Free The Pillow Fight by Nicholas Monsarrat Page B

loser was just being finished off with a folding chair as we walked in) and wangled enough space at the ringside Press table to make ourselves comfortable. Flanked by Eumor and Bruno van Thaal, I settled down happily to watch Honest John versus the Demon Barber (one fall, twenty-minute time limit, championship of the Lower Transvaal).
    Honest John (a new arrival from Rhodesia) was one of the least honest performers I had ever seen in the ring. He was rather old, rather bald, rather cynical about the whole thing; but he was still a splendid character, versed in all the stratagems which make ‘show wrestling’ such a meaty conjuring trick. He gave us (and the Demon Barber – who was entirely hairless) the works; closed-fist punching, elbow smashes that missed the chin and took the larynx, eye-gouging, knees into the groin, muscle-plucking on the referee’s blind side. He was up to all the tricks of defeat also; quite unsurpassed at cries of pain, the groggy-knees routine, fist-shaking at the crowd and appeals to high heaven for justice.
    Once, when he touched my shoe in landing outside the ring, he whispered: ‘Excuse me, lady,’ and then roared at the top of his voice: ‘Foul!’ Thrown out of the ring a second time, he pointed at a projecting nail in the floor at least a yard from where he landed, and screamed in agony: ‘Oh, my knee!’ Naturally we backed him to the limit of our lungs.
    And then, halfway through, suddenly I was bored; and just as suddenly I knew why.
    The Demon Barber was taking time out on the ropes, simulating a profound coma; Honest John was protesting his innocence, and pretending to dispose of a knuckleduster at the same time. Bruno was talking to the sports writer sitting next to him. I tapped Eumor on the arm.
    ‘Where’s Steele, Eumor?’
    He turned, surprised. ‘Who?’
    ‘Jonathan Steele.’
    ‘I don’t know, dar-r-r-ling. Why?’
    ‘I’d like to see him again.’
    Eumor’s olive face creased into a grin. ‘You have some plans?’
    ‘No. I’d just like to see him.’
    ‘No, you have plans,’ declared Eumor determinedly. ‘You wish me to procure for you … It disgusts me … I will do it gladly.’
    ‘Hush,’ I said.
    ‘Trust me, Kate,’ he hissed, wonderfully conspiratorial. ‘I find him and bring him to your bed.’
    ‘Just bring him here,’ I said.
    ‘You want his body. I arrange.’
    ‘I’m sure you’ve done this sort of thing before,’ I said, resigning myself to the trend.
    ‘Not for some years.’
    ‘What are you two children whispering about?’ asked Bruno.
    ‘Nothing,’ answered Eumor. ‘I go to the gentlemens.’
    When he came back he stood at the end of the Press table, and called to me rather loudly: ‘It’s all fixed!’ earning himself a malevolent glare both from the Demon Barber and the referee. Honest John was momentarily senseless on the other side of the ring.
    Beside me again, Eumor whispered: ‘He was home. Comes straight away.’
    ‘But what did you tell him?’
    ‘Everything!’ exclaimed Eumor, with a gleaming eye. ‘He feels same way about you .’
    When a man whom you want comes into a room – even so wide a ‘room’ as a wrestling arena – and moves towards you, some telltale chemistry goes to work, quickening your heart, stabbing your womb. I knew, seconds before Bruno said distastefully: ‘Darling, there’s your bloody communist!’ that Jonathan Steele had travelled swiftly, and was here.
    Across the noisy, crowded, smoke-wreathed arena, I met his eyes, and smiled, and looked away again. He made his way through the rows, pulled out a chair, and sat down just behind me. In the ring, Honest John (the ordained winner) was getting in a few last licks at the Demon Barber, drawing his thumbnail briskly across his opponent’s eyelids. I called out, as loud as I could: ‘Come on, Johnny! Come on!’
    Behind me, Jonathan Steele said: ‘The black sheep of our family,’ and I laughed with exquisite relief and pleasure.
    I