Watching the Climbers on the Mountain (14 page)

As he lay under the hand of the referee the stockman heard voices insulting him, others urging him to get up and avenge himself, voices of strangers whose messages rode out of the mass of noise and reached him clearly. And the quiet, persistent intonation of the count continued . . . three . . . four . . . five . . . coming down on the strokes as if real time were no longer of any consequence and the referee had taken over its allocation according to his own infinitely slower rhythm.

A change began to come over the stockman as he lay there. A period of his life was contained in the count and he felt as though he had reflected on everything that had gone before. He was no longer afraid. He realised that his fear had gone in that single stab of pain in his stomach, that it had changed to something else. And he began to feel a desire to beat Laurie Hill.

It began in the insults and exhortations of the crowd, in the screaming throats of strangers, and it focused itself in the live pain in his cheek where Hill had hit him and it flowed out from there gathering strength and shooting down into his heart, and then up into his brain. It was a desire that made the blood fill his veins until they became tight and hard as wood, and made his joints feel set with springs. Gathering itself within him, it probed and touched every part of him until it had become a concentrated will to return the blow.

‘Come on hurry up!' he snapped, pushing against the referee's hand.

‘Six,' came the response finally, and the hand pressed down firmly against his back, forcing him to wait for ever. ‘. . . Seven.' He drew a deep breath, filling his lungs as hard as he could until they hurt and lifting himself up against the referee's hand until it was withdrawn.

‘. . . Eight. Okay!' He stood with the referee between himself and Hill and he looked across the space at Laurie Hill. He saw a flicker of surprise in his opponent's eyes. The referee checked his gloves for grit, stepped back and said, ‘Fight!'

Hill gave a snarl and came for him. For the next minute Crofts had no chance to even consider throwing a punch. He was forced to defend himself. He scrambled and back-peddled and even ran, swerving and side-stepping to avoid being murdered by Hill, who kept up a savage barrage of hammering punches. He smashed at Crofts' gloves and arms and shoulders, driving at him without a pause, determined to pound him into the canvas and finish it; and the shrieking crowd were urging him to do it, one hysterical voice straining above the others: ‘Kill him, Laurie!'

The stockman appeared to be in deep trouble. It looked like only a matter of time—any second—and one of Hill's big punches would settle him. In the midst of this fury, however, Crofts' body and mind worked together perfectly, with an acute perception of every detail—he was quicker, clearer and cooler than he had ever been before in his life. He saw every punch. They touched him, brushed him, flicked him, stopped a fraction short of him and a few even landed with half their force spent, pushing at him and even knocking him aside—but not one of them got him cleanly. He watched the power in these punches going by, gathering itself and coming out of Laurie Hill, then dissipating in the hectic air a centimetre from his own head, the recoil returning into the foreman's son and contorting his face.

It amazed Crofts—this mad onslaught of furious energy trying to crush him. One wrong guess, one uncertain triggering of a reflex, one hesitation, and he knew he would be badly hurt, smashed aside and battered beyond recovery before he could regain his balance or get his guard up. He felt the electric intensity of it.

Hill came in close and Crofts saw the tearing upper-cut begin. He grazed it aside with his glove, at the same time moving to the right. The thumb of Hill's glove burned his left ear and Hill stumbled against him, thrown off-balance, his mouth gasping for air, his eyes wide and staring. Their shoulders slapped together hard. Each was sprayed with the other's sweat. For an instant then Hill seemed to expect that he would be permitted to hold fire for a second. Crofts hit him hard below his guard, a short ripping left to his stomach, then stepped away, his right cocked automatically for the combination. Hill gasped and went berserk, lashing and flailing and hurling himself on the stockman in a furious attack that left him spent and gasping by the time the bell went for the end of round one.

The stockman uncovered his guard and emerged slowly from the storm of violence. As he walked to his corner he turned and looked across at Laurie Hill. The foreman's son was lowering himself wearily onto the stool. His father was scrambling into the ring as if he were trapped by the ropes, reaching for Laurie, while both of them gasped for air like insects that had been hit by repellent.

