The Gambling Man

by Catherine Cookson

  Rory and John George were already dressed for outdoors and waiting for her, Rory, although not short by any means, being all of five foot ten, looking small against John George’s lean six foot.

  John George wore a black overcoat that had definitely not been made for him. Although the length was correct, being well below his knees, the shoulders were too broad, and the sleeves too short, his hands and arms hanging so far out of them that they drew attention to their thin nakedness. There was a distinct crack above the toecap of one of his well-polished boots and a patch in a similar place on the other. His hard hat was well brushed but had a slight greeny tinge to it. His whole appearance gave the impression of clean seediness, yet his position as rent collector in the firm of Septimus Kean was superior to that of Rory, for whereas Rory had only worked for Mr Kean for four years John George had been with him for eight. Now, at twenty-two years of age and a year younger than Rory, he showed none of the other’s comparative opulence for Rory wore a dark grey overcoat over a blue suit, and he had a collar to his shirt, and he did not wear his scarf like a muffler but overlapping on his chest like a business gentleman would have worn it. And although he wore a cap—he only wore his hard hat for business—it wasn’t like a working man’s cap, perhaps it was only the angle at which he wore it that made it appear different.

  Looking at him as always with a feeling of pride welling in her, Janie thought, He can get himself up as good as the master.

  ‘Well then, off you go.’ Ruth seemed to come to the fore for the first time. She escorted them all to the door and there she patted Janie on the back, saying, ‘Until next Sunday then, lass?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Connor, until next Sunday. You’ll give a look in on her?’ She nodded towards the next cottage and Ruth said, ‘Of course, of course. Don’t worry about her. You know’—she smiled faintly—’I think she’ll still be here when we’re all pushing the daisies up.’

  ‘I shouldn’t wonder.’ Janie went out laughing, calling over her shoulder, ‘Ta-rah. Ta-rah everybody. Ta-rah.’

  Out in the black darkness they had difficulty in picking their way in single file down the narrow rutted lane. When they reached the broader road they stopped for a moment and Rory, kicking the snow aside with his foot, said, ‘By! it’s thick. If it goes on like this we’ll have a happy day the morrow, eh?’

  ‘I’d rather have it than rain,’ John George replied; ‘at least it’s dry for a time. It’s the wet that gets me down, day after day, day after day.’

  ‘Here, hang on.’ Rory now pulled Janie close to him and linked her arm in his. It’s comin’ down thicker than ever. Can’t even see a light in the docks. Well find ourselves in the ditch if we’re not careful.’

  Stumbling on, her side now pressed close to Rory’s, Janie began to giggle; then turning her head, she cried, ‘Where are you, John George?’

  ‘I’m here.’ The voice came from behind them and he answered, ‘Give me your hand. Come on.’

  As she put her hand out gropingly and felt John George grip it, Rory said, ‘Let him fend for himself, he’s big enough. You keep your feet, else I’m tellin’ you well be in the ditch.’

  It took them all of twenty minutes before they reached Tyne Dock, and there, taking shelter under the last arch, they stopped and drew their breath, and Janie, looking towards a street lamp opposite the dock gates, said, ‘Isn’t it nice to see a light?’

  ‘And you can just see it and that’s all. Come on, we’d better be goin’. It’s no use standin’, we soon won’t be able to get through.’

  As Rory went to pull Janie forward she checked him, saying, ‘Look, wait a minute. It’s daft, you know, you walkin’ all the way to Westoe, you’ve only not to tramp all the way back. It isn’t so bad in the town ’cos there’s the lights, but from the bottom of the bank up to our place . . . well, we’ve just had some, haven’t we? An’ if it keeps on, as you say it’ll get worse underfoot, so what’s the sense of trapesing all the way there with me when John George’s place is only five minutes away?’

  ‘She’s right, Rory. It’s daft to tramp down all the way to Westoe for it’ll be another couple of hours afore you get back. And then with it coming down like this. Well, as Janie says . . .’

  Rory peered from one to the other before he answered, ‘Imagine the reception I’d get if I told them back there I’d left you at the arches. They’d wipe the kitchen with me.’

  ‘But you’re not leavin’ me at the arches; John George’ll see me right to the door. Look.’ She turned and pushed John George away, saying, ‘Go on, walk on a bit, I’ll catch up with you in a minute at the Dock gates.’

