There were a number of doors going off all round the hall, and the thick red carpet he was standing on reached to the walls on all sides except where one door was deeply inset in an alcove and had a step down to it.
He felt his mouth closing when he heard the rustle of a gown on the stairs and saw Charlotte Kean coming down towards him. Her face wore a worried expression. She said immediately, ‘My father has taken a turn for the worse, we are very concerned. Will you come this way?’
Without a word he followed her down the step and through the door that was set in the alcove and found himself in an office, but an office very different from the one in Tangard Street. The room in a way was a pattern of the hall, thick carpet, highly polished desk, the top strewn with papers and ledgers. There were paintings on all the walls except that which was taken up with two long windows over which the curtains had not been drawn.
He watched her turn up the gas light; the mantle, encased in its fancy globe gave out a soft light and set the room in a warm glow.
He couldn’t understand the feeling he was experiencing. He didn’t know whether it was envy, admiration, or respect, that kind of grudging respect the symbols of wealth evoke. He only knew that the feeling was making him feel all arms and legs.
‘Sit down, Mr Connor.’
This was the second time in one day she had invited him to be seated.
He hesitated to take the leather chair that she had proffered; instead, looking down at the bag he had placed on the desk, he opened it for her and took out a number of smaller bags and the two pocket ledgers, which he placed before her, saying, ‘I’ve counted everything, it’s in order.’
She glanced up at him, saying, ‘Thank you.’ Then with her hand she indicated the chair again. And now he sat down and watched her as she emptied each bag and counted the money, then checked it against the books.
In the gaslight and with her expression troubled as it was, she looked different from what she had done in the stark grey light this morning, softer somehow.
The money counted, she returned the books to the bag; then rising, she stood looking at him for a moment before saying, ‘I’m sure I can trust you, Mr Connor, to see to things in the office until my father is better. I . . . I may not be able to get along. You see’—she waved her hand over the desk—’there is so much other business to see to. And he wants me with him all the time.’
‘Don’t worry about the office, miss, everything will be all right there. And . . . and Mr Taylor seems a steady enough man.’
‘Thank you, Mr Connor.’
‘I’m sorry about your father.’
‘I’m sure you are.’
He stared back into her face. There was that something in her tone. Another time he would have said to himself, Now how does she mean that?
He opened the door to let her pass out into the hall, and there she turned to him and asked, ‘Is it still raining?’
‘Yes. Yes, it was when I came in.’
‘You have a long walk home. Go into the kitchen and they will give you something to drink.’
Crumbs from the rich man’s table. Soup kitchens run by lady bountifuls. Clogs for the barefoot. Why was he thinking like this? She only meant to be kind, and he answered as if he thought she was. ‘Thank you, miss, but I’d rather get home.’
‘But you don’t look too well yourself, Mr Connor.’
‘I’m all right, miss. Thank you all the same. Good night, miss.’
‘Good night, Mr Connor.’
The maid appeared from the shadows and let him out. He walked down the steps and along the curving drive into the road, feeling like some beggar who had been given alms. He felt deflated, insignificant, sort of lost. It was that house.
He walked through the rain all the way back to the beginning of Westoe, down through Laygate and on to Tyne Dock, through the arches and the last long trek up Simonside Bank into the country and the cottage.
Opening the door, he staggered in and dropped into a chair without taking off his sodden coat, and he made no protest when Lizzie tugged his boots from his feet while Ruth loosened his scarf and coat and held him up while she pulled them from him. He had no need to pretend tonight that he was ill, at least physically, for the first day’s work had taken it out of him, and the trail back from Westoe had been the last straw.
When later in the evening Jimmy, by way of comfort, whispered to him, ‘When we go to the yard it’ll be easier for you, you could cut from the office to the boatyard in five minutes,’ he nodded at him while at the same time thinking, not without scorn, The boatyard! With thirty-five pounds he could have got himself a mortgage on a decent house. Slowly it came to him the reason why he had allowed himself to become saddled with the boatyard. It wasn’t only because he wanted to kill two birds with one stone: marry Janie and give Jimmy something of his own to live and work for; it was because he wanted to get away from here, from the kitchen; and now from their concern for his mental state, which must be bad, so they thought, when he still wouldn’t go and see his best friend, and him in prison.
