Monkey Wrench Page 14

  I went downstairs again. I’d find him. I’d nail his balls to the wall. He had let me down. Things happen to people who let me down. Bad things.

  I charged through the foyer and into the corridor which led to the men’s changing room. The door slapped back against the wall and flattened the person behind it.

  ‘Oy!’ said this voice.

  ‘Out me way,’ I said.

  ‘Oh my God!’ she said. ‘You’re the London Lassassin, aren’t you?’

  ‘Who’s asking?’ I said. ‘Move! I got to find someone.’

  ‘Incredible,’ she said, ‘amazing! Eva Wylie.’

  So I stopped to take a look at her. She wasn’t much to look at, but she was very solid. And I suppose spots do clear up some time.

  She said, ‘I saw you fight in Warminster last year.’

  ‘Yeah? So?’

  ‘You were mega.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Mega mega.’

  Which was all very nice, but it didn’t help me find Mr Deeds.

  ‘If you want an autograph,’ I said, ‘see me later.’

  ‘I can’t believe it.’ She said ‘oy caarn’t’ in that dozy haystack way.

  ‘Gotter go,’ I said.

  ‘I never would of thought it,’ she said, still blocking me out.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You,’ she said, ‘and me. Against each other. Here. In Lunn’n.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘In Lunn’n. I only just came up last week. From Brissle. Mr Deeds said it’d be ages before I were ready. Now look at me.’

  I looked at her. If she was saying what I thought she was saying it wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have in a passage outside the gents’ changing room. I wanted to have it somewhere I could throw a punch.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Olga,’ she said. ‘Volga Olga. Olga from the Volga, Mr Deeds says. D’you like it?’

  ‘Love it,’ I said. ‘Follow me.’ And I went further down the passage to the women’s changing room.

  ‘It’s Mary, actually,’ she said, trotting along behind. ‘Mary Spragg. But Mary doesn’t sound very … you know.’

  I pushed the door open and turned on the light. The strip lighting flickered on the benches and tiled floor.

  ‘Ooh, lovely,’ said Olga from the Volga. ‘They don’t half give you lovely places to change in Lunn’n.’

  I dumped my kit on a bench. She stood there gawking at the white tiles like it was Buckingham Palace.

  ‘Now see here,’ I said.

  ‘Where I was before,’ said Volga Olga, ‘where Mr Deeds came to see me, we only had a screen to dress behind. And I swear the audience could see bits of us poking out. It was a village hall, see. And Mr Deeds, he came to speak to me after. He said I had potential. He’s a lovely man, Mr Deeds. Don’t you think he’s a lovely man? He was ever so sweet to me. Like a father, really.’

  Like a syphilitic ape’s father, I thought. I said, ‘Shut up a minute. He called you in to fight me?’

  ‘He gave me a ticket from Brissle to Lunn’n. I never went to Lunn’n before. It’s a bit big, like. And my mum never went neither. So I had to come on my own. But he’s been lovely to me, Mr Deeds. He found me lodging. And he’s been teaching me, private. Polishing me up, like. He says I’m not ready yet, but then he calls me up tonight. There’s a phone on the wall outside my room …’

  ‘Shut up!’ I said.

  ‘You don’t have to shout,’ said Olga from the Volga. ‘I know I do go on a bit.’

  ‘A bit?’

  ‘But it’s only ’cos I’m nervous. Meeting you for the first time an’ all. You a star, and everything …’

  There was a rap on the door, and Mr Deeds poked his head in.

  ‘You decent?’ he said. ‘Ah. You met. Okay, Mary?’

  ‘It’s lovely, Mr Deeds,’ Olga said. ‘Eva’s been ever so sweet to me.’

  Mr Deeds looked gob-whacked.

  I said, ‘Now, see here

  ‘Later, Eva,’ he said. ‘I’m putting you on after the interval.’

  ‘Crap in a trap, Mr Deeds

  ‘Gotter go,’ he said. ‘Look after her, Eva.’ And he went.

  Look after her? I’d look after her all right. After I’d looked after him.

  I flung the door open but the passage was empty. Mr Deeds could sprint when he wanted to.

  He’d left me with a baby wrestler, a great chunk of raw meat with a mouth like Mary Poppins on speed. It was stone out of order. I didn’t know what she could do. I didn’t know what she knew. She wasn’t a professional like me. If she just blundered about in the ring like she did when she talked someone was going to get hurt. And it wasn’t going to be me.

