Is This Yours? (Seven)

Jim wandered back toward the walls of the shop. Simultaneously Bob came out from behind the counter and onto the shop floor. His punters, rather than returning once again to contributing toward the shop’s profits and compensation for what it had paid Jim, were transfixed. “He’s got another one” they whispered and furtively eyed each other. “He’s got another one” thought Bob “and if he has there’s no fucking way I can stop the whole bloody shop getting on. I’ll be lucky to hold on to a cashier’s job after this”
Jim was scouring the race card pages again, the black phone in his right hand. “Twenty past six – it can’t be a day meeting; it must be tonight”. But where?: Wolverhampton or Kempton -no; Windsor or Lingfield - no. Perhaps there wasn’t room on the walls. So he picked up the office copy again. He wasn’t aware that thirty two pairs of eyes were bearing down on him like the concentrated ray of light from a magnifying glass being honed onto an ant by a vicious eight year old.
He ran his finger down the index. “Nottingham – there it is” he trumpeted to himself. Sure enough it wasn’t posted and he hastily flicked through the paper until he landed on the appropriate pages. It was an evening card alright, but the first race was six-fifteen.
“That’s gotta be it” but he couldn’t spot a horse called Strange Meeting. He checked out the next race 18:45 – not there. He checked all the cards regardless of the timings. He couldn’t spot it. Then a mouth leaned in close to his right ear:
“What are you doing Jim?” Bob spoke in the softest belligerent whisper Jim had ever heard.
“How many night meetings are there today?” Jim replied ignoring the tone of implied menace.
“Day or night is all the same as far as you’re concerned within these premises. All bets are off”
“I didn’t say I wanted to bet, all I want to know are there any other cards tonight besides Nottingham?”
“No, now fuck off”
“Sure?”
Bob looked down at the phone affixed in Jim’s hand like a stick in a dog’s mouth. Others behind and to the side of Jim were also straining to read what was on the phone. Jim put the phone carefully away in his pocket.
“Okay I’m going” and shot up clipping the nose of the old man who had backed Flautist.
The old man stood back a step putting the palm of his hand against his nostrils. As he pulled it away it was stained with red. “You stupid young wanker” he bleated, like the wrong sheep in a slaughterhouse “I’ll sue you for that”.
Bob had grabbed Jim’s sleeve. His grip, brimming with latent animosity, was pinching deep into his bicep. “Let the fuck go will you. That’s assault”
“No” said Bob pointing to the old guy, “That is, now out” and he slung Jim into the precinct outside.
“So much for the triumphant exit” Jim seethed turning to face Bob who stood in the door completely blocking any chance of re-entry. He didn’t need to go back in; there were, after all, lots more Bookies. He stared at Bob for the last time tapping the package sitting snug at the front of his diaphragm and, in the same motion moved that hand up giving Bob the middle finger and ambled away.
“This is too fucking weird” and for a second considered slinging the phone into the next refuse bin or at the very least handing it in to the Police station. Then, as it always does to those who gamble, anti-reasoning enters the equation. “It’s probably a horse racing tomorrow evening” Jim considered, despite the fact that paid tipsters never release the horse in question until midday on the day it’s running. “That’s got to be it. Nobody tips twice in a day do they? Besides which, the phone will be blocked soon. Too many like this and word would get around”. He’d probably get one go at all the major bookie chains but small independents wouldn’t touch him, even by laying the bet off. “What harm can it do me? I won’t tell Cassie about the winnings. I’ll use some of it on Strange Meeting and whatever else he sends me before it stops. If the prices and the information are as good, I could be set up for life now that I’ve got real money to gamble with; my own money to gamble with” Nevertheless he’d still owe it all to Cassie. It was her £50 and he lied to get it.
He rehearsed the lecture she’d give him. He knew the words because he’d had that warning before, after she picked him up from out of the gutter.
When she’d given him the pound back, all those years ago, as recompense for his charitable action inside the betting shop, he offered to take her out but said that the pound was all he had until pay day. One shouldn’t begin a serious relationship with a lie, but fabrication was second nature to him and he considered it a necessary evil that was not really bad but merely a method by which you manoeuvred through life. Jim had no job, had two convictions for theft and an addiction to the geegees.
