‘Hey, Jem,’ my dad says. ‘It’s time for a boxing lesson. You will need to know how to box where I come from!’
Whoa. What does he mean? I am getting all kinds of strange ideas about this place, this place where in winter it never stops snowing, which is what I explained to Lucy White, how it snows all the time, all-out snow, nothing like the wee sprinkling of frost and fluff we have here.
‘In winter,’ I said in a proud voice, in the manner of an Antarctic explorer, ‘it snows non-stop. That’s how it is.’
One proof I have of this ferocious snowing in my dad’s country is from Victor, my second favourite comic after Commando. In Victor there is a story about a dog called Black Bob, who is a sheepdog, not the roly-poly hairy kind resembling a sheep himself who traipses about Alpine passes bearing a tiny keg of cognac for types who have fainted in Alpine passes, no, Black Bob is a real sheepdog, the looking after sheep kind. There is a proper name for this kind of dog and Harriet will know it. All I have to do is slide my comic her way one day without asking anything directly, and she will tell me the name of this dog plus related details. It is not important right now.
Black Bob is good-looking and pretty sleek, a word denoting strength and slimness in a dog or horse, and possibly even a human, and seeming to me a handy word to call upon if I get to be a sports writer. I make a note of it in my Mendoza notebook. Black Bob goes to Canada in this story, though I do not know how he got there from Yorkshire where he lives with a handsome shepherd in a flat cap and waistcoat, thick black belt and dashing little white scarf. I do not know how he ended up in Canada having adventures because I missed out on some issues of Victor due to Jude taking a little time off from robbery. Never mind. Maybe for Black Bob travel is important, who knows.
In Canada, Black Bob stays with a Mountie, a Canadian type of policeman in a very big hat which must be downright annoying to run with against the wind. It could fall off, the chinstrap grabbing at the Mountie’s throat, or it could hold him up like a sail on a boat. It is not an aerodynamic hat. Jude has explained a thing or two to me regarding aerodynamics. This is no hat for a man on active duty. The Mountie and Bob have a big feeling for each other, close to how it was with the shepherd, a man Bob misses a lot. He needs to get back to Yorkshire, but meanwhile he has adventures in Canada largely involving the chasing of criminals in snowstorms, meaning nearly all the boxes in the story are white spaces except for Black Bob and the Mountie peeping through the snow, and skinny lines scraping across the page at a slant to indicate fierce winds, not very hard work for the artist, it seems to me, when the background is all snow.
The Mountie has a problem. He has a problem of snow-blindness, which I am now quite worried about also even though it seems to be a passing sort of blindness, for storms only. There is the Mountie, suddenly snow-blind, trying to chase criminals with his arms outstretched like Harriet doing her Egyptian mummy act and now Bob has to do everything, catch the criminals, take care of the Mountie, all of it. This is no surprise to me because Black Bob is always the main hero in every adventure, having a single-most desire plus the qualities of calm and modesty, making him an even bigger hero. Nothing matters to Bob except that his master is safe and the criminals not safe. In Canada then, it all ends OK, with the Mountie drinking a nice drink, cognac maybe, and his eyes carefully swaddled in a bandage until he can see straight again, and a fire going in the log cabin. There is no box to show him doing all this, feeling his way around the cabin and so on, so Bob must be the one who poured the drink, lit up a fire and wrapped the Mountie’s snow-blind eyes. There is no one else. Stories in comics are not always very realistic. Never mind.
It is possible I need to learn boxing because of criminals wandering around with bad intentions in concealing snowstorms, though I doubt it, I think this is just another cowboy lesson from my dad, another sign of his anxiety regarding me and my convent life and the weakening effect it may be having upon me. Don’t worry, Dad.
Here is where my first boxing lesson takes place: in the kitchen at the end of my dad’s day of sports writing. Here is why. When he gets fed up, and tired of teaching, he can turn around and, lo! there is Mum making dinner, Mum, his all-out favourite relief from everything, sports writing, giving lessons, talking to kids. Here is what else he needs after a lesson. A drink. I notice he already has one poured and waiting, right there on the kitchen table.
My dad stops me as I amble across the room.
‘Hey, Jem. It’s time for your first boxing lesson. You will need to know how to box where I come from!’ Then he goes, Ha ha ha! but I take it pretty seriously, that’s how it is with me.
‘OK, Dad.’
I put my book on the white oak table, far far from his Scotch glass, so as to allow for spill situations which are quite regular with him. And that is the moment I realise the lesson will not last long and I might as well take a chance on my dad as teacher and not ask too many questions. Spotting the glass and making this time calculation is a sleuthing activity, something you can do about people the more you stick with them and get to know things. It is possible to sleuth strangers also, and it is good practice, though you cannot always be sure where clues lead. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes are very good and they are written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was first a doctor and then a writer and then a man who died of heart failure. I wonder did he see it coming, with his medical insight, and was that better or worse, to see it coming? Sherlock Holmes is a top unofficial sleuth and sleuthing is his chief preoccupation, whereas Tintin, another unofficial sleuth, also has a dog, and later on he meets a sea captain, and for the companionship of le Capitaine and Milou, I believe, Tintin has gentler manners and a less edgy temperament. OK.
‘Right. Now. Take a stance!’ says Dad, jumping around in front of me.
I stare at my dad. What is he talking about? He is going to have to do better than this. Teaching is not his big thing, I can see that.
‘What do you mean, Dad? Where?’ I look around for what he might mean, I look around for a stance.
‘Get into position, Jem! Stay loose, drop your shoulder, bend your knees, so you’re a moving target, not so easy to hit, get it?’
‘Oh. OK.’ I bend my knees and hold up my fists just like Daniel Mendoza the Jewish boxer on my Questions Notebook. I feel a bit silly, my knees pointing in opposite directions and my chin in the air.
My dad is laughing at me, he laughs at my stance, ha ha ha! ‘Jem, remember Cassius Clay? We saw him on TV, remember?’
‘Yup,’ I say.
‘He dances around the ring! He does the rope-a-dope. Right? Right!’
‘Oh, Dad, that’s so ridiculous, rope-a-dope, what does it mean?’
‘Just do it, Jem! Dance around, stay loose, come on!’
My dad is getting a bit testy. His drink is waiting and my time will be up, cut the questions, Jem. then!’ I say. I dance around.
‘Now. Very important. Always, always hold one hand in front of your face. Make a fist and hold it there. To protect your face. Most fights end with head injuries. Use the hand you don’t write with. Go on! I’m a southpaw, I hold up my right. Got that?’
‘Southpaw?’ I can’t help it, I have to ask. If he is going to use technical terms, I will need to understand them, that’s how it works in teaching.
‘Leftie, I’m a leftie!’
‘So I’m a northpaw then, am I? Um, whatever’s your best hand is what you are? Or, does everyone have a north and south? Is it for sports only? Or what?’
‘No no no! It’s a word for the left-handed, all right? And only if you are left-handed,’ says my dad scraping both hands through his hair and breathing in and out noisily.
‘That doesn’t seem right, Dad. Are you sure?’
I think about Horatio, Lord Nelson, probably born right-handed and suddenly with no choice in the matter and I wonder if it counts, if he