Having finished their dessert, the two grandchildren run off to play by the water's edge. Annette is the more talkative of the sisters, but being five years older her memories of her father are undoubtedly stronger than Charmaine's. We order coffee, and Charmaine keeps glancing anxiously over my shoulder in order that she might keep an eye on the children. Annette remembers that when she was a girl there was another black family in Leamington Spa. 'Dad used to leave the café at the end of the day and take plates of food, stacked up high, to other poor families in Leamington, including this black family across the street. He'd still feed them even when we had nothing, but he was like that. He looked after loads of people in Leamington, poor people, old people, and he didn't make a fuss about it.' Annette pauses. 'But there was this black family, and years later I met a guy who was a kid in the family and he remembered my dad bringing them food. I think my dad made a lot of black kids in England realise what it was possible to achieve, so his story isn't just gloom. I'm always meeting people who remember Dad, and whenever they talk about him they always smile. Nobody has a bad word to say about him, isn't that right?' Charmaine nods her head somewhat sadly, and then she picks up the thread of what Annette has been saying. 'You see, Dad lost a lot, but he always had dignity and he was good to people.' Suddenly Annette remembers. 'He made that trip to New York near the end, and Mum said that it made a big difference to him because he was really down.' I mention to them both that Muhammad Ali was a fan of their father, and he talked extensively with Turpin at the dinner that followed the Sugar Ray Robinson celebrations at Madison Square Garden in December 1965. Both sisters' faces light up. The children have now returned from the river and Charmaine turns to them. 'Did you hear that?' They both look blankly at her. 'About your granddad and Muhammad Ali.' The kids have not heard. 'Don't worry,' says Charmaine, 'I'll tell you later.'
Randolph Turpin's story does not end in 1966 in tragedy. His proud daughters still love and revere the great fighter, and in time the grandchildren will too. For Annette and Charmaine, their father's life can never be reduced to the cliché of the naïve boxer having been ripped off and then committing suicide. To them, Randolph Turpin will always be a happy, loving father who used to be a boxer. Unfortunately their father's situation was such that he had little choice but to carry the accumulated hurt and frustrations of his boxing career into what should have been many happy years of retirement with Gwen and the children. As we wait for the bill, Annette pinpoints the heart of the story as she sees it and as I have grown to understand it. 'He felt betrayed.' This has to be true; Turpin's inner turmoil towards the end cannot have been simply fuelled by anxieties over a lack of money, and anger and frustration at having allowed himself to be used by people. There must have been a deeper, and in the end a far more destructive, hurt that was engendered by knowing that those who were closest to him had actually double-crossed him. He lived with this hurt for many years, carefully keeping it from his immediate family, and the great mystery is how he survived for so long while shouldering this oppressive burden of betrayal. Looking at his children I now know how. After years of turbulence, both private and public, he finally found in his Welsh girl, Gwen, the sustaining love of a loyal and devoted wife, and four daughters whom he adored. He persevered for them, but in the end the mounting debt, the crushing sense of abandonment, and a profound heartache that he was somehow failing the family he loved, proved too much for him. To the end, he was Beattie's most sensitive child. Annette continues. 'But he never hated anyone. In that sense he was just like Mum. He just let people make up their own minds.'
III. Northern Lights
I remember he always used to wear a big black coat, and he was kind of hunched over. But not like life had beaten him down or anything. He just had this big black coat that seemed a bit too heavy for him. In the evenings I'd come out of where I lived on Mexborough Drive and walk down to the main road — Chapeltown Road. I'd be on my way up to my sister's place to look after her twins, and I'd meet him around about Button Hill. Near where the library and the business centre are now. Somewhere between these two. The fact is, Button Hill isn't much of a hill. Or much of a street really, more like a little alley that leads down on to Chapeltown Road. But this is where I'd meet David.
I was fourteen. Back then, we were taught that you always had to be kind to your elders and betters. We lived a sheltered church life, and so I always acknowledged David and he'd just say, 'Take care, behave yourself.' That's all. 'Take care, behave yourself.' But it happened regularly enough so that we sort of got to know each other. I thought David was something to do with the university. He had that kind of attitude about him. Like he was a very intelligent man. Judging by the way he spoke, he didn't seem to me like he was a vagrant or anything. And underneath that big black coat I think he had on a dark suit. He tended to have his hands in his pockets and he looked cold. His face used to worry me. His face always looked bruised, as if he'd been scratched. It must have been 1968 or 1969, and you know he wasn't standing upright. He was a little hunched over.
I remember one night when the police were out on the street in numbers. They had come to move David on. I asked a policeman, 'Please, what has he done? He has done nothing. He just stands here.' But there was something about the policeman — about how he looked at me — that frightened me and so I ran off. That night the police arrested a lot of people and put them in Black Marias — you know, the big black vans. That's what we used to call them, Black Marias. The police took a load of people away, including David. They'd only come to get David, but people stood up for him. The people on the street were protecting David and objecting to the police. While the police were trying to move David on and telling him, 'You shouldn't be here,' the young people gathered all around him. I mean, he wasn't doing anything, he was just standing by the wall like he always did. I thought he was such a humble man. He was polite. I couldn't see anything that was wrong with him. He just used to stand there with his big black overcoat. But, I don't think he had the same relationship with everybody. He didn't speak to other people, but he spoke to me.
After the night of the disturbance, I saw him maybe a day or so later. I could see that he had been beaten for his face was all mashed up. He wasn't standing at the bottom of Button Hill, he was walking up Chapeltown Road as if he was in pain. I was fourteen. I never saw David after that. There was no other exchange after the night of the disturbance on the street. When I saw him that final time he was dragging his feet. Something had changed. I didn't know what it was, but I knew that something was different.
I remember crying when I heard that he'd died. I felt it hard. Like I'd lost a true friend. All we'd done was exchange a few words over a period of months, but I would never dare say anything to anybody about having talked with a man. I was a Christian and I knew that it was taboo for a young girl like me to talk with a man. When I heard that he'd died I wrote a poem about David. All the feelings were locked up inside and I couldn't tell my parents. I remember that I did find a way to tell my sisters, and they understood. But I could never tell Mum that I knew somebody who'd been in trouble with the police. I could never admit anything to her about what was really going on out there on the streets, and so it was like I began to live two lives. I was angry. At the time of David's death everybody was angry. Here was a black man and you tell me, what was he doing in the river? We knew that the police were always trying to move him on, but something else was wrong. What was he doing dead in the river?