The Winning Side Page 9

  ‘What else?’ I said.

  ‘I want to get married.’ He said this quietly, without flamboyance; this wasn’t the laughing schooner-lifter, this was a man with a purpose. But I still didn’t like it; he was only four or five years younger than me and he must have slowed up, no matter how fit he was. There was more to it, but before I could ask him what he skipped away.

  ‘Watch me go a few rounds’, he said.

  He spoke briefly to Henry, and went off to change. I rolled a cigarette and watched the boys pounding the bags and flicking the ropes, crossing hands; it was nice to watch until I thought about the other side of it, the cuts that made you think your eye was going to fall out and the low punches.

  Speedy came out wearing a singlet, shorts and a helmet. He got into the ring and danced around while Ernie Roberts got ready. Ernie was a tough prelim boy who won or lost according to whether his Sunday punch got home. He was about four shades darker than Speedy and ten years younger. Henry sent them out and they got on with it, no frills. Speedy was up on his toes, jabbing and Ernie was moving forward punching but it was no contest. Speedy seemed to have got it all back, the quickness, the ring sense and the thump. He tied Ernie up and sent his dark head jerking back with the jabs. They went three rounds and Speedy wasn’t even blowing.

  Henry came across while Speedy was showering. ‘Sweet’, he said.

  ‘I’ll say, he’s been doing a bit, has he?’

  ‘Broke two of Johnny Mack’s ribs last week—we had to cancel.’

  I whistled, Mack was a main event welterweight; I’d read about the postponement of his fight, but no reason had been given. Speedy came out with his hair slicked down and a big smile on his olive-skinned face. He gave Henry some money.

  ‘You don’t have to’, Henry said.

  ‘Yes, I do. Thanks, Henry. Come on, Charlie.’ I followed him out of the gym, down the street past the pub and into the coffee shop. Speedy ordered milk for himself and coffee for me. When it came he paid and watched me roll a smoke.

  ‘Haven’t had one for four months.’

  ‘All right, Speedy, you’re shining bright. What’s on your mind?’

  ‘I want you to manage me, Charlie.’

  I took my hat off to give myself something to do while I thought about how to say no. Speedy looked at me eagerly; his left eye framed with scar tissue.

  ‘No, Speedy, no.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I told you.’

  ‘And I showed you you was wrong.’

  ‘I haven’t got a licence’, I said weakly.

  ‘Easy fixed. You can do it, Charlie. What else’re you doin’?’

  That swung it, truth was, I wasn’t doing much. I wrote an occasional piece for the paper, sporting stuff mostly, and thought about writing a novel. I drank a bit.

  We settled down to talk about it and it became clear that Speedy had thought it all out. He didn’t have a high opinion of Pat Rourke, the current lightweight champion and I had to agree with him. Rourke was a good boxer, but he’d never met anyone who could box and hit. He had a long, skinny neck and it was impossible to believe that he’d take a good punch. But it’d take a really good boxer to set him up for the punch. The other contenders weren’t much: Fred Flanagan, who’d held the title before Rourke, was the best of them. He was a rugged, crowd-pleasing slugger, but he wouldn’t have lived with the old Speedy Kinnane. There was a young Victorian Aborigine on the way up, but not ready yet.

  ‘I want a warm-up’, Speedy said, ‘then Flanagan, then Rourke. Beat them and I’m out in front. I could get a shot at the Empire title.’

  ‘Why not go for the world?’

  He laughed. ‘Carter? No fear. No, Charlie, I’m not doin’ this for fun, not like the last time. Five fights—warm-up, Flanagan, Rourke, Empire title and a defence—and then I chuck it and grow fruit, with Pattie.’

  The way he put it, it sounded just feasible and I wavered and he talked me around. In fact, I had some ideas about training fighters, ideas that had never been tried because the trainers were too greedy or stupid. Psychological things, to do with building confidence and well-being, rather than sending your man in edgy and resentful.

  I went to work in a better frame of mind than I’d been in for a long time. It was good having something to plan for. I had an hour of doubt in bed, but my confidence came back when I met Speedy at noon the next day for roadwork. We ran around the park and he lapped me; he was sharp and fit and I was heavy and slow. He looked wonderful, inexhaustible.

