Catherine Cookson - The Gambling Man

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.’

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.