The Gambling Man

Outside the gates they didn’t look at each other or speak, and when Lizzie, after crossing the road, leaned against the wall of a cottage and buried her face in her hands Janie, crying again, put her arms about her and having turned her from the wall, led her along the street and into the town. And still neither of them spoke.

PART TWO Miss Kean

1

Rory stood before the desk and looked down at Charlotte Kean and said, ‘I’m sorry to hear about your father.’

‘It’s a severe chill, but he’ll soon be about again. As I told you, you are to take Armstrong’s place and you will naturally receive the same wage as he was getting . . . You don’t look fully recovered yourself, Mr Connor. Are you feeling quite well?’

‘Yes. Yes, miss, I’m quite all right.’

‘I think you had better sit down.’ She pointed with an imperious finger towards a chair, and he looked at her in surprise for a moment before taking the seat and muttering, ‘Thank you.’

‘As I told you, we took on a new man.’

He noticed that she said ‘we’ as if she, too, were running the business.

‘He was the best of those who applied; with so many people out of work in the town you would have thought there would have been a better selection. If it had been for the working-class trades I suppose we would have been swamped.’

He was surprised to know that rent collecting didn’t come under the heading of working-class trade, yet on the other hand he knew that if they had been living in the town, in either Tyne Dock or Shields, he wouldn’t have been able to hob-nob with neighbours such as the Learys or the Waggetts; the distinction between the white collar and the muffler was sharply defined in the towns.

‘My father suggests that you take over the Shields area completely. Mr Taylor can do the Jarrow district, particularly the Saturday morning collection.’ She smiled thinly at him now. ‘As he says, it’s a shame to waste a good man there . . . He has a high opinion of your expertise, Mr Connor.’

Well, this was news to him. Shock upon shock. If things had been different he would have been roaring inside, and later he would have told John George and . . . Like a steel trap a shutter came down on his thinking and he forced himself to say, ‘That’s very nice to know, miss.’

She was still smiling at him, and as he looked at her he thought, as Lizzie had said, God! but she’s plain. It didn’t seem fair somehow that a woman looking like her should have been given all the chances. Education, money, the lot. Now if Janie had been to a fine school, and could have afforded to dress like this one did, well, there would’ve been no one to touch her.

As he stared across the desk at the bowed head and the thin moving hand—she was writing out his district—he commented to himself that everything she had on matched, from her fancy hat that was a dull red colour to the stiff ribboned bow on the neck of her dress. Her green coat was open and showed a woollen dress that took its tone from the hat, but had a row of green buttons down to her waist. He could see the bustle of the dress pushing out the deep pleats of the coat. It took money to dress in colours and style like that. The old man seemingly didn’t keep her short of cash.

When she rose to her feet he stood up, and when she came round the desk she said, ‘I can leave everything in your hands then, Mr Connor?’ She handed him a sheet of paper.

‘Yes, miss.’

‘I’ve got to go now. Mr Taylor should be in at any moment.’ She turned the face of the fob watch that was pinned to the breast of her dress and looked at it. ‘It isn’t quite nine yet, make yourself known to him. And this evening, and until my father is fully recovered, I would like you to bring the takings to the house. You know where it is?’

‘Yes, I know where it is.’

Yes, he knew where it was. He had caught a glimpse of it from the gates. He knew that it had been occupied by Kean’s father and his grandfather, but that’s all he knew about it, for he had never been asked to call there on any pretext. But what he did know was that all the Keans had been men who had made money and that the present one was a bully. More than once, when he had stood in this office and been spoken to like a dog, he’d had the desire to ram his fist into his employer’s podgy face.

‘Good morning then, Mr Connor.’

‘Good morning, miss.’

He went before her and opened the outer door, then stood for a second watching her walking down the alley towards the street. She carried herself as straight as a soldier; her step was more of a march than a walk, and she swung her arms; she didn’t walk at all like women in her position usually did, or should.