Foreigners Page 6

  In the evening I dined alone at the Three Crowns. The innkeeper had timidly requested permission to join my table once I had completed my meal, and I agreed to his entreaty for I now understood that my acquiescence would enable him to temporarily escape the tedious presence of his wife. In the morning I would be returning to London, so this would probably mark my final exchange with this weak man, whom I had already corrected with regard to the status of Francis Barber's mortality. The innkeeper poured freely from what he termed a 'special' bottle of French claret, and he once again apologised for his error, but I assured him that the man's wife, though puzzled, appeared to have taken no discernible offence. The innkeeper had hardly received my words before he sought intelligence as to just how far Mr Barber had fallen from the lower rungs of the social ladder. I smiled back at this odious man, but resolved to say nothing that might assuage his curiosity. The situation soon became uncomfortable, and my host quickly changed tack, and asked after the negro's wife. I answered that she appeared to be experiencing difficulties providing for her children, for clearly the schoolhouse had been neglected since the onset of Mr Barber's illness. I reminded this foolish citizen of Lichfield of Dr Johnson's conviction that a decent provision for the poor, particularly those in the final season of their lives, is the truest test of civilisation, and I left the rest to his conscience. The effect of the wine had begun to diminish this man's speech and I feared that it had also made inroads into what remained of his judgement. I could sense the deep desire on the part of the innkeeper to ask again after the Jamaican, but my mind was made up. The fall of a man is not a pretty picture to behold, but the spectacle of an individual attempting to hide his indifference behind a thin mask of concern is an altogether unacceptable sight.

  I looked around as the inkeeper's 'guests' continued to drink like horses and grow increasingly shrill. Some among them began singing and pulling caps, while others stirred themselves as though preparing to dance a jig. Who in Lichfield had truly tried to help the faithful friend and servant of the city's foremost son? While I was sure that Francis Barber's own failings had led him to death's door in that inhospitable infirmary, I was also convinced that others had conspired in his demise by simply standing to the side and looking on. Dr Johnson's favourite, deprived of the protection of his master, and exposed to the hostile apathy of first London, and then Lichfield, had lost his way. A biographical sketch in the Gentlemen's Magazine would most likely be met with the same combination of fascination and disdain that had blighted the pathetic negro's life. Climbing to my unsteady feet, I bade my host a good night before abandoning him to the enmity of his wife. I carried a candle to my room where I anticipated a few fitful hours of half-sleep before clambering aboard a carriage back to London. I already understood that this night would be long and difficult, and that it was most likely that my dreams would be populated by multiple sightings of a small Jamaican boy named Quashey, who would no doubt be helplessly extending an arm in my direction. I resolved that in the morning I would tarry a while at Burntwood and, without comment, present his English wife with Dr Johnson's watch. Whatever she might obtain from the local pawnbroker would go some way towards feeding her irregular children. The good doctor would, I felt sure, approve of his handsome watch being disposed of for this purpose.

  II

  Made in Wales

  On the morning of 9 July, 1951, a twenty-three-year-old mixed-race man stepped off a train at London's Paddington Station and looked all around at the cavernous vastness of the place. The youngster had visited London before, but today there was something auspicious about his arrival in the great capital city for the young man's name was on everybody's lips. Randolph Turpin was born, and had grown up, in the Midlands town of Leamington Spa, a place which, until the rediscovery of the town's mineral springs in the late eighteenth century, was little more than a tiny village called the Leamington Priors. The visit of Queen Victoria in 1838, to discover for herself the nature of the healing and restorative powers of the waters, resulted in the town being honoured and renamed Royal Leamington Spa. However, by the mid-twentieth century there were two Leamingtons; the elegant Georgian and Regency Leamington, which was a haven for the genteel and the elderly, and then an altogether less attractive working-class enclave. Turpin was a product of the less impressive face of the town. As the train which had deposited Turpin, his older brothers Dick and Jackie, and Turpin's manager, the reliable and strait-laced Mr George Middleton, continued to belch smoke, the four men stared at the press of people. A large crowd made up of journalists and the general public in equal numbers gawped back in their direction. The train was half an hour late, but Turpin's reception committee would have waited all day if necessary. A flashbulb popped, and a newspaperman's voice could be heard above the roar of the station. 'Randy!' And then another bulb popped, and another voice was raised, and then the crowd began to surge up the platform towards the new arrivants. The coloured brothers looked anxiously at each other, while George Middleton looked beyond the rush of people and tried to find his contact. And then, just as the crowd began to swarm around the Midlanders, Mr Jack Solomons appeared, complete with trilby and chewing on a cigar, and he restored some order. 'Gentlemen, please. Step back and give Mr Turpin some room.' The selfproclaimed king of British boxing slipped a paternal arm around the shoulders of young Randy, and took charge of the situation. Jack Solomons was a man who, in the parlance of the times, liked to talk fast and plenty. 'Gentlemen, you know the procedure. You'll have all the time in the world to converse with Mr Turpin later on. Now come on, please. Step aside. We don't want to wear out the young man, do we?'

