The Gambling Man

Opening the door, he staggered in and dropped into a chair without taking off his sodden coat, and he made no protest when Lizzie tugged his boots from his feet while Ruth loosened his scarf and coat and held him up while she pulled them from him. He had no need to pretend tonight that he was ill, at least physically, for the first day’s work had taken it out of him, and the trail back from Westoe had been the last straw.

When later in the evening Jimmy, by way of comfort, whispered to him, ‘When we go to the yard it’ll be easier for you, you could cut from the office to the boatyard in five minutes,’ he nodded at him while at the same time thinking, not without scorn, The boatyard! With thirty-five pounds he could have got himself a mortgage on a decent house. Slowly it came to him the reason why he had allowed himself to become saddled with the boatyard. It wasn’t only because he wanted to kill two birds with one stone: marry Janie and give Jimmy something of his own to live and work for; it was because he wanted to get away from here, from the kitchen; and now from their concern for his mental state, which must be bad, so they thought, when he still wouldn’t go and see his best friend, and him in prison.

Only last night when he said good-bye to Janie the rooms over the boatyard had appeared to him like a haven. And later, as he lay awake staring into the blackness listening to Jimmy’s untroubled breathing, he had thought, Once we get there, once I’m married, I’ll see it all differently. Then like a child and with no semblance of Rory Connor, he had buried his face in the pillow and cried from deep within him, ‘I’ll make it up to him when he comes out. I’ll make him understand. He’ll see I could do nothing about it at the time ’cos I was too bad. He’ll understand. Being John George, he’ll understand. And I’ll make it up to him, I will. I will.’

But now, after his visit to Birchingham House, he was seeing the boat house for what it was, a tumbledown riverside shack, and he thought, I must have been mad to pay thirty-five pounds for the goodwill of that. Look where it’s landed me. And the gate shut once again on his thinking as an inner voice said, ‘Aye; and John George.’

2

They were married on the Saturday after Easter. It was a quiet affair in that they hadn’t a big ceilidh. They went by brake to the Catholic church in Jarrow, together with Ruth, Paddy, Lizzie, Jimmy, and Bill Waggett. A great deal of tact and persuasion had to be used on Gran Waggett in order that she should stay behind. Who was going to help Kathleen Leary with the tables? And anyway, Kathleen being who she was needed somebody to direct her, and who better than Gran herself?

Janie’s wedding finery was plain but good, for her flounced grey coat had once belonged to her mistress, as had also the blue flowered cotton dress she wore underneath. Her blue straw hat she had bought herself, and her new brown buttoned boots too.

She was trembling as she knelt at the altar rails, but then the church was icy cold and the priest himself looked blue in the face and weary into the bargain. He mumbled the questions: Wilt thou have this man? Wilt thou have this woman? And they in turn mumbled back.

After they had signed their names and Rory had kissed her in front of them all they left the church and got into the brake again, which was now surrounded by a crowd of screaming children shouting ‘Hoy a ha’penny oot! Hoy a ha’penny oot!’

They had come prepared with ha’pennies. Ruth and Lizzie and Jimmy threw them out from both sides of the brake; but they were soon finished and when there were no more forthcoming the shouts that followed them now were, ‘Shabby weddin’ . . . shabby weddin’,’ and then the concerted chorus of:

Fleas in yer blankets,
No lid on your netty,
To the poor house you’re headin’,
Shabby weddin’, shabby weddin’.

The fathers laughed and Ruth clicked her tongue and Lizzie said, ‘If I was out there I’d skite the hunger off them. By God! I would.’ But Janie and Rory just smiled, and Jimmy, sitting silently at the top end of the brake, his hands dangling between his knees, looked at them, and part of him was happy, and part of him, a deep hidden part, was aching.

Out of decency Jimmy did not immediately go down to the yard. The young married couple were to have the place to themselves until Monday, and on Monday morning the new pattern of life was to begin, for Janie had had her way and was continuing to go daily to the Buckhams’.