The Gambling Man Read online

  ‘Don’t be daft, we’re as good as married. I tell you there’s only you, there’s only . . .’

  ‘No, Rory, no, not until it’s done.’ She thrust his hands away. ‘I mean proper like in the church, signed and sealed. No, no, I’m sorry. I love you, oh, I do love you, Rory, I’ve loved you all me life. I’ve never even thought of another lad an’ I’m twenty. I can’t tell you how I love you, it eats me up, but even so I want to start proper like so you won’t be able to throw anythin’ back at me after.’

  ‘What you talking about?’ He had her by the shoulders now actually shaking her. ‘Me throw anything back at you? Actually thinking I’d do a thing like that?’

  ‘You’re a man and they all do. Me grannie . . .’

  ‘Blast your grannie! Blast her to hell’s flames! She’s old. Things were different in her day.’

  ‘Not that. That wasn’t any different. Never will be. It’s the only thing a woman’s really looked down on for. Even if you were to steal you wouldn’t have a stamp put on you like you would have if . . . if you had a bairn.’

  ‘You won’t have . . .’

  ‘Rory, no. I tell you no. We’ve waited this long, what’s a few more months?’

  ‘I could be dead, you could be dead.’

  ‘We’ll have to take a chance on that.’

  ‘You know, Janie, you’re hard; there’s a hard streak in you, always has been about some things . . .’

  ‘I’m not.’ Her voice was trembling. ‘I’m not hard.’

  ‘Yes you are . . .’

  ‘I’m not. I’m not.’

  ‘All right, all right. Aw, don’t cry. I’m sorry, I am. Don’t cry.’

  ‘I’m not hard.’

  ‘No, you’re not, you’re lovely . . . It’s all right. Look, it’s all right; I just want to hold you.’

  When his arms went about her she jerked herself from his hold once more and going to the window, stood stiffly looking down on to the river, and he stood as stiffly watching her. Only his jaw moved as his teeth ground against each other.

  She drew in a deep breath now and, her head turning from one side to the other, she looked up and down the river. As far as her eyes could see both to the right and to the left the banks were lined with craft, ships of all types and sizes, from little scullers, wherries and tugs to great funnelled boats, and here and there a masted ship, its lines standing out separate and graceful from the great iron hulks alongside.

  Rory now came slowly to the window and, putting his arm around her shoulders and his manner softened, he said, ‘Look. Look along there. You see that boat with a figurehead on it—there’s a fine lass for you . . . Look at her bust, I bet that’s one of Thomas Anderson’s pieces, and I’ll bet he enjoyed makin’ it.’

  ‘Rory!’

  He hugged her to him now and laughed, then said, ‘There’s the ferry boat right along there going off to Newcastle . . . one of the pleasure trips likely. Think on that, eh? We could take a trip up to Newcastle on a Sunday, and in the week there’ll always be somethin’ for you to look at. The river’s alive during the week.’

  She turned her head towards him now and said, ‘You said the rent’s three and six?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘You won’t get anything from Jimmy, not until he gets set-in.’

  ‘I know, I know that. But we’ll manage. I’ll still be workin’. I’ll keep on until we really do get set-in and make a business of it. I mightn’t be able to build a boat but I’ll be able to steer one, and I can shovel coal and hump bales with the rest of them. I didn’t always scribble in a rent book you know; I did me stint in the Jarrow chemical works, and in the bottle works afore that.’

  ‘I know, I know, but I was just thinkin’. Something the mistress said.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Well—’ she turned from him and walked down the length of the room—’she doesn’t want me to leave, I know that, she said as much.’ She swung round again. ‘Do you know she even said to me face that she’d miss me. Fancy her sayin’ that.’

  ‘Of course she’ll miss you, anybody would.’ He came close to her again and held her face between his hands. ‘I’d miss you. If I ever lost you I’d miss you. God, how I’d miss you! Oh, Janie.’

  ‘Don’t . . . not for a minute. Listen.’ She pushed his hands from under her oxters now and said, ‘Would you demand I be at home all day?’