  When John George walked swiftly from the shelter of the arch Rory called, ‘Hold your hand a minute . . .’

  ‘Now just you look here.’ Janie pulled at the lapels of his coat. ‘Don’t be such a fathead; I’d rather know you were safely back home in the dry than have you set me to the door.’

  ‘But I won’t see you for another week.’

  ‘That didn’t seem to bother you all afternoon, ’cos you’ve done nowt but play cards.’

  ‘Well, what can you do back there? I ask you, what can you do? There’s no place to talk and I couldn’t ask you out in the freezing cold or they’d’ve been at me. And I wanted to talk to you, seriously like ’cos it’s . . . it’s time we thought about doin’ something. Don’t you think it is?’

  She kept her head on the level, her eyes looking into his as she replied, ‘If you want a straight answer, Mr Connor, aye, I do.’

  ‘Aw, Janie!’ He pulled her roughly to him and pressed his mouth on hers and when she overbalanced and her back touched the curved wall of the arch she pulled herself from him, saying, ‘Eeh! me coat, it’ll get all muck.’

  ‘Blast your coat!’

  Her voice soft now, she said, ‘Aye, blast me coat,’ then she put her mouth to his again and they stood, their arms gripped tight around each other, their faces merged.

  When again she withdrew herself from him he was trembling and he gulped in his throat before saying, ‘Think about it this week, will you?’

  ‘It’s you that’s got to do the thinking, Rory. We’ve got to get a place an’ furniture ’cos there’s one thing I can tell you sure, I’m not livin’ in with me dad and grannie. I’m not startin’ that way up in the loft. I want a house that I can make nice with things an’ that . . .’

  ‘As if I would ask you. What do you take me for?’

  ‘I’m only tellin’ you, I want a decent place . . .’

  ‘I’m with you there all the way. I’m not for one room an’ a shakydown either, I can tell you that . . . I’ve got something in me napper.’

  ‘Gamblin’?’

  ‘Well, aye. And don’t say it like that; I haven’t done too badly out of it, have I now? But what I’m after is to get set on in a good school . . . A big school. And there’s plenty about. But you’ve got to be in the know.’

  ‘What! be in the know afore you can get into a gamblin’ school?’ Her voice was scornful. ‘Why, you’ve been up at Boldon Colliery where they have schools . . .’

  ‘Aye in the back yards an’ in the wash-houses. I know all about Boldon Colliery and the games there, hut they’re tin pot compared to what I’m after. The places I mean are where you start with a pound, not with a penny hoping to win a tanner. Oh, aye, I know, there’s times when there’s been ten pounds in a kitty, but them times are few and far between I’m telling you. No, what I’m after is getting set on in a real school, but it’s difficult because of the polis, they’re always on the look out—it’s a tricky business even for the back-laners. That’s funny,’ he laughed, ‘a tricky business, but it is. Remember what Jimmy said the night about notices in the works? They try everything to catch you out: spies, plain-clothes bobbies, touts. It’s odd, you know; they don’t run you in for drinking, but you touch a card or flick a coin and you’re for it . . . Anyway, as I said, I’ve got something in me napper, and if it works out . . .’

  ‘B
e careful, Rory. I get worried about your gamin’. Even years ago when you used to play chucks and always won, I used to wonder how you did it. And it used to worry me; I mean ’cos you always won.’

  ‘I don’t always win now.’

  ‘You do pretty often, even if it’s only me da’s monkey nuts.’

  They both made small audible sounds, then moved aside to let a couple of men pass. And now she said, ‘I’ll have to be goin’, John George’ll get soaking wet . . . Eeh! I always feel sorry for John George.’

  ‘Your pity’s wasted, he’s too soft to clag holes with, I’m always telling him. It’s right what she said’—he jerked his head—’those two old leeches suck him dry. He gets two shillings a week more than me and yet look at him, you’d think he got his togs from Paddy’s market. And he might as well for he picks them up from the second-hand stalls. And this lass he’s after . . . he would pick on a ranter, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Well, he’s not a Catholic.’

  ‘No, I know he’s not. He’s not anything in that line, but he goes and takes up with one from the narrowest end of the Nonconformists, Baptist-cum- Methodist-cum . . .’

  ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Doesn’t he talk about her at all?’

  ‘Oh, he never stops talkin’ about her. By the sound of it she should be a nun.’

  ‘Oh Rory!’

