The Gambling Man

by Catherine Cookson

  They all stared at her, Ruth, Lizzie, Paddy and Jimmy. This was the little girl who had grown up next door. This was the young lass, the kindly young lass, who had cared for her grannie, who had been full of high spirits and kindliness. Each in his own way was realizing what life could do to any one of them. Each in his own way knew a moment of understanding, and so it was Ruth who spoke first, saying, ‘Well, wherever you go, lass, whatever you do, our good wishes ’ll go with you. Our memories are long; we’ll always remember you.’ She did not add ‘as you once were.’

  ‘Aye, that goes for me an’ all.’ Paddy was nodding at her. ‘We’ve had some good times together, Janie, and in this very kitchen. I’ll think back on ’em, Janie.’

  Lizzie’s face and voice was soft as she said, ‘As you say, you’ll live a long time, lass, and you’ll marry and have a sturdy family, an’ when you do, name some of them after us, eh?’

  Janie’s head was up, her lips were tight pressed together, her eyes were wide and bright; then as the tears sprang from them, they came around her, patting her, comforting her; even Paddy hobbled from his chair, saying, ‘There, lass. There, lass.’

  ‘I’ve . . . I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Yes, yes, you’ve got to go.’ Ruth dried her eyes and smiled. ‘And have a safe journey, lass. It’s a long way to go, across the sea to another country. Aren’t you feared?’

  ‘No.’ Janie shook her head as she blew her nose. I know me way, an’ I won’t have to ride in the cattle trucks.’ She smiled weakly, and Lizzie said somewhat tentatively now, ‘Why didn’t you get yourself a decent rig-out, lass, to go back with?’

  ‘No, Lizzie, no.’ Again she shook her head. I came like this and that’s how I’m goin’ back. And . . . and you see, they wouldn’t understand, not if I went back dressed up. I’ll . . . I’ll be one of them again like this. But at the same time I’ve seen things, and I know things what they don’t, and I’ll be able to help . . . It’s funny, isn’t it, how life works out?’

  As she looked from one to the other they saw a glimpse of the old Janie, and they smiled tenderly at her.

  ‘Eeh! well, I’ll be away. I’ve got to get the train.’

  She backed from them now and, with the excep­tion of Jimmy, they didn’t move towards her, not even to come to the door. Jimmy opened the door for her, and with one backward glance at them she went out, and he followed her down the path. At the gate he said, ‘Look, wait a minute, I’ll go back and get me coat and come down with you to the station.’

  ‘No. No, Jimmy. Thanks all the same. Anyway, you’re in no fit state to be about yet, never mind walking to the station.’

  He took her hand and they stared at each other. ‘Be happy, Janie. Try to forget all that’s happened. And . . . and another thing I’d like to say, thank you for not letting on to them’—he jerked his head back towards the cottage—‘about, well, you know what, the John George business.’

  She stared at him blankly. This was the second time those very words had been said to her within a short space.

  Yesterday she had stood in that beautiful room and thought to herself with still remaining bitterness, I can see why he didn’t want to come back, for who’d want to give up all this for a boathouse, ignoring the fact that it was the tall black-garbed, sad-looking woman facing her who had been the magnet that had kept him there. Nor had she softened towards her when, in open generosity Charlotte had said, ‘I understand how you feel for he was such a wonder­ful man,’ but she had blurted out before she could check herself, ‘You didn’t know him long enough to know what he was like . . . really like.’

  ‘I did know what he was really like.’ Charlotte’s tone had altered to tartness.

  She had stared hard at the woman before retorting, ‘I shouldn’t say it at this time, but I doubt it,’ and the answer she received was, ‘You needn’t, for I knew my husband’—the last word was stressed—‘better than most. I was aware of all his weaknesses. I knew everything about him before I married him . . . with the exception of one thing . . .’

  ‘Yes, and I know what that was,’ she had said. ‘He wouldn’t let on about that.’

  It had appeared as if they were fighting.

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Well, tell me what you think it was,’ said Charlotte.

  She had become flustered at this. ‘It was his business,’ she said. ‘It’s over, it’s best left alone.’ Then she had stood there amazed as she listened to the woman saying, ‘You are referring to the John George Armstrong affair and Rory taking the five pounds and letting his friend shoulder the blame for the whole amount, aren’t you?’

  She had gaped at her, then whispered, ‘He told you that?’

  ‘Yes, he did, but I already knew all about it. I had pieced things together from the events that followed the court case.’

  ‘And you did nothin’, I mean to get John George off?’

  ‘He had been stealing for some time. His sentence would have been the same . . .’

  She had stared open-mouthed at the woman, she couldn’t understand her. She was a lady yet such were her feelings for a fellow like Rory that she had treated as nothing something that she herself had thought of as a crime and condemned him wholesale for. In fact, so big was it in her eyes that she saw it now as the cause of all that had happened to her—all the heartache and the hardship.

