Boxer, Beetle Read Free Page B

home,’ said Pock.
    ‘Will no man here assault my testicles?’ shouted the doctor. And that was when Sinner turned and smacked Pock in the face so hard that he tumbled backwards over the ropes and crashed into the gamblers like a bad idea into a hungry nation.
    Frink had never seen such a punch, or heard such a cheer. As the boy from
Boxing
wiped a spray of blood from his glasses and his notebook, the crowd squealed and cackled and howled Sinner’s name like a lover’s, smashing beer bottles and flinging their hats in the air.
    ‘You ought to be locked up!’ said Mottle to Sinner, hardly able to make himself heard. He turned to Frink. ‘Are you going to let him walk out of here after that?’ Frink shrugged, and handed Sinner his robe as he climbed down from the ring. The doctor was trying to persuade some of the gamblers to help him carry Pock outside.
    ‘Mr Roach, did he get what was coming to him?’ said the reporter.
    ‘We all get what’s coming to us, son,’ said Frink.
    Dozens of men and women and children got up from their seats as Sinner pushed through towards the corridor that led to the dressing rooms, hoping to shake his hand or kiss his cheek or pat his back or pass him a cigar, but he just looked straight ahead, swearing under his breath. Although he would never have admitted it, even to himself, he liked having fans,and he really liked ignoring his fans, and he’d learnt that ignoring them just made them even more loyal, especially the women. Tonight, most of them were content to pay tribute to Frink instead. The only concession Sinner made was to put his fists up quickly for a photographer.
    ‘You could have done him afterwards, Seth, if you had to do that,’ muttered Frink.
    ‘He hit me in the eggs.’
    ‘Yeah, but you said it didn’t hurt.’
    No one remembered how a huge green leather armchair had found its way into the biggest of Premierland’s dressing rooms, but by now it stank of sweat and resin and was vomiting stuffing from its cracks. Sinner sat down and picked up a bottle of gin. ‘You can fuck off, I think, if you’re going to moan like you always do.’
    ‘You know I am,’ said Frink. He tried to remember a time when the boy wouldn’t have talked to his trainer like that. He could, but only if he remembered so selectively that it became a sort of fantasy. For a while, he’d worried that Sinner’s growing local celebrity might make him harder to control, but in fact Sinner seemed to be almost immune to fame. Not, of course, because of any inner humility – exactly the opposite. The boy had an arrogance so unshakeable that any outside stimulation was basically redundant, a kick up the arse of a speeding train. If Sinner slipped further out of his grasp it wouldn’t be because of fame, but because of a much more banal intoxicant. ‘I need to talk to Pock’s man anyway,’ Frink added as he bent down to tidy away a skipping rope. His forehead and eyelids and the tip of his nose were always very pink, as if he’d once fallen asleep on a stove.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘He might try and get you banned.’
    ‘I won’t get banned.’
    ‘No, not this time, and not next time, but the time after that you might.’
    ‘Bye, then.’
    ‘Don’t finish that too fast.’
    Frink went out. Seth sucked on the bottle of gin and then coughed and closed his eyes.
    Sixteen years old; seven professional matches (unbeaten); nine toes; four foot, eleven inches tall. These were the numbers that made Seth ‘Sinner’ Roach, all of them pretty low, but what did that matter? Today – 18 August 1934 – he was already the best new boxer in London. To his opponents a fight with Sinner was like an interrogation, every punch a question they could not possibly answer, an accusation they could not possibly deny.
    His nickname, like the armchair, was of mysterious origin. ‘Jews don’t have sinners, Seth,’ Rabbi Brasch used to say, ‘we just have idiots.’ When Sinner was sober, there was an intensity