  ‘I don’t know about demand, but I’d want you at home all day. Aye, of course I would. Who’s to do the cooking and the washing and the like? What are you gettin’ at?’

  ‘Well, it was something the mistress said. She said she had been thinking about raising me wage . . .’

  ‘Ah, that was just a feeler. Now look, she’s not going to put you off, is she?’

  ‘No, no, she’s not. She knows I’m goin’ to be married. Oh, she knows that, but what she said was, if . . . if I could come for a while, daily like, until the children got a bit bigger and used to somebody else, because well, as she said, they were fond of me, the bairns. And she would arrange for Bessie to have my room and sleep next to them at night and I needn’t be there until eight in the morning, and I could leave at half-six after I got them to bed.’

  He swung away from her, his arms raised above his head, his hands flapping towards the low roof, and he flapped them until he reached the end of the room and turned about and once more was standing in front of her. And then, thrusting his head forward, he said, ‘Look, you’re going to be married, you’re going to start married life the way we mean to go on. You’ll be me wife, an’ I just don’t want you from half-past six or seven at night till eight in the morning, I want you here all the time. I want you here when I come in at dinner-time an’ at tea-time.’

  ‘She’ll give me three shillings a week. It’s not to be sneezed at, it would nearly pay the rent.’

  ‘Look. Look, we’ll manage. A few more games like last night, even if nothing bigger, and I can spit in the eye of old Kean . . . and your master and mistress.’

  Don’t talk like that!’ She was indignant now. ‘Spittin’ in their eye! They’ve been good to me, better than anybody in me life. I’ve been lucky. Why, I must be the best-treated servant in this town, or in any other. She’s kept me in clothes. And don’t forget—’ she was now wagging her head at him— ‘when things were rough a few years ago with their damned strikes and such, she gave me a loaded basket every week-end. And your own belly would have been empty many a time if I hadn’t have brought it. Meat, flour, sugar . . .’

  ‘All right, all right; have you got to be grateful for a little kindness all your life? Anyway, it was nothing to them. The only time that kind of charity has any meaning is when the giver has to do without themselves. She likely throws as much in the midden every week.’

  ‘We haven’t got a midden, as you call it.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  Both their voices were lowering now and in a broken tone she replied, ‘No, I don’t know what you mean. There’s things about you I don’t understand, never have.’

  He didn’t move towards her but turned his head on his shoulder and looked sideways at her for some seconds before saying, ‘You said you loved me.’

  ‘Aye, aye, I did, but you can love somebody and not understand them. I might as well tell you I don’t understand how you’re always taken up so much with cards. It’s a mania with you, and I shouldn’t be surprised that when we’re married you’ll be like the rest of them; the others go out every night to the pubs but you’ll go out to your gamin’.’

  ‘I’ll only go gamin’ when I want money to get you things.’

  ‘That’ll be your excuse, you’ll go gamin’ because you can’t stop gamin’, it’s like something in your blood. Even as far back as when we went gathering rose hips you wanted to bet on how many you could hold in your fist.’

  They were staring at each other now, and he said, ‘You don’t want to come here then?’

  ‘Aw yes, yes. Aw Rory.�
�� She went swiftly towards him and leant against him. Then after a moment she muttered, ‘I want to be where you are, but . . . but at the same time I feel I owe them something. You don’t see them as I do. But . . . but don’t worry, I’ll tell her.’

  He looked at her softly now as he said, ‘It wouldn’t work. And anyway I want me wife to meself, I don’t want her to be like the scum, gutting fish, or going tatie pickin’ to make ends meet. I want to take care of you, I want a home of me own, with bairns and me wife at the fireside.’

  She nodded at him, saying, ‘You’re right, Rory, you’re right,’ while at the same time the disconcerting mental picture of Kathleen Leary flashed across the screen of her mind. Mrs Leary had borne sixteen children and she was worn out, tired and worn out, and she knew that Rory was the kind of man who’d give her sixteen children if he could. Well, that was life, wasn’t it? Yes, but she wasn’t sure if she was going to like that kind of life. She drew herself gently from him now and made for the trap door, saying, ‘I’ll have to get started on some sewing, I haven’t got all that much in me chest.’

