Of wee sweetie mice and men Read online

  'It has. I used to play a bit of football.'

  'How're you going to keep up with him with all that chicken in you anyway?'

  'I didn't think he'd be going that fast.'

  'You'd be surprised.'

  'And I brought a bike.'

  'Smart move. What do you do, shout questions to him as he runs?'

  'Something like that. You always get up this early for him?'

  'I get up this early for me. I've a job to go to. It keeps us in Rice Krispies. What McClean pays him wouldn't.'

  'No advance on your million?'

  'We get paid after the fight.'

  'Smart. On McClean's part.'

  'Why'd you say that?'

  'No reason.'

  'You don't think he'll be around to collect it?'

  I shrugged.

  'I will,' she said.

  ***

  Something was moving around upstairs. Chances were it wasn't a baby elephant. A voice from the top of the stairs, thick with sleep: 'Mary, d'y'see ma gutties anywhere?'

  'Where you left them.'

  'Thanks.'

  Clump. Clump. Clump.

  Mary shook her head. 'He gets worse.'

  'I can relate to that. Where'd you meet him?'

  She rested her chin on her hand and she got a faraway look in her eyes for a moment. Bobby McMaster didn't seem the type to get all romantic over, but I wasn't much of an expert in that department. 'Virginity Hill, April 1988. 17 April. Three-forty pm. Sky blue. Slight wind.'

  'You've only a vague recollection then.'

  She smiled. 'I remember it all. Right down to the ... well, I remember it all.'

  'Where's Virginity Hill? It's not in Belfast, is it?'

  'Aye. St Louisa's Collegiate. The girls' school on the Falls Road. Known locally as Virginity Hill.'

  'A sarcastic nickname then?'

  'Of course ... then ... loose women used to be fashionable. You think it's strange remembering a first meeting like that, don't you?'

  'No. Not at all. Maybe a little.'

  'You remember where you met your wife, don't you?'

  'No.'

  'Not at all?'

  'Well, vaguely. I was plastered. I woke up one morning and there she was. She just didn't go away again. It must have been a killer chat-up line. So you were at Virginity Hill?'

  'Sad that really, you should remember things like that. I dare say she remembers okay?' I shook my head. She shook hers. 'Well, anyway, yeah, Virginity Hill. Believe it or not, I was considered quite bright in those days, top of the class and all that, head girl. It didn't go down too well. I mean, this was in the middle of all the rioting back then and a lot of the girls were staying away from school to join in. I was never politically minded - I mean, neither were they, they just loved a good riot. I'm no lady, like, but they were a rough lot and when they saw me still going to school and still doing well, despite all the trouble, well, they kind of had it in for me.'

  I nodded sympathetically. Cod sympathy, of course; I was trying to imagine what she would have looked like in a school uniform.

  'Anyway,' she continued, tracing a circle with her index finger on the table top, 'one day after school they pounced on me, about ten of them. The idea was to tar and feather me, but the gypsies hadn't been for a while and tar was in short supply, so they started cutting my hair off and covering me in flour and eggs and all that shit, and giving me a hiding besides. Then Bobby came round the corner. He wasn't exactly a knight in shining armour. I mean, if he hadn't rescued me and I'd just seen him in the street I would have described him as a big fat spotty git, but he ploughed into them. He took a bit of a beating as well; they were vicious, really vicious, but eventually he chased them off. Now, I was in a bit of a state by that stage, but he took me under his wing, took me home, got me sorted out. And he just turned out to be such a nice fella as well. A wee sweetie, really. Funny how things work out, eh?'

  'Yeah, I know. What brought him there anyway? The Falls is hardly the place a young Protestant wants to go wandering, even if he can take care of himself.'

  'He wasn't living that far away, just inside Proddie land really, but he was a member of the Holy Redeemer Boxing Club. I'm told it is, or was, the best in the city. He used to spend a lot of his time there, and he'd pass the school on the way home.'

  'So he took you back to your house. What did your mum say?'

  'Well, no, he took me back to his house. I couldn't go back to my house the way I was, my mum would have been straight down to the school creating blue murder, and that would hardly have done my popularity much good. My hair was all ragged, I was bleeding, I was covered in all that, well, shite ... he took me home to his mum and she sorted me out.'

