It slipped from view, obscured by the low-hanging branches of a particularly squat oak. I turned back in my seat and saw the cold sweat on Daddy’s neck.
We rounded a corner into another clearing, this one muddy from rain and footfall. Vehicles were parked in a semi-circle around the edge, most with their boots open to the slight drizzle. Men, a few boys and girls, and a very few women, stood around the open boots, peering. The fair was a chance to buy and sell. For many that might have been the main event. There were pedigree puppies and assorted rare breeds of ornamental chickens. There was a large Land Rover in one corner that was flanked by men with shaved heads and bomber jackets and most people stayed well clear. Guns possibly. Or bombs or pornography.
‘Cathy, Danny, you two get out first,’ said Daddy. ‘Find somewhere quiet to stand.’
I slid out behind Cathy and sank my boots into the mud. We trudged the outer rim. People stood around and swayed like the hulking trees that enveloped the gathering. They chatted and smoked and exhibited their animals, tools, weapons. Someone had set up a fire in an oil drum with a griddle to cook sausages and onions. Cathy and I shifted in the direction of the savoury smoke and spitting fat only to be turned away when we confessed we had no money.
‘What do you think this is? A food bank? Get out of it!’
Instead we loitered around the back of a black transit van that was filled with barrels of live fish. Goldfish, catfish, carp, perch. All swimming in water. The barrels were labelled, along with the approximate ages of the fish and the prices. Angling was big business around here.
Fighting, fishing and animals. That is where these people put their money.
I took a chance and stepped up into the van to take a closer look at what was on offer. There they were, at the bottom of the barrel. Fish the length of my forearm, spiralling up and down and around one another. Making the best use of the space they had. A pipe pumped air into the bottom of the barrel and it burbled up and tickled their gills and loose scales as the fish passed through the stream, gulping for sustenance.
‘Here, get out of it,’ said a sharp voice from behind me. It was a skinny little ginger boy a head shorter than Cathy. His face was shaded by sandy freckles and acne scabs. He wore an indigo tracksuit and white trainers. There was a residue of masticated toast stuck between his front teeth. ‘You can’t go in there unless you’re serious about buying. And you two aren’t buying owt.’
‘Who’s going a buy live fish here anyway?’ said Cathy. ‘Who’d come see a fight an buy a couple of carp?’
‘Who asked you, you stupid bitch?’
Any other day Cathy might have smacked him one. She spat through her teeth and her cheeks had filled with colour.
Her cheeks reddened readily, like mine. We both resented it. How I wished I could stay an icy pale when angry or excited.
She stepped back and walked away quickly.
I hurried after her, ignoring the sound of a heavy ball of mucus and saliva hitting the ground behind my feet as I turned.
She was pacing quickly, right across to the other side of the clearing where the serious business was happening, where Mr Price was talking with Daddy. Talking terms, outcomes, rules of sorts. Where the other serious men were standing around, their hands in the pockets of their waxed jackets, or round the leads of vicious-looking dogs. ‘Dogs in the cars when the fight’s on,’ I heard someone say. I thought of Jess and Becky doing battle with a couple of these dogs, in defence of their respective masters. I thought about the power of a true dog bite, or the slash of a claw, so much worse than the playful nips a dog could give when jumping at your hand. I thought about blood and flesh mixed with a dog’s saliva, and the tartar from its unbrushed teeth like blood mixed with rusted, dirty metal out on a farm far from help.
Daddy was unbuttoning his jacket, getting ready. I saw his opponent for the first time and felt acid in my throat.
He could have been six foot ten. He could have been taller. And he was heavy. He was sitting on the back of Mr Price’s trailer with his feet planted firmly in the mud. His weight pitched the trailer, testing its suspension to the full such that its chassis almost touched the dirt.
There he was, slouched like a dancing bear propped against a wall, rubbing his knuckles, bulbous and calcified like Daddy’s.
He caught sight of me staring as I pursued Cathy and pulled his lips up to his gums to reveal a full set of gold teeth. I looked quickly ahead. Cathy was heading for the trees.
I called after her like we were back at school. ‘Wait up. Wait up!’
Another couple of steps and I could reach her shoulder. ‘Wait up,’ I said. ‘Where you going? Fight’s about to start.’
Cathy turned and looked over my shoulder to where the serious men were puffing and panting and moving around each other in ever decreasing circles. The crowd was beginning to swell. A slack loop was forming and the gaps were filling with men, like doves flying into the niches of their cote. Their shoulders locking. The abstract sound of the chatter had been administrative but was now hoarse with a kind of giddy terror.
‘I don’t want to watch it. I’m fed up. I’m fed up with the whole ruddy show.’
With that she stalked off into the trees. I saw her weaving a path between them until the cover of their trunks and branches tightened, slicing segments out of her torso until the screen became complete and she was out of sight.
I felt the men churning behind me. I did not want to return though knew simply that I should. There was a call to witness.
I turned my back on the woods and joined the other men. The lot of us trembled together.
The Bear was pacing and jumping to keep warm and stretching his muscles and shaking his bones. Daddy stood still. As still as a wolf. His eyes were glossier and bluer in the cold air and crisp grey light. They were fixed on his prey.
A referee came between the fighters and spoke intently to each man in turn then stepped back.
The Bear began to skip back and forth. His fists were raised. Daddy remained still, almost weary, despondent. He glanced over at me for the first time since we had arrived then raised his fists too. He made circles with them like an old Victorian pugilist whose motions were captured in stills. This is how he had learnt to fight, I remembered. He had told us once. He had learnt to fight at the hands of a very very old man who could barely stand but directed his movements from an armchair by the hearth.
The Bear scuffed his feet on the ground. Daddy rocked back and forth. The muscles in his thighs were tense and poised.
A blow from the Bear, which Daddy ducked. He was lighter on his feet now, suddenly geared into action, off his heels.