The men were drinking beer and their cigar smoke drifted up into the clear, bright sky. Ed and Tex Rickard were talking nineteen to the dozen, as they had been all afternoon, of boxers, of fights. Rickard gave a blow-by-blow account of the Tunney-Dempsey fight, the bout known as the ‘fight of the long count’. The new rule was that when a boxer was knocked down, his opponent had to go straight to a neutral corner. Only then could the count begin. If he didn’t move, the referee would not start the count.
‘Ed, ma boy, that count must have been well over sixteen, I was out of ma goddam mind! I screamed for Jack to get into the corner — he’d forgotten, see, in the heat of the moment. Jeez, I’m tellin’ ya, I wanted to get in the goddam ring myself … so of course, Tunney got a second wind, who wouldn’t after sixteen seconds?’
Ed turned to Freedom and jerked his thumb towards Rickard, telling him to pay close attention to what the man, the man, was saying. Freedom leaned forward and listened as the two men began to discuss the last Tunney fight, then relaxed again. He had seen the film, knew the fight punch by punch. Freedom was beside himself. There was Ed with Rickard, apparently going over every detail of every fight that had ever taken place in the USA, and on his other side Sir Charles and Kearn talking non-stop about aeroplanes.
The real reason they had all gathered at Kearn’s was to discuss a bout for Freedom, to make him a contender for the championship, but so far no one had said a word about it. In fact, they never brought the subject up at all.
Freedom was moody, his temper fraying. With a terrible grinding of gears they stopped at the villa, and as they climbed out of the car, Freedom began to question Ed. ‘So when do I fight, Ed, what went on? They going to help me get a bout or not?’
Ed puffed on a Cuban cigar, a gift from his new friend, Tex, and waved his hand majestically. ‘These things take time, son, got to be worked out, an’ Sir Charles is going ter have ter give them a percentage of the gate, see, so we don’t want ter rush fings. They want ter see you work out tomorrow at a friend’s place … Anyway, did I tell you what Tex told me about when he was gambling in Paris, France?’
‘I don’t give a bugger about his gambling, I want a fight and I want it soon, Ed.’
That night, Freedom felt Evelyne’s belly, and they both agreed it was going to be another boy. They discussed names, and Evelyne decided she would like to call him Alexander. Freedom muttered that it was a name for a woman, and she threw a pillow at him. He would have let her call the baby Freda if she’d wanted to.
The sun had tanned Evelyne’s pale skin and lightened her long red hair. He had never seen her so beautiful. The good life suited her, and he was determined it wouldn’t stop — not now, not ever.
He slipped from the bed and lifted the blind. The night was dark and the sea was lit by a perfect, brilliant moon. He clenched his hands, his frustration was building to-bursting point. He couldn’t sleep at night, and he spent all day waiting, always waiting.
At breakfast the following morning, Freedom had already been up for hours, running himself into exhaustion. He ate in silence, and the atmosphere grew tense. Ed was eating the most enormous platter of sausage and pancakes, and his paunch was growing as fast as Evelyne’s pregnancy.
‘Be patient, fings is goin’ just right.’
That was it. Freedom banged his fist on the table. ‘Sittin’ around eatin’, mun, you call that going just right? I came here to fight, so far I done nothin’ … maybe it’s not just Sir Charles out of his depth, mun, maybe you don’t know what you’re doin’ … Get me a fight, that’s all I want.’
As if on cue, a Western union boy rang their bell and handed over a telegram. Rickard had requested another meeting.
Ed and Freedom departed with the usual crashing of gears, Ed refusing to speak to Freedom until he apologized. Evelyne sighed, Freedom’s moods were getting to them all, apart from Freda, who spent most of her time with her nose in the fridge eating all the goodies she had discovered on their trips into town.
‘I’ll take Edward down to the beach.’
‘Freda, what if he loses? If he gets a bout and loses, we are all here, living in luxury — who’s paying for it?’
Freda sat down at the table with her raspberry ripple ice-cream. ‘Don’t talk that way. Of course he will win, don’t ever speak like that.’
But Evelyne couldn’t rid herself of her foreboding. She knew Freedom was getting dangerously impatient. Freda waved her spoon at Evelyne. ‘Maybe today they’ll know about a fight, and you must not let Freedom see you are worried, promise me … have some raspberry ripple.’
Evelyne shook her head, collected the bucket and spade and, with Edward pulling excitedly at her hand, went down to the beach.
Ed drove through the gates of the luxurious ranch-style villa. This time Freedom hardly gave a second glance, already bored by Ed’s non-stop description of all the Dempsey fights. Only when a servant led them into a gymnasium did he perk up. Everything was geared to boxing — a ring built in the centre of the vast, sprung floor. The servant showed them the dressing room, gesturing to Freedom to help himself, and then bowed out, leaving him to stare at the rows of gloves, robes and boots.
‘Go on, get a work out, I’ll take a stroll round the stables. I got a surprise for you, you wait. Go on, get dressed.’
Freedom was hammering hell out of a punchbag when the gym doors swung open. A tall, elegant man in a pale cream linen suit, his black hair slicked back, leaned on the doorframe. A large diamond ring glittered on his little finger.
‘Carry on, son, let’s have a look at you. Go on, hit that bag.’
Puzzled, Freedom blinked. Ed appeared behind the man and stared in adoration, near tears. As the man moved into the centre of the room, Freedom looked at him again and realized who he was. He wore a perfectly tailored suit and shirt with a silk tie, and a handkerchief placed just so in his breast pocket, but no amount of fancy tailoring could hide his muscular body. This was none other than Dempsey himself.
Dempsey’s polished shoes made no sound on the pine floor. ‘How ya doin’, Freedom, glad to meet you.’
The hand was like a rock … so this was the ‘Manassa Mauler’, the iron man. Ed clutched Dempsey’s hand, and for one awful moment it looked as if he were going to kiss it. Dempsey began to peel off his jacket, his perfect white teeth gleaming. ‘Let’s go to it, son, I need a work out.’
It took quite a lot of persuasion for Dempsey to get Freedom into the sauna, as Freedom had never been in one and didn’t like it at all.
‘Sweats out all the impurities, all the rage over here, they’ll get to England in about twenty years. America’s the place, this is the land, here, I love this goddam country.’
He poured pine essence on to the bed of hot coals and sat on one of the benches. His body was flabby, but still in better shape than most men of his age. He thumped his belly and roared his deep, bellowing laugh.
‘This is the good life, I earned it, I earned it and now I’m living, really living … hey, you married?’
They both wore short white towels wrapped around their hips, and Dempsey seemed very proud of his ‘manhood’. He snorted when Freedom told him he was married, and said marriage was the worst contract he had ever got himself into.
‘An’ that toff with the enlarged eyeball, your — what?’
Freedom smiled at his reference to Sir Charles, and said that he was his so-called promoter.
‘They’ll have him for dinner, you stayin’ ta eat? Good, I’ll make us a barbecue, one you won’t forget, an’ we’ll have something wet to go with it.’