  As he took her hand to help her down on to the first step she looked up at him and said, ‘The mistress is goin’ to give me me bed linen. I didn’t tell you, did I?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, she is. And that’ll be something, won’t it?’

  ‘Aye, that’ll be something.’

  As he looked down into her face he stopped himself from adding, ‘She can keep her bloody bed linen, I’ll make enough afore long to smother you in bed linen.’

  4

  Rory didn’t make enough money in a very short time to smother Janie in bed linen. By the third week of the New Year he had managed to acquire only a further eight pounds and this after four Saturday nights’ sittings. And the reason wasn’t because of his bad play or ill luck, it was because he was playing against fiddlers, cheats, a small gang who worked together and stood by each other like the close-knit members of a family.

  Well, he was finished with the Corstorphine Town lot, and he had told little Joe either he got him into a good school or he himself would do a little investigating into No. 3 Plynlimmon Way. He could have told him he had already done some investigating and that the occupier, a Mr Nickle, was a shipowner. Even if not in an ostentatious way, nevertheless he was big enough to be a member of the shipowners’ association, known as the Coal Trade Committee, which had its club and meeting room in a house on the Lawe. Moreover, he was understood to have shares in a number of businesses in the town, including those which dealt not only with the victualling of ships with bread and beef but also in ships’ chandlery. And then there was the tallow factory, and many other smaller businesses. In his favour it could be said that he subscribed generously to such causes as distressed seamen and their families. And at times there were many of these; the bars along the waterfront were not always full, nor the long dance rooms attached to them in which the sailors jigged with the women they picked up.

  Mr Nickle had also been a strong advocate for better sewerage, especially since the outbreak of cholera in ’66, and the smallpox outbreak in 1870. He had helped, too, to bring about the new Scavenging Department under the Borough Engineer. Before this the removal of the filth of the town had been left to contractors.

  Oh, Mr Nickle was a good man, Rory wasn’t saying a thing against him, but Mr Nickle had a failing which was looked at askance by the temperance societies and the respectable members of the community.

  And although Rory himself thought none the less of Mr Nickle, for if the crowned heads could gamble . . . and it was well known that Bertie, the Prince of Wales, was a lad at the game, why not Mr Nickle, and why not Rory Connor, or any working man for that matter? But it was the same injustice here, one law for the rich, another for the poor. Yet these sentiments did not deter him from harassing, or even threatening little Joe, nor did little Joe see any injustice in Mr Connor’s treatment of him. He had a rough-hewn philosophy: there were gents of all grades, there were the high gents, middle gents, and the lower gents. Mr Connor was of the lower gents, but his money was as good as anybody else’s and often he was more generous than the middle gents. The real toffs were open handed, and the waterfront gamblers were free with their money when they had it, but the middle gents were mean, and although Mr Nickle was prominent in the town and lived in one of the best ends he was, to little Joe, a middle gent, in the upper bracket of that section maybe, but still a middle gent. But he was a man who had power, as had those who worked for him, and they could be nasty at times.

  Little Joe was worried for Mr Connor, but apparently Mr Connor wasn’t worried for himself. In a way Joe admired a fellow like Mr Connor; he admired his pluck because it was something he hadn’t much of himself.

  So it was that little Joe spoke to Mr Nickle’s man. Mr Nickle’s man was a kind of valet-cum- butler-cum-doorman, and his wife was Mr Nickle’s housekeeper, and his two daughters were Mr Nickle’s parlour-maid and housemaid respectively. Altogether it was another close-knit family. There was no Mrs Nickle, she had died some years previously.

  Little Joe did not lie about Mr Connor’s position, that is not exactly. What he said was, he was a gent in the property business. Also, that he played a good hand and was very discreet. He had known him for some years and had set him on in schools along the waterfront, and he had added that, as he understood that two of Mr Nickle’s friends had passed away recently, he had stressed the word friends, he wondered if Mr Nickle was looking for a little new blood. One thing he told Mr Nickle’s man he could assure his master of, and that was Mr Connor was no sponger.

