Flying finish / Бурный финиш. Книга для чтения на английском языке

There are better places for fighting than the back of an aircraft. The floor of that one was banded by the rows of seat anchorages, so that it was only a matter of time before one of us caught his foot in them and overbalanced, and it happened to be me, dodging away from a hand stretched at my throat, I went down flat on my back, unable to stop myself.

Billy fell deliberately and heavily on top of me, grinning fiercely with his own private pleasure, stabbing his elbows sharply into my chest and pressing me down hard on to the rigid anchorages. It hurt, and he meant it to. I kicked and rolled over, trying to get him underneath for a taste of it, but he was off like a cat at the crucial point and already aiming his boot as I stood up. I took that on the thigh and lunged accurately in return at his head. He just shook it briefly and went on punching, hard, quick, and with no respect for convention[110]; but the pleasure left his face when he continued to get everything back with interest[111].

Thankful at least that he had produced no flick knife or bicycle chain I battled on, knowing in a cold detached part of my brain that I would gain nothing even if I won. Billy’s resentment would be greater, not less, for being slogged by what he despised.

I did win in the end, if anyone did, but only because he had a belly full of beer and I hadn’t. We were both very near to a standstill. I hit him finally very hard just below the navel, my fist sinking in deep, and he fell against the aft box[112] retching and clutching himself and sliding down on to his knees. I caught hold of one of his wrists and twisted his arm up across his back.

‘Now you listen, Billy,’ I said loudly in his ear, panting to get enough breath, ‘I don’t see any point in fighting you, but I will if you make me. You can forget I’m an earl’s son, Billy, and take me as I am, and this is what I am.’ I jerked his arm. ‘Hard, Billy, not soft. As tough as necessary. Remember it.’

He didn’t answer, perhaps because he was showing signs of being sick. I yanked him to his feet, pushed him across to the lavatory compartment in the tail, opened the door for him, and shoved him through. As the only lock was on the inside I couldn’t make sure he stayed there, but from the sounds which presently issued from the open door, he was in no state to leave.

My own body ached from head to foot from his punches and kicks and from brisk contact with many sharp and knobbed edges, not least those spaced regularly on the floor. I sat down weakly on a straw bale and rubbed at a few places which didn’t do much good, and was suddenly struck by something very odd indeed.

My face was completely unmarked.

I had bashed my head against one of the metal bars on the rear box and there was a tender swelling a little above my right ear. But Billy, I remembered distinctly, had not once even aimed at my face; not at any point higher than my throat.

For someone in the grip of obsessive fury, surely that was extraordinary, I thought. The usual impulse in such a case was to ‘smash his face in’. Billy had actually taken pains not to[113]. I didn’t understand why. I thought about it all the way to Cambridge.

It was dark when we landed and the cabin lights were on. The cheerful customs man made his way through the plane, raised his eyebrows, and asked where my two mates were.

‘Billy is in there,’ I nodded towards the lavatory, ‘and John stayed in France. He said he was coming back tomorrow.’

‘O.K.’ He checked through the horse’s papers perfunctorily. ‘All clear,’ he said, and as an afterthought: ‘Buy anything?’

I shook my head, and he grinned, helped me open the double doors, and whistled away down the ramp as soon as it was in position.

Billy had locked himself into the lavatory and refused to come out, so I had to get one of the box drivers who had arrived to collect the cargo to help me unload the horses. Unloading was always quicker and easier than loading, but I had begun to stiffen up all over with bruises[114], and I was glad when it was done. The helpful box driver led out the last horse, an undistinguished brown mare, and before turning back to tidy up I watched them step and slither down the ramp. That mare, I thought idly, was very like the one we had taken across in the morning, though the rug she wore might be misleading. But it couldn’t of course be the same. No one would ship a horse out in the morning and back in the afternoon.

I turned away and began slowly to stack the box sides and the bars, wished painfully that Billy hadn’t been quite so rough, and forgot about it.

The following day I went down to the wharf building and hooked Simon out for a liquid lunch[115]. We shambled down the road to the usual hideous pub and he buried his face in a pint like a camel at an oasis.

‘That’s better,’ he said, sighing, when a scant inch remained. ‘How did yesterday’s trip go?’

‘All right.’

His eyes considered me thoughtfully. ‘Did you have a fall on Saturday?’

‘No. A winner. Why?’