Wearing Purple

Chapter 27

Because of Central European Time, we were running an hour later by the watch than usual, and so it was after six when the doors were opened and the first of the curious public came filing in. I had just checked with Barbara: the last of the tickets had gone; it was a full house.

The feeling from the crowd as it grew was different from either the languid Geordie curiosity of Newcastle, or the proprietorial buzz of the Glaswegians. The Catalan marks were full of Latin excitement, shouting and laughing among themselves, singing football songs and waving the home-made banners which seemed to be obligatory at all televised wrestling promotions. By six-fifty-five, as show time approached, they even had a Mexican wave going.

It was on its third circuit of the arena when my own private wave swept over me. It seemed to begin in the pit of my stomach and radiate outwards. I felt my heart hammering, I seemed to explode into a cold sweat, my head swam, the arena seemed to fade to red, then back again, and I felt overwhelmingly weak. I had experienced stage fright before, but never anything like the pure dread of those moments.

Fortunately, my attack vanished as suddenly and as completely as it had visited me. The lights dimmed, the wave stopped, the audience fell silent, and we were in business. I climbed into the ring, the lighting director found me, and my silver spot winked on. Wrestlers are judged, to a great extent, by the acclamation of the crowd. I’d guess there’s nothing new about that; I imagine the same was true in the Coliseum of Ancient Rome. Today’s gladiators call it a ‘pop’. I’ll swear that in my third week as the GWA ring announcer, when the spotlight hit me, I got a ‘pop’ of my own. Or at least I thought I did; that’s how tightly my new role had taken hold of me.

I got through my few welcoming words of passable Spanish, repeated them in English, then got on with introducing the first match. That was easy; it featured Sally Crockett, the first genuine, pan-European ring superstar.

As usual she was superb as she worked over a beefy Swedish girl who wrestled under the name of Valkyrie and who came into the ring wearing a horned helmet and carrying a huge brass shield. At the end of the match, two of our Spanish roadies carried her out of the ring on that shield and up the ramp towards the dressing room, leaving Sally to milk the adulation of the crowd for all it was worth.

As she stood perched on the middle rope I sneaked a glance towards the wrestlers’ entrance. Jerry was there, in a track suit and without his helmet, adulating with the rest of them. For a moment, I wondered how he would take it when the time came — as it would, in accordance with the laws of unpredictability which govern pro wrestling story lines — for her to lose.

The crowd’s enthusiasm for Sally’s show carried on through the programme. I was still learning the game, and my lesson for the night was that sports entertainment is to a great extent about firing up the crowd to a point just short of hysteria, to the level at which it has an addictive effect on the viewing audience. They’ll be well hooked tonight, I thought as the excitement reached fever pitch with the entry of The Behemoth, flanked by Tommy Rockette and Diane, The Princess.

She was wearing a specially made, skin-tight, nipple-pointing, ass-clinging, no-underwear number in the red and yellow stripes of the Catalan flag. Small wonder Everett was jealous, yet, I reminded myself, it was he who allowed his wife to appear in public dressed like that. As she approached the ring, I looked down at Liam Matthews, at the commentator’s table. He was gazing at her with a look of undisguised lust. . but then so was every other man at ringside.

And then the roof rose a couple of feet in the air, before settling back into position. There was no aerial entrance for Daze this time, since the structure of the arena ruled it out. Instead his music played and he marched slowly down the ramp in his ring suit and cape, looking like a small — no, medium-sized — army under a single red spotlight. Reaching the ring, he disdained the steps, leaping instead from a standing position up onto the surround, then stepping over the top rope. Arms raised high, he circled, facing each quadrant of the screaming audience in turn, as a pattern of sharp red and yellow laser beams flickered across his body, creating a flame effect.

The television lights were still coming up, and I was barely out of the ring before Jerry hit him with a spearing shoulder-first football tackle, just above the right hip but below the ribcage, bearing him across the ring and into the ropes. But as they were catapulted back, by their own weight and momentum, Daze caught the top strand, steadying himself as Jerry went flying across the ring to the ropes on the other side. The force of his impact sent Tommy Rockette, who had been standing on the apron holding the tag rope, crashing down on to the floor beside my table, and rebounded The Behemoth back towards the centre.

The black giant caught him in mid-ring, all close on four hundred pounds of him, swept him off his feet and round into a power-slam which sounded like the collapse of a large building. The referee knelt beside them and began to count; ‘One,’ pause ‘Two’. Theatrically, he mouthed the third and winning call, but the sound died in his throat as Jerry thrust his right shoulder off the canvas.

