Authors: Anna Freeman
25
T
he house is changed. Sometimes one of the misses will come knocking in search of work, or one of the old cullies will come in search of a miss. It’s as good as a play to see the look on their mugs when they spy how plain the place is done out now. We sold all that was left behind and bought instead the kind of solid, simple things we had at the cottage. There isn’t a silk hanging or a fringed lamp in the whole of the house. The parlour has a rag-rug in front of the hearth and an old tea kettle on the mantel, though I’ve put up the portrait of the little girl, and Mrs Dryer let me have the picture from the cottage, of the little boy and girl beside the stream. She sent for it to be brought, and when Old Pious – who I’d better call Mr Horton, now – when he brought it he came in and had a cup of beer, and said he was glad to see me made well.
The bench where the misses sat to be looked over has gone from the hall and the walls are fresh whitewash. Callers can see they won’t find what they look for without my saying a word. It ain’t a convent any longer, but the Webber’s Boxing Academy. I mean to have a brass plate made for the front door, spelling it out.
When the first of the little nobby lads came calling I’d no idea where he’d sprung from. I opened the door to find a blubber-cheeked boy in a fine coat and good boots, asking me if he could come for lessons. I near sent him running before he showed me his shilling. Now it’s plain enough – Mrs Dryer’s been talking us up all over Bristol. Prize-fighting is the height of fashion amongst the gentry, I’m told, and the sons of swells must study it along with their fencing and their Latin. I’d warrant we’ve boys from every family Mrs Dryer knows coming to us, and they tell their friends and so it goes. It’s a sham of prize-fighting they come to learn, for they mustn’t be injured much, but we show them the science of it and they pay good coin for the pleasure.
Even with the young gentry we’ve not as much money as we could wish, just yet. I think it may come in time and if it never does, well, we know well enough how to get by, Tom, Jacky and I.
Jacky sleeps in the garret still, though we can’t seem to scrub the stink from it, no matter what we use. There are plenty of other rooms now the misses are gone, but he’s a queer little cull and Tom and I don’t argue it. He’s still pale as death, still creeps about and peers around corners, but sometimes now he whistles as he goes. In any case, we’ve grown used to him. At first Tom and I thought to teach him to box, and he tried, poor lad, to please us. He stood at the dummy and fibbed at it with the same dogged little swing he’d shown his father, trying not to flinch when the dummy swung back at him. It wasn’t till I marked how gratefully he came away afterward that I thought to ask him how he liked it. He just looked at me in his queer way and wouldn’t reply.
‘Tell you what, Jack,’ I said then, ‘there’s pugs enough in this house, I’d warrant.’
He looked frit then, so I added, ‘Far more welcome is a useful boy, who helps about the place in other ways.’
He gave me one of his cutty-eyed glances. I nodded.
‘I can be of use,’ he said. ‘I can help, if you’ll keep me.’
‘I know it, you’re a good lad,’ I said. ‘We’re glad to have you, Tom and I.’
Jacky came over all queer then, I thought he was like to weep. None of us were much used to praise, growing up in that house. I’d have patted his head, but he looked ready to piss his breeches already.
To calm him I said, ‘Well then, get us the tea before we all starve,’ and set him to work.
As it happens, he’s of more use than I’d ever have thought. He cleans the place and opens the door to the lads who come for lessons. He’s learning how to cook and making a fair show of it. We feed the boys a tea when once they’ve had their lesson – we charge for it, of course. Jacky’s learning to boil a good pudding, with raisins and sugar, when I can get them. We sit all together around the big kitchen table, just as we used to. The boys are near as noisy as the misses used to be, though their jokes ain’t so bawdy.
Jacky doesn’t seem to miss the babber. He likes to talk about what a gent it’ll be when it gets big.
‘He won’t ever know he’s my brother, will he?’ he said, once.
I told him no, likely not.
He nodded as though he knew it.
Tom said, ‘He ain’t your brother, Jack. He’s Mrs Dryer’s now, and you’re ours.’
I suppose he is ours now.
