Catherine Cookson - The Gambling Man

He had once sworn eternal love for Janie, but he knew now that that had been the outcome of a boy’s love, the outcome of use, the outcome of growing up together, seeing no one beyond her . . .

She couldn’t be back. She couldn’t. No! No! Life couldn’t play him a trick like that. He had gone to the Justice before he married Charlotte and the Justice had told him it was all right to marry again. “Drowned, presumed dead,” was what he had said. And she was dead. She had been dead to him for nearly two years now, and he didn’t want her resurrected.

God Almighty! What was he saying? What was he thinking? He’d go mad.

‘Rory. Rory.’ Jimmy was sitting by his side now, shaking his arm. ‘Are you all right? I . . . I knew it’d give you a giiff; she . . . she scared me out of me wits. What are you gona do?’

‘What?’

‘I said what are you gona do?’

He shook his head. What was he going to do?

‘She’s back in the boathouse; she wants to see you.’

He stared dumbly at Jimmy for a time, then like someone drunk he leant forward and tapped on the roof of the carriage with his silver-mounted walking stick, and lowering the window again, he leant out and said, ‘Well get off here, Stoddard; I . . . I’ve a little business to attend to.’

A few minutes later Stoddard was opening the carriage door and pulling down the step, and when they alighted he said, ‘Twelve o’clock, sir?’

‘What? Oh. Oh yes; yes, thank you.’

‘Good night, sir.’

‘Good . . . Good night, Stoddard.’ He walked away, Jimmy by his side, but when the carriage had disappeared into the darkness he stopped under a street lamp and, peering down at Jimmy, said, ‘What, in the name of God, am I going to do in a case like this?’

‘I . . . I don’t know, Rory.’

They walked on again, automatically taking the direction towards the river and the boatyard, and they didn’t stop until they had actually entered the yard, and then Rory, standing still, looked up at the lighted window, then down on Jimmy, before turning about and walking towards the end of the jetty. And there he gripped the rail and leant over it and stared down into the dark, murky water.

Jimmy approached him slowly and stood by his side for a moment before saying, ‘You’ve got to get it over, man.’

Rory now pressed a finger and thumb on his eyeballs as if trying to blot out the nightmare. His whole being was in a state of panic. He knew he should be rushing up those steps back there, bursting open the door and crying, ‘Janie! Janie!’ but all he wanted to do was to turn and run back through the town and into Westoe and up that private road into his house, his house , and cry, ‘Charlotte! Charlotte!’

‘Come on, man.’

At the touch of Jimmy’s hand he turned about and went across the yard and up the steps. Jimmy had been behind him, but it was he who had to come to the fore and opened the door. Then Rory stepped into the room.

The woman was standing by the table. The lamp­light was full on her. She was no more like the Janie he remembered than he himself was like Jimmy there. His heart leapt at the thought that it was a trick. Somebody imagined they were on to something and were codding him. They had heard he was in the money. He cast a quick glance in Jimmy’s direction as if to say, How could you be taken in? before moving slowly up the room towards the woman. When he was within a yard of her he stopped and the hope that had risen in him flowed away like liquid from a broken cask for they were Janie’s eyes he was looking into. They were the only recognizable things about her, her eyes. As Jimmy had said, her skin was like that of an Arab and her hair was the colour of driven snow, and curly, close-cropped, curly.

Janie, in her turn, was looking at him in much the same way, for he was no more the Rory that she had known than she was the Janie he had known. Before her stood a well-dressed gentleman, better dressed in fact than she had ever seen the master, for this man was stylish with it; even his face was different, even his skin was different, smooth, clean-shaven, showing no blue trace of stubble about his chin and cheeks and upper lip.

Her heart hardened further at the sight of him and at the fact that he didn’t put out a hand to touch her.

‘Janie.’

Aye, it’s me. And you’re over the moon to . . . to see me.’ There was a break in the last words.

‘I thought . . . we all thought . . .’

‘Aye, I know what you thought, but . . . but it isn’t all that long, it isn’t two years. You couldn’t wait, could you? But then you’re a gamblin’ man, you couldn’t miss a chance not even on a long shot.’

He bowed his head and covered his eyes with his hand, muttering now, ‘What can I say?’

‘I don’t know, but knowin’ you, you’ll have some excuse. Anyway, it’s paid off, hasn’t it? You always said you’d play your cards right one day.’ She turned her back on him and walked to the end of the table and sat down.

He now drew his hand down over his face, stretching the skin, and he looked at her sitting staring at him accusingly. Jimmy had said she had changed, and she had, and in all ways. She looked like some peasant woman who had lived in the wilds all her life. The dark skirt she was wearing was similar to that worn by the fishwives, only it looked as if she had never stepped out of it for years. Her blouse was of a coarse striped material and on her feet she had clogs. Why, she had never worn clogs even when she was a child and things were pretty tight. Her boots then, like his own, had been cobbled until they were nothing but patches, but she had never worn clogs.

Aw, poor Janie . . . Poor all of them . . . Poor Charlotte. Oh my God! Charlotte.

‘I’m sorry I came back.’ Her voice was high now. ‘I’ve upset your nice little life, haven’t I? But I am back, and alive, so what you going to do about it? You’ll have to tell her, won’t you? Your Miss Kean . . . My God! You marryin’ her of all people! Her ! But then you’d do anything to make money, wouldn’t you?’

‘I didn’t marry her for . . .’ The words sprang out of his mouth of their own volition and he clenched his teeth and bowed his head, while he was aware that she had risen to her feet again.

Now she was nodding at him, her head swinging like that of a golliwog up and down, up and down, before she said, ‘Well, well! This is something to know. You didn’t marry her for her money. Huh! You’re tellin’ me you didn’t marry her for her money. So you married her because you wanted her? You wanted her , that lanky string of water, her that you used to make fun of?’

‘ Shut up ! My God! it’s as Jimmy said, you’re different, you’re changed. And yet not all that. No, not all that. Looking back, you had a hard streak in you; I sensed it years ago. And aye, it’s true what I said, I . . . I didn’t marry her for her money, but it’s also true that I didn’t marry her ’cos . . . ’cos I was in love with her.’ He swallowed deeply and turned his head to the side and, his voice a mutter now, he said, ‘She was lonely. I was lonely. That’s . . . that’s how it was.’

‘And how is it now?’

He couldn’t answer because it was wonderful now, or at least it had been.

‘You can’t say, can you? My God, it’s a pity I didn’t die. Aye, that’s what you’re thinkin’, isn’t it? Eeh! I wouldn’t have believed it. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t.’ She was holding her head in her hands now, her body rocking. Then of a sudden she stopped and glared at him as she said, ‘Well, she’ll have to be told, won’t she? She’ll have to be told that you can have only one wife.’

As he stared back at her he was repeating her words, ‘I wouldn’t have believed it,’ for he couldn’t believe what he was recognizing at this moment, that it could be possible for a man to change in such a short time as two years and look at a woman he had once loved and say to himself, ‘Yes, only one wife, and it’s not going to be you, not if I can help it’—What was he thinking? What was he thinking?