  ‘She should, she’s so bloomin’ good by all his accounts. She’s been unpaid housekeeper to a sick mother, her dad, two sisters and a brother since she was ten. And now she’s twenty, and she daresn’t move across the door for fear of her old man. He even escorts his other two lasses to work. They’re in a chemist’s shop and he’s there when it closes to fetch them home.’

  ‘What is he?’

  ‘He’s got a little tailor’s business, so I understand. But look, forget about John George for a minute. Come here.’ Once again they were close, and when finally they parted he said, ‘Remember what I said. Think on it and we’ll settle it next Sunday, eh?’

  ‘Yes, Rory.’ Her voice was soft. Tm ready anytime you are, I’ve been ready for a long time. Oh, a long time . . . I want a home of me own . . .’

  He took her face gently between his hands and as gently kissed her, and she, after staring at him for a moment, turned swiftly and ran from under the arch and over the snow-covered flags until she came to John George, who was standing pressed tight against the dock wall. She did not speak to him and together they turned and hurried on, past a line of bars arrayed on the opposite side of the road, and so into Eldon Street.

  Her throat was full. It was strange but she always wanted to cry when Rory was tender with her. Generally, there was a fierceness about his love-making that frightened her at times, it was when he was tender that she loved him best.

  ‘Daft of him wanting to come all this way.’

  ‘Yes, it was, John George.’

  ‘Of course I was just thinking that if I hadn’t have come along he would have taken you all the way, and that, after all, was what he wanted. I’m blind about some things some times.’

  She was kind enough to say, ‘Not you, John George,’ for she had thought it a bit short-sighted of him to accompany them in the first place, and she added, ‘Don’t worry. And you know what? We’re goin’ to settle something next Sunday.’

  ‘You are? Oh, I’m glad, Janie. I’m glad. I’ve thought for a long time he should have a place of his own ’cos he doesn’t seem quite happy back there. And yet I can’t understand it for they’re a good family, all of them, and I like nothing better than being among them.’

  ‘Oh! What makes you think that? What makes you think he’s not happy at home, John George?’

  ‘Well, he’s surly like at times. And I get vexed inside when I hear the way he speaks to Lizzie ’cos she’s a nice body, isn’t she . . . Lizzie? I like her . . . motherly, comfortable. Yet . . . yet at times he treats her like dirt. And I can’t understand it, ’cos he’s not like that outside, I mean when he’s collecting; he’s civility’s own self, and all the women like him. You know that, don’t you? All the women like him, ’cos he’s got a way with him. But the way he speaks to Lizzie . . .’

  Janie paused in her walk and, putting her hand on John George’s arm, she drew him to a stop. Then flicking the falling snow away from her eyes, she asked quietly, Don’t you know why he goes on at Lizzie like that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He’s never told you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You mean he’s never told you an’ you’ve been workin’ with him and coming up to the house for . . . how many years?’

  ‘Four and over.’

  ‘Eeh! I can’t believe it. I thought you knew.’

  ‘Knew what?’

  ‘Well, that . . . that Lizzie, she’s . . . she’s his mother.’

  ‘Lizzie?’ He bent his long length down to her. ‘Lizzie Rory’s mother? No! How does that come about? I don’t believe it.’

  ‘It’s true. It’s true. Come on, don’t let us stand here, we’ll be soaked.’

  ‘What . . . what about Mrs Connor? I mean . . . his mother . . . I mean.’

  ‘It’s all very simple, John George, when you know the ins and outs of it. You see they were married, Mr and Mrs Connor for six years an’ there was no sign of any bairn. Then Mr Connor gets a letter from Ireland from a half-cousin he had never seen. Her name was Lizzie O’Dowd. Her ma and da had died— as far as I can gather from starvation. It was one of those times when the taties went bad, you know, and this lass was left with nobody, and she asked if she could come over here and would he find her a job. Everybody seemed to be comin’ to England, particularly to Jarrow. They were leaving Ireland in boatloads. So what does Mr Connor do but say come right over. By the way, she had got the priest to write ’cos she couldn’t write a scribe and Mr Connor went to a fellow in Jarrow who made a sort of livin’ it writing letters an’ sent her the answer. It was this by the way, Mr Connor having to go an’ get this letter written, that later made him see to it that Rory could read and write. Anyway, Lizzie O’Dowd arrives at the cottage. She’s seventeen an’ bonny, although you mightn’t think it by the look of her now. But I’m goin’ by what me grannie told me. And what’s more she was full of life and gay like. Anyway, the long and the short of it is that she and Mr Connor . . . Well, I don’t need to tell you any more, do I? And so Rory came about. But this is the funny part about it. Almost a year later Ruth had her first bairn. That was Nellie. And then she has another. That was Jimmy. Would you believe it? After nothing for seven years! Eeh! it was odd. And, of course, we were all brought up as one family. You could say the three families in the row were all dragged up together.’