Only last night when he said good-bye to Janie the rooms over the boatyard had appeared to him like a haven. And later, as he lay awake staring into the blackness listening to Jimmy’s untroubled breathing, he had thought, Once we get there, once I’m married, I’ll see it all differently. Then like a child and with no semblance of Rory Connor, he had buried his face in the pillow and cried from deep within him, ‘I’ll make it up to him when he comes out. I’ll make him understand. He’ll see I could do nothing about it at the time ’cos I was too bad. He’ll understand. Being John George, he’ll understand. And I’ll make it up to him, I will. I will.’
But now, after his visit to Birchingham House, he was seeing the boat house for what it was, a tumbledown riverside shack, and he thought, I must have been mad to pay thirty-five pounds for the goodwill of that. Look where it’s landed me. And the gate shut once again on his thinking as an inner voice said, ‘Aye; and John George.’
2
They were married on the Saturday after Easter. It was a quiet affair in that they hadn’t a big ceilidh. They went by brake to the Catholic church in Jarrow, together with Ruth, Paddy, Lizzie, Jimmy, and Bill Waggett. A great deal of tact and persuasion had to be used on Gran Waggett in order that she should stay behind. Who was going to help Kathleen Leary with the tables? And anyway, Kathleen being who she was needed somebody to direct her, and who better than Gran herself?
Janie’s wedding finery was plain but good, for her flounced grey coat had once belonged to her mistress, as had also the blue flowered cotton dress she wore underneath. Her blue straw hat she had bought herself, and her new brown buttoned boots too.
She was trembling as she knelt at the altar rails, but then the church was icy cold and the priest himself looked blue in the face and weary into the bargain. He mumbled the questions: Wilt thou have this man? Wilt thou have this woman? And they in turn mumbled back.
After they had signed their names and Rory had kissed her in front of them all they left the church and got into the brake again, which was now surrounded by a crowd of screaming children shouting ‘Hoy a ha’penny oot! Hoy a ha’penny oot!’
They had come prepared with ha’pennies. Ruth and Lizzie and Jimmy threw them out from both sides of the brake; but they were soon finished and when there were no more forthcoming the shouts that followed them now were, ‘Shabby weddin’ . . . shabby weddin’,’ and then the concerted chorus of:
Fleas in yer blankets,
No lid on your netty,
To the poor house you’re headin’,
Shabby weddin’, shabby weddin’.
The fathers laughed and Ruth clicked her tongue and Lizzie said, ‘If I was out there I’d skite the hunger off them. By God! I would.’ But Janie and Rory just smiled, and Jimmy, sitting silently at the top end of the brake, his hands dangling between his knees, looked at them, and part of him was happy, and part of him, a deep hidden part, was aching.
Out of decency Jimmy did not immediately go down to the yard. The young married couple were to have the place to themselves until Monday, and on Monday morning the new pattern of life was to begin, for Janie had had her way and was continuing to go daily to the Buckhams’.
Of course, in the back of her mind she knew that the three shillings had been a great inducement to Rory seeing her side of the matter, for now that he wasn’t gaming there was no way to supplement his income, and what was more, as she had pointed out, he would be expected to give a bit of help at home since he was depriving them of both his own and Jimmy’s money. So the arrangement was that, until Jimmy got some orders, for his sculler was almost finished, then she would continue to go daily to her place . . .
Having clambered up the steps in the dark and unlocked the door and dropped their bundles and a bass hamper on to the floor, they clung to each other in the darkness, gasping and laughing after the exertion of humping the baggage from where the cart had dropped them at the far end of the road.
‘Where’s the candle?’
‘On the mantelpiece of course.’ She was still laughing.
