Fair Fight Read Online Free PDF Page B

rest would’ve turned on him before Mr Dryer could get there.
    Ma fed Dora and me near as well as she fed herself. She bought me a new dress from the bow-wow shop and had it sewn up short, so that I could mill in it without tripping. She had me pickling my knuckles in brine and brandy. She had me posing in my boxing dress to entertain the visitors. She threatened the misses that she’d set me on them if they didn’t mind her.
    Mr Dryer, for his part, came and went in our house whenever he pleased. He arranged that Dora should have her own room, and wasn’t there a scene over that, with Jane shrieking and Ma slapping her and chasing her out of the house, only to have Sam bring her back again. Ma made Jane a room in the cellar and she wailed over it loud enough, but she stayed there. She was lucky to be in a house like ours and she knew it; her looks were near enough gone.
    Mr Dryer had some culls come in and fit up Dora’s room with a desk and a glass-fronted cabinet for his books and bottles, till it was more like a gent’s study than a molly’s bedroom. For me he sent padded mufflers to protect my hands in training and a leather dummy stuffed with straw, which hung from a rope in the yard. The chickens used to peck the straw out of the seams at its bottom end, till at last I hoisted it too high for them to reach. I named that dummy after Ma and each morning I beat it till it was sorry.
    When I was perhaps thirteen, the cullies began asking me to do more than pose for them. Ma took me aside and said that Mr Dryer paid enough each week for my keep that I needn’t – indeed, that I mustn’t, if I thought it would weaken me for my sport upon the stage. I’d not realised till that moment that Mr Dryer had bought me, as he had Dora. I told Ma that I thought it would be best to keep my strength for the ring, and she let me be. I didn’t say so for Mr Dryer’s sake, nor for boxing. I said so because by then I’d noticed Tom.
     
    Tom Webber was a great swinging cull, as big as the bullies and only fifteen. He wasn’t what you’d call handsome; he’d a brow so heavy it looked to have been chiselled in stone, and a nose to match. For all that, he didn’t look mean. He held himself as though he wished he weren’t built so large.
    When first he began to appear beside the ring at The Hatchet I thought nothing much of it, though I noticed him as being so big and his face so young. He would come and stand right beside the ropes, or if not that, then perched upon the rail, as clumsy as a goose on a fence, where he could see all the goings-on in the ring. I’d try not to look at him. When I came out of the ring afterward, whether defeated or victorious, the men all gathered round and pushed cups of cider or wine-and-water into my hands. Now Tom began to make himself part of this circle, edging ever closer. Sometimes he stood right beside me, yet never said a word. I didn’t quite like it; he was like a spy. I’d go to the privy, out past the yard, and when I came back his head would be sticking out above the crowd, seeming to scan the place. His eyes would meet mine and he’d seem to settle. Whenever I looked up I felt his eyes upon me. I didn’t know what he looked for; he couldn’t admire me. I’d been fighting for three years then, and was plain to begin. By the time Tom laid eyes on my mug I’d had my nose knocked sideways and my teeth, which were always crowded, well, they weren’t so cramped up as they’d used to be. I’d almost no teeth on the top left-hand side, till close to the back. The ones that were left still hid behind one another, as if scared – as well they might be. I wasn’t a picture to look at and I didn’t care; my hair was always in a cap, for my idea was only to keep it out of my eyes, not make myself handsome. I no longer wished for silks, but wore hardy cotton gowns, sewn up so that my ankles showed. When I went out past the neighbourhood, where folks didn’t know me as Miss