Tom never complains about his eye, but he carries himself carefully and he’d always rather have me spar with the lads than do it himself. He’ll set to in play with Henry or me, because he can trust us not to swing wild and hit him in it. I think it still hurts him, though he won’t say it. He has a leather patch and I’m used to the look of it now, even if he ain’t.
He sets himself to teach the lads cheerfully and is as careful over them as an old hen, always fretting they’ll injure themselves.
‘Mind yourselves, boys, or you’ll end up like me,’ he says, and lifts his patch to make them squeal.
I’ve begun sparring again, now my hand is healed. Not long ago a cull from The Hatchet came to ask when we’d be back in the ring. Tom swears home he never will, though I won’t be surprised if he changes his mind someday. For myself, I expect I’ll walk back up to scratch before too long. It’s in the blood and in the fists. I can stand up against any man, but not against my own nature. Sparring in the yard won’t do for ever. I’ll want to see blood spilled and feel the old fire in my limbs.
I never forget that though Dora’s gone, she might still turn up and want her sons and her place here. I don’t know what I’ll do if that day comes. Today we’re safe enough, and there’s the smell of meat stewing – Jacky’s work – and the sound of one of the lads fibbing at the dummy in the yard. We’re as close to respectable as I ever hoped to get, perhaps as close as I’d like to be. I don’t look to the future more than I can help. You never can be sure what will come, in a house like ours.
George
So low had I sunk when I arrived at the debtor’s prison at Bristol, that the place seemed to me a veritable haven compared to the tiny cell at Plymouth and the jolting cart. More than anything, the cell I was put into reminded me of school; the iron bedstead, lime-washed walls and narrow window, with the initials of departed tenants scratched into the sill, all of it might have come from Mr Allen’s. It wanted only a couple of trunks at the foot of the bed and a house-master scolding me to wash my neck. I crawled into the bed and slept better than I had done even before leaving Aubyn. I had no dreams at all.
The novelty did not take long to fall away. The days were so dreary as to be unbearable. I was permitted to leave my cell, but there was nothing to do in that place, without money. Some of the men and women stumbling about the yard were so grey and thin that it frightened me to look at them. Worse was to look down and see my own dusty boots and know myself one of them. I found myself amongst the poorest of the prisoners, the ones who could not afford any type of luxury or diversion. For the right sum, the guards took pleasure in telling me, a prisoner could have all manner of things to increase his comfort: cushions, food, wine, even a visit from his mistress. Of course, I tried to obtain a little credit that I might gamble with, from some of the prisoners with flush pockets. Their laughter drove me quite to fury. No one in that place would extend me a penny, or, at least, no one to whom I could bear to be indebted. I could not even afford a book to read, and all the while, every bite I ate was added to my bill and so increased my debt. I could not hope to get out. The rest of the time I was all alone, in that God-forsaken room.
At last I sold my clothes to the guard, every stitch I owned, and had him bring me a suit of homespun. With the money left over I bought paper, pen and ink, and sent pitiful letters to my family, begging for assistance. I received not a word in reply. At last I gave up and took to writing out the story of my life. I found I could not keep to the truth, however, and instead my pen spilled out events as I wished they had been. Sometimes I had married Charlotte, sometimes won the country estate from Mr Dewsbury. Sometimes I had escaped to the sugar islands, strangled Dora with my bare hands and buried her on my plantation. I never wrote of Perry. I tried not to think of him at all. I diluted the ink to make it go further and when I had filled a paper I turned it and wrote upon it cross-wise. At last, however, the ink was run out, and I could not pretend it was otherwise. I had nothing left to sell but the suit of homespun, and the nights were too cold for that.
I took to reading what I had written, although sometimes I found myself weeping as I read it. When I had read it all, I took it up and read it again, and again. I had nothing else. I began seriously to consider that it might be preferable to die, but I was too cowardly for it. I sometimes planned, at night, to starve myself to death, but could not last more than an hour when the breakfast tray was pushed through the door. I tried, once, to slice my wrists open with the nib of the pen, but it was far more painful than I had imagined it. I brought out only a bead of blood before I gasped and gave up. I sat and squeezed at my arm, and watched it trickle and run. I took up the pen and dipped the nib. I put it to the paper and wrote a single crimson word,
Perry
.
