Next

arry 'Slap Happy' O’Hagan decided he had to give up trying to earn a living as a boxer and find a proper job.  Miriam was expecting.  

He enjoyed touring, setting up the fairground boxing booth with Solly then peeping through the curtains to watch the crowd drawn by Solly's skills as barker.  It was thrilling to make his entrance onto the narrow platform, centre stage, announced as the champion bantamweight, wearing his shiny black shorts, soft leather boots and open scarlet dressing gown, his monogrammed towel around his neck - arms raised, clutching a gloved fist in a show of victory.  If business was slow, Solly would draw a crowd by introducing him as Harry 'Houdini' Hagan, tying ropes around Harry's wrists and ankles, then plunging him into a sack.  Solly had taught him the tricks of the escapologist's trade. 

On quiet days, they relied on stooges planted in the crowd.  Any local challengers were thrust forward, nervous and ambivalent, ensuring a weak challenge to Harry's experience.  The trick was, in the early rounds, to make them appear more capable than they were, engendering a false confidence and a belief in Harry's fallibility.  Invariably, the professional won and the prize money remained unclaimed.  It was more show business than sport.  

On the dirt track around the fairground sites, Solly had taught Harry to drive: firstly the steam lorry, then the Austin 7, which Harry drove through the town, festooned with placards and streamers, Solly's patter blaring out through a megaphone.  The motorcar was a novelty to working people.  By the Spring of 1933, times were hardened, there was little work and the dull eyes of the grey-faced men and boys brightened at the prospect of a pugilistic spectacle.  

Once inside the tent, Harry breathed in the pungent downtrodden grass, the canvas, the sweat and cigarette smoke.  He would miss the atmosphere, the cheers and boos as he entered the ring, the diversionary tactics, the quick-footed reactions and the exhilaration of landing an unexpected left hook. 

He owed a lot to Solly; it would be painful telling the old man he was throwing in the towel. 

And there were enough men seeking work already.  Harry would have to drop the boxing pseudonym, for local folks would not take kindly to a rival they assumed to be Irish competing for a local job.  Outside Watford labour exchange, he had witnessed riots against the Welsh.  Now look what was happening in Germany to Jews.  He would forget the family name, Demski, and use the English-sounding name his father had adopted on arrival here, Tanner.  

Miriam had been patient; but since she was pregnant, she created a schlimazel about Harry being away from home.  She showed less joy in the few pound and ten-shilling notes Harry handed her irregularly, and in counting the pennies and threepenny bits punters had tossed into the ring at the end of the match.  Saturday night was lucrative, but Mondays to Thursdays, the punters were few. 

__

hey had pitched the tent in a meadow vacated by gypsies, outside a well-to-do town in Hertfordshire.  Harry went into a corner shop for five Woodbines and spotted the postcard in the window, advertising for a chauffeur. 

Now, driving I can do. 

In exchange for the promise of a buckshee can of petrol, the shopkeeper agreed that Harry could give the address as his own: Harry and Miriam's East End rooms were on the other side of London and such a long bicycle-ride away that he might be thought to live at too great a distance from the job.  Harry hurried back to the tent, shaved twice - for extra smoothness - cleaned his teeth with forefinger and a pinch of salt, changed into the clean white shirt from his holdall, rubbed his face and hair with a spot of horse liniment to make them shiny and healthy-looking, and borrowed Solly's best blue serge trousers.  They were too large, so he bunched them up with a belt.  He rubbed damp soot from the lorry into his threadbare cap and the lapels of his blazer to darken them and stuffed fresh strips of newspaper into his shoes. 

__ 

o reach the address on the back of the postcard, he took the omnibus then walked.  It was a warm June day; the sweat was running beneath the oil on his face.  He hitched the waist of the oversize trousers with his elbow.  He dare not remove his blazer, for he would reveal his trousers in their infantile indignity.  As he turned into the avenue of lime trees, he whistled to himself in wonder at the quiet grandeur.  It took a long time to pass one property and move on to the next, for each large house stood detached in its own extensive grounds. 

At 'Gables', a five-bar wooden gate spanned the gravel drive.  Harry checked his tie, prepared himself to turn in a good performance and entered. 

Harry, my boy, you need this job! 

He had feared being rumbled as unworthy for it: the house was grand and he had driven nothing finer than a Foden steam lorry and an Austin 7.  The tradesmen's entrance was at the rear.  He wiped his shoes on the back of Solly's trouser legs and pulled the bell.  He waited at the doorstep and was seen initially by a young maid - Irish, he thought from her brogue.  Next, a tall, large-bosomed, bespectacled woman inspected him silently.  Finally, a Mr Hicks in a mourning suit, grey tie and brightly polished Oxfords invited him, with grave formality, to enter.  Harry removed his cap.  Mr Hicks did not invite him to sit.  In the ring, Harry had learned that the only feature he need fear in a taller man was his reach and this was a different game.  Catching the mood, Harry mirrored the other's formal demeanour.  The ploy did the trick.  He would be responsible for cleaning the limousines and ensuring they were kept in good repair.  Sir would keep a week in hand (How am I going to tell Miriam?) and Harry would be on a month's probation.  If Sir was satisfied, Harry would be fitted with a uniform.  

He did not like the "Good day, Tanner."  'Tanner'!  He was entering a new world. 

In the avenue, Harry realised he did not know what his wages would be. 

__

olly took it well.  Over a farewell brown and mild, they reminisced about being on the road: loading and unloading the ring and the equipment, erecting and striking the tent, playing off hecklers and drunks, man-handling belligerent punters - and dossing in the lorry, each in turn stretched out in the cabin or huddled under stale carpeting and a canvas sheet in the back.

__