The Gambling Man

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?

He was trapped. Standing before him was his wife, his legal wife, and he’d have to tell Charlotte that his wife had come back and that she herself had no claim to him and the child in her couldn’t take his name. He couldn’t do it. What was more, he wouldn’t do it. He heard his voice saying now, clearly and firmly, ‘I can’t tell her.’

‘You what!’

‘I said I can’t tell her, she’s going to have a ch . . . bairn.’ He had almost said child, so much had even his vocabulary changed.