Tandia (51 page)

Hymie was not convinced. 'Dutch, listen to me, man. Jackson is a boxer, a consummate boxer. They don't come any better. Like Peekay, he's got a punch in both hands but he can box just as well. I won't say he's a better boxer than Peekay, but
Ring
magazine says he is and Budd Shulberg says he is and Nat Fleischer in an editorial last month says he's the fastest and best exponent of the skill of boxing he's ever seen. You know what he calls him? "The Ghost with a hammer in each hand!" He reckons he was coasting against Ortez. We have to accept that in terms of boxing, Jackson's practically the immaculate conception!

'Peekay's come in from behind in seven of his thirteen fights to win. And three of them have been his last four fights. With a guy like Spoonbill Jackson at the other end of your gloves that's bullshit boxing. Peekay's not going to wear him down then take him out in a late round! No bloody way!'

Dutch was reluctant to listen; he'd never taken kindly to Hymie's advice. Peekay's success had added greatly to his own prestige as a trainer, and he knew Hymie was right, but he couldn't yet bring himself to agree with his criticism. 'I'm only his trainer. You two talk all the time, why don't you talk to him, let me know what the lad says?'

Peekay was studying for his finals in June and Hymie was reluctant to talk to him about the problem. He knew Peekay wanted a first and he reasoned they'd have nearly four months after the exams with only two fights, a preliminary against a highly rated American welterweight. The likely boxer was a Marine stationed in Florida, a negro fighter originally from Harlem who went by the unlikely name of Jasper 'King Coon' Sinder. If he beat Sinder, that left the title fight.

Peekay tried not to think about the title fight, which proved impossible. You can't think about something everyday, almost every hour of your life and then dismiss it while you study for your exams. He was studying hard, working with E.W. every day, his tutor anxious for his charge to do brilliantly in his final exams. Peekay was forced to fight Ortez during the last month of cramming and he'd found it hard to concentrate on his studies as well as the fight. He'd won against the Mexican, but tediously again with a knockout in the final round. He knew Hymie was worried about him. It had been a torrid year with no easy opponents; every fight had sapped him, making it hard to recover fully for the next one. Nothing had changed, except his body was tired. Peekay began to ready his head for Jackson, but his concentration was split. He had to get his exams out of the way first.

During Peekay's last year at Oxford Harriet increasingly drew away from him. Her study of the group of boxers, completed when Peekay had fought Bisetti, had received wide acclaim. It had been cast in bronze and purchased by the town fathers for the atrium of a new sports stadium to be built in Louisville, Kentucky.

Harriet's next commission proved to be the one on which her later international fame would be built. The same church in Dresden for whom she had created the altar piece commissioned her to do the piece she had dreamed of for so long, the Walking Madonna. The sculpture would stand nearly eight feet tall in the grounds of the new church and was by far the most important piece she had been commissioned to do.

As Harriet's creative juices rose so her libido fell. It was not that she consciously felt any differently about Peekay, but her preoccupation with the task ahead so completely filled her conscious thought and possessed her that Peekay was simply squeezed out. The Walking Madonna was the first major female piece she had done; it was also the fulfilment of a childhood dream, no different for her than the world welterweight title was for Peekay. She became almost completely introspective, the voice within her sufficient for her emotional needs.

Peekay's split with Harriet finally came halfway through March. One day, Peekay ran the five miles to Cow Cottage to find Harriet in one of her dark moods, almost unable to talk. He worked silently for an hour in the garden. It was spring and after two years of loving care the cottage garden was back to its best, though in the past weeks both of them had neglected it and it needed weeding, which Peekay now set about doing. Peekay could never quite get over spring in England. The day before he'd driven from London back to Oxford in Hymie's little Prefect. The tulips had been out in the parks in a brilliant parade of red, yellow and white. Clumps of daffodils and crocuses were growing haphazardly out of the grass while bluebells spread an azure picnic cloth under dark old oaks. Peekay had thought of the snow three months earlier, and had imagined how the flowers had waited under a cold white blanket until a day such as this one, when they'd pushed with all their might and then shaken free their pretty heads to announce that spring had officially arrived.