She agreed, but on one condition, that Jim spent no more on the date than the pound she’d given him. He scoffed at her, which temporarily hurt her feelings and then, coming around to the novelty he agreed.
They met at 9:00 that evening and bought a bag of chips, a small cheap raspberry drink and a roll of fruit pastilles. After his last purchase of the sweets Jim had actually managed to come out with a penny which Cassie took off him in the late-night shop and put into the charity box for homeless pets that sat vacantly on the counter.
They sat on a bench in the small park beside the railway station, safer because of the human traffic, and talked. Rather Cassie talked and he threw in the odd snippet, but that was all right with him. They saw more of each other and eventually she introduced him to her parents (Jim’s mum was dead by now and his father was half way through a 5 year stretch at Her Majesty’s request, although he’d told Cassie he was dead too). Cassie’s mum and dad carried no preconceived ideas of the type of man their daughter would end up with. Jim appeared a little introverted but seemed to be good for her and to her and she was happy.
The crunch for all interested parties came when Jim was caught in the act of burglary for the third and final time. He was convinced their relationship would be over. But rather than tears and recriminations and a stonewall from her parents they were very supportive and Cassie’s father persuaded the judge to issue a reduced sentence in view of Jim’s upbringing, a compensatory amount paid to the traumatised victim and with a promise to employ him on release to recoup the money and to act as guarantor for his behaviour.
Jim had to attend Gamblers Anonymous meetings and take up unconditionally the employment offered by Cassie’s father. He served six months and walked straight into a job and a marriage.
He responded to kindness and attention that were previously unfamiliar elements and thought that he loved Cassie and her parents although love was another such element. Over the years though, through a combination of dependence and patronisation, he became uncomfortable, irritable and almost resentful, re-codifying their concern for him as that for a stray mongrel lost in the snow. In fact their only fault was an inability to prise some sense of self-confidence out of Jim, to which the largest share of blame was surely his own.
He sought his own employment and they let him do so, not as an act of self-empowerment but a way of scrambling out of the kennel. If he really possessed the spirit and will to fetch his own bone he’d have stuck it out at one of the many jobs he’d walked in and out of. As it was it became a compromise for him and for Cassie.
“I’m trying love” he’d whimper each time he came home after a mutual resignation.
“That’s all I ask isn’t it” and she’d cuddle him and he’d wince.
“Just once scream at me or even punch me please” but he’d swallow that plea.
“Whatever happens Jim we’ll deal with it, together” the sub-text for which was a supplication not to return back to gambling and stealing.
It never occurred to him to go back to burglary. The last thing he wanted was to indirectly attract the attentions of the sort of society his old man moved about in. “He might be out himself by now” he balked. He knew that his father would have no interest in finding him, unless he knew how well off Cassie’s parents were. “Perhaps he’ll think I’m dead. That’d work. Two corpses”
It was a large town and they had had no other family and few friends and his dad would almost certainly spend the majority of his later years in the nick. And he was right about that, he’d never see his father again.
Gambling was different. He took the course and stood up to pronounce to the world he had an addiction but refused a sponsor. One was enough.
“I’m fine, cured even, and I have Cassie”
He vowed to her he’d stop and he had up to now. “This is different. This isn’t gambling. No sir. This is printing cash. It’ll be over tomorrow. Win or lose they’ll probably pull the plug on it whoever it is sending the tips”
“What if it’s another monster price? Even 20/1 would be enough. I could put £1000 each way and still have five grand if it only placed” And his mind began imagining all sorts of fabulous scenarios, but in reality he felt that at best he’d get three shots. He’d had one he couldn’t expect the other two to be that good but he had to make it pay. He had to make them pay. You never felt pity for a bookie.
The sky discoloured a little in front of him, yet he felt a disquieting aura rise up behind him. So powerful, it became, that it felt like a harness over his shoulders. Then he knew. He was being followed.