A Gambler Born and Bred 4

I tried my first cigarette and became a fan of Embassies. Menthol was like breathing thin air through bubblegum.

My friend from school, Paul, had an alcoholic mother who smoked Embassy and we’d go and buy her cigarettes and vodka. She drank so much that she never noticed a few missing from the pack after we’d opened the pack and rearranged them to look like twenty.

Paul’s Dad had died in an industrial fire. The proceeds of his insurance claim were enough for his Mum to kill herself slowly on a daily basis for a good while, which she did gladly in front of us.

I discovered catapults that year and always had one in my back pocket for smashing windows.
If we were lucky, Paul’s Mum would give us money for cleaning her car or clearing up after her.
We also did Bob a Jobs as a dynamic team, offering to cut lawns and hedges or clean cars inside and out. We had our own equipment and gave a good impression to get work, cutting a deal from the outset and doing as quick a job as possible. By this time, I’d given up stealing from my Bob a Jobs because it would only be a matter of time before I’d be found out.
Honest Bob a Jobs could feed my gambling habit, along with dips into Mum’s faithful purse and a small allowance that I had engineered from Dad by way of my own post office account.

Paul didn’t like to gamble. He liked bikes, and spent most of his earnings on accessories for his Chopper.

I couldn’t even bring myself to buy a puncture-repair kit. Gambling sucked literally everything I worked for. If I worked for two days, my money would be gone in two hours. I took it as a given that it had to go that way, much as a young prostitute would be forced to give up her own sense of innocence for heroin.

Gambling was like a pact with the devil; everything had to go the way of gambling and nothing could be left. Not one penny. That would be evidence. In shame, there can be no evidence. All must be lost to feel true shame.

When Paul and I had no money and couldn’t be bothered to Bob a Job, we’d find pleasure in hacking up a green on the golf course, vandalising a building site or stealing sweets from a few newsagents.
For all we knew, the world was our playground. Neither of our Mums ever asked us where we’d been or what we’d been doing. Dad took on the image of a ghost in my mind, coming and going without ceremony, never asking how I was doing at school.

Once, he came back from somewhere and gave me a wooden novelty clock to assemble. I remember being sat down in the dining room and left to build the clock with some glue.
What I really wanted was for Dad to do it with me, but that wasn’t what he had in mind, so he left to speak to Mum.
I had waited for Dad to come home for ages and all he could do was shove a box in front of me and tell me to assemble the pieces for his return.
As an act of defiance, I did nothing, and waited for him with my hands folded.
When he did, finally, he was angry that I hadn’t even tried.
‘I’ll do it,’ he said nastily. ‘It’s obviously too difficult for you.’ I left him to it. He stayed in there for an hour or so and made the perfect clock.

All I’d ever wanted from my Dad was time with him, but he had always been uncomfortable giving it. It’s ironic that he couldn’t even afford me the time to assemble the clock.

He used to draw the perfect Donald Duck in about a minute and I’d watch him do it, absolutely enthralled, but as soon as it was done, he’d be gone, rustling my hair as he shot out of sight like Road Runner, leaving me with the piece of paper. That was as close as I ever got to Dad. Beep Beep!

For some strange reason, I started to become fond of wrecking flower arrangements in front of florists at this time. I’d zoom by on my bike and leave a leg out to decapitate the flowers in passing. I was gone so quick that no one noticed till I was away.

Another form of terrorism that I held dear was pyromania. Letter-boxes and bins were my favoured destinations for boxes of just-lit household matches.
One time, after Dad had come and gone again, I decided to burn the big bush that followed the steps up to our house’s porch. As I watched the flames grow higher, creeping ever closer to the windows, I called the fire brigade and they were there in minutes. Mum didn’t even tell me off. All that mattered was that I was OK.
Paul’s Mum laughed when we told her. That made her day.

Finally, I’d found a friend who, like me, didn’t really have parents.

That summer, aged eleven, I was told that I would be packed off to North Wales in September. Mum had found a boarding school for me.
She explained that Dad’s boss was a wealthy Nigerian and that he would pay for my education now that Dad was based in Lagos.

I wasn’t against the idea of going to a boarding school.
Deep down, I knew that gambling was a problem.

Paul’s friendship had shown me that there was life outside The Bright Spot.

One time, I spent some money on a baseball cap and felt proud that it hadn’t gone down the throat of a machine. That was probably the only time that I had disposed of money away from the prom. It felt good and I cherished the cap as if it was a sign of my newfound freedom. This boarding school lark might put an end to my gambling, I thought to myself, half hoping to dissolve my pact with the devil.

But Mum hadn’t quite thought it through.
The boarding school was in Colwyn Bay, a renowned amusement centre along the coast from Llandudno.
As a parting gift, Mum gave me my post office book, complete with the two hundred pounds that Nan had left to me.
I knew that my gambling odyssey was far from over. In fact, it had only just begun.