Брайс Кортни - The Power of One

I asked Hymie how he proposed to turn possibly the weakest school boxing team in the world into a winning combination. He looked at me and for once the slightly cynical grin left the corners of his mouth. ‘We need only one winner for a start. One guy you can rely on to win. The rest is easy, the rest is only good management. When men can be made to hope, then they can be made to win.’ He placed his hands one on each of my shoulders. ‘How many fights have you won in the ring, Peekay?’

‘Thirty-four,’ I replied.

‘How many have you lost?’

‘Well… none,’ I said, a little embarrassed.

‘You’ll do nicely. There’s nothing a gambler likes better than a certainty.’

‘This is the highveld, the standard is much higher than in the lowveld where I’ve done all my boxing, sooner or later every boxer gets beaten.’

‘Sure, sure, but let’s do all we can to delay that moment as long as possible. Peekay, I smell money in that boxing team.’

‘You mean by becoming an integral part of the system, me boxing and you managing, and then making it work for us?’

‘I love a fast learner,’ Hymie said.

When Darby White and Sarge saw me work out I could see they were enormously impressed. ‘Where’d you learn to box, son?’ Darby White asked.

Without thinking I answered, ‘In prison, sir.’

It was a reply Darby White would never grow tired of recounting. To my often acute embarrassment it became his favourite boxing story and given the slightest opportunity, he’d recount it to the coaches from the other schools.

Sarge was second in command of the boxing squad and acted with Darby White as a second or alone when Darby was refereeing a fight. As a young guardsman with the Coldstream Guards he’d been quite a useful amateur in his day. Later he’d worked as a second under the famous English trainer Dutch Holland of the Thomas à Becket Gymnasium in south London. Dutch Holland was the best cut-man in England and Sarge claimed to have learned the art of stemming an eye bleed from him. A cut eye would usually stop a fight in school boxing, which wasn’t always fair as the better boxer could lose on a TKO when he was ahead on points. Sarge could work miracles with a cut-stick, cotton wool swabs, adrenalin and vaseline. In fact, his special skill as a cut-man was one of the weapons Hymie was to use in his campaign to lift the boxing squad out of last place in the schools competition.

Hymie had himself elected as the manager of the boxing squad by the simple expedient of volunteering for the job. No first form boy had previously held this job. The managers of the various major sports, cricket, rugby, swimming, shooting and, of course, boxing, were invariably chosen from fifth form boys who, while not being sportsmen, were known to be brains, hence these positions came to be known as ‘swot spots’ and the fifth form boy honoured with a swot spot would invariably become a school prefect in the year following.

However, the swot spot for boxing had become a school joke and was therefore seen as not worthy of a brain. It was considered extremely poor form to apply for it, and Darby White had for the past four years rejected the few applicants on the basis of them not being known brains and therefore simple opportunists. In putting his case for the swot spot in boxing, Hymie pointed out to Darby White that as he was in the school senior chess team he qualified in the brain department and besides, with a first former in the job, Darby could look forward to five years of continuity, with all the advantages of long-term planning.

Hymie’s arguments were persuasive. The most telling of them being that we couldn’t do any worse than we were doing, so Darby might as well give him a go. Darby White only jingled his balls in his white duck trousers furiously for about two minutes before agreeing. Darby was quite unable to make a decision of any sort without putting both hands into his trouser pockets and giving his balls a tumble, the longer the process the more complicated the decision.

My first fight was as a flyweight, although at one hundred and two pounds I was a very light one and would be fighting a kid who weighed nearly ten pounds more than me. It took place in the school gymnasium a month after the term had begun. Home matches drew little attention from anyone at the school. School spirit did not extend to boxing, it was a recognised fact that we always lost and only the boxing squad and first form boarders, conscripted to watch, would be present to see the tripe walloped out of the Prince of Wales team. These one-sided bouts were privately referred to as ‘two-fisted attacks from the hairy backs’. As in: ‘Another seven to zero two-fisted attack from the hairy backs.’ The malevolence between Afrikaans and English-speaking South Africans continued unabated, with the English still feeling mightily superior. The fact that only Afrikaans schools boxed was further reason to dismiss the boxing team as being somewhat déclassé and not worthy of the finer traditions of the school. Darby White in his white ducks and singlet, with his belly spilling over the old tie which held his trousers up, and Sarge in his jazzy hotel doorman’s uniform and silly pace stick, were looked upon as a comic opera team by the remainder of the mortar and gowned teaching staff. Nothing was ever said, but you simply knew that those who laboured in the field were not equal to those who laboured in the mind.

While only the handful of Prince of Wales kids attended that first fight, the gym was packed with kids from the opposition school, an Afrikaans high school named Helpmekaar, which translated into English means Help each other. Helpmekaar enjoyed a huge reputation in all sport except cricket. Its boxing team was said to be the best in South Africa and had won the South African schools Boxing Championships the year before.

At one hundred and eleven pounds the kid I was fighting was just one pound short of being a bantamweight. I didn’t mind as I was used to fighting guys heavier and bigger than me and had fought tougher looking kids than him before. But Hymie was concerned, this was the first time we were going into business together and at the weigh-in he’d looked worried.

‘Ten pounds is a lot to give away, this Geldenhuis guy is supposed to be shit hot.’

‘C’mon, Hymie, he’s a new boy just like us, how would they know? How’s the book going?’

‘Great, that’s the problem. I’ve been taking bets in the toilet from the Helpmekaar chaps all night and I’ve got you at ten to one against four to one on Geldenhuis and they’re falling over themselves to bet on their man.’

‘That’s great, did you tell the first form boarders to bet on me?’

‘Ja, they’re all pretty excited, but their bets aren’t anywhere near enough to cover us if Geldenhuis wins. Christ, Peekay, I must be mad. It’s not having all the facts that’s pissing me off. We have no form on Geldenhuis, none on you for that matter, we’re making book in the dark, that’s just plain dumb.’

‘We’ve got to start somewhere. Let’s start by trusting each other.’

‘No offence, Peekay, but next time first the facts and then the trust.’ It was perhaps the most important thing Hymie ever said to me. Hymie was the supreme example of Hoppie’s dictum: First with the head and then with the heart. It was to be the basis of our business operations from that time on.

Geldenhuis was solidly built around the shoulders and I knew I’d have to stay away from his right, which he kept throwing straight from the shoulder as he shadow boxed while waiting for the fight to begin.

Geel Piet had warned me that some boxers throw shadow punches before a fight to deceive their opponent into thinking they lead with a left or a right when in actual fact it’s the other way around. The idea is to surprise your opponent in the first few seconds and so unsettle him. I studied the big kid and decided there wasn’t any subterfuge in his shadow boxing, he was much too confident to bother with any tricks. His leading hand was the left and I noticed he held his right too low, leaving his jaw unprotected. His slightly more open stance suggested that he saw himself as a fighter. In which case he would come out hard and fast hoping to nail me early with a good punch.