Daze jumped to his feet, hauling The Behemoth upright after him and pushed him into the ropes once again, as if to set him up for another slam. This time, though, it was Jerry who used the top strand as a brake. He grabbed his opponent’s arm and made to hurl him into the corner, but the big man simply braced himself, reversed the hold and sent him, instead, flying backwards with impossible speed into the corner of the ring.

The helmeted monster hit the red turn-buckle pads above me with a ‘Bang!’ which was so loud it was heard even above the howls of the crowd; so loud that it drew a great collective gasp. No wonder they don’t rehearse those, I said to myself. Daze followed up his advantage, sprinting into the corner to crash a lariat blow to the side of the other man’s head, then he stood back, waiting for him to fall forward.

Fall forward Jerry did, but not according to the script, not in the exaggerated way I had seen them rehearse. Instead, his knees seemed to buckle; he began to topple to the ground, but Everett caught him first, turning him on to his back and laying him gently on the canvas.

‘Doctor! Now!’ he roared, as the crowd began to fall silent. ‘Medico! En seguido!’ I had my doubts. Two weeks earlier, when Matthews had needed one in Newcastle, there hadn’t been a single doctor in the house.

I scented it as I ran up the steps into the ring; a sharp, burning smell, strong enough to make its presence felt even over the other odours which hung in the air; sweat, liniment, and humanity in general.

There was yet another smell too. As I looked at Jerry, lying there on the floor I saw the blood as it welled from beneath him and began to spread; I saw it as it began to bubble on his lips. My dad has a thing about first aid. He believes that everyone should learn it, and he made damn sure that Ellie and I did. I knew what that bubbling meant.

‘Turn him over on his face!’ I shouted to Everett, who was kneeling beside his grey-faced friend. ‘I think his lung’s been punctured. Turn him, or he could drown on his own blood.’

He didn’t look up at me, but stared out of the ring, his expression frozen, with shock, I guessed.

‘Do as he says!’ another Scottish voice called out. ‘I’m a nurse! Do it now!’

The evening had become totally surreal. I blinked. It couldn’t be Primavera, there in the ring: but it was. She was tanned; her hair was longer than it had been when I had left her. And blonder; more bleached by the sun, yet it was Prim all right; blue eyes sparkling fiercely, trim little body encased in denim shirt and jeans. She stood beside Everett. Even kneeling he looked almost as tall as she was. Then she slapped him, hard, across the face. ‘Do it!’ she screamed at him.

He snapped out of it at that, leaned over Jerry and rolled him over as gently as he could, Prim kneeling beside him, in the blood, helping him. The Behemoth’s tunic was saturated, but once he was lying face down I could still see the ragged wound in his back, just below the right shoulder-blade.

As I watched I felt a hand on my shoulder; I looked round to see Sally Crockett, with tears streaming down her face. ‘What’s happened?’ she whimpered.

‘It looks as if he’s been shot,’ I answered; cruelly blunt, I know, but I was stunned too. At once I tried to reassure her. ‘Don’t panic though. Prim’s worked in a war zone. She knows what she’s doing.’

As I spoke, my former lover turned and stared up at me. ‘Oz,’ she said, ‘give me a credit card.’ Her tone was so commanding that at that moment, if she’d asked for my right arm, I’d probably have unscrewed it and given it to her. Without a word, I took out my wallet and handed her my Tesco loyalty card.

She took the stiff plastic and pressed it against the hole in Jerry’s back. ‘Thanks. This guy has a sucking wound,’ she explained to Everett. ‘We have to keep the air out.’ A pair of paramedics had appeared in the ring and stood, gazing down at her in professional admiration. She spoke to them in Spanish, astonishing me again, for she had very little when we had split. One of them replied. ‘Nada,’ he said, shaking his head.

‘Bloody magic,’ she muttered. ‘Oz, these guys have no bandages. I need something to pack this.’

Sally was wearing a white silk shirt. Without a word she unbuttoned it, slipped it off, and handed it over. ‘Thanks,’ said Prim. ‘Now I need something to make it secure.’

I looked across the ring. Matthews was standing on the apron outside the ropes, grim-faced, watching. I called across to him. ‘Liam, there was a roll of gaffer tape on the commentary table earlier. Find it and give us it in here.’ The Irishman nodded and called down to the commentators, who were still in their seats. A moment later, one of them tossed a thick roll of shiny brown tape up towards him. He caught it, threw it on to me, and I handed it down to Prim.

‘That’s good enough,’ she said, then looked at Everett. ‘You. I need you to get him into a sitting position, so I can strap this up. After that they can take him in the ambulance.’ She was in total command.

Jerry Gradi in normal circumstances was a huge guy to handle. Unconscious, as a dead weight, he should have been virtually impossible, but Everett Davis was superhuman.With Prim still pressing the plastic card tight against the wound, he turned him over again, then lifted his great trunk off the bloody canvas.