  ‘It’s going to be lovely,’ she said, ‘My first Lunn’n fight. With you. Ooh, I’m that excited.’ She had a big soppy grin on her big soppy mush, and all her spots were glowing pink on her chubby cheeks. If she was a dog I’d think she was going to lick my face. I hated her, but I ignored her and started to organise my kit.

  ‘Do I change now?’ she said.

  ‘Suit yerself,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t look,’ she said.

  Don’t look? What the fuck was that supposed to mean? Look at what? Don’t tell me the great goof was shy! You can’t be shy and be a wrestler. If you’re a wrestler you’ve got to go out and strut. You got to strut in front of an audience. Not wearing much. Whatever you look like. You can’t be shy.

  ‘Ooh look,’ she said, after a few minutes. ‘We’re both wearing black.’

  I turned round. Shit-double-shit. She was wearing a black costume just like mine.

  ‘What’s your game?’ I said. ‘You taking the piss, or what? I wear the black. Me.’

  ‘Nice,’ said Olga from the Volga. ‘We’re both the same. Like twins.’

  ‘Take it off,’ I said. I could hardly speak I was so choked.

  ‘Mr Deeds gave it me,’ she said. ‘Lovely, isn’t it? Sophisticated. I think it makes me look slimmer, don’t you?’

  She looked like a pyramid. She had legs like brick posts, huge hips and no chest at all – a very low centre of gravity. It wasn’t a bad build for a wrestler. It’d take a tank to knock her down. But tank or no tank I was going to try.

  ‘Are you deaf or only stupid?’ I said. ‘You can’t wear black. I wear black. I’m the villain. See?’

  ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘You haven’t seen the best bit.’

  She rummaged in her bag. When she stood upright and turned to face me again she was wearing a black mask.

  ‘I don’t bleeding believe it,’ I said.

  ‘Good, isn’t it?’ said Volga Olga.

  I couldn’t think of anything bad enough to say. I tried, but I couldn’t.

  ‘Mr Deeds says I got to wear it to look sinister and mysterious,’ Olga said. ‘I think it’s great. It does make me look sinister and mysterious, doesn’t it? And slim.

  ‘Where are you going?’ said Olga from the Volga.

  Chapter 15

  I threw my robe over my shoulders and slammed out the door. I marched over to the men’s changing room. I didn’t knock. I kicked the door open.

  I said, ‘Where’s Mr Deeds?’

  ‘Get out,’ shouted Mr Julio, Flying Phil’s dad. He had his jockstrap at knee height.

  ‘Aha, oho,’ said Gruff Gordon. ‘Bandits.’

  Pete Carver said, ‘Let me guess – she’s met Mary Mouse.’

  ‘Mary Super Mare,’ said Gruff, ‘the Russian ram-raider.’

  Gruff and Pete hadn’t changed yet. They were smoking cigarettes and playing poker with the Mavericks.

  ‘Where’s Mr Deeds?’

  California Carl got up from a bench. He was wearing his gold lamé trunks. His body looked like oiled gold metal too.

  He said, ‘Get out, cunt-face.’

  He came the full length of the room, saying, ‘This place is for men only. Not you. You don’t belong. Get out.’

  He stood in front of me. ‘Fuck off,’ he sai
d, and slammed the door in my face.

  I’m not sure what happened next, but my toes and knuckles were hot and bruised when Harsh opened the door.

  He said, ‘Come with me.’

  ‘Harsh …’

  ‘Quiet,’ he said.

  I followed him further down the passage to a games room at the end. A door from there led to the main hall and I could hear the music and the crowd through it.

  ‘I’m going on in a minute,’ Harsh said, ‘so there isn’t much time.’

  ‘Harsh, she’s wearing my costume,’ I said. ‘She’s wearing the black. Black’s mine. I’m going to kill her. I swear to God, Harsh, I’m going to tear her into little pieces and ram them down Mr Deeds’ throat.’

  ‘Be quiet, Eva,’ Harsh said. ‘Stand still. What are you afraid of?’

  ‘Afraid? I ain’t afraid of nothing. It’s her should be afraid – that Olga. She’s taken what’s mine.’

  ‘Her name is Mary,’ Harsh said.