  As Mr Solomons' car pulled away from in front of Paddington Station, a few newspapermen ran alongside the vehicle, and a lone photographer persisted in pointing his camera at the car window and snapping away. However, once they passed through the first set of traffic lights, the journalists were left behind. On the train journey to London, Turpin, his brothers, and his manager had taken breakfast together and Randy had spilled the salt. Randy wasn't a superstitious man, far from it, but the look of alarm that crossed Mr Middleton's face gave him pause for thought. He had watched as his manager took a pinch of salt and quickly tossed it over his left shoulder. As they now sped towards the West End of London, Randy stole a quick glance at Mr Middleton, who was staring calmly out of the car window, but his manager betrayed his inner anxiety by the fact that he was biting down hard against his bottom lip. By the time Mr Solomons' car entered Piccadilly Circus the crowds in the street had begun to multiply, so much so that the driver was forced to slow almost to a halt. Suddenly, it looked as though it might not be possible to get much closer to Jack Solomons' gymnasium and offices at 41 Great Windmill Street, but two policemen on horseback began to clear a way through the crowds and inch by inch the car made its way forward until it was able to deposit them all at the rear entrance to the building. However, even here crowds of autograph hunters were waiting, but Turpin could tell by the hurried manner with which Mr Middleton and Mr Solomons kept glancing at each other that there would be no time to fraternise with his fans. They both wanted Turpin calm and settled for tomorrow's date with destiny, and the legendary Sugar Ray Robinson.

  The following lunchtime, Turpin's opponent, along with his retinue of handlers and hangers-on, arrived at the 'Palace of Jack', as Solomons liked to call his gymnasium and suite of offices. Sugar Ray Robinson was born Walker Smith in Ailey, Georgia, in 1921, and he grew up in Detroit, Michigan. As a teenage amateur he won the Golden Gloves featherweight title, and people were already talking about him as a potential great champion. However, just how 'great' he would become none of them could ever have imagined. He made his official professional debut in 1940 as a welterweight, and he soon won the 147 lb world title. He then stepped up to fight as a middleweight and he also won the world title at 160 lb. By 1951, Sugar Ray Robinson had fought 133 professional fights and lost only once, to Jake La Motta. However, this was a defeat that he soon avenged in a rematch
. Ray Robinson was a worldwide celebrity whose very name conjured up notions of both invincibility and flamboyance, and his fame was such that only a few weeks earlier, on 25 June, 1951, he had appeared on the cover of Time magazine. Having dispatched all of his American opponents, Robinson had recently taken to trailing Europe for fighters who would provide him with big paydays and easy victories, and when Robinson toured he did so in style. He drove a huge flamingo-pink Cadillac convertible and he stayed in only the swankiest accommodation. His entourage of boosters included his manager, his doctor, a golf pro, a hairdresser, a spiritual adviser, and a midget comic, or 'good humour' man, named Jimmy Karoubi, among many others. Awed by legendary tales of the Sugarman's extraordinary skill, and by the evidence of the maestro's oozing confidence, his opponents were generally beaten before they had even ducked their heads through the ropes. Very few doubted that Robinson was, pound for pound, the greatest fighter who had ever lived, and at thirty he was at the peak of his career.

  It was Jack Solomons, Britain's pre-eminent promoter, who had persuaded Robinson to add a final date to his latest European tour and cross the English Channel in order that he might fight young Turpin and put his world middleweight title on the line. Solomons was born in 1900 in the East End of London, but this Yiddish-speaking cockney was not the most popular man in British boxing, combining as he did the 'talents' of thuggishness and business cunning. However, Solomons was a man who could get matches made. Robinson was undertaking a series of non-title exhibition fights in Zurich, Antwerp, Liege, Berlin, and Turin, and initially the American had little interest in risking his title in London against an unknown, unless, of course, the money was right. Solomons travelled to Paris, where Robinson's entourage was resting before moving on to Belgium, and he asked Robinson to name his price. Robinson laughed and told him '$100,000 and not one cent less', and a disappointed Solomons returned to London. This sum, which was the equivalent of nearly £30,000, was unheard of at a time when the vast majority of British workers earned less than £5 a week. However, Solomons was a man who relished a challenge, and having been in the company of the great Sugar Ray he was now more determined than ever to make this match. Solomons worked and reworked his figures, and then persuaded Turpin's manager, George Middleton – a man who he described as 'one of the most reasonable men in the world to do business with' – to accept £12,000, which was less than half of what Robinson would earn. Finally, he returned to Paris with contracts in hand, and a smiling Sugar Ray Robinson signed to fight Britain's own Randolph Turpin for the world middleweight crown. Jack Solomons would be promoting the biggest bout in British boxing history, and the great Sugar Ray Robinson would be bringing his flamingo-pink Cadillac and flamboyant personality to post-war Britain.