A shadow fell over where Peekay squatted beside a patch of sweet basil. He was pinching the small white blossom from the stems so the plants wouldn't go to seed early. He looked up to see Harriet standing beside him.

'Dear, dear Peekay, you must understand it isn't you. I love you so very much, but you must wait until this thing is out of me. I can't go to your fights anymore. I can't include your fighting in my head at present.' She paused, waiting for Peekay to react, but Peekay was too old a hand at camouflage to reveal his feelings. He was silent, gathering his thoughts so that he would say the right thing, say it sotto voce, easily, without emotion, forgiving her, understanding, his hurt completely concealed.

Finally he stood, wiping his soiled hands down the sides of his rugby shorts, like a small boy caught making mud pies. 'Don't worry, Harriet, I do understand really.' He'd put his hand out towards her, but she'd withdrawn from it, taking a step backwards. 'Please, Peekay. Please don't.'

Peekay had called the Dolls' Hospital the following day and Mr Rubens had answered. 'Where you been, young man? My chess board is waiting, Doris is waiting, Miss Hans Kellerman is waiting. One month, three days and you are not calling.'

Peekay laughed at the old man's chiding. 'Hello, Mr Rubens, how's my doll? Only two hundred more pounds to pay. How about a discount for early payment? May I speak to Doris, please?'

'Wait, I find her.' Peekay heard the clatter of the phone as he dropped the receiver onto his desk.

Peekay had enjoyed his first date with Doris. They'd had a good time and although she'd allowed him a bit of a feel-up, she wasn't going to be a pushover. At first it had been circumspect; he was in love with Harriet and although Doris did all the right things to him Peekay was able to resist the temptation. But Harriet blew hot and cold. Peekay, who was highly sexed, never quite knew how he'd find her; and finally his resolve crumbled. In his mind Harriet went to bed with him on her terms, when
she
felt like it. Doris, on the other hand, simply liked to accommodate him. Peekay was able to tell himself the meaning of the sex involved was not the same thing, that he was entitled to enjoy Doris and she him. Making love to Doris, he rationalised unfairly, was for the simple release of tension and not the sometimes almost mystical experience Harriet made of it, depending on her mood.

Besides, Peekay found he liked Doris a lot. She was funny, like Togger. She seemed to enjoy being with him, as though she was out on a special treat, though she found many of his mannerisms 'dead quaint', like taking her arm when they went up steps and holding her chair out when they went into a working man's caf for a cuppa.

They'd been out several times when Peekay first raised the question of the Hans Kellerman doll, wanting to know if it was for sale. 'Blimey, Peekay, maybe if you was a millionaire an' all, but I don't think so.'

'Why, what's so special about it? Where did the old guy get it? I mean has he always had it?'

'Funny you should ask that. About a year ago or something like that, this geezer walks into the shop with the doll. "Does we buy dolls?" he asks Mr Rubens. I'm standing behind the old man and I can see his knees start to shake, but the top half, the bit what's above the counter is cool as a cucumber. He looks at the doll, turns it upside down, pulls at its arms and legs, then shakes it. "Ja, it is a good doll," he says, calm as you like. It's a good thing the cash register is right next to him 'cause his knees is shaking something terrible, I don't think he'd a made it on his own. He rings the register and takes out ten pound and slaps it down on the counter in front of the man. Blimey! Ten quid for a bleedin' secondhand doll? The old bugger's gorn off his rocker.' Doris laughed suddenly. 'I think the geezer who brought the doll felt the same an' all. He grabs the tenner and scarpers, like a rat up a bleedin' drainpipe. No sooner is he gone than Mr Rubens picks up the doll and begins to- cry. Hugs it to his chest, great tears runnin' down his face.'

'So you don't think he'd sell it to me?' Peekay asked. Doris looked at him curiously. "Ere, hang on a mo, we got hundreds of dolls. Why do you want that one? More particular, why do yer want a doll in the first place?'

Peekay told Doris the story of Carmen's doll. 'So I want to get it back for her,' he concluded.

'Blimey, I don't like yer chances, love. That doll means an awful lot to the old man. I'll ask him if you like?'

