even the man looking after the cuts, I always thought there was a smile hidden in there somewhere. ‘Cause even he’d made something off me, off me losing, ‘cause even he knew to bet on the other side. You want to go through that again?’

  ‘But we were fighters, man. We are fighters. We lived the dream. How many can say that?’

  ‘It wasn’t a dream, it was a nightmare.’

  ‘Man, you can’t believe that. Eddie, you can’t believe that. We took the fucking beatings, sure, more than most you and me. But we’re still here, ain’t we? Here we are, alive, pretty much, bit of money in our pockets, able to have a drink. Able to talk. Jesus, we both know a few that can’t even do that. You are okay for money, ain’t you?’

  ‘You think that’s why I’m here? That I want fucking money off you?’

  Manny held his hands up in mock surrender. ‘Just checking, sorry. I know what’s it’s like. Hey. Okay?’ He held out a hand, smiled, too perfect teeth. Eddie took the hand and they were okay again.

  ‘So where are you staying?’

  And that was it, the start of it. Eddie told him and as he tried to find his way home, tried to find Patrick Street at least and work from there, he realized that he’d told Manny everything.

  You are okay for money, ain’t you? All the money in the world…

  So where are you staying?

  His last thought as his head hit the pillow, world turning, circles driving inward, thoughts diving down, the letter, where was the letter?

  One rare good night Same time, different place. The world was turning through a mirror-ball hung high above the wide ballroom, spinning her notes across the tables of drinking, drowsy customers.

  Edie floated inside her own song, catching the band off guard, seeing their curious glances at each other. Hardly discussed, rashly rehearsed, but the night had been going nowhere, down the same road as too many recent nights, one way until you got to the point where you couldn’t turn around. One song ended, a song she’d done so many times that the words felt like dust in her mouth and she just wanted to spit them out. A pause, she looked at the set list taped to the floor in front of the microphone, saw the next song and wanted to cry out in pain. The band were already starting, happy in the comfort of knowing what was coming next, no surprise, no spontaneity, they would die at the prospect. She turned, looked at them in turn, drew her hand across to signal stop, stop what you’re planning. They stopped, she stopped, a pause, silence in the room, the muted applause for the last song long passed. She looked at the set list again, saw nothing there, looked in the faces of the crowd, bored, drunk, laughing, mute, uncaring, not listening, they came to be entertained, amused, she, the band were just animals in the cage, there for their brief easy amusement. In that pause, that silence, was an eternity. She was terrified in that moment, and never more alive, she had woken them up, woken the band, all looked at her, really looked at her. She held the room in her hand, how long had it been since that happened? A song, come on, do something new, anything, surprise, wake this fucking room up, give them something to talk about.