guy’s arm once in Singapore. The bone came through the skin. Remember? Want to arm wrestle to prove you were right? Prove the Yanks never told you the fucking mines were there? Prove you didn’t blow your fucking legs off yourself?’
There was silence in the room. The night’s smoke and beer fumes hung in the air like cobwebs. Sweat poured from Barraclough’s face as he fought to control his anger. He looked around at the men lolling in chairs, slumped over tables and his lip curled. He sucked in a deep breath and his eyes came to focus on me. They bored in, tested me, the way he used to do back when he was about to issue orders about how to kill and survive. Suddenly, he was sober and deadly again.
‘No, Cliff,’ he said softly. ‘I’m out of condition and you’re still in shape. But I’ll tell you what. You get that little prick Bean to find a Yank who can fight and we’ll put an Aussie up against him. Unarmed combat with no holds barred.’
‘What’s the point?’ I said.
‘That’ll settle it. Win, lose or draw, I won’t look for trouble with the Yanks. We’ll fraternise.’
‘No provocation?’ I said. ‘No Yankees Go Home and half-price beer for Australians?’
‘Right,’ Barraclough said.
It seemed like a possible solution to a mess that was bound to grow messier otherwise. I couldn’t see Bean having any objection. Bound to be a dirty fight, but one unarmed brawl was better than a hundred with broken bottles.
‘I’ll put it to Bean,’ I said. ‘Who’s going to fight for you?’
Barraclough signalled for a drink. A schooner arrived and he took a small sip and wiped his moustache, very much the mess officer. You are, Cliff. Who else?’
Rhys Thomas was practically incoherent with delight.
‘What a story,’ he babbled. ‘What a story.’
I’d done the deal with Bean. The fight was set for two nights away. My opponent was going to be one of the black Marine sergeants. Thomas had all the details. I bought him a drink in a pub in Victoria Street and gave him the bad news.
‘No story, Rhys,’ I said, ‘not yet awhile.’
‘Yeah, yeah. When the fight’s over. I appreciate that. But even with the hush-hush on, they can’t suppress this.’
‘You’re missing the point. I’m suppressing it. I just took you along for recording purposes. I don’t want anything written about this.’
‘Hardy!’
‘Maybe one day.’
‘That’s not good enough.’
‘It has to be. If you don’t agree, I’ll make sure you don’t get to see the fight.’
‘I suppose you could do that, but how’re you going to stop me writing about it?’
I lowered my glass and looked at him.
‘Jesus, Hardy. You can be an evil-looking bastard when you try.’
‘I’m going to have to be more than evil-looking to get out of this in one piece.’
‘Come on. It’ll be a set-up, won’t it?’
‘You don’t know Barraclough. He’ll make sure it’s not.’
I went through the motions for the rest of the day and then went back over the bridge. Things weren’t any better on the home front. Astrid tried. She asked me how the Barraclough matter was going and I wasn’t forthcoming. What could I do? Tell her I was going mano e mono against some Harlem streetfighter for the sake of something I wasn’t even clear about myself?
On the day of the fight, Grant Evans called to tell me how quiet it had been the night before. ‘False alarm, eh, Cliff?’
I grunted.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing. Sorry, Grant, I’ve got a few things on.’
He hung up, offended. Terrific. Just the way to go into a fight, with your woman cold and resentful and your best mate pissed off. I got through the day somehow. Astrid had told me that she wouldn’t be in until nine. I said we could watch Peter Gunn together at 10.30. She wasn’t amused.
I turned up at the Macquarie at 9.00 p.m. wearing jeans, tennis shoes and an old army shirt. I leaned against a car outside and waited until Barraclough came to me. A couple of his boys had lifted the wheelchair up to street level and were looking a bit distressed. Barraclough was drunk.
‘Where?’ I said.
‘Out the back. That little prick of a journalist reckons you said he could watch. That right?’
‘Yeah. I hope you haven’t sold tickets.’
Barraclough chuckled. ‘Just a few friends, Hardy. Just a few friends.’
The wheelchair had an electric motor. He drove it along a narrow lane beside the pub and through a gate into a small yard, floodlit from the wooden stairs that led down from the back of the hotel. It looked as if Barraclough’s backers planned some improvements out here. The cement had been taken up and the yard was about to be bricked. The bricks, nice ones, salvaged from some demolished building, were in stacks around the edge. The space, about the size of two boxing rings, was covered with a couple of inches of sand. Lawrie Bean was there, along with three men in US military uniform, three Australian soldiers and Rhys Thomas. A woman sat on the bricks, smoking. Along with Barraclough, me and Eddie, that made twelve. The woman came across to stand beside Barraclough’s wheelchair. She was a leggy blonde with a miniskirt, sequined top and a face hard enough to knock the mortar off the old bricks.
A man stepped from the shadows near the steps. Number thirteen. He wore fatigue pants, a singlet and basketball boots. He was about six-foot-two, fourteen stone and black. Except for his teeth. They were very white when he smiled, which he did now.
‘Hi, honky,’ he said. ‘I understand you don’t like niggers.’
I shot a told-you-so look at Thomas but I didn’t bother to reply. I took off my watch, removed the money from my pockets and put the lot on the bricks, never taking my eyes off the Marine. He spat on his hands and dropped into a crouch.
‘Sergeant Lester Dobbs,’ he said. “Whose ass do I have the pleasure of whipping?’
‘My name’s Hardy,’ I said, ‘and you talk too bloody much.’
He scooped up a handful of sand and whipped it at me, but I was ready for that and went in under it with my eyes slitted. I kicked for his groin; he shuffled fast and took it on the thigh. My foot bounced off rock-hard muscle. He came at me, jabbing out a left, right cocked, balanced. I moved my head enough to avoid the jab and hit him on the nose with a quick one of my own. Too light, rusty, not enough snap. He got me with the right below my left eye and I went down. I saw his huge blue and white basketball boot coming for my ribs and twisted away; he missed, lost balance momentarily and I swept his feet from under him with a scythe kick. Even falling, he was fighting; he came down hard on top of me and we grappled in the sand, kicking and clawing until I got away, courtesy of one good elbow to his ear.
We were up again, circling. I could feel blood on my face and there was a roaring in my ears. He was sweating and dirty but unmarked, smiling. I didn’t even see the roundhouse right that caught me in exactly the same place as the first one and closed my eye. I claimed him and brought my knee up which hurt him a bit but not enough to stop him butting me. I felt my nose break, not for the first time, and pain spread through my skull. I might have landed a few more times, I don’t remember. All that stays with me is the hiss and stink of his boozy breath as he hit me, left and right, head and body. The pain was everywhere, mounting to a crescendo. I felt a tooth collapse, then my mouth was full of sand and the pain stopped.
I heard Dobbs say, ‘Guy can fight.’ Then I was lifted up and propped against the bricks. Something damp was passed across my face and a glass was lifted to my mouth. I sucked in beer, choked and sprayed it out with blood and the broken tooth.
‘Jesus, Hardy.’
I recognised Rhys Thomas’ voice but I couldn’t see him. My left eye was closed and the other had sand in it. I