  Soon after Robinson's arrival, the Savoy Hotel in London had asked the American to leave, for the masses of fans that daily thronged the lobby and pavements outside of the hotel were making it impossible for the management to run the Savoy with the grace and decorum that their regular customers had come to expect. As a result the Sugar Ray Robinson party decamped to the Star and Garter public house in Windsor where the proprietors made every effort to accommodate the eccentricities of their coloured guests. On the morning of 10 July, Sugar Ray Robinson and his team departed for central London and the weighin. Once they reached Piccadilly Circus, Robinson's party were taken aback by the size of the crowds that had gathered in anticipation of the day's events. Crowds like this had not greeted him in France or in Belgium, or in any of the other places where he had displayed his flashy talents on his recent tour. It was clear that the somewhat depressed people of England, in their still bombed-out country, were in need of some kind of glamorous boost, and this being the case Sugar Ray was happy to provide this for them.

  The weigh-in was scheduled to take place at just after noon at 'Solomons Promotions', and this would mark the first time that Turpin would set eyes upon the legendary Sugar Ray Robinson. Turpin had once again struggled to make his way through the crowds and into Jack Solomons' gym, but the Leamington man understood that although people were thrilled that a British lad was getting a chance to 'have a go' at Robinson, the vast majority of those in the streets, and the lucky ones packed into the gym, were eager for a glimpse of the hotshot American. His involuntary exile to the Star and Garter pub in Windsor had deprived Londoners of the chance of seeing the world champion and his entourage promenading through London, or going through their paces in Hyde Park. This would be their first and last chance to ogle the American before the title bout, and most London fight fans seemed keen to seize it. As Turpin stood beside the scales and waited, he remained calm and he appeared, to those who looked on, to be patient and focused. As noise and confusion continued to swell all around him, Turpin decided to sit down and stare at the ground between his feet and ignore the shouted questions from the mob of journalists.

  Most of the sportswriters were convinced that Jack Solomons, and his 'yes man', George Middleton, had, in their quest for money, foolishly overmatched the promising coloured fighter with a man who was not only going to roundly wallop him, but a man who might well inflict serious and permanent damage on the youngster. The bookmakers' odds of seven to one on for a Robinson victory, and twenty to one against Turpin being on his feet at the end of the contest, suggested a forgone conclusion at best, and at worst a cynical attempt on the part of Solomons to cash in on Robinson's brief presence in Europe by throwing a dusky English lamb to the slaughter. Even if the coloured lad from Leamington did manage to stay out of Robinson's reach for the early part of the fight, he had never gone beyond eight rounds in his life, while Robinson had regularly fought fifteen-round pitched battles against American men of steel. But this did not deter the public who, once the fight had been announced, snapped up the 18,000 tickets to the Exhibition Hall at Earls Court in less than a week. Jack Solomons soon realised that he could have sold twice as many tickets, which ranged from ten guineas at ringside, to one guinea in the rafters, and doubled the £80,000 gate by putting the fight in a larger venue. Robinson versus Turpin was not only the highest profile fight in British boxing history, it was destined to be the biggest single sporting event ever held in Britain. Young Randolph Turpin's part was already written: to take his punishment like a man and put up a good show, and the unusual nature of his preparation suggested that he fully understood the script.

  A year earlier, in the summer of 1950, Turpin, together with his brother Jackie, moved temporarily from Leamington Spa to set up training camp in Wales. The fight with Robinson had not yet been made, but Turpin had got it into his head that by moving away from the distractions of his home town he could better concentrate on preparing himself for the business of championship boxing. A Wales-based businessman named Leslie Thomas Salts had recently purchased Gwrych Castle near Llandudno, which had been originally constructed in 1819 and over the years had fallen into some disrepair. However, it still remained a magnificent listed property with a view of the Irish Sea, a famous marble staircase, dining rooms, smoking rooms, a billiard room, and over 200 acres of land that included stables and extensive lawns. Intending to open the place to the public as 'the Showplace of Wales', Salts had installed rides and attractions for children, but it occurred to Salts that having professional boxers training and sparring on his grounds, and charging the public to watch, might well be a further source of income. And so it proved. His first boxer was the British heavyweight, Bruce Woodcock, but Salts soon realised that the amenable and charismatic Turpin would most probably be a better drawing card. Turpin was initially overwhelmed by his first sighting of the huge, stone-walled fiefdom, with its acres of open, rolling hills, and the castle presiding high up on a hillside. The spectacular estate possessed a verdant grandeur that exceeded anything Turpin had ever seen or imagined. He was safe in this private kingdom, in which he was the prince to Salts' king, and he could temporarily escape his upbringing, his past, and imagine himself to be a man free of the considerable pressure of being obligated t
o family and friends. However, Turpin's manager, George Middleton, was not happy with his fighter retreating to Wales for he did not regard Leslie Salts as a straight shooter, but he knew that once Randolph Turpin had made up his mind there really was little point in arguing with him.