  ‘What the fuck’s it matter what her poxy name is?’

  ‘Stand still,’ Harsh said, ‘and use her proper name. She will not seem so threatening.’

  ‘She ain’t threatening me. I’m threatening her. I’m going to …’

  ‘Eva.’

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘You don’t understand. She’s even got a mask. She don’t look human in a mask, Harsh. Mr Deeds said he wanted me to wear a mask.’

  ‘And do you wish to wear a mask?’

  ‘No I fucking don’t.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You can’t see proper. You can’t breathe.’

  ‘Then why are you so angry with Mary for wearing one? Why are you not sorry for her?’

  ‘Sorry?’ I said. ‘Sorry for her? Harsh, she’s dressed like a villain. There’s only one sodding villain on the women’s circuit. Me!’

  ‘There are no villains,’ Harsh said. ‘There are only professional wrestlers. I repeat, what are you afraid of?’

  ‘I ain’t afraid!’

  Harsh said, ‘Are you afraid that Mr Deeds has brought Mary all the way from the country to replace you? Do you know how old she is?’

  ‘Old?’

  ‘Ask her,’ Harsh said. ‘Your fear and anger are misplaced. And ask yourself why she has been forced to cover her face.’

  ‘She’s got spots.’

  Harsh sighed. ‘Then ask yourself why you refused to wear a mask. And why she consented. And then see if she is someone to fear.’

  He was stirring my brains into pudding. He wasn’t talking about what I was talking about.

  I said, ‘I ain’t afraid of her. I could beat her ten times round any ring in the world, blindfold, with both hands tied behind me back, without breaking wind.’

  Harsh sighed again. ‘Yes. Well. Excellent. So if there is no need for fear, there is no need for anger either. A rich man should not heed where fall his crumbs.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Oh, Eva,’ Harsh said. ‘You are exhausting yourself. Don’t waste your energy on what does not matter.’

  He was making sense now. Because I was feeling tired. I couldn’t think why – I hadn’t done anything but a little light training earlier – but I was feeling whacked. And suddenly, I was right chuffed because Harsh had noticed. Not many people notice if another person’s feeling tired. But Harsh noticed me.

  I said, ‘Yeah, all right.’ And I cleared my throat which was feeling a bit tight. Maybe I was coming down with flu or something – feeling tired and tight throat are the first signs. I’d been spending a lot of time with Bella and the other slags so who knows what I’d caught off them. Harsh is always right even when he’s talking garbage and doesn’t understand splotch.

  I went back to the ladies’ changing room. Olga-Volga-Mary was sitting on a bench with a raincoat round her shoulders. She had a Snoopy-dog on her lap, but when she saw me she stuffed it in her bag and blushed.

  ‘It’s for luck,’ she said. ‘My mum gave it me when I left. She came to the station with me and she had it all wrapped up for me to open on the train. A surprise, like. She always knows what to do to make me feel better, my mum.’

  Gawd gimme strength to keep me hands to meself! A baby wrestler who played with toys!

  Harsh told me to, so I had to ask. I said, ‘How old are you?’

  If she’d blushed any more her spots would’ve burst.

  ‘Eighteen,’ she said.

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘Well, nearly eighteen.’

  ‘Eighteen months or eighteen weeks?’

  ‘Mr Deeds said to say eighteen,’ said Olga from the Volga. ‘I’m big enough to be eighteen. Aren’t I?’

  She was big enough, all right. She was big as a medium-sized horse. But she wasn’t as tall as me, and she didn’t have any muscle definition. She was just an unformed slab.

  ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ said Olga. ‘Can’t hide anything from you. I’m fifteen, well, almost sixteen. But I can trust you, can’t I? You wouldn’t tell anyone, would you?’

  Harsh is a genius. He knew I’d feel better once I knew she really was a baby. He knew I’d be okay if I had something on her. Because, now, if she gave me any trouble, I could give her trouble back. Real trouble, from social workers and dead-heads like that – for working underage and not going to school. That’s what people kept trying to do to me when I was fifteen. It didn’t work, but it made my life a misery. And that’s what I’d do to Olga if she got in my way. Don’t think I wouldn’t. It’s a dog-eat-dog world – the wrestling world – and I ain’t going to lie down and let some overgrown puppy walk all over me.

