To Fight For Read Online Free

or other: girls, probably, or what they were going to do when they finally had the guts to leave this place.
    Me and Brenda took a seat in the corner and the old geezer slumped at the table next to us looked up and looked down and looked up again. It was Browne, only it took me a few seconds to realize it. He looked like he’d stepped in from a storm, hair straggled, shirt half-untucked, bleary eyed. He’d hadn’t changed either – not back then.
    â€˜Joe,’ he said, focusing his eyes. ‘Is that you? Course it’s you. How many other people could look like that and still be alive?’
    Brenda smiled. Browne stood, automatically lifted his empty glass and stepped carefully over to us. He sat and put a cold hand on my arm.
    â€˜Good to see you, son. How are you getting along? How’s the head these days?’ He looked at Brenda then. ‘And is this your young lady?’
    â€˜You met her,’ I said.
    â€˜Did I?’
    â€˜At the fights. A couple weeks ago.’
    â€˜Fights,’ he said. ‘Ah, yes.’
    He twisted some of the hair on his head around his finger and looked into the empty glass for his memories.
    â€˜Barbara,’ he said.
    â€˜Brenda,’ Brenda said, still smiling and holding her hand out.
    â€˜Charming,’ Browne said, lifting her hand and putting it down again. ‘I do remember,’ he said, as if we were arguing with him. ‘You were upset, as I recall.’
    â€˜Well …’ Brenda said, glancing over at me.
    â€˜Don’t mind him,’ Browne said. ‘He doesn’t care, do you, Joe? You didn’t like the violence, my dear. Was that it?’
    â€˜Yes,’ she said in a small voice. ‘The violence.’
    Mostly what bothered her, I think, was the idea that I’d got in that ring and taken the violence.
    â€˜All that fighting, Joe,’ she’d said that night, after we’d walked out of the fight and into the warm, fume-filled night.
    â€˜I’m glad we came here,’ she’d said. ‘Thank you.’
    â€˜What for?’
    â€˜For showing me something of your past.’
    â€˜Not much of a past,’ I’d said.
    â€˜As good as any.’
    We’d carried on walking in silence for a while, then she’d said, ‘Tell me more about your childhood.’
    â€˜I’d tell you if I could remember it.’
    â€˜I don’t think you were ever young. I think you were born old.’
    She’d given me one of her smiles to let me know she was teasing. I hadn’t minded. She was probably right.
    Born old. Yeah, that was it – assembled on some factory floor, made up of broken parts of other machines. Broken machines.
    After that, we hadn’t talked much. She’d tottered along on her heels, still holding my arm tight. We’d passed a tramp trying to sleep in a doorway, wrapped up in layers of clothing, despite the heat, and lying inside an orange nylon sleeping bag.
    Traffic had passed us, but it was quieter, slower, as if the heat was getting to the buses and taxis and lorries, making them all sluggish. Everything was grinding to a halt.
    I heard Browne say something and looked up and saw that I was in The Fox and Globe.
    â€˜Don’t blame you,’ he was saying to Brenda. ‘Not nice, the violence. Civilized people can’t take it. Not supposed to. Not for the likes of us. For the likes of him, brainless, dead from the neck up.’
    Brenda’s eyes flicked from Browne to me, then back.
    â€˜Well …’ she said again.
    â€˜You’re too civilized for that kind of thing,’ Browne was saying. ‘Too tender for the tenderizer.’
    I had no idea what that meant.
    â€˜You’re drunk,’ I told him.
    â€˜Bloody glad to hear it. I’ve been working on it long enough. It’s quite an art, you know. Scotch is my medium, like oils to a painter. You have to drink to a certain level of