  She hadn’t been able to understand her own feelings at that moment for strange thoughts had galloped about in her mind. She had made a mistake somewhere. Had she ever loved Rory? Of course, she had. But not like this woman had loved him.

  Perhaps her own mistake lay in that she had liked too many people, and it had sort of watered down her love; whereas this woman had concentrated all her feelings in one direction and had gained Rory’s love in return . . . she hadn’t bought him. It seemed to be the last bitter pill she had to swallow.

  . . . ‘The only thing he kept from me was the fact that Lizzie is his mother.’

  ‘That?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, he always was ashamed of it. Yet I couldn’t understand why ’cos Lizzie’s all right.’

  ‘Yes, Lizzie’s all right.’

  She had asked her to sit down after that, and then she had offered her the money. But even when she took it she still couldn’t like her, or soften towards her . . .

  . . . ‘You all right, Janie?’

  ‘Aye, Jimmy.’

  ‘Try to forgive and forget.’

  ‘Aye, I will. It’ll take time, but I will, Jimmy. I’ll marry. I’ll marry Henri. I liked him well enough, but that isn’t lovin’. Still, we’ve got to take what we get, haven’t we?’

  ‘You’ll be happy enough, Janie.’

  ‘Aye, well, think on me sometimes, Jimmy.’

  ‘There’ll never be a time when I won’t, Janie.’ He leant towards her and they kissed quietly, then, her head bowed, she turned swiftly from him and went through the gate and down the narrow path and became lost from his view in the hedgerows.

  For quite some time he stood bent over the gate­post. He had been in love with her since he was a lad. During the time Rory courted her he had lived with a special kind of pain, but when he had lain in the loft above them he had suffered an agony for a time because he had loved them both. Now in a way they were both dead, for the Janie he had loved was no more. She hadn’t just disappeared down the road; paradoxically she had died when she had come back to life and showed herself as a strange creature that night in the boathouse. Her resurrection had freed him. Life was odd. Indeed it was. As she had said, it was funny how it worked out.

  He knew that a different kind of life lay before him. Charlotte was setting him up in a new boatyard and, what was more, she wanted him to take an interest in business.

  Yes, a new kind of life was opening up before him, but whatever it offered it would be empty, for Rory was no longer in it. He ached for Rory, and night following night he cried silently while he wished that God
had taken him too . . . or instead. Aye, instead. Why hadn’t he died instead, for he wouldn’t have been missed like Rory was? He had emptied so many lives by his going, Charlotte’s, Janie’s, Lizzie’s, his ma’s, aye and even his da’s, all their lives were empty now . . . Yet free from the scandal that his living would have created. It was funny, weird. In a way it was like the outcome of Lizzie’s saying, leave it to God and He’ll work it out.

  He went up the path and into the kitchen that housed the old life.

  9

  They were all in the kitchen again, but now they were waiting for the carriage to take them on what had become for all of them, up till now, one of their twice-weekly visits to Birchingham House.

  Ruth stood facing Lizzie and Jimmy as, spreading her hands wide, she said, ‘Don’t worry about me, I’ll have me house to meself for once an’—’ she nodded towards Paddy—‘I’ve got your dad to look after.’

  ‘But both of us goin’, ma?’ Jimmy screwed up his face at her.

  ‘Well, now look at it this way, lad.’ Ruth’s tone was unusually brisk. ‘You’re goin’ into business, and it’s on the waterfront, practically at the end of it. Now, unless you’re going to have a carriage and pair for yourself, you can’t make that trek twice a day. Now Westoe’s on your doorstep so to speak. And there’s always the week-ends, you can come home at the week-ends. As for you, Lizzie.’ She turned her gaze on Lizzie. ‘You know, if you speak the truth, you’re breakin’ your neck to stay down there; you can’t wait for that child to be born.’

  ‘What you talkin’ about, woman? Breakin’ me neck!’ Lizzie jerked her chin upwards.

  ‘I know what I’m talkin’ about and you know what I’m talkin’ about. And you’ve lost weight. The flesh is droppin’ off you.’

  ‘Huh!’ Lizzie put her forearms under her breasts and humped them upwards. ‘That should worry you. You’ve told me for years I’m too fat. And anyway, what do you think Charlotte will have to say about all this?’

  ‘Charlotte will welcome you with open arms, the both of yous, she needs you. Remember the last time we saw her as we went out the door, remember the look on her face? She was lost. She’s no family of her own, she needs family.’

  ‘The likes of me?’ Lizzie now thumped her chest.

