"A referee?" I spluttered into the telephone. "You've got to be kidding!"
Uncle Hobart's tinny voice sounded in my ear again. "Look, I'm just doing me mate a favour. 'E's broke 'is leg. 'E can't do it, so I am."
I took a deep breath before exhaling loudly. "But you don't like football. You always moan about it when it's on the telly. Anyway, how the hell do you expect to keep up with all that running about at your age?"
"It's not football yer silly bugger. I'm too old fer that, ain't I?"
I bit back the caustic reply by clenching my teeth.
"Nah. It's a fight, ain't it?"
I sat down on the chair with a thump. "A what?" I whispered in disbelief.
"A fight," he repeated. "A fight! Yer do know what a bleedin' fight is, don't yer?" But before I could answer he hurried on. "Look, I got ter go. Just tell me if yer going ter 'elp me out or not."
"Well ... er ...yes." It was all I could manage in the circumstances.
"Good," he acknowledged. "Eight Saturday night then, and don't be late."
"Right," I answered in a dazed voice, to a dead telephone line.
I looked at my watch for what seemed like the thousandth time, tapping my foot impatiently because the Casualty Department was quieter now and I was getting bored. The most exciting thing to have happened in the past couple of hours was the duty nurse trapping a patient's finger in the hinge-side of the swing-doors. By the time the maintenance men managed to unscrew all the hinges to release him, he had come over all faint and took a nose-dive through a glass partition. I began to wonder if the poor sod was going to get out of the hospital in one piece. Having another sip of the murky, semi-warm liquid that masqueraded as coffee, I leant back and gave a despondent sigh.
"You okay?" A pleasant voice asked from my left.
"Oh sorry," I said, turning towards the woman who was slumped beside me. "I'm just feeling a bit bored, that's all."
She nodded, closing the tatty magazine she was reading. "Yes, all this waiting around does get to you after a while, doesn’t it?" She tutted. "I've been here for three hours already.
"Yeah, it sure does," I agreed with feeling.
Removing her glasses, she massaged the bridge of her nose. "Waiting for someone?"
"My Uncle," I replied.
"Nothing serious I hope?"
"A spider bite."
She started to nod, then stopped. Replacing her glasses on her nose, she stared at me with a quizzical look.
"I know, I know," I said with an embarrassed grin.
The woman frowned, throwing the magazine onto an untidy pile already precariously balanced on a low table. It skidded across the top and the whole lot landed on the foot of an old lady sitting opposite. The woman smiled a quick apology, then turned back to me.
"Shouldn't keep things like spiders as pets," she stated. "Bound to have an accident sooner or later. My friend's, sister's, husband kept snakes once." She gave a slight shudder at the memory. "Hundreds he had. 'You mark my words', I told her. 'One day that sister of yours will rue the day.' And she did. One of them boa things got out of its tank during the night and wriggled into the bedroom." She shuddered again, pulling her coat tightly around her thin body. "She woke up thinking her husband was getting a bit, well you know. But she soon found out different, I can tell you! Took her years of counselling before she got over it." She leant closer, so she could whisper in my ear. "And even now she's only got to see a hose-pipe and she goes into a fit of hysterics!"
"No, it wasn't anything like that." I answered with a grin. "It wasn't a pet that bit him."
"Got bitten in the zoo then?" She prodded me with a bony finger. "That's good. If the zoo's let one of their spidery things bite him, he'll be able to sue them for hundreds of thousands of pounds. You tell him that!"
Pursing my lips, I dropped my white plastic cup into an overflowing red plastic bin. I could see that the woman wasn't going to shut up until I told her how Uncle Hobart had got bitten by a spider.
"Well," I began, "it all started with this telephone call."
*
I picked up Uncle Hobart at eight and we headed off into South London. He was very cagey, not telling me where we were going, or why. Finally he guided me into a car park, just off the Elephant and Castle.
"Come on," Uncle Hobart called, struggling out of the car. "It's this way."
Leading me to the front of a nearby pub, he threw open the doors and waded in. The place was packed to bursting, the noise overwhelming, which made walking through the heat an almost physical experience. As Uncle Hobart burrowed his way through the packed bodies, I did my best to keep up, trying to placate the people he shoved aside. Finally we squeezed our way through a door at the back of the bar, where a small, red-faced man waited for us.
His cheeks wobbled as he spoke. "Cut it a bit tight, haven't you?"