Crofts laughed with relief and excitement. He reached his own corner and sat down, resting his back against the padded post. He looked around at the raised tiers of faces that gazed down on him. His body was glowing with a fierce fire and he rejoiced that he was here in the ring with Laurie Hill and not stuck out there on the benches. He removed his mouthguard and filled his mouth with water from the bottle the station owner was thrusting at him, letting the cool liquid run down his chest and into his shorts. He gargled and spat through the ropes into the dust. Then he leaned back hard against the post and breathed deep lungfuls of air, forcing it in and out. His body tingled all over. He felt pumped up with energy. Ward Rankin was silent, attending to him, but Gil was blowing rank cigar smoke all over him and issuing a stream of advice and instructions. He nodded and mumbled his assent to whatever it was Gil was saying and he looked across at the Hills. They were watching him too. He could not take his eyes from the foreman's son. It was all he could do to restrain himself from shouting something, an obscenity, anything, a challenge. He wiped his mouth with the back of his glove and impatiently pushed away the towel that Rankin kept dabbing him with. Keeping his eyes steadily on Laurie Hill, he slipped his mouthguard in and stood up as the bell sounded.

He was relieved to get away from the dead air in the corner and out into the live atmosphere of the ring.

Hill came out fast and started swinging his big punches. Crofts watched the left lead coming by, savouring the thrill of moving into danger again. He swayed unexpectedly way over to the right, going around the punch instead of inside it, forcing Hill to adjust his balance in order to stay within range with the right cross to which he had already committed himself. He knocked aside Hill's over-extended right and ducked in under his guard as he came on, driven by his own momentum.

There in front of him was an open view of Hill's abdomen. Crofts noticed that the wet black hair continued in an unbroken line all the way up to Hill's chest. The muscles, not well-defined, were hidden and rendered shapeless by a layer of fat. He took aim at the little sunken area below Hill's diaphragm and drove his closed left glove in as hard as he could. It made a sound like a wet mop hitting a mattress and Hill sucked in his breath and doubled forward. Crofts fired off two short jabs to Hill's ribs as the foreman's son turned aside and began to bring his own guard down. Then he stepped away as if he meant to retreat but as Hill swung round to pursue him he sprang forward instead, driving himself off the balls of his feet and zipping another left into Hill's stomach. He kept going, diving in close, right under Hill's arms. Then he crouched slightly and let loose a right uppercut at Hill's chin. Hill took the blow on his forearm, however, sensing it coming and throwing himself sideways and away from it. He snatched Crofts' glove and trapped it under his armpit, drawing the stockman towards him and smashing his forehead into the side of Crofts' face, at the same time pounding away at the stockman's ribs with his left. The referee jumped at them and dragged them apart. He pushed the protesting Hill in the chest, yelling a warning at him, then he called on them to fight.

The screams of the crowd seemed to reverberate right down into Crofts' toes in the moment when Hill's forehead smashed into the swollen lump on his cheek where the first punch of the fight had almost finished him. Pain washed through him and for an instant he lost his balance. If the referee had not stepped in so promptly he would have been defenceless. Crofts shook his head and looked at Hill coming for him again. But although he felt the lump on his cheek, he could not bring himself to think about defending it. A cold anger had taken hold of him and when he struck at Hill as they came within each other's range it was with an aggression that threatened to smother him if he did not release it—he was driving at Hill's head with the desire to kill him.

The two men stood hard against each other in the centre of the ring and neither gave an inch. They pounded and smashed at each other, caught in the roaring force of their aggression, each striving to defeat the other, to inflict a telling blow. They seemed endowed with a superhuman strength and intensity.

The shrieking crowd raised on its tiered benches urged them on in a wave of excitement. Yet, at the centre of this frenzy, at the centre of himself, the stockman was calm and controlled. He blocked and fielded Hill's punches and he felt the force of those that hit him; and he countered with lefts and rights and with calculated combinations, registering exactly the power with which each punch got through to Hill or was turned aside by him, knowing when he failed to hurt and when he succeeded.

He stayed there. And in the end he became so finely attuned to the responses of his opponent that he detected almost before it happened the first instant that Laurie Hill began to falter—the first shuddering recoil that did not pounce back at him with the ferocity he had come to expect. He detected this weakening as Hill himself felt it and instantly the stockman's energy was fired to a new intensity. He became colder, calmer and more accurate, his aggression became purer, and he struck where he would do the most damage to the foreman's son. He drove home his advantage with a determination he had given to nothing in his life before.