I did not know how many days later it was that the guard came at an unexpected hour. I did not know how long I had been imprisoned, only that it was long enough that my heart jolted when the bolts scraped back when they should not. I felt myself cower from the opening of the door.
‘Well,’ a familiar voice said, ‘is this cringing thing what I have paid a fortune for?’
I looked up at Perry. He looked as weary as I felt. He was thinner than I’d ever seen him; his skin was ashen.
‘Ain’t you fortunate, Mr Bowden?’ the guard said. ‘This gent’s paid all your debts. You’ll have a job to repay him. Be working your whole life over that, I’d wager.’
The Fair Fight
is a work of fiction, but female boxers certainly existed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They were often seen as a novelty act, as opposed to the serious sport between gentlemen. Women did fight men, just as Ruth does, although they more often fought each other. They fought doubles matches too – most famously James and Elizabeth Stokes took on other male-female teams in the 1720s and 1730s. This was a brutal age when bear-baiting and cock-fighting were common forms of entertainment and prize-fighting went along with that.
Interestingly, as regards Charlotte, there did exist a woman nicknamed ‘The Boxing Baroness’, Lady Barrymore, who sparred and posed in boxing costume for the amusement of her husband in the 1820s.
Ruth’s fight at the fair and Tom’s Championship fight are both composites, drawn from reports of several real eighteenth-century boxing matches.
Jem Belcher was a real man, and became Champion of England in 1800, although his fight was against Jack Bartholomew. In 1803, Jem Belcher lost his own eye in a game of racquetball, and was forced to retire from the ring.
Daniel Mendoza was also a real-life Champion, and invented the move called the Jew’s stop. He was jailed several times for debts and fraud.
The descriptions of Charlotte’s sporting papers – and some aspects of Tom’s prize-fight – are drawn from the book
Strange Encounters
by J. Brady, Hutchinson, 1946.
Broken entails – like the one on Aubyn Hall – were unusual, but not impossible. The legal breaking of an entail required that the owner and the next heir formally agree that it should be broken. In my head, I imagine that this took place between Perry’s father and grandfather, although it doesn’t really matter.
Aubyn Hall and The Ridings are both fictions, although the gatehouse at The Ridings and the long drive through fields are inspired by the gatehouse and drive at the
BSU
campus at Newton Park, Wiltshire.
The Hatchet Inn still stands in Bristol city centre behind the Hippodrome.
Thanks are due to:
My wonderful agents at Tibor Jones, especially Sophie Hignett and James Pusey, for believing in the book and for their astute editing ideas. Arzu Tahsin at Weidenfeld & Nicolson and Sarah McGrath at Riverhead, for being such insightful and patient editors. You’ve made the book a stronger, sleeker beast. My parents: eternal gratitude (yes, yes, and obedience) for your emotional and financial support and for the interest you’ve taken in the workings of my brain. Sarah Freeman, for her thoughtful suggestions and eagle-eyed proofreading. Debbie Freeman and Jessica Winkler, for their relentless confidence in the book. Amy Underdown, for her thoughtful feedback and for loving Ruth and Charlotte as much as I do. James Davey, for helping me with some aspects of the experience of fighting that just wouldn’t have occurred to me. Jamie Harrison, for being willing to discuss punctuation with me over and over again. Ami-Jade McCarthy for her support during the novel’s early stages, when my confidence needed careful handling. All my Creative Writing colleagues at Bath Spa University for their teaching and continued support. Ella Heeks for the listening, and all the animals. Jess Gulliver, Sophie Buchan and everyone at W&N. Sara Ford and all the management at The Hatchet Inn (where I worked for years) for their flexibility around my creative commitments.
I wrote this novel as part of my MA at Manchester Metropolitan University. Thanks are due to everyone on the course, especially Jackie Roy who supervised my dissertation, and my writing-buddy Karin Hala, who sadly died last year. You are missed.
Thanks are also due to all the helpful staff in the reference section at Bristol Library.
Anna Freeman is a lecturer in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University as well as a multiple slam-winning performance poet who has appeared at festivals across Britain including Latitude and Glastonbury. She lives in Bristol.
The Fair Fight
is her first novel.