The Gambling Man

He didn’t see his reflection until he reached home. When they helped him over the step he made straight for the mantelpiece. Although Ruth tried to check him he thrust her gently aside then leant forward and looked at his face in the oblong mottled mirror. His nose was still straight but his eyes looked as if they were lying in pockets of mouldy fat. Almost two inches of his hair had been shaved off close to the scalp above his left ear and a zig-zag scar ran down to just in front of the ear itself.

‘Your face’ll be all right, don’t worry.’

He turned and looked at Ruth but said nothing, and she went on, ‘The dess-bed’s ready for you, you can’t do the ladder yet. We’ll sleep upstairs.’

He said slowly now, like an old man might, ‘I’ll manage the ladder.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s all arranged. Don’t worry. Now come on, sit yourself down.’ She led him towards the high-backed wooden chair, and he found he was glad to sit down, for his legs were giving way beneath him.

He said again, ‘I’ll make the ladder,’ and as he spoke he watched Lizzie go into the scullery. It was as if she could read his mind; he didn’t want to lie in the same room with her, although she lay in the box bed behind the curtains. He couldn’t help his feelings towards her. He knew that she had been good to him over the past weeks, trudging down every day to the hospital, and he hadn’t given her a kind word, not even when he could speak he hadn’t given her a kind word. It was odd but he couldn’t forgive her for depriving him of the woman he thought to be his mother. But what odds, what odds where he slept; wherever he slept his mind would be with him, and his mind was giving him hell. They thought he wasn’t capable of thinking straight yet, and he wasn’t going to enlighten them because he would need to have some excuse for his future actions.

Nobody had mentioned John George to him, not one of them had spoken his name, but the fact that he had never been near him spoke for them. Something had happened to him and he had a good idea what it was; in fact, he was certain of what it was. And he also knew that he himself wasn’t going to do anything about it. He couldn’t. God! he just couldn’t.

‘Here, drink that up.’ Lizzie was handing him a cup of tea, which he took from her hand without looking at her and said, ‘Ta.’

It was good of old Kean,’ she said, ‘to send a cab for you. He can’t be as black as he’s painted. And his daughter comin’ to the hospital. God, but she’s plain that one, stylish but plain. Anyway, he must value you.’

‘Huh!’ Even the jerking of his head was a painful action, which caused him to put his hand on his neck and move his head from side to side, while Lizzie concluded, ‘Aye well, you know him better than me, but I would say deeds speak for themselves.’

When Lizzie took his empty cup from him and went to refill it, Ruth, poking the fire, said, ‘I’ll have to start a bakin’,’ and she turned and glanced towards him. ‘It’s good to have you home again, lad. We can get down to normal now.’

He nodded his head and smiled weakly at her but didn’t speak. It was odd. Over the past weeks he had longed to be home, away from the cold painted walls and clinical cleanliness of the hospital, but looking about him now, the kitchen, which had always appeared large, for it was made up of two rooms knocked into one, seemed small, cluttered and shabby. He hadn’t thought of it before as shabby, he hadn’t thought of a lot of things before. He hadn’t thought he was cowardly before. Afraid, aye, but not cowardly. But deep in his heart now he knew he was, both cowardly and afraid.

He had always been afraid of enclosed spaces. He supposed that was why he left doors open; and why he had jumped at the collecting job, because he’d be working outside most of the time in the open. He had always been terrified by being shut in. He could take his mind back to the incident that must have created the fear. The Learys lads next door were always full of devilment, and having dragged a coffin-like box they had found floating on the Jarrow slacks all the way down the East Jarrow road and up the Simonside bank, they had to find a use for it before breaking it up for the fire, so the older ones had chased the young ones, and it was himself they had caught, and they had put him in the box and nailed the lid on. At first he had screamed, then become so petrified that his voice had frozen inside him. When they shouted at him from the outside he had been incapable of answering; then, fearful of what they had done, they fumbled in their efforts to wrench the heavy lid off.