The Gambling Man

He lifted the iron knocker and rapped on the paint-cracked knobless door. There was a noise of children either fighting or playing coming from behind it, and after a few minutes it was opened and three pairs of eyes from three filthy faces peered up at him. All had running noses, all had scabs around their mouths and styes on their eyes. The eldest, about five, said in the voice of an adult, ‘Aw, the rent man.’ Then scrambling away through the room with the others following him, he shouted, ‘The rent man, Ma! ’Tis the rent man, Ma!’

‘Tell the bugger I’m not in.’

The woman’s voice came clearly to Rory and when the child came back and, looking up at him, said, ‘She’s not in,’ Rory looked down on the child and as if addressing an adult said, Tell her the bugger wants the rent, and somethin’ off the back, nr else it’s the bums Monday.’

The child gazed at him for a moment longer before once more scrambling away through the room, and when his thin high voice came back to him, saying, ‘He says, the bugger wants the rent,’ Rory closed his eyes, bowed his head and pressed his hand over his mouth, knowing that it would be fatal to let a smile appear on his face with the two pairs of eyes surveying him. If he once cracked a smile in this street he’d never get a penny.

It was almost three minutes later when the woman stood before him. She had a black shawl crossed over her sagging breasts, the ends were tucked into a filthy ragged skirt, and in a whining tone and a smile widening her flat face she exclaimed, ‘Aw begod! it’s vou, Mr Connor. Is it the rent you’re after? Well now. Well now. You know it’s near Christmas it is, and you know what Christmas is for money. Chews it, it does, chews it. An’ look at the bairns. There’s not a stitch to their arses an’ himself been out of work these last three weeks.’

Without seeming to move a muscle of his face Rory said, ‘He’s in the rolling mills and never lost a day this six months, I’ve checked. You’re ten weeks in arrears not countin’ the day. Give me five shillings and I’ll say nothing more ’til next week when I want the same and every week after that until you get your book clear. If not, I go to Palmer’s and he’ll get the push.’

It was an idle threat, yet she half believed him because rent men had power, rent men were rich; rent men were a different species, not really human.

They stared at each other. Then the smile sliding from her face, she turned abruptly from him and went through the room, shouting, ‘You Willy! You Willy!’ And the eldest child followed her, to return a moment later with two half-crowns and the rent book.

Rory took the money, signed the book, marked it in his own hard-backed pocket ledger, then went on to the next house. Here he pushed open the bottom door and called up the dark well of the staircase, ‘Rent!’ and after a moment a man’s voice came back to him shouting, ‘Fetch it up.’

His nose wrinkled in distaste. If he had a penny for every time that worn-out quip had been thrown at him he considered he’d be able to buy a house of his own. After a moment of silence he again shouted, ‘Rent, or it’s the bums Monday.’

The moleskin-trousered bulky figure appeared on the stairhead and after throwing the rent book and a half-crown down the stairs he yelled, ‘You know what you and the bloody bums can do, don’t you?’ then as Rory picked up the money and the book and entered in the amount the man proceeded to elaborate on what he and the bums could do.

Without uttering a word now Rory threw the book on to the bottom stair, looked up at the man still standing on the landing, then turned about and went towards the end of the street.

There was no answer whatever from the next three doors he knocked on, but he had scarcely raised the knocker on the fourth when it was opened and Mrs Fawcett stood there, her rent book in one hand, the half-crown extended in the other, and without any greeting she began, ‘You won’t get any change out of them lot.’ She nodded to one side of her. ‘Nor to this one next door.’ Her head moved the other way. ‘Off to Shields they are, the lot of them, to the market and they won’t come back with a penny, not if I know them. Lazy Irish scum. And I’ll tell you somethin’.’ She leant her peevish face towards him. ‘Her, Flaherty, she’s got her front room packed with beds, and lettin’ them out by the shift; as one lot staggers out another lot drops in. Great Irish navvies with not a drop on their faces from Monday mornin’ till Saturda’ night, but Sunday, oh, that’s different, away to Mass they are, and straight out and into the bars. Disgrace!’

Rory closed her rent book, handed it to her, looked at her straight in the eye, then turned and walked away. He did not bother knocking at the door next to hers for he believed what she had said, they were all away on a spending spree. It was odd, she was the only good payer in the street; she’d always had a clear rent book; but of the lot of them, scum Irish they might be, he preferred any one of them to Mrs Fawcett.