They were circling. The Bear tried again. He lunged with his right fist then followed with his left. Daddy avoided the first and then parried, raising his own left fist to go at his opponent’s chin. The Bear pulled back and Daddy missed. Some calls from the crowd then a sudden shiver of silence. Another miss from the Bear, then another. Daddy was saving his punches.
They skipped. A couple more goes at it then the Bear struck home. Not to Daddy’s head but to his chest. The crowd winced and jeered in equal measure. It must have winded him. I felt winded too. He was shuddering backwards, off balance. The Bear came at him again with a right hook. Daddy ducked but was clipped on the left side of his skull. Another knock.
Daddy peeled back. He heaved the breath back into his lungs and straightened his spine. The Bear bared his teeth – a flash of gold – and Daddy went for them. A sharp jab. Blood. He took a second jab at the teeth, trying to tease at the same place. He had spotted a weakness. The Bear flashing a set of gold teeth meant he had had to replace his own set of teeth, which meant his gums had been permanently weakened, which meant that he could lose more. Again for the teeth but Daddy was blocked then both men pulled back panting.
A dog barked from the back seat of a car and others joined the chorus.
The Bear caught Daddy hard on his left cheekbone with a blow that came from nowhere. A quiet crack like a splitting log and then there was blood around his eye and dripping down his cheek, pooling on his shoulder and chest, on his white cotton vest. Daddy was blowing clots of blood from his nostrils like a dragon breathing fire.
He could not use that eye any more. It was swelling and closing up his eyelid.
But he kept on.
The slap of shoes against the mud. Men stamping and rubbing their hands. Daddy and the Bear, their fists in guard. Barking dogs. Spitting men. A sticky wind. Ancient oaks arching their backs to cover the scene. The scent of diesel. Diesel, dirt, sweat, blood, burning meat, the sugars dripping from fried onions. A ring of men standing above rings of mushrooms, connected and hidden beneath the earth, and then rings of limestone.
The Bear had Daddy on the back foot, dragging his heels. I tried hard not to look but I could not help it. Daddy’s arms were dropping and his legs slipping. He was tired. He was tired and stooping.
Daddy gulped as if his breath was caught in his throat. The Bear came in for another punch. Daddy looked as though he barely had enough left in him to avoid the fist, but he did, for the most part. He was caught on his left shoulder, knuckle hit muscle.
But the Bear had overbalanced, and Daddy hooked round with his right fist. He moved his whole body behind the punch. He swung into it from his hips. He rose up on his haunches, almost up off his toes and off the ground. He was suddenly fresh again. A feint – perhaps it had been – a feint. His good eye was alert. He planted his fist on the other man’s jaw with every estimation of strength he had.
Again a sound like splitting wood but this time not one cut cleanly with an axe but ripped from the side of a tree by lightning and thunder and wind. Wood that was shattering into a hundred pieces. A torrent of red and gold. Blood bursting from the Bear’s unstoppered gums as his gold incisors, his gold canines, gold molars followed a long, slow arc to the sodden earth.
The Bear stumbled. I stumbled. I felt like I was going to pass out. Either pass out or piss myself. Oh no, oh please God no. There could be nowt worse. I rearranged my feet to steady myself and looked away, up at the sky, hoping that the cold breeze would catch my eyeballs and freshen me. Bring tears perhaps. Tears were better, tears from the cold, it could be. Oh god, please don’t let me faint. Please. My insides were moving too now. My bowels. Oh please, God, no.
The huge man was falling, following his teeth into the mud. His eyes had rolled back into his skull. He was knocked out. And as he fell I felt dizzier and dizzier, like I’d been sucked inside him and was feeling the same motion, like I was falling too.
The Bear was on the ground. His head had slapped and cracked again. The men around me were moving forwards and so was the ground. I was about to fall.
And then I was in Daddy’s arms. I had not seen him come for me. He had knocked out the Bear, he had won the fight, and almost in the same step come to me. He picked me up clean off the ground like I was his trophy. He raised me into the cold air. I felt the tears on my cheeks but no giddiness. I breathed deeply. No more sickness.
Our men were all around. And Peter, and Ewart and then Martha came over, carrying a zipped green bag, and she was opening it and taking out bandages and iodine and frozen peas.
From my vantage point in Daddy’s arms I looked down to see his adversary lying on the floor, men crowding round him, doing little to help. One had a bucket of water and some cloths.
And then I saw Price. He was looking up at me. Staring at me as calmly as he had watched the whole fight. Just staring.
But where was Cathy? Where was Cathy?
As Daddy brought me back down, I looked to the perimeter of the woods. Had she come back after all? Had she watched the fight from the cover of the trees? Had she heard it?
Martha was fussing. She was pulling Daddy over to the car. She had fully opened up the boot of the Volvo estate and laid out some towels. Jess and Becky came to greet us, yapping at Daddy. His feet were not dragging now. He was stepping brightly. He sat down in the back of the car boot and Ewart picked up his feet and propped them on a crate. He began to untie Daddy’s laces and pull his shoes off. His socks were wet and dirty and Ewart took those off as well and wrapped the exposed skin with a towel.
Martha had wrapped the frozen peas in a thin towel too and placed them over Daddy’s eye for him to hold. She dabbed iodine onto small fluffy pieces of cotton wool and cleaned up the other cuts. Daddy winced as she did this. Small, specific pain inflicted with care can be worse than any other kind.
‘Water,’ said Daddy. I pulled out a flask from the cool-box. He drank a little then put down the flask. With his good eye he looked at Ewart, who reached inside his coat and pulled out a hip flask. Daddy took it and swigged. He swilled the first mouthful around in his mouth then spat it on the ground. He swallowed the second.
Martha took the ice pack away from his eye and inspected the cuts. ‘It’ll need stitches. I’ll clean it before you put those peas back on.’
She did not use the iodine but a softer solution of salt and water.
I helped him take off his shirt and put one on clean. Then I wrapped a fleece round him and a blanket over that. He was sitting very still, sipping from the hip flask but mostly staring out into the trees beyond, smiling contentedly.
I thought about what Vivien had said that time. About how fighting made Daddy feel. About him needing it, body and mind both. He appeared satisfied now. If only she could see him. She had been wrong about the outcome. She had doubted him.
Cathy had not appeared but I was not too worried, then. I knew she would be safe, partly because she was tough and partly because she had walked into the woods, and her and I knew woods well. Ash and oak, like ours at home.