He struck a match and lit the candle, then held it up as he looked towards the table on which the lamp stood.
When the lamp was lit he said, ‘Well, there you are now, home sweet home.’
Janie stood and looked about her. ‘I’ll have to get stuck in here at nights,’ she said.
‘Well, if you will go working in the day-time, Mrs Connor.’ He pulled her to him again and they stood pressed close looking silently now into each other’s face. ‘Happy?’
She smiled softly, ‘Ever so.’
‘It’s not going to be an easy life.’
‘Huh! what do I care about that as long as we’re together. Easy life?’ She shook her head. ‘I’d go fish guttin’ if I could help you, an’ you know how I hate guttin’ fish, even when we used to get them for practically nowt from the quay. Do you remember walkin’ all the way down into Shields and getting a huge basketful for threepence?’
‘Only because they were on the point of going rotten.’
‘Ger-away with you . . . Do you want something to eat?’
‘No.’
‘You’re not hungry?’
‘Not for food.’
Her lips pressed tightly together; she closed her eyes and bowed her head.
He now put his hands up to her hair and unpinned her hat and throwing it aside, unbuttoned her coat.
‘I’ll have to get these bundles unpacked and . . . and tidied up.’
He went on undoing the buttons. ‘There’s all day the morrow and the next day and the next day and the next, all our life to undo bundles . . .’
‘Hie! what’re you doin’? That’s me good coat. Look, it’s on the floor.’
‘Leave it on the floor; there’s more to follow.’
‘Rory! Rory! the bed isn’t made up.’
‘The bed is made up, I saw to it.’
‘Oh Rory! . . . An’ I’m cold, I’m cold, I’m cold. I’ll have to get me nightie.’
‘You’re not going to need a nightie.’
‘Aw, Rory! . . . Eeh!’ She let out a squeal as, dressed only in her knickers and shift, he swung her up into his arms and carried her through into the bedroom and dropped her on to the bed. She lay there just where he had dropped her and in the dim light reflected from the kitchen she watched him throw off his clothes.
When he jumped on to the bed beside her she squealed and said, ‘Eeh! the lamp.’
‘The lamp can wait.’
They were pressed close, but she was protesting slightly, she didn’t want to be rushed. She was a bit afraid of this thing. If she could only make him take it quietly—lead up to it sort of. Her grannie had said it hurt like hell. His lips were moving round her face when she murmured, in a futile effort to stem his ardour, ‘Oh Rory, Rory, I’ll never be happier than I am at this minute. It’s been a wonderful day, hasn’t it? . . . They were all so good, an’ they enjoyed themselves, didn’t they? I bet they’ll keep up the jollification all night.’ She moaned softly as his hands moved over her; then, her voice trailing weakly away, she ended, ‘If-only-John-George-had-been-there . . .’
His hands ceased their groping, his lips became still on her breast and she screamed out now as he actually pushed her from him with such force that her shoulders hit the wall as he yelled at her, ‘God Almighty! can’t you give him a rest? What’ve you got to bring him up now for, at this minute? You did it on purpose. You did!’
In the silence that followed he listened to her gasping. Then she was in his arms again and he was rocking her. ‘Oh lass, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. Did I hurt you? I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It was only, well, you know, I’ve waited so long . . . And, and . . .’
When she didn’t answer him, or make any sound, he said softly, ‘Janie. Janie. Say something.’ What she said was, ‘It’s all right. It’s all right.’
‘I love you. I love you, Janie. Aw, I love you. If I lost you I’d go mad, barmy.’
‘It’s all right. It’s all right, you won’t lose me.’
‘Will you always love me?’
‘Always.’
‘You promise?’
‘Aye, I promise.’
‘I’ll never love anybody in me life but you, I couldn’t. Aw, Janie, Janie . . .’
Later in the night when the light was out and he was asleep she lay still in his arms but wide awake. It hadn’t been like she had expected, not in any way. Perhaps she wasn’t goin’ to like that kind of thing after all. Her grannie said some didn’t, while others couldn’t get enough. Well she’d never be one of those, she was sure of that already. Perhaps it was spoiled for her when he threw her against the wall because she had mentioned John George.
