Fair Fight Read Online Free PDF Page A

I remember. That, and I cut my fist on his teeth. I’d not learned then how to harden the skin and no one had thought to bandage them. His teeth pierced my hand and from then on each fib I landed left a mark of my own blood upon his chops, like paint upon the door of a plague house.
    That night I ate a plate of oysters so juicy they burst in my mouth like berries. The girls asked me to tell them the story of the mill over and again, and each time I told them how I’d thought I was to have two cullies for my first time, they screamed with mirth to think of it.

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    M r Dryer came calling for Dora more often, after that, till one evening I found him sitting in the parlour and fetched him a nip of rum, as I would’ve any cully, then. He took out his snuff box and took a pinch off the back of his hand, tipping his head back with little, fussy sniffs. Then he dabbed at his nose with a devilish fine wiper. I remember looking at the needlework about its edge and wishing it were mine. I’d a porridge on the stove and he didn’t seem about to talk of boxing so I turned to go, when he stopped me.
    ‘How long must I wait?’
    ‘I couldn’t say, sir, but I’d not say long,’ though I knew Dora liked to take her time between cullies, to make herself nice again.
    ‘I wish to see her now,’ he said, as though I could pull my sister from my pocket.
    ‘I’m sorry, sir.’ I didn’t know what other reply to make.
    ‘Sorry will not serve. What must I pay, to see her now? Tell me and I will pay it. I do not like to wait.’
    I ran to fetch Ma. When we came back, Mr Dryer was standing in the hallway, gazing up the stairs with a look on his mug as though he’d a mind to run up and pull the other cully off my sister. Ma thought it too, for she pinched me.
    ‘Fetch Sam in from the door,’ she said.
    I ran to fetch Sam then, excitement like beer brewing in my belly. Any little thing to change the shape of the day was welcome.
    Ma was speaking softly to Mr Dryer. He shook his head. He’d grown even more sober, where another man would’ve grown wild. He brought out his purse. I couldn’t hear what was said, but now Ma was the one to shake her head. She put her hand upon his sleeve. He didn’t shake it off, but only stopped speaking and looked at it. Ma took it off him. The tone of their whispering grew fiercer. At last, Ma said,
    ‘Well, I hope it please you, after all this,’ and turned to Sam, the bully.
    ‘Sam, fetch that fellow out of Dora’s room and bid her clean herself. Tell him he can have his pound back if he’s not done, or have another girl, whichever he likes.’
    That cull up there with Dora had paid nothing more than three or four shillings to lie with her and we all of us knew it but Mr Dryer.
    Sam shook his head and began climbing the stairs. Mr Dryer said something to Ma and went back into the parlour and shut the door, just as if he were in his own house.
    ‘Sam,’ Ma called, ‘tell her be quick, mind.’
    And that was how Mr Granville Dryer, young as he was, came to be Dora’s fancy man. He paid enough that no other cully need visit her. He was promised they never would, though of course they did, especially the black-eyed sea captain – Ma wasn’t one to turn away good coin, if she could be sure that Mr Dryer was otherwise occupied. He was occupied often with me.
    He came to see my sister perhaps twice a week. Near as often he came to fetch me to The Hatchet, to have me stand up and mill before a crowd. A few times he took me to fight at other taverns, and twice I went to mill against stout, barefoot women in the fields at Lansdown. I preferred The Hatchet’s ring to any other. I always did fight better there.
    Sometimes Mr Dryer brought straw-headed Mr Sinclair with him, sometimes another, dandyish cull, who Dora declared so handsome that she’d be tempted not to charge him. She’d no opportunity to charge him or otherwise, for he was always with Mr Dryer, and Mr Dryer guarded her as another