  We fixed up the licence and made arrangements with Henry to use his gym. I ran nearly every day with Speedy and got back into some sort of condition. I even sparred with him; my left was slow and stiff from the shoulder wound and I’d never been anything but a trial horse as a boxer. But I’d been in there with some good ones—Speedy was as elusive as Kid Young, he was faster than Hassen and a much better boxer, but he couldn’t hit as hard. He looked better in the ring than Vic Patrick but he was orthodox, even plain, in style; his defence was oyster tight.

  We didn’t have a contract; I paid fifty per cent of the expenses and was on twenty-five per cent of the winnings. The chance for some winnings came after six weeks when we made a match with Wally Cassidy and I used my press contacts to get some coverage of Speedy’s come-back in the newspapers and on radio. Speedy had had a falling-out with the Stadiums Ltd management, so we got on the bill at Leichhardt. That was all right by Speedy, who said he’d never lost a fight there. I looked up his record in Read’s Annual and found he was right; he’d won twenty-eight fights there. This went over well with the press boys.

  A week before the fight I met Pattie Downer, Speedy’s girl. She was part-Maori, slim, pretty and soft-spoken. We sat in a Kings Cross cafe, Polynesian, Aboriginal, Welsh and God knows what else, and had a hell of a good night. It was a sly grog joint, you could have beer or wine in your tea cup and anything you liked in your coffee, but we kept it dry. Speedy was in good form; he joked about meeting the new Queen when he won the Empire title and what he’d say to Bob Menzies.

  It was Summer when the Cassidy fight came off, and the old Leichhardt stadium was like a steam bath. The come-back of a name fighter always draws a big crowd—the first time. Alby Morrison the promoter had put together a pretty good bill, and by the time the prelims had finished there was a full house, all sweating and betting and smelling of beer. Speedy didn’t even look at the crowd from his corner. He had a job to do.

  He was a master that night; he out-boxed Cassidy in the first round and out-fought him in the second. He took it a bit quiet for the next few, just earning the points and getting the feeling of being back in the ring, and then he cut loose again. In the sixth Cassidy looked gone, so Speedy carried him for two more. But he made it so good that Cassidy really thought he was doing better. In the ninth Speedy showed him how wrong he was with a left and right combination that dumped Wally on the seat of his pants for keeps.

  Speedy’s cut of the gate was £320, so I took home £80, plus £20 I’d won in a bet. Speedy told me he’d put £100 on himself at good odds. It was a good start.

  We signed to meet Flanagan in January, and Speedy stepped up the training until I was afraid he’d leave his form in the gym or on the road. I advised him to ease up and he did; he was a marvel to train, a tiger for punishment but willing to listen to reason. He could have trained himself, almost did, but he needed me for the business end. They’d put anything over you if they could—penalties for this and that, waivers of rights, cheat you on the film fees, the lot. But my strongest point was the publicity; I’d stopped drinking and was able to cruise through my job, which left me plenty of time for talking to sports writers and promoters. One thing Speedy banned: there was to be no mention of Pattie in the stories about him, no pictures of her, nothing. I worried about that, he was so proud of her privately you’d have thought he’d want to show her off a bit.

  We had a few quiet nights out before the Flanagan fight. Now that I wasn’t pissing
my money up against a wall and with a bit extra coming in I was able to buy a second-hand car and get around a bit. I started going out with a woman who lived in the same block of flats as me in Bondi. Her name was Nelly Cooper. She was separated from her husband who was a rugby player and she worked part-time as a commercial artist. The four of us went out for an Italian meal a couple of times, and to the pictures. We went on picnics to Newport. We all had better suntans than Nelly.

  Then it was Melbourne, and Flanagan. I never liked Melbourne, lousy climate, early closing. Now the pub hours didn’t worry me, and there was a balmy weather spell on. We ran from Richmond where we were staying to the gym at Fitzroy—the way we went made it six miles on the flat and most of that was through parks. It was pretty nice. When I said so, Speedy said he missed Pattie. Two days before the fight he turned thirty.

  ‘I can beat Flanagan’, he told me. ‘I’ve seen him a couple of times. Work him to left and his balance goes, you can come inside and get him.’