It was most strange how he reacted now whenever John George’s name was mentioned. She could understand him not wanting to go to the prison, him having this feeling about being shut in, but she couldn’t work out in her own mind why he never spoke of John George. And when the name was mentioned by anybody else he would remain silent. But to act like he had done the night just because . . . Well, she was flabbergasted.
Her grannie, as part of the advice she had given her on marriage last Sunday, had said, ‘If he wants any funny business, out of the ordinary like, and some of them do, you never know till the door’s closed on you, you have none of it. An’ if he raises his hand to you, go for the poker. Always leave it handy. Start the way you mean to go on ’cos with the best of them, butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths afore they get you in that room. But once there, it’s like Adam and Eve racing around the Garden of Eden every night. An’ if you cross your fingers and say skinch, or in other words, hold your horses, lad, I’ve had enough, they bring the priest to you, an’ he reads the riot act. “Supply your man’s needs,” he says, “or it’s Hell fire and brimstone for you.” So off you gallop again, even when your belly’s hangin’ down to your knees.’
She had laughed at her grannie and with her grannie. She had put her arms around the old woman and they had rocked together until the tears had run down their faces, and the last words she had said to her were, ‘Don’t worry, Gran, nowt like that’ll happen to me. It’s Rory I’m marrying, and I know Rory. I should do, there’s only a thin wall divided us for years.’
But now they hadn’t been hours married afore he had tossed her against a wall, and tossed her he had because he had hurt her shoulder and it was still paining. Life was funny . . . odd.
3
Septimus Kean died, and Rory continued to take the day’s collections to the house for some four weeks after Mr Kean had been buried, and each time Miss Kean received him in what she called the office. But on this particular Friday night she met him in the hall and said to him, ‘Just leave the bag on the office table, Mr Connor, we’ll see to that later. By the way, are you in a hurry?’
He was in a hurry, he was in a hurry to get home to Janie, to sit before the fire
and put his feet up and talk with Jimmy, and hear if he had managed to get an order, and to find out if any of the Pitties had been about again . . . The Pitties. He’d give his right arm, literally, if he could get his own back on the Pitties. There was a deep acid hate in him for the Pitties. And it would appear they hadn’t finished with him for they had been spying about the place. He knew that to get a start on the river Jimmy would have to take the droppings, but if it lay with the Pitties he wouldn’t get even the droppings. They were beasts, dangerous beasts. By God he’d give anything to get one over on them.
He answered her, ‘Oh no, not at all.’
‘There is something I wish to discuss with you. I’m about to have a cup of tea, would you care to join me?’
Old Kean’s daughter asking him to join her in a cup of tea! Well! Well! He could scarcely believe his ears. Things were looking up. By lad, they were.
In the hall she said to the maid, ‘Take Mr Connor’s coat and hat.’
Then he was following her to the end of the hall, and into a long room. There was a big fire blazing in the grate to the right of them. It was a fancy grate with a black iron basket. It had a marble mantelpiece with, at each end, an urn-shaped vase standing on it, and above the mantelpiece was another large oil painting of yet another past Kean.
At first glance the prominent colour of the room seemed to be brown. The couch drawn up before the fire and the two big side chairs were covered with a brown corded material. The furniture was a shining brown. There were three small tables with knick-knacks on them. A piece of furniture that looked like a sideboard but like no sideboard he’d ever seen before had silver candlesticks on it. The velvet curtains hanging at the windows were green with a brown bobble fringe and were supported from a cornice pole as thick as his upper arm.
‘Sit down, Mr Connor.’ She motioned him towards one of the big chairs and he sat down, then watched her pull a handbell to the side of the fireplace.
When the door opened she turned to the maid, not the same one who had opened the door to him, and said, ‘I’ll have tea now, Jessie; please bring two cups.’
The Gambling Man Page 14
