The Gambling Man

As the roars of laughter filled the kitchen Bill Waggett turned towards his mother and yelled, ‘That’s a fine thing to say; you should be ashamed of yersel.’ He now looked towards Ruth as if apologizing, but she was being forced to smile, and Ruth rarely smiled or laughed at ribaldry.

‘Remember the day he was born.’ Old Mrs Waggett had got their attention now. ‘Me mother an’ me grannie pulled him out, an’ I remember me grannie’s very words. “Like a Saturday night rabbit he is,” she said. You know’—she turned towards Janie—’when the last of the rabbits are left in the market, all weary skin an’ bone? “You’ll never rear him,” she said; “he’ll go along with the other five.” But I never had no luck, he didn’t.’

She now glanced in impish affection towards her son, where he was sitting, his head bowed, moving it slowly from side to side. The movement had a despairing finality about it. His mother had started and it would take some kind of an event to stop her, especially when as now she had the ears of everyone in the room. He could never understand why people liked listening to her.

‘And it was me own mother who looked at him lying across her hands an’ said, “I don’t think you need worry about the press gang ever chasin’ him, Nancy.” An’ you know somethin’? The press gang nearly got me dad once. Around seventeen ninety it was. I’m not sure of the year, one, two or three, but I do know that all the lads of the Tyne, the sailors like, put their heads together; they were havin’ no more of it. They, ran the press gang out of the town, North Shields that is, not this side. Then in come the regiment. Barricaded the town, they did, an’ forced the lads on board the ships. But me dad managed to get over to this side of the water; he said himself he never knew how.’

‘He walked on it.’

There were loud guffaws of laughter now and Gran cried back at her son, ‘Aye, an’ he could have done that an’ all, for at one time you could walk across the river. Oh aye, they once made a bridge with boats, me mother said, and laid planks over ’em, and a whole regiment passed over. The river’s changed.’ She nodded from one to the other. ‘You know, me grannie once told me they caught so much salmon on the Tyne that it was sold at a farthin’ a pound. It was, it was. Can you believe that? A farthin’ a pound!’

‘Yes, yes, Gran.’ All except her son were nodding at her.

‘And I don’t need to go as far back as me grannie’s or even me mother’s time to remember the great shoals of fish that were caught in these waters. An’ there were nowt but keels and sailin’ ships takin’ the coal away then. None of your Palmer’s iron boats. What did you say, our Bill?’ She frowned towards her son. ‘ “Oh my God!” that’s what you said. Well, I’m glad you think of Him as yours.’

She joined in the titter that now went round the room. Then nodding her head from one to the other, she went on, ‘Talkin’ of coal. I can remember as far back as when Simon Temple opened his pit at Jarrow. I was only eight at the time but by! I remember that do. The militia was marching, the bands playing, an’ when he got to Shields market the lads pulled the horses from his carriage and drew him themselves. His sons were with him and his old dad. They pulled them all the way to the Don Bridge, where the gentlemen of Jarrow met him. And that was the day they laid the stone for the school for the bairns of his workmen. By! I remember it as if it was yesterday. Simon Temple.’ She shook her head and lapsed for a moment into the memory of one of the rare days of jollification in her childhood.

In the pause that followed Collum Leary put in, ‘Simon Temple. Aye, an’ all the bloody coal owners. Grand lads, grand fellows, great gentlemen. Oh aye, especially when they’re shedding crocodile tears over the dead. Ninety-nine men and lads lost in the Fellon pit and over twenty at Harrington . . . .’

‘That was a long time ago, Collum.’ Grannie Waggett thrust her chin out at the small man who had usurped her position of storyteller and he turned on her, no longer jocular as he cried, ‘Don’t be daft, Gran. It’s happenin’ almost every month in one pit or t’other. Don’t be daft, woman.’

‘Leave be. Leave be.’ It was the first time Kathleen Leary had spoken and her husband looked at her as he repeated, ‘Leave be, leave be, you say. Bloody coal owners!’

The mood of the kitchen had changed as it nearly always did when the subject of work was brought up, whether it was Paddy Connor talking of the steel works or Bill Waggett of the conditions in the docks, or Collum Leary of the soul destroying work in the mines; and nearly always it was on a Sunday when the atmosphere would become charged with bitterness because nearly always on a Sunday Grannie Waggett was present.

‘Come on, Gran.’ Janie had taken hold of her grandmother’s arm.

‘What! What you after? Leave me be.’

‘It’s time we were goin’ in.’ Janie nodded towards the wall. ‘An’ I’ll soon be making for the road.’