  ‘You’, I said. ‘Not me.’

  ‘That’s right. I’ll get inside and knock his block off.’

  And that’s pretty much the way it happened. Flanagan came out swinging, as he always did, and Speedy sidestepped and back-pedalled and made him look foolish. When Fred lost his temper he was an easy mark for Speedy’s jabs. Flanagan settled down a bit in the middle rounds but he was tired by then and the flaw Speedy had noticed in his technique became more pronounced. Speedy stepped inside a shaky left and landed three head punches; one of them ripped Flanagan’s eye open and it was goodnight. Fred was game for more but the referee stopped it in the tenth. The photo in the Argus the next day showed both men covered in blood.

  ‘Look at that’, Speedy said. ‘I didn’t have a scratch on me and it looks like I’ve gone through an abbattoir. They allowed to do that, Charlie?’

  I said they were and told him it’d be good for the next gate, which was true; Rourke was susceptible to cuts.

  Speedy must have taken nearly a thousand quid away from Melbourne, I had a good few hundred myself. But he was quiet, even surly on the train back to Sydney, and he stayed that way for the rest of the week.

  Back in Sydney, we issued the challenge to Rourke, and the newspapers backed us up. Stadiums Ltd weren’t happy about it; Speedy Kinnane hadn’t figured in their plans, but there was nothing the firm could do about it. Rourke vs Kinnane was the fight the public wanted to see.

  Speedy should have been on top of the world but he was just the opposite—he plodded on the road, seemed to have lost his timing in the ring and was mechanical about his exercises. He’d been a natural for my confidence-building approach and I hadn’t anticipated any let-downs, creeping doubts. The first few times I asked him what was wrong he shook the questions off but eventually he opened up.

  ‘It’s Pattie’, he said. ‘She wants to come to the bloody fight.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that? It’s natural, let her. It might do you some good having her there. You need something.’

  ‘I don’t need that! Will you talk to her. Charlie? Tell her how I feel.’

  ‘How can I? I don’t know how you feel. I don’t understand.’

  ‘Maybe I should’ve let her come to the other fights’, he muttered. ‘Might’ve put her off.’

  ‘You superstitious or something?’

  ‘Naw. Hey, maybe that’s it. You could tell her she’d jinx me.’

  ‘Oh yeah, she’d love that!’

  ‘You have to do something. You’re my manager—manage it!’

  So I went to see Pattie. I thought I’d be able to talk her round, but it was hopeless; she was as determined to see the fight as he was to prevent her. But at least she told me her reasons.

  ‘He doesn’t really want to fight, you know, Charlie. He hates it, he’s doing it to give us a start, that’s all.’

  ‘Well then, why not let him do his way?’

  ‘No!’ For her, she said it loud. ‘I want to know what it’s like, so I can appreciate what he’s doing.’

  I worked away at her but she stuck right there; in the end we worked out a solution—she’d go to the fight, but Speedy wouldn’t know she was there. She’d see her man make his sacrifice and he’d keep his peace of mind or whatever it was he was protecting. We went for a walk down near the water at Bondi.

  ‘Have you got a farm in mind?’

  ‘Yes’, she said. ‘Speedy says we’ll have it soon.’

  ‘Soon? What’s he mean, soon? He’s got three fights to go at least.’

  She shrugged. ‘He said soon. How’s Nelly?’

  ‘All right.’

  I told Speedy that Pattie had agreed to give the fight a miss, and he was a new man. There was bounce in his running and zip in his punches. We signed with Rourke, they put the prices up, and with all the publicity we were getting a full house looked like a certainty. We tailed off the training and went out as a foursome two nights before the fight. We ate fish at Watson’s Bay out in the open, down near the water. Nelly put a bone carefully on the side of her plate and asked Speedy if he’d be able to give up boxing for good when he had the farm.

  ‘Just watch me.’

  ‘I’d like to see the match’, she ventured. She couldn’t bring herself to say ‘fight’.

  Speedy looked alarmed. ‘No, don’t!’

  I’d had a bit of wine for a change, and felt belligerent. ‘The way you bloody talk’, I said, ‘you’d be happier if no one came, if you fought in a bloody empty stadium.’

