The Boxer's Dreams of Love Read online

  At the bottom of the lane, the body of a man lay still, still breathing, head resting on the bottom step, one hand lightly clasped around the rust raw railing. The blood from the wound had slowed its exit but still it came. Pulsing, oozing warm out of the warm body, resting finally on the mottled stone step, and now it merged with Edie’s blood.

  The search was over.

  Eddie had found her.

  CHAPTER 14

  Together again The boxer dreams of love and wakes to find an angel at his bedside. He stretches out a hand and she takes it. Smiles, leans close and he smells the sweet fragrance of her body.

  Not her. He sleeps again, hunting down his dream, listening for the sound, the song that’s always ahead of him, in the distance.

  Never her.

  The boxer dreams.

  Had she ever been there?

  Eddie Brogan with someone like that? Loved, wanted?

  Eddie Brogan, boxer, ex-boxer, dreamer, drowning in self-pity, struggling for breath, to break the surface, pounded, beaten, lying on the floor of the ring and the ropes that might help him to his feet are out of reach. Don’t you get it yet, Eddie, well, don’t you? You’re supposed to stay down, don’t you understand that? You were always supposed to stay down. But you kept getting up, beaten, bloodied, still, getting up, coming up for more, more pain. Why didn’t you stay down? Safer down there. Stop trying to get up all the time, aren’t you tired of it? Isn’t the body crying out for rest? Stop.

  Stop. Stop dreaming. Wake up, Eddie.

  ‘Eddie?’

  White. Walls, uniforms, teeth. Pretty faces, pens at the ready, clipboards, surrounding his bed. Where was his angel, who were these singularly unpleasant people? The older one spoke, he didn’t need a pen and paper. They listened and wrote down his gospels. Eddie was the subject.

  ‘Two broken ribs, collarbone, superficial lacerations to the neck and stomach, knife inflicted probably. Significant blood loss. Very strong recovery.’ A Fighter, tell them that. They spoke among themselves, at around and above him but never actually to him. the older one simply patted Eddie’s leg as they were leaving. At least he knew what was wrong with him. Knew where he was. But not why… or how.

  It took him two days to remember where he had been staying. Although a part of him wished he hadn’t. This time he really had no money. The police were waiting to talk to him, hopefully tell him what had happened. What he had done. Sitting up in bed he looked down at the grazed red knuckles of both hands. Could have been the result of a fall, scraping hard ground, any number of things. But he reckoned he knew what it was. Saw the signs.

  He hadn’t done anything except be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Someone, several someones had taken exception to his accent and in the tragic aftermath of a football result going the wrong way they had taken their revenge on the nearest thing to hand. An Irishman sitting right next to them at the bar, a sober one at that, asking the barman if he knew of a girl, a singer, a singer in a band, where they might be. Wrong place, wrong time and even Eddie couldn’t fight the odds stacked against him. So he ran, on aging legs that got him as far as the bottom of a blind alley. He stopped, waited, breathless, lets the blows rain down. Until he went down, the fall causing more damage than the beating he had taken. Then they took his money, what little he had left. Left the letter at least.

  Lounging, pushing back time, delaying, wanting to leave, nowhere to go. Hospital heaving with people, people everywhere. Everywhere the despair look in the eyes. Ready to go, still-stained clothes and they wanted him out of there. He could see that clearly, he understood, it was just the thought of going back to the guesthouse. He had paid a deposit, told the woman he wasn’t sure how long he’d be staying. Until he figured something out. And he had no ticket home, no money for a ticket home. What to do, what to do? He was loitering by the sweet machine, waiting for his chocolate to fall. Using the last of his money, literally, had to eat. But lunch, dinner, tomorrow? He felt like laughing, this was some cosmic joke. Maybe Frankie was around the corner, waiting to tell him it was all just a game. Or he’d wake up and there’d be no need for Frankie at all because no girl, no infidelity, no assault. No reason to be here at all. Because this could not be happening. That was it, he’d wake up, cook a little something, potter around for the day, maybe a movie, then get ready for the evening, take his place on the door, Paul wouldn’t bother him tonight.