  As she laughed John George said solemnly, ‘You surprise me, Janie. It’s quite a gliff.’

  ‘But you don’t think any the worse of Lizzie, do you?’

  ‘Me think any the worse of . . . ? Don’t be daft. Of course I don’t. But at the same time I’m back where I started for I understand less now than I did afore, Rory speaking to her like that and her his mother.’

  ‘But he didn’t always know that she was his mother. It was funny that.’ She was silent for a moment, before going on, There was us, all the squad of the Learys, me da, me ma, and me grannie. Well, you know me grannie, her tongue would clip clouts. But nobody, not one of us, ever hinted to him that Mrs Connor wasn’t his mother, it never struck us. I think we sort of thought that he knew, that somebody must have told him earlier on. But nobody had; not until six years ago when he was seventeen and it was Lizzie herself who let the cat out of the bag. You know, Lizzie is one of those women who can’t carry drink. Give her a couple of gins and she’s away; she’ll argue with her own fingernails after a couple of gins. And it was on a New Year’s Eve, and you know what it’s like on a New Year’s Eve. She got as full as a gun an’ started bubbling, and Rory, who up till that time had been very fond of her, even close to her, when she hadn’t got a
drink on her, ’cos this is another funny thing about him, he can’t stand women in drink. Well, I don’t remember much about it ’cos I was only a lass at the time, but as I recall, we were all in the Connors’ kitchen. It was around three o’clock in the morning and I was nearly asleep when I hear Lizzie blurting out, “Don’t speak to me like that, you young . . . !” She called him a name. And then she yelled, “I’m your mother! Her there, Ruth there, never had it in her to give breath to a deaf mute till I went an’ had you.” And that was that. From then on he never has been able to stand her. An’ the pity of it is she loves him. He went missing for a week after that. Then he turned up one night half starved, frozen, and in the end he had the pneumonia. He had been sleeping rough, and in January mind. It’s a wonder it didn’t kill him. Now do you begin to understand?’

  ‘I’m flabbergasted, Janie. To think that I’ve known him all this time and he’s never let on. And we talk you know, we do; I thought we knew everything there was to know about each other. Me, I tell him everything.’ The tall length drooped forward. His head bent against the driving snow, he muttered now, ‘I’m that fond of Rory, Janie, ’cos, well, he’s all I’d like to be and never will.’

  ‘You’re all right as you are, John George; I wouldn’t have you changed.’ Her voice was loud and strong in his defence.

  ‘You wouldn’t, Janie?’ The question was almost eager, and she answered, ‘No, I wouldn’t, John George, because your heart’s in the right place. An’ that’s something to be proud of.’

  They walked on some way in silence now before she said quietly, ‘I hope you don’t mind me askin’, but the lass you’re gone on, why don’t you bring her up to the kitchen?’

  He didn’t answer immediately but took her arm and led her across the road and up the street towards the beginning of Westoe and the select section of the town, where the big houses were bordered by their white railings and the roads were broad enough to take two carriages passing, and he said now, ‘I wish I could, oh I wish I could ’cos she’s nice, Janie, and bonny. Not as bonny as you, but she’s bonny. And she’s had a life of it. Aye, one hell of a life. And still has. Her da’s got religion on the brain I think. Her mother’s bedridden, and, you know, they spend Sunday praying round her bed, taking turns. The only time she’s allowed out is on a Saturday afternoon when she’s sent to Gateshead to visit an aunt who’s dying and who seems to have a bit of money. Her da wants to make sure of who she’s leaving it to and as he can’t go up himself and the other two lasses are in jobs—there was a brother, Leonard, but he ran off to sea, and good luck to him I say—Anyway, Maggie is allowed to go to Gateshead on a Saturday afternoon. That’s how I met her first, on one of me Saturday train jaunts.’