a friend for nine years, then feel surprised when he turns up looking a decade older. In fact, you feel betrayed, as if he’s aged you along with him, and personally dragged you a decade closer to the grave. But I didn’t say any of this, of course. You don’t say such things to an old friend, even one who didn’t look quite as joyful to see me as he might have done—and especially considering the nature of my errand.
Tell the truth, Daniel looked as if he’d seen a ghost, and promptly excused himself to attend to the Cockney Irish party. She was snoring loudly now, and lying in a small but spreading puddle, which commenced its contribution to the overall aroma of the place. But Daniel paid no mind at all, and picked her up, as easy as you’d pick up a kitten. It pleased me to see that he still had his strength—although this was to be expected, since old prize-fighters always hold their strength to the end. It’s the speed that goes first, and then the wind, and then the coordination, till finally they just stand stiff and splay-legged like slaughteryard cattle while a young man chops ’em down.
“I’ll do that, Captain!” the newly saved troll was exclaiming. “That’s dirty work—let me!” He had risen to his feet as Daniel had entered the room, and was now bounding towards him like a great galumphing Newfoundland dog. The look on his face was absolute devotion.
“No, Tim Diggory,” said Daniel, “it’s not dirty work at all. There’s no dirt where the Lord’s work is to be done, and nothing to flinch at in a fellow human soul. But here you are, so we’ll do it together.”
While they went off into the back, I made myself pleasant to the Miss Sherwoods, offering amiable observations about this and that and the other—the weather and the price of ribbons—for I’m the sort of man who’s at ease wherever he finds himself. When this petered out I amused myself by looking round at the pictures on the walls. O’Thunder’s Academy was decorated with pictures both religious and pugilistic in nature. It was a remarkably eclectic mix, such that St Peter shouldered up against Molyneaux, and gentle Jesus with his lamb appeared to be gazing straight across at a portrait of Mendoza, stripped to the waist and set to settle someone’s hash.
“Daniel Mendoza,” I said, to the Miss Sherwoods. “Before my time, but the old-timers say he was one of the greatest of them all. He was champion of England until soft living caught up with him, alas, along with Gentleman Jackson, who seized him by the long dark hair with one hand, and battered him senseless with t’other. The other gentleman,” I added, indicating the picture of Jesus, “I believe you know already. But do you know what the two of them had in common?”
“They were both warriors,” said Daniel, who had returned in time to hear this question. “They both fought fearlessly, asking no quarter, regardless of the consequences.”
“Ah, there you go,” said I. “There you go—Daniel puts it in a nutshell. Lacking his sure grasp of the essence of things, I was simply going to say: they were both Jewish, and a credit to their people.”
Daniel had recovered from his first shock at seeing me. Now he found a smile and extended his hand. It was like taking hold of a bag of nuts. As with all old prize-fighters, every bone in those hands had been broken, at one time or another. For Daniel had been a pugilist, of course, after the two of us had left the Army. I had been a trainer of pugilists—and still was.
“My old friend John Thomas Rennert,” said Daniel, almost as if he meant it. “After all these years. Welcome, brother—and doubly welcome if you’ve come to confess your Christian faith and join us in our work. No? Ah, well—for I can tell by your merry laugh that this is not the case. Or at least not yet, for who can say when the Lord may come to each of us, and rap upon our door, and call upon us to open? But welcome nonetheless. I’ll pour you a glass for old times’ sake, and we’ll sit and chat awhile in fellowship. After that you’ll be on your way, for I’m sure you’re a busy man as you always were. And these days I have myself so very much to be getting on with.”
That voice again, after all these years. I’d half-forgotten what an instrument it was. Daniel could always talk. So could I, of course, as I’ve confessed already—but that was talking in a different way. I could talk the sparrows down from the trees. Daniel could halfways convince them they were eagles.
He opened a cabinet and took out a bottle of the pale and a single mug. “For I no longer have truck nor trade with spirituous drink,” he said. “If you cast your mind back, perhaps you’ll recall the reason why.” A shadow crossed his face, and of course I remembered vividly. “Nine years sober,” he said, quietly. “Since that morning in Bristol—you were there, John Thomas—when God reached out and lifted me from the mire.”
“Then I compliment you on your resolve. Your very good health,” I said, raising my brandy, and added with a wink: “Captain O’Thunder. For I understand it’s ‘Captain’ these days.”
He gave me a look. “I am many things these days, John Thomas, and Captain is one of them. But I’m not at all the man you used to know.”
He had taken me to a little sitting area off in a corner, with a bench and a rickety wooden chair. It happened to be out of the immediate earshot of the Miss Sherwoods, who had gone back to mending hand-me-down clothes, and also the Diggory party, who had returned to sit with the cashbox by the door. For no man is comfortable when his past comes strolling up the stairs to introduce itself to his new friends, especially a man with a past like Daniel’s.
“I can see that you’ve changed indeed, old friend,” said I, privately doubting this very much. For none of us ever changes, not really. “And yet in one important particular, you’re exactly the same man as ever. You’re fit, as I said already, as a fiddle. You look as fit as the man who licked Long John Jurrock in fifty-two rounds—remember that? You look as if you could step into the ring this afternoon, against the Tipton Slasher himself.”
Daniel laughed out loud. “The Tipton Slasher? My friends would carry me out in a horse blanket, John Thomas, half a minute after I stepped in. I haven’t fought in nearly a decade. I’m fat and thirty-three years old. I feel it, brother—and more than that, I look it. So why don’t you tell me what this is about, and what you’re angling towards, so I can shake your hand one last time and wish you well and be done with it?”
A smile remained on his face. But there was a resoluteness too, that hadn’t been there in the old days. I wasn’t sure I liked that resoluteness.
“What you’re saying is true enough, Daniel—or part of it, at any rate. You’re not as young as you were—who is?—and perhaps you wouldn’t stand for long against the Slasher. But the fact remains, you retired from the prize-ring too soon. You departed from the green faerie circle before you’d had a chance to reach your prime. I’ve mused upon this many times, these past nine years—I’ve thought upon it with a lingering sadness, Dan—I’ve wondered often and again, ‘What might Daniel O’Thunder have achieved, had he stayed with the game just a little while longer?’ And I wager you’ve done so too.”
I leaned forward, for now I was in my stride, and closing in on the quarry. “You’re a fighter, Daniel—that’s what you are, and always will be. And I have a Proposition.”
“You always did, John Thomas. The answer is no.”
“Hear me out. It concerns a young man I’ve taken an interest in, called Spragg the Ruffian. You’ve heard of him? I see you have, for he’s been mentioned in the sporting papers. Well, we’ve fought him a few times up North, and he’s done well. A strong, strapping lad—not much in the way of technique just yet, but he’s learning, and he can deliver a blow. He bested the Croyden Drover— remember him?—and stretched out the Onion Boy, flat as a mackerel, after twenty-seven minutes. So now it’s