‘Oz,’ she called. ‘Get down here and take over pressing on the card while I tape him up.’ Wincing as the blood soaked into my trousers, I knelt beside her, balled Sally’s shirt into a pad as she showed me and used it to force the card as hard as I could against the hole in Jerry’s back, staunching the flow. I held my thumb on it until she had covered the packing completely with the gaffer tape, winding it as tight as she could around the huge wrestler’s ribcage. Finally she tore the tape free from the roll with her teeth and spoke to the ambulance crew once again. One of them jumped down from the ring, and ran off. ‘Gone for a wheelchair,’ she explained.

She went with the paramedics when, eventually, Jerry was loaded into their chair, and wheeled out of the arena. It was only then that I remembered the crowd: to an hombre and senora they had stayed in their seats, watching the scene, or as much as they could see, in silent fascination.

I was still carrying my mike. I switched it on, and apologised in my best Spanish for the delay, and asked them to stay seated. ‘Might as well send them home,’ said Everett despondently, as he stood in the ring beside me as I made my announcement. ‘I’m screwed. The stations are gonna have to show back-up material. Bang goes one million dollars in penalty payment.’

‘Not necessarily,’ I said. ‘You can still shoot the match with you and Rockette. There’s still time. But right now, can we try to figure out what happened?’

‘This happened.’ Liam Matthews’ voice came from the corner of the ring, the one into which Jerry had been slammed. We stepped across to join him.

He had his hand on the top turn-buckle pad. As we looked at it we could see that it was ripped, that the padding was protruding, and that some of it was blackened and scorched.

‘I was watching from the side as Jerry went into the corner,’ said Matthews. ‘It just seemed to burst, but looking at this, I’d say there was some sort of explosive charge inside it, and it went off when The Behemoth hit it.’

‘But other people have been posted in that corner tonight,’ Everett protested.

‘None as big as him,’ I reminded him. ‘Or as hard as that.’ I sniffed the pad, and remembered the burning smell, as I climbed into the ring. ‘Liam’s right; this thing was rigged to take out either big Jerry, or you.’

I shoved a finger into the rip, then pulled it out, fast. There was metal inside, and it was still warm. I reached behind the turn-buckle, found the cords which held the pad in place, and untied them.

‘That’s the answer,’ I said to Everett, waving it at him. ‘Now, are you going to rescue this show?’

The big man was still struggling to focus on the reality of the situation. ‘What time is it?’ he asked at last.

I looked at my watch. ‘Ten past nine, local time; an hour earlier GMT.’

As he frowned, Diane came to stand beside him. Her costume was damp with sweat, and almost transparent. I looked down and saw that there were blood streaks around the hem.

‘They’ve downloaded the first hour of the show to the station,’ she said, her voice still steady. ‘We have to send them the second half inside the next twenty minutes.’

‘Then we’re screwed,’ said her husband. ‘We don’t have time to fill the gap.’

‘Yes we do,’ she snapped. ‘They break for commercials before the last match. We can download what we have right now, then follow up later with tape of you and Rockette.’

Everett shook his head. His expression was agonised. ‘Just what the hell do you think I am, bitch?’ he snarled at her. ‘That guy in the ambulance, that guy who could be dead right now; he’s my best friend in the world. I knew him long before I knew you. When I joined Triple W out of college, it was Jerry who taught me what this game is all about, even though he knew he was probably making me the main man, at his expense.

‘You think I can just step back up to the plate and perform? Stand in his blood and perform? No way.’

She stepped in front of him, hands on hips, glaring up at him. ‘That’s exactly what Jerry wants you to do. He owns a chunk of this company, remember.You want him to wake up and find that you’ve cost him a couple of hundred thousand dollars because you’ve acted like a pussy?’ She spat the last word at him.

He sighed, and nodded. ‘Yeah, okay. I’ll do it. Oz, you hold on to that pad. Di, tell Rockette he’s on in five minutes. Tell the camera ops not to shoot the blood on the floor unless they got no other option.’

‘You’ve got another option,’ said Liam Matthews, quietly.

‘What do you mean?’ Diane asked.

The Irishman looked at her. ‘Daze and Rockette as a main event, with no gimmicks, just will not work. We all know that. We need an edge. . and you’re looking at him.’

‘You can’t wrestle,’ I heard myself protest. ‘You had a kidney injured two weeks ago.’

‘I don’t have to wrestle,’ he shot back. ‘You’ll see.

‘Trust me on this, boss. You begin your match with Rutherford, string it out, then go along with whatever happens.’

Everett was beyond arguing. He nodded and headed back towards the dressing room area.