  'What was she like?'

  'Great. Great-ish. She's a bit like him, big shy thing. I mean, she didn't know who I was, didn't recognize the uniform, didn't realize I was a Catholic. I don't think she'd even spoken to one up till then. To break the ice, to cheer me up, she told me a joke - how do you know ET's a Catholic, 'cause he looks like one. Yeah, I know, ha-ha, but I didn't know where to look. She wasn't even right, 'cause he looks like a Prod.' She smiled sheepishly. 'Sorry,' she said, `you're not sensitive about things like that, are you?'

  I shook my head.

  'Anyway, that's how we got started. I mean, he was shy, but he was interested without ever having the courage to ask me out. I think I ended up asking him out - he kept calling round to see me, to see if I was okay.'

  'What'd your mum say about it all?'

  'What, about him or the fight?'

  'Both.'

  'Well, like, I told her I fell off my bike. That explained the cuts. The hair, well, once I'd played about with it a bit, I managed to persuade her it was the latest fashion. I'm not sure if she quite fell for that one, but what could she do? Yeah, she liked Bobby immediately. Who wouldn't?'

  'She didn't mind him being a Protestant?'

  'She never said. Never has said. So I suppose she didn't. She was a bit more concerned about the fact that he was a boxer. Not the sort of security a mother looks for in a son-in-law.'

  'How'd you get round that one then?'

  'Didn't really, what could she do? It was either a big friendly boxer or a hit man for the IRA.'

  'Seriously?'

  'Nah, not really, but most everyone I knew back then had connections in that direction, and who wants to end up hitched to a murderer?'

  'As opposed to someone who tries to kill his opponent in the ring?'

  'He's never tried to do that.'

  'Do you not think you need the killer instinct? Particularly against someone like Tyson.'

  'No.'

  'Seriously?'

  'He's a sportsman. He'll go out there and do his best and enjoy it. That's all there is to it. If he wins, he wins; if he doesn't, he doesn't.'

  'You really think it's as simple as that? For him?'

  'Yeah.'

  'But it's not as simple as that for Geordie McClean.'

  'No, of course not.'

  'What do you make of him?'

  'I don't make anything.'

  'Do you trust him?'

  'Ish.'

  'That's hardly a vote of confidence.'

  'Well, put it this way. He hasn't ripped us off. He's given Bobby a crap job, he's paid some bills, and he's promised to give us a million. Nobody else has done anything for us. The chance of getting a million pounds isn't something that comes along every day, why not go for it?'

  'That's easy for you to say.'

  I didn't mean it to come out quite so sharp.

  Her eyes fixed on mine. She looked hurt, but steely too. 'That's uncalled for. This is entirely Bobby's decision. It's what he wants to do. I've nothing to do with it.'

  'He must have talked it over with you.'

  'Of course.'

  'And?'

  'He said he wanted to go for it, but wouldn't if I didn't want him to. So I told him to go for it. You think I was wrong?'

&nbs
p; I shrugged. 'Who's to say? I'll tell you after the fight.'

  'You can't really lose then.'

  'No.'

  'You said earlier about your footballing days - I mean, if you just played locally, thought you were quite good, but were then suddenly offered the chance to play in the World Cup final, wouldn't you take it? Just to be able to say, I did that?'

  'No. I wouldn't.'

  'Scared?'

  I nodded. 'Scared of the whole world laughing at me.' Mary shook her head. 'That won't happen.'

  'I hope not.'

  The kitchen door opened. Bobby McMaster filled the void. His hair was tousled, his cheeks pink. He clutched his guitar in his hand. 'Mornin',' he said.

  I nodded.

  'Do you want to hear a song before we go?'

  Mary stood and lifted our plates. 'Please, Bobby, no.' She looked at me and shook her head. 'He only knows three chords, and two of them are his trousers.'

  Bobby smiled warmly at her, then set the guitar down. He puffed out his cheeks and aimed his thumb at the back door. 'Let's go then,' he said.

