Sprout Mask Replica (2 page)

The
family had moved south many years before to escape the Great Haggis Famine,
which explains why they lived in Brentford rather than Scotland, in case anyone
was wondering.

The
family sold off the horticultural bits and bobs and raised enough money to
employ the local undertaker to take care of the necessaries. This fellow upped
the coffin lid and very hastily dressed the great
³
granddaddy in the
full Highland Regimental finery (for as you can imagine, the great
³
granddaddy
was pretty niffy by now). But the undertaker couldn’t get the coffin lid back
on, due to the size of the great
³
granddaddy’s sporran, it being one
of those magnificent hairy affairs with lots of silver twiddly bits and tassels
and Celtic knick-knackery and so forth.

So the
undertaker did the most logical thing. He removed the sporran, nailed down the
coffin lid and arranged the sporran on the top, where it looked very imposing
and pretty damn proud and most splendid.

Or so
he
thought.

The
trouble began as the coffin was being borne through the streets of Brentford.
At this time, 1877, Brentford was but a small farming community and
superstitious with it.

None of
the locals had ever seen a sporran before, and in particular they had never
seen one so large and magnificent as that of the great
³
granddaddy.

As the
coffin passed upon its final journey, the peasants looked on and took to
muttering and the crossing of themselves.

‘Surely,’
they whispered, one unto another, ‘that is nothing other than a devil’s
familiar that rides upon the Rankin’s coffin.’ And the old ones made protective
finger-signs and spat into the wind and wiped down their lowly smocks and hustled
their children into their rude huts.

The
undertaker, being also a local, but of relatively sound mind, endeavoured to
explain that they had nothing to fear, that the thing was but an article of
dress called a sporran. This did nothing to ease the situation, for word now
passed from rustic mouth to rustic ear that the Rankin was being buried in a
dress and the thing on top of the coffin was (and here local accent came into
its own) a
‘spawn’.

Spawn
of the Devil!

Naturally.

The
officiating vicar, the infamous Victor ‘Vaseline’ Vez (of whom more later), was
also a local man, but one of unsound mind, and he refused point-blanket to bury
the sporran.

He
would bury the remains in the coffin, but would not incur the wrath of God or
the Church by giving a Christian burial to the ‘foul issue of Satan’s botty-parts’.
And he too crossed himself, then folded his arms in a huff.

The great
³
grandmummy, who had more soundness of mind than the lot of them put
together, agreed to the vicar’s demands, took the sporran home after the
service, but returned late that night to lay it on the grave.

And
there it lay. No-one dared to venture close to it, not even the Reverend Vez.
The years passed, grass grew up around it, ivy entwined about it. A robin built
a nest in it.

But
that was all a
very
long time ago.

You
see, the graveyard is no longer there. The council pulled it down, or rather
up, and built a gymnasium on the spot. The Sir John Doveston
[3]
Memorial Gymnasium, or Johnny
Gym as it was locally known.

And it
was to this very gym, that, upon a bright spring morning in the year of 1977,
the hopeful, agile, fighting-fit form of eighteen-year-old plater’s mate Billy ‘The
Whirlwind’ Bennet came jogging,
Adidas
sports bag in one hand and
borrowed training gloves in the other.

The gym
had never proved, a success. Some claimed that the ghost of a sporran haunted
its midnight corridors. But others, who were more accurately informed, put the
gym’s failure down to the ineptitude and almost permanent drunkenness of its
resident caretaker/manager/trainer, Mr Ernest Potts, who had lived there for
almost thirty years as a virtual recluse.

Potts
was an ex-pugilist of the cauliflower-ear persuasion, given to such lines as ‘I
could have been a contender, Charlie,’ and ‘I’ll moider da bum.’ And on the
bright spring morning in question, he was draped over the corner stool of the
barely used ring, reliving former glories.

‘And it
was in with the left. Then in with the right. Then slam slam slam slam.’ Ernie
took another slug from the corner bottle and there was more than just a hint of
gin-stink evident in that early morning air. ‘Up and across and slam slam slam.
And then,’ he gestured to the canvas, ‘eight, nine, ten, OUT!’

