A Gambler Born and Bred 6

1977-1981

After scraping through my entrance exams, I was transferred to the senior school.
There was instantly more time. We were given freedom to wander.
If, on a given day, we had no sports and no senior teams to watch, there would be a window of two or three hours to do as we wished.
Soon enough, I had worked a new system to pay for my gambling, and this time it was easier than ever.

Part of my Dad’s deal with his employer was that I was to be given an account at a farm shop in town.
I got to know the old couple that ran the shop and struck a deal with them.
They must have felt sorry for me or just liked me, but when I suggested that they might give me the change from a fiver if I bought an apple and some peanuts, they agreed. I did this once a week for the four years I attended Rydal.

My other scam was thieving bibles, dictionaries and novels from the school library. As they were borrowed on trust up until then, there were no markings or stamps.
I only took the ones in good condition. At the local pawn shop in town, I struck a deal to furnish him with books from the school at a third of their face-value.
Thus, with one bible, one dictionary and a novel, I would earn six pounds. I did this about six times a term until, in my final year, the stamping of all new books became compulsory.

Along with a small amount of pocket money, this was my gambling war chest. Not a lot but more than most other kids in my year.

I was also quite good at stealing from shops, but the risk involved was quite high.
There had been too many kids pulled up in chapel for pilfering porn mags and comics from Smiths to take it seriously as a viable way to earn money.
With the farm shop caper once a week and the run from library to pawn shop every month, I could finance three gambling sessions a week at the pier.

If I had no money for long enough, my head would feel like it was exploding so I’d go out and smash some windows.
One time, in broad daylight, I smashed all the windows of a luxury coach with my catapult in just over a minute.
I was in uniform with a friend (I forget his name because I used to go through ‘friends’ at an alarming rate).
We ran back towards school from the coach park, crossing roads without looking, utterly petrified of having been seen.
I was convinced that I’d be found out, but nothing came of the incident apart from a photograph of the coach all smashed up in the local paper that I saw while waiting for chips at the Chinese restaurant on my way back from the pier.
A girl from the year above that I wanted to impress was eating with her parents and I so wanted to tell her that it was me, but I realised that she’d probably be racked with guilt and end up splitting on me, so I didn’t.

I got to know girls from Penrhos, the local girlschool, at about this time. I was into punk.
One of my friends was booted out of school for various anarchic crimes. His parents didn’t want to know (I think they were in Saudi) so he became a roadie for bands that played at the pier and rented a bedsit in town. To me, this guy was a real punk. I just liked the music.

During the summer of 1978, Mum took my sister Lucy and I on holiday to Italy. Here, I met two girls of eighteen from East London. We had such a good time together and I had a crush on one of them.

In 1979, we moved to a house in Guildford. I was fourteen.
Mum and Dad had been separated for two years and, although it didn’t look as if they’d ever get back together, Dad’s job had allowed him to buy a more expensive house. Besides, Mum wanted to be closer to her friends in Surrey.
On school holidays, I’d traipse around Guildford town but there were no arcades and I had no friends.
There was a Kensington market-style place that sold vinyl, clothes and music equipment, but, apart from that, Guildford had nothing to offer apart from crappy fruit-machines in sweaty kebab takeaways that hardly ever paid out or the one at the bar in the train station, which never paid.

The Pretenders played at the Civic Hall. I sold my ticket and spent the proceeds in a takeaway and then walked home, hungry and penniless.

At school in Colwyn Bay, my life as a gambler took second place to the pursuit of girls.
I still had time to gamble, of course, but if I had arranged to meet a girl for sex (usually snogging and fondling behind a shed) the girl would take preference.

Sometimes, I would take the train for weekend leave and visit my sister Jane in London, where I’d stay at her flat in Earls Court. There were plenty of kebab shops there, and if I had enough money I’d take the tube to Leicester Square and play at the Crystal Rooms.

Seedy men would approach me and ask if I’d have sex with them, thinking I was a runaway rentboy. I never said yes. I’d not go that far.
These men knew that kids like me were broke and looking for kicks. They gambled on how desperate we really were.

One time, in a kebab shop in Earls Court, an Arabic student started playing the fruit-machine and I was desperate to find out if he’d get the jackpot, which had again eluded me, taking all my money in the process.
When no jackpot came, it didn’t seem to bother him. I thought he must have been loaded, that he just didn’t care. He seemed like a nice enough bloke and asked if I wanted to read porn mags at his bedsitter. It was only around the corner so I agreed.
I had the surprise of my life when I realised the mags were for gay men. He tried to soften the blow by pushing a carton of duty-free cigarettes up my nose, but I wasted no time and shot back to my sister’s flat.