  Tonight. He’d be in the insect infected room that he couldn’t even afford. He could shower, change his clothes at least. And then. Then… Do something.

  ‘Excuse me.’ Eddie moved aside, letting the bed move past, just a teenager lying there, tubes down her mouth, a deep cut on her forehead, ghost pale skin. The attendant glared at Eddie and pushed past, pushing another trolley in the supermarket of the dying that never closed. Eddie took his chocolate bar and looked for a seat in the cramped plastic canteen. He found a space beside an obese man, teary wife at his side.

  He took out his phone, credit fast diminishing, and again the insane wish to laugh hysterically because – He finished his meagre food and searched his pockets in vain, not quite in vain though as he somehow managed to find enough for a steaming Styrofoam tea that burned his mouth. He thought of burning it a little more and they might let him stay another night or two. He could go back to the bar, see those lovely louts again, ask them if they’d oblige him with another round or two, just enough to give him a week back in the hospital.

  It was early afternoon, he couldn’t hang around anymore. Sitting in the canteen just reminded him of food so he had to get out of there. Out in the gleaming corridor and that constant antiseptic smell. He thought he could hear music. He looked around, heard nothing. There it was again.

  What was wrong with the sound? It started and stopped. A fragment of a song, the same fragment repeated, tried in different ways. It wasn’t piped, recorded, it wasn’t coming from a radio, TV. What was it? Somebody was singing. It had started again, closer this time. He tried to move in its direction, a crazy thought forming in his mind, swirling around, unformed. He was trying not to think of it. It wasn’t possible. This was the last piece of punishment, he thought he’d taken it all but it just kept on coming.

  There it was again. Very close now. Woman’s voice. Trying to keep it quiet but her nature was forcing her to let it out. Fragments of a pretty tune, just like breathing.

  Couldn’t be. He wanted to wake himself up.

  The boxer dreams of love and on awakening…

  Edie was standing in a doorway in a pale blue hospital gown, purple slippers on her feet, swaying to her own tune. She was looking straight at him but didn’t see.

  He moved towards her. Two yards away. She was looking straight at him, but still didn’t see.

  ‘Edie?’

  He could hardly speak.

  Two sides of the same coin. The only pieces in the jigsaw. One letter separating their names.

  She didn’t smile when she held him. When she looked into his disbelieving eyes. She thought they’d sent word somehow, summoned him here so he was somewhat expected. When they told him the news he’d surely come.

  She took his hand, led him inside the room. She sat him on the bed and cradled him to her chest. She smelled of the place, chemical, mechanical even as he felt the softness. Felt his own pain, the ribs, shoulder, the thin fabric of her gown rubbing against the cuts on his face.

  ‘What are we like?’ she attempted to joke. ‘I don’t need to ask what happened to you.’

  ‘It’s not what you think. Honestly. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But what about you?’

  ‘I don’t really know. They don’t seem to know. They’re doing tests. All sorts of tests. Could be nothing.’

  ‘Or something—’ he finished.

  In the weeping wards, death seeping, creeping through thin walls. He had lost her, let her go, found her almost too late. All the voices that had told him, ‘last chance, last chance, last chance’ and he nods his heads and
promises, this time, this fucking time. And what does he do? Betrayal, clear and simple. Edie, Frankie, himself. And then the punishment came. Slow and heartless, just and justified, teasing him first with a glimpse of heaven, money, money in his pockets, overflowing, enough for both of them, and then it’s taken away. Dumped on a road that led in one direction, one destination. This place. This hospital room, cold, cloying. What was she not telling him? They don’t seem to know. How could they not?