He felt Hill's movements become clumsy and the strength ebb from his punches. His opponent now looked startled, even vulnerable. His mouth hung open and he made fumbled attempts to wrestle into a clinch and to hold it until he could recover a little strength. Crofts did not let up, but redoubled his efforts as if only now could he unleash his real strength. Hill swung round, stabbing the empty air, and his wet body seemed larger and softer and heavier as it received more and more punishment. Crofts smashed him in the eyes and pounded his face and drove into him with a timed series of combinations in which each blow contacted with Hill as he recoiled from the previous one.

And somehow the foreman's son stayed on his feet and even appeared, to those who were not following, to continue the fight.

When the bell sounded Crofts pushed Hill away from him. Hill had a strange look of expectation in his eyes. Crofts waved his gloves at him, dismissing him, and turned and walked to his own corner. Hill did an odd thing then; he tongued his mouthguard into the open palm of his glove, spat on the canvas and laughed before going to his corner. It was that contempt for everything. Crofts shrugged. He knew Laurie Hill didn't have the ability to defend himself now.

The referee went over to the Hills and bent down to speak with them. The stockman prayed they would not stop the fight. But Ray Hill was arguing. They were going on. He relaxed. He watched them sponging Laurie Hill's face and shoulders, and as the cool water ran over his own head and down his body he felt a sharp pang of resentment—perhaps you could kill someone like Laurie Hill and at the very end they might laugh at you, and it would all be for nothing. He felt disturbed, and for an instant it weakened his will to win. He closed his eyes, leaned back and tried to relax, glad of the wafts of air from the towel Ward Rankin was flapping at him. He was intact, unhurt. His strength was all there. His body was a splendid machine. He could get up in one minute and choose the exact moment to smash Hill to the canvas. He had vastly overestimated this whole show. He could do it easily.

He sighed deeply and in his mind's eye he saw Hill staring at him, his insolence intact, cold and unintelligent in his exhausted eyes. Nothing would get rid of it. A hand was placed on his chest. He jumped and opened his eyes, startled back into the world. Gil was bending over him and Ward Rankin was standing back, watching.

‘Are you okay, Robert?' Gil asked anxiously. ‘You've got him, mate!' He smiled and shook Crofts' shoulder to encourage him. ‘You've got the bastard fucked, Robert!'

‘I know,' Crofts said. He looked past Gil and met Ward Rankin's introspective gaze. There was always something puzzling about the man's expression, as if
he
understood.

Most of the audience thought the struggle between these two men was yet to reach its climax. Hill and Crofts slugged it out again for the first minute of the third and last round. They stood there banging away at each other with all the appearance of furious striving, and the Shire foreman hung on the ropes screaming instructions at his son, as if he might yet defeat the stockman. Hill dragged up the last dregs of his strength and tore into the stockman: a left to the belly, a left to the head, another left to the belly, and a right cross to the head; and he kept prodding and poking, feeling Crofts' strength waiting there poised, taking what was left of these punches easily, damping them, swaying out of reach, deflecting, even letting one through every now and then; and Hill tensed himself and waited for the counterattack that would destroy him, send him reeling and crashing to the canvas. He kept digging and jabbing at Crofts, snarling and flailing until his arms felt as though they would break off and he was scarcely able to lift them above his waist; and still the counterattack did not come from the stockman.

Crofts watched the saliva running out of the corner of Hill's mouth and he fielded his punches, seeing them coming a long way off, feeling their spongy weakness; they were token punches, all the sting, the speed and the power sapped out of them. He let one through and it hit him in the stomach. Nothing. He jabbed at Hill's head, Biff! And Hill kept coming in, and then he let him come right in and fall into a sobbing clinch. He let him rest there for a few seconds, the big hairy arms soft and heavy, then he pushed him away and hit him lightly in the face, snapping his head back but not hurting him. And again. Bing! making the airman dance a bit. He heard that same high-strung voice screeching out of the background chorus, beseeching, ‘Kill him!' and he felt as if he and Hill were alone a million miles away.