Peter Corris - White Meat

The Aborigine had no trouble in ducking under Rosso’s follow-up right swing and propping him with a straight left as he moved back into open space. That was the pattern of the round; the shorter man rushed in, bullocked his opponent to the ropes and tried to smash him with short, clubbing punches. Moody jabbed him. Moody took the points for the round but there was something a bit supercilious about his style; his shots stung the Italian and made him look clumsy, but they didn’t hurt or frighten him or sap the strength in his body.

Rosso’s handler had smooth silver hair like Rossano Brazzi and a ring with a big, bright stone in it glittered on his finger as he waved and jabbed in the air in front of his fighter. Trueman and someone who looked like the dark boy with the withered leg worked quietly and efficiently on Jacko and there was little conversation in the corner.

In the next two rounds Rosso tried to cut Moody off and slam into him in confined sections of the ring. He managed to hem him in a few times but he couldn’t do much when he got there. Moody tied him up quickly and Bourke broke them and the Aborigine was off again, not dancing exactly, just moving in and out quickly and precisely and scoring with long lefts. His timing was good but not perfect. Rosso caught him with a few heavy body swings that had more power than they should have, given Moody’s evasive abilities and speed. But the Italian was way behind on points when they came out for the fifth.

It wasn’t a good round for Jacko. He seemed to have tired a bit and looked apprehensive. I couldn’t help wondering if the fix was in, somehow. Moody took a couple of punches he should have slipped easily and Rosso roughed him up badly in a clinch. The crowd noise went up a couple of notches. The Italians felt that their boy was getting on top and the Aborigines weren’t happy at all. No-one was neutral and the change of fortunes in the fight affected everyone. I could hear the rustle of money as bets were put on and laid off.

Moody looked a little distressed in his corner after the round but Trueman’s style hadn’t changed at all. The sixth started out much the same as the last round with Rosso aggressive and clumsily effective. Rosso brushed Moody’s left lead aside as if it was a cobweb and slammed in a hard clean right to the mid-section. Moody felt it and responded with a cuffing, playful-looking left to the side of the head. Rosso ignored that and bored in to land a short, jolting right near the Aborigine’s heart. There was a commotion behind me and I turned to see Ted Williams on his feet with beer slopping out of a schooner.

“Do him for Sunday!” he roared.

The punch or the shout transformed Moody. Maybe it was both. He seemed to settle into a firmer stance and loom over the Italian at the same time. He swayed out of reach of Rosso’s next swing and speared a hard left into his face. He followed that with a crisp right; it was the quickest punch combination of the night and Rosso faltered. He missed with a roundhouse drive at Moody’s head and Jacko came in shifting his weight slightly and sliding into position for the perfect punch – his whole body flowed in behind a short right that took Rosso on the chin and destroyed him. Moody’s shoulder hardly moved and the punch wouldn’t have travelled a foot. Rosso’s knees sagged and he collapsed like a ruptured bag of cement. The darkness was in and wrapping around him before he hit the canvas.

It was the sort of end-of-fight you read about, rather than see, maybe like when Dawson finished Patrick or Burns knocked out O’Neill Bell. Everyone was standing up shouting and people were turning to each other asking if they’d seen it. Toni towered up there, her eyes like saucers staring at the ring. I could feel the excitement in Tickener beside me. Jerome, on the other side, was hustling. He brushed men aside to get to others and I caught a flash of his brown fist in the air, full of money.

I’d made money too but it was that kind of moment when money doesn’t mean anything. I’d invested a lot of emotional capital in the events leading up to this and the moment was sweet. I finished my drink and felt the euphoria of the blacks around me catching hold and sweeping me up. My face creased into a smile and I was standing there foolishly taking in the scene like a stoned-out hippie. Suddenly the euphoria washed away and the alcohol warmth inside me died.

Five rows away Penny was standing beside a tall Aborigine. She was wearing a flame-red dress of some satiny material that touched a fetishistic nerve inside me like a dentist’s drill going into tooth pulp. A poplin trench coat was floating out around her shoulders; it was too big for her; someone else’s coat, and her eyes were shining and the Hash of her white, chunky teeth was a stark, erotic signal. She moved her head a fraction, saw me, and looked straight through me. I stood still, empty and cold, and the fellow-feeling I’d had with the blacks around me ebbed away and I was back where I’d been before – alien, excluded and hostile.

Jerome said something to me and I grunted in reply. I started to move off and found Tickener by my elbow.

“Great fight, Cliff,” he bubbled.

“Wonderful,” Toni said.

“I don’t know,” I said blankly. “I think Sands would have been home sooner.”

A while later I was driving to Mosman to see Ailsa, but I didn’t expect the visit to be a good one. My head was too full of the images of women: wild ones, rushing to the edge; ambitious ones with their toeholds on the ladder of preferment; old ones with their greed and the need for security showing in their eyes, and young ones with the illusions being scrubbed off their faces by the long days and nights.