  From there to here. Out of dirt, rain, a street like all the rest, a father unlike all the rest, blows raining down, pumping sense into little Eddie, pumping blood out of him, kid stays his ground, hands by his side, few hours of escape to the fields, friends, football. Until. One day, raining so hard that the field is a lake. While the others run home, Eddie saunters, circles, in no hurry, soaked to the skin, until. He stops outside a gym, hears the exertions from inside, the blows, but something forces him inside and he sees the world. His world. A future. Home again and still the father’s fists fly like hammers. Mother? In another room, deaf to all but her own rosy dreams, her own perfect painless world. Kid Eddie always wonders why she lives in such peace with this man. He sees them, on the couch, on the stairs, kissing, touching, and then he hears the bed upstairs. He wonders what he must have to done to be treated in such a different way. It was obviously so bad that he blocked it from his memory.

  From there to the day he clenched his fists as his father pummelled him to the floor. To the day he put his hands, his fists to resist, to protect himself. That look of utter disbelief in his father’s eyes. A fear almost or the seeds of it.

  Eddie, fourteen, watches his father approach, the stink of his breath, mother in the kitchen washing cleaning something, singing to herself. Father approaches and Eddie raises his own fist first. Father flinches and takes a step backward, almost shrinking in front of the son. And never again. From there to a place of his own, a basement flat under the train tracks, odd jobs for odd people, fights, in the ring and out of it, standing on his feet. Climbing inside the ring, taking his first trips to the canvas, first of many, finding out that he could get paid for losing, a habit that was hard to break. A life of sorts. The boxer dreams of everything. Answers his door one day to see his mother standing there, a bruise on her face, signs of others underneath. He closes the door on her, cries in the darkness until there’s nothing left inside. He moves the next day, somewhere cleaner, quieter.

  Ferocious brutal days, epic drunken nights until the one he found Edie for the first time. Destroyed her dress and could barely offer an apology. A couple of days later and he finds her again.

  That day the boxer first dreams of love.

  From there to here. Inhospitable hospital room, they slowly pull apart and her eyes show him the unvarnished truth of the days that lie ahead. She waits for him say something, to give her some hope.

  ‘I have no job, no money.’ He could tell her all the rest, he will in the days ahead but he cut to the essential truth because he knew that every second counted now.

  Nothing more to say.

  CHAPTER 15

  Broken promises, broken bones Rose petals of blood slipped through his hands as they crashed against the sweating skin of his opponent. He could hardly see or think, his heart was racing so fast. Whenever his right leg lifted off the ground he thought his veins would clog. He had to keep stamping it down, bringing it back to life. It had the unexpected benefit of causing Charlie Higson to pause, take a step back, a fatal hesitation that gave Eddie the chance to either take a breath or move in for the kill.

  In the corner in the break there was little respite, the pounding never seemed to slow a beat. It was all he could do to open his mouth to take in the water. He didn’t look across the ring at Charlie, didn’t have to, he’d be a mirror of himself. He only had thoughts and eyes for himself. His whole blurred world was his feet, his hands with their red raw knuckles.

  No gloves today, no such luxury or comfort allowed. The sight of one in the vicinity would draw howls of derision from the derisory men who lined each side of this sprawling desperate fight. He pleaded for more water and had barely time to taste it before the bell was rung once more. He’d lost count of the rounds, not that it mattered, he couldn’t imagine either of them lasting too much longer. When he stood he immediately felt like fainting. There was support at his elbow and Eddie nodded his head. He waited for it to clear. Thought he saw the light sway way above in the rafters of the barn. His legs were cement, the makeshift floor was a muddy swamp, it was an ocean to reach the centre and Charlie ‘hell is coming’ Higson was somehow already there, and the punch was real, the breaking tooth in Eddie’s mouth was real, it exploded in the space between his immobile feet. And then a second blow, just below the eye and Eddie saw concern in Charlie’s face, a pang of regret that had no real place in a boxing ring. Eddie flailed, falling, crumbling, he put out a useless hand but nobody took hold of it. He saw the faces for the first time, in the centre row, flashing brilliant white teeth in mouths that had never felt the force of a bruised bony concrete hand.

