Fair Fight by Anna Freeman Read Free Book Online

turned the corner.
    Ma never said a word, but she knew too many folks with flapping chops and I could be sure she’d heard enough. Sometimes I thought she was watching me with new eyes, the way she watched the new misses. I’d become an uncertain creature in her mind and I found I liked it; she couldn’t fathom what else I might be doing when her eyes weren’t on me, and more than that – someone had thought it worth a whole two shillings just to talk to me. No man had ever paid two shillings for Dora’s conversation.
    I’d taken to going to The Hatchet even when Mr Dryer didn’t come to fetch me. Ma never spoke against that, either; I suppose by then I was earning enough, or she was biding her time. Perhaps she was run mad enough by then that she didn’t think of me unless I was in front of her. She was certainly grown forgetful.
    One evening I was waiting at the door to the Hatchet yard, watching two lads about to fight upon the stage, stretching themselves and jumping about, when up came a sailor. This was a cull fresh off a boat, all full of ginger and half-soused already. He came over beside me and touched my face, where I’d a bruise or two, as I near always did.
    ‘Ain’t you all scuffed up,’ he said. ‘How’d you like a little ointment for that?’ His face made it clear enough what he meant by that.
    ‘Tom,’ a cully standing nearby called out, ‘here’s a noddy talking foul to your missus.’
    ‘He’d best shut his bonebox,’ Tom called out, walking toward us, ‘unless he wants it closed for him.’
    The sailor called back, ‘No offence meant, son. Bruise the little bitch yourself, did you? I’ll warrant she keeps quiet enough, now.’
    Tom kept coming through the crowd, who moved aside and, guessing what he was about, turned to watch. He stepped right up to that sailor, smiling, and struck him right in the chops, so hard that the cully’s head cracked against the door and bounced right off again. He slumped forward, and everyone about reached out to help him to the floor.
    Tom turned to me and I could see he was anxious then, that I’d be vexed at him playing the knight.
    I reached out and touched his big hand, just gently.
    ‘I knew you’d have a good fib on you,’ I said. ‘You’d have to with maulers like that. You should go up in the ring.’
    Tom shook his head, but he looked pleased enough to piss. ‘I’d rather watch you,’ he said. ‘I should’ve let you fight for yourself, just now. I didn’t mean to take liberties.’
    ‘I’ve been waiting for you to take liberties,’ I said, just to see him blush.
     
    And just like that, Tom seemed to grow bolder. Nothing much changed that you could see. He never asked me outright, but from that day he’d sometimes say of a stream he’d fished as a boy or the mine his father and brothers still worked, ‘I’ll take you there, when once we’re married.’
    And this without once kissing me, or taking my swollen-up hands.
    I sometimes told him, ‘Ma never will let me marry you, Tommy.’
    He’d only smile then and say, ‘She will.’
    But he knew nothing about it. He was too good to know.
    When once I understood that he meant it, the agony of uncertainty was replaced by worse – I began to love him. I told myself I mustn’t – I forbade it. That was as much help as forbidding Ma to love money, or Mr Dryer to love boxing. I knew I’d never hold him; as soon as he knew me truly, he’d run, of course he’d run. Oh, he said he’d never known a girl like me; that he thought me brave and liked to see me carry myself so proud and spirited, but that wasn’t like to last, that wasn’t what lads looked for to marry. Surely, soon, he’d find some other girl, with curling hair and unmarked cheeks and I’d have to kill them both, or die of it. I thought about this and still I walked beside him. I laughed when he joked. I cast about for him when I took the ring and couldn’t be easy till I knew his eyes were on me, and then