The Angel in the Corner - Monica Dickens [58]
The side-streets were dark and dirty, with small shuttered shops, and shabby houses hiding their lights behind torn blinds. She passed one or two men who stared at her with their heads down, and three youths arm in arm, who gave her the expected whistle. In the doorway of the club, more youths were lounging. They were not talking. They were apparently not waiting for anything. They were merely leaning against the wall in a vacuum of time, staring at nothing with vacant eyes. As Virginia approached, their eyes turned to her as if they were threaded on one string, followed her to the doorway, and remained staring emptily, while she hesitated, not liking to enter the dim corridor.
The name of the club was written over the door in faded paint, but Virginia asked: ‘Is this the Vauxhall Sporting Club?’ The youths said nothing for a moment. Then one of them nudged another and he nodded.
‘Is it all right if I go in? I mean, do you have to be a member?’ This was too much for them. They looked at her as if she were speaking Chinese.
‘Oh, well – thank you,’ Virginia said nervously, and walked into the passage. Behind her, the youths broke out in a volley of guffaws.
As Virginia went down the passage, she could hear a gradually increasing roar of sound. When she reached the thick curtain which hung at the end, she could distinguish individual shouts against the background clamour. It was a bestial noise, mindless, cruel. She had heard it when she went to a boxing match: a male crowd noise, split here and there by women’s shrieks, quite different from the more genial open-air crowd noise of a football match.
There was a chair and table at the end of the passage, with a saucer full of cigarette stubs, but no one sat there. The heavy curtain swayed, as if someone knocked against it on the other side. As it parted slightly in the middle, Virginia saw the yellow light fogged with smoke, men’s backs, and a Laocoon-like glimpse of a struggling naked torso beyond them.
There was nothing to do but go in. She slipped inside and stood with her back to the dusty curtain, hoping that she would not be noticed before she could see Joe. There were no benches round the ring. The men, and a few women in the front, were standing up, jostling one another, swaying together in surges of excitement, waving their arms, or flinging out a stiffened finger as they shouted instruction or abuse at the wrestlers.
The two men in the ring were squat, vast shouldered, and hairy. They circled each other like snarling baboons, then were suddenly locked together, and rolled to the ground in a deliberate motion that looked more like a joint effort than a battle. Their short legs strived and twisted, their arms embraced, their heads beat the ground, and the black hair on their backs was matted with running sweat.
Watching in startled fascination, Virginia forgot for a moment to look for Joe. She caught her breath as one man picked up the other and hurled him to the ground with a thud that made the hoarse crowd yell and stamp their feet. Virginia could not take her eyes from the ring. She was leaning forward with her mouth open, and a little cry escaped her as an arm like the trunk of a small tree was twisted and bent back, while its owner screamed and gnashed his teeth.
The man standing in front of her looked round. He nudged his neighbour, who turned round too.
‘What are you doing here, little girl?’ the first one said. ‘Lost the way to the Ritz?’ He was a mean-looking man with a face like a knife, and Virginia felt afraid. She stood on tiptoe, searching the crowd for Joe.
‘Looking for someone?’ the man asked, shifting a match from one corner of his mouth to the other.
‘Yes. Joe Colonna. Do you know him?’
‘Never heard of him,’ the man said. ‘Come and stand here by me. You’ll see better.’ He put out an arm to pull her forward. Virginia twisted out of his grasp, and moved away on the edge of the crowd,