  Eddie trailed blood like a wounded snail as they carried him first to the corner, there to carry out a preliminary examination before they took him any further. He could tell it was bad by the deep crevices of concern on their faces, the glances at each other as if to say ‘can you fucking believe this guy is still alive.’

  Life imitating art imitating life and so on. This should be in black and white, Eddie thought. He sat on the table while the doctor knelt nursing his wounds. The doctor kept wanting to say something, something Eddie had heard a thousand times. But the kindly man never said it. He finally left him alone, with his wounds, his money, his guilt, his tears. He looked at his bag by the locker in the corner, they’d left the envelope on top, he hadn’t wanted to touch it. Not yet anyway. He cried. For many things. Not for losing, he’d grown used to that. Maybe a little bit from the pain.

  It was a lot of money, for what he’d had to do. Had fought legal fights for years and never earned so much in one night. Every cloud blah blah blah. Edie in the hospital, all the clichéd good reasons flooded his brain. Worth killing himself for, or someone else, if only it could help her, help them both. The next fight had already started outside. He heard the cattle screams of delight. As good a time as any to leave, he thought. He washed his face once more, his skin was shockingly pale and he knew the bruises and cuts would be cruel to him in the morning. Pushed his hair back, his newly grown middle-aged crisis hair that at least made Edie smile.

  He opened the door to a rush of noise from the crushed space. He hoped he wouldn’t be recognized as he made his way to the exit, if he could find the damn thing. He kept a tight grip on his bag as he pushed through pinstriped pimps and corpulent corrupters of the soul. He was thinking of the last occasion that he had decent money in his pockets. Surely God wouldn’t be so cruel. He got strange looks but they were only momentary and only because he was being a little forceful in trying to make his escape. Almost there, at the door of the barn because a barn was exactly what it was. There was straw on the floor, a makeshift ring and bellowing gamblers in heightened fear and ecstasy at the illegal nature of it all. And in the ring itself now, two younger men, clumsy, too anxious, lacking in even the most basic skills and Eddie wondered if the two kids had any understanding at all of the nature, the history of a once noble sport.

  Eddie waited at the door, staring at the blinding rain that had turned the temporary car park into a river already. A sudden roar from inside made him look back. Through the low light and the lowlights pummelling the air with unused fists and blood money he saw one of the kids on the floor of the ring. He was on his side, eyes wide, glassy, he wasn’t moving. Eddie really didn’t want to look anymore but he couldn’t turn away. What was worse though was the sight of the other kid, standing over the vanquished, snarling, pumped, exhilarated, screaming abuse down at the injured man.

  Eddie blinked to end this hellish vision. Eyes open again and he
saw something else. He saw. Manny Redmond. Manny fucking Redmond with polka dot tie and clean shoes no doubt.

  Eddie turned, ran out into the rain, searching for his car in the river of regret.

  CHAPTER 16

  Manny, part 2 Eddie got the news about two hours after he had made it back to Edinburgh. He was locking his car, or trying to lock it. This is what you got for buying a twenty year old Opel for fifteen hundred. His phone rang.

  ‘Eddie?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Tom.’ Businessman, illegal fight promoter, brilliant chess player

  apparently. The man who’d left the money on Eddie’s bag after the fight. ‘What’s the matter?’ Eddie was sure that Manny would somehow be

  mentioned.

  ‘It’s Charlie.’

  ‘Charlie? What about him?’

  ‘We’re not really sure. Well, it looks like a heart attack. He was found

  by the side of the road, car door open. As if he was trying to get out.

  Trying to get help. Eddie, you still there?’

  Hell had come for Charlie Higson. Alone on a nothing road. For

  nothing. They’d met for the first time an hour before the fight. It took most

  of that time for Eddie to understand what he was saying, his Borders accent

  being so strong. Jesus.

  ‘Still here. Sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Listen, Eddie, these things happen. I don’t have to tell you that. He

  was no kid, was he? Taken a lot of punishment over the years. It was just

  his time, that’s all.’