'No, I'll think of a plan.'

'What sort of a plan?'

'I'll think of something.'

Dops grabbed Peekay's sleeve. 'Please, anything else, but don't ask me to do it, I beg you, Peekay. It'd kill him, it would.'

'Doris, what on earth are you talking about?' Doris looked close to tears. 'You only been nice to me because of her, haven't you? That was it all along, wasn't it?' She started to sob quietly.

'Doris! What the hell are you on about?'

'The doll! You want me to nick the 'Ans Kellerman, don'cha?' she sobbed.

Peekay threw back his head and laughed. 'Christ, no!' He put his arms around Doris and pulled her head onto his breast. 'I'm a toff from Oxford, remember. Toffs don't go around nicking other people's dolls. Here.' Peekay handed Doris his handkerchief, 'wipe your tears.' Peekay suddenly realised that if he'd asked her to steal the doll she'd have done so, that Doris loved him enough to do it.

'Doris, look at me. Your mascara's run, you look a right berk,' Peekay said, imitating Togger. He took the handkerchief from her hands and gently wiped where the mascara had run down her cheeks. Peekay sighed. 'I don't know, Doris, I can't take you anywhere,' he chided.

The following Wednesday, Peekay took an earlier than usual train to London and called Mr Rubens. 'May I have a talk with you?' he asked.

'Of course!' the old man replied. 'We both got a telephone, so talk already!'

'No, I mean, privately, away from the office. Perhaps you'll let me buy you lunch.'

'Lunch? Lunch costs money, my boy. We talk yes, but no lunch.' He gave Peekay an address, Duke's Place in the East End. 'Here is a synagogue, I will meet you two o'clock.'

Peekay arrived a little early to find Mr Rubens already waiting for him. The little man stood outside the giant doors of the ancient Great Synagogue. When he saw Peekay he pushed one half of a door open and waited with his free hand holding out a yarmulka for him to take. Peekay placed the tiny skull cap on the back of his head before they entered.

Peekay's first impression of the interior was of its similarity to a church, though faintly oriental as well. He didn't know why, but he'd always thought of a synagogue as somehow different. More mysterious. He was amazed to see stained-glass windows and it was only the writing in Hebraic which suggested they, were any different to the stained-glass pictures of Old Testament scenes he'd seen in a Christian cathedral.

'You are surprised I bring you here, yes?' Mr Rubens asked.

'Yes, I've never been inside a synagogue.'

'It is not so strange, I think?'

'Well, no, it's sort of like a stripped-down church, you know, without the effigies.' Peekay whispered.

'A Jew comes to the synagogue to talk. It is not necessary you talk soft, Peekay.'

'I must say it's a surprising venue.' Peekay grinned, 'I'd thought maybe a couple of ham sandwiches in a pub.' Peekay blushed suddenly. 'I'm terribly sorry, Mr Rubens!'

The old man brushed away his embarrassment.

'Tell me something, Peekay. This talk we are having, it is serious, ja?'

'Mr Rubens, I want to buy the Hans Kellerman doll from you.'

Mr Rubens was silent for some time. Then he sighed and spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness looking directly at Peekay. 'Ja, I think this is maybe why you are calling me. But you know this is not possible?'

Peekay's heart was beating fast. He didn't know why he was so nervous, he'd expected all along his offer would be rejected by the old man. 'Please, sir, I know the doll means a lot to you, but if you'll just let me explain why I need to buy it?'

'Please, some respect! We are not talking about a doll, we are talking about a Hans Kellerman.'

'Mr Rubens, you are not the only person who feels this way about the Hans Kellerman. Someone else loves it too!' Peekay said urgently, trying to impress his seriousness on the little man who now sat with his long coat still buttoned with his delicate white hands folded on his lap. Peekay began to tell Mr Rubens about Carmen, about how much it had meant to her, how much love had been vested in the doll and how it had been sold for a bottle of gin. Peekay concluded by recounting how Carmen had left home and how Togger searched every pawnshop in the Mile End Road and beyond in the hope of coming across Elizabeth Jane. 'Elizabet Jane, this is a name?'