‘What! be in the know afore you can get into a gamblin’ school?’ Her voice was scornful. ‘Why, you’ve been up at Boldon Colliery where they have schools . . .’
‘Aye in the back yards an’ in the wash-houses. I know all about Boldon Colliery and the games there, hut they’re tin pot compared to what I’m after. The places I mean are where you start with a pound, not with a penny hoping to win a tanner. Oh, aye, I know, there’s times when there’s been ten pounds in a kitty, but them times are few and far between I’m telling you. No, what I’m after is getting set on in a real school, but it’s difficult because of the polis, they’re always on the look out—it’s a tricky business even for the back-laners. That’s funny,’ he laughed, ‘a tricky business, but it is. Remember what Jimmy said the night about notices in the works? They try everything to catch you out: spies, plain-clothes bobbies, touts. It’s odd, you know; they don’t run you in for drinking, but you touch a card or flick a coin and you’re for it . . . Anyway, as I said, I’ve got something in me napper, and if it works out . . .’
‘Be careful, Rory. I get worried about your gamin’. Even years ago when you used to play chucks and always won, I used to wonder how you did it. And it used to worry me; I mean ’cos you always won.’
‘I don’t always win now.’
‘You do pretty often, even if it’s only me da’s monkey nuts.’
They both made small audible sounds, then moved aside to let a couple of men pass. And now she said, ‘I’ll have to be goin’, John George’ll get soaking wet . . . Eeh! I always feel sorry for John George.’
‘Your pity’s wasted, he’s too soft to clag holes with, I’m always telling him. It’s right what she said’—he jerked his head—’those two old leeches suck him dry. He gets two shillings a week more than me and yet look at him, you’d think he got his togs from Paddy’s market. And he might as well for he picks them up from the second- hand stalls. And this lass he’s after . . . he would pick on a ranter, wouldn’t he?’
‘Well, he’s not a Catholic.’
‘No, I know he’s not. He’s not anything in that line, but he goes and takes up with one from the narrowest end of the Nonconformists, Baptist-cum- Methodist-cum . . .’
‘What’s she like?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Doesn’t he talk about her at all?’
‘Oh, he never stops talkin’ about her. By the sound of it she should be a nun.’
‘Oh Rory!’
‘She should, she’s so bloomin’ good by all his accounts. She’s been unpaid housekeeper to a sick mother, her dad, two sisters and a brother since she was ten. And now she’s twenty, and she daresn’t move across the door for fear of her old man. He even escorts his other two lasses to work. They’re in a chemist’s shop and he’s there when it closes to fetch them home.’
‘What is he?’
‘He’s got a little tailor’s business, so I understand. But look, forget about John George for a minute. Come here.’ Once again they were close, and when finally they parted he said, ‘Remember what I said. Think on it and we’ll settle it next Sunday, eh?’
‘Yes, Rory.’ Her voice was soft. Tm ready anytime you are, I’ve been ready for a long time. Oh, a long time . . . I want a home of me own . . .’
He took her face gently between his hands and as gently kissed her, and she, after staring at him for a moment, turned swiftly and ran from under the arch and over the snow-covered flags until she came to John George, who was standing pressed tight against the dock wall. She did not speak to him and together they turned and hurried on, past a line of bars arrayed on the opposite side of the road, and so into Eldon Street.
Her throat was full. It was strange but she always wanted to cry when Rory was tender with her. Generally, there was a fierceness about his love-making that frightened her at times, it was when he was tender that she loved him best.
‘Daft of him wanting to come all this way.’
‘Yes, it was, John George.’
‘Of course I was just thinking that if I hadn’t have come along he would have taken you all the way, and that, after all, was what he wanted. I’m blind about some things some times.’
She was kind enough to say, ‘Not you, John George,’ for she had thought it a bit short-sighted of him to accompany them in the first place, and she added, ‘Don’t worry. And you know what? We’re goin’ to settle something next Sunday.’
‘You are? Oh, I’m glad, Janie. I’m glad. I’ve thought for a long time he should have a place of his own ’cos he doesn’t seem quite happy back there. And yet I can’t understand it for they’re a good family, all of them, and I like nothing better than being among them.’
‘Oh! What makes you think that? What makes you think he’s not happy at home, John George?’
‘Well, he’s surly like at times. And I get vexed inside when I hear the way he speaks to Lizzie ’cos she’s a nice body, isn’t she . . . Lizzie? I like her . . . motherly, comfortable. Yet . . . yet at times he treats her like dirt. And I can’t understand it, ’cos he’s not like that outside, I mean when he’s collecting; he’s civility’s own self, and all the women like him. You know that, don’t you? All the women like him, ’cos he’s got a way with him. But the way he speaks to Lizzie . . .’
Janie paused in her walk and, putting her hand on John George’s arm, she drew him to a stop. Then flicking the falling snow away from her eyes, she asked quietly, Don’t you know why he goes on at Lizzie like that?’
‘No.’
‘He’s never told you?’
‘No.’
‘You mean he’s never told you an’ you’ve been workin’ with him and coming up to the house for . . . how many years?’
‘Four and over.’
‘Eeh! I can’t believe it. I thought you knew.’
‘Knew what?’
‘Well, that . . . that Lizzie, she’s . . . she’s his mother.’
‘
‘It’s true. It’s true. Come on, don’t let us stand here, we’ll be soaked.’
‘What . . . what about Mrs Connor? I mean . . . his mother . . . I mean.’
‘It’s all very simple, John George, when you know the ins and outs of it. You see they were married, Mr and Mrs Connor for six years an’ there was no sign of any bairn. Then Mr Connor gets a letter from Ireland from a half- cousin he had never seen. Her name was Lizzie O’Dowd. Her ma and da had died— as far as I can gather from starvation. It was one of those times when the taties went bad, you know, and this lass was left with nobody, and she asked if she could come over here and would he find her a job. Everybody seemed to be comin’ to England, particularly to Jarrow. They were leaving Ireland in boatloads. So what does Mr Connor do but say come right over. By the way, she had got the priest to write ’cos she couldn’t write a scribe and Mr Connor went to a fellow in Jarrow who made a sort of livin’ it writing letters an’ sent her the answer. It was this by the way, Mr Connor having to go an’ get this letter written, that later made him see to it that Rory could read and write. Anyway, Lizzie O’Dowd arrives at the cottage. She’s seventeen an’ bonny, although you mightn’t think it by the look of her now. But I’m goin’ by what me grannie told me. And what’s more she was full of life and gay like. Anyway, the long and the short of it is that she and Mr Connor . . . Well, I don’t need to tell you any more, do I? And so Rory came about. But this is the funny part about it. Almost a year later Ruth had her first bairn. That was Nellie. And then she has another. That was Jimmy. Would you believe it? After nothing for seven years! Eeh! it was odd. And, of course, we were all brought up as one family. You could say the three families in the row were all dragged up together.’
As she laughed John George said solemnly, ‘You surprise me, Janie. It’s quite a gliff.’
‘But you don’t think any the worse of Lizzie, do you?’
‘Me think any the worse of . . . ? Don’t be daft. Of course I don’t. But at the same time I’m back where I started for I understand less now than I did afore, Rory speaking to her like that and her his mother.’
‘But he didn’t always know that she was his mother. It was funny that.’ She was silent for a moment, before going on, There was us, all the squad of the Learys, me da, me ma, and me grannie. Well, you know me grannie, her tongue would clip clouts. But nobody, not one of us, ever hinted to him that Mrs Connor wasn’t his mother, it