Ernie
sighed and squared his sagging shoulders. ‘I remember that night as if it were
only yesterday. They had to scrape me off the floor. Took two of them to carry
me back to the dressing-room. Old Fudger Marteene, my manager, and Dave ‘Boy’ Botticelli.
I wonder whatever happened to them.’

The
could-have-been-a-contender of yesteryear wiped a ragged shirtcuff across his
chin and squinted down in some surprise at the boyish figure who had appeared,
as if through magic, at the ringside.

For a terrorsome
moment Ernie thought, perhaps, that this was some mental manifestation caused
by the gin, or even the phantom sporran itself. But no, it was but a
ruddy-faced lad.

‘What
do you want here, boy?’ The voice of Ernie echoed round the hall.

‘Is
this the Sir John Doveston Memorial Gymnasium? And are you Mr Ernest Potts, its
trainer in residence, sir?’ asked a small clear voice.

‘Mr
Ernest Potts?’ Ernie raked at the stubble on his chin.
‘Sir?’
He made an
attempt to square his shoulders once more, but twice in a single day was
pushing it a bit and he collapsed in a fit of coughing.

‘You
were a fighter, sir, weren’t you?’ asked Billy ‘The Whirlwind’ Bennet. ‘My
father said he saw you spar at The Thomas Becket.’

Ernie
leaned heavily upon the top rope and stared hard at the lad. ‘That was a long
time ago,’ he managed, between what had now become wheezings. ‘What did your
daddy say of me?’

‘He
said you were a stiff, sir,’ answered Billy.

‘Then
your daddy knows his stuff,’ said Ernie, much to the surprise of young Bill,
who had calculated that this remark would get the old bloke’s rag up. ‘What do
you
do, sonny?’

‘I box
a bit,’ said Billy. ‘I was hoping I might join your gym.

‘Box a
bit?’ Ernie chuckled, then coughed, then chuckled again. ‘I used to box
a
bit.
But I used to get knocked down,
a lot!’
He beckoned to the
young intruder. ‘Come up here and let’s have a look at you.’

Billy
jogged up the steps, set down his bag and gloves and, with a jaunty skip,
vaulted clean over the top rope.

We’ve a
live one here, thought Ernie. ‘Go on then,’ he said. ‘Do your stuff.’

Billy ‘The
Whirlwind’ Bennet stripped down to his singlet and shorts, put on his training
gloves and began to shadow-box about the ring. Ernie slouched upon the corner
stool and viewed this with a professional, if somewhat bloodshot, eye.

Billy
thundered around the mat, making with the dazzling footwork. Twisting and
dipping and weaving, he brought into play astonishing combinations of punches. ‘Fish!’
he went as he hammered his imaginary opponent from eye to solar plexus. ‘Fish!
Fish! Fish!’

‘Why do
you keep going,
fish?’
enquired Ernie, as he lit up a Woodbine.

‘I hate
fish,’ snarled Billy. ‘Hate ‘em.’

Ernie
nodded and sucked upon his fag. ‘I used to know a fighter called Sam ‘Sprout-hater’
Slingsby. He used to imagine his opponent was a giant sprout.’

‘Was he
any good?’ asked Billy, as he made sushi out of his shadow-spar.

‘A
complete stiff,’ came the not-unexpected reply. ‘Never had the sense to think
that, unlike a sprout, a man might kick the shit out of him.’

‘That’s
why I chose fish,’ said Billy, bobbing and feinting and blasting away. ‘Fish
are slippery and fast and sly. Like boxers, I think.’

Ernie
nodded. This boy is not the fool I have yet to give him the credit for being,
he thought. ‘Have you had any experience?’ he asked, as he rang the bell and
examined the lad who stood before him, as fit and full of breath as if he had
yet to throw a punch.