  Speedy said something non-committal.

  ‘Where’d your bloody farm be then?’ I went on.

  He stopped me there with one look; under the shaggy eyebrows, with the white scar lines through them, his eyes sliced into me. I felt clumsy, drunk, although I wasn’t. Nelly and Pattie started chatting and the moment passed. Later Nelly told me that Pattie was going to the fight.

  ‘I know’, I said. ‘I fixed it up.’

  ‘Speedy’ll never forgive you if he finds out.’

  ‘He won’t find out.’

  ‘I want to go too.’

  I swore, and said no, but she persisted. It wasn’t easy that late, the fight was a sell-out. Everyone knew that Rourke was a classy boxer and a shot at the Empire title wasn’t out of his reach, or Speedy’s, if he beat him. The publicity was no problem. I’d arranged all the usual things, and the one Speedy really liked was the old physical statistics comparison—the side by side photographs with the arms outstretched and the measurements. Speedy’s waist measured twenty-nine and a half inches.

  Sydney hadn’t had a fight night like it since Burns and Barnes which of course was the greatest since Patrick and Dawson and so on. The ‘House Full’ sign was out before the preliminaries were over and the taxi drivers, who sometimes got in for free by showing their badges, were being turned away. The scalpers were flat out.

  Pattie and Nelly’s seats were near the back of the ringside section, not good seats and not together. Even Speedy, who scarcely looked at the crowd, might have spotted them in a pair. I was nervous, but Speedy was ice cool; although we’d looked at films of Rourke in action and hadn’t been able to come up with a strategy. He was a better fighter than he appeared, I decided. His defence was good and he was very fast with his hands and feet. He didn’t seem to punch hard and most of his fights went the distance, but I noticed that he had his opponents’ knees sagging pretty often. Truth was, I wasn’t sure Speedy could beat him.

  The prelims weren’t much, which meant that the tension built up for the main bout. The noise dropped when the referee called them into the centre. I sneaked a look out into the crowd and spotted Nelly and Pattie; a little beyond them no face was visible through a grey haze of smoke. The referee said the usual things and it was on.

  The first round was one of the prettiest boxing exhibitions I’ve ever seen. It was so good that even the mugs in the crowd liked it. There was a lot of jabbing and feinting which the bleachers drunks usually hate, but it was all so fast that no o
ne got bored. In the first break I congratulated Speedy on a good start; he spat and said nothing. The next couple of rounds were even, with Rourke doing just a little better, scoring once or twice more in the important exchanges. I mentioned this to Speedy after the fourth and he grinned as well as you can grin around a mouthguard. In the sixth, Speedy walked into a left hook and he went down; he was up straightaway and steady, but through the gloom I saw Pattie’s face go pale with shock. Speedy lost that round and the next. He was going well for the first minute then trailing off, and Rourke was doing all the work in the last minute before the referee marked up his card. I told Speedy to pace himself better.

  He spat into the bucket and waited until the other second had got down.

  ‘Don’t be a mug, Charlie’, he said.

  My stomach lurched. ‘What’re you saying?’

  ‘I’m throwing it.’ The bell went and he got up and did a Griffo for half a minute, then Rourke got him on the ropes and pounded him. Speedy took most of the punches on his arms and it looked worse than it was. He saw out the round.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Wipe me face. Half of Rourke tonight, two hundred and fifty quid on him, ten percent of his title shot and all defences. Easy street.’

  He lost another round; Rourke was slowing up a bit and Speedy had to use all his skill to stay behind. He went down again near the end of the tenth and came back to the corner rubber-legged.

  ‘This is the hard bit’, he said.

  ‘I saw then why he hadn’t wanted the women at the fight; he took some punches to the head and body that must have hurt. His eye was cut wide open. Pattie stood up and screamed but she was pulled down. Speedy went in and took some more, he even landed a few, but he could hardly see for the blood and Rourke couldn’t let him go. I was thinking, Why the hell shouldn’t he? as the punches were hitting him, but I felt empty and sick. The referee counted Speedy out and when he lifted his face off the canvas you’d have sworn someone had worked on it with a hammer.

  The doctor stitched him back together in the dressing room. He had a shower, got through the commiserations and didn’t look too bad.