‘He’ll be along at The Ploughman – in the back room, most likely,’ one of the younger men tells her, speaking for the first time. ‘Do you know where that is? Go on a bit further, and at the next bridge turn right, up to the London road. You’ll find it soon enough.’
‘Thank you.’ Cat walks away to a variety of good-natured catcalls and hisses.
Only at the entrance to The Ploughman does she hesitate, because the doorway is low and the room inside dark and crowded, even though it’s after hours. For a moment, she feels that clawing inside when she is shut in, when there is a chance she could be trapped. But she steels herself, slipping through the crowd in a way a larger person couldn’t. There are a few other women in the pub, but only a few; their blouses tight, the top buttons undone, beer in their hands and red on their cheeks and kisses all over their mouths. In the back room, the young man had said. There is a rough wooden door, shut and latched at the far end of the room. Cat makes for it. When her fingers touch the latch, she jumps. A huge roar goes up from the other side, of a hundred deep male voices booming as one. Unease slows Cat’s progress, makes her pause. It sounds like a large and violent crowd is waiting behind the door, and she knows enough of such things to fear them. A hand clasps her wrist and pulls it firmly from the latch.
‘Now, where might you be going, young lady?’ asks a whiskery old man. His skin on her wrist is like a leathery bark, and she twists herself free.
‘Take your hands off me!’ she snaps, her heart lurching.
‘All right, all right, nobody’s trying to interfere with you! I asked a question, that’s all.’ He slurs his words slightly but his eyes are bright and if he wanted to stop her, Cat sees, he could.
‘I’m here to see George. George Hobson,’ she says, tipping her chin defiantly. ‘He’s in there, isn’t he?’
‘What are you? His woman? Daughter? I thought he had none,’ the man asks curiously.
‘What I am to him is my business. Are you going to let me through or not?’ The man studies her for a moment, chewing thoughtfully on the bedraggled remnants of a cigarette.
‘You know what this is, do you?’ He eyes her dubiously and hooks his thumb at the door. Another roar goes up from beyond it. Cat’s heart beats faster. She clamps her mouth shut, nods briskly though she can’t think what she will find in this restricted room. ‘Go on then, but you’ll not make a scene or I’ll have you out on your ear, got that?’ He leans over, lifts the latch and presses the door open, just wide enough for Cat to squeeze through. Biting her lip, her hands in fists, she does so.
The room is blue with smoke, airlessly hot, and the ceiling even lower and all of wood, like the walls. Cat’s view is barred by ranks of men, their backs turned to her, all jostling and cheering and stamping and wincing, waving their arms, their fists, their pocket-books. Cat skirts the edge of this crowd until she spots an opening, worming her way, unnoticed, to the front. She does not recognise him at first, the smiling man who blushed when she discovered that he couldn’t read. Now he is stripped to the waist, his thick torso slick with sweat and blood. Light shines from the curves and contours of his body. His hair is plastered to his head, and blood comes freely from a cut above his left eye, drawing a bright line down to his chin. But his opponent looks in worse shape. This other man is taller than George, but does not have his solid build. His long arms are thinner, though the muscles stand out along them like knots in rope. Both of them have made their knuckles bloody red and ragged.
When his opponent lands a punch, George absorbs it with an outward rush of breath, and does not falter. He moves smoothly, weaving like a cat, ducking his head like a bird, more graceful than a man of his size should be. Cat watches him, quite mesmerised. She has never seen anybody look so alive. She breathes deeply, catching the salt of sweat on her tongue; hears the smack of bone on flesh, of knuckles sinking deep somewhere giving, and a collective groan from the crowd in sympathetic pain. Cat presses up against the ropes of the makeshift ring, grasping the rough hemp tightly in her hands as she yells out her support. How different, how powerfully real he seems, compared to the fat policemen in London; the cherubic vicar; her own thin and bony self.
Another punch and George begins to bleed from one nostril, sweat flying as his head snaps to the side. His shoulders slump and blood vessels stand proud along the muscles of his arms. Ugly pink bruises are blossoming around his ribs. But his expression is calm, one of steady deliberation. He knows, Cat senses, exactly what he is doing. What he should do next, what he has doubtless done before; all oblivious to the strain of it and the fatigue and the pain he must feel. His opponent’s face is fixed into a grimace of effort and aggression. George is waiting, she sees. Using the other man’s aggression against him. Making him feel frustrated and eager to wade in, to get the job done. Letting him land a few big punches, letting him see the path to victory, making him impatient for it, making him careless. George waits, he weaves; he blocks a blow that would have closed his right eye – just in time, letting it glance from his face as if next time he might not be fast enough. It works. The other man steps in, drops his guard, pulls back a swing that he means to be the final punch of the night. He takes a fraction of a second to wind up, to twist his whole body behind the blow. When George strikes, his arm moves so fast it’s hard for the eye to follow; an upper cut that hits the taller man under the chin with a force that snaps his head back on his neck. The man drops abruptly, stunned, and lies propped upon his elbows, all bewildered.