Fair Fight by Anna Freeman Page B

took an age to reappear. When he did, he was so pleased with himself as to scarcely notice the strained mood.
    ‘Now we will go to The Hatchet,’ he said, as though he were expedition leader, ‘and finally see a prize-fight.’
    ‘I do not care for prize-fights,’ said Perry, who had never seen one.
    ‘You will care for the rum,’ I said.
    My friend ignored me, but his face lost some of its sullenness and he followed behind us like a lamb.
     
    That night was more pleasurable for my companions than it was for me. Perry pronounced the rum as fine as any he had ever tasted, though it was likely the cheapest that the innkeeper thought he could get away with selling. Perry addressed this observation exclusively to Granville and he kept up the game all the evening. He would not reply to any of my own remarks. When I put my hand upon his arm to lead him out to the yard and the boxing ring, he removed his arm from my touch and said,
    ‘You stink of bitch.’
    He followed Granville out, without looking to see if I would follow.
    When once the bout began, Perry cried out at each hit as enthusiastically as did Granville, and when our man won he slung his arm around Granville’s neck. I had placed my shilling upon the same cove, but Perry said not a word to me. My winnings were little compensation.
    Granville affected not to notice Perry’s coldness toward me, but I could see his pleasure at being made favourite. For my part, I had never known jealousy like it – I thought I might at any moment cast up my supper. I had never been anything but the first object of Perry’s heart. I was so low over it that I was afforded only the meanest kind of satisfaction to see Granville trying to carry Perry’s weight about his shoulders as the bigger boy grew progressively more soused. We stayed so late – I, most reluctantly – that we had to hire a linkboy to walk ahead of us with a light, so that we should not be robbed by footpads. We made slow progress, Perry wanting to stop at every chop house and having to be coaxed onward by Granville, bent almost double under his arm. They veered wildly across the roads, for Granville was not strong enough to counter Perry’s floundering progress. I walked behind them, cursing them for their slowness but too bloody-minded to assist.
    I was angry and drunk enough when I finally got into bed that I almost wept, but then the spinning of the chamber took my attention and I fell into a sickly slumber.
    I woke to find Perry climbing in beside me and laying his head on my chest. I was relieved, but so sick from the liquor that just the movement of him was enough to send my stomach pitching. I wrapped my arms about him as though he was a life-raft upon the ocean of my nausea, and at last we slept again.
     
    That was my last year of schooling. The next year, for want of any better idea, I took a place at Oxford, studying law, which did not suit me. I wished, rather, to find a young lady of fortune and make her my wife, so that I need not be a lawyer at all. My motivations were not entirely mercenary. I hoped for love, as all young men do, but I did not mean to lose sight of the practicalities. I had a devil of a time. I was invited to dinners and parties by families acquainted with my own, but if ever I seemed to be forging a particular friendship with a young lady I found the invitations died away like autumn leaves. I had not solidified my prospects; those watchful mothers had grander ideas than a fourth son, not yet finished with his studies.
    My own mother spared barely a thought for me, now that my eldest brother, John, was to be married. She talked endlessly of the wedding and the couple’s future happiness.
    Well might they be happy , I thought, with an estate to inherit .
    I was sure that my mother could have assisted me in finding a suitable bride, had she cared to.
    When, on a visit home, I raised the subject, she said only, ‘Study hard, George, and see that you become an asset to a