Boxer, Beetle Read Free Page A

Sinner, glaring down at Mottle. ‘Prick couldn’t hurt me. Put a cobblestone in his glove and he couldn’t hurt me.’
    ‘We won’t have any cheating here.’ Mottle looked over to the judges’ table for confirmation.
    ‘I want to fucking fight. They all want me to fight.’ Sinner turned to shout at his trainer. ‘Frink, tell him! This is a piss-take!’
    ‘You’ve won, son. Rules is rules.’
    ‘Bollocks to this.’
    Mottle nodded to the announcer. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Seth “Sinner” Roach!’ There was a sarcastic, resentful cheer from a few of the crowd, and then they went back to hooting and booing, even louder now, no longer in mockery but in anger. They’d been cheated, just like Sinner, and before long an itchy discordant drone would start to rise up to the ceiling of Premierland, a threat you didn’t hear with your ears but with your stomach and fists. Tonight there would be knives out all the way down Commercial Road, Pock thought, not just the gamblers but everyone who’d lost out on what they’d paid for. It didn’t matter how good the first three fights were if someone spoiled the fourth – even worse than when you let a girl change her mind before you finished with her. He began to wonder if he’d made a mistake, but then he spotted Myrna in the third row, putting on lipstick with a compact mirror. He’d tell her that he’d been winning, that he’d been unlucky. Barnaby Pock, still technically unbeaten after nineteen matches, he thought. His head hurt.
    ‘Hold on, hold on,’ said Frink, hurrying over to where Mottle stood, pulling along with him a gangly fellow with a moustache who tonight was Premierland’s house physician (a modest improvement over the days when the best you couldhope for was a sticking plaster in the pocket of the referee). ‘Let the doctor look at him. If the doctor says he’s all right, then you have to let him fight.’
    ‘I do not,’ said Mottle.
    ‘He wants to fight.’
    ‘I’m afraid I can’t possibly conduct a proper examination out here,’ said the doctor.
    ‘Have a feel!’ shouted one of the gamblers.
    ‘Are you wearing any sort of protective apparatus, Mr Roach?’ said the doctor.
    ‘He wears a strap,’ said Frink.
    ‘Only a strap! Perhaps you or your trainer are acquainted with my own line of Fistic Armatures? No? Because I assure you, gentlemen, if all pugilists were to be supplied with this inexpensive invention, there would be no question of halting a match simply because a blow had gone astray. They are impregnable.’
    ‘Just have a look at the boy,’ said Frink.
    ‘It won’t make any difference, Mel,’ said Mottle.
    ‘Quite comfortable, too,’ said the doctor. ‘Mr Roach, I dare say you would take a – my goodness – well, I dare say a size ten. And you, Mr Pock … I estimate a size four. Or perhaps a three.’
    ‘Do you want a fucking knock?’ said Pock.
    ‘That is a very felicitous offer, sir, since I happen to be wearing one of my Fistic Armatures at this very moment. In fact, I challenge any one of you gentlemen to strike me in that region. Like St Stephen, I shall feel no pain.’
    ‘I want to fight,’ said Sinner in a voice like steel handcuffs. ‘They’re waiting. They didn’t come to see a fucking pantomime.’
    ‘Anyone?’ said the doctor.
    ‘Come on, mate, you’ve won,’ said Pock.
    ‘Surely you will be good enough to test out my invention, sir?’ the doctor said, gesturing to the boy from
Boxing
, whohad pushed his way through the gamblers with his notebook held over his head like a lantern.
    Frink studied Sinner’s face, hoping the boy’s rage might scuttle back into the gloom behind his eyes. But Sinner was still angry – he hadn’t given up yet.
    ‘Do you think Mr Roach was winning, Mr Pock?’ stuttered the reporter.
    ‘I beseech you,’ said the doctor.
    ‘Come on, now, Seth,’ said Frink. ‘Next time.’
    ‘What do you say, Mr Roach?’ said the reporter.
    ‘Let’s all go