Girls became more and more important to me, which was a good thing because I could see that my gambling was out of control. It was by then ‘a habit’, as natural as breathing.
It dominated all, if not the vast majority, of my spare time. If I wasn’t getting money together, I was thinking about how to get it. The moment I got it, I was either on my way to spend it or I was spending it or I was on my way back to school, skint.

By the age of fifteen, in my final year at Rydal, I found myself surrounded by a pretty good set of friends. We were the wild ones.
The girls at Penrhos had brought us together by teaching us some harsh lessons of life; making us risk life and limb crossing the train lines, running through thistles and scaling walls, just for the chance of a snog and a feel. If we wanted their sex, we had to earn it, because they were well aware of the hoards of tarts in town that would give themselves away for peanuts. The Penrhos girls were the tops and they knew it.

We were all after one girl. Sue Regan.
In the last term of my last year at Rydal, I started going out with her. The love I felt was a new thing altogether.
Up till then, my only ‘love’ was gambling. Sue made me feel proud for who I was. I wasn’t scurrying around arcades or plotting another little theft.
Sue’s love was pure. Her kisses were pure and her smell was pure heaven.
When we walked down to the prom together, everyone around us just stood there and gawped. We really were a match made in heaven.
When it was time to go back to school, I’d walk as if on air and feel my money still there in my pocket.
One time when we were walking together, I was so in love that I passed by all the arcades on the prom and all the ones in town without even noticing them.
Sue gave me hope.

The last day of term was one of the strangest days of my life.
With the prospect of all the pupils’ parents coming, the school had to look good.
Alas, overnight, all hell broke loose.
Some of my friends and a load of sixth formers had pulled down the rugby posts, hacked up the quad’s immaculate lawn and the cricket pitch, graffitied the outside walls of the chapel with various names of punk and heavy metal bands, with swastikas and CND logos everywhere.

One of my best friends had broken into the turret from where the proud flag of Rydal flew for all Colwyn Bay to see. Two-Sideys, known for his swift change of personality, had taken the flag down and replaced it with a swastika flag. When he went to leave, he stuffed a load of quick-hardening glue inside the lock to deter re-entry.
It worked till midday but then the fire brigade came and took it down.

I had to leave Rydal because Dad no longer worked for the wealthy Nigerian. His new job at the University of Central London wouldn’t stump up school fees so I had to go.

I was surprised when Dad arrived with Grace, whose husband had recently died from alcoholism. John had always been Dad’s best friend. I knew Grace and John well because we used to stay with them in Weybridge. Their children were the same age as us. We’d grown up together and always got on well.
But why was she there with Dad to pick me up from school?
I found out soon enough when Joyce went to the post office ‘to get some stamps’.

Dad and I drove up to my house to collect my trunk. He seemed flustered and uncomfortable.
We wrestled the trunk down the stairs and he soon became angry, muting swear words under his breath like Mutley of Dick Dastardly fame.
By the time we got to the car, there were beads of sweat on his brow.
After gently lowering the trunk into the boot, he turned to me.
‘Oh, by the way, I got married,’ he said.
The impact of these few words hit me like a cricket ball thwacking me in the face.
‘Who to?’ I asked, stupidly.
‘Well,’ he replied, wiping his forehead with his handkerchief to avoid eye-contact. ‘Grace, of course. Why do you think I came here with her?’
‘I don’t know’ was all I could say.

The five-hour journey was a passage of time in which I resolved never to love Dad again. Such was the purity of my hateful anger towards the pair of them, not a word left my lips.
He had betrayed Mum and his children by marrying one of Mum’s best friends only weeks after divorcing her, and I had been left in the dark.
Everyone knew of the divorce, it turned out, apart from me. It was thought best in view of the fact that I had to concentrate on my O levels.

Mum had found a new house, Dad told me, as we approached Guildford.
When we got there, Mum was waiting outside for me. She was looking lovely and had put a ribbon over the doorway to welcome me home.
Pulling the trunk out with Dad (Grace was sat in the car and Mum was stood on the other side of the street), I felt a massive wave of pain for Mum.
I didn’t say goodbye to Dad. I just dragged the trunk across the street and hugged Mum. He was off like a shot.