‘None,’
said Billy. ‘That’s why I came here. My father said that although he thought
you were a stiff, he considered you one of the dirtiest fighters he’d ever seen
and could think of no-one better to give me the benefit of your years of
experience.’

Ernie
was most impressed by this. ‘You have
some
potential,’ sniffed the old
blighter, who had, to his own mind, just witnessed possibly the most stunning
display of pugilistic skill ever seen in his entire life and who, for all his
drunkenness and dead-lossery, knew genius when he saw it.

And
who knew that he must own this lad or die.

‘I’ll
train you, if you want,’ he said in an off-hand tone. Billy ‘The Whirlwind’ Bennet
grinned a toothy grin. ‘I would be honoured, sir,’ he lied.

There
was to be deception and chicanery on both sides of this partnership. And
although Ernie’s motives were blatant and obvious, exactly what Billy was up to
was anyone’s guess.

The
Whirlwind’s training began the next day. There were five-mile runs, which Ernie
supervised from the gym, by means of a two-way radio; press-ups and chin-ups
and plenty of work-outs on the speedball and heavy bag.

‘We
must find you a partner to spar with,’ said Ernie. ‘One who can give you a real
taste of ring action.’

‘Fish!
Fish!’ went Billy, as he beat the speedball to shreds.

Lightweight Jimmy Netley
arrived at the gym that very evening in response to Ernie’s telephone call. For
a man of twenty-three years, Jimmy wasn’t wearing well. His eyes bespoke him a
late-nighter and his sallow complexion gave added eloquence to this bespeaking.
Jimmy’s hands toyed nervously with his copy of
The Boxing News
and these
hands were never very far from the glass handle of a pint pot.

He
had
been a promising youngster, but had become too susceptible to the pleasures
of the pump room. Jimmy dug about in Ernie’s ring-corner ashtray in search of a
serviceable dog-end, as the manager of Billy The Whirlwind (the inverted commas
had now been dropped) Bennet swaggered in, wearing a very dapper lime-green
suit.

‘Good
evening to you, Jimmy me bucko,’ called Ernie, affecting an Irish brogue to go
with his attire.

‘Good
evening to
you,’
called Jimmy, who favoured an Italian sling-back
himself, but only when home alone with the blinds drawn. ‘Would you have a
spare fag about your person?’

‘No ciggies
for you, you’re in training.’ ‘I’m bloody well not.’

‘You
bloody well are.’

And
bloody well he was.

One week turned into
another and this one into a further one still. Jimmy and The Whirlwind sparred
and jogged and did the inevitable work-outs on the speedball and heavy bag.

Ernie
watched the young men train. He watched The Whirlwind pour forward with a
gathering storm of punches, rain down upon Jimmy with a gale force of blows.
Everything about this boy was meteorological. Except for the fish.

He
watched as Jimmy ‘I’d-rather-be-home-with-my-footwear-collection’ Netley
stumbled about the ring, catching every punch and making heavy weather of it
all.

‘This
will give our boy the confidence he needs,’ Ernie whispered to the
storm-damaged Jimmy, whom he had cut in for 1 per cent of the action.

‘Gawd
bless you, boss,’ mumbled Jimmy from the canvas.

Friday night was fight
night. Billy would have his first professional bout. Even for a loser like
Ernie Potts certain things could be achieved through discreet phone calls to
the right people and veiled threats regarding doubtful decisions, mysterious
fixtures and vanishing purses… and the cutting in of powerful gangland
figures for 33 per cent of the action.

Billy
The Whirlwind Bennet had even gone to the trouble of fly-posting the entire
borough with broadsheets, printed at his own expense, announcing the event. He
would be boxing AT WEMBLEY! three fights up from the bottom of the card on a
bill topped by the British Heavyweight Championship.

Some
showcase.

For
some
fighter.

This
had
to be seen.

Now,
the atmosphere at fight night is really like no other. Electric it is and it
crackles. The crowd is composed of the very rich and the very poor and all in
between, drawn together as one through their love and appreciation for the
noble art.

There are captains of industry,

Men of the cloth,