  6

  A fine rain was falling when we finally left the house, but it was a good rain, not cold, no wind to back it up. Mary kissed her husband at the door and smiled at me.

  We made for Belvoir Forest Park. It was about a mile up the road, a pleasant enough little enclave in which McMaster could stretch his muscles without being poisoned by exhaust fumes. He said he normally made three or four circuits of it, which didn't seem much. He liked the trees and the quiet and spotting the occasional squirrel. The nearest I'd been to nature in the last decade was the can of Pine Fresh I kept in the bog.

  We hit the rush hour square on. No horns were pumped at him. No one shouted encouragement. No kids ran after him for autographs. It wasn't because he was well happed up or because of the drizzly rain and depressing grey skies. It was because no one had any idea who he was.

  The press conference the day before had been muted. Most of the journalists were in shock. McClean had already explained to me his ... ahem ... master plan. He knew the press would crucify him, and of course McMaster, if he really tried to hype the fight on this side of the Atlantic. He would leave the real hype to the Americans. They are, after all, the masters of hype. Reaction to the fight in Britain or Ireland didn't matter to him or to Tyson's people; boxing revolves around America. The only place the hype mattered was America. That's where the tickets were sold for the arena, where the tickets were sold for pay-per-view television, where the advertising deals went down. The task on this side of the Atlantic was damage limitation, on the other side, damage exploitation. So a handful of reporters were invited to the press conference, a press release, short, the briefest of announcements, was handed out, and photos were taken. McClean said a few words, McMaster a few less, in and out. No time to answer the important questions like how, or why, or what if.

  Still, I'd expected at least one camera crew in tow for this first training run after the announcement, but McClean was keeping a tight rein on all the publicity and wouldn't let anyone near. I suppose I should have felt honoured, but all I felt was damp.

  McMaster kept to the side of the road, the hood on his grey tracksuit pulled tight around his face. I didn't have his faith in the traffic, so I kept to the edge of the kerb, jinking between the telegraph poles and schoolkids. He set a fair pace, head bowed, shoulders hunched, hood pointing up, looking for all the world like a druid on manoeuvres.

  The good thing about telegraph poles is that they tend to stay in the one place. You can't say the same about schoolkids. The way you expect them to go, they invariably go the other; try taking that into consideration, and they'll go the way you expected them to go in the first place, so you lose both ways. After driving a car for so long, I'd forgotten how effeminate a bike's bell sounded. I was embarrassed ringing it. By the time I'd failed to dodge the kids, stopping, starting, shouting, apologizing, McMaster was a hundred yards up on me and disappearing through the park gates.

  I freewheeled through the entrance and peered down the path. No sign of him. I braked, caught my breath. There were a few people about, miserable-looking in the rain; their dogs were the enthusiasts.

  'Hey, slow coach!'

  Bobby was sitting on a green wooden bench off to my right. I pushed the bike over to him using my toes. His face was red, his tracksuit dark with the rain.

  'Stacks of fun, eh?' he said.

  'Taking a breather already, champ?'

  'That was a bit of a climb. Won't be no hills in the ring with Tyson.'

  'That's hardly the point.'

  He smiled and stood up. 'Just letting you catch up, sunshine, didn't want to lose you on these wee paths. You ready?'

  'Always.' He set off. A slower pace. I eased along beside him. 'Do you mind talking while you run?'

  He didn't reply, which I took for a yes. You have to really.

  'Does your trainer never come with you on these runs? Isn't that what he's meant to do? Y'know, inspire you?'

  'Jackie? Nah, he's not up to it.' He turned abruptly to the left, took a downward path, rougher terrain. I braked and turned after him, thumping through potholes as I tried to regain ground. As I caught him he shouted back, 'Jackie can't train with me any more. He has one of those consonant bags. I think he has a vowel problem.'

  He turned his head back to me, puffed out and smiled. 'Joking. He's not too well though. He's too old for all this anyway. He trusts me to do the work.'

  'I was thinking last night,' I shouted back, 'that this is not unlike the plot of Rocky, y'know: no-hoper white guy given the chance of his life against an invincible champion. Done more for the publicity and the hype than any sense of competition or sporting achievement. What do you think?'