I switched on my mike again, and told the crowd, in broken Spanish, what they knew already; that The Behemoth had been injured. Then I told them a small lie; I said that he wasn’t badly hurt. Finally, I announced that Daze would be back in the ring in five minutes. The buzz of conversation turned into a cheer; not as loud as before, certainly, but a pop none the less. By the time the lights dimmed, and the spotlight picked up Tommy Rockette, guitarless, making his way down the aisle, they were as excited as they had been before.

I announced him, in English, then Spanish, and jumped down from the ring to await the arrival of Daze. Diane had found a chair and was sitting at my table, wrapped in a roadie’s jacket. As I took my place, Sally Crockett, who had gone back to the dressing room to find a GWA tee-shirt to replace her silk shirt, came and knelt beside me. She was shaking; I took her hand and gave it a squeeze.

‘Don’t worry,’ I told her. ‘He’s going to be all right. I know it. You can’t kill Behemoths.’

She looked up at me. ‘But what happened, Oz? Was it someone in the crowd?’

‘No. I can’t tell you for sure, but it wasn’t that. Just you concentrate on being thankful that my ex was there to take charge.’

So much had happened, so fast, that I had barely had time to consider Prim’s cameo reappearance in my life. I had just begun to wonder why, when the lights dimmed again, and threw me back into the midst of the show.

Everett’s match stank, I have to say. He fumbled at least three moves as he and Tommy Rutherford hammed it up in the ring above me, but the Spanish crowd were there to see Daze, and damn few of them knew the difference between a power slam and a polka.

The pair had been in listless action for three minutes, when Liam Matthews, back at the commentary table, took off his head-set, stripped off his jacket to reveal muscles bulging out of his short-sleeved shirt, picked up a hand mike and trotted up the steps into the ring.

The first clue Tommy Rockette had of his presence was a karate kick which caught him on the left temple and turned him into the same sack of potatoes which he had imitated so well a week earlier. Daze looked on, genuinely astonished I guessed, as the Irishman, a foot shorter than him, shook his hair out of its pony tail and stepped up to him, poking him with his right index finger in the centre of his huge chest.

‘Big fella yerself,’ Matthews drawled in his best adopted Dublin brogue. ‘Have oi got a bone to pick with you. Two weeks ago, in England, I picked up a little scratch.’ He paused, not for the crowd, I knew, but so that the viewing audience could follow him. ‘Next thing I knew, I wasn’t the Transcontinental Champion any more.’ He nodded. ‘That’s right, when I was injured, they stole my belt.

‘Now everyone knows that you’re the ringmaster of this here circus, and that everything that happens in the Global Wrestling Alliance has to be okay with you. So I guess that when the suits in the back office took away my belt, you didn’t argue about it.’

He poked Everett in the chest again. ‘So here’s what I’ve got to say, Mr Daze, sor,’ he yelled into his mike. ‘The hot news in the GWA, is that the Champ, The Behemoth, is on the injured roster. That means the suits will have to forfeit his belt too. So little Liam is here to make a challenge to the mighty Daze.’ The spectators didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, but as his voice rose, so their excited buzz began to build into a cheer.

‘At the next pay-per-view, in Edinburgh, it’ll be me against you, big man for the GWA title — assuming you’ve got the guts to face me, that is.’ The cheer grew into a roar.

‘And when you do, I’m going to. .’ He hit Daze across the chest with a blow which looked like a karate cut, but was in fact a loud slap. ‘. . chop. .’ Another blow. ‘. . you. .’ A third blow. ‘. . Down!’

The roar had grown into a single shrill scream, as Daze picked Liam up by the throat, as I had seen him do once before. But this time, the Irishman kicked out, with the side of his right foot, appearing to catch him significantly below the waist. The giant released his hold. . and as he did, every light in the arena went out.

When they came on again, five seconds later, only Daze and the still-prone form of Tommy Rockette remained in the ring.

Watching the story unfold, I had forgotten that Diane was sitting beside me, at my small table. ‘And roll credits,’ she whispered in my ear. ‘Terrific. The clever little bastard has saved the show. And at the same time, he’s given himself the big push he was after, right to the top of the totem pole, up beside Daze.’ She stood, then walked around across to join her husband as he waved goodbye to the audience and vaulted over the ropes and down to the floor, in a single jump.

As Matthews crawled out from underneath the ring he winked up at me. ‘Don’t know what you’ve got to grin about, son,’ I whispered to myself, so quietly that not even Sally could hear, although she was still kneeling beside me. ‘You’ve just talked yourself into a match with a monster, who thinks you’re shagging his wife. There’s a fair chance he’s going to bust the other kidney as well!’