  ‘Yes, the likes of you. Who better? Now stop sayin’ one thing and thinkin’ another. Go and pack a few odds and ends. And you an’ all, Jimmy. Now both of yous, and let me have me own way for once in me own house with me own life. I’ve never had much say in anything, have I? Now, have I?’ She turned and looked towards her husband who was staring at her, and he smiled; then nodding from Lizzie to Jimmy, he said, ‘She’s right, she’s right, she’s had the poor end of the stick. Do what she says and let’s have peace.’

  Stoddard was a little surprised when the two leather-strapped bass hampers were handed to him to be placed on the seat beside him, but then so many surprising things had happened of late that he was taking them in his stride now.

  Three quarters of an hour later, when the carriage drew up on the drive, he helped Mrs O’Dowd, as she was known to the servants, down the steps; then taking up the hampers, he followed her and the young gentleman up towards his mistress who was waiting at the door. As the greetings were being exchanged he handed the hampers to the maid, and she took them into the hall and set them down, and when Charlotte glanced at them, Lizzie, taking off her coat, said, ‘Aye, you might look at them; you’re in for a shock.’

  A few minutes later, seated in the drawing-room, Lizzie asked softly, ‘Well, how you feeling now, lass?’ and it was some seconds before Charlotte, clasping and unclasping her hands, replied, ‘If I’m to speak the truth, Lizzie, desolate, utterly, utterly desolate.’ Her voice broke and she swallowed deeply before ending, ‘It gets worse, I, I miss him more every day. I was lonely before but, but never like this.’

  Lizzie, pulling herself up from the deep chair, went and sat beside her on the couch and, taking her hand, patted it as she said, ‘Aye, and . . . and it’ll be like this for some time. I know. Oh aye, I know ’cos I’ve a world of emptiness inside here.’ She placed her hand on her ribs. ‘But it’ll ease, lass; it’ll ease; it won’t go altogether, it’ll change into something else, but it’ll ease. We couldn’t go on livin’ if it didn’t. So in the meantime we’ve put our heads together, haven’t we, Jimmy?’ She looked towards Jimmy, where he sat rubbing one lip tightly over the other and he nodded, ‘And this is what we thought. But mind, it’s just up to you, it’s up to you to say. But seeing that in a short while Jimmy’ll be working on the waterfront, well, as Ruth pointed out, it’s a trek and a half right back to the cottage twice a day, and in all weathers. And—’ she gave a little smile now— ‘she also reminded him that he hadn’t got a carriage and pair yet, and that he’d have to shank it, so she wondered if you wouldn’t mind puttin’ him up here for a while, ’cos . . .’

  ‘Oh, yes. Oh, yes, Jimmy.’ Charlotte leant eagerly towards him, holding out her hand, and Jimmy grasped it. And now with tears in her voice she said, ‘Oh, I’m so grateful. But . . . but your mother?’

  ‘Oh, she’s all right.’ Jimmy’s voice was a little unsteady as he replied. ‘She has me da, and I’ll be poppin’ up there every now and again. She’s all right.’

  ‘Oh, thank you. Thank you.’ Now Charlotte looked at Lizzie, and Lizzie said, ‘An’ that’s not all, there’s me.’ She now dug her thumb in between her breasts. ‘I’ve got nothin’ to do with meself, I’m sittin’ picking me nails half me time, an’ I thought, well, if she can put up with me I’ll stay until the child comes ’cos I’ve a mind to be the first to see me grandson, or me granddaughter, or twins, or triplets, whatever comes.’

  ‘Oh, Lizzie! Lizzie!’ Charlotte now turned and buried her face in the deep flesh of Lizzie’s shoulder, and Lizzie, stroking her hair, muttered, ‘There now. There now. Now stop it. It’s the worst thing you can do to bubble your eyes out. Grannie Waggett used to say that you should never cry when you’re carryin’ a child ’cos you’re takin’ away the water it swims in.’ She gave a broken laugh here, then said, ‘There now. There now. Come on, dry your eyes. What you want is a cup of tea.’ She turned towards Jimmy, saying, ‘Pull that bell there, Jimmy, an’ ring for tea.’ Then with the tears still in her eyes, she laughed as she lifted Charlotte’s face towards her, saying, ‘Did you ever hear anythin’ like it in your life? Me, Lizzie O’Dowd, saying ring for tea. What’s the world comin’ to, I ask you?’

  Charlotte stared back into the face of the mother of her beloved. Two years ago she had been alone, but since then she had experienced love, and such love she knew she would never know again. But on the day she had bargained for Rory’s love she had said to him that there were many kinds of love, and it was being proved to her now at this moment.

  When Lizzie said to her, ‘If you don’t watch out I’ll take over, I’m made like that. Ring for tea, I said, just as if I was born to it. I tell you!’ Charlotte put out her hand and cupped the plump cheek, and what she said now and what she was to say for many years ahead was, ‘Oh, Lizzie! Lizzie! My dear Lizzie.’

  THE END

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