Free The Longest Fight by Emily Bullock Page B

forever.
Please, please.
He begged himself not to come before he pictured Rosie’s face again.

SEVEN
    S omeone thumps on the door; John’s shins hit the wooden toilet. His trousers drop to his knees. The parrot squawks, woken from sleep, battering its wings against the bars. He bites his lip, flexes his left hand against the back wall. The door is locked; he hopes it is Tommy, that he will get bored and walk away.
    ‘What you doing in there?’ His dad thumps the cracked wood.
    ‘I’m done.’ John’s voice sounds high and tight. He tries to reach his belt, lying across his foot, without making a sound. A grey feather floats in under the gap between the door and the cobbles. His dad paces. John stuffs himself back inside his trousers, gym sub money jingling in his pocket. He rubs his hand down the back of his shirt as he scans the toilet: nothing to give him away. He opens the door.
    ‘Disgusting.’ His dad shoves past him. ‘You’ll go blind, boy.’
    John stares at the red bricks of the outhouse but his cheeks smoulder from the inside, heat flushing down his neck.
Look out, look out,
the parrot cries from the cage by the back door. It extends a claw through the bars, but John doesn’t have any scraps for it this morning.
    ‘Think I don’t know why you get up early before work? No point practising. Who’d ever want you?’ His dad stretches his arms against the doorframe, leans out towards John.
    The boys’ bedroom window creaks open, the scrape of wood echoing in the yard. Tommy, his eldest brother, home on leave, is probably hanging out, trying to eavesdrop for ammunition to use against him.
    ‘God landed me with three boys and not one of them can catch a girl. What a waste of Munday blood. At least Bill doesn’t bother turning up here for his leave, getting under our feet,’ his dad calls up to the window; the sash drops shut again.
    John is glad the morning sun never reaches the yard: it would burn him right up. His dad doesn’t bother to close the door, just coughs and shuffles his feet.
    ‘Wait till I tell the men down the factory what I caught you doing.’ His dad’s laugh is drowned out by a rush of piss hitting the bowl.
    John tastes last night’s smoked kippers hitting the back of his teeth. He doesn’t want to face those eyes down the line of the Bible Factory – fingers pointing, mouths flapping. With the money in his pocket he could just keep riding the tram until he reached a place where no one knew who he was – further than Mitcham this time. His dad keeps talking as he shakes off the final drops. John wants to be somewhere that no one knows his business, no one listening outside doors waiting to pounce. He is fifteen now, as much of a man as he’ll ever be. John grasps the coins in his pocket and lifts his feet so as not to make a sound, shrinking backwards into the dark alleyway beside the house. The black eyes of the parrot watch him.
    He makes it to the end of Lomond Grove; no one is following. The early morning air is thick as bath steam, a hats-tilted-against-the-sun kind of a day. It presses down on John, making him itchy in his skin. When his dad gets to the factory he will find out John has gone, then they’ll all be sorry. He stands in the shade under the trees and waits for a tram. He sticks an arm then a leg into the sun, testing the burning sensation on his skin. It is the kind of heat that boils up a storm. A tram pulls up, he climbs on board and the rush of air as it goes along lifts the sticky sweat from his neck. He even manages to read some of the paper the man in front is holding. Something about that German bloke they are alwaysranting about, but John doesn’t really pay attention until the sports pages. Seemed as if Germany had something to celebrate: Louis versus Schmeling, knockout in round twelve – Joe Louis’ first defeat. He wants to read the rest of the fight reports, but doesn’t get the chance before the man folds up the pages and gets off at the