Uncle Hobart cocked a thumb in my direction. "Blame 'im. It were 'im that were driving."
The fat man looked at me with an expression of contempt before turning back to Uncle Hobart, who he poked with a chubby finger. "Well if we're late starting, you can take the hassle," he complained. Jerking his head for us to follow, he stomped off. "Come on then, this way, this way," he called when we didn't move.
We followed him down a long, dingy corridor into a large room. The walls were covered in flaky paint and the place smelt damp.
"Better get set up," the fat man ordered. "We're starting in ten minutes."
"Any chance of a quick 'alf?" Uncle Hobart called as the rotund figure approached the door, but the man just waved a hand over his shoulder and disappeared into the corridor.
I looked around. "Where's the ring then?"
"What ring?" Uncle Hobart asked, eyebrows raised.
"For the fight. You know, the boxing ring."
All I could see was a large table in the centre of the room, with a glass tank standing on it, and a bank of racking covering one wall.
"What we want a ring fer?" Uncle Hobart asked. "It ain't a bleedin' boxing match is it, yer cretin!"
"Well what the bloody hell are you refereeing then!" I was quickly loosing my temper.
Uncle Hobart walked to the racking, beckoning me over, pointing at some transparent plastic boxes stacked on the shelves.
I leant closer. "Spiders?" I muttered in a sceptical voice.
Nodding slowly, Uncle Hobart licked his lips. "But not just any old spiders, mind," he confided with relish. "Them’s poisonous ones, ain't they?"
I backed off, shaking my head, my stomach shrinking. "You're not expecting me to believe that you're going to referee a fight between two poisonous spiders, are you?"
He nodded again, his smile broadening.
The fat man bustled back into the room and placed a tray holding six pints of beer on the table. He threw a glare at Uncle Hobart. "You can do this, can't you?" he asked.
Uncle Hobart picked up a beer, half-emptying the glass with one swallow. "No trouble mate," he replied smacking his lips.
"Three, three minute rounds. Then get them out quick. Okay?", the fat man ordered.
Uncle Hobart finished his drink, burped, then picked up another glass. "No trouble."
The fat man left and Uncle Hobart saluted the closing door with his glass. "This is going ter be the easiest twenty quid I've ever made," he said, turning to me. "'Ere." Holding out his hand, he drooped a stopwatch into mine. "Yer be the timekeeper," he said, then quickly downed another pint.
*
The third fight was nearing a close when disaster struck. Uncle Hobart, having imbibed all night, was a touch wobbly on his feet, constantly buffeted by the throng that filled the room to overflowing. Whenever the spiders fought, the crowd stamped and roared, shoving each other, trying to place bets with a tough looking character standing by the door. I checked the stopwatch, rapping my glass on the table to signal the end of the another round. Uncle Hobart leant over the tank to separate the spiders with a long stick and as he did so, someone pushed forward, forcing Uncle Hobart’s stomach up against the table. He let loose a long, loud, belch that filled the tank with beer fumes, whereupon the spiders stopped fighting, twitched a couple of times, keeled over and lay still. The whole room looked on in a stunned silence.
"Sod me, the silly old codger's pickled 'em!" a voice called from the back of the room.
Uncle Hobart leant over the tank. "No, 'ang on a bit," he said. "I think this 'un's moving."
I made a grab for his arm but was far too late because he was already poking one of the spiders with his finger. Unfortunately for him the comatose creature made a quick recovery and I watched in horror as it leapt onto his hand. Uncle Hobart jerked his arm from the tank, with a large and very vicious looking spider still attached to his digit. Glancing at me, he gave a sickly smile, clicked his dentures, mouthed two unintelligible words, then collapsed onto the floor.
Uncle Hobart's fall started a domino effect in the packed room, which swiftly rippled outwards towards the walls. The last man to go down made a grab at the shelving, bringing the whole lot crashing down on top of us. The plastic containers bounced about the floor, popping open, allowing the spiders to scuttle free amongst the writhing bodies. The ensuing panic caused twenty-three broken legs, two changes of underwear, and three heart attacks.
*
As a white-coated figure approached me along the corridor, I struggled to my feet.
"How is he, doctor?" I asked.
"We're keeping him in for observation," I was informed, "but that's only because of his age. Don't worry, he's got the constitution of an ox. Should live for years yet."
"Mores the pity!" I muttered, heading for the lift.