  'Shite.'

  'But you see the similarities?'

  'No.'

  'I mean, Rocky was...'

  He stopped. I skidded. He put his hand on the handlebars and lifted. He took the wheel about three feet in the air while I hung on, suspended like a rodeo rider on a frozen horse. 'I don't need you to be so fucking negative round me all the time,' he said, his face snarled. 'It doesn't do me any good. I need to think positive.'

  'I...'

  'So either learn to be positive, or learn to speak with your jaw wired shut. Understand?'

  I nodded. 'I'm sorry,' I said, 'I'm not trying to be negative.' He nodded and eased the wheel down.

  'Okay,' he said. 'Listen. Observe. Ask if you have to. But keep your negativity to yourself. Save it for the book, okay?'

  'Okay, champ.'

  'And don't call me "champ". I'm the contender.'

  'Well, I can hardly call you "cont". It's a bit close for comfort.'

  'We're getting back to wired jaws here, Starkey.'

  'Sorry.'

  He turned back to the track and set off again. I pushed off after him and tried to muster a more positive attitude.

  'Can you get insurance for a fight like this?' I shouted after him. They were the questions any honest-to-God reporter had to ask, and I was the only one with access.

  'For fuck's sake, Starkey, will you fuck up?' He broke suddenly from the track, cut into a bunch of pines. By the time I'd recovered from another skid in the loose gravel he'd disappeared.

  I stopped and spat. I was soaked, I was exhausted, I had a truculent, missing subject and I could feel the chicken fighting the egg in my stomach. I felt miserable.

  Ten minutes later I caught a flash of him through the trees. I suppose 'flash' is not a word that is often used in connection with McMaster, but catching a lumber of someone doesn't hang right. He was a good bit off, maybe two hundred yards through the trees, and at a lower level. I turned the bike off the track and began negotiating my way towards him, angling my descent based on a calculation of how far you can reasonably expect a fat man to run on a muddy track against how much ground a stick insect with the sense of balance of a befuddled baby giraffe can expect to cover, and my calculation came out spot
on, if I'd been hoping to come out a hundred yards behind him.

  By the time I'd pulled the bike back up onto the track and looked up after him, McMaster had stopped, his hooded figure motionless on a curve of the track. I thought maybe he'd heard me careering through the trees and had had a change of heart about my company, but as I moved forward I saw through the drizzle four dark figures emerge from the trees, two on either side of him. They were too far off for me to pick out any detail on them, save that two appeared to be carrying baseball bats. It seemed an unlikely place for autograph hunters. Or for baseball.

  The journalist is supposed to be a non-participant in conflict, to observe objectively and report. Yet despite McMaster's apparent antipathy towards me, it seemed a bit churlish to leave him to tackle four hoods by himself. I pushed forward on the bike. I don't know what was propelling it, adrenaline probably, because my jelly legs weren't. Perhaps the unheralded arrival of a stranger would help heal what appeared to be a festering situation. Or perhaps they would kill me. My posthumous biography, Requiem for a Pixieweight, would contain all the answers.

  Fifty yards short, my way was blocked. A young fella, maybe twenty-five, stepped out from the trees and held his hand up. He wore a green bomber jacket, black jeans, mud-spattered red DM boots and a scowl. He was thickset, and either a skinhead or prematurely bald under his cap.

  I braked. When he dropped his hand I caught a glimpse of the letters UVF tattooed across his fingers. He couldn't do much undercover work for them.

  'Sorry,' he said, 'the path's closed.'

  I looked over his shoulder. McMaster was engaged in animated conversation. His shoulders were moving left and right, but he kept his arms well tucked in. The two with the baseball bats held them lazily over their shoulders. They would find it difficult to swing them quickly if McMaster made a sudden move. Sudden move and McMaster are words rarely found in the same sentence.

  'What's the problem?' I asked, dismounting.

  'Subsidence,' he said, his lip curling up in seeming distaste at the length of the word.

  'I'll be careful,' I said, and started to push past him.

  He put his hand on the handlebars. 'Dangerous subsidence,' he said firmly.

  'How dangerous?'