  But if Olga gave me no grief I’d show her a thing or two. Call me a soft-hearted fool if you like. I could help her a bit. I could help her enough to make me look good. Because it doesn’t make me look good if I mash an opponent too easily. If she wants to look good on her own account she’ll have to help herself. Like I had to. I’m soft-hearted, but I ain’t daft.

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Let’s find out what you know, and what we got to do to make a fight of it tonight.’

  Olga said, ‘Mum told me to watch out for myself in Lunn’n. She said everyone was out for themselves. But it isn’t like that at all. You’re being like a sister to me.’

  I nearly told her – I’m a sister to my sister, wherever she is, but I ain’t no sister to a pumpkin I only just met. She had a lot to learn, that Olga, but, like Harsh said, I wasn’t going to waste my energy on stuff that wasn’t wrestling.

  I took her along to the games room where we could spread ourselves out a bit.

  Harsh was gone. He was in the ring. Mr Deeds often puts him out early, before the crowd gets too hysterical to appreciate him. The crowd likes to think it can appreciate skill. But that’s not what it’s there for. It’s there for blood and thunder, thud and blunder. You don’t get thud and blunder from Harsh. You get skill. ’Cos Harsh is a shooter. He wouldn’t stoop to dramatics.

  I opened the door a crack and peeped out at him. Just watching him work makes me peaceful. He’s quick, supple and strong – everything I wish myself. And he flows. He flows from throw to fall to escape to hold to pin like water flowing over rocks.

  ‘See that, my girl,’ I said to Olga, ‘that’s poetry in motion, that is. Look and learn.’

  But I didn’t let her look too long ’cos I didn’t want her to learn too much. A pumpkin like her can’t take it all in, see. She’d just get confused.

  She was big, but she was soft. Kids are. Their muscles haven’t hardened. I’m not saying she wasn’t strong – she was. Or she would be if she did the work. But when I grappled with her it was like grappling with a sponge. I suppose I must’ve felt like that a couple of years ago when I was raw. And it made me think. I spent all my fighting life up against women older than me. This was the first time I copped someone younger.

  Of course she was soft in the head as well as soft in the body. But at least she wanted to learn. She was keen. Keen but clumsy. And that made me think too. Abou
t Bella, Stef and the others. And how they didn’t want to learn to use themselves except for rumpty-tumpty.

  If I said to them, ‘Do so-and-so,’ they’d moan. And when I said, ‘No, that’s wrong, do it again,’ they’d go, ‘Do I have to? I’m sweating.’

  Olga didn’t mind doing stuff over and over again. Which was just as well, seeing how wrong she got it first off. She liked the work. She thought it was fun. I know, ’cos she kept saying so. She said it so often I had a good mind to wire her mouth shut.

  Even so, it was better to be with a woman who wanted to be an athlete than to be with the frilly kind. The frilly kind try to make you feel like a freak for having muscles, and they bad-mouth you for being sweaty – as if being sweaty’s the same as being dirty. Which it isn’t.

  I was just thinking maybe I’d dump the self-defence lessons and start a wrestling school instead when it was time for me and Olga to go on.

  Chapter 16

  Going on first after the interval is a bad slot.

  You’ve lost half the audience. They’re still trickling back from the bar. They’re more interested in their bags of sweets, their beer and their burgers than they are in you. They’re wondering if their bladders will hold out for the whole of the second half. They’re making last minute trips to the bog. They’re buying the kids a last packet of crisps. They don’t have their minds on the job.

  Mr Deeds knows it’s a bad slot. That’s why he gave it to me. He knew Olga wasn’t ready and he thinks I don’t matter. But I do matter. And if I’ve got an aim in life, it’s to show Mr Deeds and all the piss-piddle-poohs like him how much I matter.

  I sent Olga out first. She toddled down the aisle and climbed into the ring. And nobody hardly noticed. There she was in her black mask, looking like a lady executioner, and no one noticed.

  She stood in her corner like a good little girl and waited. And waited.

  Then, out of the speakers, came ‘Satisfaction’. I didn’t move a muscle.

  I was peeking through the door, so I could see people beginning to turn in their seats to see where I was. I stayed shtum. I was going to show Mr Deeds. If he thought he could mail-order some little pumpkin-bumpkin in from the country to replace me he had another think coming. He’d never get a better villain than me. Never.