  Mr Nickle’s man said he would see what could be done. What he meant was he would look into Mr Connor’s mode of business. He did.

  When next little Joe met Rory all he could say was, ‘I’ve got you set-in for a game in a place in Ocean Road, just near the Workhouse.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll make it the night, Rory?’ Jimmy asked under his breath as he stood near the door watching Rory pull on his overcoat.

  ‘I’ll have a damned good try, I can’t say better. It’s a new place; I’ll have to see how the land lies, won’t I?’

  ‘You’ll find yourself lying under the land if you’re not careful.’

  Rory turned his dark gaze on to Lizzie where she sat at one side of a long mat frame jabbing a steel progger into the stretched hessian. He watched her thrust in a clipping of rag, pull it tightly down from underneath with her left hand, then jab the progger in again before he said, ‘You’d put the kibosh on God, you would.’

  Ruth looked up from where she was sitting at the other side of the frame. In the lamplight her face appeared delicate and sad, and she shook her head at him, it was a gentle movement, before she said, ‘Just take care of yourself that’s all.’

  ‘I’ve always had to, haven’t I?’

  ‘Aw, there speaks the big fellow who brought himself up. Suckled yourself from your own breast you did.’

  Rory now grabbed his hard hat which Jimmy was holding towards him, then wrenching open the door, he went out.

  It was a fine night. The air was sharp, the black sky was high and star-filled. He could even make out the gate because of their brightness, and also with the help of the light from the Learys’ window. They never drew their blinds, the Learys.

  He picked his way carefully down the narrow lane so that he shouldn’t splash his boots. He had also taken the precaution of bringing a piece of rag with him in order to wipe them before he should enter this new place because the houses in King Street and down Ocean Road were mostly decent places.

  The rage that Lizzie always managed to evoke in him had subsided by the time he reached Leam Lane and entered the docks. And he decided that if there was a cab about he’d take a lift. But then it wasn’t very likely there’d be one around the docks, unless it was an empty one coming back from some place.

  He didn’t find a cab, so he had to walk all the way down to Ocean Road, a good couple of miles.
r />   Although the streets were full of people and the roads still packed with traffic, but mostly flat carts, drays and barrows now, he kept to the main thoroughfare because the bairns seemed to go mad on a Saturday night up the side streets, and in some parts lower down in the town one of their Saturday night games was to see which of them could knock your hat off with a handful of clarts. The devil’s own imps some of them were. Once he would have laughed at their antics, but not since the time he’d had a dead kitten slapped across his face.

  The market place was like a beehive; the stalls illuminated with naphtha flares held every description of food, household goods, and clothing; the latter mostly second, third and fourth hand. The smells were mixed and pungent, and mostly strong, especially those emanating from the fish and meat stalls.

  In King Street the gas lamps were ablaze. People stood under them in groups, while others gazed into the shop windows. Saturday night was a popular night for window-gazing and there was no hurry to buy even if you wanted to; the supplies never ran out and most of the shops were open until ten o’clock, some later.

  He stopped within a few yards of his destination. He had come down here last night to make sure of the number. It was a corner house, not all that prosperous looking but not seedy. He stooped and rubbed his boots vigorously with the rag, then threw it into the gutter, after which he straightened his coat, tilted his hard hat slightly to the side, pulled at the false starched cuffs that were pinned to the ends of his blue-striped flannelette shirt sleeves, then, following little Joe’s directions, he went round the corner, down some area steps, and knocked on the door.

  He was surprised when it was opened by a maid, a maid of all work by the look of her, but nevertheless a maid.

  ‘Aye?’ She peered up at him in the fluttering light from a naked gas jet attached to a bracket sticking out from the wall opposite the door, and in answer he said what Joe had told him to say. ‘Me name’s Connor. Little Joe sent me.’

  ‘Oh aye. Come in.’